by Derek Davison

As talks over a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program continue in Vienna (the next round will be April 7-9) it seems that even those neoconservatives who supported sanctions and negotiation as peaceful paths to a settlement want little from these talks beyond a justification for war. [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Derek Davison

As talks over a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program continue in Vienna (the next round will be April 7-9) it seems that even those neoconservatives who supported sanctions and negotiation as peaceful paths to a settlement want little from these talks beyond a justification for war. While they are careful to couch their arguments in terms of extracting the best negotiated settlement from Iran, their standards for an acceptable comprehensive settlement are generally unreasonable at best and impossible to meet at worst.

The latter was on display a week ago when I attended the McCain Institute’s “Iran Nuclear Deal: Breakthrough or Failure?” debate. Neocon panelists Bret Stephens and Reuel Marc Gerecht repeatedly argued that nuclear monitoring and verification procedures cannot ensure that the United States will be warned if Iran violates its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. For Stephens, especially, this was not a question about the amount of resources dedicated to monitoring Iran’s nuclear program or the level of access monitors permitted in Iranian facilities; he simply argued that monitoring cannot work. There is little gray area here: if your goal is an Iran without nuclear weapons, and no amount of monitoring can ensure that they are not developing one, what is left apart from the military option? Yet, while Stephens is certainly open to the idea of war, he continues to argue that harsher sanctions can result in an Iran with no breakout capacity, which seems to leave the door open to an Iran with some kind of nuclear program. Of course, he also conveniently avoids defining what that program might look like, what those tougher sanctions ought to be, or when and how any sanctions might ever be lifted.

An example of unreasonable conditions comes from Michael Singh, managing director of the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council for the Bush administration. He argues in a recent piece that the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) should insist that Iran retain zero enrichment capacity in a comprehensive deal, despite Iranian insistence that they will never give up enrichment. Like Stephens, Singh argues that tougher sanctions can achieve this outcome, but offers no suggestions as to what those sanctions should be and, more crucially, whether the international community could be expected to go along with them. This is an important concern, particularly at a time when tensions within the P5+1 are high over the situation in Crimea. Until now, the international unanimity that supported sanctions has been held together in part because the United States has been open to negotiations and to easing sanctions in return for Iranian concessions. If the US suddenly shifts to a more rigid position, is there any reason to believe that the P5+1 will maintain unity on Iran?

In order to make the case that Iran doesn’t “need” an enrichment program, Singh engages in questionable argumentation. He writes, for example, that Iran has no need for its own uranium enrichment capacity, because its native supply of natural uranium is so small that it will need to import enriched uranium whether it has an enrichment capability or not. But Singh must surely know that, even though Iran’s supply of domestic uranium is not enough to make their nuclear program self-sufficient, a domestic enrichment program allows Iran to import natural uranium ore, the trade of which is not subject to the same regulatory safeguards that are applied to enriched uranium. Singh also argues for a deal with Iran along the lines of the nuclear cooperation agreement reached with the UAE in 2009, in which the UAE agreed not to enrich uranium itself. But he can’t seriously argue that the UAE’s historical and geopolitical circumstances are in any way analogous to Iran’s, or that Iran’s reluctance to rely solely on foreign sources of enriched uranium doesn’t have some justification. It’s not even clear that Singh himself believes that zero enrichment is possible; in a piece written earlier this year, he argues that a zero enrichment goal should be used simply as a negotiating position. As in any other negotiation, then, the P5+1 would eventually move away from zero enrichment and toward a final compromise. Yet now, Singh seems to be repudiating the idea of any enrichment compromise, instead calling for a “zero enrichment or bust” approach to a comprehensive deal.

The question that folks like Stephens and Singh as well as their more bellicose colleagues like Bill Kristol and Max Boot need to answer is: what’s the endgame? Should the international community continue moving the goalposts, levying harsher and harsher sanctions on and making further demands in perpetuity? What purpose will that serve? Is there any realistic concession that Iran could offer that would, in their minds, be worth easing sanctions? Iran’s nuclear program has already cost it over $100 billion just in revenue lost to sanctions. If Iran is not prepared to surrender its entire program now, and it clearly is not, why should we expect that more or “tougher” sanctions would bring the Iranian government around? What happens if those tougher sanctions do have the effect of fracturing the international coalition?

If Iran will not surrender its nuclear ambitions, and Iranian officials insist they will not, then is war inevitable? What do Stephens and his allies imagine that war will achieve? Is it regime change? If so, what if a war actually strengthens the Iranian government’s support among its people? After all, polling says that 96% of Iranians say that maintaining a nuclear program is worth the price being paid in sanctions, and two-thirds of them support the development of a nuclear weapon. This does not appear to be a public that will turn on its leaders over their nuclear efforts. Or is their goal an Iran whose nuclear program is destroyed and cannot be reconstituted? If so, what can military strikes do to eliminate the scientific and technical knowledge that Iran already possesses and that is more important than physical infrastructure in developing nuclear weapons? What happens after the strikes, when Iran begins to rebuild its nuclear program, but without any monitoring and with a mind toward producing a weapon, a goal that even US intelligence services say it has not directly pursued as yet?

Instead of pretending to support sanctions and talks, let’s have an open discussion about the war these commentators appear in favor of, and what they think it will achieve.

As the Iranian leadership prepares to engage in negotiations with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1), the conversation inside Iran has moved beyond the nuclear issue to include a debate about the utility of or need for engaging in direct talks, even relations, with [...]]]> via Lobe Log

As the Iranian leadership prepares to engage in negotiations with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1), the conversation inside Iran has moved beyond the nuclear issue to include a debate about the utility of or need for engaging in direct talks, even relations, with the United States.

Public discussions about relations with the US have historically been taboo in Iran. To be sure, there have always been individuals who have brought up the idea, but they have either been severely chastised publicly or quickly silenced or ignored. The current conversation is distinguished by its breadth as well the clear positioning of the two sides on the issue.

On one side are the hard-liners who continue to tout the value of a “resistance economy” – a term coined by the Leader Ali Khamenei — in the face of US-led sanctions. On the other side is an increasing number of people from across the political spectrum, including some conservatives, who are calling for bilateral talks.

The idea of direct talks with the US was openly put forth last Spring by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and current chair of the Expediency council, through a couple of interviews. He insisted that Iran “can now fully negotiate with the United States based on equal conditions and mutual respect.” Rafsanjani also conceded that the current obsession with Iran’s nuclear program is not the US’ main problem, arguing against those who “think that Iran’s problems [with the West] will be solved through backing down on the nuclear issue.” At the same time, he called for proactive interaction with the world, and for understanding that after recent transformations in the Middle East, “the Americans… are trying to find “new models that can articulate coexistence and cooperation in the region and which the people [of the region] also like better.” Rafsanjani added that the current situation of “not talking and not having relations with America is not sustainable…The meaning of talks is not that we capitulate to them. If they accept our position or we accept their positions, it’s done.”

In Rafsanjani’s worldview, negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are merely part of a process that will eventually address other sources of conflict with the US in the region.

Rafsanjani is no longer the lone public voice in favor of direct talks. In fact, as the conversation over talks with the US has picked up, he has remained relatively quiet. Instead, Iranian newspapers and the public fora are witnessing a relatively robust conversation. Last week, for instance, hundreds of people filled an overcrowded university auditorium in the provincial capital of Yasuj, a small city of about 100,000 people, to listen to a public debate between two former members of the Parliament over whether direct talks and relations with the US present opportunity or threats.

On one side stood Mostafa Kavakabian who said

…whatever Islamic Iran is wrestling with in [terms of] sanctions, the nuclear energy issue, multiple resolutions [against Iran] in [international] organizations, human rights violations from the point of view of the West, the issue of Israel and international terrorism is the result of lack of logical relationship, with the maintenance of our country’s principles, with America.

Sattar Hedayatkhah on the other hand argued that “relations with America under the current conditions means backtracking from 34 years of resistance against the demands and sanctions of the global arrogance.”

In recent weeks the hard-line position has been articulated by individuals as varied as the head of the Basij militia forces, Mohammadreza Naqdi, who called sanctions a means for unlocking Iran’s “latent potential” by encouraging domestic industry and ingenuity, and the leader’s representative in the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), cleric Ali Saeedi, who said that Washington’s proposals for direct talks are a ploy to trick Tehran into capitulating over its nuclear program.

Standing in the midst of this contentious conversation is Leader Khamenei, who, as everyone acknowledges, will be the ultimate decision-maker on the issue of talks with the US. During the past couple of years he has articulated his mistrust of the Obama Administration’s intentions in no uncertain terms and since the bungled October 2009 negotiations over the transfer of enriched uranium out of Iran — when Iran negotiator Saeed Jalili met with US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns for the P5+1 side of the meeting — has not allowed bilateral contact at the level of principals between Iran and the US.

Yet the concern regarding a potentially changed position on his part has been sufficient enough for the publication of an op-ed in the hard-line Kayhan Daily warning against the “conspiracy” of “worn-out revolutionaries” to force the Leader “to drink from the poison chalice of backing down, abandoning his revolutionary positions, and talking to the US.”  The opinion piece goes on to say that

…by offering wrong analyses and relating all of the country’s problems to external sanctions, [worn-out revolutionaries] want to make the social atmosphere inflamed and insecure and agitate public sentiments so that the exalted Leader is forced to give in to their demands in order to protect the country’s interests and revolution’s gains.

The idea of drinking poison is an allusion to Revolution-founder Ruhollah Khomeini’s famous speech wherein he grudgingly accepted the ceasefire with Iraq in 1988 and refered to it as poison chalice from which he had to drink. Hard-liners in Iran continue to believe that it was the moderate leaders of the time such as Rafsanjani who convinced Khomeini to take the bitter poison, while conveniently omitting the fact that the current Leader Khamenei was at the time very much on Rafsanjani’s side. This time around it is the “worn-out revolutionaries” who, in the mind of the hard-liners, despite being conservative and acting as key political advisors to Khamenei or holding key positions in office, are suspected of pressuring him to accede to talks.

Basirat, a hard-line website affiliated with the IRGC’s political bureau, has taken a different tact and instead of denouncing pressures on Khamenei, has published a list of “Imam” Khamenei’s statements which insist on long-standing enmity with the US. Presumably, the intended purpose is to make it as hard as possible for him to back away from those statements.

The hard-liners face a predicament, which is essentially this: Having elevated Khamenei’s role to the level of an all-knowing Imam-like leader, they have few options but to remain quiet and submit to his leadership if he makes a decision in favor of direct talks. Hence their prior moves to portray any attempt at talks as capitulation at worst, or unnecessarily taking a bitter pill at best.

It is in this context that one has to consider Khamenei’s potential decision over the issue of direct talks. Whether he will eventually agree to them is not at all clear at this point and in fact is probably quite unlikely, unless the US position on Iran’s nuclear program is publicly clarified to include allowance for limited enrichment inside Iran.

In other words, while Khamenei may eventually assent to direct talks, the path to that position requires some sort of agreement on the nuclear standoff — even if only a limited one — within the P5+1 frame and not the other way around.

The reality is that US pressure on Iran has helped create an environment in which many are calling for a strategic, even incrementally implemented, shift of direction in Iran’s foreign policy regarding the so-called “America question.” But this call for a shift can only become dominant if there are some assurances that corresponding, and again, even incrementally implemented shifts, are also in the works in the US regarding the “Iran question.

- Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an affiliate graduate faculty member in political science and international relations at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. A version of this article appeared on IPS News. 

This week, Jeffrey Goldberg gave cover to Mitt Romney’s critique of public discussion about the consequences of going to war with Iran in Bloomberg News.

Goldberg wasn’t giving Romney a platform for his messaging; he agrees with the Republican nominee’s assessment:

Romney’s more potent criticism of Obama has more to [...]]]> via Lobe Log

This week, Jeffrey Goldberg gave cover to Mitt Romney’s critique of public discussion about the consequences of going to war with Iran in Bloomberg News.

Goldberg wasn’t giving Romney a platform for his messaging; he agrees with the Republican nominee’s assessment:

Romney’s more potent criticism of Obama has more to do with statements made by Obama’s underlings. It is true, as Romney wrote, that administration officials have discussed publicly the risks of an American (or Israeli) attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. There are risks, of course — potentially catastrophic ones — of attacking. But it doesn’t help the American negotiating position to publicly telegraph to the Iranians these sorts of doubts.

Goldberg reiterated his stance in the Atlantic:

President Obama has been undermined from time to time by his own team on the Iran question — whenever a senior official of his administration analyzes publicly the dangers of a military confrontation to the U.S., we should assume the Iranian leaders breathe a sigh of relief, and make the calculations that Obama is bluffing on military action.

Not everyone agrees with Romney and Goldberg, whose flawed reporting about the alleged threat from Saddam Hussein in 2002 was referenced by US hawks to advance their case for war on Iraq. Indeed, prompted by Israel’s latest Iran-pressure campaign, the editorial board of USA Today urged for a real discussion about the military option’s consequences:

But the choice between hot and cold wars is exactly what needs to be discussed before the U.S. risks launching itself into another military morass. Look at the daunting consequences, and you see why Israelis are so divided:

But can the cons of publicly discussing an easily devastating war be more harmful than concealing the discussion from the public? Ali Gharib answers in the Daily Beast:

Were the administration not willing to publicly discuss the potential consequences with its public, then the threats better be a bluff—because to launch this war without a national dialogue would be a monumental disservice to American democracy, not to mention irresponsible. The stakes are simply too high: an eminent group of foreign policy heavyweights recently said an attack could spark an ”all-out regional war“; former top Israeli security officials say strikes could be counterproductive, spurring Iran to build the bomb, and justify it. That’s to say nothing of the incredible potential these scenarios—deemed likely by experts—hold for spilled American blood and treasure.

As does Ben Armbruster in ThinkProgress:

…having a thorough, thoughtful, honest and open discussion about the consequences of going to war with Iran only helps us and our allies. Democracies debate policy openly and freely, which actually could serve as a model for those Iranians looking for change. Openly discussing and knowing the consequences of attacking Iran doesn’t mean that President Obama won’t follow through with his policy of using all options available, including military force, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It means that he, his administration and the American people will be more informed about what the aftermath of a military attack would look like.

“If we’ve learned anything from the past decade of war in the Middle East, it’s that debates over our national security strengthen our policy and our democracy. Doing the opposite weakens it,” Rubin said.

Indeed, “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” didn’t work out so well in 2003.

Back in January, academic Matthew Kroenig claimed the United States could militarily strike Iran without causing havoc and catastrophe in the region. His arguments were widely criticized and supported by the usual suspects. Jamie Fly, the neoconservative executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, disagreed with Kroenig, but only because [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Back in January, academic Matthew Kroenig claimed the United States could militarily strike Iran without causing havoc and catastrophe in the region. His arguments were widely criticized and supported by the usual suspects. Jamie Fly, the neoconservative executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, disagreed with Kroenig, but only because Kroenig did not go far enough. Then in May the two penned an op-ed arguing that President Obama had offered Iran too many carrots. This was just days before the talks almost collapsed after the only “relief” the Western-led negotiating team offered Iran was spare parts for aircraft that have suffered tremendously under sanctions. What would assist the negotiation process, according to Fly and Kroenig? More threats of military force, of course.

Although using the military option on Iran hasn’t exactly taken off as a preferred choice here in Washington, Kroenig and like-minded folks working at prominent platforms like the Wall Street Journal continue to beat their drums. That’s likely one reason why the Council on Foreign Relations hosted a debate moderated by Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose between Kroenig and Trita Parsi, a prominent US-Iran relations analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council. The entire debate is worth listening to, but in a nutshell, Kroenig reiterates the arguments from his article: out of the 3 potential outcomes with Iran — successful diplomacy, nuclear containment and military conflict, the third is most likely and planning should begin even while the US continues its diplomatic track with Iran. Israel isn’t equipped to do the job, so the US should carry out “limited” strikes and only respond devastatingly if Iran retaliates with more than wimper by, for example, closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Parsi accordingly points out several flaws in Kroenig’s argument: an Iranian nuclear weapon is neither inevitable nor imminent, diplomacy has neither failed nor been whole-heartedly utilized and the experience of the Iraq War, which took the lives of 5,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, shows that a war with Iran is hardly going to be quick and relatively painless as Kroenig suggests. Parsi adds that as with the lead-up to the Iraq War, proponents of the military option with Iran are not from the military or intelligence communities. In fact, neoconservative hawks regularly contest the validity of intelligence and military assessments, which is ironic to say the least. Parsi also notes that as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly emphasized, bombing a country is the best way to convince it that it needs a nuclear deterrent to ward of future attacks…