During this 1-hour discussion on bloggingheads.tv, author Robert Wright goes through many of the most controversial issues about Iran with the best-selling Iranian-American author, Hooman Majd.
]]>During this 1-hour discussion on bloggingheads.tv, author Robert Wright goes through many of the most controversial issues about Iran with the best-selling Iranian-American author, Hooman Majd.
]]>Two days of talks between Iran and six world powers have ended in Baghdad without any concrete agreement, except to meet again next month in [...]]]>
]]>Two days of talks between Iran and six world powers have ended in Baghdad without any concrete agreement, except to meet again next month in Moscow.
At the heart of the talks is an attempt by the US and other world powers to persuade Iran to accept immediate restrictions on its nuclear programme.
The US believes the Iranians want to build atomic weapons. But Tehran denies this and says its nuclear reactors will be used only for energy and research purposes. Iran was previously enriching uranium up to 3.5 per cent, and only started enriching to 20 per cent in 2009.
After the talks concluded, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, said: “We expect Iran to take practical steps to urgently meet the concerns of the international community, to build confidence and to meet its international obligations.”Known as the P5 + 1 group, the powers negotiating with Iran include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Britain, Russia, China, France - plus Germany. They want Iran to stop enriching uranium to a concentration of 20 per cent. They say at that level it is easy to enrich the uranium further to develop weapons grade material.
Meanwhile, the Iranians went into the negotiations seeking an easing of crippling economic sanctions that have primarily targetted its oil exports.
Hans Blix was the former chief weapons inspector for the UN’s nuclear watchdog in the run up to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Among other things, he told Al Jazeera: “It would be in Israel’s interest to avoid that there will be any enrichment plants anywhere in the Middle East … the question will be for the Israelis are they willing to sacrifice their own nuclear weapons, which they have regarded as a life insurance, but in return getting a well-verified zone free all sorts of fuel-cycle activities like enrichment and re-processing? I think the whole Middle East would benefit from that.”
The Guardian today about the bellicose rhetoric surrounding the Obama administration’s Iran sanctions policy. In addition to highlighting related policy recommendations from certain hawkish think tankers, I was also able to interview Paul Pillar, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Hooman Majd and Hans Blix. Here’s how I begin:
The United States claims that sanctions against Iran are designed to convince it to change its behavior on a range of issues, but even the language used to describe them tells a different story. Sanctions are central to the Obama administration‘s “dual-track” strategy – explained as a combination of pressure and engagement intended to increase US leverage at the negotiating table. As Iranians struggle with increasingly “crippling” measures, advocates are justifying the resulting pain as the alternative to war.
No single influential figure has made war with Iran seem like a prospect more than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, despite warnings against the dire ramifications from key Israeli and western security advisers. Yet it was Netanyahu who inspired more standing ovations during a May 2011 hardline speech to Congress (29 in total) than Obama did during his state of union address in January of that year, and it has been Congress that has been pushing forward the harshest measures against Iran.
While Obama criticized the “loose talk of war” that was rampant during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) conference in March, discussions of sanctions by the administration remain heavily focused on the punitive element – in response to ongoing pressure from Israel and a seemingly pro-Netanyahu Congress. Obama’s unwillingness to match his red line on Iran (acquirement of a nuclear weapon) with Netanyahu’s red line (acquirement of “breakout capability”) is a key reason why relations between the two leaders remain publicly cool. At the same time, the administration’s efforts to project an image of toughness toward the Islamic Republic significantly overshadow any displays of confidence-building diplomacy.
Read more.
]]>In regards to Iran, toward the start of the discussion Sheen brought up the non-violent strategy of targeted boycotts to oppose, among other things, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory. Foxman, exposing his hypocrisies, replies (with my emphasis):
I’m opposed to boycotts, period. I think boycotts hurt the wrong people, do not achieve their aims. They’re counterproductive. I’m not aware of any boycott — except for the boycott against South Africa — that has worked. And even there, it hurt innocent people…
So I’m opposed to boycotts, and I’m certainly opposed to boycotts whether against the whole state of Israel or segments of the state of Israel. We basically have a policy of being opposed to boycotts.
[Question from Sheen about whether Foxman's opposition is moral deficiencies or tactical inefficacy of the strategy.]
Well, the moral reason is boycotts basically hurt the wrong people, and there are innocent victims of the boycotts. There’s the same question about sanctions, whether sanctions work. … On a principled stance, we are opposed to boycotts.
Watch the video, starting from 16:40:
While Foxman says he doesn’t support visiting the morally reprehensible collective punishment of boycotts on Israelis, he has no qualms about using them to attack ordinary Iranians in an effort to force the country’s leadership to change its mind. This is exactly what Foxman did when the ADL whole-heartedly backed various sanctions packages — which he admits are plagued by the same moral quandaries as boycotts — against the Islamic Republic.
Here’s an ADL statement, co-issued by Foxman on June 9, welcoming UN sanctions against Iran (my bold again):
The world can live without Iranian oil exports, but the regime can’t. Empty oil tankers bypassing Iran on their way to fill up at Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati ports will concentrate the minds of Iran’s leaders unlike any action we can take short of war.
Foxman again, on June 17, celebrating EU sanctions against Iran that targeted that nation’s oil and natural gas sectors as well as finance and trade. His statement — a de facto endorsement of collective punishment of Iranians in order affect change in the Iran’s leadership — was issued despite the well-known fact that the leadership is notoriously obstinate:
While the impact on Iran’s finances will be in the future, these sanctions should impact the regime’s decision-making today.
The leadership of the Iranian opposition is unequivocally opposed to broad-based U.S. sanctions against Iran — both Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi have said as much, as have some exiles close to the Green movement like Hooman Majd. Even New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, whose writing shows that he is certainly no fan of the Islamic Republic’s leadership, is opposed to sanctions.
Foxman is always accusing critics of Israel of singling out the Jewish state. In this case, it turns out Foxman is the Israeli exceptionalist, period.
]]>Incredibly well connected in Iran, Majd is one of the country’s most astute analysts and a great story [...]]]>
Incredibly well connected in Iran, Majd is one of the country’s most astute analysts and a great story teller.
For the last question of their chat, Aslan asks Majd what he thinks Iran will be like in five years. Majd delivers a nuanced answer, as both the current situation and Aslan’s question demand. His answer contains many lessons for U.S. policy-makers, shedding light on why Majd is an important voice on this issue outside the Washington bubble. Here’s the full video, with the transcript of Majd’s last answer (my emphasis):
I think it can go either way. It depends on what happens outside Iran, almost as much as what happens inside Iran. When I was last in Iran about five months ago, there was a lot of despondency among the youth, and people trying to emigrate and trying to leave. Not because of an imminent threat to them, but just because they feel like they lost. That’s why people say the Green movement is over, because they feel like they’ve lost this battle.
I don’t think the regime in Iran is particularly unhappy about those kinds of people leaving. I think they feel that they have enough support by their case that they can manage the system.
I think if the United States in particular puts the kind of pressure they are putting on Iran right now — including sanctions for human rights and things like that — they kind of tend to unite the country more than divide it. Even people in the Green movement in Iran — the leadership anyway — have been against sanctions like this because it gives the hard-liners every excuse to crackdown on them.
Five years from now, if you saw what’s happening today with relations between the U.S. and Iran — the threat of war, what’s happening with Israel — I don’t think you’ll see much of a change. We’d see the democratic process stalled; I don’t think we’ll see much progress.
[...] It’s all speculation. And I do think we play a big role in this. I think we play a bigger role than we thing in terms of being able to foster this democratic movement.
I’ve always said, Reza, that if we can resolve this nuclear issue with Iran — no matter how much we hate Ahmadinejad, no matter we dislike this regime — if we can solve this, it gives these guys in Iran a little breathing room so that they’re no longer accused of being on the other side. And it would also force Ahmadinejad and his government to face up to the problems that they have in Iran. Every time something happens, (Ahmadinejad) can point to the nuclear issue and say, ‘Well, we have to be united against them. Sanctions against us; they’re threatening war.’ And it’s impossible for these Green guys to get a break, because every time they want to say something, it gets overshadowed by this pressure from Israel and pressure from the United States.
I’m hopeful that the nuclear issue can be solved in five years, and if it can, you’ll see a lot more change in Iran.
Mostly raised in the West, Majd brings a quasi-outsider’s eye to the Islamic Republic (read my review of his latest book here).
While his Western sensibilities allow Majd to explain Iranian complexities so well to a U.S. audience, one of his greatest assets may be that he’s an outsider here, too: the man has little or nothing to do with the narrow, agenda-driven dialogue in Washington. Coming to writing and journalism late in his career, Majd is a quintessential Washington outsider (though don’t expect him anytime soon on a Tea Party ticket). He thinks outside the Washington box, which allows him to spend most of his time in the real world.
As I wrote, check out his book.
]]>Writing as a guest blogger on Washington Post‘s Political Bookworm blog, Majd took on the issue of sanctions. Specifically, he looks at whether sanctions which are supposed to get Iran to change its nuclear behavior — either giving up enrichment (which is within Iran’s rights as a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, despite U.S. demands) or acquiescing to a more rigid inspections regime to confirm that the program is for peaceful purposes — can work.
Majd writes (with my emphasis):
Iran is a proud nation with a strong sense of history [...] It is almost an article of faith among Iranians, including those who oppose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the West, meaning the United States and Britain, still want to frame their relationship with Iran as one of arbab and nokar, or master and servant.
Iranians’ sensitivity to this issue reflects how they perceive pressure, or demands by foreign nations. [...]
[T]here is still tremendous support for the nuclear program in Iran, not just because of Persian pride, which President Obama recognizes, but because it has become the very symbol of Iranian independence from East and West, and a symbol of the country’s resistance to what many Iranians consider unreasonable foreign demands. [...]
Despite what some analysts insist, psychoanalyzing the Supreme Leader of Iran from thousands of miles away and proclaiming that he believes the foundation of his rule and the survival of the regime is dependent on anti-Americanism, the reality is that neither the Supreme Leader nor any other Iranian leader, conservative, pragmatist or Green, really believes that — not unless America really does aspire to be the arbab of Iran.
It was the Supreme Leader who declared, in response to U.S. demands that the United States change its behavior, “you change, and we will change too.” Pressure, sanctions, demands and threats cannot change the perception Iran has of U.S. intentions toward it, not even with an American president as civil as Barack Obama. That doesn’t mean that Iran cannot negotiate a way out of the nuclear impasse (and other points of contention with the West), it just means that it won’t from a position of perceived weakness.
As such, it’s not so much that Iran won’t bow to pressure, it’s that it can’t. If it does, it will have lost its very raison d’être.
As Majd points out towards the end of his essay, Iranians are not opposed to negotiations with the West over its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad has often spoken about negotiations in the context of “mutual respect” — which includes talking with Iran about retaining its rights to enrichment and a peaceful nuclear program, without the threat of sanctions or military attack.
U.S. policy-makers, most of whom have never been to Iran, save a few older officials who would have been there three decades ago, would do well to read Majd closely to better comprehend where the Iranians are coming from. Perhaps with an understanding of Iranian thinking, the U.S. will have better luck meeting Iran halfway.
]]>That system, notes Majd, has “never quite been the absolute and monolithic totalitarian dictatorship we often imagine it to be (and it’s certainly not one with a dictator president).” Rather than the embattled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the focus of much Iranian discontent), the real power center of Iranian politics, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, remains very much in control. Though some infighting has persisted despite his orders to stop, Khamenei accepts a level of political dissent — especially if it comes from Ahmadinejad’s right and doesn’t challenge the Supreme Leader himself.
So why did Khamenei insist that the political wrangling be toned down, at least in public? And what does it mean for what Obama’s claims about his gains versus his actual prospects for progress on the nuclear issue? Majd writes:
]]>Khamenei is no doubt aware that Iran’s enemies are keenly watching for signs of the regime’s weakness, the better to justify military attacks. By emphasizing unity — something former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, no fan of Ahmadinejad, has also done in recent weeks — Khamenei likely means to project an image of strength, internationally and domestically, at a crucial period in Iran’s history. The rallying together isn’t a flailing reaction to sanctions; it’s a concerted show of strength in the face of adversity.
The fact is, there is broad consensus on major foreign-policy issues across the political spectrum in Iran — particularly with respect to the nuclear issue. While U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration claims that the latest and toughest sanctions seem to be working, forcing the Iranians to consider negotiations on the nuclear issue, the Iranian leadership was already in agreement on actual compromises before the sanctions were imposed. [...]
The suggestion that tensions within the leadership have been aggravated by the sanctions, or that sanctions are responsible for Iran’s apparent willingness to talk, is a misreading of the political scene in Tehran.