by Shervin Malekzadeh
Millions of Iranians will gather in the coming days to watch their country take on the world in something other than politics. Against the odds, against Argentina, and after a long, eight-year absence, Iran’s participation in the World Cup is a welcome break from usual state TV programming. While the people [...]]]>
by Shervin Malekzadeh
Millions of Iranians will gather in the coming days to watch their country take on the world in something other than politics. Against the odds, against Argentina, and after a long, eight-year absence, Iran’s participation in the World Cup is a welcome break from usual state TV programming. While the people of Iran ceaselessly hope for sanctions relief and a better economy, at least for now, sports will draw their interest more than their government’s wrangling with Western powers over Iran’s nuclear portfolio.
Missing out on the festivities will be the more than 1 million recent high school graduates studying for the dreaded konkoor, a yearly university entrance exam scheduled for June 26. Tucked away in their bedrooms, poorly sheltered against the frantic shouts and exhortations just outside their doors, the temptation of the World Cup could not have come at a worse time for these students. They face a cruel calculus: an entire year of preparation to take a four-hour test focusing on five subject areas — the only way to gain college admission. The cost of failure will be an entire year of waiting just to retake the test. Those students who pass, on the other hand, will have no way of knowing beforehand where they will be placed (there are no campus visits in Iran) nor whether they will be able to enroll in their preferred course of study (their ranking on the konkoor determines both).
What is not uncertain is that most of the successful test-takers will complete their university education without securing a job or an obvious career path. More than 21 percent of all young people with a college degree were unemployed according to last year’s state figures, more than double the official national average. An astounding 43 percent of college-educated women are without work. Young, overqualified, and unemployed, most of Iran’s college graduates will continue to live at home and toil away at jobs unrelated to their degrees and majors, a state of adolescent suspension that the political scientist Diane Singerman has memorably labeled, “waithood.”
It is an inconsistency that youth and the possession of a university degree have become the strongest predictors for unemployment in Iran today. The great mystery is that none of this seems to matter. Despite considerable outrage in the media and amongst the general public about the inability of Iran’s educational system to funnel graduates into the workforce, the demand for college amongst ordinary Iranians remains insatiable.
The single-minded pursuit of credentialed merit in Iran persists against dim prospects. Since 2005, the percentage of 18-24-year-olds attending college has nearly tripled, rising from just over 20 percent to the current 55 percent, a demand fueled in part by an Ahmadinejad administration determined to establish its populist bona fides through education. State planners keen on expanding the government’s reach have been met more than halfway from below, by a society obsessed with the distinction and opportunities that “getting the paper” supposedly brings. “Learn and study what you will,” writes one long time observer of Iran’s educational system, “but above all get a university degree!”
So why participate in a system in which the odds, if not the system itself, appear to be stacked against you? This question is not limited to academia. Iranians take part in all kinds of “games,” be they educational (attending college to gain employment), political (voting in presidential elections), or athletic (the World Cup), despite very low chances of success.
Indeed, almost exactly a year ago today, more than 18 million Iranians, over 70 percent of the voting age population, participated in Iran’s presidential election despite the turmoil of the 2009 election and violent suppression of the Green Movement. Though polling and anecdotal evidence showed that many Iranians believed their vote “would not matter” and that the election would be rigged, an absolute majority turned up at the ballot box in June 2013 to vote Hassan Rouhani into office, shocking even the most astute of observers and creating a “political earthquake.”
The politics of participation in Iran is not without explanation. Disappointment and fatigue with a revolution that remains wedded to large and unwieldy promises have left many people inclined to seek their advantage in the small and manageable, to get what they can from revolutionary strictures. A college degree is unlikely to produce a job, just as a vote for Hassan Rouhani will surely not lead to Jeffersonian democracy. But while both are uncertain opportunities for progress, nonparticipation guarantees failure.
Something similar is happening with Iran’s Team Melli. The national team qualified for the World Cup just days after Rouhani’s election, the celebratory crowds for which dwarfed even the widespread street celebrations following Rouhani’s presidential win. Today, every Iranian knows the chances of the national team making it to the second round, much less winning the tournament, are almost zero. That does not mean, however, that Iranians will turn off the TV when Iran plays against Lionel Messi and the formidable Argentinian team on Saturday, or that young people won’t find a way to sneak away from their books to watch the match, all in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the odds will turn their way.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
Photo: Iranian youth celebrating in northern Tehran after Team Melli qualified for the 2014 Brazil World Cup on June 18, 2013, just days after Hassan Rouhani was elected president. Credit: Kosoof
by Omid Memarian
Traditionally, a few months before a presidential election in Iran, the government opens the public sphere, giving more freedom to the press, more space for activists to speak out and even loosening social restrictions like the one on women’s clothing and hijab. But less than two months before [...]]]>
by Omid Memarian
Traditionally, a few months before a presidential election in Iran, the government opens the public sphere, giving more freedom to the press, more space for activists to speak out and even loosening social restrictions like the one on women’s clothing and hijab. But less than two months before Iran’s June 14 election, the situation feels very different in Tehran. In fact, the opposite is happening.
In mid-January, Iranian intelligence forces arrested more than 16 journalists and questioned many more. All of them were released after a few weeks. Iranian intelligence also summoned the managing editors of major publications and warned them against criticizing the government during the election season.
A number of political activists linked to the reformists’ camp, including former MP Hossein Loghmanian, have also been arrested in the last few weeks. And just months before the election, instead of experiencing more freedom, three major publications — Mehrnameh, Aseman and Panjareh — have shut down voluntarily to avoid likely censure and official closure. A reporter from one of these publications told me, “We all thought we were going to have a similar environment like in the past, and that the government would be more tolerant regarding the media’s performance, but the monitoring and censorship imposed by the intelligence is intensifying day by day.”
It’s not just about the media or activists anymore either. On April 30, Reuters reported that Bagher Asadi, a prominent Iranian diplomat — well-known and respected in UN diplomatic circles — had been arrested in mid-March. The government kept the arrest quiet for more than six weeks, but once the family leaked the news to the media, they confirmed it.
Former diplomat Mohammad Reza Heydari told me on Thursday that he believes the arrest occurred because Asadi was critical of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy and challenged the government’s performance on a number of occasions — something Tehran does not tolerate, especially when it comes from Iranians.
These are just a few examples of how the Iranian government is getting ready for June. Remembering the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election, the widespread protests in the streets and the massive number of arrests, the government has chosen to preempt any possible challenge to the regime’s narrative on a wide range of issues, from the government’s policies, to the candidates’ qualifications, to the ongoing crackdown on dissidents.
By now, two presidential candidates in the last election, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, as well as Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard, have spent well over two years under house arrest. These two were beloved politicians in the eyes of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Khomeini. Even so, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can’t tolerate them. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Khamenei supported unconditionally in his first term, now won’t pass up any opportunity to criticize the establishment.
So if the regime can’t trust a former prime minister and a former head of parliament, or even it’s current president, then whom can they, or rather, the Supreme Leader, trust? The answer is basically no one. And if you don’t trust anyone, from veteran revolutionaries to the younger generation of political figures, then what do you do with a presidential election?
The regime’s extreme sense of suspicion and distrust, and the level of squabbling amongst the political parties, who, regardless of ideology or revolutionary ideals, are all greedy for a piece of the pie, point to an unsettling future for Iran’s political sphere in the months to come. The Supreme Leader will do whatever it takes to make sure one of his loyalists ends up in office.
As Khamenei strives to keep his stranglehold on power, we should expect intensifying censorship and control over the media, civil society and political activists in the coming months. No matter who is nominated for Iran’s presidential election in the coming days, the regime is ready to avoid any surprises, regardless of the cost.
]]>by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
The latest round of talks between the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) and Iran in Kazakhstan concluded on Saturday without any tangible progress. While details of the reciprocal offers remain unclear, what we have learned indicates that neither side is in any particular hurry [...]]]>
by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
The latest round of talks between the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) and Iran in Kazakhstan concluded on Saturday without any tangible progress. While details of the reciprocal offers remain unclear, what we have learned indicates that neither side is in any particular hurry to conclude the lengthy negotiations. In the meantime international sanctions, which have plunged Iran’s economy into its deepest crisis since the war with Iraq, will remain in force and may even be tightened. An important question now is whether the delay in resolving the crisis favors Iran or its Western foes, and the answer has to do in part with what one believes is happening to Iran’s economy.
Just before the talks restarted, a report in the New York Times entitled “Double-Digit Inflation Worsens in Iran” may have strengthened the belief of those in the US who think that time is on their side. If inflation — the most obvious, if not the most painful, effect of sanctions — has gotten worse for the sixth month in a row, then waiting a few more months might weaken Iran’s position. The article was based on new data released by Iran’s Statistical Center, which, when looked at more closely actually shows that inflation has been up and down in the last six months, falling as many times as it went up, though prices go only up (see a detailed graph of monthly inflation rates here). The persistence of high inflation has as much to do with sanctions as with Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence on making good before he leaves office and ahead of the June presidential election by pushing ahead with his unfunded (and therefore inflationary) promises of cash transfers and low-cost housing.
Iranian officials who were last year denying the impact of sanctions now praise them for helping Iran wean its economy from oil. Last month, Iran’s Minister of Economy, Shamseddin Hosseini, said that “Thanks to the sanctions [imposed] by enemies, a historical dream of Iran is being realized as the oil revenues’ share in the administration of the country’s affairs has been reduced.” The Minister for Industry, Mining and Commerce also added a humbling note, “What we had been unable to achieve on our own, sanctions have done for us.” He was referring to the huge inflow of cheap imports paid for by the oil revenues over which he has presided since 2009.
As these officials have discovered lately, oil money can stock the kitchens and living rooms of the average family while keeping their educated son or daughter out of a job. While imports increased eightfold over the last ten years, many local producers in agriculture or industry have either shut down or increased the import content of their production. Either way, jobs have been lost. Between 2006 and 2011, census figures show that Iran’s economy created zero new jobs, as the working age population increased by 3.5 million.
As I have argued before, the devaluation of the rial, which many saw as the reason why Iran restarted negotiating, is actually a reason why it may not be in such a hurry to resume its oil exports. A study last week that was surprising for its source — the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has always pushed for tougher sanctions on Iran — admitted that Iran is doing a good job of adjusting to reduced oil revenues. It shows how the balance of trade in non-oil items is improving and how the government budget is becoming less dependent on oil.
But adjusting to the financial sanctions is an entirely different story. After being cut off from the international banking system and with limited access to global markets, Iran is finding it extremely hard to turn its import-dependent economy around. If Iran could choose which of the two sets of sanctions to lose first, oil or financial, it would definitely be the latter.
]]>by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather [...]]]>
by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather unhappy, even more than expected, with Iran. After all, it made a slight move during the first round by reportedly not demanding the complete dismantling of Fordo and rather asking for its suspension with provisions that would make its return to operation difficult. In return, it offered some sanctions relief regarding the gold trade and petrochemical industry.
The Iranian leadership did not think this was a balanced offer even if they acknowledged the US move as a positive step. The closure or non-operation of Fordo is a key component of a solution to the nuclear conflict while the slight sanctions relief offered in return hardly impacts the complex web of trade and financial sanctions that have been imposed on Iran. More importantly, for negotiation purposes, Fordo — an under-mountain site built in reaction to the repeated refrain of “all options are on the table” — is Tehran’s most important leverage for the talks. So, giving it away cheaply is just bad negotiating strategy.
There were attempts by some members of Iran’s foreign policy establishment to sell the US offer as a good first step to the Iranian public but that didn’t work out. In private conversations, even those hoping that Tehran would take the offer talked about the need for the Leader to take the “poisoned chalice,” a reference to Islamic Revolution founder Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous words when he accepted a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988. In other words, even those hoping for the acceptance of the offer considered it unbalanced and only necessitated through circumstances.
Subsequent efforts to make the offer more balanced during the technical talks in Istanbul failed. Hence, as they have done before, the Iranian negotiating team shifted gears and began talking about a comprehensive solution to the Iran question that will address other regional issues (i.e. Syria and Bahrain) as well as delineate what the end game will be. The endgame for Tehran since everything began in 2003 has always entailed the right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. In retrospect, we should have expected Iran’s shift back toward a comprehensive discussion — which also happened in Moscow — after efforts during the technical talks to make the revised proposal more balanced failed.
As a result, the question of “now what?” will have to be on the table for the US. By moving a bit, the Obama administration has acknowledged that just making demands without at least appearing to address some of Iran’s bottom lines won’t move the process forward. Similarly, the presumption that a successful sanctions regime will convince Tehran to accede to a perceived bad deal in order to rescue Iran’s economy also just received a solid beating.
The US can of course continue to tighten the economic noose on Iran, although it is not clear how much more “useful” damage that will actually do. Two recent reports from completely divergent outlets — the National Iranian American Council and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — suggest that Iran’s economy is adapting to the limits that have been imposed on its oil exports. Neither of these reports deny the harm sanctions have inflicted or the opportunity costs that have resulted, but they do acknowledge that Iran has been able to adjust and limp along at least in terms of macro trade and budget numbers. Even a recent joint-report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists — while focusing on the costs and risks of Iran’s nuclear program — ends up acknowledging that costs from the loss of oil exports and opportunity costs resulting from the loss of foreign investment has been absorbed by Iran.
Indeed, continuing with what hasn’t worked in the past with the hope that it will one day work is what Gary Samore, Obama’s former nuclear advisor, expects. I guess the hope is that something magical will happen with Iran’s June 14 election and a newly elected president who will take charge by August. Perhaps he will be able to convince the Iranian leadership across the board that the offer Iran just designated as neither balanced nor comprehensive needs to be accepted.
This expectation or hope is a risky one. It is premised on the belief that Iran is a contested political environment and the harshness of sanctions will eventually pave the way for folks who think it’s time to abandon Iran’s nuclear program in favor of economic riches to gain the upper hand or argument. But the logic of Iran as a contested political terrain actually brings us to the opposite conclusion. One can more easily argue that the inability to begin a process of give and take on the nuclear issue before Iran’s election provides incentive to those who insist on Iran’s nuclear rights — and also happen to be in charge of the country — to make sure that a president is elected who will continue to toe their established line. In other words, the further escalation of sanctions may end up impacting the Iranian election, but not in the way that was intended.
So are there other options? Yes, according to another recent report by the Atlantic Council called Time to Move from Tactics to Strategy on Iran. It calls upon the Obama administration to “lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities.”
Various sections of the report appear like they have been written by different members of the Council’s Iran Task Force, but the process laid out is pretty close to what the Iranians have articulated; if the issue is Iran’s nuclear program, then let’s lay out a roadmap and endgame for how the nuclear issue can be resolved to the relative satisfaction of all sides. The report also calls for opening an US Interests Section in Iran and increased people-to-people contact. Although it doesn’t come right out and say it, it effectively endorses various improved relations (people-to-people or government-to-government) as a companion to or simultaneous with a clearly defined step-by-step framework that reduces pressure on Iran in exchange for limitations on its nuclear program.
I’m not sure if the individuals who wrote the section on people-to-people contact and the need to use stepped-up public diplomacy to make Iranians “aware of the real reasons for sanctions” (to ensure the peacefulness of Iran’s nuclear program) understand how hard it is even for the most adept propaganda machine — and our country does have a pretty good one — to sell the idea that the US is justified in collectively punishing Iranians for the policies of their leaders. Nevertheless, making the case that the US is really not that bad while the sanctions regime is being relaxed through a step-by-step process of negotiations is a whole lot easier than what is being done right now: escalating the process of squeezing Iran while denying responsibility for it.
The Council report curiously does insist on maintaining one aspect of the Obama administration’s approach. It says that the majority of the Iran Task Force favors maintaining the military option as a last resort. It calls on the Obama administration to make sure that the option remains credible despite the acknowledgment that “While the drawbacks of a nuclear Iran are grave, the ramifications of a premature military strike—what the US military refers to as “second- and third-order effects”—could also be dire.” My dictionary tells me that “dire” is much worse than “grave” and I guess the report tries to ignore this by highlighting its rejection of a “premature” strike, whatever that means. But the dire effects of the premature strike are the same, I suppose, as a rightly timed strike.
Beyond this, I am truly puzzled by the inability of those promoting this type of public discourse to understand the corrosive impact that the language of “all options are on the table” has on the so-called international community that the Obama administration claims to represent, as well as various stakeholders in Iran, including the “Iranian people” who we apparently love and are so interested in establishing contact with. These fighting words do nothing to make the threat of military attack credible to those who run Iran’s nuclear policy precisely because of the “dire” effects that the Council report lays out. They also undercut any claim to righteousness regarding the nuclear row for the people who occupy the land and buildings that are being threatened. I cannot claim to know what the “Iranian people” think, but I can say that the overwhelming majority of Iranians I know, inside and outside of Iran, consider this language vulgar and appalling and reflective of an utter disregard for other people’s lives and livelihoods. Who else speaks this way nowadays? North Korea?
America’s “now what?” moment regarding Iran could be a productive moment if it begins to come to terms with the fact that the sanctions regime has not changed the calculation of the Iranian government — as evidenced by what just happened in Almaty. It can only do so, however, if it acknowledges that the military option cannot be made credible because the idea is both stupid and offensive.
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
The stakes in President Barak Obama’s impending visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan have risen steadily in recent days. It is taking take place, after all, almost immediately following Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip around the region — but not to the same stops [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
The stakes in President Barak Obama’s impending visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan have risen steadily in recent days. It is taking take place, after all, almost immediately following Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip around the region — but not to the same stops on the President’s tour — which, coming so soon after Kerry assumed office, almost inevitably can do little to advance America’s regional agenda. This agenda includes fostering regime change in Syria and ending its civil war; promoting political stability in Egypt and reinforcing its relationship with Israel; gaining Iran’s compliance on the nuclear issue; and setting the stage for a more salubrious course for the so-called Arab spring than has been seen so far, at least in the Near East. On top of that, Kerry had to deal with a complicating comment by the Turkish prime minister: “It is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism, or anti-Semitism, or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.” That slur did nothing to increase Israel’s confidence regarding its neighborhood.
Also inevitably, an unavoidable linkage between President Obama’s trip and the issue of the Iranian nuclear program was reinforced by the administration’s obligatory recitation of its policies before the annual meeting in Washington of AIPAC, “America’s pro-Israel lobby.” Vice President Biden was most dramatic: “President Barack Obama is not bluffing. He is not bluffing. We are not looking for war. We are looking to and ready to negotiate peacefully, but all options, including military force, are on the table.” That is nothing more than Obama has already said, in one way or another. But it comes immediately after the resumption of talks in Kazakhstan between Iran and the so-called “P5+1” countries — the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union. These talks, containing at most a sliver of hope of future progress, were probably just a “time buyer” in any event — especially to get both sides past the Iranian presidential elections in June. But, now, “confidence-building,” assuming that it’s possible, will have to wait for another day.
President Obama’s trip thus does not begin on an upbeat note for America’s overall ambitions in the region. But on one level, that is almost beside the point. This is, after all, the first time he has been to Israel, more than four years into his presidency. The very fact of his going is thus important. A neat parallel was President Anwar Sadat’s almost-hectoring speech to the Israeli Knesset in 1978. At the time, I asked a leading Israeli whether Sadat’s words undercut his message of peace. “The fact that he was standing there in the Knesset,” my interlocutor said, “spoke so loudly I couldn’t hear what he was saying.”
So Obama will be there, underscoring by his presence not just that the US “has Israel’s back,” but also, made necessary by the fact of his trip, that Israel-Palestine negotiations are on his agenda. But what else?
Certainly, given the administration’s declared objective of restarting the moribund Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” — where Kerry has characterized failure as a “catastrophe” — Obama has to address the subject, and do so in more than pro forma terms. Most important is providing a sense of his own personal commitment, assuming that that is his intent, to seeing the process move forward, a highly-elastic term. One observer with about as much experience as anyone, Ambassador Dennis Ross, laid out his own 14 steps for confidence-building in last Sunday’s New York Times. While quite possibly realistic in terms of confidence-building, they are far from confidence-inspiring and are devoid of significant concrete goals, much less an end point, the so-called “final status.” Notably, Ross did not mention the so-called “Clinton Parameters,” of December 2000, which can be viewed here, and which are widely understood to be the only realistic basis for peace and the “two-state solution.”
While nothing is easy in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the Clinton Parameters compete for the prize: land-swaps would incorporate most West Bank Jewish settlements into Israel; Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state; Palestine would be essentially demilitarized, with Israel retaining some residual rights of defense; outside peacekeepers (probably NATO) would be introduced; and arrangements would be made for Palestinian refugees, certainly better than their current circumstances. But 12 years after these sensible ideas were put forward — and 33 years since negotiations began — success is not now even remotely in sight.
Obama’s peace mission — if that is how he sees his Near East trip — will be complicated by Israel’s deep security concerns, most immediately the civil war in Syria. Jerusalem and Damascus have had a tacit agreement since the mid-1970s to prevent a breakdown in their uneasy truce, but that is now in jeopardy. And although Egypt’s continuing commitment to its treaty with Israel, the latter’s geopolitical linchpin, will probably hold, this is not something on which Israel can bet the farm.
And then there is Iran and the nuclear conundrum. Of necessity, Obama will have to repeat, and perhaps even reinforce, what Vice President Biden said to AIPAC. He can express hopes for a peaceful outcome, but he will have to underline, and underline again, the military consequences if Iran does not respond in terms that the US, with Israel at its elbow, has set. This will not be the time or place for the US president to lay out a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Iran, including one essential element that has so far been missing: that the security needs not just of the US and Israel, but also of Iran, must all be on the table. Instead, Obama’s trip will be a time primarily to provide, and provide again, reassurances to Israel, the sine qua non for everything else.
This, of course, will do little to move forward efforts to defuse the time-bomb with Iran. But with those efforts necessarily being on hold until after its June elections, nothing should be expected from the US president, other than some reference to giving diplomacy a chance. But what of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?
An old rule of thumb, based on both the facts and appearance of power, is that US presidents don’t do “fact-finding” or go on “listening tours.” They have mid-level officials to do that. What American presidents are expected to do by both friend (with hope) and foe (with fear), is to lead. Words will not suffice: Obama has already done that in Cairo, Ankara, and Accra with three essays in eloquence that advanced the proposition that hope buttressed by hard work can triumph over experience. Now the world waits to see his Act Two.
There is one thing to do: be bold. Not baby-steps, like those suggested by Dennis Ross — as well as by others over the years — and which have yielded so little for so long. The place to start consists of two steps that go directly to “final status.” First, to endorse in clear-cut terms the Clinton Parameters as the United States’ bottom-line, a formal commitment to a two-state solution — full stop; and second, to promise the diplomatic and other efforts needed to see them through to completion, whatever it takes. I have already argued for the appointment of Bill Clinton as Special Negotiator. Or perhaps the Secretary of State would want to do it, though that would necessarily take him away from the rest of his global duties. But the principle is clear: if the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is ever to succeed — a huge “if” — the US president has to enunciate a concrete, simple, and unambiguous plan, set his seal to it, and be a bull terrier in carrying it through.
Be bold, Mr. President, or it would be better that you stay home.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>via IPS News
A review of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus [...]]]>
via IPS News
A review of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony.
Both wrote memoranda in 2003 urging the George W. Bush administration to take the Iranian “roadmap” proposal for bilateral negotiations seriously but found policymakers either uninterested or powerless to influence the decision. Hillary Mann Leverett even has a connection with the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), having interned with that lobby group as a youth.
After leaving the U.S. government in disagreement with U.S. policy toward Iran, the Leveretts did not follow the normal pattern of settling into the jobs where they would support the broad outlines of the U.S. role in world politics in return for comfortable incomes and continued access to power.
Instead, they have chosen to take a firm stand in opposition to U.S. policy toward Iran, criticising the policy of the Barack Obama administration as far more aggressive than is generally recognised. They went even farther, however, contesting the consensus view in Washington among policy wonks, news media and Iran human rights activists that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in June 2009 was fraudulent.
The Leveretts’ uncompromising posture toward the policymaking system and those outside the government who support U.S. policy has made them extremely unpopular in Washington foreign policy elite circles. After talking to some of their antagonists, The New Republic even passed on the rumor that the Leveretts had become shills for oil companies and others who wanted to do business with Iran.
The problem for the establishment, however, is that they turned out to be immune to the blandishments that normally keep former officials either safely supportive or quiet on national security issues that call for heated debate.
In “Going to Tehran”, the Leveretts elaborate on the contrarian analysis they have been making on their blog (formerly “The Race for Iran” and now “Going to Tehran”) They take to task those supporting U.S. systematic pressures on Iran for substituting wishful thinking that most Iranians long for secular democracy, and offer a hard analysis of the history of the Iranian revolution.
In an analysis of the roots of the legitimacy of the Islamic regime, they point to evidence that the single most important factor that swept the Khomeini movement into power in 1979 was “the Shah’s indifference to the religious sensibilities of Iranians”. That point, which conflicts with just about everything that has appeared in the mass media on Iran for decades, certainly has far-reaching analytical significance.
The Leveretts’ 56-page review of the evidence regarding the legitimacy of the 2009 election emphasises polls done by U.S.-based Terror Free Tomorrow and World Public Opinon and Canadian-based Globe Scan and 10 surveys by the University of Tehran. All of the polls were consistent with one another and with official election data on both a wide margin of victory by Ahmadinejad and turnout rates.
The Leveretts also point out that the leading opposition candidate, Hossein Mir Mousavi, did not produce “a single one of his 40,676 observers to claim that the count at his or her station had been incorrect, and none came forward independently”.
“Going to Tehran” has chapters analysing Iran’s “Grand Strategy” and on the role of negotiating with the United States that debunk much of which passes for expert opinion in Washington’s think tank world. They view Iran’s nuclear programme as aimed at achieving the same status as Japan, Canada and other “threshold nuclear states” which have the capability to become nuclear powers but forego that option.
The Leveretts also point out that it is a status that is not forbidden by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – much to the chagrin of the United States and its anti-Iran allies.
In a later chapter, they allude briefly to what is surely the best-kept secret about the Iranian nuclear programme and Iranian foreign policy: the Iranian leadership’s calculation that the enrichment programme is the only incentive the United States has to reach a strategic accommodation with Tehran. That one fact helps to explain most of the twists and turns in Iran’s nuclear programme and its nuclear diplomacy over the past decade.
One of the propaganda themes most popular inside the Washington beltway is that the Islamic regime in Iran cannot negotiate seriously with the United States because the survival of the regime depends on hostility toward the United States.
The Leveretts debunk that notion by detailing a series of episodes beginning with President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s effort to improve relations in 1991 and again in 1995 and Iran’s offer to cooperate against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and, more generally after 9/11, about which Hillary Mann Leverett had personal experience.
Finally, they provide the most detailed analysis available on the 2003 Iranian proposal for a “roadmap” for negotiations with the United States, which the Bush administration gave the back of its hand.
The central message of “Going to Tehran” is that the United States has been unwilling to let go of the demand for Iran’s subordination to dominant U.S. power in the region. The Leveretts identify the decisive turning point in the U.S. “quest for dominance in the Middle East” as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which they say “liberated the United States from balance of power constraints”.
They cite the recollection of senior advisers to Secretary of State James Baker that the George H. W. Bush administration considered engagement with Iran as part of a post-Gulf War strategy but decided in the aftermath of the Soviet adversary’s disappearance that “it didn’t need to”.
Subsequent U.S. policy in the region, including what former national security adviser Bent Scowcroft called “the nutty idea” of “dual containment” of Iraq and Iran, they argue, has flowed from the new incentive for Washington to maintain and enhance its dominance in the Middle East.
The authors offer a succinct analysis of the Clinton administration’s regional and Iran policies as precursors to Bush’s Iraq War and Iran regime change policy. Their account suggests that the role of Republican neoconservatives in those policies should not be exaggerated, and that more fundamental political-institutional interests were already pushing the U.S. national security state in that direction before 2001.
They analyse the Bush administration’s flirtation with regime change and the Obama administration’s less-than-half-hearted diplomatic engagement with Iran as both motivated by a refusal to budge from a stance of maintaining the status quo of U.S.-Israeli hegemony.
Consistent with but going beyond the Leveretts’ analysis is the Bush conviction that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had shaken the Iranians, and that there was no need to make the slightest concession to the regime. The Obama administration has apparently fallen into the same conceptual trap, believing that the United States and its allies have Iran by the throat because of its “crippling sanctions”.
Thanks to the Leveretts, opponents of U.S. policies of domination and intervention in the Middle East have a new and rich source of analysis to argue against those policies more effectively.
*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Photo: Tehran skyline in Iran.
]]>After the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) in Moscow last June, dialogue at the senior political level was put on ice due to the American presidential vote. Eighty-five days have passed since the re-election of Barack Obama, and high-level talks [...]]]>
After the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) in Moscow last June, dialogue at the senior political level was put on ice due to the American presidential vote. Eighty-five days have passed since the re-election of Barack Obama, and high-level talks between Iran and the P5+1 have yet to resume. There are many reasons for this.
On the Iranian side, there are four main, mutually reinforcing factors behind Tehran’s cautious approach to fresh talks. First, certain figures within the political system, the nezaam, are in favor of waiting for Obama to finalize changes to his cabinet, including his national security team. These figures are by no measure dominant. Indeed, the prevailing narrative in Tehran is that a change of personalities won’t make any difference and that the American nezaam has certain engrained interests and institutions as well — among them, enmity with the Islamic Republic.
Meanwhile, more influential Iranian figures are pushing for Western positions to be clarified in more detail before the resumption of talks. The reason behind this maneuver is to maximize readiness for potential damage control; Iran does not want to be blamed for any diplomatic failure.
Inherent in the latter aspect of the situation is an Iranian desire to not be seen as being dragged to the negotiating table by sanctions. While Iran does seek sanctions relief, it wants such measures to be put forward in a serious manner.
The majority of the most punishing Western oil and financial penalties were imposed after the beginning of Iranian enrichment of uranium to 19.75% purity in 2010. In exchange for movement on this level of enrichment, Tehran would need some removal of the post-2010 sanctions, which include the EU oil embargo, shipping & insurance penalties, as well as US sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran.
The most important factor affecting Iranian behavior, however, is how it has entered its election cycle. Tehran is filled with debate and rumors about likely presidential candidates and what they’ll be able to do after assuming office. Western policymakers would be wise to recognize that all politics is local and show an understanding for how the Iranian presidential elections may slow down dialogue. The Iranian leadership’s main preoccupation until June is to maintain maximum stability. In this context, a nuclear deal that cannot be sold at home is not necessarily better than no deal and more sanctions.
While the Supreme Leader has final say on the nuclear issue, the next president would at least initially be able to enter the scene with some fresh ideas — both his own and from higher circles — and have room for maneuvering. The exact amount of political space, of course, depends on which candidate will win.
There are two main reasons for this: first, a new president would be better suited to pursue an opening with blessing from above, as failure can easily be deflected on him before domestic public opinion. Second, whoever the next president will be, it is unlikely that he will at least initially be as divisive as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Less tension at home will give Iran a stronger negotiating stance, along with improved Western acceptance of an Iranian ability to deliver.
This line has been echoed by influential officials such as former envoy Sadeq Kharrazi, who has argued that “lively elections” will empower the government and bring “wise people to power” with a consequent greater Iranian capacity to extract concessions from the United States. Kharrazi also said that he didn’t believe relations between Iran and the US would be normalized during Obama’s second term prior to Obama’s re-election and has indicated that the real window for diplomacy on the nuclear issue will be after Iran’s presidential election. Kharrazi argues that this is because the Americans have never been and never will be willing to negotiate with Ahmadinejad’s government.
The writing between the lines is that many figures within Iran are not going to let any negotiations with the US be successful as long as Ahmadinejad is in power.
In sum, while Iran’s bottom line on the nuclear issue won’t change (i.e. enrichment on Iranian soil), the next Iranian president would at least initially be able to pursue an opening. Moreover, a new president would give the United States in particular a badly needed new “face” to deal with.
Ultimately, power to change the US-Iran relationship is equally in the hands of Barack Obama. A day after Obama’s first Nowruz message in 2009, at the end of a damning speech, Iran’s Supreme Leader responded that “if you change your attitude, we will change our attitude.” Most likely, that offer still stands.
Until then, a mutual desire to keep things from spiraling out of control will in all probability result in both sides kicking the can down the road until after this summer.
- Mohammad Ali Shabani is a doctoral researcher at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London and the Editor of Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs.
]]>Sociologists sometimes get lucky. In June 2009 I arrived in Tehran for a routine research trip. Over the next several months I witnessed the largest political demonstrations in Iran since 1979. Arising from protests against the results of the June presidential election, which were perceived by many Iranians as fraudulent, these [...]]]>
Sociologists sometimes get lucky. In June 2009 I arrived in Tehran for a routine research trip. Over the next several months I witnessed the largest political demonstrations in Iran since 1979. Arising from protests against the results of the June presidential election, which were perceived by many Iranians as fraudulent, these marches and rallies quickly became known as the “Green movement.”
Social movements serve as a kind of natural laboratory for sociologists. We spend most of our time trying to explain why things don’t change; we study inequality, poverty, conflict, and discrimination. A social movement, however, is all about change — in demands, ideas, actions, and relationships between people. Living through one makes you feel like history is speeding up. Standing in the middle of it all makes you feel like your side will win. But not all, or even most, social movements win. Yet, even if the demands are not met and the momentum dissipates, social movements tend to have effects that extend beyond their brief existence. This was certainly the case for the 2009 Green movement; it continues to impact events in Iran today.
In a recently published journal article for Mobilization, I describe and explain some of the social and political dynamics that led to the Green movement’s rise and fall. Here I want to link my observations to Iran’s upcoming presidential election through the following three points.
1. Pre-election mobilization can lead to unpredictable outcomes
No one anticipated that Iran’s 2009 presidential election, regardless of its winner, would shake up the political scene. The stakes seemed pretty low, just as they do today. Mir-Hossein Mousavi was barely remembered from the 1980s, when he was a skinny prime minister overseeing an economy besieged by the Iran-Iraq war. Yet the few weeks leading up to the election witnessed a massive upsurge in emotional energy from all sides of the political spectrum. Many people made up their minds to vote for a particular candidate in the final few days. Rallies and street parties, which involved more than a bit of fun, pulled in curious onlookers and politicized them.
This escalation in emotional energy underpinned the surge in post-election protest. If you think emotion isn’t important for a social movement, then you’ve probably never been involved in one. Hope turned into anger among those who believed that Mousavi had won the election. But Mousavi’s shift from a mild-mannered retiree to a Gandhi-styled hero didn’t occur simply because he suddenly discovered an inner reserve of charisma. The pre-election mobilizations refashioned Mousavi’s tone on important social issues, and the post-election protests turned him into a symbol for stark political change. Elections matter in the Islamic Republic not because the best candidates are on the ballot — people are used to holding their nose and voting — but because they can sometimes reshape Iran’s social environment.
2. The internet does not equal civil society
The Green movement had little to do with civil society. This term is often used as a substitute for “the people,” but civil organizations such as trade unions, merchant guilds or sports clubs do not amount to a large blob of people that act in tandem outside of pre-existing political interests and networks. Post-election protests in 2009 were organized quite spontaneously and mostly outside of existing Iranian civil organizations.
The internet often confused — as much as it facilitated — events as website rumors about protest locations divided up momentum and online images of violence convinced many that going out was simply unsafe. The organizations that could have corralled and directed the protest upsurge were also the ones that were directly targeted in the first few days after the ballot by the Iranian government, including Mousavi’s electoral network of volunteers and strategists. Yet Mousavi’s network resembled a political body more than a civil one. As we saw in the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama, bona-fide organizations usually matter more for elections than internet activists, such as those which operate mainly on Twitter; we will learn more about the candidates in 2013 from their organizational power than from their campaign ad promises.
3. The Iranian middle class is not going away
As I discussed in my Mobilization article, Green protesters were mostly middle class, as defined by education and occupation, but that doesn’t mean they were a small elite living in Tehran villas. Given the rapid expansion in universities around Iran, a large portion of young people with a college degree come from families with working class parents. Go to many neighborhoods in Tehran, or any public park, and you will see a mixed class setting. Many of these younger individuals felt deeply alienated from the Iranian government in the wake of the 2009 election, if not before.
Yet it’s a myth that conservatives in Iran solely rely on poor people for their political base. The right-wing put on a good show while being challenged on the street by Green protesters, but within a year, the coalition that had backed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in tatters. Iran’s current president is now widely regarded as the Alfred E. Neuman of the Islamic Republic. As a result, there may be even more candidates running in 2013 than in 2009, unless the various wings of the conservative spectrum make nice with each other. That’s not likely to happen, however, and as the election draws nearer, some of these candidates will appeal to the middle class, especially after a disastrous economic year that saw so many families being hit by inflation and currency troubles. Even without a reformist candidate, Iran’s struggling economy sets the stage for more surprises.
Related to Iran’s economic dilemma is the gorilla in the Supreme Leader’s office: sanctions by the US and EU. More candidates could mean a less predicable election, but a hardline US stance on Iran could also lead to a situation where no single candidate would dare step out of line lest he be accused of being “soft on America.”
But during a trip to Iran late last year, it was easy to pick up any newspaper and read about conservatives ripping into each other. As I recently wrote in The London Review of Books, this means “alliances and enmities are being rearranged yet again.”
The experts will likely tell you that Iran’s 2013 elections are going to be a dog and pony show. While another huge social movement is unlikely, we may all end up, yet again, surprised by Iranian politics.
– Kevan Harris is a postdoctoral research fellow in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
Photo: Mousavi supporters protesting against Iran’s 2009 election results gathered in Tehran on June 18. By Hamed Saber.
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