by Jasmin Ramsey
The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who held several meetings with the Iranians this week.
On Wednesday, an Iranian diplomat told the Japanese Kyodo News that the talks could be extended by two months, but there’s still no official word. The editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post have meanwhile come out on the side of continued negotiations.
Presently there’s not a lot of buzz around the question of whether Congress will push for more sanctions on Iran. Indeed, senior Senate aides told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that they do not see the same level of tension over a possible extension compared with the beginning of the year.
Still, as Jim wrote earlier this week, key lawmakers here in Washington are trying to make sanctions relief to Iran conditional on Congressional approval.
While the prospects of reaching a comprehensive deal any time soon are far from certain, one thing is for sure: important actors, from all sides of the political spectrum inside Iran, support the diplomatic process. Indeed, just this week the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) released a study showing leading Iranian activists’ support for the negotiations.
The report, Voices from Iran: Strong Support for the Nuclear Negotiations, shows that support for a successful deal are equally forthcoming not only among human rights victims and former political prisoners, but also among those who believe that the negotiations themselves would have no effect on the human rights situation in Iran.
“Opponents of the nuclear talks cannot use human rights concerns as a tool to undermine the negotiations,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Campaign. “The very individuals who have suffered the most from the human rights crisis in Iran remain fully committed to the negotiations.”
More than two-thirds of the 22 key human and civil rights defenders interviewed said they felt an agreement resulting in the lifting of sanctions would improve the economic conditions of ordinary people, who would then be enabled to focus on improving civil liberties.
“Every single human rights advocate — along with journalists, editors, private business owners and so on — I have met in Iran hopes for the resolution of the nuclear conflict and eventual ending of sanctions for two basic reasons: one is economic and one is political,” said independent scholar and LobeLog contributor Farideh Farhi.
“As one prominent human rights advocate told me, the right to economic livelihood is also a human rights issue. Given the comprehensive nature of US-led sanctions, these folk see them as major violations of the Iranian peoples’ rights and want them removed,” said Farhi, who is currently in Tehran.
“Politically, while the lifting of sanctions is not presumed to automatically lead to better treatment of dissidents and critics by the state, there is hope that the reduced threat perception and reduced fear of regime change will eventually lead to the further loosening of the political environment,” she added.
“Conversely, there is fear that a breakdown in the nuclear negotiations may lead to the intensification of domestic factional and institutional conflicts, which have historically harmed the more vulnerable political and civil rights activists as well as members of the press,” she said.
This should be important news for US, Canadian (also see here) and EU politicians who appear worried that seriously engaging Iran on its nuclear program will lead to worsened human rights violations and/or believe further punitive measures at this time will improve the situation.
As Jim noted:
While [House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-NY] were releasing their letter, on one side of the Capitol, Sen. Mark Kirk, by far the biggest Congressional recipient of AIPAC-related funding in his 2010 re-election campaign, teamed up with Marco Rubio, the keynoter at last year’s Republican Jewish Coalition convention, to introduce The Iran Human Rights Accountability Act on the other. Among other provisions, it would impose visa bans and asset freezes against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. It’s just the kind of thing that generates a lot of goodwill in Tehran. Indeed, one of the Act’s chapters could only be interpreted as “regime change:” it declares the “policy of the United States” to be laying “the foundation for the emergence of a freely elected, open and democratic political system in Iran that is not a threat to its neighbors or to the United States and to work with all citizens of Iran who seek to establish such a political system.” Another gift to the hard-liners in Tehran who are as eager to undermine their negotiators in Vienna as the hawks here are to blow up the negotiations.
“The study makes clear that anyone concerned about human rights in Iran should not use human rights to undermine a nuclear deal,” Mike Amitay, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Policy Center, told LobeLog. “Human rights issues should be addressed in tandem with support for the negotiations and in a way that does not undermine the success of the negotiations.”
“In this regard, recently introduced rights legislation is counterproductive and offered now as an attempt to scuttle a deal,” he said.
By the way, here’s Josh Fattal, who spent 2 years as an American hostage in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, urging Congress to support the nuclear talks with Iran:
The most important point I’d like to impress on our negotiators and members of Congress is that this is a historic opportunity. Additionally, the human toll from decades of confrontation is immeasurable. My suffering as a political hostage in Evin Prison from 2009 to 2011 was a result of decades of mutual hostility between the U.S. and Iran. But, taken in context, I got off relatively easy with only 26 months behind bars. A resolution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear capacity will finally lead us down a different path that no longer punishes the Iranian people for the actions of their leaders.
Photo Credit: The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran
]]>Iran is unlikely to agree to curb its nuclear programme unless the U.S. and its Western allies are prepared to ease tough economic sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic over the past decade, according to a major new report signed by more than three dozen former top U.S. foreign-policy [...]]]>
Iran is unlikely to agree to curb its nuclear programme unless the U.S. and its Western allies are prepared to ease tough economic sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic over the past decade, according to a major new report signed by more than three dozen former top U.S. foreign-policy makers, military officers, and independent experts.
While recent sanctions “may well help bring Iran to the negotiating table, it is not clear that these sanctions alone will result in agreements or changes in Iranian policies, much less changes in Iran’s leadership,” the report, “Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions Against Iran”, concludes.
“If Iran were to signal its willingness to modify its nuclear program and to cooperate in verifying those modifications, Iranian negotiations would expect the United States and its allies, in turn, to offer a plan for easing some of the sanctions,” according to the 86-page report.
But, “(a)bsent a calibrated, positive response from the West, Iran’s leaders would have little incentive to move forward with negotiations,” it stressed, noting that the administration of President Barack Obama should have a plan at the ready that would make clear how and in what sequence Washington might ease sanctions in exchange for Iranian cooperation.
The new report, which is signed by 38 foreign policy luminaries, including three Republican former cabinet secretaries, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and half a dozen retired Army and Marine Corps generals with substantial Middle East experience, comes at a particularly sensitive moment.
On the one hand, Congress, prodded by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is moving to enact as part of the 2013 defence bill tough new sanctions against foreign companies and individuals still doing business in several key Iranian economic sectors.
The final bill, which may seek to reduce Obama’s ability to “waive” such sanctions, could also include policy language adopted by the House urging the administration to build up its military presence in the region to make the threat of an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities more credible.
On the other hand, the administration, which opposes the pending sanctions package and any limitation on the president’s waiver authority, has been meeting with its partners in the P5+1 group -the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – to forge a common negotiating position in preparation for a new round of talks with Iran that will probably take place next month.
In the clearest statement to date, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week said Washington was also willing to engage Tehran on a bilateral basis in order to gain an accord.
She and other officials have said in the past that Washington is willing to ease sanctions in return for Iran’s cooperation, but the administration has been vague about the timing, suggesting it would consider taking such steps only after Tehran took specific concrete steps.
These include shipping its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country, closing its Fordow enrichment plant, and clearing up long-pending questions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Tehran’s possible past research into the military applications of nuclear energy.
“So far, neither the United States nor the UN Security Council has stipulated the precise criteria that Iran must meet to trigger the lifting of sanctions, or the sanctions that would be lifted in exchange for Iran’s actions,” noted the new report, which was also signed by more than a dozen retired top-ranked diplomats, including former U.N. ambassador Thomas Pickering. “There is no action-for-action plan that all parties understand.”
Given the prominence and bipartisanship of the signatories, who also included Michael Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general who served in top intelligence positions under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and advised Mitt Romney in his unsuccessful election bid against Obama, the new report could well influence both the debate in Congress and within the administration.
The Iran Project’s first report – on the costs and benefits of a possible U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran – received considerable attention here after its release in mid-September.
That report, which concluded that even a massive U.S. assault would set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by only four years at best, highlighted the growing concern in establishment foreign-policy circles about the beating of the war drums by the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its supporters here.
Like its predecessor, the latest report, does not advocate a particular policy.
But it notes that the benefits of U.S. sanctions against Iran “have often been taken as a given,” in part because they offer an alternative to military action. The costs of sanctions, on the other hand, have not been “routinely addressed in the public or policymaking debate”.
Moreover, it said, “sanctions alone are not a policy,” and their effectiveness “will depend not only on the sanctions themselves, but also on the negotiating strategy associated with them.”
Assessing the costs, as well as the benefits, of sanctions, it said, should “enhance the quality of debate about the sanctions regime and the role of sanctions in overall U.S. policy toward Iran.”
Among the benefits sanctions have provided, according to the report, have been a slowdown in the expansion of Iran’s nuclear programme; a relative weakening of its conventional military capabilities; growing concerns in the regime about public unhappiness with the economy which “appears to have been significantly weakened” as a result of these measures.
It also cited “some indications of a greater willingness on the part of the Iranian leadership to negotiate seriously” over its nuclear programme, although the report also expressed doubt “that the current severe sanctions regime will significantly affect the decision making of Iran’s leaders – any more than past sanctions did – barring some willingness on the part of sanctioning countries to combine continued pressure with positive signals and decisions on matters of great interest to Iran.”
On the costs side of the ledger, on the other hand, the report cited tensions between the U.S. and Russia, China, India, Turkey, and South Korea, among other countries, which have been pressed to comply with Washington’s increasingly comprehensive sanctions.
It also noted increased influence by hard-line factions, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), over the cash-strapped economy; the political empowerment of those same factions which can depict the sanctions as U.S.-led aggression; and the sanctions’ potential negative humanitarian impact as U.S. and foreign companies and groups that sell or provide food and medicine to Iran find the licensing procedures too burdensome and the banks needed to provide credit for such transactions increasingly unwilling to do so.
Insofar as the sanctions lower the quality of life for the average Iranian, they may also contribute to long-term alienation between the two countries.
In addition, the sanctions are creating “new international patterns of trade” that are resulting in increased market share for Chinese and Indian goods in Iran at the expense of Western products, while the “rapid expansion of unofficial, black-market trade between Iran and Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey is distorting and undermining the economies of those states and the region,” according to the report.
]]>Last week IPS Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discussed how Barak Obama and Mitt Romney might differ with respect to Iran based on Obama’s record and Romney’s campaign thus far.
Q: How might the approach to Iran differ depending on who does end up in power at the end of the [...]]]>
Last week IPS Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discussed how Barak Obama and Mitt Romney might differ with respect to Iran based on Obama’s record and Romney’s campaign thus far.
Q: How might the approach to Iran differ depending on who does end up in power at the end of the day?
Jim Lobe: I think that’s very difficult to predict. On the one hand the Obama team is quite determined to avoid any military action if at all possible and indeed we have what are described as “leaks” out of the White House this weekend covered by the New York Times indicating that Obama is for one-on-one talks with Iran. Although the White House denied that report, there seems to be a lot of buzz around it. So presumably something is going on and it seems also the Europeans are encouraging such an approach at this point and it’s something that Obama himself had promised when he ran for president 4 years ago — that he wanted to engage the Iranians directly.
Romney, on the other hand, is unlikely to do so. In fact, his campaign has strongly denounced these leaks, as has, for example, the Wall Street Journal, which is a strong supporter of Romney. As to what Romney would actually do, again, I think it’s very difficult to predict. He has a range of advisers from kind of traditional realists like Robert Zoellick, who is a former president of the World Bank, to a group of thinkers who are described best as neoconservatives, who are extremely hawkish on Iran and whose views are very close to those of Bibi Netanyahu, who would like nothing better than to somehow get the United States to attack Iran or Iran’c nuclear facilities at the very least.
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The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George [...]]]>
The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has done anything but appease that evil regime for reasons that befuddle us all.
Hence, it is now of paramount importance to halt the current president’s “outreach” to Iran because all previous attempts motivated by Washington’s “excess of decency” have allowed “33 years of Iranian outrages” to go “unavenged” and “undeterred”.
Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, was an avid supporter of the US invasion of Iraq and a fierce critic of the planned 2011 troop withdrawal, arguing that the US should have maintained a “serious tripwire force in Iraq as a hedge against Iran and other bad forces in the region” instead.
Now, again, he is amplifying his call to arms with fear mongering and a line that fellow neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen has been using for years – Iran and the US are already at war, so the US should start acting like it:
Maybe the president thinks decency obliges him to give diplomacy another chance. But it is from an excess of decency that 33 years of Iranian outrages have gone unavenged, and Iran now proceeds undeterred. Sensible policy on Iran begins not with the question of how to avoid a war—that war was foisted on U.S. in 1979—but how to win it. Anything less invites further terror and dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.
Following this line of reasoning requires diverting the conversation from how best to effectively engage with Iran in order to stop its nuclear program, to how to wage a successful war against an intractable and wicked enemy. Stephens’ conclusion is based on a litany of Iranian offenses (some of which remain questionable, let alone unproven) from the hostage crisis to bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in the 1980s, the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, “thousands of U.S. troops killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the curious case of Mansour Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American who recently pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in collusion with Iranian counterparts. This, according to our militarist pundit, has been the Iranian record against the United States.
And what of the US record against Iran? Why, an “excess of decency” of course! For reasons that Stephens doesn’t have time to get into or simply cannot explain, the US leadership from Reagan to Obama has repeatedly chosen the soft line with Iran. Perhaps the inherently peaceful character of the US has led to its impressive military hardware being reserved for only special occasions, which, in the case of the Middle East, Stephens forgets to mention, has somehow been deployed since the first 1991 Gulf War with no hiatus in between.
With this in mind, there really is no reason to waste time over the nuclear issue. Stephens wants a war to “avenge” the Islamic Republic’s 33-year long record of crimes and does not shy away from declaring his unhappiness regarding the direction of the Iran conversation in the US. The idea that sanctions are working unsettles him because it suggests that there is still time for serious and public diplomatic engagement with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all. (And no, I am not talking about a Reaganesque mission to secretly dispatch a national security adviser with a cake and bible to Tehran.) Even attempting peaceful conflict resolution is difficult for Stephens to accept because it “dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.” For Stephens and many of his neocon colleagues, the real issue goes beyond the nuclear impasse; what we should really be concerned about is Iran’s history of “dishonoring” America since its Revolution.
Interestingly, this argument echoes talking points made by Iranian neoconservatives (which we often refer to as hardliners). Just read any column by Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of Kayhan Daily, and you will understand what I mean.
What are the similarities? First there is the victim mentality. Nothing the US or Iran has done can outdo the “bad” things that are done to them. From Shariatmadari’s point of view, the Islamic Republic has always been on the receiving end of Western “savagery” (a term also recently used by Leader Ali Khamenei to describe US conduct vis-à-vis Iran) because of its values, principles, and its daring resistance against US “arrogance.” From Stephens’ point of view, nothing the US has done – like siding with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and at a minimum engaging in a collusion of silence over Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran’s military and civilians, or shooting down, even if accidentally, an Iranian civilian airliner and then promoting the naval commander responsible for it – is even worth mentioning. Iranian conduct always occurs in a vacuum and is only worth noting in terms of the harm that is imposed.
From the neoconservative point of view — in the U.S. and Iran — correct values, “decency,” and the desire to be a beacon of goodwill, is the only mark of their respective countries. And the violent and disdainful conduct of the other side is the only conduct that needs to be noted. I am sure that, in the minds of folks like Shariatmadari and Stephens, that is indeed the only conduct noted.
This is why Stephens refers to the “crippling” sanctions that Governor Romney and President Obama referenced in Monday night’s debate as more of a “campaign prop than policy tool.” The notion that “unprecedented” sanctions that target the financial core of another country — not to mention killing nuclear scientists and sabotaging nuclear facilities — could also be considered an act of war is incomprehensible for Stephens.
Beyond feigned or actual feelings of victimhood, there is also a similarity in their avoidance of responsibility for the outcome of their proposed solutions. Neoconservatives in both Iran and the United States have had their chances at influencing their respective countries’ foreign and security policies. George W. Bush’s “muscular foreign policy” promoted by the likes of Stephens brought the US the debacle that has been Iraq — which, if anything, has actually strengthened Iran — and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “aggressive foreign policy,” pushed by folks like Shariatmadari, has brought Iran crippling sanctions.
Do they take responsibility for any of their disasters? Absolutely not! Stephens’ push for another war in the Middle East is clear evidence that he does not see himself or his cohorts as responsible for the fiasco in Iraq. In fact, he has said so plainly. The war was not the “original sin,” he wrote in 2007. In fact, it was no sin at all. Things went wrong because of mistakes that occurred after the neoconservatives lost their influence in the Bush administration when Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State (this being, by the way, the reason Stephens vehemently opposed Rice becoming Romney’s running mate).
A similar argument is now being parlayed by Iranian neoconservatives. Things always begin to go wrong when the Iranian government indicates a willingness to talk with the United States, they say. It exhibits weakness, and it is only through a show of strength and “will”– a favorite mantra of neoconservatives everywhere — that “bullies” like the US can be deterred.
Let me end by pointing out that despite the uncanny similarities of their worldviews, there is at least one critical difference between Iranian and US neoconservatives. This difference does not exist in their self-satisfied and belligerent poses; it relates to the location of their respective countries in the geopolitical and economic order.
It is the United States and its allies that are trying to strangle Iran economically, not the other way around. And of course it is the United States that will be engaging in yet another version of “shock and awe” if folks like Bret Stephens have their way, not the other way around.
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Two must-read analyses of the Iran portion from last night’s final presidential debate are brought to us by TIME’s Tony Karon and the Arms Control Association’s Greg Thielmann. (This TPM headline also sums up the entire debate quite nicely: “Romney’s Final Debate Message: I’ll Be A Better Obama”.)
Two must-read analyses of the Iran portion from last night’s final presidential debate are brought to us by TIME’s Tony Karon and the Arms Control Association’s Greg Thielmann. (This TPM headline also sums up the entire debate quite nicely: “Romney’s Final Debate Message: I’ll Be A Better Obama”.)
Karon writes that regardless of who wins the 2012 presidential election, the United States will consider direct talks with Iran:
“It is essential for us to understand what our mission is in Iran,” Romney said in Monday’s foreign policy debate, “and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means.” His leverage of choice: “crippling sanctions” with the threat of military action as a last resort should Iran cross a red line toward developing “nuclear-weapons capability.” That’s broadly the same policy the Obama Administration has followed. Asked to differentiate himself, in the debate, Romney didn’t even raise the ambiguous question of where to draw the red line. (Obama sets his red line for action at Iran moving to acquire a nuclear weapon; Romney uses the phrase nuclear-weapons capability – although it’s not exactly clear whether this means the capability to build nuclear weapons, which Iran perhaps already has in latent form, or the capability to rapidly assemble and deploy nuclear warheads atop missiles.) Instead Romney simply insisted he’d have imposed tighter sanctions sooner.
But inflexibility from both sides may prevent a peaceful resolution to the Iran-US impasse:
While he may be open to a genuine compromise, Khamenei can’t be seen to surrender on “nuclear rights” for which Iran has fought and suffered growing isolation over the past decade, notes University of Hawaii Iran scholar Farideh Farhi. “With the draconian economic measures imposed on Iran in the past year, the [domestic] political terrain makes quite impossible the acceptance of a deal that does not bring about some immediate, palpable, even if small, relaxation of the sanctions regime,” says Farhi. Imagining sanctions as an alternative to military action may be misleading, she argues, because Khamenei believes their purpose is regime change, and mounting economic pain could prompt the regime to become more reckless in its effort to break out of the noose.
(Interestingly, Romney previously dodged questions about meeting directly with Iran, but Benjamin Armbruster reports that Paul Ryan was on network morning shows today saying that Romney would engage in bilateral talks without preconditions [from the Iranians?]).
Thielmann, a former senior State Department intelligence analyst, meanwhile clarifies the candidates’ positions on Iran:
Obama concluded last night that: “There is a deal to be had, and that is that [the Iranians] abide by the rules that have already been established. They convince the international community they are not pursuing a nuclear [weapons] program. There are inspections that are very intrusive. But over time, what they can do is regain credibility. In the meantime, though, we’re not going to let up the pressure until we have clear evidence that that takes place.” At the same time, he warned that “the clock is ticking” and that he would not allow negotiations “to go on forever.”
For his part, Governor Romney appeared to tack away during the debate from his previous posture on Iran. Earlier, he had followed the lead of Israel’s prime minister, appearing more skeptical that any acceptable compromise could be reached with the current regime in Tehran and more willing to imply that unilateral military action would be taken sooner rather than later. Last night, Romney’s martial alarm was barely audible. Yet his avowed interest in diplomacy was belied by his call for treating Iran’s diplomats “as the pariahs they are.” It is difficult to negotiate constructively with those you are simultaneously labeling “pariahs.”
Both candidates appeared united in making one point about Iran policy options. Whatever the consequences of exercising the military option, they each signaled willingness ultimately to launch a preventive attack against Iran. This in spite of a near consensus among experts that, short of invasion and occupation, such an attack would not prevent but would bring about a nuclear-armed Iran.
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In a new report for the Oxford Research Group (first excerpted at PBS’s Tehran Bureau) author Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi explains why sanctions without compromise won’t change Iran’s hardline leaders’ stance on the nuclear program:
The key dilemma which Western policymakers should consider is that, rightly or wrongly, the [...]]]>
In a new report for the Oxford Research Group (first excerpted at PBS’s Tehran Bureau) author Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi explains why sanctions without compromise won’t change Iran’s hardline leaders’ stance on the nuclear program:
]]>The key dilemma which Western policymakers should consider is that, rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Leader and much of the governing elite have staked their legitimacy on the nuclear programme. This is one reason why Oxford Research Group in consultation with former policymakers and diplomats with direct experience of the Iranian nuclear file emphasized that in order to reach a diplomatic solution, Iran should be offered a package with integrated “face-saving” measures. This briefing has also sought to make the case that sanctions and defiance are no replacement for serious diplomacy, which ultimately means that both sides must show their readiness to depart from their opening positions.
If Iran’s total submission and relinquishment of all right to uranium enrichment is the endgame, then sanctions are highly unlikely to succeed as long as the present governing elite remains in power. A compromise solution, however, remains feasible and not beyond the realm of possibility.
Another factor which should be considered is that Iran does not believe the U.S. is prepared to offer a deal that would be palatable to it prior to Obama’s re-election. Similarly, it is doubtful that Ayatollah Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad’s domestic critics, would favour conclusion of a comprehensive deal with the P5+1 if it meant Ahmadinejad could claim it as a victory and capitalise on it domestically. The Iranians thus want to keep negotiations going, so that diplomatic contact is maintained until the arrival of the most apposite time to strike a deal. Iran’s economic turbulence of course impacts its plans in this regard, but nonetheless the aforementioned should be borne in mind.
If the objective is to curb and limit Iranian uranium enrichment activities, and ensure they remain peaceful, then the sequencing of any deal needs to be carefully weighted to promote a “balance of advantage” for both sides of the dispute. As we had previously laid out in “Iran’s Nuclear Impasse: Breaking the Deadlock,” it may be possible to exchange the demands made on Iran’s nuclear ambitions with the progressive lifting of nuclear related sanctions. It is still possible for the West to use the leverage provided by sanctions constructively. As yet however, there are few signs that the U.S., France, Germany and Israel will agree to any such scheme.
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign studiously avoids calls for war with the Islamic Republic. While some advisers have been hawkish on Iran in the past, only John Bolton has called for an attack since the campaign got underway. Instead, on a recent press call, Romney adviser Dan Senor went out [...]]]>
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign studiously avoids calls for war with the Islamic Republic. While some advisers have been hawkish on Iran in the past, only John Bolton has called for an attack since the campaign got underway. Instead, on a recent press call, Romney adviser Dan Senor went out of his way to twice state that he was “not suggesting the military option should be used” (even as he admonished the Obama administration for openly discussing potential consequences of an attack).
In an interview with journalist Barbara Slavin published yesterday on Al-Monitor, another top Romney adviser made abundantly clear that there are very few differences between Romney’s Iran policy and President Obama’s.
Ambassador Richard Williamson told Slavin that “President Romney will seek a negotiated settlement,” which incidentally the Obama administration also considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. Williamson even commented on the possible costs and consequences of attacking Iran, noting, as myriad others have, that an attack would only delay — not stop — a potential Iranian nuclear weapon:
SLAVIN: You’ve talked about a credible threat of military force yet much, if not all, of Israel’s intelligence and defense establishment oppose a strike, saying that would push Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
WILLIAMSON: You can degrade their quest for nuclear breakout. It would be expensive, it would be costly; it’s something we should avoid if possible but it’s not something we should take off the table. If you do, then you will have no chance to get a negotiated settlement.
Because he views a potential Iranian nuclear weapon as a threat to the security of the U.S., its allies in the region and the nuclear non-proliferation regime, Obama’s vowed again and again to keep all options “on the table.”
That leaves Williamson’s endorsement of a “zero enrichment” policy — lining up with hawkish Member of Congress declaring that Iran cannot be allowed to maintain any domestic uranium enrichment — as the main difference. Officially, that’s U.S. policy under the Obama administration, though officials have hinted a compromise might be possible to strike a deal. Perhaps that’s because domestic enrichment, as reiterated yesterday, is the firmest of Iranian demands in negotiations.
The hardest of the hard-line neoconservatives ramped up a campaign for war with Iran today, putting them at odds with not just Obama but Romney as well. Perhaps that’s why Romney tends to avoid focusing on foreign policy issues. As Vice President Joe Biden recently said, “Governor Romney has called for what he calls a ‘very different policy’ on Iran. But for the life of me it’s hard to understand what the governor means by a very different policy.”
]]>After a short and half-hearted attempt, the Obama administration, willingly or otherwise, fell into the trap of [...]]]>
]]>After a short and half-hearted attempt, the Obama administration, willingly or otherwise, fell into the trap of effectively continuing the Bush administration’s one-track policy of ratcheting up pressure in the hope that the Iranians will finally cry uncle. Meanwhile, hard-line Israeli influence on domestic US political dynamics prevents Obama from making do with existing draconian sanctions on Iran that more or less constitute economic warfare. Nothing he does is deemed sufficient; there is a consistent requirement for yet more measures to squeeze Iran yet further, and cease uranium enrichment that brings it closer to the status of a real or virtual nuclear state.
The problem with this approach is that the current Iranian leadership perceives itself as left with few options apart from responding to belligerent policies with belligerence of its own. It believes the Obama administration, despite protestations to the contrary, is like its predecessor: more interested in regime change and destabilization than resolving the nuclear issue. Hence, in its response, the Iranian leadership has made a calculated decision to demonstrate it will not be a passive recipient of decisions made by others. It has thus highlighted the costs of escalating sanctions, whether through threats to obstruct or shut down oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz; permitting protestors to attack the British Embassy; or threatening to halt oil exports to European states before European sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank come into effect in July.
This escalating sanctions regime and threat scenario naturally increase the prospect of an accidental conflagration in the Persian Gulf, where both Iran and the US have a substantial military presence and lack sufficient means of communication. In short, the potential for this presumably controlled game of brinksmanship to spin out of control will continue to increase if the current round of negotiations fails to produce results.
Mitt Romney continued his attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy yesterday evening in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Romney, once again, falsely claimed the Obama administration has taken the “military option” off the table and claimed he would impose “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s nuclear [...]]]>
Mitt Romney continued his attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy yesterday evening in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Romney, once again, falsely claimed the Obama administration has taken the “military option” off the table and claimed he would impose “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s nuclear program. Blitzer asked Romney about his Iran policy:
- BLITZER: How far would go to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb?
ROMNEY: Well Iran has to be convinced that we would go all the way, we would take military action, and that military action is on the table. I think our president has communicated in various subtle ways that there is not a military option that we would consider. I think that’s a mistake. I think you have to have crippling sanctions against Iran. I think you have to have covert action in Iran to convince the people there of the folly of becoming a nuclear nation. But I think the Iranians have to believe as well, and particularly their leadership believe, that America is would considering taking military option [sic]. That has to be on the table and plans have to be in place and that’s clearly something that you have to consider.
Watch it:
It’s unclear what “subtle ways” the White House indicated that the “military option” was off the table but Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, when asked about military contingencies for attacking Iran during his Senate confirmation hearing, said that such planning was occurring.
Romney’s claims that the administration failed to successfully use covert action or sanctions to slow Iran’s nuclear program would also appear to be politically motivated, yet factually baseless, charges. Covert action, such as the Stuxnet computer virus, and sanctions appear to have had the intended effect of slowing the Iranian nuclear program. Indeed, IAEA reports would indicate that the nuclear program is moving much more slowly than either Tehran or Washington’s Iran hawks would care to mention.
But Romney’s baseless attacks on Obama’s Iran policy appear to have become a go-to talking point in the GOP presidential hopeful’s interviews. What’s even more interesting is that, so far, no interviewer has called him out on the blatantly false statements he is making about the U.S.’s efforts to slow Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.
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