by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims and Counter Claims over New Sanctions,” reviews the recent debate over the Kirk-Menendez bill. S. 1881, which I called the “Wag the Dog Act of 2013.” Among other conclusions, the report, which was drafted by Jim Walsh, an international security expert at MIT, finds that new sanctions at this time would likely undermine the prospects for a successful negotiation, particularly given the fact that all of the parties in the P5+1 are themselves clearly opposed to the legislation. It also found that new sanctions may yet prove useful, but not when negotiations are just getting underway, as they did today in Vienna. And it noted that some critics of the bill, presumably including some administration officials, probably overstated the intentions of many of the bill’s 59 co-sponsors as deliberately wanting to sabotage the negotiations (as opposed, presumably, to deliberately wanting to sabotage President Obama). In any event, you can find the new report here.
The Iran Project, which has involved an impressive number of foreign policy veterans led by Amb. William Luers (ret.) and Amb. Thomas Pickering (ret), who served as Washington’s chief envoy in virtually every hot spot — from Moscow to San Salvador and from Lagos and Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay (in the run-up to and during the first Gulf War) — has itself conducted Track II diplomacy with leading Iranians over the past decade or so, including and especially many of the same Iranians, such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who have filled key posts in Hassan Rouhani’s government. The group has also played a key role in shaping the elite debate here over Iran during the past few years. Although it has maintained a relatively low public profile, opponents of the engagement policy, of which AIPAC and the Israel lobby are the most important, know how effective the Project has been.
In addition to Luers, Pickering and Walsh, the new report is signed by Amb. Frank Wisner (ret.); Paul Pillar, the CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Jessica Tuchman Mathews; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz. Upcoming reports will include an analysis of the Nov. 24, 2013, accord between Iran and the P5+1 (the Joint Plan of Action, or JPA); the issues that must be addressed in a comprehensive agreement; and the challenges of lifting sanctions if a comprehensive agreement is indeed reached.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile, doves and pragmatists have been pointing out the ineffectiveness of sanctions in [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile, doves and pragmatists have been pointing out the ineffectiveness of sanctions in changing Iran’s nuclear calculus (even though the majority of them initially pushed for these sanctions) as well as the many cons of military action. Although the hawks and hardliners tend to be Republican, the group is by no means partisan. And these conversations do converge and share points at times, for example, the hawks and hardliners also complain about the ineffectiveness of sanctions, but in the context of pushing for more pressure and punishment.
That said, both sides appear stuck — the hawks, while successful in getting US policy on Iran to become sanctions-centric, can’t get the administration or military leaders to buy their interventionist arguments, and the doves, having previously cheered sanctions as an alternative to military action, appear lost now that their chosen pressure tactic has proven ineffective.
Hawks and Doves Debate Iran Strike Option
On Wednesday, the McCain Institute hosted a live debate that showcased Washington positions on Iran, with the pro-military argument represented by neoconservative analyst Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute and Democrat Robert Wexler, a member of the US House of Representatives from 1997-2010, and two prominent US diplomats on the other side — Ambassadors Thomas R. Pickering, who David Sanger writes “is such a towering figure in the State Department that a major program to train young diplomats is named for him”, and James R. Dobbins, whose distinguished career includes service as envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia.
Only the beginning of this recording (I can’t find any others) is hard to hear, and you won’t regret watching the entire lively discussion, particularly because of Amb. Pickering’s poignant responses to Pletka’s flimsy points — she inaccurately states IAEA findings on Iran’s nuclear program and claims that, even though she’s no military expert, a successful military operation against Iran wouldn’t necessarily include boots on the ground. In fact, experts assess that effective military action against Iran aimed at long-term positive results (cessation of its nuclear program and regime change) would be a long and arduous process, entailing more resources than Afghanistan and Iraq have taken combined, and almost certainly involving ground forces and occupation.
Consider some the characteristics of the pro-military side: Wexler repeatedly admits he made a mistake in supporting the war on Iraq, but says the decision to attack Iran should “presuppose” that event. Later on he says that considering what happened with Iraq, he “hopes” the same mistake about non-existent WMDs won’t happen again. Pletka, who endorsed fighting in Iraq until “victory” had been achieved (a garbled version of an AEI transcript can be found here), states in her opening remarks that the US needs to focus on ”what happens, when, if, negotiations fail” and leads from that premise, which she does not qualify with anything other than they’re taking too much time, with arguments about the threat Iran poses, even though she calls the Iranians “very rational actors”.
While Wexler’s support for a war launched on false premises seriously harms his side’s credibility, it was both his and Pletka’s inability to advance even one indisputable interventionist argument, coupled with their constant reminders that they don’t actually want military action, that left them looking uninformed and weak.
The diplomats, on the other hand, offered rhetorical questions and points that have come to characterize this debate more generally. Amb. Pickering: “Are we ready for another ground war in the Middle East?”, and, “we are not wonderful occupiers”. Then on the status of the diplomatic process: “we are closer to a solution in negotiations than we have been before”. Amb. Dobbins meanwhile listed some of the cons of a military operation — Hezbollah attacks against Israel and US allies, interruptions to the movement of oil through the vital Strait of Hormuz, a terror campaign orchestrated by the Iranians — and then surprised everyone by saying that these are “all things we can deal with”. A pause, then the real danger in Amb. Dobbins’ mind: that “Iran would respond cautiously”, play the aggrieved party, withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, kick out IAEA inspectors and accelerate its nuclear program at unknown sites. Then what, the audience was left to wonder. Neither Pletka nor Wexler offered an answer.
The Costs of War With Iran and the C-Word
While watching the McCain debate, I wondered if Pletka and Wexler would consider reading a recently published book by Geoffrey Kemp, an economist who served as a Gulf expert on Reagan’s National Security Council and John Allen Gay, entitled War With Iran: Political, Military, And Economic Consequences. This essay lays out the basis of the work, which mainly focuses on the high economic costs of war, so I won’t go into detail here, but yesterday during the book’s launch at the Center for National Interest (CNI), an interesting comment was made about the “C-Word”. Here’s what Kemp said during his opening remarks, to an audience that included everyone from prominent foreign policy experts and former government officials, to representatives from Chevron and AIPAC:
You certainly cannot, must not, underestimate the negative consequences if Iran does get the bomb…But I think on balance, unlike Senator McCain who said that the only thing worse than a war with Iran is an Iran with a nuclear weapon…the conclusion of this study is that war is worse than the options, and the options we have, are clearly based on something that we call deterrence and something that we are not allowed to call, but in fact, is something called containment. And to me this seems like the most difficult thing for the Obama administration, to walk back out of the box it’s gotten itself into over this issue of containment. But never fear. Successive American administrations have all walked back lines on Iran.
Interestingly, no one challenged him on this during the Q&A. And Kemp is not the only expert to utter the C-Word in Washington — he’s joined by Paul Pillar and more reluctant distinguished voices including Zbigniew Brzezinksi.
Diplomacy as the Best Effective Option
Of course, if more effort was concentrated on the diplomacy front, as opposed to mostly on sanctions and the military option, Iran could be persuaded against building a nuclear weapon. Consider, for example, US intelligence chief James Clapper’s statement on Thursday that Iran has not yet made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon but that if it chose to do so, it might be able to produce one in a matter of “months, not years.” Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “[Iran] has not yet made that decision, and that decision would be made singularly by the supreme leader.”
It follows from this that while the US would be hard pressed in permanently preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon (apart from adopting the costly and morally repulsive “mowing the lawn” option), it could certainly compel the Iranians to make the decision to rush for a bomb by finally making the military option credible — as Israel has pushed for — or following through on that threat.
So where to go from here? Enter the Iran Project, which has published a series of reports all signed and endorsed by high-level US foreign policy experts, and which just released it’s first report with policy advise: “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure with Diplomacy”. There’s lots to be taken away from it, and Jim Lobe, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have covered it, but it ultimately boils down to the notion that the US needs to rethink its policy with Iran and creatively use the leverage it has gotten from sanctions to bring about an agreement. Such an agreement will likely have to be preceded by bilateral talks and include some form of low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil and sanctions relief if Iran provides its own signifiant concessions. The report also argues for the US to engage with Iran on areas of mutual interest, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
During the Wilson Center report launch event, Amb. Pickering summed up the status of negotiations with Iran as follows: “Admittedly we should not expect miraculous moves to a rapid agreement, but we’re engaged enough now to have gone beyond the beginning of the beginning. We’re not at the end of the beginning yet, but we’re getting there.” Later, Jim Walsh, a member of the task force and nuclear expert at MIT pointed out that 20-percent Iranian uranium enrichment, which everyone is fixated on now, only became an issue after Iran stopped receiving fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor and began producing it itself. In other words, the longer the US takes to give Iran a deal it can stomach and sell at home, the more the Iranians can ask for as their nuclear program progresses. “The earlier we can get a deal, the better the deal is likely to be,” he said.
]]>Considering the misleading claims made about non-existent Iraqi and Iranian nuclear weapons, and the ramifications of another costly and catastrophic war, there should be more analyses like Scott Peterson’s highlighting of lessons from the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
A declassified January 2006 report published in [...]]]>
Considering the misleading claims made about non-existent Iraqi and Iranian nuclear weapons, and the ramifications of another costly and catastrophic war, there should be more analyses like Scott Peterson’s highlighting of lessons from the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
A declassified January 2006 report published in September by the indispensable National Security Archive shows that CIA analysts allowed their search for non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to overshadow Saddam Hussein’s reasons for bluffing about them. Peterson accordingly suggests that Iranian attempts to eradicate traces of what appears to be previous weapons work (halted in 2003, according to the 2007 NIE), could be a face-saving measure rather than evidence of malicious intent. Increasing “scrutiny and distrust” directed at Iraq also led to counterproductive activities from both sides:
But that Iranian refusal – while at the same time engaging in “substantial” landscaping of the site, which the IAEA says undermines its ability to inspect it for traces of past nuclear work – echoes many Iraqi weapons inspections in the 1990s. In those standoffs, Iraqi officials often behaved as if they had something to hide, when in fact they did not.
As the CIA’s 2006 assessment states, “Iraq’s intransigence and deceptive practices during the periods of UN inspections between 1991 and 2003 deepened suspicions … that Baghdad had ongoing WMD programs.”
The CIA further notes that Iraqi attempts “to find face-saving means to disclose previously hidden information” meant that Iraqi attempts later to “close the books” only “reinvigorated the hunt for concealed WMD, as analysts perceived that Iraq had both the intent and capability to continue WMD efforts.…”
This led Iraq to one conclusion, similar to the public declarations of Iranian leaders today: “When Iraq’s revelations were met by added UN scrutiny and distrust, frustrated Iraqi leaders deepened their belief that inspections were politically motivated and would not lead to the end of sanctions,” read the CIA report.
Some analysts have dared to suggest that Iranian attempts to remove traces of halted weapons work is ultimately a positive sign. Consider the assessment of MIT international security expert Jim Walsh, who focuses on Iran’s nuclear program, talking about Parchin last week at a conference in Washington last week:
]]>So I think they had a weapons program; they shut it down. I think part of what was happening was at Parchin, this gigantic military base that the IAEA visited, but because it’s so large, they went to this building and not that building and that sort of thing. Then they get – IAEA gets some intel that says, well, we think the explosives work was being done in this building, and, you know, all this time, Iran’s being – Parchin’s being watched by satellites continuously, and there’s no activity there. Nothing for five years, right? And then – or – not five years, but some period of time – years.
So then, the IAEA says, well, we want to go to that building, and then suddenly, there’s a whole lot of activity. You know, there’s cartons put up and shoveling and scalping of soil and all that sort of thing. So I read this as – that was a facility involved in the bomb program, and they’re cleaning it up, and IAEA is not going to get on the ground until it’s cleaned up. Now here’s the part where I’m practical and blunt – I don’t care. Right? This is part of a program from the past. And I wish they didn’t have the program from the past, but I’m more worried about Iran’s nuclear status in the future than the past, and so, you know, if it’s dead, and all they’re doing is cleaning it up so there’s no evidence of what they did before, I – you know, it’s regretful and blah, blah, but I don’t care. I would rather get a deal that prevents Iran from moving forward towards a nuclear weapon or moving forward so that we don’t have a military engagement that leads to a nuclear weapons decision by Iran.
Amidst reports that stalled negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme may soon be jump-started, many here are arguing that a mutually negotiated settlement remains the most effective option for resolving the dispute and averting the threat of war.
“We believe there is time and clearly there is an [...]]]>
Amidst reports that stalled negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme may soon be jump-started, many here are arguing that a mutually negotiated settlement remains the most effective option for resolving the dispute and averting the threat of war.
“We believe there is time and clearly there is an interest from all parties to reach a diplomatic solution,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, co-host with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) of a conference here today titled, “Making Diplomacy Work”.
“Diplomacy is the obvious option, but it’s not obvious how to make diplomacy succeed,” said NIAC president Trita Parsi, who chaired the event that aired on C-SPAN Monday.
The U.S. and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The conflict has been mostly cold, but the threat of war spiked this year following a pressure campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Obama administration has set the U.S.’s “red line” at development of a nuclear weapon, but the Israeli red line is Iran’s acquirement of nuclear weapon-building “capability”, or Iran crossing into a so-called “zone of immunity” where it can create a nuclear weapon at Fordow, the underground uranium enrichment facility that’s impenetrable by Israeli air strikes.
Asked how he would advise the president if the Israelis carried out a strike against Iran, keynote speaker Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Adviser under President Jimmy Carter, said he would have appropriately advised the president before that point and that U.S. national security should not follow that of another country.
“It’s very important for clarity to exist in a relationship between friends. I don’t think there’s any implicit obligation for the United States to follow, like a stupid mule, whatever the Israelis do,” said the famed geostrategist.
Jim Walsh, a nonproliferation expert at MIT, stated that military strikes against Iran would compel it to expel International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) inspectors and dash for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against future attacks.
“What do we get if there’s war?” asked Walsh. “An Iran with nuclear weapons.”
In contention with the Israeli red line is the notion that Iran already has the ability to create a nuclear weapon, should it make the decision to do so, according to experts.
“Since 2007, Western and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran is nuclear capable,” said Kimball, who previously told IPS that the objective should thus be aimed at affecting Iran’s will.
“We must be honest about this, there’s no difference between a centrifuge at Fordow and Natanz, it’s only harder to bomb Fordow,” said Walsh.
Walsh also noted that “mistrust” between the U.S. and Iran and a focus on singular issues are impediments to the diplomatic process.
“They both want to get a deal around issue of 20-percent (enriched uranium), they want to play small ball, get something and push the can down the road. This is a mistake. You are shrinking the negotiating space,” noted Walsh.
Ahmed Sadri, a professor of Islamic World Studies at Wolf University, argued that the next few months provide the perfect window of opportunity for the U.S. and Iran to seriously move the diplomatic process forward.
“Now is the right time, after American elections and right before Iranian elections,” he said, adding that “if there is no relationship (between the U.S. and Iran), negative feelings are reinforced.
“Leader Ali Khamenei has a very conspiratorial and paranoid mind…But just because you’re paranoid that there’s a crocodile under your bed doesn’t mean there isn’t a crocodile under your bed,” said Sadri.
According to Rolf Ekéus, the former head of the United Nation Special Commission on Iraq, sanctions-relief must be on the table to provide Iran with enough incentive to give up its alleged ambitions.
“Iraq was praised by the IAEA…but it turned out they were cheating, that’s why one had to create another arrangement…containing a very important U.N. dimension that respected boundaries and the independence of Iraq,” said the Swedish diplomat.
“This was a functioning system which allowed good behaviour to get sanctions relief; bad behaviour was met with tough language from the Security Council, not individual governments, Israel or anyone,” said Ekéus.
Ekéus also emphasised that “regime change must be taken off the table” as Iranians should be “left to take care of it” and the U.S. should stop “hiding behind the P5+1” and engage Iran on mutual regional interests.
“Iran is huge now, its influence is enormous, but it’s shaky all over. The P5+1 is not the appropriate player if you want to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.
Brzezinski emphasised that the diplomatic process is not dead, but listed options the U.S. should consider if negotiations completely fail.
The worst choice would be a U.S. joint or Israeli attack, which would “produce a regional crisis and widespread hatred particularly for the U.S.,” said Brzezinski, dismissing it as an “act of utter irresponsibility and potentially significant immorality of the U.S.”
The least objectionable of the worst options – all of which should be considered only after the U.S. failed to achieve its desired outcome through negotiations – would be a type of containment.
“We combine continued painful, but not strangulating sanctions – and be very careful in that distinction – with clear political support for the emergence of eventual democracy in Iran…and at the same time an explicit security guarantee for U.S.-friendly Middle Eastern states, including Israel, modeled on the very successful, decades-lasting protection of our European allies from an overwhelming Soviet nuclear threat,” he said.
Brzezinski added that Iran has not endured as a sovereign state for centuries because it was motivated by suicidal tendencies like initiating a war that would invite a devastating U.S. attack.
“The sooner we get off the notion that at some point we may strike Iran, the better the chances for the negotiations and the better the chance for stability if we couple it with a clear commitment to the security of the region, designed to neutralise any potential, longer-range, Iranian nuclear threat,” he said.
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