Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji, WINEP: Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji of the Israel-centric Washington [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji, WINEP: Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji of the Israel-centric Washington Institute for Near East Policy (aka Washington Institute or WINEP) argue that Iran may need to be shocked into submission with more crippling measures including a military attack:
Ultimately, changing this mindset may require a profound shock of some sort, be it remarkably tough sanctions, more-complete political isolation, or military action.
While claiming that sanctions alone are not enough, the authors recommend piling more on anyway:
Washington has long advocated sanctions as the key to spurring Iranian compromise, and the announcement of the latest round of financial measures certainly seemed central in getting Iran back to the negotiating table. At the end of the day, however, such measures have not persuaded Tehran to make even the minimum compromises that would be acceptable to the P5+1. Expecting the new sanctions alone to spur Iran toward a more favorable position may therefore be unrealistic — Washington and its allies would be well advised to plan additional sanctions.
Michael Eisenstadt, WINEP: The director of WINEP’s Military and Security Studies Program argues that the US should aggressively harden its stance against Iran by implementing increased pressure tactics and ramping up the military option through posturing and public preparation:
Successful diplomacy may well depend on the administration’s ability to convince Tehran that the price of failed negotiations could be armed conflict. To make this threat credible, Washington must first show Tehran that it is preparing for a possible military confrontation — whether initiated by Iran or a third country — and that it is willing and able to enforce its red lines regarding freedom of navigation in the Gulf and the regime’s nuclear program.
Jamie Fly, Lee Smith and William Kristol, Weekly Standard: While applauding a related bipartisan Senate letter that we noted last week, three of the most ardent neoconservative pushers of the Iraq War urge Congress to “seriously explore” an Authorization of Military Force against Iran:
Stephen Rademaker, one of the witnesses at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on June 20, testified that Iran has not been “sufficiently persuaded that military force really is in prospect should they fail to come to an acceptable agreement to the problem.”
The key to changing that is a serious debate about the military option. But even in the wake of the collapse of the talks, far too many otherwise serious people continue to hold out hope for a negotiated settlement brought about by increased economic pressure. All additional sanctions should be explored and enacted as soon as possible, but what the track record of more than a decade of negotiations with Iran tells us is that this is not a country about to concede. This is not a regime on the ropes or on the cusp of compromise, as many would have us believe.
This is a regime committed to developing nuclear weapons, despite the cost to the Iranian economy and the toll on the Iranian people. Time is running out and the consequences of inaction for the United States, Israel, and the free world will only increase in the weeks and months ahead. It’s time for Congress to seriously explore an Authorization of Military Force to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
Mark Dubowitz, Foreign Policy: The executive director of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies and influential sanctions-pusher Mark Dubowitz argues for more “economic warfare” to “to shake the Islamic Republic to its core” by “blacklisting Iran’s entire energy sector”, extending the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, targeting other areas of the Iranian economy and:
…if that’s insufficient to get Khamenei to strike a deal — and there is unfortunately no evidence so far that it will — the president needs to unite the country in moving beyond sanctions and preparing for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Daniel Pipes, Washington Times: The aftermath of an Israeli attack on Iran wouldn’t be all that bad according to Daniel Pipes. From yesterday’s posting:
]]>Mideast focused pundit Daniel Pipes has positively reviewed a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) that discusses “likely” Iranian responses to an Israeli “preventive strike”. Pipes, who in 2010 argued that President Obama should bomb Iran to “to salvage his tottering administration”, repeats Michael Eisenstadt and Michael Knights’ assessment of how Iran would react to an Israeli military attack before concluding that the consequences would be “unpleasant but not cataclysmic, manageable not devastating.” The underlying assumption in Pipes’ article is that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon rather than nuclear weapon capability, which is what the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) and US intelligence agencies have asserted. And according to Pipes’ line of reasoning, the consequences of striking Iran pale in comparison to the only alternative he provides: “apocalyptic Islamists controlling nuclear weapons“.
Weekly Reads/Watch:
News: Iran nuclear talks: Are sanctions on the table?Weekly Reads/Watch:
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: The Post’s militantly pro-Israel blogger gleefully opines that the Israeli Prime Minister’s new coalition government increases Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to strike Iran and defy President Obama:
A more broad-based, secularized government with latitude to strike Iran and to move cautiously on the “peace process”? J Street’s worst nightmare — an emboldened Netanyahu without the baggage of the religious right. Good luck stirring up opposition to that here or in Israel.
The irony is rich. Netanyahu is riding high while his nemesis, President Obama, is struggling for his political life. The latter will be in a weakened position to challenge the former on Iran or much else for the balance of the year.
Elliott Abrams, World Affairs: George W. Bush’s neoconservative Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams argues in favor of an Israeli attack on Iran if the U.S. fails to wage war first:
President Obama, like many world leaders, has called an Iranian nuclear weapon “unacceptable.” He is right, and that should remain the US position—not just that it would be a bad outcome, not just that we would be angered by it, but that we refuse to accept it and, as the president also once said, will prevent it. If we are unwilling to act, or to act soon enough, it should be our position that Israeli action is justifiable.
It’s telling, by the way, that Abrams uses belligerent Iranian anti-Israel rhetoric to justify his call to war while failing to mention that almost every day we read something about how Israel, nuclear-armed and in possession of the world’s top militaries, might strike Iran. He also fails to mention that a figure who actually matters recently stated that Iran does not seek military confrontation with Israel. You can argue that the Supreme Leader’s adviser Mohammad Javad Larijani was lying, but then again, when has Iran militarily invaded another country? Remember, the Iran-Iraq war was initiated by Saddam Hussein who actually used chemical weapons against Iranians and his own people. And how many times has Israel militarily and covertly attacked other countries in the last 60 years? When has Iran militarily occupied territory? In the case of Israel, the question would not be when, but for how long. You can argue that all Israeli aggression has been self-defense, but you’d have to apply the same standard to Iran too, no? And then where would we be?
Robert Wexler, Foreign Affairs: The former house Democrat who now heads a pro-Israel organization called the S. Daniel Center for Middle East Peace makes a long-winded argument for a U.S. war on Iran after the other options he outlines have been exhausted according to his terms:
Moreover, it is clear that should a military option ultimately prove necessary, an American-led strike would best serve Israel and the Middle East generally.
A strike led by the United States would allow for the creation of a large international coalition of nations, similar to the coalition built by President George H. W. Bush in the lead-up to the Gulf War. The US, unlike Israel acting unilaterally, would be able to gain the support of its European allies, NATO assistance, and a degree of official and unofficial support from the Arab world. Just as the Gulf states shouldered the vast bulk of the financial burden for the first Gulf War, a coordinated effort could allow for them to play a comparable role in this case.
Top Israeli military officials have also stressed their deep preference for an American-led strike. Israel’s former head of military intelligence, Major General (ret.) Amos Yadlin, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed: “America could carry out an extensive air campaign using stealth technology and huge amounts of ammunition, dropping enormous payloads that are capable of hitting targets and penetrating to depths far beyond what Israel’s arsenal can achieve.”
Yadlin went on to aptly suggest that “Mr. Obama will therefore have to shift the Israeli defense establishment’s thinking from a focus on the ‘zone of immunity’ to a ‘zone of trust.’ What is needed is an ironclad American assurance that if Israel refrains from acting in its own window of opportunity—and all other options have failed to halt Tehran’s nuclear quest—Washington will act to prevent a nuclear Iran while it is still within its power to do so.”
Patrick Clawson, Foreign Affairs: In January the Washington Institute’s (WINEP) director of research endorsed covert deadly attacks on Iran. Clawson’s line of reasoning implied that only military options were available:
Mr. Clawson said the covert campaign was far preferable to overt airstrikes by Israel or the United States on suspected Iranian nuclear sites. “Sabotage and assassination is the way to go, if you can do it,” he said. “It doesn’t provoke a nationalist reaction in Iran, which could strengthen the regime. And it allows Iran to climb down if it decides the cost of pursuing a nuclear weapon is too high.”
This week he said that the goal of U.S. sanctions should be regime change. That’s the essence of his argument, regardless of all the other wonderful things he also talks about:
Whether or not diplomacy results in an agreement, the sanctions have already fulfilled the core objective of the Obama administration — namely, kick-starting negotiations. But that is not the right goal. Given Iran’s poor track record of honoring agreements, negotiations remain a gamble because they may never lead to an agreement, let alone one that can be sustained. Rather than focus on talks that may not produce a deal, then, the United States should place far more emphasis on supporting democracy and human rights in Iran. A democratic Iran would likely drop state support for terrorism and end its interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, improving stability in the Middle East. And although Iran’s strongly nationalist democrats are proud of the country’s nuclear progress, their priority is to rejoin the community of nations, so they will likely agree to peaceful nuclearization in exchange for an end to their country’s isolation.
The United States could assist democratic forces in Iran by providing money and moral support. It could fund people-to-people exchanges and student scholarships; support civil society groups providing assistance to Iranian activists; work closely with technology companies such as Google on how to transmit information to the Iranian people; and overhaul Voice of America’s Persian News Network, where journalistic standards have suffered under uneven management. It could also raise human rights abuses in every official meeting with Iranian officials, such as the ongoing nuclear negotiations, and bring Iranian rights violations to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, understands the danger of a popular revolution in his country and has done everything in his power to prevent it. If the United States is going to take a risk, it should aim not for a partial, insecure nuclear arrangement but the best return possible — a democratic Iran.
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Some key quotes from the panel included Saban Center director Kenneth Pollack calling for the U.S. to hold Israel back from any “rush action” while the Middle East is in a state of turmoil:
This hasn’t been about Israel. And the most important thing for the Israelis to do is to not make it about Israel. There are a lot of things that the government of Israel could do right now that would be extraordinarily unhelpful. Unhelpful to the events playing out in the region and ultimately unhelpful to the future and security of the state of Israel.
It would be driven by the fear, the siege mentality. It’s one of our roles as the United States, and their great ally and friend, to help them through this period without taking rash action that will ultimately be to the detriment of Israel and the U.S. and to the benefit of Iran.
I think the Iranians would like nothing more than to see the Netanyahu government take a series of rash steps that would infuriate the Arab populations.
This theme — that hardliners in Iran, not to mention other Arab leaders facing citizen uprisings, will benefit from aggressive behavior on the part of Israel — was recurring during the panel’s discussion.
Pollack also addressed the argument that democratic revolutions in the Middle East can be hijacked, saying:
We need to be alive to the possibility that these revolutions can come off the rail, that there are spoilers out there who look to take advantage of it. Iran is one that is unquestionably trying to do just that. What we have to do is make it hard for Iran to do it and help our allies in Israel not become spoilers themselves.
Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, added her own warning: that the U.S. must be careful not to fall victim to Islamophobic fear-mongering as popular democracy movements sweep across the Middle East.
You are seeing at every level people who conflate the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Al Qaeda as if they were all one thing whose primary purpose is to blow us up in our supermarkets. That is the rhetoric we’re going to be confronting here in Washington.
The New York Times’s Roger Cohen emphasized that the constant predictions that Iran is on the precipice of producing a nuclear weapon (with many of the deadlines already having passed) has been highly inaccurate:
We’ve had a lot of predictions that [Iran would be producing nuclear weapons] and the fact is it hasn’t happened.
And
The Iranians have been messing around with this nuclear program for forty years! What are they doing?
The discussion about Iran tended to focus on what the democratic uprisings in Iran and elsewhere will mean for Israel and its fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The panelists admitted that Iran had lost its position on the front pages of newspapers and, as breaking news emerges from the Middle East on a daily basis, the Obama administration’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program will be diminished.
Pollack observed:
]]>A lot of the people who previously spent all their time working on Iran, trying to craft these sanctions, trying to bring all these other countries aboard against Iran are now spending 24 or 25 hours a day doing nothing but working on Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, etc… Iran is very much on the backburner at the moment in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.
But I’ve just stumbled upon something long overlooked that raises an even stronger case for the need to assess Ross’ closeness to the neoconservative movement — a group that has led U.S. foreign policy into so many disastrous undertakings, and that stands as the ideological driving force behind the dishonest campaign for war with Iraq and Iran. Now we have to ask: Just how close is Dennis Ross to the neoconservative movement?
According to the journal’s website, Ross, as he sits today in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, is a member of the board of editors of the neoconservative Middle East Quarterly. The Journal, whose editors have included AEI‘s Michael Rubin, Martin Kramer, and Efraim Karsh, is published by arch-hardliner Daniel Pipes; the journal is run out of his Middle East Forum think tank.
According to The Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine,” which takes snapshots of webpages over time, Ross’ listing on the board of editors started sometime between July 2 and July 12, 2006. By the latter date, Ross’ affiliation is recorded as the Washington Institute for Near East Studies (WINEP), the AIPAC-formed think tank that he played a part in setting up, where he was a scholar. As of April 2008, Ross was still listed at MEQ with the WINEP affiliation.
Along with his membership on the board of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem think tank, Ross gave up the WINEP gig when he moved to the administration.
But, as of today, he is still listed among the board of editors of MEQ. Interestingly, his affiliation has changed. Ross is now simply listed as:
Dennis Ross
Washington, D.C.
That change suggests that the site has been updated since Ross left WINEP — a departure that coincided with the formal announcement of Ross’ appointment to the Obama administration. This raises the question of why Ross is continuing his institutional affiliation with a bastion of aggressive neoconservatism such as MEQ while serving as a top administration adviser on the Middle East.
On a Middle East Forum blog, Ross’ battles within the administration have been covered by former AIPAC’s administration relations director Steve Rosen, who has never acknowledged the ties between the Forum and the Quarterly or Ross’ role in the latter.
As far as I can tell, flipping through the journal and Middle East Forum’s archives, Ross doesn’t seem to ever have contributed to either, though he was interviewed for MEQ by Pipes and Ross’s former WINEP and (apparently) current MEQ colleague Patrick Clawson.
On the board of editors of MEQ, Ross is joined by Karsh, the editor; Pipes, the publisher; Rubin and Clawson, both senior editors; James Phillips, a fellow at the neoconservative Heritage Foundation; journalist and Hudson Institute fellow Lee Smith; and WINEP executive director Robert Satloff.
As of late Friday afternoon, the NSC and MEQ, both asked for comment, haven’t yet responded. I’ve asked if Ross is paid, and what his responsibilities are or have been. When they respond, I’ll update.
Ross was out of the country today, in Israel, trying to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Iran — also in Ross’s portfolio — met with the P5+1, including the U.S., in Turkey.
]]>The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials [...]]]>
The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials estimate that if Iran were to try a “break out” by enriching uranium at Natanz to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, that move (requiring reconfiguration of the centrifuges) would be detectable – and it would take Iran one to two more years to make a bomb.
The Iranians could try what U.S. officials call a “sneak out” at a secret enrichment facility like the one they constructed near Qom. They would have to use their poorly performing (and perhaps still Stuxnet-infected) old centrifuges or an unproven new model. Alternative enrichment technologies, such as lasers or a heavy-water reactor, don’t appear feasible for Iran now, officials say. Foreign technology from Russia and other suppliers has been halted, and the Iranians can’t build the complex hardware (such as a “pressure vessel” needed for the heavy-water reactor) on their own.
And here’s Eli Lake in the Washington Times, with a good article on the same subject in which he talks with neoconservative pundit Patrick Clawson of WINEP, again with my emphasis:
Patrick Clawson, a specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “Certainly, the IAEA reports and what we hear from people knowledgeable about the nuclear program is that Iran is encountering significant technical problems.”
“The great worry is that Iran has clandestine facilities that will allow it to overcome these technical problems,” he said.
Now here’s Columbia professor Richard Bulliet, speaking at a forum called “War With Iran?”, where the event poster featured a gas mask emblazoned with the Israeli, Iranian, and U.S. flags (video here; start at minute 41):
Recently I was reading about the buildup to the war on Iraq, and one of the things that became apparent as you look back… is that after 1991, the U.S. put sanctions on Iraq that were essentially sanctions that could not be positively satisfied. Iraq could say ‘okay, we have completely given up WMD.’ And we could say, ‘we don’t believe you, and the only way we can be sure is to get rid of your regime.’
My worry is that we’re moving a little bit in this direction with Iran, that we’re creating a focus on a sanctions regime that it may not be possible for Iran to ever satisfy the fear of the people that are putting on the sanctions.
…If you had a statement from Iran that ‘we have stopped purifying uranium,’ you would have some people who would say: ‘Well, underground someplace they’re still doing it; there are hidden facilities. There are centerfuges going day and night, and we just don’t know where they are doing it. They’re in Saddam’s palaces which have now been shipped to Iran.’
And under that circumstance, you get to a logic that’s saying, if you sanction a regime to get it to change its behavior, but you do not believe there are any circumstances under which a claim to behavior change would actually be credible, then regime change is your only option.
How many of the people that campaign most tirelessly for sanctions think that they will work? How many thought they were a good idea in Iraq for a decade, then went ahead and pushed for a war there anyway?
This last point is at the crux of critically examining sanctions–which hurt ordinary Iranians. In Iraq, infant mortality rose from 1 in 30, in 1990, to 1 in 8, in 1997. That’s more than a threefold increase, in just seven years, of babies who did not live to see their first birthdays.
There was no evidence in Iraq of a weapons of mass destructions program. Was it a result of those same sanctions? I couldn’t say. But I do know that neoconservatives and their allies in power remained determined, even with the draconian sanctions, to make war on Iraq.
]]>Because I got hung up in New York Wednesday morning, I hit rush hour traffic on the Beltway coming into DC, and arrived late for the opening session of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘s Washington Forum on “Countering the Iranian Threat.”
Nothing out of the ordinary during last night’s cocktail outing at the Ritz-Carlton, where in an adjacent conference area, two Barhraini gentlemen stood in white robes and head-dresses greeting people for an event sponsored by that government. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) event is your run-of-the-mill blue chip neoconservative conference at the high-endest of high-end Washington hotels.
As I looked closely at the final schedule, I was rather struck by the speakers’ list.
The New York Times‘s David Sanger — who just co-wrote a controversial story about Iran – will moderate a panel. Jeffry Goldberg, another mainstream journalist and no stranger to controversial stories on Iran, will be on a panel with perhaps the most strident advocate of immediate attacks on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht.
From officialdom, U.S. WMD czar and the former vice president of United Against a Nuclear Iran, Gary Samore, will address the crowd on Friday morning.
Naturally, the right wing of the foreign policy establishment is represented as well. Iran Policy Committee head Raymond Tanter, a tireless advocate of the Mojehedeen-e Khalq (MEK), was at the cocktail. And the Hudson Institute‘s I. Lewis Scooter Libby — formerly then-Vice President Dick Cheney‘s chief of staff who was convicted of lying to investigators in the PlameGate scandal — was in attendance for Thursday morning’s panels, as was Patrick Clawson of the AIPAC-formed Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Of course there is the FDD roster itself: Gerecht (who was seen chatting in the lobby on Thursday morning with neoconservative Washington Times journalist Eli Lake), Cliff May, Michael Ledeen, and all the others.
But what really piqued my interest was an FDD fundraiser scheduled for Thursday night at the home of an unnamed ambassador to the United States.
Here’s what the schedule has to say:
7:00 pm
Dinner at the residence of one
of Washington’s noteworthy Ambassadors
(Closed to Media)
(Minimum $5,000 gift required. Contribute here, or for more information on becoming a donor, please contact XXXXXXX)
FDD’s communications director, Judy Mayka, told me on Wednesday night that just which ambassador is hosting the $5,000 a plate fund-raiser is such a closely guarded secret that even she didn’t know. I’ll update as I find out more.
However, Thursday morning’s session featured Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who made the case for more robust U.S. assistance to Israel on missile defense. He received spontaneous mid-presentation applause — a rarity at these Washington panels.
Given the focus on Israel for FDD and many of its scholars — and the neoconservative movement from which they emerge — it’s not a stretch to put the early odds that Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren will play host to tonight’s big money FDD donors.
Otherwise, what I caught of the opening panel was rather unremarkable. Former Regean administration national security advisor Bud McFarlane spoke about impending threats and FDD’s unique ability to confront them:
We’re going, in the next two years, to face a threat from Iran, North Korea… We’re probably going to face a disruption of the oil supply…
Nobody else in Washington has the reach and the depth and the solutions that will get us out of this.
Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s executive director, ran down the group’s roster and sang their praises. He joked, as anti-anti-Semitism activist Irwin Cotler did on Thursday morning, about being a Canadian. Threats against Iran were not totally absent, but Dubowitz delivered them with a metaphor:
There’s no silver bullet for solving this problem, but there might be silver shrapnel.
Knowing some of the views of FDD staff and experts, some of the panel titles read like rhetorical questions:
- Sanctions: What’s Next?
Is enforcement enough?- Increasing Threats, Diminishing Options: Should the Military Option be Employed against Iran?
When does this become the only option?
Dubowitz confirmed the militarist bent of FDD when he closed out Wednesday night’s opening cocktail reception: “We’re not just a think tank. We like to think of ourselves as a ‘battle tank’.”
]]>Ross is an influential adviser to [...]]]>
Ross is an influential adviser to Obama on Iran issues, where he’s thought to be the prime architect of a policy aimed foremost at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“The president has made it clear he is determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” said Ross. “The president has been very active in this area to mobilize the international community to the aims we want to pursue. Every meeting he’s had around the globe, Iran has featured very prominently.”
Ross gave a sweeping account of U.S. policy toward Iran since the start of the Obama administration, discussing motivations behind the both aspects of the White House’s “dual-track” engagement and pressure plan for Iran, noting the failures of the former and the successes of the latter.
As a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, Iran is entitled to nuclear power and repeatedly denies the widely held Western belief its program is aimed at producing weapons.
“We’re prepared to respect Iran’s rights, but rights come with responsibilities,” said Ross. “They have to restore the confidence of the international community in order to get those rights.”
Though Ross said there were many reasons for tensions, he believed the lack of a formal diplomatic relationship between Iran and the United States — “an absence of contacts between officials” – for the past thirty years has been a factor.
“Absence of contact had done nothing to prevent Iran from pursuing it’s nuclear program and it didn’t do anything to prevent Iran from increasing its reach in the region,” said Ross.
“If there’s one thing President Obama wanted to change it was that. He wanted to have an engagement program,” he continued. “He was prepared from the very beginning to reach out and did.”
Some analysts have suggested the United States never seriously tried engagement. Comments from diplomats, including those found in diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, reveal many believed negotiations were bound to fail even at the start of implementing the dual-track strategy.
“It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed.
“The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Obama was never sincere about his engagement strategy,” wrote Columbia professor and Iran expert Gary Sick. “It has yet to be tried.”
When asked directly about diplomatic engagement, Ross responded: “Everyone we have been dealing with knows quite clearly — they understand that we are quite serious and remian quite serious,” he said. “The president believed it was important to pursue diplomacy not as some kind of charade, but to change Iran’s behavior.”
He said that the robust sanctions passed in the UN Security Council last summer — which he hailed as a major success of the overall policy — are an indication of the U.S. seriousness.
“If we were seen as not being for real we would not have been able to do that,” he said.
On Tuesday, Iran announced it agreed to join the P5 + 1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, the U.K, and the United States - and Germany) for negotiations next week in Geneva. Ross said he had hopes for serious talks, which he reportedly will attend.
Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where Ross used to work, asked whether there will be talk of “pursuing other steps” at the P5 + 1 meetings — perhaps a nod at using the “military option” or addressing a choice the administration might face between that and pursuing the containment of an Iran with a nuclear weapons (or the capability to make them).
Either way, Ross deftly dodged the question: “I think you give plan A a chance before you go to plan B.”
“I think the most important thing is that we want these negotiations to get underway,” he added. “The expectation should not be that you go into the meeting and everything gets resolved.”
Addressing the aims of the Western negotiating group more broadly, Ross said, “The 5 +1 was created to deal with the nuclear issue. If you want to put other issues on the table, that’s fine. But there has to be a discussion of the nuclear issue.”
Last month, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said of the upcoming talks that Iran’s nuclear rights were “not negotiable,” though many diplomats and experts thought the statement reflected Iran’s longstanding defense of its rights to nuclear power under the NPT.
“We will be watching the nuclear issue,” he continued. “[Obama is] not in talks for their own sake. If (the Iranians) are not serious, we’re going to see that.”
Ross dedicated much of his prepared comments to discussing Western successes in pressuring Iran, citing the UN and U.S. Congressional sanctions.
“There’s no doubt the impact of the sanctions is being felt,” he said, naming examples of many international companies that have reduced business with Iran, especially in the energy sector. “What it all adds up to is something pretty clear: The pressure on Iran is starting to grow.”
“Iran has the possibility to be (in the international community),” he said. “I hope it will take the chance because if not it will be squeezed more.”
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