via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to [...]]]>
via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to overcome their differences regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, if there begins to be some progress in that regard, then I do see opportunities for dialogue and cooperation on a broader range of issues, including my issues, which is to say Afghanistan,” Ambassador James F. Dobbins, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS at a briefing here Monday.
This summer’s election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric with centrist and reformist backing as well as close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been followed by signals that Iran may be positioning itself to agree to a deal over its controversial nuclear programme.
Rouhani’s appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to oversee Iran’s nuclear dossier has been received positively here by leading foreign policy elites who consider Zarif a worthy negotiating partner.
The Western-educated former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, which could lead to a resumption of diplomatic ties that were halted following a 2011 storming of the British embassy in Tehran by a group of protestors.
Dobbins, who worked closely with Zarif in 2001 after being appointed by the George W. Bush administration to aid the establishment of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, told IPS that “Iran was quite helpful” with the task.
“I think it’s unfortunate that our cooperation, which was, I think, genuine and important back in 2001, wasn’t able to be sustained,” added Dobbins.
The U.S. halted official moves toward further cooperation with Iran following a 2002 speech by Bush that categorised Iran as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea.
While President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009 indicated a move away from Bush-era rhetoric on the Middle East, the U.S.’s Iran policy has remained sanctions-centric – a main point of contention for Iran during last year’s nuclear talks.
Positive signs from both sides
But a recent string of events, which continued even as the U.S. seemed to be positioning itself to strike Iranian ally Syria, have led to speculation that the long-time adversaries may be edging toward direct talks, though the White House denied speculation that this could take place at the U.N. General Assembly.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham also verified the exchange but denied speculation that Syria was a subject.
“Obama’s letter was received, but it was not about Syria and it was a congratulation letter (to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani) whose response was sent,” Afkham told reporters in Tehran in comments posted on the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
That both leaders have publicly acknowledged such rare contact is an important development in and of itself, according to Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration.
“This is an effort as much as anything to test the waters in domestic American politics regarding direct talks, regarding the possibility of seeing whether something more productive can be done than in the past. And except out of Israel, I haven’t seen a lot of powerful protest,” Hunter told IPS.
“The Iranians have already backed off on the stuff about the Holocaust by saying it was that ‘other guy’. Now, and this is a reach, but keep in mind that as the slogan goes, the road between Tehran and Washington runs through Jerusalem,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-98).
“A serious improvement of U.S.-Iran relations also requires Iran to do things in regard to Israel that will reduce Israel’s anxiety about Iranian intentions on the nuclear front, and on Hezbollah,” he said.
Hunter added that “compatible interests” between the two countries, including security and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom of shipping in the vital oil transport route, the Strait of Hormuz, could also pave the way to improved relations.
A shift in Iran
Even Khamenei, who has always been deeply suspicious of U.S. policy toward Iran, has given permission for Rouhani to enter into direct talks with the U.S., according to an op-ed published by Project Syndicate and written by former Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian.
During a meeting Monday with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei also said he was “not opposed to correct diplomacy” and believes in “heroic flexibility”, according to an Al-Monitor translation.
Adding to the eyebrow-raising remarks was Khamenei’s echoing of earlier comments by Rouhani that the IRGC does not need to have a direct hand in politics.
“It is not necessary for it to act as a guard in the political scene, but it should know the political scene,” said Khamenei, who has nurtured years of close relations with the powerful branch of Iran’s military.
Iran sends out feelers
On Sept. 12, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 20 percent low enriched uranium by converting it into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).
This was described as “misleading” by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) based on how little LEU Iran had reportedly converted to fuel.
“As such, this action cannot be seen as a significant confidence building measure,” argued ISIS in a press release.
But Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (2000 to 2005), called this “an example of all-too-prevalent reductionism that seeks to fold political and psychological questions into technical ones.”
“Confidence-building measures can mean many things, but in general they have at least as much to do with perceptions and intentions as they do with gauging physical steps against some technical yardstick,” Pillar told IPS.
“Confidence-building measures…are gestures of goodwill and intent. They are not walls against a possible future ‘break-out’. If they were, they would not be confidence-building measures; they would be a solving of the whole problem,” he said.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Mehdi Ghasemi
]]>by Jim Lobe
I’ll make this short.
Twenty-four hours ago, we posted Amb. Robert Hunter’s analysis of the Syria question and his appeal to Obama to “keep his nerve (backed by the US military leadership) and continue resisting attempts to drag the US even more deeply into Syria.” He [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
I’ll make this short.
Twenty-four hours ago, we posted Amb. Robert Hunter’s analysis of the Syria question and his appeal to Obama to “keep his nerve (backed by the US military leadership) and continue resisting attempts to drag the US even more deeply into Syria.” He prefaced his essay with a quotation from the British political TV series, “Yes, Prime Minister;” to wit: “It’s safer to be heartless than mindless. History is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless.”
Twelve hours later, I read Bill Keller’s column, “Syria is Not Iraq,” in Monday’s edition of the New York Times, which, to be frank, I found to a virtually perfect example of the kind of mindlessness over heartlessness that Amb. Hunter may have had in mind. I know Keller is being completely sincere in his beliefs, but I was frankly appalled at what seemed to me precisely the thoughtlessness of the column, which, given its length (over 1300 words — just 200 words less than his infamous Feb 8, 2003 column, “The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club,” that endorsed the Iraq invasion) and placement on the page, seemed calculated to convey the impression that it was The Final Word.
For mindlessness, take this passage, which follows his ruling out of putting U.S. boots on the ground, an outcome, he notes, “nobody favors:”
The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels — funneling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiating an orderly transition to a nonsectarian Syria. We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.
All of this must be carefully choreographed and accompanied by a symphony of diplomacy to keep our allies with us and our adversaries at bay. The aim would be to eventually have a transition government, stabilized for a while by an international peacekeeping force drawn mostly from neighboring states like Turkey.
Now, without boots on the ground, how is it that the U.S. will “assert control of the arming and training of rebels?” And how will the Supreme Military Council ensure that only the “good” insurgents will get the weapons that will be funneled through the SMC? And are we sure that “sending missiles against his military installations” will persuade Assad and those around him to sue for peace? And if he or they don’t, what will be the next step to change his calculations? “Boots on the ground?” And how would he constitute “an international peacekeeping force drawn mostly from neighboring states like Turkey” when all of the neighbors are increasingly on one side or the other of the widening sectarian conflict? Sounds great, but who is he talking about? Iraq? Lebanon? Jordan, Saudi Arabia? And has he consulted the latest surveys on Turkish public opinion and what it might think about sending troops into Syria? Are these informed recommendations? Of course, Keller adds that he doesn’t “mean to make this sound easy,” but, in fact, that’s precisely what he’s doing, just as he did when he was a self-described “reluctant hawk” on Iraq.
Keller also notes that he was wrong on Iraq, calling his position a “humbling error of judgment.” But it’s clear that the statute of limitations on humility — and perhaps on the Iraq War itself — has expired. (Hence, “…getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.”) His column is anything but humble. It is filled with the conviction that he knows what’s best for all concerned, with confidence that his risk analysis is on the mark, that good guys and bad guys can be easily distinguished, that doing something is better than doing nothing (an idea he credits to an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, an American Enterprise Institute satellite). In short, his column is filled with the same kind of arrogance that he brought to Iraq as a “reluctant hawk” ten years ago. Indeed, Syria and Iraq may not be the same, but Keller hasn’t changed.
]]>via IPS News
A White House letter Thursday to Congressional leaders suggesting chemical weapons use by the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has reignited debate about direct U.S. military involvement in the war-torn country.
“Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the [...]]]>
via IPS News
A White House letter Thursday to Congressional leaders suggesting chemical weapons use by the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has reignited debate about direct U.S. military involvement in the war-torn country.
“Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin,” the letter said, a day after a letter by eight senators was sent to the president asking if chemical weapons had been used by the Assad regime since the conflict there began in 2011.
Republican Senator John McCain, one of the co-signers of the letter to the White House, said Thursday that president Obama’s “red line” on Syria has been “crossed”.
“Not only have our intelligence people concluded that, but as importantly the Israeli, the British and the French have as well,” McCain said on Fox News.
“The president clearly stated that it was a red line and that it couldn’t be crossed without the United States taking vigorous action,” he said.
But it’s not clear whether the president’s red line has been crossed.
The White House is also seeking confirmation of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment before taking action.
“…Precisely because the president takes this issue so seriously, we have an obligation to fully investigate any and all evidence of chemical weapons use within Syria,” the White House letter said before calling for a U.N. investigation to “credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place”.
“There was wiggle room [in the letter] about who might have been actually doing it,” Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration, told IPS.
“That letter is a wonderful weasel-worded letter to try to make the president look good and preserve all options. And I don’t mean the option to go to war, I mean the option to not go to war,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993-98.
“It’s not clear to me that the administration has figured out what’s in the best American interest after period X…because we’ve been ambivalent about that or because in the president’s statement it says Assad ought to go, then if that’s where you are, what are you prepared to do to see it come about, and if it does come about, then what are you prepared to do?” said Hunter.
“You can arm the rebels, you can have a no-fly zone, you can use air power…we now have a capacity to use air power at relatively low risk. But that still begs the question: then what happens? How do you protect the minority if Assad goes? How do you keep this from becoming a spill-over into what I call a slow-rolling civil war throughout this part of the Middle East,” he said.
“It does not appear that the proverbial Obama administration ‘red line’ has been crossed – yet – because there clearly are some differences about the level of certainty within the U.S. intelligence community over whether regime lethal chemical weapons (CW) use has taken place,” Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Middle East/South Asia Intelligence Office (INR/NESA), told IPS.
“Also at issue is whether, if this has occurred, the incident was significant or relatively isolated and minor, as well as whether the level of danger that any such use would be repeated,” said White, now a scholar at the Middle East Institute.
There is meanwhile differing opinion among U.S. Mideast policy experts about whether Washngton should militarily intervene in Syria, something which the Obama administration has so far resisted.
“It doesn’t really matter which intelligence assessment – Israeli or American – is accurate, this is no longer an academic question. The U.S. and its allies, in or outside the U.N., must act swiftly to bring down the regime and prevent any further use of chemical weapons by the regime,” Emile Nakhleh, a an expert on Middle Eastern society and politics who served in the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993-2006, told IPS.
“It is time the Obama administration acts on its own to speed up Assad’s fall. If the president had followed his earlier statement that Assad should go, the Syrian people would have been spared the horrible destruction that the regime has inflicted on the country, the deaths of almost 100,000 people, and the flight of almost three million Syrians as refugees to neighbouring countries.
“More importantly, such action would have removed the possibility of the regime using weapons of mass destruction against the Syrian people,” Nakhleh, who formerly headed the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, told IPS.
The White House’s letter release Thursday coincided with a library dedication ceremony for President George W. Bush, which was attended by all living U.S. presidents including Obama.
Bush spoke highly of his two-term presidency, which included U.S.-waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“…We liberated nations from dictatorship and freed people from AIDS. And when our freedom came under attack, we made the tough decisions required to keep the American people safe,” said Bush at the library dedication ceremony on the campus of SMU in Dallas, Texas.
But successive polls show little support now by U.S. citizens for involvement in another Mideast war.
In December 2013, a Pew Research poll showed that 65 percent of respondents opposed the U.S. and its allies even sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria.
“The Obama administration, already heavily committed in Afghanistan, addressing significant military-related budget cuts, and well aware of the need to avoid an Iraq-like scenario, will move with much greater caution in dealing with Syria than did the Bush administration (which eagerly sought an all-out war with Iraq) back in 2003,” White told IPS.
“Particularly with Islamic extremists (in fact, many directly affiliated with Al-Qaeda) important players in the complex situation on the ground in Syria, this administration will likely remain well aware of the Colin Powell dictum: ‘You break it; you own it’,” said White.
“Syria already is, in effect, broken, but the U.S. so far has played only a marginal role in determining the flow of events there. Indeed, so far, this remains very much a Syrian conflict, despite the involvement of various outside governments (including Iran),” he said.
Photo: U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel briefs the press in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, April 25, 2013. Credit: DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
Every US president since Harry Truman has sought to disentangle his administration from the Middle East, and all have found themselves sucked back into the region and its problems. So will it be in President Obama’s second term. A year or so ago, his team [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
Every US president since Harry Truman has sought to disentangle his administration from the Middle East, and all have found themselves sucked back into the region and its problems. So will it be in President Obama’s second term. A year or so ago, his team launched what was variously called the “Tilt to Asia” or the “rebalancing” in that direction. But like it or not, before that long-term agenda can seriously get off the ground, the president and his top officials will have to deal with the immediacy of the Middle East, from one end to the other.
The United States has more or less withdrawn from Iraq, but that country is still far from stable — that is, not being a potential source of problems for the US and the West in the future. Obama has set a rough timeline for transferring lead responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves, though sizeable US and some allied military elements will remain. Even so, the prospects for “success” — defined in terms of a country that will be proof against a renewed Taliban insurgency and with a modicum of internal political developments — is hardly a good bet. Likewise in neighboring Pakistan, which looms as a potential headache of such major proportions (nuclear weapons, Islamist militancy, etc.) that Washington tries to ignore it.
The civil war in Syria is intensifying, but no one, in the US or elsewhere, seems to have good ideas about what to do, and there is precious little planning about what happens after President Assad departs the scene. Will the civil war be limited to Syria? Will it become another Lebanon, with decades of internal strife and third-party attacks on other countries, including Turkey and Israel? Or will the situation become even worse, as part of a slow-burning civil war of sorts across the region, as Sunni states like Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia try to rebalance the “loss” of Shi’ite-majority but formerly Sunni-dominated Iraq, plus competitions with Iran and other struggles, such as the suppression of the Shi’a majority in Bahrain (supported, for our sins, by the US) and the Shi’a majority in the oil-rich Saudi Eastern Province progress.
Then there is Iran. During the US political campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu extracted pledges from both candidates that “containment” of a potential nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable, and the re-inaugurated president has reiterated his pledge that he will do what is necessary to stop such a development. Unfortunately, this puts the US president in a place where no president and no great power should ever go: where being able to decide, in the US national interest, whether or not to go to war depends on the “good behavior” of two other countries with agendas and interests of their own, Iran and Israel.
Meanwhile, the bloom is off the rose of the Arab Spring, Egypt is in incipient turmoil, young and unemployed populations across the region are experiencing their revolution of rising but frustrated expectations, and the region as a whole continues to experience its long-standing deficit in representative governance. And then there is Islamist militancy, here in Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan, there in Mali, tomorrow somewhere else – although how much that really matters to US security is an open question now that a decade of homeland security seems to have bought protection for our nation, so long as no terrorist gets his hands on a nuclear weapon (a most unlikely scenario).
Did I mention the Palestine question? Secretary of State John Kerry says that not moving to resolve that problem would be a catastrophe. Hyperbole, most likely, but somehow the US reputation is on the line in the region if we are unable to deliver any kind of positive change, which for nearly 34 years has proved to be a Sisyphean task. Finally, the US, as the world’s “indispensable nation,” has to show that it can lead and be seen as responsible for its own and others’ security — at least in some key parts of the globe. And, at the same time, it needs to get on with its most important national security challenge: to strengthen the US economy, rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, provide education and health care to its people, and deal with budget and debt questions of considerable magnitude.
Thus, as Lenin would ask, Shto delat? What is to be done? There are no answers that are guaranteed to pay off, but here are some ideas.
First, the US government and its people need to understand that we can’t let go of the Middle East, as much as we are tired of war — did anyone mention pledges regarding an Iranian bomb? Our fate here, Kismet, was settled a couple of generations ago, and, try as we might, we still have national security interests in the region that others will not just pick up, even if — as is no doubt true – there are limits to what we and others can do to shape the massive internal upheavals that are taking place from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Hindu Kush.
Second, this administration needs to start seeing the entire region as an integrated whole, rather than as a series of disparate crises that are somehow loosely related to one another. There can be no progress on Israel-Palestine so long as Israel is terrified of Iran, worried about Egypt and Syria, and isolates Gaza from any relief for its economic and social misery. A quieting down of the terrorist/Islamist threat cannot even begin so long as rich people in Saudi Arabia continue to support the doctrines and bankroll the fighters that are spreading instability and fear among secular populations. Afghanistan will never cease being a source of concern unless all relevant external countries are willing to agree on some framework for its future, if only for it to be proof against excessive external meddling — and this also means that the US must return to its practice after 9/11 of trying to find common interests with Iran in Afghanistan, which was scotched by the strategic folly that was called the Axis of Evil.
Third, the US needs finally to understand that security in this region, as we have learned there and elsewhere, must be a combination of military forces, appropriately applied (and appropriately limited), along with the triumvirate of governance-reconstruction-development. We know the lessons and have since Bosnia in 1995. But US agencies are still “stove-piped,” the money for non-military activities is not there, and we continue to judge the contributions of our European allies to shared security in terms of defense budgets rather than in terms of what they can do to help societies progress – where several of them are better at it than we are. Further, we need to begin developing a long-term plan for a potentially all-inclusive new security structure for the Persian Gulf region, to replace the jerry-built structure shattered by wars there from 1979 to 2003 and beyond.
Fourth, we need finally to see Iran with clear eyes. The issue is not just nuclear weapons or the lack thereof. Deep and long-lasting regional competitions for influence are at the heart of the matter, and we have been sucked into them, wittingly or not. And in the last three administrations, we have been unwilling to put on the table a negotiating position that has a chance to succeed, by recognizing that the security interests of the US, Israel, and Iran must all be considered. No country can negotiate seriously when it is under military threat, facing sanctions that only help to strengthen the regime domestically, and with no serious proposals on the “plus” side. Ironically, those who most talk about going to war with Iran also tend to be those who most oppose the US’ dealing directly with Iran and putting a realistic set of proposals on the table. A first-year graduate student in strategic studies could dissect that approach. We are not even prepared to propose areas of clear common interest, such as freedom of the seas, an Incidents at Sea Convention — such as we concluded with the Soviet Union during the dark days of the Cold War — and formal Iranian membership in the effort to counter piracy at sea.
Fifth, we will have to prioritize and also be clear about what really matters to us – to the USA – and what doesn’t, in the process developing some “strategic patience.” All the while, however, we have to remember that others look to us for leadership and steadfastness. A curse, perhaps, but our curse.
Most important, however, are two things that the first Obama administration, like the Clinton and Bush II administrations, did not do but can no longer avoid. The first is to recognize that, 22 years after the end of the Cold War, it is time to relearn how to “think strategically” about new circumstances and to abandon reflexive, outdated approaches to considering the world, our place in it, and how to respond in the US national interest. Easier said than done, but we did it in the past. Regrettably, we have become sclerotic in our methodology, with too many of our think tanks and “policy planning staffs” producing brilliant tactical suggestions but little strategic wisdom or “actionable “ guidance on major redirections for policy.
Related to this, indispensable to success, is for President Obama and his team to search for, engage, and listen to those people in the country – some in relatively junior positions in the government, most outside — who know the Middle East and Southwest Asia region from one end to the other, who can think strategically, who can handle the need for making intelligent tradeoffs, and who do know how to embed choices and decisions in US domestic politics – which, incidentally, need to come second, not first, as has been the case for at least the last three administrations.
Quite a list of tasks. But the last-named is the most immediate and probably the most consequential: “Hire good people and listen to them.” If the administration gets that right — and that will be clear one way or another in the next few weeks — success for US interests in the Middle East will still not be guaranteed. But if the administration gets that wrong, failure is assured.
– Robert E. Hunter, former US ambassador to NATO, was director of Middle East Affairs on the NSC Staff in the Carter Administration and in 2011-12 was Director of Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University.
Photo: President Barack Obama sits in the Oval Office on his first day in office, Jan. 21, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>By Robert Hunter
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has written at length (Washington Post, November 18th – Job One Abroad: Iran) on Iran’s progress toward a military nuclear capability and, in brief, on what to do about it. His suggestion is for “a creative diplomacy, allied to [...]]]>
By Robert Hunter
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has written at length (Washington Post, November 18th – Job One Abroad: Iran) on Iran’s progress toward a military nuclear capability and, in brief, on what to do about it. His suggestion is for “a creative diplomacy, allied to a determined strategy.” But precisely what?
Historic parallels are always imprecise. But 40 years ago, the United States was in confrontation with the Soviet Union, in the midst of history’s most complex and potentially deadly arms race.
Yet the US government, matched by the Soviet Union, found ways to prevent a collective falling-off of the cliff of nuclear cataclysm.
1972 was notable for several developments, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which provides no precedent in today’s standoff with Iran. But a less-remembered diplomatic agreement does: the Incidents at Sea Agreement, whereby the two superpowers agreed on means to prevent a possible collision or other confrontation at sea from escalating to something far worse. Today, the parallel is in the Persian Gulf and more particularly, the Strait of Hormuz. All countries, including the US and Iran, have a vital interest in the free flow of commerce, especially oil commerce. All have an interest in reducing risks of unintended escalation. The risks are exacerbated by the heavy presence of US warships in the Gulf, although the plethora of US military power elsewhere in the region is surely sufficient to show resolve both to Teheran and to Gulf Arab states. The reported Iranian effort to shoot down a US drone last month could have escalated, had steady US nerves not prevailed.
As far as one knows, nothing akin to the Incidents at Sea Agreement has been proposed to Teheran, nor has its complementary interest of stability in Afghanistan, or its cooperative role in countering piracy in the Arabian Sea, been formally embraced.
More broadly, by 1972 the US was fully committed to direct, bilateral talks with Moscow, which it still abjures, today, with Teheran, and has done for decades. Further, at the beginning of 1973, NATO and the Warsaw Pact began talks on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR), which recognized the risks of potential conventional force instabilities in a heavily-armed region — a good parallel with the vast overarming of all parties in the narrow confines, short-distances, and high performance weapons of the Persian Gulf region. That year the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was also convened, resulting two years later in the Helsinki Final Act. Arguably, this agreement made a significant contribution to the eventual hollowing out of the Soviet empires (especially in Eastern Europe) and an end to the Cold War.
Collectively, this diplomacy became known as detente, one of the great successes of US diplomacy in the last half century.
All these efforts were premised on growing awareness, at a time of mutual hostility and risks of war that neither side could hope to escape unscathed, that each had to understand the other’s fears and take a major measure of responsibility for the other’s security. That was the essence of mutual deterrence (Mutual Assured Destruction). Obviously, even a nuclear-weapons-armed Iran would be no match for either the United States or Israel, each with its nuclear arsenal, but there would still be a form of mutual deterrence: in the sense that even a single Iranian nuclear weapon could threaten Israel’s very existence. Hence, pledges by both US presidential candidates to do whatever is needed to keep Iran from crossing a so-far imprecise “red line.”
Yet the United State has never been ready clearly to say that, even if Iran were to do everything that we want of it, we will recognize its legitimate security interests, much less offer it guarantees against attack, as the last Bush administration did with North Korea. Henry Kissinger sees that recognition not as something to be declared up front, as in the Cold War, but only after Iran “accepts enforceable verification.” Elementary strategy analysis and a vast history of statecraft argue that that course cannot succeed.
Kissinger is surely right that “Iran [needs to show] willingness to conduct itself as a nation-state, rather than a revolutionary religious cause.” And maybe Teheran would not respond positively, whatever we do. But in trying to move Iran in that direction and toward ending nuclear risks in the Middle East, there is clear precedent from the Cold War: intelligent US diplomacy, then crafted and led in major part by the National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger.
- Robert Hunter, former US ambassador to NATO, was director of Middle East Affairs on the NSC Staff in the Carter Administration and in 2011-12 was Director of Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University.
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