Will engagement work?
Maybe, and then, maybe not…Yet, contrary to what Mr. Krauthammer disingenuously asserts, no one in the Obama administration has made that claim…
In fact, everyone, and for good reason, remains suspicious of Iranian intentions. After the Geneva meeting with the Iranians on Thursday (the US was represented by Undersecretary of State William Burns) president Obama declared: we’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking. If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.
What Obama has said is that it should at the very least be attempted. Mr. Krauthammer may call that appeasement if he likes, but many consider it a refreshing attempt to seriously confront the Iranian issue by actually talking to the main party in the dispute.
In some quarters, apparently, this seems to be a revolutionary idea.
If the previous administration had actually achieved anything after eight years of what the scholar Juan Cole has pithily called belligerent Ostrichism, Obama would not be under the obligation to revisit the issue.
Considering that, during the two Bush-Cheney terms, no meaningful and rational leadership was ever delivered on the issue and that, to quote Mr. Cole again, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly, Obama, at last, changed direction.
It was about time: only a fool would pursue a policy that repeatedly failed in the past and that can only continue to do so in the future.
Indeed, what did demonizing the Iranians, and granting them founding member status in the Axis of Evil club actually achieve?
Pressure, not dialogue was the way to deal with the Iranians, and compel them to capitulate and do America’s bidding, Cheney,Bush, Bolton and their admirers boasted.
According to Glenn Kessler of the WP, the previous administration was actually convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse.
They would thus wait, presumably, for the Iranian democrats who had overthrown the mullahs to move into their new ministerial offices, to tackle the nuclear issue.
One can only be astonished at such naiveté (to use the term Mr. Krauthammer utilized in reference to Obama, but more to the point here to describe the previous administration’s wishful thinking).
Yet, other serious errors of judgment were in the offing, alas…
As early as October 2002, the Iranians expressed interest in establishing a dialogue with Washington, according to IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei: ElBaradei said Iran wanted to talk and offered to help open a quiet channel. Bush demurred, wrote the WP in 2004.
An opportunity was lost.
In May 2003, another was handed yet again to the Bush-Cheney administration.
A month after the fall of Baghdad, the State Department received a fax sent by Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador in Tehran: the Iranians were offering to negotiate directly with the US on all major outstanding issues.
Iranian ambassadors in Sweden and Britain had also discretely indicated that the regime was ready to talk to the US.
According to Paul Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, there were several other informed intellectuals who visited Iran at the time. They were being used to receive and deliver similar sorts of messages. There was an interest in Tehran in engaging and talking, he said.
According to the memo, what was Iran willing to discuss?
* full transparency in matters of WMD verification, and full cooperation with the IAEA;
*full cooperation on terrorism issues, and decisive action against all groups on Iranian soil, al-Qadae in particular;
*assistance in stabilizing the situation in Iraq;
*halting all material support to violent Palestinian groups ( i.e. Hamas);
*pressuring Hezbollah to disarm in Lebanon;
*acceptance of the two states approach in the Middle East.
Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, who read the memo, said:
the Iranians acknowledged that WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and support for terror were serious causes of concern for us, and they were willing to negotiate.
In return, the US would refrain from seeking regime change; abolish all sanctions; allow the development of a peaceful nuclear program, and recognize Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region.
The document was written by Sadegh Kharazi (the Iranian ambassador in Paris, and the nephew of the Iranian foreign minister).
Leverett later added: at the time, the Iranians were not spinning centrifuges, they were not enriching uranium. He interpreted the offer as a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.
In essence, the Americans had the opportunity to place the Iranian nuclear program firmly and fully under international, IAEA control, and ensure it would remain civilian in purpose.
How did the Bush-Cheney administration react to what has been called the grand bargain?
MM Bush and Cheney ignored the Iranian request: the Bush government never bothered to reply, wrote Bloomberg.
But that was not all: they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran former administration officials said, wrote Glenn Kessler of the WP.
They ignored the message, and thrashed the messenger…
When asked about the offer, at a congressional hearing in February 2007, Condoleeza Rice, who in 2003 was National Security Adviser, replied: I honestly don't remember seeing it…
Mr. Bolton, who was then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, at least, was more direct and forthright: we're not interested in any grand bargain, he said.
To conclude on this matter, one US military official familiar with the issue told Newsday: what we took was exactly the wrong approach. Our military had made the point to everyone in the region. If Iran is ready to come to the table, then you come to the table. Do it with distrust but get them to the table and get them engaged. We wasted an opportunity…
That October, the Europeans managed to convince the Iranians to interrupt their enrichment activities which were now underway, in order to launch comprehensive negotiations. They asked the Americans if they were willing to participate. The answer was no.
A European diplomat later said: they (the Americans) were very skeptical You have to remember they were in a very ideological position at the time. They were not interested.
In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president, replacing the moderate Mohamad Khatami who had shown willingness to engage with the West…
What consummate statecraft, on the part of MM. Bush and Cheney.
One can only be astonished at such fecklessness (Mr. Krauthammer’s term to describe Obama’s current approach, but which seems more appropriate here), and incompetence (the only word that comes to this writer’s mind to describe the way Bush-Cheney handled the issue).
Mr. Obama responsibly decided to repudiate the inept and obdurate Bush and Cheney approach to the Iran issue, and chose dialogue instead.
Last Thursday, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the representative of the European Union Javier Solana, and, at last, the US met in Geneva with Iran’s chief negotiator on nuclear issues, Saeed Jalili.
The Iranians agreed to allow the IAEA to inspect the Qum uranium enrichment plant within two weeks.
More significantly, the Iranians also consented to ship its LEU (low enriched uranium) to Russia for further enriching (to about 20% the level necessary for medical use, and the production of electricity), ensuring that it would not be reprocessed in Iran for military use.
The parties are to meet again at the end of the month.
This is a promising start, but all will depend on Iranian intentions, their willingness to honor these commitments, and our capacity to seriously consider their concerns.
Yet, what alternative is there to the Obama policy of engagement?
That some stalwart Bush and Cheney supporters are fuming while others are sniggering is not surprising. One cannot but be amused by the fact however, that yesterday’s France-bashers are now praising a French president, albeit to bash their own.
Sarkozy is now the president they wish they had…
Yet, contrary to what they would like us to believe, there is no substantial difference in the French and American approach to the issue.
Eight years of flagrant US contempt for Iran has led Obama to adopt a more measured and subtle tone when dealing with the issue.
Sarkozy has no such constraints, and always speaks his mind, on Iran or any other issue.
As Michael Williams of the University of London said in the WP: Sarkozy has a lot of bravado and can be quite brash.
Edward Cody, of the WP, added: Sarkozy's aides emphasized that the difference in tone does not mean a difference in policy. On the contrary, a French official said, the Pittsburgh announcements were the fruit of unusually close cooperation between European and U.S. intelligence agencies and extensive last-minute negotiations among U.S., French and other European officials.
In short, one French diplomat told TIME: we've always called for dialogue, followed by sanctions if necessary, and unlike his predecessor, Obama is now also calling for dialogue with Iran. Contents of sanction action and timetables to apply them are under discussion, but we're in perfect agreement on objectives, and methods to attain them.
So much for Sarkozy the realist, and Obama the appeaser…
For the new approach to be successful, it must be meaningful.
Perpetually threatening Iran, the Pavlovian reflex of the Bush and Cheney school of diplomacy, serves no useful purpose, other than to render Iran more, not less intransigent.
It should be clear by now that Iran will never forsake its nuclear program, nor abandon uranium enrichment. It is under no legal obligation to do either, by the way.
As Roger Cohen of the NYT recently wrote: the Qum-nuclear twinning reveals the Iranian mindset: The enrichment program has attained sacred status as a symbol of Iranian independence — comparable to oil’s nationalization in the 1950s.
He suggests that the US should widen the canvas, and include all major issues in the negotiations.
Is the grand bargain approach about to be resurrected?
What are the other options? Iran has been under a varied regime of sanctions for the last thirty years!
Were they useful and effective, the nuclear issue, and all the other issues, would have been resolved long ago.
Yet, they are relevant only in the sense that they allow the six powers to avoid grimmer alternatives, all the while appearing to be taking action.
Ray Takey, formerly of the State Department, and now of the Council on Foreign Relations, characterized sanctions as the feel-good option.
They have had little effect, and have not altered Iranian behavior.
In addition, not everyone is even in favor of sanctions, thus diluting their effects.
China has done its best to limit the scope of sanctions applied on Iran, for very obvious reasons, well summarized by Michael Wines, of the NYT:
In June, China National Petroleum signed a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars natural gas field in Iran. In July, Iran invited Chinese companies to join a $42.8 billion project to build seven oil refineries and a 1,019-mile trans-Iran pipeline. And in August, almost as the Americans arrived in China, Tehran and Beijing struck another deal, this time for $3 billion, that will pave the way for China to help Iran expand two more oil refineries.
China has thus other priorities, and assisting the US in undermining Iranian influence in the region, and asserting US dominance there is not one of them…
In addition, the Iranian opposition is against them as well.
Mir Hussein Mousavi, who many believe in Iran won last June’s presidential elections, declared that though he considered Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy wrong and adventurist, he did not support the imposition of sanctions on Iran: sanctions would not affect the government but would impose many hardships upon the people, who suffer enough as a result of the calamity of their insane rulers, he added.
Many in the Iranian opposition believe that the regime will exploit the call for further sanctions to increase the pressure on its opponents.
Ali Shakouri-Rad, of the opposition Islamic Iran Participation Front, told the WP: the government will say that critics of their policies are doing the foreigners' bidding" and will use sanctions as a pretext to silence opponents.
Finally, a German Foreign Ministry official told Roger Cohen the following: efficiency of sanctions is not really discussed because if you do, you are left with only two options — a military strike or living with a nuclear Iran — and nobody wants to go there. So the answer is: Let’s impose further sanctions! It’s a dishonest debate.
Where does that leave us?
In the words of Roger Cohen: the choice is indeed between a military strike and living with a nuclear Iran. But what is a “nuclear Iran?” Is it an Iran that’s nuclear-armed — a very dangerous development — or an Iran with an I.A.E.A,-monitored enrichment facility?
Our objective, obviously, is the latter. For that to occur, we shall need Iran’s cooperation, but we shall also need to address its concerns….
Since a nuclear Iran, however, is, for ideological reasons, an unconscionable proposition for the bellicose right (never mind that it never had any qualms about the nuclear weapons programs of India, Israel and Pakistan, who, unlike Iran never signed the NNPT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor allowed the IAEA to inspect their nuclear facilities), only the military option remains!
In order to make that option palatable to the more reasonable and (since the Iraq debacle) skeptical members of their domestic and international audiences, they are seeking to magnify, if not fabricate, the threat posed by Iran.
Mr. Krauthammer will have us believe that the Iran nuclear question is the most serious security issue in the world, no less…
Let us try to measure the magnitude of this threat.
First and foremost, the US intelligence community, in its National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, in 2007, clearly stated that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program four years earlier…It should be said, however, that not all foreign intelligence services agree, nor do some members within the IAEA.
In addition, Iran devotes about $ 6 billion a year to its defense.
In other words, and to have an idea of what that amount represents, Iran’s annual defense budget would be sufficient to finance current US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about…two weeks.
Iran’s GDP of about $8,900 places it in 68th position, behind Kazakhstan and Thailand. This is the country posing the greatest threat to the security of the US and the world and that some, inanely, have compared to Hitler‘s Germany? What happened to North Korea, which has repudiated the NNPT, Afghanistan, and the deteriorating situation there eight years after the initial US invasion, the Talabanization of Pakistan, the al-Qadae network’s resilience and extension to other countries in the region, and in particular, Yemen?
These are obviously secondary threats, and only Iran matters.
The obsession with Iran has replaced the obsession with Iraq in the hearts and minds of those who desperately need an enemy on which to unleash American military power, the necessary manifestation of the indispensable nation’s might and paramount status.
This will sound distressingly familiar to all those who remember the agitprop campaign against Iraq in 2003, transforming that third world nation with no army to speak of (it had been for the most part destroyed in the First Gulf War) into a major threat.
Then, the war enthusiasts issued dire warnings concerning the imminent threat posed by Iraq and its stockpiles of WMDs, and the fact that we simply could not afford to dither any longer: but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, Condoleeza Rice had shrilly admonished those still unconvinced by the administration’s preposterous accusations.
Though they brazenly supported a war fought on fraudulent and specious grounds, they are undeterred, and ready to renew that exploit, having learned nothing from what should have been a humbling and sobering experience.
The use of force would naturally solve nothing, for though military might could conceivably disable Iranian installations, and provoke mass casualties in the process, it would not destroy the program itself…
It is still the preferred option of the Bolton school, however…
Let us hope that the US media and public will be more skeptical this time, and not be fooled anew by the pro-war propaganda…Initial press coverage is, alas, not encouraging…
Perhaps the time has come for those who favor the grand bargain strategy.
The Iranian regime has been weakened at home by the vigorous opposition to last June‘s fraudulent presidential election, and is reviled by many there.
A significant segment of the population, and in particular Iran’s youth, yearns for contact with the West, and , especially, America.
It may be in the regime’s interest to strike a deal with the West that would strengthen its political position at home, and that even the opposition would be compelled to approve.
Will Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have the necessary wisdom and fortitude to go down the road of reconciliation, and seek an agreement?
Perhaps.
Let us hope that our own leaders shall do their utmost to reach out to the Iranians, and negotiate a deal we can all countenance.
With Obama leading in Washington, and Ahmadinejad hobbling in Tehran, it may just happen…
Maybe, and then, maybe not…Yet, contrary to what Mr. Krauthammer disingenuously asserts, no one in the Obama administration has made that claim…
In fact, everyone, and for good reason, remains suspicious of Iranian intentions. After the Geneva meeting with the Iranians on Thursday (the US was represented by Undersecretary of State William Burns) president Obama declared: we’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking. If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.
What Obama has said is that it should at the very least be attempted. Mr. Krauthammer may call that appeasement if he likes, but many consider it a refreshing attempt to seriously confront the Iranian issue by actually talking to the main party in the dispute.
In some quarters, apparently, this seems to be a revolutionary idea.
If the previous administration had actually achieved anything after eight years of what the scholar Juan Cole has pithily called belligerent Ostrichism, Obama would not be under the obligation to revisit the issue.
Considering that, during the two Bush-Cheney terms, no meaningful and rational leadership was ever delivered on the issue and that, to quote Mr. Cole again, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly, Obama, at last, changed direction.
It was about time: only a fool would pursue a policy that repeatedly failed in the past and that can only continue to do so in the future.
Indeed, what did demonizing the Iranians, and granting them founding member status in the Axis of Evil club actually achieve?
Pressure, not dialogue was the way to deal with the Iranians, and compel them to capitulate and do America’s bidding, Cheney,Bush, Bolton and their admirers boasted.
According to Glenn Kessler of the WP, the previous administration was actually convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse.
They would thus wait, presumably, for the Iranian democrats who had overthrown the mullahs to move into their new ministerial offices, to tackle the nuclear issue.
One can only be astonished at such naiveté (to use the term Mr. Krauthammer utilized in reference to Obama, but more to the point here to describe the previous administration’s wishful thinking).
Yet, other serious errors of judgment were in the offing, alas…
As early as October 2002, the Iranians expressed interest in establishing a dialogue with Washington, according to IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei: ElBaradei said Iran wanted to talk and offered to help open a quiet channel. Bush demurred, wrote the WP in 2004.
An opportunity was lost.
In May 2003, another was handed yet again to the Bush-Cheney administration.
A month after the fall of Baghdad, the State Department received a fax sent by Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador in Tehran: the Iranians were offering to negotiate directly with the US on all major outstanding issues.
Iranian ambassadors in Sweden and Britain had also discretely indicated that the regime was ready to talk to the US.
According to Paul Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, there were several other informed intellectuals who visited Iran at the time. They were being used to receive and deliver similar sorts of messages. There was an interest in Tehran in engaging and talking, he said.
According to the memo, what was Iran willing to discuss?
* full transparency in matters of WMD verification, and full cooperation with the IAEA;
*full cooperation on terrorism issues, and decisive action against all groups on Iranian soil, al-Qadae in particular;
*assistance in stabilizing the situation in Iraq;
*halting all material support to violent Palestinian groups ( i.e. Hamas);
*pressuring Hezbollah to disarm in Lebanon;
*acceptance of the two states approach in the Middle East.
Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, who read the memo, said:
the Iranians acknowledged that WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and support for terror were serious causes of concern for us, and they were willing to negotiate.
In return, the US would refrain from seeking regime change; abolish all sanctions; allow the development of a peaceful nuclear program, and recognize Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region.
The document was written by Sadegh Kharazi (the Iranian ambassador in Paris, and the nephew of the Iranian foreign minister).
Leverett later added: at the time, the Iranians were not spinning centrifuges, they were not enriching uranium. He interpreted the offer as a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.
In essence, the Americans had the opportunity to place the Iranian nuclear program firmly and fully under international, IAEA control, and ensure it would remain civilian in purpose.
How did the Bush-Cheney administration react to what has been called the grand bargain?
MM Bush and Cheney ignored the Iranian request: the Bush government never bothered to reply, wrote Bloomberg.
But that was not all: they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran former administration officials said, wrote Glenn Kessler of the WP.
They ignored the message, and thrashed the messenger…
When asked about the offer, at a congressional hearing in February 2007, Condoleeza Rice, who in 2003 was National Security Adviser, replied: I honestly don't remember seeing it…
Mr. Bolton, who was then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, at least, was more direct and forthright: we're not interested in any grand bargain, he said.
To conclude on this matter, one US military official familiar with the issue told Newsday: what we took was exactly the wrong approach. Our military had made the point to everyone in the region. If Iran is ready to come to the table, then you come to the table. Do it with distrust but get them to the table and get them engaged. We wasted an opportunity…
That October, the Europeans managed to convince the Iranians to interrupt their enrichment activities which were now underway, in order to launch comprehensive negotiations. They asked the Americans if they were willing to participate. The answer was no.
A European diplomat later said: they (the Americans) were very skeptical You have to remember they were in a very ideological position at the time. They were not interested.
In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president, replacing the moderate Mohamad Khatami who had shown willingness to engage with the West…
What consummate statecraft, on the part of MM. Bush and Cheney.
One can only be astonished at such fecklessness (Mr. Krauthammer’s term to describe Obama’s current approach, but which seems more appropriate here), and incompetence (the only word that comes to this writer’s mind to describe the way Bush-Cheney handled the issue).
Mr. Obama responsibly decided to repudiate the inept and obdurate Bush and Cheney approach to the Iran issue, and chose dialogue instead.
Last Thursday, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the representative of the European Union Javier Solana, and, at last, the US met in Geneva with Iran’s chief negotiator on nuclear issues, Saeed Jalili.
The Iranians agreed to allow the IAEA to inspect the Qum uranium enrichment plant within two weeks.
More significantly, the Iranians also consented to ship its LEU (low enriched uranium) to Russia for further enriching (to about 20% the level necessary for medical use, and the production of electricity), ensuring that it would not be reprocessed in Iran for military use.
The parties are to meet again at the end of the month.
This is a promising start, but all will depend on Iranian intentions, their willingness to honor these commitments, and our capacity to seriously consider their concerns.
Yet, what alternative is there to the Obama policy of engagement?
That some stalwart Bush and Cheney supporters are fuming while others are sniggering is not surprising. One cannot but be amused by the fact however, that yesterday’s France-bashers are now praising a French president, albeit to bash their own.
Sarkozy is now the president they wish they had…
Yet, contrary to what they would like us to believe, there is no substantial difference in the French and American approach to the issue.
Eight years of flagrant US contempt for Iran has led Obama to adopt a more measured and subtle tone when dealing with the issue.
Sarkozy has no such constraints, and always speaks his mind, on Iran or any other issue.
As Michael Williams of the University of London said in the WP: Sarkozy has a lot of bravado and can be quite brash.
Edward Cody, of the WP, added: Sarkozy's aides emphasized that the difference in tone does not mean a difference in policy. On the contrary, a French official said, the Pittsburgh announcements were the fruit of unusually close cooperation between European and U.S. intelligence agencies and extensive last-minute negotiations among U.S., French and other European officials.
In short, one French diplomat told TIME: we've always called for dialogue, followed by sanctions if necessary, and unlike his predecessor, Obama is now also calling for dialogue with Iran. Contents of sanction action and timetables to apply them are under discussion, but we're in perfect agreement on objectives, and methods to attain them.
So much for Sarkozy the realist, and Obama the appeaser…
For the new approach to be successful, it must be meaningful.
Perpetually threatening Iran, the Pavlovian reflex of the Bush and Cheney school of diplomacy, serves no useful purpose, other than to render Iran more, not less intransigent.
It should be clear by now that Iran will never forsake its nuclear program, nor abandon uranium enrichment. It is under no legal obligation to do either, by the way.
As Roger Cohen of the NYT recently wrote: the Qum-nuclear twinning reveals the Iranian mindset: The enrichment program has attained sacred status as a symbol of Iranian independence — comparable to oil’s nationalization in the 1950s.
He suggests that the US should widen the canvas, and include all major issues in the negotiations.
Is the grand bargain approach about to be resurrected?
What are the other options? Iran has been under a varied regime of sanctions for the last thirty years!
Were they useful and effective, the nuclear issue, and all the other issues, would have been resolved long ago.
Yet, they are relevant only in the sense that they allow the six powers to avoid grimmer alternatives, all the while appearing to be taking action.
Ray Takey, formerly of the State Department, and now of the Council on Foreign Relations, characterized sanctions as the feel-good option.
They have had little effect, and have not altered Iranian behavior.
In addition, not everyone is even in favor of sanctions, thus diluting their effects.
China has done its best to limit the scope of sanctions applied on Iran, for very obvious reasons, well summarized by Michael Wines, of the NYT:
In June, China National Petroleum signed a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars natural gas field in Iran. In July, Iran invited Chinese companies to join a $42.8 billion project to build seven oil refineries and a 1,019-mile trans-Iran pipeline. And in August, almost as the Americans arrived in China, Tehran and Beijing struck another deal, this time for $3 billion, that will pave the way for China to help Iran expand two more oil refineries.
China has thus other priorities, and assisting the US in undermining Iranian influence in the region, and asserting US dominance there is not one of them…
In addition, the Iranian opposition is against them as well.
Mir Hussein Mousavi, who many believe in Iran won last June’s presidential elections, declared that though he considered Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy wrong and adventurist, he did not support the imposition of sanctions on Iran: sanctions would not affect the government but would impose many hardships upon the people, who suffer enough as a result of the calamity of their insane rulers, he added.
Many in the Iranian opposition believe that the regime will exploit the call for further sanctions to increase the pressure on its opponents.
Ali Shakouri-Rad, of the opposition Islamic Iran Participation Front, told the WP: the government will say that critics of their policies are doing the foreigners' bidding" and will use sanctions as a pretext to silence opponents.
Finally, a German Foreign Ministry official told Roger Cohen the following: efficiency of sanctions is not really discussed because if you do, you are left with only two options — a military strike or living with a nuclear Iran — and nobody wants to go there. So the answer is: Let’s impose further sanctions! It’s a dishonest debate.
Where does that leave us?
In the words of Roger Cohen: the choice is indeed between a military strike and living with a nuclear Iran. But what is a “nuclear Iran?” Is it an Iran that’s nuclear-armed — a very dangerous development — or an Iran with an I.A.E.A,-monitored enrichment facility?
Our objective, obviously, is the latter. For that to occur, we shall need Iran’s cooperation, but we shall also need to address its concerns….
Since a nuclear Iran, however, is, for ideological reasons, an unconscionable proposition for the bellicose right (never mind that it never had any qualms about the nuclear weapons programs of India, Israel and Pakistan, who, unlike Iran never signed the NNPT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor allowed the IAEA to inspect their nuclear facilities), only the military option remains!
In order to make that option palatable to the more reasonable and (since the Iraq debacle) skeptical members of their domestic and international audiences, they are seeking to magnify, if not fabricate, the threat posed by Iran.
Mr. Krauthammer will have us believe that the Iran nuclear question is the most serious security issue in the world, no less…
Let us try to measure the magnitude of this threat.
First and foremost, the US intelligence community, in its National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, in 2007, clearly stated that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program four years earlier…It should be said, however, that not all foreign intelligence services agree, nor do some members within the IAEA.
In addition, Iran devotes about $ 6 billion a year to its defense.
In other words, and to have an idea of what that amount represents, Iran’s annual defense budget would be sufficient to finance current US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about…two weeks.
Iran’s GDP of about $8,900 places it in 68th position, behind Kazakhstan and Thailand. This is the country posing the greatest threat to the security of the US and the world and that some, inanely, have compared to Hitler‘s Germany? What happened to North Korea, which has repudiated the NNPT, Afghanistan, and the deteriorating situation there eight years after the initial US invasion, the Talabanization of Pakistan, the al-Qadae network’s resilience and extension to other countries in the region, and in particular, Yemen?
These are obviously secondary threats, and only Iran matters.
The obsession with Iran has replaced the obsession with Iraq in the hearts and minds of those who desperately need an enemy on which to unleash American military power, the necessary manifestation of the indispensable nation’s might and paramount status.
This will sound distressingly familiar to all those who remember the agitprop campaign against Iraq in 2003, transforming that third world nation with no army to speak of (it had been for the most part destroyed in the First Gulf War) into a major threat.
Then, the war enthusiasts issued dire warnings concerning the imminent threat posed by Iraq and its stockpiles of WMDs, and the fact that we simply could not afford to dither any longer: but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, Condoleeza Rice had shrilly admonished those still unconvinced by the administration’s preposterous accusations.
Though they brazenly supported a war fought on fraudulent and specious grounds, they are undeterred, and ready to renew that exploit, having learned nothing from what should have been a humbling and sobering experience.
The use of force would naturally solve nothing, for though military might could conceivably disable Iranian installations, and provoke mass casualties in the process, it would not destroy the program itself…
It is still the preferred option of the Bolton school, however…
Let us hope that the US media and public will be more skeptical this time, and not be fooled anew by the pro-war propaganda…Initial press coverage is, alas, not encouraging…
Perhaps the time has come for those who favor the grand bargain strategy.
The Iranian regime has been weakened at home by the vigorous opposition to last June‘s fraudulent presidential election, and is reviled by many there.
A significant segment of the population, and in particular Iran’s youth, yearns for contact with the West, and , especially, America.
It may be in the regime’s interest to strike a deal with the West that would strengthen its political position at home, and that even the opposition would be compelled to approve.
Will Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have the necessary wisdom and fortitude to go down the road of reconciliation, and seek an agreement?
Perhaps.
Let us hope that our own leaders shall do their utmost to reach out to the Iranians, and negotiate a deal we can all countenance.
With Obama leading in Washington, and Ahmadinejad hobbling in Tehran, it may just happen…
(the photograph of the Geneva meeting is by AP)
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