Unaccustomed and apparently unwelcome as such things are in the sour winter of 2007, we should recognize the just published National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as a partial success and a significant opportunity.
The success is only partial because - despite the attempts at mind-reading by the Estimate's authors - no country that continues enriching uranium to weapons-grade can be said to have "abandoned" its nuclear program.
Yet the success is also real because - thanks to the various pressures brought to bear on Iran in 2002 and 2003 - we now seem to have more time than previously projected to deal with the Iran problem. Since we have more time, we can proceed in a more deliberate and strategic way. This is our opportunity. How shall we use it?
First, let's have a realistic appraisal of where we are.
Iran has not been transmuted into a benign actor by this estimate. It remains a terror-supporting state, an outlaw regime that continues to regard kidnap torture and assassination as legitimate tools of external policy - above and beyond its appalling human rights record at home. Most immediately disturbing, Iran is waging a proxy guerilla war against the US inside Iraq. And of course the nuclear program can be restarted at any time - next time from a much more sophisticated base of knowledge and with an ampler supply of nuclear fuel.
Hopes of some kind of "grand bargain" with this regime seem illusory. Nor is it clear why the US should wish such a grand bargain. The regime seems massively unpopular with its people. It will not last forever. Critics of US foreign policy are always warning us about the odium the US contracts when it "props up" regimes like those of the former shah of Iran. If it was unwise to associate the US with the shah, how can it make sense for the US to become a partner of the even more detested mullahs - even supposing such a thing were possible? Especially since the thing we are most often (rightly or wrongly) told the mullahs want - a US security guarantee - would promote the US from being the mullahs' partner to being their guarantor.
In dealing with an authoritarian regime, it's always a challenge to balance your short-term interest in stable relations with your long-term interests in not being contaminated with the regime's unpopularity with its own people. Different experts will arrive at different balances in each case, and I am nothing like an Iran expert. (To read some assessments by the real thing, click here.)
That conceded, here's what I'd propose as the next steps in US policy.
1. With the present downgrading of the Iran threat, the US occupies a sudden - probably short-lived - position of strength vis a vis the Iranian rulers. This is the perfect moment to clarify US military intentions in a way that will reassure potential friends among the Iranian people that the US will do everything it can to avoid a violent resolution of the confrontation between Iran and the rest of the world. This is the moment to take force off the table in all but the most extreme situations. The US should declare now that so long as the Iranian nuclear program remains demonstrably suspended, it guarantees no first use of military force against the territory of Iran. (Iranian agents in other countries, including Iraq, will of course remain fair game.)
2. The US should issue clear and specific guidelines about the steps Iran needs to take to rejoin the civilized world. Many of these will of course be intolerable to the present regime. But they can serve as inspirations to those who would reform or replace the regime. They should include a total end to terrorism and support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and an end to subversive activities inside Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Kurdish territories.
3. The US should aid democratic forces inside Iran - but in a more effective and intelligent way. We should greatly increase US support for professional and independent broadcasting into Iran. There is a long-running debate about US public diplomacy: how closely should US-supported broadcasters follow US government policy? Conservatives tend to take the view that policy should prevail. I think this view is wrong. US services broadcasting into Iran should substitute for the independent, credible media that Iran lacks. These media should have budgets for reporting, especially on issues like corruption, human rights abuse, family and sexuality, environmental degradation, and religion - topics on which the regime would most like to suppress discussion. US-supported broadcasters should serve as models of what a free Iranian society might look like. While of course US taxpayers should never subsidize a terror-glamorizing pseudo-independent network like Al Jazeera, US broadcasting into Iran should focus on what Iranians want to hear, not what Americans wish to say. There should be room for Marxists, environmentalists, radical feminists - not because the US government necessarily likes them, but because a free society has room for them. Oh, and there should be a heavy commitment to music and comedy as well. Especially comedy.
4. We should aid those democratic forces too by promoting human rights as an issue. Not democratization - much as we would wish to see democratization occur - because the official stance of the US government should be that Iran's future form of government is a matter for Iranians to decide. But we should take up on an individual basis first cases of foreign or dual nationals who have been detained and abused inside Iran - and then move from there to publicizing and denouncing in public fora abuses of Iranian nationals too.
Given recent history, it will take a sustained campaign over many years for the US voice on these issues to regain credibility. But with 3 to 5 years of steady and consistent work, the powerful voice of the US government can impress this issue on the awareness of the world and the Iranian people. We should be preparing that public to see America as their advocate against their authoritarian government - and the natural friend of a future and more accountable Iranian regime.
5. The US and Iran have not had direct bilateral relations since 1979. It was Iran that breached this relationship, and we have no reason to think that Iran wishes to restore those relations. So ... why don't we start proposing them? Iran will surely say "no." Good. Let's make a propaganda issue of that, inside Iran, underscoring to Iranians how radical and intransigent their government is, how their present costly isolation is their own government's.
Note that proposing direct relations is a very different thing from inviting Iran into regional talks, in the way Baker-Hamilton recommended. Baker-Hamilton proposed to legitimize Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of its neighbors. That is like opening the door to the parakeet's cage while the cat stalks the room. But making it clear that it is the present Iranian regime, not the US, that is invested in bad US-Iran relations? That's a very different matter.
To be continued ....
3 comments:
What an absurd comment..Iran to rejoin the civilized world...
It is our own government that should join the civilized world by reversing the current warmongering doctrine. And encourage Persian Gulf cooperation among all the countries, including Iran. What does Bush administration do instead? Brands Iran as a threat to sell more weapons. As for support of terrorists, PKK's cousins in Iraq are funded and supported by our government, not to mention other terrorist groups that are being used to create terror inside Iran.
We need a clear congressional mandate to review these deranged foreign policy initiatives, that have weakened our position in the Middle East, but our elected officials are too timid to do anything. Jefferson, we need you badly to fix things up fast, before we lose our position in the world.
Author of this masterpiece is obviously wasting his talent on this blog when he should be applying for a scholar position at the American Enterprise Institute.
The sheer number of unsubstantiated accusations are absolutely breathtaking. But then again we have a dedicated TV network called FOX News for propagating exactly the same kind of misinformation compost which is being passed as analysis here.
‘HANXING’ states: “No country that continues enriching uranium to weapons-grade can be said to have "abandoned" its nuclear program.”
True. But Iran is not enriching uranium to weapons-grade level. That false claim was also made last August by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which prompted this letter [1] from the IAEA to the contrary.
That bold face, for the lack of a better term, LIE is immediately followed in the next paragraph by another whopper that “thanks to pressures brought to bear on Iran in 2002 and 2003 - we now seem to have more time than previously projected to deal with the Iran problem.”
Obviously the author missed his mentor John Bolton’s article [2] in the Washington Post yesterday when he described the NIE report as “internally contradictory” for implying that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure because as “undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003”, he knew we were not exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran.
Just as you think he’ll actually begin to do some honest and “realistic appraisal” of the report, the tirade turns outright ugly – “a terror-supporting state, an outlaw regime that continues to regard kidnap, torture and assassination as legitimate tools of external policy”. Those descriptions certainly fit a certain other country in the region far better than his subject of revulsion which by this point is no longer a secret to the reader.
Alas, after conceding that he is “nothing like an Iran expert”, he proceeds to propose a number of steps as U.S. policy beginning by taking force off the table so long as the Iranian nuclear program remains demonstrably suspended which actually sounds fair enough. But then he qualifies that with Iranian regime’s halt of uncorroborated activities which render the first proposition a non-starter.
The rest of the rant is a regurgitation of what we’ve been fed for the last 6 years and all the overt and covert attempts to bring about a regime change which has only added to the level of distrust between the two countries.
His outright rejection of the idea in the final paragraph proposed by Baker-Hamilton to engage Iran in direct talks, flies in the face of the NIE report’s own judgment that a voluntary halt of Iran’s nuclear program can only occur under conditions that acknowledge its security, prestige, and regional influence.
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2006/iaea_hpsci-iran_12sep06.htm
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502234.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Who the hell said that Iran is enriching uranium at the weapon level? Who the hell even said that Iran is enriching, or has enriched, enough uranium for a reactor, let alone a bomb? Not the IAEA, the only objective source of information, and not even the NIE.
Iran's alleged support of terrorism, if true, is nothing compared with illegal invasion of Iraq, that has resulted in the death of at least 700,000 innocent civilian, destruction of an advanced nation, and 4 million refugees. It is nothing compared with Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006, and the apartheid, racist system that Israel has set up in the occupied territories, destroying a whole nation.
It is nothing compared to what the US did when it encouraged and supported Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, killing and injuring 1 million Iranians, and inflicting as much as $1 trillion economic loss on Iran. It is nothing compared with what the US did in Vietnam, resulting in the death of 2 million people. This list can go on and on and on.
The "author" lies and has no shame. He is worse than the President, and Gobels, the Nazi propaganda master. When people like this so-called author and blogger talk about peace, what they really mean is a graveyard peace. One in which everybody is dead, so that Israel and its supporters can do what they want.
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