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George
Bush’s Iran policy was one blunder after another, beginning with
placing Iran on an "axis of evil" list. His policy set out not
to resolve the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. He followed through by
spurning the opportunity for a settlement in 2003.
Bush’s
policy was to fight the "evil", which meant getting rid of that
"evil". That meant either making Iran do what the U.S. wanted or
changing the regime in Iran. The methods were to confront Iran, isolate it,
stop it from becoming a regional power, get it to back down, weaken it, get
it to abandon any and all its nuclear ambitions, sanction it, and support
dissidents inside Iran. Iran would not only be contained, it would be reduced.
Bush’s
policy was anti-detente. It was neoconservative policy, that is, arrogant,
self-righteous, vengeful, spiteful, pugnacious, and warlike policy. It was
blind and stupid policy, based on the mistaken beliefs that U.S. military
power is supreme and that the dominant and sole superpower will therefore get
its way, by bomb or by drone, by threat or by sanction, by U.N. resolution or
by war.
After
Bush’s eight disastrous years, one might suppose that a new
administration, a Democrat administration, and a new president who had
promised change might change Bush’s policy toward Iran. This was not to
be. Obama has not altered the anti-detente policy nor, for that matter, other
of Bush’s policies. To all those who expected that he would change
Bush’s Iran policy, Barack Obama has been a major and complete
disappointment. He changed nothing but the occupants of the White House. He
hand picked Hillary Clinton and others who, acting as his lieutenants,
continued and expanded Bush’s policy. Congress supported him by
remaining firmly wedded to anti-detente.
The
conflict between the U.S. and Iran has therefore not been resolved. It has
been intensified.
Hillary
Clinton is going to resign after the next election. If Obama is re-elected,
that makes it easier for him to shift his Iran policy 180 degrees, should he
choose to. He should do it, because the current policy has failed miserably
and will continue to fail. The U.S. has gained nothing from seeking to
undermine and isolate Iran. Instead it marches toward war.
The U.S.
cannot eradicate the Iran regime, it cannot make Iran go away, and it cannot
bring Iran under its control, that is, not without creating a disaster for
itself and the entire world. The U.S. cannot change the regime in Iran by
anything less than warring on Iran and occupying the country. Doing that
entails huge costs and risks to the U.S., all the countries in that region,
and the many other countries that would be affected by it, including Russia,
China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski recently said
that an Israeli attack on Iran would create a disaster, So would a U.S.
attack, possibly igniting the whole region, tying down the U.S. for years,
sowing enmity between the U.S. and the major powers, driving up oil prices,
undermining economies, and destroying world trade upon which global progress
is based. Morally such an attack would be completely wrong. It would set
peace back for the world’s dominant power to launch a preventive or
preemptive war. It would reinforce this doctrine among other nations. Force
would become the heart of international relations. The peaceful application
of rights in international law would be thwarted.
War
against Iran is not a rational option but that fact reduces by very little
the chance that Obama or a successor like Romney will make war and be
supported by other European powers. If these leaders should have a few
moments of sanity, then they may realize that what is rational is
accommodation with Iran, a deal, give and take, a quid pro quo.
What is
rational concerning Iran is detente.
Obama
should "go to Iran" in the same way that Nixon went to China. His
policy should be detente. By that I mean quite a bit more, what we might call
"ultra" detente – a broad settlement of issues via
negotiation. One can also term it rapprochement or accommodation. It has been
called a "grand bargain". Naturally, I do not mean that he should
go hat in hand to Teheran. I mean that the U.S. and Iran should negotiate the
issues and cap an agreement with a symbolic meeting of some kind.
Neoconservatives
will immediately object that this is easier said than done. This is a petty
and false objection. Of course, it will take skilled diplomacy. But what it
really takes is something that the neocons resist, which is a change of
directions. Detente means that the U.S. recognizes Iran, treats it with
respect, pledges to leave it alone, pledges its security from attack by the
U.S., and integrates it into the world. Detente means that Iran settles its
differences with Israel and stops using its proxies as threats to Israel.
Detente means that Israel changes its policies so as to settle its
outstanding differences with the Palestinians. Israel’s nature as a
state has to be clarified and settled if there is to be peace.
Detente
will mean that Iran rises as a regional power and Israel declines, but this
can be done diplomatically. The neocons want the U.S. and Israel to thwart
Iran and for Israel to thwart the Palestinians. This is a policy of perpetual
friction, tension and war. Detente aims for the opposite. If it can be done
between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China, then it can be
done between the U.S. and Iran and between Israel and its neighbors.
The
neocons will claim that negotiation has been tried already. They will claim
that Iran’s leaders are irrational ideologues and that negotiation is
impossible. These claims are totally false. Dr. Trita Parsi, in his 2007
book, Treacherous Alliance: the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the
United States, debunks them completely. Parsi interviewed 130 American,
Iranian and Israeli officials and analysts in order to understand their
foreign relations. I recommend this book.
The best
proof that Iran is rational, will negotiate, and that detente is possible is
simply to read Iran’s 2003 negotiation proposal to the United States.
It is here and here. An interpretative article, one of many on the web,
is here.
To
understand U.S. intransigence with respect to Iran (and to understand the
misinformation and lies that continually bombard Americans from their
government), I quote Parsi at some length concerning the proposal:
"The
Iranians prepared a comprehensive proposal, spelling out the contours of a
potential grand bargain between the two countries addressing all points of
contention between them. The first draft of the proposal was written by
Sadegh Kharrazi, the nephew of the Iranian foreign minister and Iran’s
ambassador to France. The draft then went to Iran’s supreme leader for
approval, who asked Iran UN Ambassador Zarif to review it and make final
edits before it was sent to the Americans. Only a closed circle of
decision-makers in Tehran was aware of and involved in preparing the proposal
– Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, President Mohammad Khatami, UN
Ambassador Zarif, Ambassador to France Kharrazi, and Ayatollah Ali Khamanei.
In addition, the Iranians consulted Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador to
Iran, who eventually would deliver the proposal to Washington.
"The
proposal stunned the Americans. Not only was it authoritative – it had
the approval of the supreme leader – but its contents were astonishing
as well. (See Appendix A.) ‘The Iranians acknowledged that WMD and
support for terror were serious causes of concern for us, and they were
willing to negotiate,’ said Flynt Leverett, who served as senior
director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council at the
time. ‘The message had been approved by all the highest levels of
authority.’ The Iranians were putting all their cards on the table,
declaring what they wanted from the United States and what they were willing
to offer in return. ‘That letter went to the Americans to say that we
are ready to talk, we are ready to address our issues,’ said Mohammad
Hossein Adeli, who was then a deputy foreign minister in Iran. In a dialogue
of ‘mutual respect,’ the Iranians offered to end their support to
Hamas and Islamic Jihad – Iran’s ideological brethren in the
struggle against the Jewish State – and pressure them to cease attacks
on Israel.
"On
Hezbollah, Iran’s own brainchild and its most reliable partner in the
Arab world, the clerics offered to support the disarmament of the Lebanese
militia and transform it into a purely political party. On the nuclear issue,
the proposal offered to open up completely the Iranian nuclear program to
intrusive international inspections in order to alleviate any fears of
Iranian weaponization. The Iranians would sign the Additional Protocol to the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and they also offered extensive American
involvement in the program as a further guarantee and goodwill gesture. On
terrorism, Tehran offered full cooperation against all terrorist
organizations – above all, al-Qaeda. On Iraq, Iran would work actively
with the United States to support political stabilization and establishment
of democratic institutions and – most importantly – a
nonreligious government. Perhaps most surprising of all, the Iranians offered
to accept the Beirut Declaration of the Arab League – that is, the
Saudi peace plan from March 2002, in which the Arab states offered to make
peace collectively with Israel, recognizing and normalizing relations with
the Jewish State in return for Israeli agreement to withdraw from all
occupied territories and accept a fully independent Palestinian state; an
equal division of Jerusalem; and an equitable resolution of the Palestinian
refugee problem. Through this step, Iran would formally recognize the
two-state solution and consider itself at peace with Israel. This was an
unprecedented concession by Tehran."
The Bush
administration spurned this offer. I quote Parsi:
"Powell
and his deputy, Richard Armitage, favored a positive response to the
Iranians. Together with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, they
approached the president about the proposal, but instead of instigating a
lively debate on the details of a potential American response, Cheney and
Rumsfeld quickly put the matter to an end. Their argument was simple but
devastating. ‘We don’t speak to evil,’ they said."
Will Obama
pursue detente if he retains office? The signs are anything but favorable at
this time, but political shifts of this nature are always possible –
possible but unlikely.
The sooner
detente is recognized as the best course, chosen, begun and carried through,
the better. If, for example, Bush had engaged the Iranians constructively at
the outset, the nuclear issue would have been much easier to handle than it
now is, because now Iran has much more knowledge and has built up a greater
capability to exercise various nuclear options, should it choose to.
But even
before detente, right now, Obama must stop Israel from attacking Iran.
He must do so in the strongest ways available to him, like denying airspace
to Israel for refueling its bombers. The urgency of this is extremely high.
It overshadows anything else in the immediate future. This is because Israel
has a preemption doctrine that it has acted on before, and because the
rhetoric now coming out of Israel has grown more and more strident, paranoid
and open about bombing Iran.
In this
regard, the recent reports about Leon Panetta’s thinking are extremely
troubling. We have been told that Panetta "was concerned about the
increased likelihood Israel would launch an attack over the next few
months." Concerned?! Is that all? Just concerned? What’s he doing
about it? If this is what he was willing to leak, it makes the U.S. sound
passive and helpless, which it is not. He should already have formulated a
strong response that such an action was absolutely not acceptable and that
the U.S. would prevent Israel from doing it by preventing their airplanes
from flying over Iraq and refueling. Is Obama asleep? Does he not understand
the implications of an Israeli attack? I can only hope that the cables being
sent to Israel are unambiguously warning off the Israeli government from
bombing now or ever.
The
foreign policy toward Iran is being conducted so poorly by the U.S.
government that it would be better to choose a dozen Americans at random,
give them a few weeks to acquaint themselves with the now-secret information,
have them educate themselves, have them reach a unanimous opinion and
then negotiate with Iran. I have more confidence in a "jury" of
this type than in the U.S. government.
A shift to
detente requires serious and persistent diplomacy, not threats and not
sanctions. In his latest book, A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama’s
Diplomacy with Iran, Parsi documents that Obama and Hillary Clinton have
spurned detente and not given diplomacy a chance.
Behind the
suggestion for detente is the assumption that the U.S.-Iran conflict is not
fundamentally ideological or religious. It is geopolitical. Parsi makes a
case that this is factual. The 2003 grand bargain that the Iranians put on
the table confirms this, but there is much other evidence to confirm it.
Going for
detente assumes that Iran’s leaders are rational. They are. Any kind of
thoughtful research that goes below the headlines to examine Iran’s
policies confirms that fact, including Parsi’s book.
Can
detente come out of the Republican camp?
The
Republican that is now out in front for the nomination is Mitt Romney. His policy on Iran, like that of Bush and Obama, is identical to the
Bush-Obama policy:
"Well,
it’s worth putting in place crippling sanctions. It’s worth
working with the insurgents in the country to encourage regime change in the
country. And if all else fails, if after all of the work we’ve done,
there’s nothing else we could do besides mil – take military
action, then of course you take military action."
Why? Why
is all this worth it? Because, says Romney,
"...the
gravest threat that America and the world faced as – and faced was a
nuclear Iran..."
Not at
all. Iran was willing to limit its nuclear ambitions to peaceful uses and
swear off any nuclear arms production. This is rational for Iran because if
it produces a nuclear bomb, then the nearby Arab states will want to do the
same. If they do so, that will neutralize Iran’s current advantage in
conventional arms. It’s rational for Iran to want to have at hand the
option to build nuclear weapons but not actually to build them and set off a
nuclear arms race that equalizes them and their neighbors.
Romney’s
statement is no more useful for establishing a foreign policy toward Iran
than the notion that Saddam Hussein was a "grave threat."
At
present, the U.S. and Israel threaten Iran. If it did ever arm itself with
nuclear weapons, they would be at best a counter-threat and a deterrent to
their own country being bombed and destroyed.
The U.S.
has Iran surrounded. Israel reportedly has hundreds of nuclear weapons and is
prepared to drop them, altogether too readily. Important elements in Israel
do not believe in Iran’s rationality. This is a very dangerous
misconception upon which to base its foreign policy. The U.S. can destroy Iran’s
infra-structure in a matter of a few months, even without nuclear bombs. The
U.S. is making the demands on Iran, it is imposing the sanctions, not the
other way around. Iran has no nuclear weapons, in possession, in production,
or in development, and everyone agrees on that. Its missiles can go no
further than about 1,500 miles.
If Iran
did have nuclear weapons or the capability to make them, this would change
the balance of power in the region. But Iran would not use them because of
the retaliatory power possessed by both Israel and the U.S. The Iranians are
not crazy. They are not going to commit suicide and end their own regime by
launching a nuclear attack that is met by retaliation that is 500x worse.
What do they gain?
It is true
that, by definition, Iranian nuclear weapons would be a threat or even a
grave threat if Iran developed them, but the weapons of the U.S. and Israel
are now a threat and a grave threat to Iran. Iran is going to respond somehow.
Iran is not going to remain passive indefinitely. It has responded in
rational ways. It has threatened asymmetric warfare if attacked, and not only
in the region. It has built up forces to fight such a war. It has threatened
to cut off oil to Europe. It has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. It
is developing the knowhow to build nuclear weapons. What else can it do?
The ogre
that is raised by such statements as Romney’s is that the Iranians
would use nuclear weapons, if they had them, in a first strike against
Israel. The crude idea is that they are ideological nutcases, and we do not
want nutcases in possession of these weapons because they might give in to
their ideological or religious biases and drop one or two on Israel. These
are the false beliefs behind all efforts to paint Iran as some kind of grave
threat.
The main
reason for such beliefs is the rhetoric of Iran’s President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad:
"This
regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages
of history."
He has
also questioned the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad’s rhetorical excesses are
matched by extreme replies coming out of some quarters in Israel and America.
Parsi
writes
"Few
Iranian Jews take Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric seriously, and
they point to the fact that little has changed for Iranian Jews under him.
‘Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it’s not an Islamic
or Iranian phenomenon – anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon,’
Ciamak Morsathegh, head of the Jewish hospital in Tehran, explained.
Iran’s forty synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools,
haven’t been touched. Neither has the Jewish library, which boasts
twenty thousand titles, or Jewish hospitals and cemeteries. Still,
Iran’s Jews have not sat idly by. The Jewish member of the Iranian
Majlis, or parliament (most religious minorities are guaranteed a seat in the
parliament), Maurice Mohtamed, has been outspoken in his condemnation of
Ahmadinejad’s comments."
Because
there is no movement to detente, the U.S., Iran and Israel are having a war
of words. Almost every day threats and counter-threats are being issued by
all three states. Calculations and mis-calculations are being made as to the
effect of these words. Ahmadinejad’s comments fall into this category.
The
reality is that there is no Iranian policy to wipe out Israel. Ahmadinejad did
not say that anyway. Furthermore, he is not the supreme leader in Iran or the
only one who would decide such an important matter.
The entire
situation, including the misperceptions of extreme elements in all three
countries, can be defused by a change in U.S. policy to detente.
This, I am
sorry to say, is not in view. The U.S.-Iran story does not have a visible
happy ending, not at this time.
Michael S. Rozeff
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