Talking Up an Iran-Al Qaeda Connection

I haven't read the new National Intelligence Estimate (as if! I'm on vacation), nor have I read much of the reporting on it. But the mainstream reports I've seen so far do not allude to the subject at the center of this article in the neocon New York Sun: an alleged link between Iran and Al-Qaeda. Sun correspondent Eli Lake says:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.

I have no information to give context to this allegation, so I merely note it for the record, with the warning that we may end up hearing a lot more about this from Iran-warmonger types.

The Corner, for instance, is already flogging it.

Labels: Iran, Neoconservatives, New York Sun

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:00 PM 1 comments

  Giuliani Hires Norman Podhoretz, Neocon Warmonger

Via Think Progress: The Giuliani campaign unveiled its foreign policy team yesterday, and prominent among the names is Norman Podhoretz, the murderous lunatic who recently demanded that the United States "bomb Iran" despite his own admission that such an attack could "unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest."

Podhoretz is an unapologetic extremist of the very same neoconservative crowd that has been so thoroughly discredited by its role in formenting the Iraq war. His advocacy of war with Iran is insane not just from a moral but also a strategic standpoint: an attack on Iran would not stop, and would likely accelerate Iran's nuclear program, and would almost certainly benefit the very hardliners the neocons claim to be so worried about. Podhoretz is an addled ideologue, not a serious foreign policy thinker, and by hiring him, Giuliani has demonstrated that he is determined to stick to -- and possibly expand upon -- the failed policies of the Bush administration. Some conservative commenters have hinted that they'd like to see Iran at the center of the debate during the 2008 election; Rudy seems intent on granting them their wish.

I'll do a full post on Podhoretz, as well as other members of Giuliani's foreign policy team -- which includes notable conservative names like Peter Berkowitz -- as part of the policy advisors series. Look for the Podhoretz profile soon.

Cross-posted at The Right's Field.

Labels: Iran, Norman Podhoretz, Rudy Giuliani

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:01 AM 0 comments

  The Bleating of the Hawks

Writing from the parallel universe in which neoconservative foreign policy ideas haven't been comprehensively and humiliatingly discredited, Joshua Muravchik takes to the Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal today to beat the Iran war drum. Following on the heels of Normon Podhoretz's addled little screed in Commentary, Muravchik's piece seems to represent an even further regression into a kind of dreamlike, bellicose haze -- a warm and cloudy place where unreconstructed neocons are free to release their gasses without consequence or accountability. Neither Podhoretz nor Muravchik give any indication of having made an effort to understand what a US military conflict with Iran would actually entail. Nor are they even making much effort anymore to protect their historical analogies from strain. We're told that war with Iran is in the cards simply because Iran's regime is obnoxious, because the bad guys are "feeling [their] oats," and because ... something about appeasement:

A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak. Often democracies have fed such beliefs by their own flaccid behavior. Hitler's contempt for America, stoked by the policy of appeasement, is a familiar story. But there are many others. North Korea invaded South Korea after Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that Korea lay beyond our "defense perimeter." Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after our ambassador assured him that America does not intervene in quarrels among Arabs. Imperial Germany launched World War I, encouraged by Great Britain's open reluctance to get involved. Nasser brought on the 1967 Six Day War, thinking that he could extort some concessions from Israel by rattling his sword.

That authoritarian regimes have often underestimated the warmaking capacities of democracies is certainly true. But that truism has fermented and now fuels the fantasies and revisionist hallucinations of the neocons, who go on to burp out bad history to support their arguments. For instance: on which planet was it that the Second World War began because of Hitler's "contempt" for an America practicing a "policy of appeasement"? In fact, can we come up with a variation on Godwin's Law for the term? Can we ask that advocates for yet another war be required to justify said war without resorting to the word "appeasement"?

And I'm not even going to get into Muravchik's use of "flaccid."

Labels: Iran, Joshua Muravchik, Neoconservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:19 AM 1 comments

  Whereas VDH Seems to Kind of Get It

At NRO, at least Victor Davis Hanson seems to grasp what's going on in Iran:

It’s probably a good rule to do the opposite of anything the Iranian theocracy wants. Apparently, this government is now doing its darnedest to be bombed. So, for the time being, we should not grant them this wish.

[...]

While the Iranian theocrats understand that the entire world, including many of their own citizens, is turning against them, they also know that this could change if a Western nation would just attack them. Their strategy seems to be to find a way to provoke someone to drop a few bombs on them, on the naive assumption that such an assault would be of limited duration and damage. Such an attack, they may figure, would earn them sympathy in much of the world.

As far as I know, this makes Hanson the first National Review writer to accept the widely-argued point that a US attack - or even the threat of one - is exactly what the Iranian regime wants.

Hanson goes on to argue for comprehensive sanctions on Iran - which is a pretty bad idea in itself, and may be a path that leads to war anyway.

Labels: Iran, National review, Victor Davis Hanson

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:10 AM 0 comments

  2+2 = 6,012

David Frum demonstrates a remarkable refusal to be distracted by logic as he zeroes in on the neoconservative target: war with Iran.

Some may sigh with relief at the release of the captives: "Well, at least we averted the risk of war."

My fear is that we have now moved closer to war than ever. The EU response to the detention of the capitves makes clear that there is almost zero hope of gaining European cooperation for an effective sanctions regime upon Iran. If they won't impose comprehensive sanctions after an act of piracy like this, they sure cannot be expected to do it merely because Iran has moved another step closer to completion of a nuclear bomb. By refusing to consider meaingful nonmilitary pressure, the Europeans have steadily reduced the number of peaceful options. As things are going, those options will soon be reduced to two: acquiesence - or air strikes. That is not success.

Some might point out a third option: quiet diplomacy - which, in fact, actually worked. But then some people are constrained by the earthly laws of empiricism and logical deduction. David Frum is not one of those mortals.

UPDATE: Compare with this NY Times op-ed by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh:

Had the British followed the American example, once the sailors and marines were seized, they could have escalated the conflict by pursuing the matter more forcefully at the United Nations or sending additional naval vessels to the area. Instead, the British tempered their rhetoric and insisted that diplomacy was the only means of resolving the conflict. The Iranians received this as pragmatism on London’s part and responded in kind.

The United States, meanwhile, has pursued its policy of coercion for two months now, and one is hard-pressed to find evidence of success. Beyond even the symbolic move of apprehending the British sailors, Iran’s intransigent position on the nuclear issue remains unchanged. To underscore that point, Iran has scaled back cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and released a new currency note adorned with a nuclear emblem.

Labels: David Frum, Iran

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:30 AM 0 comments

  Right-Wing Think Tank Review - 3/29/07

Heritage Foundation (Sourcewatch profile here)

Free Trade Is Dead, Long Live Free Trade
By Tim Kane
WebMemo No. 1409, pub. 3/27/07

Kane's article assesses the implications of increased skepticism in Congress toward unrestrained free trade agreements. At stake, Kane argues, is the success or failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. More immediately, the issue is whether Congress will renew the president's trade promotion authority (TPA), which is set to expire on June 30. Noting that the previous renewal, in 2002, passed the House with only a thin majority, Kane worries that a growing protectionist mood in Congress will doom the TPA, thus undermining President Bush's efforts to successfully conclude the Doha round: "Will Congress grant American negotiators the authority to close this multilateral deal?"

The article recounts increased Republican support for measures like the ones blocking the Dubai Port World bid last year, punishing China for pegging the yuan to the dollar, or requiring country-of-origin labeling on imported produce. It also blames "special interest groups ... notably European agribusiness" for "scheming to abort" Doha. But Kane reserves special criticism for what he calls "conditional trade deals" pushed by American politicians:

"Yes, Peru, Americans will trade ‘freely' with your citizens on the condition that you do X, Y, and Z." This is not the American way; conditional interstate commerce among the United States was made unconstitutional in 1789 precisely because the Founding Fathers recognized the pettiness and gross inefficiency of protectionism.

The analogy is a bit confounding, since Congress of course has the authority to regulate interstate commerce - states may not set their own conditions because American citizens are fully enfranchised in a federal government that has the authority to do so. That government in fact has a long history of enforcing labor and environmental standards - the very sorts of "conditions" that Kane is denouncing. There is, of course, no overarching sovereign authority on the global level.

Nonetheless, from a progressive perspective there are strong arguments for supporting the success of the Doha round. American trade can be made both freer and fairer: for instance, Daniel Tarullo has argued that, by easing some of its domestic agricultural subsidies, the US can both increase American farmers' access to global markets and help improve the lives of farmers in the developing world - which, in turn, would be good for global security. However, as Tarullo notes, the Bush administration "has never shown more than pro forma support" for the Doha round; meanwhile, its strategy of "competitive liberalization," meant to build demand for multilateral trade negotiations through a series of bilateral and regional agreements (such as CAFTA), has accomplished little more than creating distractions and polarization in the trade debate.

Tarullo argues that senior Administration officials should be more involved with the Doha talks. To do so, however, they will need to work with a Democratic Congress. The Administration shut out Democrats during the CAFTA debate, but it can no longer avoid compromise, especially as it is seeking TPA renewal. Contra Kane, labor and environmental standards will be necessary parts of any comprehensive multilateral trade agreement. It is politically unrealistic - a fantasy - to believe otherwise. However, Kane's article attempts to make the case against such standards anyway.


Advancing Freedom in Iran
by Steven Groves
Backgrounder No. 2019, pub. 3/26/07

Groves argues that "there is still an opportunity to bring about peaceful democratic change in Iran." The primary obstacle to such change, according to Groves, is Iran's constitution: "a cancer that must be excised." The constitution renders Iranians' efforts to elect reformers futile, because it creates so many mechanisms for the mullahs to reject the democratic will of the people - for instance, through the authority of the Guardian Council to vet all presidential candidates and to veto any legislation the Council deems contrary to the precepts of Islam. Therefore, says Groves, "the United States should focus its funding and public diplomacy efforts toward supporting a national referendum on Iran's constitution."

Groves criticizes "unrealistic diplomatic 'grand bargains,'" which would seek comprehensive solutions to the multiple disputes between Iran and the West. Such efforts unrealistically assume that there is anything that can persuade Iran to abandon core policy objectives such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the "grand bargain" approach would "do little to nothing to advance freedom, democracy, and human rights for the Iranian people."

Instead, says Groves, US policy should turn on a re-interpretation of the 2006 Iran Freedom Support Act, which regulated US sanctions against Iran and financed democracy-promotion efforts.

Regrettably, the act stated that U.S. policy was merely “to support efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government of their country.” As an official policy position, this statement rings hollow. The United States supports the efforts of the people of every nation in the world to exercise self-determination over their form of government. Instead, the U.S. government should state explicitly what the Iran Freedom Support Act only implies: The United States supports a peaceful democratic transformation of the Iranian regime.

This policy would mean using the funding authorized by the Act to "unite the various groups interested in constitutional reform" under a "Rainbow Civil Movement," to support internet outreach and the dissemination of printed material advocating a constitutional referendum, and to "covertly provide cellular phones and other communications devices" to Iranian dissidents.

Groves argues that congressional legislation relating to Iran should "clearly state that the United States government supports a democratic transformation of the Iranian regime." He also advocates for increased public diplomacy efforts, including increasing the amount of "serious analysis and programming" on Radio Farda - or establishing an alternate station for this purpose. Finally, Groves insists on the need for stronger efforts to "squeeze Iran financially," both on behalf of the US Treasury Department, and European nations, who should end government-backed export guarantees that account for an important part of Iran's trade.

The idea of suspending European export guarantees for Iran has been raised by numerous commentators, including Timothy Garton Ash at the Guardian, and Nile Gardiner at Human Events Online. Both of these articles were written in response to the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors. It's instructive to compare Gardiner's article - which was also posted at Heritage's website - with the Groves piece. Each rejects diplomatic engagement with the regime. Gardiner, however, uses the current hostage crisis as an opportunity to ramp up the right's already-aggressive rhetoric, calling Iran's latest move "a hostile act of war." Without any sense of irony or acknowledgment of the rhetoric churned out by hawks during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, Gardiner neatly reprises the very same claims:

Iran poses the greatest threat to global security of our generation, and the West must be ready to meet the challenge with strength and determination. Not since the rise of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia has the free world been faced with such a grave danger from a state actor. While the use of force is always a last resort, the United States, Great Britain and their allies must be prepared to disarm the Iranian regime if it refuses to back down, with or without the backing of the UN Security Council.

It is left to the reader to decide whether Groves is simply a more serious analyst than Gardiner, or whether the two articles represent different formulations of the same underlying approach to Iran.


American Enterprise Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)

Arnold, Rush Battle for the Republican Party's Soul
By Kevin A. Hassett
Pub. 3/26/07; also pub. at Bloomberg.com.

Hassett reviews the recent contretemps between California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh. Observing that "the Republican party is at a historical crossroads," Hassett suggests that the Limbaugh-Schwarzenegger dispute perfectly illustrates the major debate within the GOP. And "only one side can win."

The controversy is rooted one of the most fundamental dilemmas in democratic politics: how to balance effectiveness with principle. Because, as Hassett notes, there have been no politicians since Reagan with the political skills to sell unpopular conservative ideas to the general public, Republicans are forced to decide between compromise and ideology.

Hassett notes that Schwarzenegger's recent move to the left, which has included hiring a Democratic chief of staff, agreeing to an increase in the state minimum wage, tackling carbon emissions, and developing a health care program, "has boosted his popularity." The governor's latest job approval ratings are 11 points higher than they were in 2005. However, says Hassett, "popularity might come at the expense of principle." And it is this "sell out" of conservative principle that has led extremist conservatives like Limbaugh to harshly criticize Schwarzenegger.

The governor's response was that "Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant." Unfortunately for the Republican party, however, that does not in fact appear to be the case. Hassett forecasts that the GOP's presidential primary debates will largely involve rehashing the very same kind of dispute - and he believes that, both in those debates and in the general intra-party debate, the Limbaugh faction will win. In other words, the Republicans, with a model for the resurgence of their party on prominent display in California, will reject it and instead choose to further marginalize themselves. (It should be noted that Hassett himself seems to approve of this scenario.)

One final note on the stakes involved: Hassett actually puts this dispute into an important context when he suggests the "compromisers"

will argue that the country urgently needs to come together to address long-run problems such as the entitlement programs that are headed for financial ruin. That can only be done, it will be argued, if Republicans are willing to compromise with Democrats.

As this blog and other observers have repeatedly pointed out, the United States is indeed heading toward a major debate over its fiscal priorities, including taxation and entitlements. Milton Friedmanite movement conservatives are focusing on a showdown over the entire tax code - and, by implication, the future of American entitlements - in 2011. One way or another, there is a major budget gap that will need to be addressed. If the Rush Limbaugh ideologues do indeed triumph over the Schwarzenegger "compromisers," it will have important effects on the politics of the great budget debate when that time comes.

Labels: Iran, Republicans, Right Wing Think Tank Review, trade

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:30 AM 0 comments

  Calculating the Iran Crisis

At the Corner, Stanley Kurtz says the 2008 election is likely to be more about Iran than about Iraq. Kurtz suggests that the Persian front is about to heat up:

What if Mario Loyola is right, and Iran is likely to expel U.N. inspectors and ramp up its nuclear fuel processing in a matter of months. That will provoke not only a national security crisis, but an American, and global, political crisis. At that point, the key question for every presidential candidate will be what to do about Iran. [...]

By election time, we’ll see a raft of conflicting estimates on just when Iran is likely to get a bomb. None of them will be completely reliable, but there will also be good reason to fear that the worst scenarios are true.

At that point, predicts Kurtz, "the anti-war left" will point to the lessons of Iraq and "deride all the guesswork as bogus fear-mongering."

This, of course, will be a conundrum of the right's own making. The Bush administration and their neoconservative enablers have so degraded the US intelligence apparatus, and so undermined the public's faith in the honesty of the executive branch, that as long as Bush remains in office we will simply have no reason to believe that any of his warnings, any of his dire predictions of smoking-guns-as-mushroom-clouds, have any validity at all.

Still, Kurtz estimates that "overall, if this turns into an Iran election, it will help the Republicans." And probably it will, as Democratic frontrunners will feel compelled to reserve judgment on intelligence that could be legitimate - but which they won't be able to analyze for themselves. The Bush administration will have the advantage of being the information gatekeeper on the Iran situation. The GOP candidate will simply have to talk tough. The Democrat will be obliged to account for the possibility that this time there really is a wolf - even while the entire Democratic base throws its hands up in outrage at yet another round of transparent Republican fearmongering.

You can hear Kurtz licking his chops. Look at this framing:

Unfortunately, I wonder if, by the time a new president comes in, it won’t already be too late to stop Iran. Iran no doubt remembers how it sent the hostages home at the start of Ronald Reagan’s new presidency. It greatly feared Reagan’s combination of toughness and fresh political capital. That’s part of why Iran is racing so hard right now to get the bomb.

There's a little bit of everything here: Reagan worship, self-aggrandizing tough-guy posturing, dark warnings that the sky is falling and only the Republicans can stop it.

It's a funny little paragraph. I doubt Ayatollah Khomeni gave a damn about Reagan's "fresh political capital." He certainly did like the weapons Reagan's people sold him, though.

And if Iran is racing hard to get the bomb, it's because the Bush administration, in its incompetent and incoherent policies toward Iraq and North Korea, has shown that it's in the interest of card-carrying members of the Axis of Evil to get nukes before the US can invade.

But that's not the narrative we'll hear if Iran becomes the issue next year. The Republicans, once again, will be on message - and the Democrats will be, once again, in a quandary.

Labels: 2008, Iran, Presidential election, Stanley Kurtz

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:12 AM 0 comments

  Pure Psychic Automatism at the Corner

Don't look now, but there's an extremely silly debate going on at the Corner over diplomatic engagement with Iran. It was triggered by this Frank Gaffney piece, in which the author displays the most spectacular ignorance about diplomacy in general, and Iran in particular. Ultimate Warrior Andy McCarthy gives it a "huzzah!" which prompts Andrew Stuttaford, The Last True Tory, to weigh in with a little reality check:

Talking to Iran and Syria is, of course, absolutely the correct, cynically self-interested, thing to do. The idea that sitting down with the representatives of a country's regime either somehow "legitimizes" that regime or will be perceived (by anyone who matters) as some sort of reward is nonsense. [...]

Will anything good come of it? I've no idea, and nor does anyone else, but we won't know until it's been tried.

Speaking more widely, it strikes me as thoroughly perverse that those who like to argue that "nothing" should be off the table when it comes to Iran and Syria find a little diplomatic conversation as something too ghastly to contemplate.

This, of course, does not sit well with the Fighting Keyboarders of the NRO. Michael Rubin opines that "it's been tried before," and anyway, Yassir Arafat. McCarthy, meanwhile, shoots a white-hot bolt of pure stupidity into the mix:

While we're at it, let's get bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar to the table. Maybe we can get this whole thing settled.

He follows this up with a descent into what appears to be a form of rhetorical dadaism:

Re my suggestion that we include bin Laden in the talks, readers are pointing out to me that this is ridiculous because Michael Ledeen has pointed out that Osama has probably gone off to that Big Orgy in the Sky. This strikes me as terribly insensitive.

The dead, after all, have their point of view. And what about putting yourself in the other guy's shoes — Rule One for the successful negotiator? Won't we all be dead someday? Wouldn't it just be another case of unilateral American cowboy arrogance to refuse to negotiate with someone just because he's, er, vitally-challenged?

Whether the Cornerites are some sort of avant-garde experiment in political performance art, or just drunk, you've got to feel a little empathy for Stuttaford and his pointless efforts to reason with them.

Labels: Foreign Policy, Iran, The Corner

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:05 PM 2 comments

  Right-Wing Think Tank Review - 2/28/07

American Enterprise Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)

Deja Vu: Repeating Past Mistakes with North Korea
By Nicholas Eberstadt and Christopher Griffin
Pub. 2/26/07; orig. pub. in the San Diego Union-Tribune 2/25/07.

The authors condemn the recent six-party agreement in Beijing, which will provide North Korea with fuel oil and other assistance, in return for the communist state's promise to begin dismantling its nuclear programs. This accord, says Eberstadt and Griffin, "was a strategic blunder masquerading as a diplomatic triumph."

According to the authors, this "capitulation in Beijing" represents a retreat from Washington's previous insistence on "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization," and it is likely to create a wedge between the United States and its partners. While the Koreans consented to freezing their plutonium program at Yongbyon, they refused to discuss their highly enriched uranium (HEU) program - "the discovery of which sparked the current round of North Korean nuclear brinkmanship." Moreover, the agreement fails to address the nuclear weapons already manufactured by North Korea. Yet the Koreans may have conceded just enough to string the process along, so that "only the most blatant breach of faith is likely to rupture the six-party talks in the near term" - otherwise, "international pressure" will "keep the agreement alive." Thus any attempt by Washington to strengthen the terms of the accord will be met with resistance from Seoul and Beijing. Meanwhile, by failing to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents, the agreement may end up alienating America's most reliable ally in the region.

How can Washington recover from this self-inflicted setback? As a first step, when North Korea presents its list of nuclear programs in 60 days, the Bush administration must be prepared to reject any document that does not include a complete accounting of the HEU program... Only American pressure can keep the issue alive.

The United States might also make any move toward removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism contingent upon the satisfactory resolution of the abductee issue. [...]

Looking beyond the six-party framework, Washington should consider a policy that leverages U.S. strengths against North Korean weaknesses. As North Korea depends on international extortion to survive, the United States should follow Japan's lead and refuse to support the failed North Korean economy until Pyongyang delivers real progress on denuclearization and other issues. Cooperation with Tokyo to increase pressure against Pyongyang's proliferation and counterfeiting activities is a vital measure. And pushing Beijing to facilitate the flow of North Korean refugees though its border along the Yalu River would deliver both humanitarian and strategic dividends.

The pact has been criticized from both right and left, though a number of observers have noted that, given Washington's weak bargaining position, the agreement was the best that could have been expected. The larger problem, as this article explains, is that hardliners like Eberstadt and Griffin have weakened the American position by pushing an approach that has backfired repeatedly. Indeed, there might be no need for this "defeat without a war" - or for similar concessions that may have to be granted to Iran - had neoconservative ideologues not encouraged American policies that have only given "rogue states" incentive to withdraw from negotiations and build up nuclear arsenals as protection from American attack.


Table Talk
By Michael Rubin and Danielle Pletka
Pub. 2/21/07; orig. pub. in the Wall Street Journal, 2/21/07.

Rubin and Pletka are leading neoconservative hawks who have been pushing for confrontation with Iran for some time. Their article, written in anticipation of last week's deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, condemns those calling for dialogue with Tehran - arguing that Iran uses "engagement" as cover for advancing the interests of the hard-line clerical leadership. European negotiations with Iran, say the authors, failed to slow the pace of Tehran's investment in nuclear and conventional arms, nor its export of weapons to terrorist groups. No amount of effort to identify and strengthen "reformists" within Iran will change this basic fact, they say:

Western efforts to game the Iranian system, in short, misunderstand the nature of politics in the Islamic Republic. Politicians rise and fall, but the supreme leader’s authority remains supreme. Rhetoric notwithstanding, the president is more figurehead than commander. Factional differences add color to the Iranian scene, and there are nuances in economic and social policies. But politicians do not alter the regime’s ideological underpinnings.

The article seems clearly aimed as a rebuttal to those who have pointed out that Iran's hardliners stand to benefit from any American attack. On the contrary, say Rubin and Pletka, there is no substantive difference between Tehran's "reformists" and hardliners, and anyway, "dialogue and the attendant relaxation of U.N. sanctions will strengthen and validate the Ahmadinejad regime." The authors are eager to abandon engagement, and they argue that more dialogue will only get in the way of tougher sanctions:

Those eager to sit down with Tehran say that dialogue does not mean abandoning sanctions. This is hardly serious. Washington has already offered and delivered inducements to the regime--a clear path to World Trade Organization accession and spare aircraft parts--in exchange for behavior modification. In response, Tehran has offered no confidence-building measures. All that remains are direct talks, and even there, Washington has dropped the price from ending Iran’s nuclear program to a temporary suspension of enrichment.

[...]

To change course now would signal the impotence of international institutions and multilateral diplomacy. History shows that when the supreme leader believes Western resolve is faltering, Iran will be more defiant and dangerous. Now is not the time to talk. If Washington and Europe truly believe in the primacy of multilateralism and diplomacy, now is the time to ratchet up the pressure.

The authors do not explain why, as in North Korea, "ratcheting up the pressure" would not merely add to the incentive for Iran to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. Nor do they acknowledge that the "inducements" Washington offered in June 2006 were not rejected out of hand, but because they ignored the security questions at the heart of the Iranian negotiating position. Essentially, Rubin and Pletka conflate the idea of engagement with the Bush administration's current incoherent Iran policy, then offer a false dichotomy between this and a strategy of "ratcheting up the pressure," clearly intended to push the United States and Iran closer to war.


The Heritage Foundation (Sourcewatch profile here)

Don't Count on the Security Council to Curb Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
By James Phillips
WebMemo No. 1370, pub. 2/26/07.

Phillips offers a look at what "ratcheting up the pressure" might mean:

The United States must push hard for stronger sanctions against Iran, not only at the Security Council but also directly with European and Japanese allies, who have considerable untapped leverage over Tehran. Relying solely on U.N. sanctions, which are likely to be diluted and delayed by Russia and China, will be to too little, too late. Unless the European Union and Japan agree to withhold foreign investment, strategic trade, and technology from Iran, there is little chance that Iran's nuclear ambitions will be stopped, short of war.

The article was written after it had become clear that Tehran had ignored the Security Council's February 21 deadline to suspend nuclear enrichment. Phillips argues that the new sanctions under consideration at the UN, while "long overdue," are "far from sufficient to convince Iran's radical Islamic regime to change its behavior." The primary problem, says Phillips, is that China and Russia are likely to use their veto power to limit the strength of any sanctions passed through the Security Council:

Washington cannot depend on the U.N. to take decisive action. Both Moscow and Beijing have a vested interest in protecting Tehran from sanctions that would disrupt their growing economic and military ties.

Thus, argues Phillips, the US should organize efforts to "exploit Iran's Achilles heel, its faltering economy." Specifically, American policy should target foreign investment, loans, and technology and trade deals - as well as imposing a travel ban on Iranian leaders. This would be coupled with "public diplomacy programs to explain to the Iranian people the growing costs of their leaders' stubborn refusal to abide by Iran's treaty commitments."

Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott have argued that sanctions are extremely unlikely to be effective as a tool for stopping Iranian nuclear development. To have any real impact, the sanctions would have to be as complete as those imposed upon Iraq during the 1990s. However, as in Iraq, this would largely have the effect of punishing the Iranian people rather than the regime, while "inflam[ing] Iranian nationalism" rather than undercutting the government. Moreover, the Iraqi sanctions came at a time of low oil prices, which lessened their pain for the rest of the world - by contrast, Iran would be positioned to retaliate against sanctions by driving up the price of oil to more than $100 per barrel - which would be politically unsustainable both in the United States and for any international cooperative effort, and which could plunge the world economy into recession.

If Hufbauer and Schott are correct, than an analysis like the one presented by Phillips, Rubin, and Pletka would place the United States in a very dangerous position - for these authors suggest that harsh sanctions are the only alternative to war. One might even argue that their papers could be seen as an exercise in self-fulfilling prophesy - by pursuing a strategy that shuns engagement in favor of stronger sanctions, the United States would be propelled down a path that would lead inevitably to war.

Joseph Cirincione and Andrew J. Grotto of the Center for American Progress have produced an in-depth report on American strategy options with regard to Iran. They analyze the shortcomings in various possible approaches - including the one advocated by neoconservative intellectuals - and argue for a strategy of "contain and engage" that could slow Iranian nuclear development in the short term, while opening up possibilities for comprehensive arrangements in the long term. It's worthwhile reading for those who take the Iranian problem seriously - but who believe that the neoconservatives are seriously wrong.

(All emphasis mine)

Labels: American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy, Heritage Foundation, Iran, North Korea, Right Wing Think Tank Review

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:51 AM 0 comments

  Revenge of the Vulcans II

Excellent piece by Craig Unger at Vanity Fair, outlining the path to war in Iran. "The Bush White House has already built the fire," says Unger, "whether it will light the match remains to be seen."

There's a lot to digest in the article, but one of the many interesting aspects is Unger's explanation of how the neoconservatives have been rehabilitated in the Bush administration, after the briefest of exiles. The article also helps illustrate the way conservative think tanks - especially AEI - and journals have played a major role in shaping Bush's disastrous Middle East policy. As this blog matures, I hope we'll begin to be able to capture some of that process in real time. Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from Unger's piece, just after he describes the release of the Iraq Study Group Report, which was generally well-received:

The only American whose opinion mattered, however, was not impressed. Bush, Salon reported, slammed the I.S.G. study as "a flaming turd." If Rice even delivered Scowcroft's message, it had fallen on deaf ears.

Just eight days later, on December 14, Bush found a study that was more to his liking. Not surprisingly, it came from the American Enterprise Institute, the intellectual stronghold of neoconservatism. The author, Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the A.E.I., is the son of Donald Kagan and the brother of Robert Kagan, who signed PNAC's famous 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to overthrow Saddam Hussein. According to Kagan, the project began in late September or early October at the instigation of his boss, Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at A.E.I. She decided "it would be helpful to do a realistic evaluation of what would be required to secure Baghdad," Kagan told Vanity Fair.

The project culminated in a four-day planning exercise in early December, Kagan said, that just happened to coincide with the release of the Iraq Study Group report. But he rejected the notion that his study had been initiated by the White House as an alternative to the bipartisan assessment. "I'm aware of some of the rumors," Kagan said. "This was not designed to be an anti-I.S.G. report.… Any conspiracy theories beyond that are nonsense."

[...]

In one sense, the neoconservative hawks—including the authors of "A Clean Break"—have been kept aloft by their failures. The strategic fiasco created by the Iraq war has actually increased the danger posed by Iran to Israel—and with it the likelihood of armed conflict. "[Bush's wars] have put Israel in the worst strategic and operational situation she's been in since 1948," says retired colonel Larry Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff in the State Department. "If you take down Iraq, you eliminate Iran's No. 1 enemy. And, oh, by the way, if you eliminate the Taliban, they might reasonably be assumed to be Iran's No. 2 enemy."

"Nobody thought going into this war that these guys would screw it up so badly, that Iraq would be taken out of the balance of power, that it would implode, and that Iran would become dominant," says Martin Indyk.

Read the rest here.

Labels: American Enterprise Institute, Craig Unger, Frederick Kagan, Iran, Neoconservatives, Vanity Fair

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:25 PM 0 comments

  Hoover Doves

Last week Larry Diamond and Leonard Weiss published in op-ed in the LA Times arguing that "Congress must stop a war on Iran" (h/t: Undercover Blue). Now Diamond has followed up with an article in the Christian Science Monitor, writing with Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul about how "Iran's weakened hardliners crave a U.S. attack." The authors are making a similar point point to the one Ali Ansari did at the Guardian online a couple of weeks ago, when he argued that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is politically weak and isolated - and that a U.S. attack may be the only thing that can save him.

Diamond et al agree with the point about Ahmadinejad's own troubles, but their analysis goes beyond the president himself. Neocon hawks continually fail to note - whether out of ignorance or dishonesty - that the Iranian president is not by any means the most powerful figure in Iran's government. The real power belongs to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and as the CSM article observes, "his failing health has launched a succession struggle." This struggle pits Iran's considerable reform constituency against Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards hardliners, and their thuggish supporters. As Ahmadinejad falters, he still has one major hope: that the U.S. will launch an attack.

To reverse his waning popular support, Ahmadinejad has tried to change the subject from his domestic failures to his foreign adventures. He knows there is only one thing that could bring the people back to him – a US military attack on Iran. His repulsive remarks about Israel and his nuclear bravado aim precisely to provoke such an attack, which would create the crisis conditions necessary for his faction to seize full power.

Just as Iran's reactionaries are pining for war, some of Iran's more moderate leaders have written a letter asking the Saudi government to help reduce tensions between the US and Iran. Military confrontation with US forces would silence this camp domestically.

In fact, Iran's democratic opposition warns that a US military strike would strengthen the regime hard-liners and weaken their own already limited ability to operate. If Ahmadinejad welcomes war with America and Iran's dissidents fear it, shouldn't the Bush administration think twice about the unintended consequences of military action?

Kevin Drum has called Diamond a "member in good standing of the mainstream liberal foreign policy community," by which he means that he's no Ramsey Clark. Diamond was one of those liberals whose internationalist instincts were challenged by Bush's Iraq war; he worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority for some time, though he claims to have opposed the initial invasion of Iraq.

I bring up this background on Diamond because he's also, interestingly, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. One of the products of the Iraq disaster has been a revitalization of foreign-policy realism, much of it taking place from within conservative think-tanks and publications. There's a danger - which is worth discussing in another post - that liberals opposed to the Iraq war might too easily let themselves be seduced by these new realist allies. But it's worth noting that such a tactical alliance exists at all, and that parts of the conservative intellectual sphere are helping to foster it.

Labels: Foreign Policy, Hoover Institution, Iran, Larry Diamond, liberalism, Neocons, realists

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:50 AM 0 comments

  How Bush May Save Ahmadinejad

Ali Ansari at the Guardian explains: the Iranian president is politically isolated and increasingly unpopular:

Ahmadinejad was elected on a platform of anti-corruption and financial transparency, and few appreciated how rapidly he was intoxicated with the prerogatives of his office. He very soon forgot the real help he had received in ensuring his election, basking in the belief that God and the people had put him in power. Ahmadinejad soon had a view for all seasons: uranium enrichment. Of course Iran would pursue this, and what's more, sell it on the open market at knockdown rates. As for interest rates, they were far too high for the ordinary borrower, so cut them immediately. And then there was the Holocaust.

None of this might matter so much, if the president had based his rhetorical flourishes on solid policies. But much to everyone's surprise nothing dramatic materialised. Ahmadinejad appeared to follow the dictum of his mentor, Ayatollah Khomeini - "Economics is for donkeys".

The result? Inflation, unemployment, and "ridicule." Even his supporters are dismayed:

Much to their irritation, not only has Ahmadinejad singularly failed to consolidate and extend his political base, the recent municipal elections saw his faction defeated throughout the country. Traditional conservatives and reformists reorganised and hit back, ingeniously using technology to work round the various obstacles placed in front of them. Now, over the past weeks, with biting weather, shortages of heating fuel are further raising the political temperature, while his political opponents point to the burgeoning international crisis for which the globetrotting president seems to have no constructive answer. Talk has turned to impeachment.

Only one thing can save Ahmadinejad's political career now: American belligerence.

One cliched dictum of politics is that you should never get in the way of your enemy when he's trying to commit suicide. And yet, that's what American policy towards Iranian hardliners seems to do again and again.

Labels: Ahmadinejad, Foreign Policy, Iran

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:51 PM 0 comments