SPEAKING
FREELY US
must drop the donkey policy By
Hooshang Amirahmadi and Shahir Shahidsaless
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In the growing war
environment between Iran and Israel comes a
blinking light with an offer from Iran to restart
negotiations with the five permanent members of
the UN Security Council and Germany (5+1). More
significantly, US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and EU commissioner for foreign relations
Catherine Ashton have cautiously expressed hope
that this time the engagement would lead to
satisfactory results, otherwise the last chance
for a diplomatic settlement of Iran's nuclear
dispute may be forever lost.
During the
past three decades, the United States and Iran
have set aside continued animosity on many
occasions to seek
negotiation,and at times they
have even sat round the table. However, none of
those attempts could be sustained for any
meaningful time and they never were able to engage
substantially on the issues that divide them. Why
can't the two sides negotiate sustainably and
substantially and how might the problem be
addressed?
The US official position is
that Iran's nuclear program is geared toward
developing "military capability", but that Iran
has not as yet made the "decision" to build bombs.
To stop Iran, the Obama Administration has
committed itself to a "dual-track policy of
applying pressure in pursuit of constructive
engagement, and a negotiated solution". The
pressure includes economic sanctions, political
isolation, and the threat of war.
According to David Petraeus, the director
general of the Central Intelligence Agency, US-led
sanctions are biting the Iranian regime. Thus,
Washington believes, or hopes at the least, that
this pressure approach is working and will soon
make Iran change behavior. The US is also basing
its hopes on the European cooperation against
Iran, the popular opposition to the regime, and
the growing domestic political chasm within the
top leadership of the Islamic Republic.
While the US pressure approach is causing
the Islamic Republic's regime serious harm - and
the domestic political chasm is real - the policy
will nevertheless fail to persuade Tehran to
abandon its nuclear enrichment program, and it
cannot cause regime change. Worst yet, the dual
track policy will in its conclusion lead to an
unwanted war or make Iran build nuclear weapons.
These eventualities, according to General Martin
Dempsey, Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff
"would be really destabilizing". In his view, "we
should be in the business of deterring as a first
priority".
The popular view is that
Tehran's resistance to calls for a compromise is
due to its desire to build bombs. Some facts call
this assessment into question. Under the same
Supreme Leader, Iran suspended enrichment in 2003,
accepted the swap deal that Brazil and Turkey
negotiated, allowed snap and unexpected
inspections by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), and unlike North Korea, and despite
immense pressure, has not exited the nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Iran's
intransigence is not also due to a lack of
cost-benefit analysis or ideological dogmatism.
One glaring example is Iran's cooperation with the
US over the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan
and the choice of Hamid Karzai to lead the
government at the Bonn Conference in 2001. Oddly,
only a few weeks later, US President George W Bush
named Iran as part of an "axis of evil". Iran has
also stood on the sideline of wars and repression
against Muslims in the Middle East, Europe, China
and Russia.
The real reason for Iran's
stubbornness is the dual-track policy itself.
Before it is a solution, the policy is a problem,
if not the problem. Specifically, it is
based on a profound misunderstanding of the
Iranian society, and is insensitive to its culture
and politics. Significantly, the policy is
oblivious to the power of cultural sentiments of
national pride and resistance to pressure as well
as deep-rooted mistrust of the US, which in words
of Mohammad Khatami, Iran's former reformist
president, has created a wall between the two
countries.
National pride is a major
driving force of Iran's nuclear program and the
main reason for the Islamic regime's resistance to
demands for its suspension. Indeed, the nuclear
program is often equated to the oil
nationalization in 1950s. It is no wonder that a
2011 survey, conducted by the RAND Corporation,
reports that more than 90% of Iranians, obviously
among them those who oppose the Islamic regime,
support the country's nuclear program. When
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad accepted to swap
Iran's 3.5% enriched uranium for 20% enriched
uranium from Russia and France, Mir Hossein
Mousavi, leader of the Green Movement, called him
a "traitor."
Leaders of the Islamic
Republic have frequently condemned the dual-track
policy and the 'tone' of American officials as
'disrespectful and derogatory.' They are
particularly annoyed by the terms 'carrot and
stick' as they are applied to donkey in Iran.
Mohammad ElBaradei, when serving as the head of
the IAEA, repeatedly cautioned the US that "carrot
and stick … is a policy suitable for a donkey but
not for a proud nation". It is no wonder that the
Supreme Leader Khamanei should upsettingly remind
the West that "our nation hates threat and
enticement".
The Iranian Shia culture of
resistance to pressure is another important
obstacle to a negotiated settlement of US-Iran
dispute over the nuclear matter. It is worth
noting that the most heroic figure in the Shia
history is their Third Imam, Hossein, who
preferred death in the hands of the caliph of the
time, Yazid, over submission under coercion. After
1,400 years, Shia Muslims still mourn his
martyrdom. It is this culture that is on display
when the Supreme Leader says, "under bullying and
intimidation [we should] not retreat from the
enemy, not even one step."
Mistrust plays
even a more powerful role in US-Iran conflict. The
roots of the mistrust go back to the 1953
CIA-assisted coup against Mohammad Mosadeq, the
Iranian popular and democratic prime minister.
Thus, the broadly shared view among the ruling
hardliners in Iran is that suspension of the
nuclear program 'under coercion' would open the
door to more coercion and demands of concessions
by the US. According to Grand Ayatollah Makarem,
once Iran gives up to the pressures and halt the
nuclear program, the US would then use issues such
as human rights to again impose draconian
sanctions. The process, the hardliners perceive,
can eventually bring the Iranian regime to its
end.
Tehran's fear of regime security is a
potent obstacle. It is the Iranian regime's
perception that a victory over the nuclear issue
could boost the US confidence and encourage it to
aggressively use sanctions as a weapon to
actualize regime change. While the US policy is
not aimed at overthrowing the regime in Iran, it
has been careless in distinguishing its rightful
support for human rights and democracy in Iran
from the calls for regime change that has been
voiced by so many quarters. The role of mistrust
in the failure of the US policies is broadly
admitted by the American influential analysts as
well as the policy-makers. However, ironically,
policy measures move toward the intensification
rather than mitigation of mistrust.
The
pervasive role of these powerful cultural
sentiments in the nuclear issue is
incomprehensible and completely alien to the
Western analysts and policy-makers alike. It is no
surprise that the US policies toward Iran,
particularly with respect to the nuclear dispute,
almost unreservedly discount the influence of
these cultural sentiments. The policies are also
oblivious to the fact that the political leaders
in Tehran, the Supreme Leader in particular, would
incur a high cost and would be even accused of
selling out Iran's dignity if they were to
completely back down from the nuclear program
under duress.
Advocates of the dual-track
policy might argue that, regardless, under
tightening sanctions, once the Islamic regime's
survival is threatened, the leadership would have
no choice but to surrender. This argument
disregards serious risks. First, an endangered
regime would understandably take retaliatory
actions against the US and its allies in the
region.
Second, a war against Iran that
does not end its Islamic regime will lead to an
Iran with nuclear bombs even if the US were to
engage it in a 'permanent war'. The chance that
the Islamic regime will collapse under a war is
nil given the Iranian patriotism, lack of a viable
alternative to the regime, and the likelihood that
the regime would eliminate most opposition leaders
and activists at the very start of the war.
Third, for the sanctions to threateningly
weaken the government, time is needed. Under an
open-ended embargo and destabilization process,
Iran will find enough time to build nuclear arms
if indeed it intends to do so. Besides, protracted
"crippling sanctions" can create a moral dilemma
and public diplomacy fiasco as they will mostly
hurt the same Iranian people whom the US claims to
support against the authoritarian Islamic regime.
Finally, as was the case with Iraq,
sanctions may at the end fail to make the Islamic
Republic surrender. Under this condition,
pressures will build over time and patience for a
lengthy diplomatic solution will wane. A war then
can become the only option to overcome the
deadlock. As Zbigniew Brzezinski has put it, "the
more you lean towards compulsion, the more the
choice become war if it doesn't work."
Any
of these possibilities would signal the failure of
the US policy tenets of "applying pressure in
pursuit of constructive engagement" and a
"negotiated solution". If the US wants a
diplomatic settlement of the nuclear dispute with
Iran, it must abandon its delusion that the dual
track approach will work, and adjust its current
policy by adopting a realistic approach that is
more sensitive to both the Iranian cultural
sentiments which pervasively rejects pressure and
intimidation, thus obstructing constructive
dialogue, as well as the country's political
realities. The US must appreciate the fact that in
Iran, national pride is more important than
national interest.
First, the US must
abandon the language of carrot and stick as well
as threat and intimidation, replacing them with a
respectful tone; second, the US must alleviate
Tehran's fear of regime change by abandoning the
"all-options-are-on-the-table" mantra, replacing
it with a policy of negotiations on an equal basis
and national security guarantees; and third, the
US must build trust with Iran by supporting a
nuclear-free Middle East, a move that can bring
Israel and Iran into an indirect, if not direct,
overdue dialogue.
Finally, for the reasons
offered above mainly the issue of national pride
and the severe consequence of a complete retreat
from the nuclear program for the Supreme Leader's
credibility and the regime's survival, a
zero-enrichment option on the Iranian soil is
unrealistic. Instead, the US and allies must focus
on averting Iran from producing bomb-grade
uranium. The most realistic form of achieving this
outcome is intrusive monitoring of Iran's nuclear
sites through the IAEA's Additional Protocol. Iran
will accept this condition, and it may even accept
a partial suspension as a measure of mutual
face-saving, as long as the perceived 'bullying'
policy is abandoned.
Hooshang
Amirahmadi is a professor at Rutgers
University and President of the American Iranian
Council. Shahir Shahid Saless is a
political analyst and freelance journalist. He
writes on US-Iran relations primarily for Farsi
publications.
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