Danger of a US miscalculation over
Iran By Trita Parsi
WASHINGTON - The winds of fortune in the
Iranian nuclear standoff seem to have shifted,
judging by the United States' new confidence. But
in Washington's apparent quest to get an upper
hand, misreading the causes of the backlash
against President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Iran may
cause the US to lose rather than gain leverage.
Over the past few months, Iran's hardline
president has suffered several political defeats
at home. The most important of these was the
December 15 municipal elections, where candidates
allied
with the president fared miserably, while centrist
conservatives close to former president Hashemi
Rafsanjani - a key rival of Ahmadinejad - made
significant gains.
Ahmadinejad's defeat,
coupled with increased criticism against him at
home over his economic policies and his failure to
evade United Nations Security Council sanctions
over the country's nuclear program, have left
Washington with the impression that its efforts to
squeeze Iran's access to international finance
have borne fruit at a surprising rate.
Washington's euphoria over this perceived
success has been used as an argument with its
European allies that the pressure is working and
that if only Europe joins the US, Iran will
eventually be brought to its knees.
This
argument has been repeated in discussions among
the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany
over how to respond to Iran's refusal to suspend
its uranium-enrichment activities, as requested by
UN Security Council Resolution 1737 in December.
But Washington's reading of developments
in Iran is severely flawed. Most important, there
is likely no significant causality between the
United States' recently imposed unilateral
financial sanctions and Ahmadinejad's dwindling
popularity.
The administration of US
President George W Bush seems to be confusing its
sanctions policies with Ahmadinejad's incompetent
economic policies. The push-back against
Ahmadinejad has, according to observers of Iran's
domestic political scene, far more to do with his
failed economic policies and his populist
promises, which have created exaggerated
expectations among the Iranian populace, than with
Tehran's nuclear posturing or Washington's
financial sanctions.
A key trigger of the
anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments has been rising
inflation, which has been caused by an influx of
liquidity into the Iranian economy rather than a
shortage of it.
Still, Washington is right
in pointing out that Tehran has been thrown off
course and that divisions within the Iranian
government regarding the nuclear file are growing.
But the impetus for this rift is likely the
psychological shock Tehran suffered when the
Security Council passed Resolution 1737 rather
than any economic pain resulting from Washington's
pressure.
Tehran seemed to have thought
that it could evade sanctions throughout 2006, and
then face a potentially more lenient council in
2007 with the entry of states such as South Africa
into the UN's highest body.
The problem
for the West, though, is that Tehran will
recuperate from a psychological shock much faster
than it would had the shock been economic in
nature. As a result, the West's perceived
advantage over Iran may prove transitory and
short-lived.
If the Bush administration is
really seeking negotiations, that is, if its
policy of seizing and releasing Iranian diplomats
in Iraq and its military buildup in the Persian
Gulf are geared toward gaining leverage over Iran
to be used in a future negotiation rather than to
produce a pretext to start a war with Tehran, then
Washington would be wise to start those
negotiations sooner rather than later.
Furthermore, whatever difficulties Iran
may find itself in currently, and whatever pain
additional economic and financial sanctions may
incur on Tehran, these costs must be measured
against Washington's intensifying predicament in
Iraq once the Bush administration's surge strategy
has run it course.
The White House is
virtually alone in believing that the surge will
change Iraq for the better. Tehran is in agreement
with the US Congress and Washington's European
allies in predicting that the Bush administration
cannot reverse the negative trends in Iraq through
a moderate increase in US troop levels, while
refusing to engage Iran diplomatically or pressure
the Saudi government to clamp down on elements
within its territory who are supporting the Iraqi
insurgency with funds and arms.
Still, the
US State Department is pressing on with its twin
policy of surging troop levels in Iraq and
reducing diplomatic activity with Iran. The idea
of punishing Iran by imposing new and stricter
sanctions is also attractive to hawkish Democratic
members of Congress who feel a political need to
differentiate themselves from the Bush
administration and its perceived war plans, while
at the same time remaining tough and hostile
toward Iran.
By late summer, however, the
US public's patience with the surge policy will
likely dry up. Public and congressional opposition
to the Bush administration's Iraq policy will
cross a new threshold and the White House will be
pressed either to show positive results or accept
a significant shift in its Middle East policy.
This is where the underlying flaws with
Washington's faulty reading of internal
developments in Iran, in which causalities are
seen where none exist, may become devastating to
the US.
If no success in Iraq has been
produced by this summer, Iran will likely be in a
stronger position vis-a-vis the West than it is
now, even if Washington succeeds in imposing
robust sanctions on Tehran. However stringent the
next round of UN sanctions on Iran may be, they
will likely not impose enough damage on Iran to
offset the damage the failure of the surge will do
to the United States' position.
As a
result, in a bid to find leverage against Iran by
increasing pressure but without boosting
diplomacy, Washington - and its European
fellow-travelers - may end up squandering the
little leverage they have left.
Dr
Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous
Alliances: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and
the United States (Yale University Press,
2007). He is also president of the National
Iranian American Council.
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