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2 Iran steeled over US pressure
tactics By Farideh Farhi
In the light of the passing of the late
February deadline imposed by United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1737 and Iran's
refusal to comply, Washington is abuzz with wildly
diverse plans regarding how to deal with Iran.
Just days after the deadline, on February 24, Vice
President Dick Cheney reiterated the US
administration's long-standing position that "all
options are on the table" if Tehran does not
suspend uranium-enrichment activities.
On
the other side of the spectrum, the announcement
that the US will attend the regional security
conference held in Baghdad on
Saturday and is open to talks
with the representatives of Iran who will also be
attending has highlighted the possibility of
direct negotiations between the two countries.
Meanwhile, the US administration's point
man for dealing with Iran, Under Secretary of
State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns,
insists that a military conflict is neither
"desirable" nor "inevitable" and he has been
publicly and confidently describing a complex
strategy intent on creating a "diplomatic pincer
moment - a diplomatic construct that would drive
the Iranians to the negotiating table" under the
terms or preconditions defined by the United
States.
The feverish diplomatic effort to
maintain a unified international stance against
Iran's enrichment program, while at the same time
fanning rumors about possible military action,
continues to fuel pressure on Iran at the Security
Council level.
On the side, it has also
led to financial restrictions by the US as well as
several European banks, threats against Tehran's
alleged meddling in Iraq, incarceration of Iranian
officials in Iraq, dispatching of two aircraft
carriers to the Persian Gulf, and public calling
of a strengthened US-Arab coalition against Iran,
all in the hope of keeping the Iranian regime off
balance and guessing about US intentions and
capabilities.
While this multi-faceted
offensive looks quite clever, it is more a
reflection of competing views that exist within
the administration of President George W Bush -
between those who want to push for regime change
and those who consider the more incremental,
evolutionary process of behavioral change as more
realistic and less dangerous.
More
significant, if the objective of US policy is to
force a weakened negotiating hand on Iran rather
than a direct military confrontation, it is based
on a serious misreading of contemporary politics
in Iran and miscalculation regarding the unity
with which all significant players in Iran will
react in response to perceived efforts to weaken
the regime.
Burns has stated that he
believes the intense pressure is having an impact
and will eventually nudge Iran to abandon its
long-standing policies toward uranium enrichment
and the Middle East region as a whole. In making
its move, the Bush administration seems to be
drawing from the memory of events in 1988 that
culminated in a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq.
In that year, the US sank a significant
portion of Iran's navy, attacked an Iranian
commercial Airbus, and gave Iraq intelligence that
led to the destruction of two Iranian divisions
with the help of chemical weapons. The reaction of
war-wearied ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
supreme leader of Iran, was to "drink from the
poison cup" and accept a ceasefire with Iraq after
recently revealed debates within the Iranian
government about the dire state of the economy and
the difficulties encountered in wartime
recruitment. The Bush administration seems to have
taken to heart the joke the Iranians often make
about themselves that "Iranians do not respond to
pressure unless it is lots of pressure".
In addition, realizing the Iranian
public's broad support for their government's
nuclear program and worried about further
inflaming Iranian nationalism in case of a direct
military attack, the US strategy seems to have
shifted to a policy of frightening the Iranian
people of the consequences of the Iranian
government's nuclear efforts. This "psychological
war" does not necessarily preclude an actual war
or attack, but the thinking is that a militarily
frightened and economically worried Iranian public
or elite may pressure the hardline government of
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and ultimately
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose
assent is necessary in foreign-policy matters, to
recognize Iran's fundamental weaknesses and the US
strengths.
And even if this does not
happen and a military confrontation eventually
occurs, the economic and political pressures
imposed, like those pursued during the 1953 US
coup in Iran, are hoped to exacerbate the already
fractious political environment inside Iran and
subdue the Iranian public's nationalism and
reaction.
The strategy is both flawed and
dangerous because it does not take into account
the important political changes that have taken
place in Iran and the world since the end of the
Iran-Iraq War in 1988. It also misses the
possibility that the Iranians are also playing an
"all options on the table" game of their own. It
is true
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