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4 A real success story in the US's
Iraq: Iran By Peter Galbraith
presume that this behavior did not
go unnoticed. Subsequently, the US military did
disarm the MEK, but in spite of hostility from
both the Shi'ites and Kurds who now jointly
dominate Iraq's government, its fighters are still
at Camp Ashraf. Rightly or wrongly, many Iranians
conclude from this that the US is supporting a
terrorist organization that is fomenting violence
inside Iran.
In fact, halting Iran's
nuclear program and changing its regime are
incompatible objectives. Iran
is highly unlikely to agree to a negotiated
solution with the US (or the Europeans) while the
US is trying to overthrow its government. Air
strikes may destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, but
they will rally popular support for the regime and
give it a further pretext to crack down on the
opposition.
From the perspective of US
national-security strategy, the choice should be
easy. Iran's most prominent democrats have stated
publicly that they do not want US support. In a
recent open letter to be sent to UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji
criticizes both the Iranian regime and US
hypocrisy. "Far from helping the development of
democracy," he writes, "US policy over the past 50
years has consistently been to the detriment of
the proponents of freedom and democracy in Iran
... The Bush administration, for its part, by
approving a fund for democracy assistance in Iran,
which is in fact being largely spent on official
institutions and media affiliated with the US
government, has made it easy for the Iranian
regime to describe its opponents as mercenaries of
the US and to crush them with impunity."
Even though they can't accomplish it, the
Bush administration's leaders have been unwilling
to abandon regime change as a goal. Its advocates
compare their efforts to the support the US gave
democrats behind the Iron Curtain over many
decades. But there is a crucial difference. The
Soviet and Eastern European dissidents wanted US
support, which was sometimes personally costly but
politically welcome. But this is immaterial to
Bush administration ideologues. They are, to
borrow former US ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's
phrase, deeply committed to policies that feel
good rather than do good. If Congress wants to
help the Iranian opposition, it should cut off
funding for Iranian democracy programs.
Right now, the US is in the worst possible
position. It is identified with the most
discredited part of the Iranian opposition and
unwanted by the reformers who have the most appeal
to Iranians. Many Iranians believe that the US is
fomenting violence inside their country, and this
becomes a pretext for attacks on US troops in
Iraq. And for its pains, the US accomplishes
nothing.
For 18 years, Iran had a secret
program aimed at acquiring the technology that
could make nuclear weapons. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
supposedly rogue head of Pakistan's nuclear
program, provided centrifuges to enrich uranium
and bomb designs. When the Khan network was
exposed, Iran declared in October 2003 its
enrichment program to the IAEA, provided an
accounting (perhaps not complete) of its nuclear
activities, and agreed to suspend its uranium
enrichment.
After the election of
Ahmadinejad as president in 2005, Iran announced
it would resume its uranium-enrichment activities.
During the past two years, it has assembled
cascades of centrifuges and apparently enriched a
small amount of uranium to the 5% level required
for certain types of nuclear power reactors
(weapons require 80-90% enrichment, but this is
not technically very difficult once the initial
enrichment processes are mastered).
The
United States has two options for dealing with
Iran's nuclear facilities: military strikes to
destroy them or negotiations to neutralize them.
The first is risky and the second may not produce
results. So far, the Bush administration has not
pursued either option, preferring UN sanctions
(which, so far, have been more symbolic than
punitive) and relying on the Europeans to take the
lead in negotiations. But neither sanctions nor
the European initiative is likely to work. As long
as Iran's primary concern is the US, it is
unlikely to settle for a deal that involves only
Europe.
Sustained air strikes probably
could halt Iran's nuclear program. While some
Iranian facilities may be hidden and others
protected deep underground, the locations of major
facilities are known. Even if it is not possible
to destroy all the facilities, Iran's scientists,
engineers and construction crews are unlikely to
show up for work at places that are subject to
ongoing bombing.
But the risks from air
strikes are great. Many of the potential targets
are in populated places, endangering civilians
both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal
of radioactive material. The rest of the world
would condemn the attacks and there would likely
be a virulent anti-US reaction in the Islamic
world. In retaliation, Iran could wreak havoc on
the world economy (and its own) by withholding oil
from the global market and by military action to
close Persian Gulf shipping lanes.
The
main risk to the US comes in Iraq. Faced with
choosing between the US and Iran, Iraq's
government may not choose its liberator. And even
if the Iraqi government did not openly cooperate
with the Iranians, pro-Iranian elements in the
US-armed military and police almost certainly
would facilitate attacks on US troops by
pro-Iranian Iraqi militia or by Iranian forces
infiltrated across Iraq's porous border.
A
few days after Bush's August 28 speech, Iranian
General Rahim Yahya Safavi underscored Iran's
ability to retaliate, saying of US troops in the
region: "We have accurately identified all their
camps." Unless he chooses to act with reckless
disregard for the safety of US troops in Iraq,
Bush has in effect denied himself a military
option for dealing with the Iranian nuclear
program.
A diplomatic solution to the
crisis created by Iran's nuclear program is
clearly preferable, but not necessarily
achievable. Broadly speaking, states want nuclear
weapons for two reasons: security and prestige.
Under the shah, Iran had a nuclear program, but
Khomeini disbanded it after the revolution on the
grounds that nuclear weapons were un-Islamic. When
the program resumed covertly in the mid-1980s,
Iran's primary security concern was Iraq. At that
time, Iraq had its own covert nuclear program;
more immediately, it had threatened Iran with
chemical-weapons attacks on its cities. An Iranian
nuclear weapon could serve as a deterrent to both
Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons.
With
Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf War, the Iraqi
threat greatly diminished. And of course it
vanished after Iran's allies took power in Baghdad
after the 2003 invasion. Today, Iran sees the
United States as the main threat to its security.
US military forces surround Iran - in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Bush and
his top aides repeatedly express solidarity with
the Iranian people against their government while
the US finances programs aimed at the government's
ouster. The US and international press are full of
speculation that Cheney wants Bush to attack Iran
before his term ends. From an Iranian perspective,
all this smoke could indicate a fire.
In
2003, as Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance
shows, there was enough common ground for a deal.
(For a review of the book, see That '800-pound gorilla'
..., Asia Times Online, September 15.)
In May 2003, the Iranian authorities sent a
proposal through the
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