BOOK REVIEW Delinking options on Iran Iran: Assessing US Strategic Options edited by James J Miller,
Christine Parthemore and Kurt N Campbell
Reviewed by Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Crafting a new United States policy toward Iran will surely rank high on the
agenda of the next US president and, already, a growing amount of literature
has been put out by various US think-tanks which is geared for the consumption
of the future occupant of the Oval Office.
Unfortunately, the net result so far has been less than satisfying and, in the
case of this new compendium, is even more worrying.
The narrow analytical framework, dubious assumptions and, worse, dangerous
rehashing of the military-diplomatic cocktail in
the report's proposed recipes for dealing with Tehran come precisely at the
time when the opposite, a distinct delinking of this acidic mix is called for.
In the introductory chapter on "game-changing diplomacy" we receive the
familiar assertion: "[A] military strike should be seen as a highly problematic
last resort, to be considered only after all other options have failed."
But, in the absence of any "smoking gun" and given Iran's nuclear
transparency, the military option simply obviates international law, making it
problematic on more than just operational grounds, yet the authors simply take
for granted Iran's supposed nuclear weapon trajectory without even a healthy
pause.
Consequently, the new ideas proposed, that of de-emphasizing "near-term threats
of military action", prioritizing "comprehensive verification", and direct
negotiation with Tehran "on a broad range of issues", get subsumed by the same
old logic of coercive diplomacy.
Furthermore, the authors in this chapter seem more interested in presenting
Iranian hardliners with a "dilemma" - that of either accepting US proposals or
facing popular dissatisfaction at home - than in exploring a mutually
acceptable solution.
Iranian people are not US-centric enough to turn their backs on their rules
simply due to the force of yet another proposal hurled at them by Washington.
Another problem is that Miller, Parthemore and Campbell, while acknowledging
there is "no realistic possibility that Iran would give up its right to enrich
uranium", nonetheless paper over their insight and insist that the long-term US
goal should remain as it is today, namely, a "permanent suspension of the
enrichment activities". The pertinent question of how to bridge the gap between
the "near-term" and the "long-term" has not yet been addressed.
Do they realistically believe that Iran would terminate its expensive and
nationally cherished nuclear fuel cycle after complying with stringent
verification requirements and, indeed, why should they?
The authors do not even seem well informed about the recent progress of Iran's
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for example the
fact that IAEA surveillance cameras are in place at the Natanz facility and the
inspectors have made numerous unannounced visits there since March 2007.
This casts doubt on their constant hypothesizing on "if" Iran will submit to
robust inspections, as if this is not already a tissue of present reality. Nor
do they mention that Tehran has hinted it is willing to re-adopt the intrusive
Additional Protocol, once its nuclear file is normalized and returned from the
UN Security Council to its technically proper forum, the IAEA.
Bottom line, the authors are plain wrong about what the US's overall objective
should be: not a norm-defying suspension of Iran's enrichment program, but
rather a verified, fully monitored and peaceful Iranian enrichment.
The next US administration should view the Iran nuclear crisis strictly from
the prism of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty standards rather than political
and or geopolitical motives, and offer to remove US and UN sanctions on Iran
once all parties are satisfied with the requirements of comprehensive
verification.
Iran can then be essentially viewed on a par with countries such as Japan and
Brazil, possessing nuclear fuel capability and yet maintaining a dormant
nuclear weapon tendency due mainly to the absence of security threats.
This would call for a serious attempt by the US, which has erected a security
belt around Iran since 2001, to take proactive steps to address Iran's
legitimate security concerns. Yet, a major lacunae throughout this report is
even a mild criticism of the US's global policy and its subsets of Iran and
Middle East policies.
It is as if the only thing needed is a modification of the behavior of US
adversaries such as today's Iran, when it is abundantly clear that substantive
changes in the US's external behavior, particularly in the Middle East, are
necessary.
Instead, the proposed "game-changing diplomacy" is directly connected to
"re-establishing US global leadership" without presenting any clue as to what
is fundamentally wrong with the global hegemonic policy that has alienated so
many people and their governments around the world. Absent of this insight, the
authors predict US-Iran relations will continue to have "significant points of
tension" for the "foreseeable future". This is probably true, yet it is not
traced to a proper diagnosis of misguided US policies and foreign behavior.
Consequently, the authors reject the idea of a security guarantee to Iran,
delegating this to a change of Iranian behavior vis-a-vis the broader Middle
East issue, again, without linking this to a simultaneous modification of the
US's much criticized Middle East policies.
Another contributor is veteran US diplomat Dennis Ross, who currently serves as
a top foreign policy advisor to Senator Barack Obama. He again dispenses with
any pretensions of novelty and essentially prescribes more of the same, that
is, "tighten the noose" of Iran sanctions and adopt a "hybrid approach" of
engaging Iran diplomatically partly through "back channels" while increasing
the leverage of "pressures".
This is followed by a contribution by Suzanne Maloney, a former US State
Department policy advisor, who despite her wisdom about rapprochement with
Iran, misreads Iran's patching up relations with Saudi Arabia and the United
Kingdom as a "reversal of core policies". She goes on to lament the "little
apparent progress in conclusively resolving Iranian antagonism and the threats
posed to American interests".
But, what about the American threats to Iranian interests in the post September
11, 2001, context? Maloney's recommendation of a "new American diplomacy toward
Iran" aimed at "building a way to co-opt [President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad" speaks
for itself and is a rather sad reminder of how much more work is needed in US
security studies to get things right - and away from such wistful dreams which
supplant sound and realistic policy.
The volume's drift toward the incoherent deepens with the contribution by
former assistant secretary of defense Ashton Carter, who starts out on the
right foot by discounting the prospects for a successful military action
against Iran and, yet, somehow through deft semantics manages to integrate
"turbocharged sticks" into the diplomatic option.
Carter writes, "If the air strike was carried out as part of a process of
coercive diplomacy rather than in the hope that it would produce a decisive
result in itself, that diplomatic process could lead to a more lasting end to
Iran's nuclear ambitions."
This is undermined however by the author's own other insights - about the need
for "periodic refresher" strikes on Iran to prevent the resurfacing of its
nuclear program - in other words - permanent warfare with Iran. The basic
knowledge that military action against Iran would spell doom for diplomacy is
somehow foreign to Carter, who is dead-set that "military action must be viewed
as a component of a comprehensive strategies rather than a stand alone".
Yet, anyone contemplating the day after a US carpet bombardment of Iran's
nuclear facilities, which would likely cause considerable civilian casualties,
could clearly see that Iran's dialogue with US and other participants in the
"Iran Six" group would be an immediate collateral casualty.
Another chapter by Iranian scholar Vali Nasr, who has previously exaggerated
the Shi'ite-Sunni divide and claimed before that this is more important than
the anti-occupation insurgency in Iraq, nonetheless provides a correction to
Carter's flawed analysis, by enumerating on the impacts of military action
against Iran - in exacerbating regional tensions and instabilities, increasing
terrorism, and the like.
His fine analysis is marred by dubious assumptions, such as suggesting that a
US-Iran war could be triggered as a result of "direct attempts to solve
security problems in Afghanistan", a highly unlikely possibility given Iran's
strong support for the current government in Kabul. Nor is Nasr adequately
cognizant of Iran's planned response to a US or Israeli attack, and wildly
claims that "Iran may not retaliate quickly".
Why? According to Nasr, Iran's intention would be to postpone a response by
seeking to "push ahead with its nuclear program". Yet, the suggestion that Iran
would withhold an immediate response is simply wrong and misrepresents the
mindset of Iran's military strategists.
It is also dangerous since it unintentionally provides false comfort to
warmongers in Washington or Tel Aviv, who should know that a major regional war
would be started immediately following their attacks and Iran's instant
counter-attacks. (See
How Iran will fight back Asia Times Online, December 16, 2004.)
Nasr is equally wrong about depicting Saddam Hussein as "the main barrier to
Iran's expansionist aims since [the] 1970s". The time has come to jettison such
erroneous accounts of one of modern history's worst expansionist leaders, who
exploited Arab and Western fears of Iran to instigate wars of conquest on his
neighboring countries. By falsely attributing expansionist aims to Iran and
perpetuating this myth of Saddam, Nasr and other like-minded authors indirectly
rationalize the US's current policy of deterrence against Iran's menace - by
filling Saddam's vacuum. [1]
The volume's supposedly novel prescriptions ends with a contribution by Richard
N Haas, president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, who recycles the
allegation that Iran is in the process of building a nuclear weapons capability
and adds, "If Iran reaches the ability to enrich uranium on a large scale, the
US should fashion diplomatic and military options designed both to roll it back
from that position and to discourage it from moving forward to overt strength."
There are, however, two problems with this statement.
First, "large-scale" enrichment is not a threat so long as it is not
"weapons-grade" and is limited to "low-enriched" activities strictly monitored
by the UN's atomic agency, which happens to be the case today, a small yet
delicate point missed by Haas. Second, as with the other contributors cited
above, the incredibly dubious notion that somehow military action can
complement diplomatic action, instead of nullifying it and causing near and
long-term diplomatic setbacks, is narrated here without the slightest ambiguity
- an appalling error in judgment and analysis.
In conclusion, the premise of a new and "smart" US diplomacy in the near future
is hardly confirmed in this volume." [2] That remains a tall agenda that has
yet to be met by those who aspire to be the architects of the next US policy
toward Iran.
Notes
[1] The Natanz facility serves in many ways as the surrogate for the
non-existing "smoking gun"' placed on top of the heap that is the level of
dogma, or rather calculated paranoia, about Iran's nuclear program. For more on
this see, Afrasiabi,
Iran, nuclear challenges Iranian Journal of International Affairs
(Summer 2007).
2. For more on this, see Afrasiabi
The illusion of American smart power Asia Times Online, Nov 13, 2007.)
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping
Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author
of
Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction. For his
Wikipedia entry, click here.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
But, in the absence of any "smoking gun" and given Iran's nuclear
transparency, the military option simply obviates international law, making it
problematic on more than just operational grounds, yet the authors simply take
for granted Iran's supposed nuclear weapon trajectory without even a healthy
pause.
