WASHINGTON - As the White House prepares the ground for direct diplomacy with
Iran on a handful of issues, a group of Iran hawks gathered in Washington to
discuss their views on how to handle what they describe as a "series of
provocative actions" by Tehran beyond its ongoing nuclear development.
Some of their comments revealed a willingness to engage and hesitancy to bomb
Iran, possibly representing a mainstreaming of their views.
But while US President Barack Obama slowly works his way through the early
phases of engaging Iran, some are also pushing to give him more sticks to wave
over Iran's head at the same time he offers carrots.
US Congress is in the process of introducing bills that would give
Obama the authority to impose extraterritorial sanctions by punishing foreign
companies that sell gasoline and other petroleum products to Iran.
Neo-conservative independent Senator Joe Lieberman introduced legislation on
Tuesday and Representative Mark Kirk, a close ally of the so-called Israel
lobby, introduced a bill last week that would do essentially the same thing.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference on Iran,
Lieberman said his bill was "very similar" to Kirk's and hoped that they would
soon be combined into law, noting that he had the support of Senate majority
leader Harry Reid.
The bills are expected to receive the support of thousands of conference-goers
at next week's summit of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
the most prominent organ of Washington's powerful Israel lobby. Attendees at
the conference will go to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to speak with their
representatives in Congress and, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
are expected to push hard for the sanctions bills.
But for Lieberman and other neo-conservatives who spoke on a panel following
his remarks at AEI, endorsing talks with the Islamic Republic, even while
introducing sanctions designed to give the president authority to "cripple"
Iran, represents a softening of their stances.
Gone are references to an "evil" and "irrational" regime in Iran, as was the
hawks' blanket opposition to engagement during last fall's campaign, based on
the idea that diplomacy in general will do the unthinkable by strengthening and
emboldening unsavory elements in Iran.
Even the new potential sanctions were discussed with a conscientious
mindfulness of their impact on Iranians.
"Look, we need to be honest about this," said AEI resident scholar Fred Kagan.
"Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions."
The comment sparked a discussion during the question and answer sessions where
Kagan declared that he was not opposed to sanctions even though there was a
"human cost" anytime sanctions hit regimes take away a "vital resource" from a
society where some segments are "borderline”.
Even the issue of an Iran with nuclear weapons is no longer regarded with the
same apocalyptic language that was used in the past, with most panelists saying
the biggest threat was Iran being emboldened to "act out" with what Lieberman
called its "terrorist proxies".
Lieberman clearly disliked the idea, noting that he disagreed with those who
said "we can learn to live with a nuclear Iran”, but Kagan said that he thinks
that living with a nuclear Iran is a position that "reasonable people" can
take, though he didn't agree either.
The panel viewed the sanctions, engagement and a potential military strike as
tactics towards getting what the US wants from Iran - though the latter was
portrayed as an undesirable outcome.
"I am not advocating a military strike against Iran," said Kagan, later
describing himself as "someone who is desperate to avoid war with Iran”.
"If there were any military strike on Iran, people would rally around the
flag," warned Michael Rubin, another neo-conservative at AEI.
The panel viewed the question of a potential Israeli strike against Iranian
nuclear facilities - raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an
interview last month - negatively, albeit for different reasons.
While Rubin insisted several times that Israel is a sovereign state and will
act as such, Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution took the view that an
Israeli strike was the "worst" option from an "American perspective”. He said
that, absent capabilities like those of the US, Israel could not "flatten every
building in Iran that has anything to do with the nuclear program”, but a
strike would, nonetheless, incur all the negative consequences of a direct US
strike.
But Pollack also thought the strike was unlikely: "On a practical level, Israel
really doesn't like to do things that invoke [the ire] of the US."
Lieberman and the panel, however, said that using military power remained an
option, and that engagement had to approached cautiously and carefully.
"By rushing into engagement without considering timing," Rubin said, "every
[Iranian President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad rebuff becomes a ... populist chip."
And Rubin doesn't hold out much hope that this June's Iranian election will
bring much change to the Islamic Republic or its nuclear programme, noting that
Iran's real power is based in the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"There will be some issues decided in the Iranian elections," he said.
"Unfortunately, they will be issues of style, not substance."
"Rather than move towards resolution," he said, "[the Iranians] will throw up
more obstacles."
Pollack, a sometime neo-conservative ally who was jokingly introduced as being
from "AEI West", said that people in Washington are getting "euphoric about
engagement”.
"As [Lieberman] put it, engagement is not a strategy; it is a tactic," Pollack
said, echoing a pervasive theme of the afternoon that underscored the
uncertainty of how Obama's Iran policy review is shaping up. But he said that
while the Iranian regime was still "authoritarian" and "brutish”, that didn't
preclude better relations.
One of the benefits of engagement, said Pollack, was that the US could "reach
out to Iranian people and see that their government doesn't serve their
interests".
The panel, in general, seemed to shy away from forcing regime change in Iran,
at least in the short term.
"If you want to do regime change in Iran," said Kagan, "... you have to
invade."
Such a prospect, he said, would require 600,000 soldiers - impossible with
forces already stretched thin between Iraq and Afghanistan. Regime change, he
said, was something "we are going to aim for over generations”.
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