POLITICS
A Middle East Solution
Part III: Iran - Constructive
Engagement is the Only Way
(A few months ago, we handed our travelling correspondent Don Rose no
small assignment: come up with a solution to the Middle East Crisis. In this
third essay, he discusses the developing crisis in Iran.)
Our president calls Iran part of “the axis
of evil.” The Iranians, in turn, call us “The Great Satan.”
We helped impose a dictatorial regime on Iran a half-century ago, making them
our pawn in the Cold War. They returned the favor in 1979, seizing 66 American
hostages from our embassy and holding them for 444 days.
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The current Iranian leaders regularly threaten our ally Israel with extinction,
and we respond with scenarios of nuclear retaliation. If ever there were two
nations working at cross purposes, it is America and Iran.
Once we argued with them about oil. Now it’s about atomic energy and
nuclear weapons as they celebrate their own entry into the nuclear age.
Millions of people around the world live in fear that George Bush may launch
his third war in six years. But many also recognize that there might be some
justification for such an attack: These are bad guys—almost as bad as
they come, whether you’re talking about a cruel, repressive internal
regime or an external exporter of terror. Hardly anyone on earth wants to
see nuclear weapons in their hands—including many Arab nations.
In some ways they were a more logical target in
the so-called war on terror than was Iraq. It’s clear they sponsored
several terrorist attacks on us in the past decade. On the other hand, they
have not invaded another country in 250 years. But, as all the mutual fund
prospectuses say, past performance is no indicator of future results.
As I write this in mid-April, American and Iranian leaders are careening toward
what could be the most dangerous situation in the Middle East, if not the
world. There is a way out of Iraq (as I have previously shown) and the Israeli
and Palestinian leaders, although now at loggerheads, have a foundation for
a new process of detente and ultimately peace.
But Iran today poses a special challenge: a fundamentalist Muslim regime seemingly opposed to everything we stand for now flexing its nuclear muscle, challenging us to respond.
How did we reach this pass?
Can history tell us anything useful?
A Persian Empire
The land we now know as Iran was called Persia until well into the 20th Century. The legend of the Great Persian Empire has been with us since long before the birth of Christ. Inspired by the monotheistic teachings of Zoroaster, better known in some quarters as Zarathustra, the Persians dominated their middle eastern region as early as 550 B.C. and for much of the following 1000 years.
But a thousand years of dominance gave way to another thousand years of religious and political struggle as first the Arabs--who brought their new religion of Islam--invaded and dominated. Then Mongols and finally the Ottoman Turks spilled across the land creating their own dynastic regimes.
Modern Persia, occupying roughly the same territory as today’s Iran, came into existence in the early 16th Century under the Shah Ismail. It was Ismail who established the Shiite sect of Islam as the official state religion. A succession of later Shahs, some despotic, others wise, peaceful and progressive, guided Persia for another 500 years.
For much of that time, the ruling Shahs shared power with strong religious mullahs, both of them rallying the Iranian people to fend off Turkish and Czarist Russian attempts to encroach on their territory.
It was not until late in the 19th century that Iran became the first of many Middle Eastern countries where western engineers would discover the lifeblood of their new economies, oil. In Iran, the first reserves were estimated to hold up to 10% of the entire world supply, and the British moved quickly to exploit them.
Under an oil concession with the Shah, the British
established the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later renamed British Petroleum
(BP.) So extensive were BP’s oil activities that Britain became a dominant
influence in south Persia, equally resented by both the secular and religious
sectors.
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Meanwhile, in 1906 the incumbent shah granted the country a constitution and
parliament; his successor tried to reverse the process and was himself deposed.
Following World War I and the Russian Revolution—during which Britain
invaded Russia from Iran—a Persian military officer backed by the British
seized power, deposed the newly incumbent dynasty and declared himself Reza
Shah Pahlavi. Remember that last name.
In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi changed the name of Persia to Iran, based on a
word meaning “Aryan.”
The Shah of Iran
In 1941, the elder Pahlavi, turned over his throne
to his son Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who became the central figure in the
formation of modern day Iran. [Today there are some who hope to install his
son as leader of a constitutional monarchy or secular republic if the
Islamists are ever overthrown. But I get ahead of my story.]
While the young shah was still new to power, a nationalist leader named Mumammad
Mossadegh became the Iranian prime minister after World War II and set out
to nationalize the old industry. Mossadegh’s plans included deposing
the shah, who fled the country, and building stronger relations with the Soviet
Union.
The British were not about to give up the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company without a fight. Initially, the United States stayed out of the conflict (the U.S. was itself courting the new leaders of Saudi Arabia.) But oil politics now put any country with large reserves in play so the American CIA joined the British, and friendly forces in Iran, to overthrow Mossadegh and bring the Shah back into absolute power.
Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi proved to be a bizarre mix of reformer and dictator. Between 1963 and 1971, he brought a number of secular reforms to Iran, sending mullahs such as the Ayatollah Khomeni into exile in France. He instituted land reforms, and initiated a drive to modernize the cities. Women no longer needed to veil themselves and enjoyed many western-style rights.
While liberalizing society, the Shah also brutally controlled it using his secret police force—SAVAK—to deal with opponents on the left and right alike. Rising oil revenues financed both his military repression and his drive toward industrialization. But both liberals and conservatives resented his heavy-handed tactics and, increasingly, blamed the United States for propping up his government.
Student rioting in the capital Tehran in 1978 eventually led to the overthrow of the Shah, and his replacement by the Ayatollah Khomeni, who, back from France, established Iran as an Islamic Republic.
It was a cadre of Khomeni “student” supporters who, late in 1979, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 hostages -- the last 50 of whom were are not freed until January 1981. This, of course, left a lasting imprint on the psyche and the politics of the U.S.
Jimmy Carter’s inability to deal with the hostage situation weakened him significantly and helped elect Ronald Reagan—whose aides somehow, it is said, persuaded the Iranians not to release those hostages before the election. Iran and the U.S. were now avowed enemies, but Reagan somehow managed covertly to sell them arms. Proceeds of the sale went to finance the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua’s civil war. And all the while this is going on Hizbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization jointly financed by Iran and Syria, is itself holding other American hostages.
Shortly after the hostage-taking, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein decided in 1980 to launch a border war against Iran. The war lasted eight years, cost a million and a half lives, and ended with little gain on either side. Throughout the conflict, the United States supported Iraq with both money and weapons, the delivery of which was negotiated by current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
In 1985, Iran set out to create its first nuclear energy program, but Saddam bombed the main plant, leading Iran to give the United States its tacit support during the 1990 Gulf War.
After Khomeni
The Ayatollah Khomeni died in 1989 and the assembly of clerics, who actually run the country, named Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as their supreme leader. In the parliament, meanwhile, a seemingly liberal reformer, Akbar Rafsanjani, was elected to the first of two terms as Iran’s president.
Rafsanjani and his successor, Mohammed Khatami, encouraged development of a reformist constituency, leading some American middle east policy experts to believe there is a foundation of support in Iran for better relations with the U.S. and Europe.
But the mullahs remain a conservative and powerful force in the daily life of Iran. They have had liberal organizations disbanded, newspapers closed and films closed down. In 2005, the mullahs led a movement to have more than 1,000 liberal and reform candidates thrown off the election ballot. And it was in that election that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the ultra-conservative major of Tehran, became the current president.
So
the forces we face now are both from the religious conservative faction of
Iran. And neither is shy about condemning Jews, threatening Israel or, as
has been the case for many years, supporting Hizbollah terrorist attacks in
Lebanon.
Iran brings together the three problems today that make for such a variegated problem in the Middle East – religious sectarianism, oil and now nuclear power. But recent history shows us that no matter how ugly their rhetoric or adamant their positions, the Iranian leaders also seem to be able to find a way to deal. (During Iran-Contra they even bought weapons from their archenemy Israel.)
And the same might be said about our side. America too will deal—even with those whom we say we cannot deal. Take North Korea for example—another of the tripartite axis of evil.
What am I getting at here? Perhaps we can find a way other than military force to cope with the prospect of a nuclear Iran.
Separate the Issues
Let’s separate out the issues.
First, let's put Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric in context.
Its purpose is to build Iran’s street cred in the Arab world. At the same time, because the language has been so starkly harsh and ugly, it bolsters sympathy for Israel in Europe and other parts of the globe—a sympathy that had been waning because of the Palestine issue.
It seems highly unlikely that Iran will take any overt action against Israel, nuclear or conventional, because of the consequences. Covertly, of course, it is already financing Hizbollah terror and it will up its financial help to Hamas because Iran has been a principal beneficiary of rising oil prices.
But if provoked enough, there’s little doubt Israel, with its 200 or so nuclear weapons and numerous delivery systems could turn Iran into a radioactive desert. Even a non-nuclear response, which would involve the U.S. and likely France and Britain, would be devastating. It’s not unthinkable that it could start another world war.
Ahmadinejad may sound nuts at times but he’s not very likely to wrap a suicide belt around his whole country—likely the mullahs would stop him well before that stage.
Second, we certainly need better intelligence. Is it energy or is it a bomb Iran is developing?
There is no question that Iran would love having the bomb. It would mean greater prestige and serve as protection against outside attackers. Iran would be catapulted to one of the elite countries of the world—a standing it lost about 1500 years ago. More importantly, nobody, not even President Bush, really wants to muck around with a nuclear nation—even India and Pakistan reduced their hostilities over Kashmir after both went nuclear.
Iran continues to claim, however, that all it is interested in is peaceful use of nuclear energy in order to conserve more of their oil for the market. Is it conceivable that Iran's drive to develop nuclear energy is actually limited to peaceful purposes. The Ayatollah himself issued a fatwa forbidding the creation, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.
But Iran turned down Russia’s very useful offer to refine uranium on its own soil as a means of limiting its use to energy projects.
So once again in the Middle East, America finds itself searching for facts and understanding in a country where we doubt our own intelligence capabilities.
There is no question Iran has the information and technological know-how to make a bomb. It’s no real secret anywhere anymore. We know now is Iran owns the technological resources to take the first major step in enriching uranium and has done so—but it needs to be able to take the next six steps to create the isotope U-235 of sufficient concentration to be used in a weapon. Most reliable estimates are that it will take at least three, and more likely five years, for Iran to turn that knowledge into production of a single bomb, let alone an arsenal.
The problem here is that you have to take several similar steps in enriching uranium for energy or for weaponry, and inspectors may not be able to tell whether you’ve gone beyond that goal before it’s too late. Iran’s friends like Russia and China may be inclined to let Iran proceed with what they see as a peaceful program. But for America, that requires a degree of trust in Iranian leaders that we have no reason to hold.
So how do we get Iran to stop its program?
The Military Option
Well, there are obviously all those items on the warfare table: invasion, “surgical” bombing of nuclear facilities, covert military hit squads and tactical nukes. An attempt at full invasion, given the size of the country and its army—to say nothing of the relative weakness of ours because we’re stretched so thin elsewhere—should be unthinkable.
Covert squads might be able to locate a few facilities and do a James Bond-type job on them. They might be able to hit the incumbent president —though that idea was abandoned earlier when they were trying to get Saddam. Even then, our special forces couldn’t get all the mullahs. Save this one for the movies.
As we also hear daily, the location of the many nuclear facilities we know about, let alone the secret ones, would seriously reduce the effectiveness of surgical strikes. Many are well below ground and unreachable by conventional bombs, which is why nukes are being considered. What was I saying earlier about starting World War III? Of course, Bush might just think that was the word of God.
Sanctions or Regime Change
Sanctions are a peaceful way—they worked well in South Africa, and even in Iraq. Iran, however, could retaliate in several unpleasant ways, including by manipulating the oil supply and seriously damaging the international economy. You want $6 per gallon gasoline next summer? Hold off. Sanctions are always an option down the road, as a spoken or unspoken threat.
Then there is the longer term approach of fomenting political change —meaning regime change—through another internal revolution. This would involve working with the pro-U.S. reform base, or whatever is left of it. It’s tough work in the repressive, unsafe situation that obtains in today’s Iran—but we’re working on it.
The large majority of Iranis are under age 25 and they’re hooked up and wired up to much of the world. How long are they going to sit still for the mullahs? Violence from us, however, would only rally the younger people around the mullahs.
Other efforts depend on dealing with exile organizations—much as we did in Iraq, where we wound up running with Ahmed Chalabi. Some of those groups are the ones sponsoring the son of the last shah. Worth pursuing, but all must be taken with the appropriate grain of salt, given that the Irani diaspora is likely as out of touch as were the Iraqis. More salt is shaken when we learn that the person in charge of our Department of Iranian Affairs is Elizabeth Cheney—Dick’s daughter!
Direct Negotiation
The one thing we haven’t tried—it’s not even on our iconic table yet—is direct negotiations. Open-handed engagement. Take violence off the table; suspend for a while the ideas of regime change. They already know that we can be tough and we can bomb and we can cut off much money flow.
In what might turn out to be a central document for this crucial time, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, cites the Ayatollah's fatwa in a recent New York Times Op-Ed article. In it he also pledges support for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He goes on to discuss the extent to which his country cooperated with inspection agencies. No one has found any evidence to suggest that their intentions are anything but peaceful.
Of course he also said that they have “never resorted to the threat of force against a fellow member of the United Nations.” It takes a lot of Clintonian parsing of words to accept that one, considering his president’s comment that “the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated,” or earlier endorsing “wiping Israel off the map.”
Importantly, however, he said his country is willing to negotiate directly and he presented a voluntary package of measures it would undertake to prove its peaceful intent. Of course, governments have been known to lie about such stuff—even our own government has been caught in fibs about bombs, taxes, peaceful intentions and even sex.
But why not try open, direct talks with the enemy. It is simply not sufficient to let Russia or China act as our surrogates.
To many it’s a horrifying thought. How can anyone talk to these people, much less trust what they say?
The answer is there is nothing to lose and a very
small light at the end of this tunnel if we do. They have already set part
of the agenda in Zarif’s New York Times piece. Was that not an outreached
hand? Why not reach back?
We talked a lot to the Russians and Chinese throughout the Cold War—that’s
what kept it from becoming a hot war. We’re talking to North Korea now—and
maybe getting somewhere.
It may simply be a temporizing moment, but an important one. Every moment we spend avoiding violence and the potential for social and economic catastrophe is a blessed moment—and it could bring us a moment closer to the day Iranians undergo yet another historic change from religious lunacy to secular sanity.
Changes are part of their history. Cutting deals with "the enemy" is part of their history as well as ours. Let's try what the diplomats call "constructive engagement."
Who knows—maybe now time is on our side.