Iran MediaWatch: Has "Green Reform" Disappeared in Washington?

UPDATE: Within minutes of posting this, I read an article in The Washington Post which points to an answer to my question:

Two weeks before President Obama visited China.... Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Bader, both senior officials in the National Security Council...traveled to Beijing on a "special mission" to try to persuade China to pressure Iran to give up its alleged nuclear weapons program. If Beijing did not help the United States on this issue, the consequences could be severe.

The Chinese were told that Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as an "existential issue and that countries that have an existential issue don't listen to other countries," according to a senior administration official. The implication was clear: Israel could bomb Iran, leading to a crisis in the Persian Gulf region and almost inevitably problems over the very oil China needs to fuel its economic juggernaut, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this week, the White House got its answer. China informed the United States that it would support a toughly worded, U.S.-backed statement criticizing the Islamic republic for flouting U.N. resolutions by constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. The statement, obtained by The Washington Post, is part of a draft resolution to be taken up as soon as Thursday by the 35 nations that make up the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

1. Key personnel in the National Security Council, notably Ross, are hell-bent on getting sanctions as soon as talks with Iran are declared to have broken down.
2. To pursue those sanctions, these officials are prepared to exaggerate to the point of hysteria: "Israe could bomb Iran".
3. To pursue those sanctions, these officials will leak private conversations with foreign powers and sensitive documents to accommodating reporters.
4. To pursue those sanctions, these officials will ignore obvious difficulties: "While diplomats and arms-control experts welcomed China's support of the IAEA resolution, some acknowledged that it is not clear whether Russia or China would go further and agree to new sanctions against Iran."
5. The issue of what is happening inside Iran --- be that "reform", "justice", "human rights" --- is irrelevant to these officials.

Iran: 3 Problems (for the Greens, for the US, for Ahmadinejad)
The Latest from Iran (26 November): Corridors of Conflict

Have "the Greens" disappeared in Washington?

Yesterday's New York Times editorial is an exercise in frustration, bluster, and irrelevance. Its legimitate concern at the oppressions of the Iranian regime falls away into obsession with and distortions of the nuclear issue --- "time is running out"; "Iran’s repressive leaders cannot be allowed to threaten the rest of the world with a nuclear weapon" --- and the knee-jerk call for tougher sanctions through the United Nations Security Council. ( To recap: 1. The Security Council won't adopt such sanctions; 2. They would have little effect on Tehran's position on the nuclear programme; 3. They do nothing to solve the dilemmas of engagement on issues such as Afghanistan; 4. They do nothing with respect to the human rights issue which supposedly concerned the NYT at the start of the editorial.)

Far more interesting is this morning's opinion piece in The Washington Post by Maziar Bahari, the journalist detained for 118 days after the June election, especially if his sentiments are shared by Obama's officials.

After making a striking assertion, "The [Revolutionary] Guards are becoming stronger than the President and the Supreme Leader," Bahari offers an equally striking recommendation,

Can the West, especially the United States, have a dialogue with these people? Yes. Because there is no other choice. The West has to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear program and the stability of Iraq and Afghanistan. Not talking to Tehran doesn't work.

So engagement has to be pursued, even if we don't like the Iranians in charge (including Bahari's jailers).What is most striking, however, is Bahari's treatment of Iranians beyond the Guards, the Supreme Leader, and the Ahmadinejad Government. In contrast to his clear position on engagement, this seems to be a muddled attempt at escapism from his earlier political calculations:

The rumor du jour in Iran is that Obama and the Guards are reaching a deal to normalize relations, in exchange for which America will ignore human rights abuses in Iran. Hence, the opposition movement's slogan "Obama, either with them or with us." The United States has acted against the interests of the Iranian people in the past. Repeating that mistake for tactical gains would be the biggest mistake of the Obama administration.

As for the Iranian people, the more immediate victims of the brutal regime, we have to think long-term. Our anger should be sublimated into something more positive. We have been brutalized to think of the world in black and white. Seeing the shades of gray can be our strongest weapon against those who would jail, beat and torture us.

Given the New York Times flight into nuclear worry and sanctions and the reality of Bahari's engagement --- it is not with the reformists, either as individual figures like Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami or with the grassroots mass of the protest movement, what exactly is the "long-term more positive"?

Comments

[rmd]

In the Washington Post story:

Obama referred to the issue with Iran as "a core national interest" of the United States, a conscious use of a term China employs on sensitive issues such as Taiwan and Tibet. "It's their terminology coming back at them, emphasizing how critical" the issue is to the United States, the U.S. official said.

Interesting that the official would think it clever to use, about a foreign country, a term that China uses about its own provinces.

[Scott Harrop]

Concur with the take-down of the WaPo & NYT's items, particularly the bit of Mr. Ross (!) going to China to get China (that paragon of human rights standards) on board with a "get-tough on the road to unleashing Israel approach to Iran." If the planted story is to be believed, we have Ross in China warning that if Iran isn't stopped, then, then, then.... (breath pause), then Japan will go the final half yard and weaponize its nuclear program. Hysterical yes. And reported with a straight face in the WaPo.

With such contorted strategems afoot, can only imagine how difficult John Limbert's new role is.

Saw the Bahari piece yesterday in the Toronto G&M.... an especially important item, though indeed, it can be read as quite "muddled." On the one hand, he seems to buy the KS type argument that we must "side with history" so as to not repeat errors of past, even as at the same time he realizes there's much serious "gray afoot" -- that engagement must go on... It's in the interests not just of this or that faction, but in the interests of all, and of both countries. That we have much we don't like in each other's systems,.... well, is that new?