Latest Iran Video: US Analysis (Gary Sick) v. Overreaction (Stephens, Haass)

Although this interview on CNN is a few days old, I think Gary Sick's evaluation of the political situation in Iran --- from the Green Movement to the state of the regime to the nuclear talks --- is amongst the best to come out of the US. I am struck in particular by his assessment that short-term "success" for the regime (repression of protest) conflicts with long-term "success" (legitimacy).

Later this morning, I came across the opposite on the analytic spectrum. Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, gets so tangled up, amidst his recent call for "regime change" and the snap perception that the Green Movement "failed" last week, that he declares, "Preventive strikes. The earlier we do them, the better." That plays into the hands of Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal, a long-term advocate of an aerial attack: "I think the question that is raised by the failure of the so-called Green Movement to come out in force is whether the movement has actually crested. It gained strength after the election. I think it had its high point in December."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcr16MpZRQ4[/youtube]

The Latest from Iran (15 February): Withstanding Abuse

Part 1 of 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofMJx_L1YDU[/youtube]


Part 2 of 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWNOp7YtCJc[/youtube]

Comments

[Catherine]

Here's the transcript for those who can't watch a video when you see this post:

AMANPOUR: Welcome back. As Iran steps up its uranium enrichment program, a new U.S. intelligence estimate is expected to say that Tehran has resumed limited work on developing a nuclear weapon. This would revise a previous such assessment which said that Tehran had stopped its weaponization program.

This week, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that Iran had produced its first batch of 20 percent enriched uranium. He made his comment during a -- during a massive display of support for the regime on Thursday during celebrations marking the anniversary of the Islamic revolution. In the speech, President Ahmadinejad declared, quote, "The Iranian nation became a nuclear nation."

But as he was speaking, Iran's security forces were beating back anti- government demonstrators nearby. Some demonstrators were calling for a referendum on Iran's future.

Earlier, I spoke with Gary Sick of Columbia University. He dealt with Iran for the Carter White House during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Professor Sick, as we heard there, what do the people want? What does the opposition movement want, do you think, as it stands today?

GARY SICK, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Well, you know, that keeps changing, and because initially what they wanted was simply a recount of the election in June. As the -- as the regime has cracked down harder and harder, they're getting better at it.

[15:35:00]

I mean, repression does work. And they now are much more organized in terms of keeping things quiet and keeping the opposition down than they were before.

As they've done that, however, the price that they pay for it is that the demands of the opposition go up.

AMANPOUR: And yet it really does seem that, since the June election, it's been a constant shadowboxing. Neither side has delivered a knockout punch. The regime has not crushed the opposition; the opposition has not changed the regime. Where is it leading?

SICK: Well, you know, we watched the Iranian revolution in 1978 and '79, and the reality is, you had no idea where it was going to go, and there was great difference of opinion.

And, basically, it kind of depends on who blinks first. The regime is trying very hard to give an image that it is unbeatable, that it's strong, that it can't be intimidated, and that it will give nothing, it will give nothing whatsoever to the opposition.

The opposition keeps increasing their demands, but, again, as you say, not able to deliver a knockout punch.

AMANPOUR: In the limited vision that we've had of what happened in Tehran and around Iran, how do you assess what the opposition achieved or what the government achieved?

SICK: I think the opposition -- certainly, it was there in spots in various places. The -- as I say, the government has gotten better and better at its repressive techniques. And they've identified paths and where the opposition was likely to come. They've closed those off. They have troops surrounding them. They use tear gas at the very earliest sight when their leaders began to appear. As we heard, they beat them up or scare them away or force them to turn back.

And as a result, I think -- it was very sporadic, and it was very isolated, in terms of what the opposition could do. So in that sense, I would say the -- the regime accomplished its short-term goals.

The problem is, the short-term goals of repression and holding things down oppose the long-term goals, which would be really long-term legitimacy and support, and basically they're losing that all the time.

AMANPOUR: Well, as they lose legitimacy, they're also publicly sort of attacking the descendents of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the revolution, who have clearly stood with the opposition, with the reform movement. Isn't that an irony today, 31 years later?

SICK: You know, it's really astonishing. But, you know, the people who were closest to Khomeini, with the exception of a very, very few people around Khomeini himself, those people have all moved to the reform side. They are all on the side of change, and they all believe that the revolution has not, in fact, met its goals, that it has cheated the people, in terms of what it promised and what it actually delivered.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Mousavi himself said he was very close to Ayatollah Khomeini. He was one of the first prime ministers.

SICK: Mr. Mousavi and Mr. Karroubi both have made statements saying, "You know, I was a true believer. I really felt that the -- that the revolution has accomplished great things, that -- a wonderful future." And both of them now say, "But I've changed my mind. It simply isn't true anymore."

AMANPOUR: The West seems to try to -- it seems to be stuck in how to -- how harshly to deal with the government over its nuclear issues, not knowing how it's going to affect and how it wants to affect the domestic political situation.

SICK: When President Obama originally came up with his idea of engagement and opening up, holding a hand out to Iran, that was -- it seemed very attractive to--

AMANPOUR: Would you say it's pretty much failed, it just hasn't worked?

SICK: Well, I would say that he was unwilling to quite follow through on what he said, and the reason that he couldn't really follow through is because of the elections in June, because the sudden uprise of opposition to government.

And so what do you do?

AMANPOUR: Many people -- some of the Iranian think-tank groups outside are saying, "You've been wasting your time, you in the West, talking just about the nuclear issue. Focus on democracy. Focus on human rights." Has the strategy been wrong from the start?

SICK: You know, it's nice to say those things, but what do you actually do? I mean, you want to support democracy in Iran. If the United States intervenes in any direct way to assist the people who were out in the streets trying to do something, we basically undercut their legitimacy, because then they really do look like Western stooges.

AMANPOUR: Going back to the -- to the other -- well, going back to the nuclear issue, Iran -- well, you heard President Ahmadinejad today declare that Iran is now a nuclear nation. Where do you think they stand right now? And how is this going to affect the international community?

SICK: Well, actually, they're not really any closer than they were two years ago. And, in fact, their centrifuges are not working very well. They have not made very much progress at all. And, of course, Ahmadinejad has been saying for years that Iran was a nuclear nation.

[15:40:00]

He can announce that every time there's a celebration, but the reality is, nothing much has happened. And if they've produced a gram of 20 percent enriched uranium, well, hooray, but, you know, it's not a great accomplishment, frankly.

AMANPOUR: To be continued. Professor Gary Sick, thank you so much, indeed, for joining us.

SICK: Always a pleasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: I also spoke with a senior Iranian diplomat who's now defected to the West. Mohammed Reza Heydari was Iran's consul general in Oslo, Norway.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: What about when you resigned? Did you talk to other Iranian officials in diplomatic posts? Did you encourage others to follow your example?

MOHAMMED REZA HEYDARI, FORMER IRANIAN CONSUL GENERAL (through translator): I started a campaign of "green embassy," along with my friends who thought the same way I do. I had e-mails from different embassies. And so I told my friends to choose to side with the people before it's late, because the Iranian people are embracing all of us right now.

But tomorrow, when the people will define their own future, they will not accept any justification for our actions then. Right now, we see the government is easily killing our young people, trapping them, executing them.

It is unacceptable by the people for us to remain silent and to not show any reaction. And so I hope they will join the campaign that I've set up and to basically define what they want from the government.

AMANPOUR: But nobody has joined you yet, is that correct?

HEYDARI: Actually, a few friends have. But because of security reasons, their names have not been disclosed yet. And right now in our embassies, right now there's a chaos, and they are split. The diplomatic corps and the intelligence corps are split at our embassies right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And we have videos of Thursday's events in Tehran. To see them, go to cnn.com/iran, where we have a special section on the anniversary of the revolution and the latest unrest.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/12/ampr.01.html

[Roe Lassie]

Scott,

Who are the Whitehouse going to listen to? Who has the influence with them out of these completely opposite views? (I hope it's Gary Slick!

[Catherine]

And here is the transcript of the Fareed Zakaria clips:

ZAKARIA: Defiance in Iran this week. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made an announcement: Iran is now a nuclear state. This as his country made a big step forward in the enriching of uranium, bringing it closer to weapons capacity.

Meanwhile, the anniversary of Iran's revolution brought angry protesters back into the streets, along with a massive show of government force to keep them at bay.

Joining me now to make sense of all this is Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the "Wall Street Journal's" foreign affairs columnist, Bret Stephens.

Now, you have gotten a fair degree of plaudits from neoconservatives. In fact, I think Bret is the only one who hasn't favorably cited...

BRET STEPHENS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": No, I have. I have.

(LAUGHTER)

STEPHENS: I'm in your camp now, as well.

ZAKARIA: ... a piece you wrote in Newsweek, where you basically said, even though I'm a card-carrying realist, I think we should be working to undermine the government of Iran and, indeed, change it.

Now, what would you do if the Iranians were to come to the United States and say, "You know this back channel negotiations you've been trying to do? Let's talk. Let's see if there's some way we can come up with a deal that is satisfactory."

Would you not -- you would be negotiating with Ahmadinejad. You'd be negotiating with the regime that would -- and it would give it credibility.

So, would you not do that, because you want to undermine the regime?

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS: If I thought there was a serious Iranian willingness to engage in real negotiations, as opposed to simply buying time, I would negotiate with them. I would save the high-level meetings until the deal was done.

And also, even after a deal were done, I would still keep in reserve certain types of sanctions and other aspects of normalization that would only be put into play if the Iranians adjusted other parts of their policy.

We shouldn't forget, we don't like what they're doing at home to their people. We don't like what they're doing with Hamas and Hezbollah. We don't like, more broadly, their support for terrorism or some of their meddling in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, we have a whole menu of issues. And we shouldn't take all of our incentives, or eliminate all of our sanctions, simply because of the nuclear issue. But I take your point. If we get an acceptable deal on the nuclear issue, we should not walk away from that, either.

STEPHENS: But I would just say...

ZAKARIA: Is he taking away what he just gave? Is he sort of suddenly becoming -- being back to being the realist?

(LAUGHTER)

STEPHENS: This is what happens when you're a diplomat, as opposed to a columnist.

I think your hypothetical is wrong in that, I think you -- what we've learned in the year-long effort to engage the Iranians is just how central anti-Americanism is to the ideological nature of the regime.

A different kind of regime would have seized the deal that Obama was offering. It was an extraordinary offer. We were prepared -- or through our allies -- to enrich their uranium for them to practically 20 percent, which is what they're now threatening to do anyway. There's a reason why, as we have sought to engage the Iranians, they have become more hostile, not less. And that goes to what the ideological pillars of the regime are.

ZAKARIA: Well, to be fair...

STEPHENS: Without anti-Americanism, this becomes a normalized regime.

ZAKARIA: But to be fair, Bret, the Pakistanis never accepted the offer to have outsiders enrich for them. The Indians have never accepted it.

Is it so peculiar that Iran, which thinks of itself as a proud nation, with 60 percent of the people, you know, in support, say, no, we don't want this deal?

STEPHENS: But it wasn't simply on the nuclear issue where we were rebuffed. We were rebuffed at every turn.

President Obama made this offer, this extraordinarily conciliatory message to the Iranian people last Iranian New Year's, last February or March. And Khamenei's response was derisive. It became increasingly derisive, not simply on nuclear issues, but on a whole...

ZAKARIA: So, you're saying, basically, no point in negotiating with them. Right?

STEPHENS: Well, I think that is what we ought to have learned from the last year.

ZAKARIA: Well, if the negotiations -- and, you know, I think what Bret says, you know, it is true, certainly, that it's remarkable how many opportunities they've had to get engaged seriously, and that they have chosen not to take.

HAASS: But just to slightly disagree with one point, I still don't think we ought to be the one to plug the plug on the negotiations. We just shouldn't delude ourselves that, simply because negotiations are going on, they're going to succeed. We should be prepared to continue with them at a working level. But unless there's real progress, we should then go think about our other options.

ZAKARIA: So, let's talk about them. So, the negotiations, let's say, are most likely going nowhere. Regime change in the short term is most likely -- you know, doesn't seem to be -- we don't seem to be in 1989 and Hungary and Poland yet.

What does that leave us with? I mean, you outlined the dilemma nicely. Now choose. So, you've got two choices. You've got to live with an Iran that is on a path where it could develop a serious nuclear capacity. Are you going to live with it? Or are you going to try and dismantle it?

If you're going to dismantle it, by the way, now is easier than later.

HAASS: Oh, sure. Well, preventive strikes, the earlier we do them, the better.

I would simply say that the United States ought to look at that seriously. The idea of simply saying...

STEPHENS: Which is -- it's Israel...

ZAKARIA: What the hell does that mean?

HAASS: Well, what it means is, look. Fareed, in the abstract, unless you have targeting information, unless you've done a complete look at all the intelligence about what it is we can accomplish, about what it is, what our vulnerabilities are to Iranian retaliation, I don't think anyone sitting around this little table can give you a hard answer.

But if you're asking me, do I think using military force is a real option -- not just a rhetorical option -- yes. I've just come back from the Middle East. And what's clear to me in the Arab world, is people do not want to see an Iranian weapon. It would be transforming in the worst possible way for that part of the world.

We have to be serious. And I don't think we should necessarily just hide behind Israel's skirts. If this strategically makes sense -- let's just say, if it does -- then it's something the United States should consider doing, rather than simply hiding behind Israel. We have greater capacities than the Israelis...

ZAKARIA: What is the Iranian threat to the United States that would justify an American military attack?

HAASS: What is an Iranian threat? Well, the idea of a Middle East in which not simply Iran, but other countries would then likely follow suit and have nuclear weapons. The idea that that would dramatically increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons would not only be introduced in the physical sense, but used, goes up tremendously with all that means for that part of the world, access to oil and the rest.

STEPHENS: I mean, look. I think I agree with what Richard said. We have three difficult options.

There's containment, which I don't think could work for the reasons that Richard just mentioned. There's an Israeli strike, which I think would be very problematic for a number of reasons -- first, the question of its efficacy, and secondly, the question of its repercussions.

And then there's the third possibility, which is contemplating American military action, which is not without cost, not without risk, not without serious worries.

ZAKARIA: But the thing about the Iranians is, in foreign policy terms, they've been incredibly rational. They've been incredibly calculating. There's no reason why one would assume you couldn't deter or contain them.

HAASS: Look, they have been -- they have been rational at times. The Ayatollah Khomeini was quite rational in ending the Iran-Iraq war. I just don't think we can assume it, given what some of the things people like Ahmadinejad have said. It may be theater. On the other hand, you don't narrowly (ph) assume it.

They would become far more radical, I believe, in their foreign policy. And again, I don't believe it would stop there.

I don't believe the other countries in the world, no matter how much missile defense, no matter how many security guarantees we put out there, we'd have to assume that security and stability in the Middle East would be degraded, if the Iranians went this path.

But I think, look, your question is a legitimate question. You've got two wildly, I think, unattractive choices -- using military force or simply tolerating or living with an Iranian nuclear weapon. I hope we don't get to that point.

You know, Yogi Berra's old line, when you reach a fork in the road, take it. This is a truly unattractive fork, which again is why people like me keep saying, are there things you can do to weaken the regime or change its calculus.

But we may get to that point, in which case, this president is going to have to make a truly historic decision. Because each way, I think, it has real repercussions and real costs. I don't see necessarily a lot of upsides of either one of those choices.

ZAKARIA: And we've got to take a break. When we come back, more with Richard Haass and Bret Stephens debating Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHENS: You can see a scenario playing out in which Ahmadinejad simply decides, or is declared that he has some illness and has to step aside, and some more acceptable face comes in and manages to mute the sense of outrage that his election sparked.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: And we are back with Bret Stephens and Richard Haass, talking about Iran.

So, the protests were something of a damp squib. To be expected because of the government show of force, or something more?

HAASS: Well, tactically, if I had been involved with the opposition, I would have said, don't come out in force this day. It was too predictable. The regime had done everything it could to deny access to the Internet, to arrest many of the leaders, to preposition the Basij, the militia guys with clubs. So, this was not the day to do your big show of force. More broadly, this is not the sort of thing that's going to be decided in an afternoon. A process is underway. Clearly, the regime is nervous, or it wouldn't have done all the things it's doing. The revolution -- or the opposition, rather -- is growing in strength ever since the fraudulent June 12th election. This is going to play out over time.

STEPHENS: Yes, but I hope you're right, because I think the question that is raised by the failure of the so-called Green Movement to come out in force is whether the movement has actually crested. It gained strength after the election. I think it had its high point in December. It realized it could take advantage of these public occasions to protest.

But it has no agenda. It has no real leader. I mean, Mousavi is one contender to the leadership.

And so, without a sense of direction, what they want, other than opposition to the regime and of various kind of gradations, whether it's opposition to Ahmadinejad or opposition to the regime, in toto, if they don't have a sense of where they're going to go, there's a real question of whether they can maintain the momentum they've enjoyed for the last seven months.

ZAKARIA: You know, I also wonder about something that we don't talk about a lot in the United States, but which I found was something discussed more by people in Europe and, actually, in a place like India, which is, just how much support does Mousavi have, and just how much support does Ahmadinejad have?

Last week, Steve Coll puts out this very elaborate poll, a lot of telephone polling into Iran. Understandably, you know, there's always the issue of whether people are being honest. There's always the issue about whether people are scared.

But he points out, for example, that in the run-up to the election, they did telephone polling for the few months before. And remember, before the election, it was not so dangerous to come out in favor of Mousavi. A lot of politicians came out. People thought this was a genuine contest.

On June 11th, the vote -- the poll -- Ahmadinejad gets 57 percent, Mousavi gets 27 percent. Now, it waxed and waned, again, in predictable ways. Ahmadinejad was seen to have done better after the first debate.

So, my sort of big question is, could it be that -- you know, this is an urban, liberal phenomenon that we love, because they seem to be opposed to theocracy and dictatorship. But actually, it's 30 percent of the country, 35 percent of the country, not 80 percent of the country.

HAASS: And the answer is, we don't know. But if Ahmadinejad had more than 50 percent of the polls when accounted (ph) on election day, odds are they would not have announced the victor, that he won, before they had any chance to count the votes. So, it suggests to me that people were probably lying, that they were playing it safe. They were saying they supported the regime when, in fact, they were voting in some ways against the regime.

But I take your point. I don't know if the opposition is 25 percent, 50 percent or more. And what perhaps matters just as much is, how united is the establishment?

We know the Revolutionary Guards have the upper hand right now. The clerical establishment, though, has some fissures in it. Who knows about the Revolutionary Guard?

The army, another principal institution in the country, is not quite as radicalized. And what history suggests is that, what matters often as much as the strength of the opposition, is the unity of the establishment. Are they prepared to essentially stay the course? Again, I don't know that.

STEPHENS: Yes, I think -- I mean, that really is the key point, because regimes like Iran only fall when the regime its will to continue to suppress the people. And the regime has cards to play. Khamenei has cards to play.

I mean, there's plenty of opposition within the IRG, the Revolutionary Guards establishment, within the clerical establishment. There's a lot of opposition to Ahmadinejad personally. He's a character, and he's problematic to them.

And so, I mean, you can see a scenario playing out in which Ahmadinejad simply decides, or is declared that he has some illness and has to step aside, and some more acceptable face comes in and manages to mute the sense of outrage that his election sparked.

ZAKARIA: And to your point about the issue of, you know, to what extent do these guys have an agenda, and what is the agenda, I was struck by, for example, you know, we now know that Mousavi decided to criticize Ahmadinejad for some mild statements he made about the nuclear program which sounded more dovish.

So, then, in this poll they asked people, do you support nuclear power, overall the number of people who support Iran having a nuclear capacity is 55 percent, among Mousavi supporters 57 percent. Those that support both nuclear power and the bomb is 38 percent overall, 37 percent Mousavi.

So, in other words, Mousavi does not seem to be drawing from a group of people who are particularly different, at least on this international issue.

STEPHENS: But it's a critical issue, nonetheless, because I mean, imagine a regime change scenario in which some new constellation comes into -- some new order is established in Iran that looks less like the current clerical regime and, say, more like the government in Pakistan and in India. Then the whole Iranian nuclear question totally loses its salience, because the world can live with an Iranian nation-state that is also a nuclear power. What the world has problems with is an Iran that has millennarian, global, revolutionary ambitions. That's where the difference lies.

So, you can support a nuclear Iran as an Iranian nationalist, or you can support it as a, you know...

ZAKARIA: So, for you, the capabilities are less important than the issue of reading Iran's intentions.

STEPHENS: That's right.

ZAKARIA: And we're going to have to leave it at that. Richard Haass, Bret Stephens, thank you very much.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/14/fzgps.01.html

[raoul michelin]

Mr Sick's views must be taken with several grains of salt. Mr Sick was Jimmy Carter's advisor on Iran during the 1978-79 revolution. He must take responsiblity for what could only have been very bad advice indeed, judging from its disastrous results. Mr Sick is the same man who, some 31 years ago, subtly championed the cause of "islamisizing" Iran. Unless he puts up his hands and admits to some very fatal errors in political judgment (Mr Khomeini and has gang were in part able to hijack the Iranian revolution with the moral support of domestic and foreign intellectuals - Mr Sick being a prime example of the latter), I see no reason why his views about the current situation should be given much credit. The last time anyone with any power listened to Mr Sick, the black shadow of fundamentalism eclipsed any hope of democracy in Iran and sought to do the same through acts of terror in the rest of the world. We certainly cannot blame Mr Sick or the likes of him for all that has befallen Iran since 1979 - but we must not now endow him with the politifcal acumen he simply does not have. To him, I would say: you fooled me once, shame on you, IF you fool me again (and I'll be damned if I let you), shame on me.

[Scott Lucas]

Roe,

That's a great question, and I'll be watching for the signals. I don't think the likes of Stephens have much traction. Haass has a higher profile but I think his dramatic embrace of "regime change" was too abrupt for the policy folks. I would keep a close eye on John Limbert, the Assistant Secretary of State who knows Iran well (he speaks fluent Persian and was a hostage in '79). His analysis, when I have heard him, seems to be close to Sick's interpretation, albeit with more scepticism of the Green movement earlier in the crisis.

S.

[IRAN NEWS DIGEST: Briefs 2/16]

[...] EA:  Latest Iran Video: US Analysis (Gary Sick) v. Overreaction (Stephens, Haass) [...]

[Nick]

Are people like Sick and Limbert still relevant? I mean, they may have had influence 30+ years ago on Iran policy, but who inside the government solicits their advice? Do either of these men have national security clearance as the pre-requisite to the kind of up-to-date intelligence necessary for making policy decisions in contradistinction to taking political positions?

Personally, I found the Zakaria discussion more honest. Haass explicitly stated that nobody at the table had the information necessary to make the policy decision and left it in the hands of the Obama administration. They did analyze the issues adequately and give some sense of what the relevant considerations were on all sides of the issue.

In contrast, Sick seemed to have a political view which he set out to defend. He didn't even mention the nuclear proliferation issues, for example, and when asked about the expected update of the intelligence community's assessment, he dismissed their concerns out of hand. Forgive me, but I fail to see how I should be reassured that the Iranians are only simulating military applications of nuclear technology rather than actually detonating devices. He may think they've made no progress over the last two years, but I'll wait to see the new assessment report and whether the estimates for Iran having nuclear weapons capacity gets pushed back from the current time window.

The Zakaria discussion grasped the important point: the US and the rest of the international community will one day face the choice between:

1) an Iran with a nuclear bomb (or the break-out capacity North Korea had circa 2003); and
2) military action.

That's not the end of the story, of course. It's extremely possible that option #2 only forestalls option #1 for a few years (and will likely guarantee Iran driving straight through break-out capacity for immediate weaponization). The postponement may give more time to the Iranian opposition to effect internal change, but then again military action would also likely smother it.

So what can be done to forestall this choice? Seems like the US and the international community have four options:

1) Negotiation (closed by the Ahmadinejad administration's paralytic weakness);
2) Narrow sanctions targeting the Revolutionary Guards;
3) Broader sanctions targeting gasoline imports; or
4) Total sanctions targeting oil exports.

The US can do #2 alone, possibly #3 as well. US and EU working together can definitely do #3. The UN is needed for #4, and it probably isn't likely because of Chinese demand for energy. I don't know for what option the Obama administration is currently trying to build support, and all of the above options may undermine the Iranian opposition. However, it's looking increasingly likely that US policy and international stability cannot be pined on the hopes that the scrappy underdogs that are the green movement will overcome the goliath that is the militarized regime.

I don't expect any of these questions will be resolved anytime soon. The Obama administration is nothing if not patient and thorough, so I don't expect them to commit to any concrete course of action for another year. We'll see what happens, but I am deeply skeptical of anyone that claims to possess easy and obvious answers for these issues.

[Scott Lucas]

Nick,

Thank you for a very interesting post. There's a lot to consider but I would say that, for me, the Administration bringing back Limbert into the Executive as Ass't Secretary of State was significant. His pragmatic approach that a deal could be reached with the Iranians was a counter to the Dennis Ross that negotiations were only for show to set up tough measures.

That doesn't mean Limbert is dominant by a long shot, but he has the claim of expertise, both from the past and from the present --- there are precious few Iranian specialists (and one of them, Vali Nasr, is curiously on the Afghanistan-Pakistan brief with Richard Holbrooke) that match him.

S.

[Barry]

@Scott Lucas

I don't know whether Stephens has any "traction" or not ( as you questioned)-- but he did state the essential point ( for me) of the nuclear situation ---

"Then the whole Iranian nuclear question totally loses its salience, because the world can live with an Iranian nation-state that is also a nuclear power. What the world has problems with is an Iran that has millennarian, global, revolutionary ambitions. That’s where the difference lies."

Barry

[Scott Lucas]

Barry,

Stephens' declaraton is a bit of a shift from opinion, put forth vocally last autumn, that Mousavi and the Greens were disappointing because they wouldn't give up the uranium enrichment programme.

S.

[Scott H.]

thanks for posting these videos Scott. Gary, as usual, provides a very sober, reasoned perspective.

Mind-numbing how often we keep hearing the line that the IRI depends upon anti-Americanism to maintain power -- that without an American bogey it would fall. As such, all the sophisticated internal debates within Iran about under what conditions ties to the US could be restored get dismissed, even obvious statements by Leader Khamenei on precisely this subject (going all the way back to the early years of his Presidency) get ignored.

Ah, and the "ideologues" on this side of the pond will make much hay insisting that Iran is run by "ideologues."

As for John Limbert, you raise an excellent point.... and so many of us were heartened by his appointment.

Alas, speaking of sober, one wonders if his role re. Iran in the Clinton State Dept. is analogous to that of George Mitchell re. Israel-Palestine.

[ChrisE]

@ Nick

"The Zakaria discussion grasped the important point: the US and the rest of the international community will one day face the choice between:

1) an Iran with a nuclear bomb (or the break-out capacity North Korea had circa 2003); and
2) military action."

Even if we accept that this is the only two choices the US will face, which I don't, that 'choice' will be taken years from now under an unknown set of geo-political and domestic circumstances. The problem with entertaining that debate now, under the present cicumstances, is that it obstructs the pursuit of policies that can feasibly prevent the choice ever having to arise. Policy is already hamstrung by ill informed hysteria- why limit your flexibility further by setting the terms of debate that may have to occur a long time from now?

It is also fundamentally ridiculous to shift policy towards confronting a hostile nuclear armed Iran when in fact it should be directed towards a regime that has thus far demonstrated a total ineptness in its nuclear programme.

I believe that is Sick's point.