Interpreting Tehran: Professor Gary Sick on the Future of US-Iranian Relations

Last Thursday, In front of an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London that included members of Parliaments, diplomats, senior academics, journalists and representatives from more than a dozen embassies Professor Gary Sick delivered a fascinating survey of the last 30 years of US-Iranian relations. The presentation was made “on the record”, and Chris Emery, our colleague at the University of Birmingham, was there to summarise the remarks.

Professor Sick has served in three US administrations and was the National Security Council’s Iran expert at the time of the Iranian Revolution and US Embassy Crisis. He is now Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University and Director of Gulf2000.

The problem is not a foreign policy problem; it is a domestic policy problem. The baggage of the past is more relevant than any strategic rivalry or threat. Most importantly, the US has never given Iran the opportunity to have an internal debate on the possibilities and consequences of rapprochement with America. The Iranians have therefore not had to think through the important political effects, for example, of ending the chants of “Death to America” at Friday prayers. This statement has become an important expression of the Iranian Revolution; rapprochement, which would surely be incompatible with its encouragement byt the State, may accompany some modifications to Iran’s revolutionary identity.

The Iranian threat to US interests, contrary to the “perceived wisdom” of the Bush Administration and Israeli government, has been wildly blown out of proportion. The newfound strategic confidence of Iran was largely the legacy of recent US foreign policy and the elimination of Iran’s two gravest enemies, the Taliban to the east and Saddam Hussein to the west. The growth of Iran’s influence in the region could not have been achieved, solely by its own actions, as Iran lacks either inclination or capability to project its powers beyond its borders.

Iran is not the most dangerous threat facing the US and Europe. The Afghan-Pakistan nexus, with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability, was far graver. Even America’s exit from Iraq posed a greater threat.

Iran and Israel are the new polar rivals in the Middle East. The Sunni Arabs are not as important now and ultimately fear any emerging strategic relationship between the US and Iran. (N.B.: Sick later qualified this statement, asserting that the Arabs were not threatened strategically but, instead, feared marginalisation. This sentiment must be factored into US diplomacy: US-Iranian rapprochement, if and when it occurs, should be matched with the complimentary reassurance of America’s Arab allies.)

Israel has viewed US-Iranian rapprochement with a degree of anxiety, and,the recent conflict in Gaza partly demonstrated Israel’s fear of political alienation. Israel has for some time been engaging in signalling actions, and recent Israel manoeuvres, such as the rehearsal of long-distance bombing operations in the Mediterranean, are particularly aimed at Europe. The message is that the pressure on Iran must be maintained or Israel may respond unilaterally to what it maintains is an existential threat to its existence. This signa was also seen in Israel’s recent request to America to use Iraqi airspace.

Israel, however, will not bomb Iran because it is logistically and politically impossible. Having been unable to eliminate Hezbollah or Hamas’s operational capability, despite several weeks of intensive bombing, Israel would be unable to perform any surgical strike. Instead, Tel Aviv would have to commit to sustained bombing missions, with a hitherto unknown degree of accuracy, on a range of targets. An Israeli strike would also effectively take America to war with Iran, who would reasonably assume permission had been given, and Iranian reprisals in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and to Persian Gulf shipping would be disastrous for US interests. Any military strike would thus never be sanctioned by the US.

Iran’s motivation for developing nuclear weapons had been connected to its correct perception that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear armaments at a time when Iran and Iraq were engaged in a brutal war in which Saddam had shown a ready willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. It is no coincidence that Iran apparently halted all of its weapons designs in the fall of 2003, following Saddam’s removal by US forces.

A reasonably strong case can be made that Saddam “saved” the Islamic Revolution. His attack on Iran created an outpouring of Iranian nationalism which mobilised support for the state at a time when the Revolution looked to be floundering. It also forced the Iranians to organise more efficiently both their financial and political arms of the government and, more importantly, their armed forces which were in chaos in the Revolutionary period. The Islamic Republic of Iran remained a much more nationalist than Islamist state.

Iran is incredibly inefficient in its pursuit of nuclear technology or the West is very wrong about the urgency of preventing it from doing so. Iran has had a nuclear programme, in at least one form or another, for 25 years and yet its only nuclear facility is still not working, despite persistent claims by the Iranian authorities that it would. Considering it took India, Israel and others just 10 years from making the decision to produce a bomb to successful testing, this could be clear evidence of a lack of determination in Tehran. Iran’s enrichment program is also subject to close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency..

With respect to nuclear technology, there is much continuity between the current and former regimes in Iran. The Shah himself talked, probably unrealistically, of an 18-month “surge” period in which a bomb could be produced after an effective enrichment cycle had been achieved. The Islamic Republic, similarly, probably wants a nuclear program which is capable of delivering a bomb if they decided some time in the future that they needed one. The recognition that a civilian nuclear program gives a certain degree of flexibility, if major geo-political or strategic changes pose a grave future threat to Iranian security, is of course a very different proposition than that currently made by Western and Israeli hawks. At the same time, claims that Iran’s protestations that Islamic law prohibits WMD should be taken with a large dose of salt. As Ayatollah Khomeini said, the “survival of the state takes precedence over Islam”.

How then should the international community respond to the ‘”uclear issue”? US intelligence has regularly claimed, since the early 1990s, that Iran was 3-6 years away from acquiring a bomb This reliable information, which contradicts the assumption that Iran is determined to produce nuclear weapons, can be used more effectively. Certainly, it argues very strongly against any military response. Even if a civilian nuclear program including enrichment allows Iran greater flexibility to produce a weapon sometime in the future, about 40 countries currently have this same potential. The world lives with this prospect every day and doesn’t take countries like Brazil to the UN Security Council.

What is needed, however, is consistent transparency, which Iran is willing to accept. This would allow the world to accurately guage the extent of Iran’s nuclear programme and, with an early warning based on credible non-politicised information, react accordingly and without hysteria.

The Obama Administration’s policy approach has to be seen in the context of previous US and Iranian administrations and the prospect of a new administration in Tehran this summer. There should be no substantial US overtures until after the Iranian elections. America has little to gain by being seen as interfering in this process.

(N.B.: Perhaps disappointingly, Professor Sick did not make any major predictions as to who would be influential in formulating and executing US-Iran policy. Nothing was said, for instance, on the controversial selection of Dennis Ross as Obama’s Middle East envoy. Nor did he examine any potential emerging bureaucratic tensions within the conception of US policy in Iran- of the kind that had blighted the administrations that he himself had served.)

The US has not yet began to decide where Iran policy is going and what its end goal should be. The preceding George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations, and their predecessors before them, had no meaningful policy beyond rhetoric. The Obama Administration would thus have to be prepared to make hard decisions, in a way that previous administrations had failed to contemplate. It would need time to do so.

(N.B.: Professor Sick reserved stinging criticism for the efforts of the previous administration and particularly its contradictory and counter-productive attempts to engage with Iran’s civil society. Whilst Professor Sick praised the work of NGO’s and human rights activists in exposing some of the abuses committed by the Iranian government, he condemned the mixed messages Bush has sent to the Iranian public in its support for outside groups. The Bush administration, he claimed, had fleeted between supporting unpopular external Iranian groups, pursuing (and then denying to be pursuing) regime change and promoting a ‘velvet revolution’. The damage of this approach can not be underestimated and has contributed to the substantial mistrust and paranoia in which Tehran frames US engagement.)

There are some very practical problems that need to be overcome. Optimally, the US should try and forge direct links with the Supreme Leader. America’s isolation from this ultimate source of political authority in Iran places limits on rapprochement. In his final analysis, however, this avenue had been sought, especially during the hostage crisis, and consistently refused. Put simply, Ayatollah Khamenei had shown no interest of talking to America.

There is another practical problem for US diplomacy. A whole generation of career diplomats have never set foot on Iranian soil and thus lack any exposure to its political or popular culture. This makes it critically important for diplomatic relations to be restored. A potential starting point is for the US to open a US “Interests” office in Tehran. As a matter of protocol, it was the Americans who broke relations in 1980, so it is the US that has to formally restore them.

(N.B. Professor Sick also recounted some of his own personal experiences of meeting with president Ahmadinejad, in whose company he had spent roughly eight hours since his election in 2005. Professor Sick noted a partial softening of his attitudes since then and observed that the president genuinely, though it is often dismissed in the western media, believed he was a peacemaker.

Sick recounted one meeting in which US-based specialists had participated, with Ahmadinejad, in a seminar in Washington. Professor Sick asked the Iranian president to imagine he was simply an Iranian academic participating in a discussion with American academics in America. Would he not be arrested by Iranian authorities on his return to Iran? The president laughed off the assumption as inaccurate, but Sick proceeded to supply evidence of Iranian academics who had suffered this very fate. Professor Sick chose not to elaborate further on this discussion. Nor did he comment on the much wider issue of the role academics can play in increasing constructive dialogue, and the limits placed upon them doing so in both countries.

Despite this perhaps provocative anecdote, and a sweeping though not uncommonly made statement that Arabs and Persians generally dislike each other, Sick’s analysis was mostly pragmatic. Yes, some aspects of Iran’s behaviour were cause for some concern in the west. In fact no country, according to Sick, had done a better job of diplomatically shooting itself in the foot. In this latter regard, Ahmadinejad’s unnecessary rhetoric had significantly damaged Iranian diplomacy. However, the threat Iran poses has been widely blown out of proportion.

Professor Sick also acknowledged many of the long term grievances held in Iran towards America as legitimate. More importantly, he observed that US policy had been proved counter-productive. Rather than continue the mistakes made by all US administrations since the Revolution, the US had to be prepared to make hard decisions and recognise the basic failure of all its previous assumptions to achieve tangible benefits to US diplomacy or US interests. A large part of this process involved the abandonment of historical baggage on both sides.)

Exclusive: How Iran is Taking Over America

Once it was Reds under the Bed. Now it's the Mullahs Hiding behind the Curtains.

Human Events sounds the warning, exposing all the pseudo-Americans who are actually working for Tehran. Our only qualm with this article is that --- as it outed Trita Parsi, Juan Cole, and Gary Sick, all of whom we have featured on this website --- somehow it forgot to mention Enduring America amongst the threats to Mr and Mrs USA.

Why U.S. Policy Leans Too Close to Terrorist Appeasement
Clare M. Lopez

The Obama administration has lost no time extending an outstretched hand to Iran’s terrorist regime, just as promised during the election campaign. The president assured the mullahs of his pacific intentions in a January 2009 interview on al-Arabiya TV, asking nothing more than that Iran unclench its fist.

Secretary of State Clinton echoed Obama after an early February 2009 meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Absent from either of their comments was any mention of Tehran’s obligations before the world community to comply with United Nations resolutions to immediately and verifiably suspend all nuclear enrichment activity. Also missing was any criticism of Iran’s massive support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- not to mention its long-standing affiliation with al-Qa’eda.

As for introduction of a U.N. resolution to condemn Iran for repeated incitement to genocide of a fellow U.N. member state -- the State of Israel -- somehow that didn’t come up either. Holding to account a regime that stones girls to death for being raped, hangs gays from construction cranes, and executes juveniles also doesn’t seem central to the new agenda. Perhaps we missed it and the United States actually signed on to the Cairo Declaration. For those who don’t remember that ignominious piece of paper, it is the 1990 opt-out by Muslim states from the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights.

An 8 February 2009 speech by Vice President Joe Biden (in Munich, of all places) did note U.S. readiness to take pre-emptive action against Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism, but also repeated that the U.S. is open to talks. This is what your mother always warned you against: mixed signals.

Under the Bush administration we had no Iran policy. Now, our policy leans too close to appeasement. How did it get this way?

America’s foreign policy toward Iran did not reach this level of malleability overnight or by accident. A well-organized plan to infiltrate and influence U.S. policymakers at the highest levels has been operating on American soil for well over a decade. Conceived in Tehran under the direct authority of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the plan set out to create a network of top U.S. academics, diplomats, journalists, NGOs, and think tanks that would advocate a policy of appeasement towards Iran. Iran’s top strategic objective has always been to buy time for its nuclear weapons program, which now is well along in developing the three critical components: enriched uranium, warhead weaponization, and a credible missile delivery system.

Beginning in the late 1990s, a de facto alliance between Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. (such as CAIR -- the Council on Islamic American Relations) and frank Tehran regime advocates like the American-Iranian Council (AIC) openly began to promote public support for a U.S. foreign policy based on the favored positions of the Islamic Republic. In 2002, a new pro-Iran group was formed by a young Swedish-Iranian immigrant named Trita Parsi. That group, the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) quickly established itself as the nexus of a growing network of individuals and organizations that openly lobby for a U.S. policy of acquiescence, diplomacy, incentives, and negotiations with the Tehran regime -- while strongly opposing coercive diplomacy, sanctions, or threat of military action. Part and parcel of this advocacy on behalf of Tehran is a pattern of antipathy towards Israel that minimizes its security concerns and dismisses its legitimate defense needs.

Under Parsi, who is closely connected to the Tehran regime, the NIAC network has expanded to include a growing number of new groups. Some of them -- such as The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) -- are NIAC clones. CASMII was founded in December 2005 to oppose all forms of pressure on Iran. Others, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS, founded in February 2007) play the role of useful idiots. CNAS had Dr. Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s appointee as Ambassador to the UN, on its Board of Directors.

Dr. Vali Nasr, who has been named senior advisor to U.S. Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, was one of the authors of a September 2008 CNAS publication called Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options. Nasr’s chapter, "The Implications of Military Confrontation with Iran," urged the U.S. to take the military option for dealing with Iran off the table and instead focus on how best to accommodate Tehran’s rising power in the Middle East region. The Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI) launched its pro-Iran activities with a cross-country event called The Folly of Attacking Iran Tour, which crisscrossed the U.S. in February and March 2008.

The American Foreign Policy Project (AFPP) was founded in December 2008 with an “experts list” that reads like a remix of other CAIR and NIAC affiliates, including former Ambassadors Thomas Pickering, James Dobbins, and William Miller plus well-known academic figures such as Professors Gary G. Sick of Columbia University and Juan R. Cole of the University of Michigan. These groups’ interlocking Boards of Advisors, Directors, and Experts include many other nationally-known figures from public policy and international business arenas, including some big oil companies.

All are associated in one way or another with Trita Parsi and NIAC and all advocate a policy of accommodation with Iran.

The Iranian regime makes no attempt to disguise its links to this network. NIAC, for instance, was openly mentioned in the 7 December 2007 issue of the government-controlled Aftab News, where the NIAC network was called the regime’s “Iran lobby in the U.S.” In March 2007, the Fars News daily described NIAC as ‘a non-profit’ organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. that was established to counter the influence of AIPAC [the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, a legal lobby group] and to enlist the support of Iranian expatriates living in the U.S. in order to ‘penetrate U.S. politics.’

Maneuvering behind Washington, D.C. policymaking scenes to exert influence on U.S. decision makers is pretty standard for a host of legitimate interest groups, including many foreign countries. Concern is indicated, however, when the guiding influence behind such maneuvering emanates from the top levels of a regime like Iran’s that holds top spot on the Department of State’s state sponsors of terror list, makes no secret of its hatred and enmity for the U.S. and our ally Israel, and acts in myriad ways to support those who have assassinated, held, kidnapped, killed, and tortured American civilians and military over a 30-year period. The expanding influence of this pro-Iran lobby on U.S. foreign policy attests to a determined and sophisticated operation that serves only the interests of regime implacably hostile to America’s own national security interests.

Ms. Lopez is the Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.