Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 10:42
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.)
Update (9 p.m.): Hamas has written a letter to President Obama and attempted to send it to Washington via Senator John Kerry, one of three US Congressmen visiting Gaza.
Evening Update (9 p.m.): 
Evening Update (8 p.m.): Another obstacle to the Egyptian-brokered talks, this time over Palestinian unity.