Engagement with Iran? An Additional View of Professor Gary Sick's Analysis

On Tuesday, we published Chris Emery's summary of last week's talk in London by Professor Gary Sick on Iran and the state of US-Iranian relations. A reader who was also at the talk has offered these additional observations:

Chris Emery has written up some excellent notes on Professor Sick's analysis, so I won't re-hash though them all. I think that the one article covering the talk, Bronwen Maddox in The Times of London, missed the point a little bit. She went for the sensational headline grabber, "Why an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not an option", rather than writing about the larger picture which Sick examined. These include the re-definitions of Israeli/Arab/Iranian roles and their positions in the Middle East due to the redistributions of power in the last eight years. I also think it's a bit too early to render a judgement of whether Sick is as off the spectrum with the Obama Administration as Maddox makes out.

Sick seemed to be almost exactly replicating Trita Parsi's power-cycle competition thesis on the threat and rivalry reassessment, developed for 1990-92, to the current era- which in a nerdy way is pretty fascinating. I might be looking into this a bit too much but I have noticed an increase in the material overplaying the threat depiction of Iran to Israel, echoing the very aggressive posture of Israel's Shimon Peres in 1992. - http://jcpa.org/text/ahmadinejad2-words.pdf See, for example, Joshua Teitelbaum in the Hoover Digest on "What Iranian Leaders Really Say About Doing Away with Israel", Jeremy Issacharoff's recent piece in the Washington Times,  anda bunch more.

Sick kept repeating the need to reassure the Arab states (particularly Saudi Arabia/Egypt) and Israel that if there was a rapprochement towards Iran, they would not be left with a role deficit and/or isolated in the region. And I liked the point about U.S.-Iranian relations not being a foreign policy problem but a domestic problem.

Sick urged the US to hold back the full negotiation efforts with Iran until after the election, and let the "engagement" debate develop organically in Iran throughout the election campaign. I think the last thing [former President Mohammad] Khatami needs is to be considered America's candidate in the race. Although Sick didn't go into details about the Iranian election, it will be interesting if it ends up being a two-way race between Khatami and Ahmadinejad. The Iranian electorate will be faced with a choice based on two very divergent policy differences and governing styles, and it will then be the first really contested election in Iran's post-revolutionary period in which people will be choosing between two candidates with not only divergent ideas but also divergent records.

Sick urged the Obama Admininstration not to repeat the mistakes of Bush in having an incoherent policy towards Iran; however, I think "mixed signals" has been a perpetual theme of America's Iranian policy for the last thirty years. I would have liked to hear more about what should be on the agenda for U.S.-Iran talks.

Iran's Presidential Election: What Difference Does Khatami Make?

Our colleague Chris Emery offers this incisive assessment of former President Mohammed Khatami's declaration that he will stand in June's Presidential Election in Iran, taking us beyond the simplistic formula of Ahmadinejad v. Khatami:

Former two-term Iranian President Mohammed Khatami waited until almost the last possible minute before deciding to put his name on the ballot for the presidential elections in June. He only declared after a careful examination of the political environment and, more importantly, his electoral chances.



This scrutiny was not matched by the western media.

Their haste was perhaps predictable: Khatami is well-known and respected in the West. It was just too tempting to paint him as the reformist liberal who, in conjunction with the new saviour of American diplomacy, could genuinely transform US-Iranian relations. So it will now hold its collective breath that he will prevail against the hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The context of renewed hopes for rapprochement is, I suspect, of much less significance to the Iranian public’s perception of Khatami’s decision to run. And it is unlikely, though still unclear, that Khatami's decision was relatded President Ahmadinejad’s reciprocation of Barack Obama's offer for dialogue with America.

Whilst the prospect of a more moderate leadership in Washington and Tehran is gratifying, the characterisation of Khatami as "the Iranian Obama" or, even more erroneously, that Obama’s election provoked Khatami’s decision to run is patently false. Khatami’s decision to run rests on internal Iranian politics, the complex dynamics of which are hard to penetrate.

For example, it had been widely reported that Khatami would not run if former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mousavi chose to. Prior to his announcement, Khatami met with Mir Hossein Mousavi at the office of reformist politician and cleric Abdollah Nouri in northeast Tehran. So all Iranian eyes will now watch if Mousavi, another popular reformist, is now the one to withdraw.

Another egregious error, as typified by the BBC article that announced Khamtami’s decision, is the assumption that Iranians now face a choice between one hard-line conservative candidate (Ahmadinejad) and one liberal reformist (Khatami). Quite apart from failing to qualify terms such as "reformist", "liberal", and "conservative2, which have very different and dual meanings in Iran than in the West, it is rash to immediately reduce the election to a two horse race. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the popular Tehran mayor and veteran, remains firmly in the race and the chances of Mehdi Karoubi, who heads the reformist E'temad Melli Party, or former Prime Minister Mousavi cannot simply be discounted.

It is perhaps tempting, given the generally constructive rhetoric emerging from Washington, to link Khatami’s entry to the tentative prospect of normalised relations between Iran and the US. This is also an error. Firstly, Khatami's electoral prospects are not going to stand or fall on current developments in US-Iranian relations. Secondly, both sides will probably refrain from meaningfully pushing rapprochement until the election in Iran is finished. Thirdly, Khatami does not have a radically different attitude to Ahmadinejad on the main American concerns of Iran’s nuclear programme and its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Fourthly, the final decision on rapprochement will not be made, in Tehran, by the president’s office- whoever is occupying it.

In any case, the election in June will not be fought over rapprochement with the US. Instead, if the contest comes down to a battle between Khatami and Ahmadinejad, it will be over presidential legacies and broken promises. Ahmadinejad’s failure to deliver on his promise to improve economic and employment conditions, at a time of increased oil revenue, has led to widespread disillusionment. Khatami has claimed a better economic record as president, yet he failed to deliver the reforms and greater openness his supporters sought.

Many questions, however, remain. Will Khatami’s entry damage the reformists’ prospects, uniting the conservatives against him, as Khatami must have feared? What will be the response of the influential former President Hashemi Rafsanjani who, according to different sources, is either refusing to support Khatami or trying to persuade Karoubi to step aside in favour of him?

Today in Mr Obama's Neighborhood: The Latest in US Foreign Policy (9 February)

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The Neighborhood Today: An Economy Day, But Clouds over Afghanistan

Evening Update (11:25 p.m.): Move Along, Nothing to See Here. Genius/General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, and Frnech Defense Minister Herve Morin discussed Afghanistan today in a meeting in Paris. Of course, Petraeus told reporters afterwards, they did not talk about the issue of troop reinforcements: "That wasn't part of the discussion today. What we were doing was discussing how we perceive the 20 countries in the central command area of responsibility."

Which is sort of the equivalent of visiting the Pope and not mentioning Catholicism.



6:55 p.m. Either the Obama Administration is playing a good cop, bad cop game from Iran, or the departing US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, is being none-too-subtle in his distance from the White House and, I suspect, his alliance with American military commanders.

As the White House talks of engagement with Iran, Crocker has told Al Arabiya Television that Tehran is still supporting Iraqi insurgents, despite US-Iran talks over the security situation: ""There is also what I would call a terrorist element from some Shia extremists and we believe that they are supported still by elements within Iran...The question is what decisions the Iranians are going to make about their future relationship with Iraq."

6:50 p.m. Reports indicate four US soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter have been killed in a suicide car bombing in Mosul in northern Iraq.

6:15 p.m. Interesting twist in the drama over the US airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The Cable, the blog of the journal Foreign Policy, claims that the dispute arose in part because more than $100 million in American payments did not go to the Kyrgyzstan Government but to the family of former Kyrgyz leader Askar Akayev. The US failure to renegotiate agreements to ensure its payments made it to the correct location, i.e., the Kyrgyz Treasury, prompted Kyrgyzstan to take action.

Afternoon Update (4:30 p.m.): It appears there are further manoeuvres around the closure of the US Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan. A Parliamentary vote has been delayed because the Kyrgyz Government is "sending more paperwork" to the parliamentarians.

Russian sign of goodwill for the Biden speech? Kyrgyz horse-trading for more income? Your speculation is as good as mine.

11:40 a.m. The BBC has just released a poll of more than 1500 Afghans on the political, economic, and military situation. The percentage who think the country is "headed in the right direction" is falling. While there was a 2:1 margin saying Yes two years ago, opinion is now evenly divided.

Support for the Afghan Government is still high, although it is declining. Perhaps most provocatively, given the debate in Washington, is this finding: "Support for the presence of foreign troops is also strong but declining."

11:25 a.m. South Korean Lee Myung-Bak has vowed to take a "firm" stance against North Korea's suspension of all political and military agreements.

11 a.m.: Juan Cole has an interesting analysis of former President Mohammad Khatami's declared candidacy for June's Iranian presidential election. It's an optimistic assessment: "Could Khatami be Iran's Obama?"

6:30 a.m. GMT: The general talk of US engagement with Iran, buttressed by Vice President Joe Biden's speech on Saturday, prompts some frankly ludicrous speculation on Iranian politics and society. Michael Ledeen is howling at the Tehran moon: "The terror masters in Tehran believe [Iran's] satellite has an even greater significance -- another step toward the return of the Shiite messiah, or Mahdi, the long-vanished 12th Imam." Worst Sentence of the Day comes from Roger Cohen in The New York Times: "The core debate is: can Iran manage a Chinese-style reform where its Islamic hierarchy endures through change, or does opening to America equal Soviet-style implosion?"

So let's get to the important, unresolved question: did Iranian officials meet US counterparts privately in Munich this weekend? Any clues most appreciated....

There is a tantalising story in The Wall Street Journal today highlighting the link between Iran and Afghanistan. US officials have told the paper that Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke will "engage Iran as part of a broad effort to stabilize Afghanistan and combat the country's growing drug trade". The article notes that one of Holbrooke's advisors is Professor Vali Nasr, who has written extensively on Iran.

Morning Update (5:30 a.m. GMT; 12:30 a.m. Washington): US politics will be pre-occupied today with the Congressional debates over the Obama economic stimulus package, giving us a bit of space to read the developments after this weekend's Munich Security Conference.

As we updated last night, the President v. military contest over American strategy in Afghanistan is taking on the look of a centrepiece, with envoy Richard Holbrooke bigging it up as "tougher than Iraq". The latest development, however, gives more weight to the argument that the idea of a military-first surge is in trouble: the Germans have let it be known that a new political approach, rather than an increase in troops, is the best way forward, and the French Defense Minister, Herve Morin, has repeated his statement of two weeks ago that Paris will not send additional forces.

Politically, the reaction to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's speech needs to be watched, given his attempt to take the initiative from the Americans with the proposal of talks with "moderate Taliban". Given the implications of that suggestion, and Karzai's tenuous position with Washington, there is surprisingly little response in US and British media this morning to the speech.

Meanwhile, the talk of Genius/General David Petraeus in Munich seems to have slipped by most journalists. What coverage there is offers Petraeus' Afghanistan-surge-as-Iraq-surge rationale, a situation that "has deteriorated markedly in the past two years" in a "downward spiral of security", and the close-to-useless summary, "Terrorism – the be-all and end-all of policy towards the region under President George Bush – is now seen as much as a product as a cause of Afghanistan’s instability. National reconciliation is to be pursued as the longer-term objective."

For better or worse (in my opinion, worse), the Obama Administration has welded the Afghanistan issue to Pakistan as "Afpak", so envoy Richard Holbrooke starts in Islamabad today. White House staff are telling media that the Pakistani situation is the one that "scares" Obama, but it is clearly unclear what Washington is proposing to do --- the politics inside the country, be they at national level or in the regions, seem to beyond US grasp at the momen. So is the fighting: the military approach appears to be in suspension after the two missile strikes just after Obama took office, while dozens have died this week in battles in the Swat Valley between local insurgents and the Pakistani Army.

The New York Times' overview of Holbrooke's visit is simple but concise:

On almost every front, Pakistani leaders are calling for less American involvement, or at least the appearance of it. The main reason for the swell in resentment here is the very strategy that the United States government considers its prime success against Al Qaeda: missile strikes delivered by remotely piloted aircraft against militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Today's Obamameter: The Latest in US Foreign Policy (8 February)

Latest Post: Update on Obama v. The Military - Where Next in Afghanistan?
Latest Post: A New US Foreign Policy? The Biden Speech in Munich
Latest Post: Transcript of Joe Biden's Speech on Obama Foreign Policy

Current Obamameter: Settled

7:20 p.m. We've just offered, in a separate post, a latest view of the battle in Washington over the proposed "surge" in Afghanistan.

5:10 p.m. Message to Georgia: No, No, NATO. Following up his overtures to Russia on Saturday in his Munich speech, Vice President Joe Biden made it clear on Sunday that the Obama Administration would not be pushing Georgia's accession to NATO.

After meeting Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Biden responded to a question about accession: "I'm in favor of Georgia's continued independence and autonomy. That is a decision for Georgia to make."

5:05 p.m. Important news out of Tehran: former President Mohammad Khatami has announced he will run in June's Presidential election.

4:35 p.m. And It Went So Well in Baghdad. President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has said that victory there will be "much tougher" than in Iraq. He told the Munich Security Conference, ""I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited."

Two US troops and two Afghans were killed by a bomb in Helmand Province on Sunday.



Afternoon Update (4:15 p.m. GMT; 11:15 a.m. Washington): Another bit of publicity around the Afghanistan battle. National Security Advisor James Jones has told a German newspaper that a decision on strategy will be needed by the NATO summit on 5 April. Jones added platitudes such as "answers will not be unilateral but multilateral" and the insistance that NATO and the Afghan Government must stop the drug trade as the "economic fuel of the insurgency".

Decoding? Jones is flagging up the duties that US military, as it "surges", would like to pass on to European partners. That's especially pertinent in Germany, where there is public unease about taking on the hard-line enforcement of a drugs ban. Indeed, it is no coincidence that it was German media that leaked the unwise statement of an American military commander last week that troops should have the right to shoot drug producers on sight, whether or not they are connect to the Taliban.

On the Russian front, Moscow has welcomed Joe Biden's call "to reset the button" of relations. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said, "It is obvious the new U.S. administration has a very strong desire to change and that inspires optimism,"

4 p.m.  Just back from recording for Al Jazeera's Inside Story and an engaging discussion on the Biden speech and US foreign policy with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Rosemary Hollis of City University, London. Airtime is 5:30 p.m. GMT.

1 p.m. Al Jazeera English is now focusing on Afghan President Hamid Karzai's address to the Munich Security Conference. karzai has made a big political play, setting out a strategy of reaching out to the "moderate Taliban" for discussions. This is not a new position for Karzai, but in the midst of the US consideration of a military "surge", the timing of this makes it an important intervention.

Interesting that AJE is framing this as a US v. Afghanistan battle in which "the US will get its way" on the troop build-up, missing the emering story of division within the White House.

We'll follow up later, after speaking with AJE, about the latest from Washington. It appears that President Obama is holding out against immediate approval of the military's proposals because of the lack of an "exit strategy".

8:45 a.m. So how intensive is the Obama Administration's spin campaign on Afghanistan and Pakistan? In the same New York Times that tells Afghan leader Hamid Karzai he could soon be yesterday's man, there is a loving profile of Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke, complete with family photos and Superman rhetoric:

You have a problem that is larger than life. To deal with it you need someone who’s larger than life.

8:33 a.m. The New York Times has a dramatic article on the widening gap between the US and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, adding weight to the speculation that Washington may try to "ditch" its erstwhile choice to run the country. Fed by inside information from Obama Adminsitration officials, the article opens with an account of how Vice President Joe Biden walked out on a dinner with Karzai last month after the Afghan leader denied any corruption in his Government:

President Obama said he regarded Mr. Karzai as unreliable and ineffective. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said he presided over a “narco-state.” The Americans making Afghan policy, worried that the war is being lost, are vowing to bypass Mr. Karzai and deal directly with the governors in the countryside.

Morning Update (8:30 a.m. GMT; 3:30 a.m. Washington): Pretty quiet overnight, so we've focused this morning, in a separate entry, on an analysis of Joe Biden's speech to the Munich Security Conference, setting out the "new tone" (and, for us, troubling cases) in US foreign policy. We've also posted the transcript of the speech.

Scott Lucas of Enduring America will be appearing on Al Jazeera English at 2 p.m. GMT to discuss the Obama/Biden approach.