Engagement with Iran: A Hopeful US Approach

Related Post: Engagement - And There's Hope on the Iranian Side As Well....

On Friday we suggested a handy three-step process to evaluate the significance and impact of President Obama's message to the Iranian people and leaders.

Wow, only 48 hours later, we're at Step 3: The US Reaction to the Iranian Response.

Even more surprising, and indeed reassuring, that reaction seems to have fulfilled our hope "that Washington does not follow Obama’s message by trying to box Iran in on issues such as the nuclear programme, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, and general relations with the Arab world".

Fed by Administration officials and European diplomats, New York Times reporters Helene Cooper and David Sanger write that Obama's message is “part of a strategy intended to emphasize a positive message to Iran in the prelude to that nation’s presidential election this summer. Among other measures being weighed are a direct communication from Mr. Obama to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and an end to a prohibition on direct contacts between junior American diplomats and their Iranian counterparts around the world.”

Even more importantly, at least in the short term, the President “had set aside for the next few months a quest for more punitive sanctions aimed at Iran”.

The statements indicate Washington's recognition that the Iranian leadership would be in no position to move to direct, general talks before June's Presidential election. And, while it is unclear if the officials spoke to the Times before Ayatollah Khameini's remarks on Friday, there is no hint in the article that the Supreme Leader's comments will alter the American approach.

Cooper and Sanger are led by their sources to a detailed reading of Obama's signals in his message: “[He] directed his comments not just to the Iranian people but to Iran’s leaders,...he referred to Iran as 'the Islamic Republic',... [and he] went so far as to quote the medieval Persian poet Saadi.” Far significant, however, is the clue that Washington and Tehran have worked out the Iranian participation at the US-led conference on Afghanistan in The Hague next week.:”Iran is expected to send a delegation, and a senior administration official said Mrs. Clinton would probably greet Iranian officials on the sidelines.”

This is all encouraging, especially in contrast to the Administration's march to possible disaster in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even if the approach may not be completely the product of American desires. Moscow seems to have played a part in its rebuff of any linkage of US-Russian talks to a shift in its position on Iran: “Russia in particular appears unlikely to support tougher sanctions until Mr. Obama demonstrates that he has first gone significantly further than President Bush did to engage Iran.”

Space War: Russia and US in Satellite Shoot-out?

Related Post: Obama: Finding the Right Word for Russia

Experts, policy makers, and academics have been talking about hypothetical military combat in space for decades, particularly during the 1980s with the introduction of President Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" program to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles. However, there's evidence to suggest that warfare in Earth's orbit is very quickly accelerating from merely hypothetical to a strategic reality.

This week Russian Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Valentin Popovkin revealed that his country has been developing Anti-Satellite weapons technology, particularly "basic, key elements" needed to shoot down a satellite in near earth orbit. Regarding similar programs by the Americans and Chinese, Popovkin said, "We can't sit back and quietly watch others doing...such work."

Of course the Russians would have to emulate any military program that both the US and China have, but this isn't your everyday imperial arms race. They think the US already shot down one of their satellites.

Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the [February 10, 2009 collision with a defunct Russian satellite]  was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.

It's not unusual for the Russians to be suspicious about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) projects, especially ones like Orbital Express that could eventually be used against them. But the real indicators of a US "shoot down" comes from the satellite's manufacturer, Iridium Satellite LLC, which could serve the dual purpose of both telecommunications provider and military intelligence asset.

Iridium Satellite started in the late 1990s as one of many companies competing in the burgeoning field of satellite telecommunications. However, due to technical issues and rampant mismanagement, Iridium filed for bankruptcy and seemed on the brink of disaster. That's when a private group of investors stepped in and bought Iridium and it's $6 billion in assets for the bargain basement price of $25 million. Almost simultaneously Iridium announced a $36 million, no-bid contract with the Department of Defense for providing satellite communications to some 20,000 users.

Who sits on the board of this once-broke, now uberprofitable company? None other than Alvin Krongard, better known as Buzzy, former Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under the disagraced George Tenet and board member of the private security contractor formerly known as Blackwater.

If I can find all of that on Google, what do you suppose the Russians know? No wonder they're developing their own military space technology.

Counter-Point: Dan Mosqueda isn't so sure the US shot down the satellite. Via Twitter, he says "This conjunction was a result of sloppy Russian space ops. An Iridium bird [satellite] isn't an Orbital Express bird, not even close in size. OE was launched via an Atlas V - HUGE launch vehicle. Iridiums were launched on smaller and completely different Delta-family launch vehicles. Last launch was back in 2002. The ASTRO is at 250 miles [from the earth's surface], Iridium at 450, and the Cosmos 2251 is at 490, but could have decayed a bit. So ASTRO is out of the picture."

Obama: Finding the Right Word for Russia

Related Post: Space War - Russia and US in Satellite Shoot-out?

The media are going ga-ga over an incident at yesterday's showpiece meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. Before their working dinner, Clinton handed Lavrov "a small green box with a ribbon. Inside was a red button with the Russian word peregruzka printed on it."

For many of us older than 35, it was a jaw-dropper in post-Cold War humour. Ohmygosh, Clinton just handed the erstwhile Soviet Commies the nuclear button! Go on, Sergei, push it. Push it with a smile and blow us to oblivion.

All right, it was meant to be a reassurance that Dr Strangelove and Mutual Assured Destruction is so yesterday. But the media, who must be younger than 35, were focused on some inadvertent humour.
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With the gift, the Americans meant to indicate unsubtly that they wanted to "reset" relations with Russia. However, when Clinton asked if peregruzka was the right word, Lavrov --- obviously not just laughing about annihilation comedy --- replied, "You got it wrong. It should be perezagruzka. This says peregruzka which means overcharged."

Great. We'll now have days of bad political gloss upon the jokes --- Clinton already started it with, "We are resetting, and because we are resetting, the minister and I have an overload of work." Are we screwing the Russians by giving them the wrong change from the relationship? Will the US-Russia talks get too electric over issues like Georgia (the country, not the US state), Iran, and missile defence?

The right word, in fact, is the very boring realpolitik. Clinton's visit with Lavrov yesterday, and Obama's forthcoming meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the start of April, fulfil the long-expected Administration approach. The Bush policy, trying to ensure Russian co-operation by putting Moscow in a corner, is scrapped. The white elephant of Missile Defense is gone, although Washington will try to get some Russian reward for the "concession". NATO will not be pushed further onto Russia's doorstep with the entry of Georgia and Ukraine; indeed, the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia will be quietly accepted.

Instead, Washington will be looking for Russia's assistance on a number of issues. Immediately, there will be hope that Moscow will help the US get supplies into Afghanistan. The bonus of Russia pull political, economic, and technological support from Iran is still envisaged, even if was not in the Obama letter to Medvedev sent last month. And the US will look for Russia to cause no problems over political and economic development in Eastern Europe.

All very sensible, but all obscuring the realism of realpolitik. Russia holds most of the political cards at the moment. Indeed, Moscow has been showing one of those cards on Afghanistan over recent weeks: no, you can't have your airbase in Kyrgyzstan, yes, you can have our support for non-military supply lines in Afghanistan, maybe you can have assured military routes if there are clear limits on the American bases in the region.

Vladimir Putin, the former Russian leader and still more than a political shadow, even had the cheek this week to point to the card up his sleeve. You know, he said quite loudly, we could hold up energy supplies to the Ukraine.

But you don't even have to look that far to see Moscow's smiling manoeuvres in the new relationship with the US. Hey, Mr Lavrov, now that we gave you that joke gift, how about cutting off Russian supplies for Iran's nuclear programme? The unfunny answer: The decision "will be made exclusively on the basis of law in accordance with Russian law, and will be under expert control, which is one of the strictest in the world and of course in accordance with international agreements."

That would be a No then. And, by the way, Sergei added, "We want our partners to act the same way and show restraint in military supplies to those countries where, including very recently, those weapons have been used very close to our borders."

That was the statement which led to the real comedy moment of the day --- watching State Department staffers burble that in no way was Lavrov thinking of Georgia. Nope, nope, nope.

There will be some screeching from Washington babble-ocracy today --- from some Congressmen, shout sheets like the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard, think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute --- that the Obama Administration has sold out to the Russians, handing them our new Eastern European partners, letting them off the hook on Iran. And some of those folks will pull out the argument that the Russian economy is in no shape to withstand a US kick-back against Moscow's intrigues.

Sorry, folks. The Russian economy may be shaky, but it's a very large shaky economy. There's no way that the world, including the US, can afford for it to collapse, especially when Russia --- with its control of key resources --- can take some folks with it.

Welcome to the Reset of the New Realism. Somewhere Henry Kissinger is giving a chuckle, and not just because it's 21st-century leaders who have to deal with charges of war crimes.

Clinton to Iran: You Can Play in the (Afghanistan) Sandbox

This is getting just a bit silly. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has wagged her finger at Iran all week, stoking up ideas of a renewed Iranian-Arab conflict, trying it on with the supposed letter to Russia linking missile defence to a cessation of support for Tehran's nuclear and missile programmes, and re-applying the label of Iran as supporter of "terrorism" (Hamas). So what is her encore?

Setting up the prospect of its first face-to-face encounter with Iran, the Obama administration has proposed a major conference on Afghanistan this month that would include Iran among the invited countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

“We presented the idea of what is being called a big-tent meeting, with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan,” she said at a news conference here after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. “If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited, as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”

In itself, that move is both wise and necessary. The Bush Administration never grasped, or chose to set aside, the significance of Iranian influence in the west of Afghanistan, and the recent travails of the US military --- supply lines closed, insurgency spreading, opium/heroin production out of control --- have only highlighted that Washington needs a regional strategy which includes Tehran.

But it's a bit rich, if not stupid, to do this after putting the rhetorical and diplomatic squeeze on Iran all week. The chances of a warm Iranian reception and possible attendance at the meeting, scheduled for the Netherlands on 31 March, would have been greater if the US Secretary of State had not spent the last 96 hours portraying Tehran as an untrustworthy, even pariah regime.

The resolution of this apparent contradiction in Washington policy is actually straightforward. What Clinton has attempted, rather crudely, is to define where the US will allow Iran to have influence. The Middle East, especially Israel-Palestine, is a no-go area. However, in Central Asia, Washington will accept that Iran has a role to play in logistics and support, while trying to ensure that Tehran has only a limited place in the re-arrangement of Afghan politics (and, of course, no place at all in US military operations in the centre of the country).

Clever, ain't it? Well, it would be, if you presume that Tehran will simply say, "Gee, thanks," and accept the American definition on where it is allowed to go. That's the naive response of The New York Times, which burbles, "Afghanistan may provide the most promising avenue for opening a diplomatic channel to Iran," --- and then forgets to mention Clinton's statements on the Middle East in the 1000-word article.

I could be wrong --- there might be winks, nudges, and secret discussions in which the Americans have tipped off Iranian colleagues, "OK, we're going to pose as if we really don't like you for a few days, but just go along with it until the next act" --- but I suspect the Iranian Government is going to bristle at the high-handed treatment since Monday. They may throw the Afghanistan offer back at the US; at the very least, I expect they will demand that Washington drop the hostile rhetoric on the Middle East and the Iran nuclear programme.

This latest Clinton move is the equivalent of a parent yelling at her child, "No, no, no!", then pointing the kid to the "right" place to play in. Well, I've done that, and I can tell you a litte secret:

The little b****** wouldn't stay in the sandbox.

Persian Letters: Iran, Missile Defense, and a Clinton Power Play?

Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - Iran is Still Very, Very Dangerous
Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - A US “Grand Strategy” on Israel-Palestine-Iran?

If Hillary Clinton's proclamations this week do signal a new American approach on Iran, the initiative is already coming a bit unstuck.

On Tuesday, we noted the Obama Administration's leak to The New York Times of a letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, sent in January, reportedly offering to trade US missile defence plans for Moscow's abandonment of Iranian nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. We predicted the manoeuvre was a non-starter: "The Russians have no desire to link their relations with the US to a change in their position on Iran."

We should have taken that bet straight to the bookies. Within hours of the Times revelation, Medvedev was telling reporters that "any swaps...would not be productive". Obama scrambled for cover, “What I said in the letter was that obviously to the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for, or the need for, a missile defense system."

But, with the text of the letter still secret, here's the key question: did it actually link a US pullback on missile defense to a Russian concession on Iran or did someone, possibly in Clinton's circle, make that up as part of the grand scheme she unfolded in the Middle East?

Here was the initial response from Medvedev's office: "Obama's letter contains various proposals and assessments of the current situation. But the message did not contain any specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives." That is in accord with the US President's statement, which suggests either that this is close to the truth.

We have already the US military spin furiously against the White House to push their plans on Iraq and Afghanistan. I would be far from surprised if a bloc in the State Department is doing the same here: today's New York Times drinks the Hillary Kool-Aid again, "Iran Looms Over Clinton’s Mideast Trip", making it seem as if she is merely reacting to an unexpected wave of concern from those she is meeting: "After three days of meetings in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, Mrs. Clinton said she was struck by the depth of fear about Iran and the extent to which officials say it meddles in their affairs."

Clinton made no comment on the letter to Moscow, a wise move given Obama's reaction to the leak, but she kept up the general drumbeat: "It is important to make the case that I, and others, have been making, that we think Iran poses a threat to Europe and Russia."

So we now have the prospect that in trying to play one diplomatic hand --- mobilising support against Iran --- Clinton or someone else influential in the State Department has jeopardised another effort, the US rapprochement with Russia. In which case....

Can anyone get me in the White House when Barack welcomes Hillary back from her journey?