9/23/09

Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak to the United Nations General Assembly.  He will make predictably odious statements, and they will be seized upon by conservatives in the U.S. as evidence that the U.S. should abandon its policy of engaging the Iranian regime. These critics should be ignored. This past summer has demonstrated that engagement weakens – not strengthens – the Iranian regime. The willingness of the U.S. to sit down for negotiations in an effort to address Iran’s nuclear program and possibly to reorient the relationship emboldened those Iranians seeking reform and undermined regime hardliners who thrived on conflict with the U.S. Our willingness to engage has also led to a more cohesive international stance on Iran and will force Iran to clarify its position toward the West. Finally, engagement with Iran puts focus on the core issues – its nuclear program, human rights, and its role in the region – while delegitimizing Ahmadinejad’s theatrical ravings.

Conservatives who argue for abandoning engagement are stuck in the failed policies of the past: unilateral and unrealistic sanctions, useless saber-rattling, and wild notions of regime change. This stance defies the opinions of top military leaders and leading Iran experts. While the U.S. must be ready to deploy internationally backed pressure if needed, the best means forward with Iran is to stay committed to the policy of engagement.

Ahmadinejad on the defensive as he heads to the UN General Assembly.  A year ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to New York for the UN General assembly emboldened.  His country having achieved the ability to “influence all the region’s security dilemmas,” in the words of Iran experts Ray Takeyh and Suzanne Maloney, Ahmadinejad delivered a rambling, hate-filled tirade, attacking Israel and the West.  

This year, Ahmadinejad is on the defensive.  The instability following the elections has opened schisms that continue to threaten Ahmadinejad’s base of support.  Earlier this month a conservative clerical association in Qom rebuked him, urging the President his supporters to “concentrate their minds seriously on economic woes and social challenges and avoid uttering unnecessary and provocative remarks,” according to the Los Angeles Times.  His regime’s egregious violations of demonstrators’ rights have dampened international enthusiasm for him and his outrageous anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism.  

The Obama administration’s willingness to engage has further undermined Ahmadinejad abroad and at home.  Former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns says the Administration’s early efforts at engagement effectively put him “on [the] defensive prior to this election because of our ability now to open up the vista for the possibility of negotiations.”  As National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi put it last June, Obama’s “diplomatic outreach and removal of this threat perception has not necessarily created fissures among the Iranian elite in and of itself, but it has weakened the glue that created unity among Iran's many political factions.”  

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 9/23/08. Ray Takeyh and Suzanne Maloney, via Brookings, 12/08. Los Angeles Times, 9/08/09. Nick Burns, 6/11/09. Trita Parsi, 6/22/09]

Engagement remains the best route to advance core US interests.  After the speeches are over, engagement will clarify Iran’s position – and that of other nations – and build international support for an effective, common approach.

• Chester Crocker, a Reagan-era State Department official, says that the administration’s critics misunderstand engagement.  He writes in the New York Times, “Let’s get a few things straight. Engagement in statecraft is not about sweet talk. Nor is it based on the illusion that our problems with rogue regimes can be solved if only we would talk to them. Engagement is not normalization, and its goal is not improved relations. It is not akin to détente, working for rapprochement, or appeasement... diplomatic engagement is proven to work — in the right circumstances.”

• Secretary Gates said earlier this month, “Our view, and the view that we have shared, I might say, strongly with all of our friends and allies, in the region as well as elsewhere, is that the way to deal with the Iranian nuclear program at this point is through diplomatic and economic efforts.”

• Karim Sadjapour of the Carnegie Endowment argues, “Engagement is not an end in itself, but rather a means that seeks, among other things, to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions and moderate its regional policies. I hope that negotiations will bear fruit, and I think that Undersecretary of State Bill Burns is an incredibly skilled and thoughtful diplomat.”

• Former Undersecretary of State and Bush administration point man on Iran Nick Burns said in a recent interview with World Politics Review that, "I think negotiations are the right way to go. I don't think they have a strong possibility of succeeding, but the ability of the U.S. to get countries to support sanctions depends on the U.S. going to negotiations."

• Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon also spoke with the New York Times’ Roger Cohen about a “back end” to the policy of engagement. According to Cohen, “[t]he back end is punitive sanctions, in the event engagement fails, that would change the Iranian calculus on further uranium refinement: cutting off Iranian banks’ access to credit; extending that isolation to insurance and shipping; stopping refined petroleum products from reaching Iran.” However, as Cohen adds, for that back-end to be available “Obama will need to prove his outreach is more than rhetoric and that other nations have bought into the notion that a near-boycott of Iran should be imposed.”

• Brookings Institution Iran expert Suzanne Maloney testified before Congress that despite the new obstacles that have emerged following Iran’s presidential elections, engagement represents the only path forward.  “The Obama administration's interest in engagement was never predicated on the palatability of the Iranian leadership - indeed, until very recently the conventional American wisdom tended to presume a second Ahmadinejad term - but on the urgency of the world's concerns and the even less promising prospects for the array of alternative U.S. policy options."  

[Chester Crocker, NY Times, 9/14/09. Robert Gates, 9/04/09. Karim Sadjapour, 9/23/09. Nick Burns, World Politics Review, 9/4/09. Roger Cohen, NY Times, 8/02/09. Suzanne Maloney, 7/22/09]

The conservative position on Iran – saber-rattling, unilateral sanctions, and emphasis on regime-change – is dangerous, rejected by U.S. national security leaders.  Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and prominent neoconservative John Bolton recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “[a]dopting tougher economic sanctions is simply another detour away from hard decisions on whether to accept a nuclear Iran or support using force to prevent it.”  Meanwhile, Dick Cheney’s former national security advisor John Hannah called for regime change this month, writing, “nothing seems more likely to enhance the prospects for peacefully resolving the nuclear issue than the Islamic Republic's replacement by a more democratic government.”  
Meanwhile, top military and defense officials, former diplomats, and Iran experts agree that unilateral, hostile action against Iran would be “disastrous.”

• Former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Burns also explained the serious repercussions of a military strike in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last May: “Air strikes would undoubtedly lead Iran to hit back asymmetrically against us in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider region, especially through its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. This reminds us of Churchill's maxim that, once a war starts, it is impossible to know how it will end.”  More recently he affirmed that the use of force “does not make sense at this time.”

• Carnegie Iran expert, Karim Sadjapour is “convinced that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would actually welcome a military strike; it may be their only hope to silence popular dissent and heal internal political rifts.”

• Iran expert Robin Wright and national security expert Robert Litwak, “Yet a military strike is also likely to backfire, instead rallying Persian nationalism around the regime, just as Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion mobilized support for the revolution at a time it was running out of steam.”

• Secretary Gates, who was originally appointed to the position by George W. Bush, agrees, in fact saying that it would be disastrous. He wrote in Parameters journal last year that, “Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need. In fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels.”  

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said last year on FOX News,  “I'm fighting two wars, and I don't need a third one... I worry about the instability in that part of the world and, in fact, the possible unintended consequences of a strike like that and, in fact, having an impact throughout the region that would be difficult to both predict exactly what it would be and then the actions that we would have to take to contain it.”  

• Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, stated that unilateral sanctions “only help solidify the regime” by reunifying conservatives around their hostility to Western nations.

[John Bolton, WS Journal, 8/31/09. John Hannah, Foreign Policy, 9/11/09. Bret Stephens, WS Journal, 9/15/09. Nick Burns, 5/06/09. Nick Burns, World Politics Review, 9/4/09. Karim Sadjapour, 9/23/09. Robin Wright and Robert Litwak, 9/13/09. Secretary Robert Gates, Parameters, 2008. Admiral Michael Mullen, Fox News, 7/20/08. Abbas Milani, Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/30/09]

What We’re Reading

President Obama mulls over General McChrystal’s assessment on Afghanistan before making any decisions on resource allocation. The Pentagon continues to reject calls from Congress, mostly Republicans, for General McChrystal to testify. Congress is also pressing military officials to avoid rules of engagement which force soldiers spend more time protecting the Afghan population instead of focusing on hunting Taliban fighters, possibly putting them at greater risk.

Russian counternarcotics officials pressure the US to be more active against poppy production in Afghanistan, as a large segment of smuggled Afghan heroin goes through Russia.

The Sunni man credited with organizing the Baghdad resistance against al Qaeda in Iraq is denied a visa to immigrate to the United States.

President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao pledge to tackle climate change, but domestic constraints in both countries could limit action.

After various rounds of voting, UNESCO rejected the bid of controversial Egyptian Cultural Minister Farouk Hosny to be their next Director General in favor of Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova.

Following ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s return, American and Latin American officials race to defuse the growing tension between Honduras’ two opposing political parties.

US border agents closed the border with Mexico Tuesday after human smugglers tried to ram a van through a checkpoint.

The Burmese foreign minister quietly visited Washington last Friday, meeting with Sen. Jim Webb.

Palestinian and Israeli leaders agreed to a two-week timetable to set conditions for resuming a formal peace process, with President Obama pressing both sides to move forward.

Commentary of the Day

The Washington Post argues that Obama’s efforts on Middle East peace should be much more focused on issues like a final border.

The New York Times applauds President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao’s agreement to cut carbon emissions, but they hope for more concrete action.  The LA Times agreed, asking President Obama to be as specific as President Jintao was in marking carbon-cutting goals.

The LA Times argues that Bargram should not have the same detainee policy as Guantanamo, and is hopeful that more detainee rights will be afforded those held in Bagram.