1/5/10

Yesterday, Secretary Clinton issued a firm challenge to the Iranian regime, inviting them to the negotiating table, while emphasizing that the U.S. would not stand by in the face of their continued intransigence.  Clinton's comments came after indications that the Obama administration was preparing a push for internationally-backed sanctions that would punish the Iranian regime, but not Iranian people.  Taken together, these signs provide a picture of the Administration's evolving approach for dealing with Iran, an approach that marries acute pressure directed at the regime, with a continued willingness to engage.  This strategy reflects the administration's preference for an integrated diplomatic approach involving pressure and incentives, as well as short and long term objectives.  It also reflects an assessment that Iran's opposition is resilient and evolving, and - as some Green movement leaders have begun to say - that it can benefit from outside pressure if it is carefully, not indiscriminately, applied.

In contrast, conservatives have elected to ignore the situation on the ground, blowing past diplomacy or even containment in order to make a military confrontation seem inevitable.  Not only does this approach undermine the President's strategy for Iran, it ignores the aspirations of the Iranian opposition at a sensitive time.  Most damningly, prominent national security experts from both parties have warned that the rush to military confrontation would have dire consequences for U.S. security and economic interests, while at best delaying Iran's nuclear development.  The President should resist these reckless calls, maintaining focus on America's core objectives with Iran in accordance with American, regional, and global interests

As political turmoil continues in Iran and the regime continues to face opposition, U.S. leaves the door open for negotiations.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday wisely announced that the U.S. is leaving the door open to negotiations.  USA Today reports that, "The U.S. is consulting with other nations about new sanctions, but there is no hard-and-fast deadline for Iran to respond, Clinton said. The U.S., Clinton said, wants to ‘keep the door to dialogue open. But we've also made it clear we can't continue to wait and we cannot continue to stand by when the Iranians themselves talk about increasing their production of highly enriched uranium.'"  An anonymous State Department official expanded:  "We have avoided using the term "deadline" ourselves, since we have made clear that the door to dialogue will remain open," said the official. "But we have also made clear that we will not wait forever, and discussions on pressure and sanctions with our international partners have already begun."

Clinton's comments followed a period of intense political turmoil in Iran.  At the end of December, during the Shia sacred holiday of Ashura, the Iranian regime cracked down on massive street protests.  Voice of America reported that, "Iranian security forces cracked down on major anti-government protests in several cities on December 27, arresting more than 500 demonstrators.  Eight people were killed in the unrest." And Reuters reports that "Since the killing of eight people on the Shi'ite Muslim religious ritual of Ashura ... the political turmoil has entered a new phase. The establishment, which had tolerated sporadic clashes and anti-government rallies since the vote, has intensified a crackdown on the reform movement aimed at halting its street protests and activities... Since the clashes on Ashura on December 27, at least 20 leading moderates including three senior advisers to Mousavi have been arrested." Amidst the increasing unrest, 88 professors from Tehran University signed a letter on Monday asking Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to put an end to the widespread violence against protestors.  "Nighttime attacks on defenseless student dormitories and daytime assaults on students at university campuses, venues of education and learning, is not a sign of strength... Nor is beating up students and their mass imprisonment," read part of the letter, according to the New York Times.  Prior to the June elections, such a statement would have been unthinkable, and it demonstrates the changing domestic atmosphere inside Iran. [USA Today, 1/5/10. Haaretz, 1/5/10. Voice of America, 1/5/10. Reuters, 12/30/09. NY Times, 1/4/10.]

As Iranian opposition considers its approach, Obama administration readies multilateral targeted sanctions, support for Green Movement opposition in parallel to offer of negotiations.  The Washington Post recently reported, "The Obama administration is readying sanctions against discrete elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters... in what may be a difficult balancing act, officials say the administration wants to carefully target sanctions to avoid alienating the Iranian public -- while keeping the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran's nuclear program. The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people." Brookings Institution Iran expert Suzanne Maloney recently testified before the House of Representative's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, that sanctions "represent one of the few tools that the United States has at its disposal and, with good judgment and wider international support can help advance our objectives with respect to Iran. To maximize their effectiveness, the following principles should be foremost in the minds of American policymakers... 1) The objectives of sanctions should be clear, limited, and achievable... 2) Integrate sanctions within the continuum of U.S. diplomacy... 3) Seek broad international consensus and implementation... 4) Focus on measures with direct and immediate costs... 5) Consider the impact on Iran's internal climate."

Iran expert and former State Department adviser Ray Takeyh urged the administration to speak out against the regime's repression as an explicit part of its strategy: "You can have negotiations with Iran, as the United States has had negotiations with many adversarial countries while also at the same time disapproving on the internal practices of those regimes."  While he has pointed out that the Iranian opposition is currently somewhat incoherent - "It doesn't have a central nervous system" - some Iranian dissidents have begun expressing support for sanctions targeted at regime leaders.  A Green Movement member expressed support for international sanctions targeting the Revolutionary Guard to the Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman: "It is a very good move, provided that the people [aren't] affected very much by these sanctions... Another thing is that there have been so many arrests. Civil rights are the last thing [the regime] cares about. So besides sanctions, we need international pressures to prevent numerous arrests everyday."  [Washington Post, 12/30/09. Suzanne Maloney, 12/15/09. Ray Takeyh, 1/04/09. Washington Independent, 12/30/09]

Military and national security leaders call conservatives' reckless escalation ‘foolish,' but drumbeat continues.  In opposition to the administration's approach, in spite of the aspirations of the Iranian protesters, and in ignorance of the testimony of prominent national security experts, many conservatives have continued to push for military confrontation with Iran.  Writing in the Washington Times yesterday, John Bolton made it clear that he saw only one solution for dealing with countries like Iran:  "neither Iran nor North Korea will be negotiated out of the nuclear weapons programs...Moreover, we cannot be content merely trying to "contain" nuclear rogue states, since so doing simply leaves the initiative entirely with them, given their asymmetric advantage of threatening or actually using their weapons. These countries, each for its own peculiar reasons, are not subject to the Cold War deterrence principles." Bolton's op-ed followed Alan Kuperman's piece in the New York Times, which was even more explicit: "We have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better."  

Prominent national security experts have pushed back fiercely against these conservative war cries, arguing that the rush to military confrontation ignores basic U.S. interests:

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski: "Those advocating a tougher stance should remember that the United States would bear the brunt of the painful consequences in the event of an attack on Iran, whether the United States or Israel launched it. Iran would likely target U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, possibly destabilizing both countries; the Strait of Hormuz could become a blazing war zone; and Americans would again pay steep prices at the gas pump. Iran is an issue regarding which, above all, Obama must trust himself to lead and not to be led." [Zbigniew Brzezinski, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: "The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time." [Robert Gates, 9/25/09]

General Anthony Zinni, former head of US Central Command and former Bush Administration envoy to the Middle East:  "the problem with the strike is thinking through the consequences of Iranian reaction.  One mine that hits a tanker, and you can imagine what is going to happen to the price of oil and economies around the world.  One missile into a Gulf oil field or a natural gas processing field, you can imagine what's going to happen.  A missile attack on some of our troop formations in the Gulf or our bases in Iraq, activating sleeper cells, flushing out fast patrol boats and dowels that have mines that can go into the water in the Red Sea and elsewhere. You can see all these reactions that are problematic in so many ways. Economic impact, national security impact -- it will drag us into a conflict.  I think anybody that believes that it would be a clean strike and it would be over and there would be no reaction is foolish. [Anthony Zinni, 8/04/09.]

Former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns: "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." [Nicholas Burns, 5/06/09]

Colin Kahl, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East "[military action] will have an unpredictable set of consequences for the region but we can imagine a number of destabilizing ones. Depending on how Iran chose to retaliate, whether they chose to retaliate through the use of proxies in places like Iran or in Afghanistan through incitement of Shia communities... They could activate potentially activate or encourage Hizballah and Hamas to engage in reprisals and you can imagine the second and third order consequences of that on the peace process and on our outreach to the Muslim world and all of that.... We don't exactly know how it would unfold you have the prospects for unintended escalation and kind of losing control of what's going on,' Kahl warned, adding that even though any military strike could delay Iran's nuclear program, it could also ‘incentivize the Iranians to go all the way to weaponize.'" [Colin Kahl, via Think Progress, 10/1/09]

[John Bolton, 1/04/09. Alan Kuperman, 12/24/09]

What We're Reading

The suicide bomber who killed CIA and Jordanian intelligence agents in Afghanistan was a double agent whom was recruited to find Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahr.  Infiltration mitigation and intelligence reforms are likely to result.  Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has delayed the release of Parliament for its winter holiday so that it can approve a new list of cabinet nominees, following the rejection of the majority of the original list of nominees.

While the United States has a strong security relationship with Yemen, analysts are growing wary of working with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been less interested in maintaining domestic political and tribal connections and more in consolidating his family's power.

The Kenyan authorities are purportedly planning to deport a Jamaican-born Muslim cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal, who may have helped inspire the Detroit airline bomber.

Five American Muslims being detained in Pakistan as suspected terrorist recruits are pleading not guilty to charges.

The nation's top climate scientists and the CIA are collaborating to utilize the federal government's intelligence assets, including spy satellites and other classified sensors, to assess ongoing climate change.

Cargo freighters sailing off the coast of Somalia have begun to hire armed guards.

Web users reported an outage of China's strict Internet controls, known as the Great Firewall, for several hours Monday morning, allowing them brief access to banned Web sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter before national controls were reinstalled.

Commentary of the Day

The New York Times condemns Uganda's government for seeking to pass legislation making homosexuality a capital offense.

Following the foiled Christmas Day airline bombing, Eugene Robinson notes how the US' state-sponsors designation illogically extends extra travel scrutiny for Cubans.

The LA Times notes innocent Americans have been killed in the crossfire of Mexico's ongoing war against the drug cartels.