Why the Role Reversal on Iran? Advocates of engagement understand that Iran isn't able to negotiate now, given its internal paralysis

The ultra-hardline Iranian newspaper Kayhan argued yesterday that the West is confused about how to engage Iran in the aftermath of Iran’s election and crackdown on peaceful demonstrators. However, it isn’t confusion that they’re witnessing – it’s a surprising role reversal. Many people who previously advocated for engagement now say that we need to hold off for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Iran’s fragmented political system is in too much disarray to respond to U.S.-backed diplomacy. Conversely, many hawks in the U.S. are now arguing that engagement must begin immediately.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it clear what the Obama administration thinks. “We’ve certainly reached out and made it clear that’s what we’d be willing to do, even now, despite our absolute condemnation of what they’ve done in the election and since, but I don’t think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now,” she said. As one blogger astutely put it, demanding Iran to talk to the U.S. right now would be akin to Russia demanding that the United States negotiate an arms reduction treaty in the midst of Bush v. Gore.

Rather than benefiting from Iran’s vulnerabilities, engaging now could lead to the most dangerous scenario. As Dr. Trita Parsi said yesterday in Foreign Policy magazine:

"Of all scenarios the Obama administration could end up facing — an Iran that refuses to come to the table, for example, or an Iran that only uses talks to play for time — the worst scenario is another one: where the parties begin talks according to the set timetable, but fail to reach an agreement due to an inability to deliver. If talks fail, U.S. policymakers will be left with increasingly unpalatable options as a result."

Perhaps this explains why advocates of sanctions and/or war, who not long ago were saying that we shouldn’t talk to Iran at all, are now saying that the U.S. should engage Iran immediately with a short timetable.

Why the role reversal? Many in Washington believe engagement is a pointless exercise and are eager to impose sanctions and/or bomb Iran. The perma-skeptics of diplomacy think we should impose an artificial deadline, rush to engage, and then run headlong into Iran’s political paralysis. Their plan would have us miss the deadline, sanction Iran as much as possible, and then lobby for the U.S. to bomb Iran when sanctions fail to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Of course, this is an incredibly foolish “solution.” As every Iran expert worth their salt has noted, bombing Iran is perhaps the only thing that can cement this government’s hold on power indefinitely into the future.

With Israel’s head of intelligence publicly saying Iran won’t be able to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon until 2014 at the earliest, the U.S. can and should wait for the right time to engage.

Reposted from NIAC Insight

The Iranian Nuclear Threat, Obama and Israel, by Gidon D. Remba, Israel Horizons, Summer 2009

As published in Israel Horizons, Summer 2009 (and the Meretz USA blog: Part 1 and Part 2)

Barack Obama was swept into the White House promising to reverse the Bush administration’s aversion to diplomatic engagement with new overtures to the Arab and Islamic worlds. While the Obama administration remains committed to direct talks with Iran in the wake of its fraudulent election and brutal suppression of peaceful protests, the message has been leavened with new signals. The administration will not yield to the demands of Republicans, Israeli government hardliners, AIPAC and others in the organized American Jewish community to enact “enhanced sanctions” now. It understands that doing so would quash any hope of Iranian openness to a deal preventing the development of highly-enriched weapons-grade uranium and nuclear arms through a new system of robust monitoring.

Obama now says that there is a September “time frame” for Iran to respond to offers to discuss its nuclear program. If by then Iran has not accepted the invitation to talk, the United States and “potentially a lot of other countries” are going to say “we need to take further steps.” The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations is planning a “Washington Day” on Sept. 10 that “would bring together 300 to 500 leaders from across the United States to press for [new] sanctions legislation.” But the ongoing schism among clerical leaders within the Iranian regime may make it impossible for even secret talks with the US to begin within that short a time-line.

The administration will need to co-opt Congressional leaders to resist any action on new sanctions legislation, if it believes there is a chance for an arrangement with Iran. This will lead to new tensions between President Obama and much of the organized Jewish community, who will be calling even more vociferously for the administration to abandon diplomacy and ratchet up economic pressure on Iran.

On the other hand, if, after a fair trial, diplomacy fails, and the administration decides, in concert with other countries, to move ahead with new sanctions, those who pressed for a backup plan to engagement will demand a new Plan B in case enhanced sanctions prove unable to halt Iran’s march down the nuclear path. The Obama administration could develop a new policy based on nuclear deterrence and containment of Iran, as General John Abizaid, who headed the US Central Command, has suggested.

In short, the US, Israel and the Arab world would live with a nuclear Iran, one which might have the capability to develop nuclear weapons. Prying Syria from Iran’s orbit through an American-backed peace accord with Israel would reinforce this approach, weakening Iran strategically. Or Israel could, more insistently than before, demand US acquiescence or support for a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear sites.

Alan Dershowitz opined in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Has Obama Turned On Israel?”: “If the Obama administration were to shift toward learning to live with a nuclear Iran and attempt to deny Israel the painful option of attacking its nuclear targets as a last resort, that would…weaken the security of the Jewish state.”

But it’s far from clear that opposing an Israeli preemptive strike would harm Israel’s security. It may well be the converse: an attack on Iran may be the single most dangerous course, embroiling the US and Israel in a new, unwinnable, catastrophic region-wide war.

Vice President Joe Biden recently signaled a more forceful tone by reminding Iran that Israel has the sovereign right to pursue a military option after the diplomatic window closes. “We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do…if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

Both Biden and Obama made clear that the door remains open to engagement with Iran, but Biden suggested that if Iran wishes to avoid a host of negative consequences—“isolation” and the possibility of an Israeli preemptive strike—its leaders had better engage soon with the US on the nuclear issue. Alluding to the administration’s commitment to pursue negotiations with Iran despite Israeli objections, Biden stressed that “there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States…we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world.”

Would the US deny to Israeli aircraft over-flight rights in Iraq? The Vice President offered that “Israel has a right to determine what’s in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what’s in our interests.” Translation: Iran should consider that even if the US were to deny over-flight rights to Israeli planes seeking to reach Iran via Iraq, Israel might still opt to strike Iran some other way, if Iran does not come to terms with the US.

In the very same news cycle, it was reported that an Israeli sub (which can be equipped with nuclear-armed cruise missiles) traversed the Suez Canal with Egypt's permission, putting it in closer range to Iran in case Israel opted to launch a preemptive strike or a second strike. At the same time, the Mossad chief reportedly assured Netanyahu that the Saudis had agreed to Israel overflying their territory in a mission that would serve their “common security interests”—a report immediately denied by the Saudis, as expected. Nevertheless, Iran was meant to get the hint.

President Obama wasted no time in clarifying that the US had “absolutely not” given Israel a green light for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. “We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East," said the President.

Ynet reported on July 16 that two “Israeli missile-firing warships sailed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea, ten days after a submarine capable of launching a nuclear missile strike. The Times of London quoted an Israeli official as saying, ’Israel is investing time in preparing itself for the complexity of an attack on Iran. These maneuvers are a message to Iran that Israel will follow up on its threats.’ The report described [the naval maneuvers] as ‘a clear signal that Israel was able to put its strike force within range of Iran at short notice.’”

Are such threats of Israeli military action simply bluster, a way of exerting pressure on Iran to reach agreement with the US? Or will Israel launch a preemptive assault on Iran?

Israeli Strike or Bust?

Neoconservatives have lost no time beating the drums of war and insisting that the time for an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear program is now. “With no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable,” urged John Bolton. Ridiculing the administration’s willingness to attempt direct talks with Iran as a “theological commitment to negotiations”—a projection of Bolton’s own ideological opposition to them under any circumstances—Bolton asserts that there is no point to waiting for talks to play out with Iran.

“Unfortunately, the Obama administration has a ‘Plan B,’” he continues, “which would allow Iran to have a ‘peaceful’ civil nuclear power program while publicly ‘renouncing’ the objective of nuclear weapons. Obama would define such an outcome as ‘success,’ even though in reality it would hardly be different from what Iran is doing and saying now.” But the point of negotiations is to establish an intrusive inspections system not unlike the one that succeeded in preventing Saddam from re-developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a fact that Bolton finds too inconvenient to acknowledge.

In April 2008, Benjamin Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, said to Stephen Hadley, then President George W. Bush’s national security adviser: “Ahmadinejad is a modern Hitler and the mistakes that were made prior to the Second World War must not be repeated.” Soon after he became prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu repeatedly issued warnings about the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons: “These are not regular times,” he said. “The danger is hurtling toward us. The real danger [is] underestimating the threat. . . My job is first and foremost to ensure the future of the state of Israel…the leadership's job is to eliminate the danger. Who will eliminate it? It is us or no one.”

Such statements from Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have stoked apocalyptic fears among the Israeli Jewish public, and much of the mainstream American Jewish leadership. A former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has written that “If President Obama’s diplomatic efforts and subsequent tougher sanctions fail, then the president and the world should understand and support Israel's engagement in military action, if it so undertakes, to halt or delay Iran's capability of dropping a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv. One Holocaust is enough for the Jewish people.”

The “mad mullahs” picture of a regime driven by a martyr complex—a nation of irrational, undeterrable suicide bombers—has become firmly rooted in the Israeli Jewish psyche. But a series of reports has cast doubt on this view of Israel’s situation—and on the entire incendiary complex of fears propelling us towards an Israeli attack on Iran. Yediot Ahronoth security correspondent Ronen Bergman reported that “Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the former chief of military intelligence, described Israel's public perception of the Iranian nuclear threat as ‘distorted.’ His view—which is shared by many in Israel's security and intelligence services—is that Israel is not Iran's primary target,” nor its main motive for seeking a nuclear weapons capacity, and therefore, “Israel must not attack Iran unilaterally.”

Israel’s intelligence services recognize, continues Bergman, that “throughout its 30 years of existence, the Iranian regime has shown pragmatism and moderation whenever its survival was at stake. And the Iranians clearly understand that a nuclear attack against Israel would lead to a devastating Israeli counterstrike that, among other things, would mean the end of the revolutionary regime. Finally, the Mossad and military intelligence believe that the real reason the Iranians are intent on acquiring nuclear weapons … is to deter US intervention and efforts at regime change.”

It is widely understood among those who have closely studied the Iranian regime that it operates according to the principle of maslehat, “expediency,” taking a cost-benefit approach to decision-making. “Far from being a suicidally ideological regime,” observes Iran expert Mohsen M. Milani, “Tehran seeks to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic while advancing the country’s interests through negotiations.” Internal repression and détente with the US both serve these ends, as they did for post-Tiananmen China and Soviet Russia.

According to Dr. Reuven Pedatzur, a miltary affairs scholar at Tel Aviv University, an exhaustive study by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington concluded that “it is questionable whether Israel has the military capability to destroy Iran's nuclear program, or even to delay it for several years.” The odds of success from a military point of view are not great, the study's authors conclude. Second, Israel would only attack Iran's known nuclear sites. But it is likely that following such a strike—which would be unlikely to succeed even against the known sites—Iran would accelerate its uranium enrichment efforts in its secret sites, thus negating any possible benefits of a successful attack.

Third, Iran would certainly retaliate against Israeli targets with Shahab-3 missiles, as would Hezbollah and Hamas with many thousands of their own rockets, while also dispatching waves of suicide bombers into Israel. “Hezbollah now has some 40,000 rockets; Israel does not have a response to these rockets. The rocket defense systems now being developed (Iron Dome and Magic Wand) are still far from completion, and even after they become operational, it is doubtful they will prove effective against thousands of rockets launched at Israel.” The Israeli strike would also sow instability throughout the Middle East and potentially spur attacks against US forces and American allies in the region, while squelching Iran’s reformist movement.

The Pentagon’s top military and civilian leaders have long opposed an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized that military action “could have grave consequences and would be very destabilizing.” Mullen also suggested that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran holds promise. But the window for diplomacy to avert a dangerous Middle East nuclear arms race is closing, he warned.

Will Israel continue to huff and puff and threaten that it might hit Iran? Will it strike? Israel is unlikely to attack while the US is attempting to engage Iran; such action would jeopardize Israel’s good relations with the United States. But what if diplomacy, and sanctions, fail?

Political scientist Steven Cook has suggested that “all those indications portending an Israeli attack – the strike against Syria in September 2007, the large air exercises over the Mediterranean in the summer of 2008, and the recent countrywide drills that the IDF’s Home Command conducted [and Israel’s more recent naval maneuvers, coupled with the upcoming Arrow missile interceptor tests at a US missile range in the Pacific]—might actually indicate that Israel is trying to figure out how to deter Iran, rather than attack it.”

But security analyst Bergman has reached less sanguine conclusions from his conversations with Israeli government officials: “As Iran approaches nuclear weapons capability—some time in 2010, according to current Mossad estimates—an increasing number of people in Netanyahu's circle will adopt the view that Israel needs to take action and that the United States will be understanding of Israel's needs. And if the Obama administration is not so understanding? Israel may decide that the existential danger posed by a potential second Holocaust warrants risking even a serious rift with the United States. Ultimately, the fear of a nuclear-armed state whose leader talks openly of destroying Israel may outweigh the views of the country's intelligence experts.”


Gidon D. Remba is executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Change (http://www.jews4change.com/), a nonprofit organization which supported Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy and advocates for a progressive domestic and foreign policy agenda. He also edits the group’s “Say No To War With Iran” site (http://saynotoiranwar.blogspot.com/) and blogs at Tough Dove Israel (http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/). He served as senior foreign press editor and translator in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, 1977-1978, during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: The US must ultimately talk to the Iranian regime about nuclear proliferation

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Rachel Maddow 6/23/09: After concurring with President Obama's condemnation of the Iranian regime's violent repression of peaceful protesters, Albright responded in part as follows to the question of whether the US will, in the end, have to recognize that Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran, if indeed he remains in power:

“. . . The issue is ultimately what are US national interests. The President said that we are very concerned about the direction that Iran is going on [their] nuclear program….I have to say that we have dealt with a lot of odious people in order to deal with issues that are larger.

"For instance, we dealt with Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, we dealt with other people that we don’t like when we have to deal with America’s national interests, and the truth is that nuclear proliferation is one of the biggest problems that we have.”

Watch the video of Albright's comments below:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(The entire interview is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#31514869)

Top Republican Senator Richard Lugar: US should sit down with Iran despite post-election turmoil

6/21/09
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Republican senator says the United States should still sit down with Iran, despite postelection turmoil in Tehran. Sen. Richard Lugar says the U.S. has a goal of containing Iran's nuclear ambition. He says the two countries should meet even though there are protests in Tehran over this month's presidential vote.

Lugar, R-Ind., says President Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should be ready to meet with their Iranian counterparts. Lugar spoke to CNN's "State of the Union."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

For video see
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/21/richard-lugar-us-should-s_n_218538.html

WASHINGTON, June 21 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., says the United States should "sit down" with Iran to negotiate an end to its nuclear program. Echoing a sentiment expressed last week by President Barack Obama that he would continue to seek a dialogue with Iran even in the face of a crackdown on government political opponents, Lugar said on CNN's "State of the Union" news program Sunday that he, too, would want to continue direct talks.

"We would sit down because our objective is to eliminate the nuclear program that is in Iran," said Lugar, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Of course, we really have to get into the nuclear weapons. ... Now we have a new opportunity in which we might very well say we want communication with Iran."

An Israeli military strike on Iran would have snuffed out Iran’s new democratic revolution

Bernard Avishai reminds us that had Israeli hawks had their way last year and launched a military strike on Iran--blocked, thankfully, by a chastened Bush Administration and Pentagon--it would have snuffed out the democratic revolution we are witnessing today in Iran:

"As I write, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mainly young Iranians are deciding whether or not to risk going out into the streets. There is little someone like myself can add regarding the poignancy of their decision. Yet one thing seems obvious: a generation of Iranians has been changed by these rallies--changed in roughly the opposite way they would have been had Israeli military intelligence got its way, and won American and IDF agreement to an aerial strike on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year.

"Even in the face of mass protest, not only did Mossad chief Meir Dagan refuse to admit the obvious--that an attack would have caused widespread carnage, put Iran on a war footing, and preempted its twittering liberalism--but he's had the audacity to predict to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee what nobody could possibly know at this point, that the protests will peter out; that, anyway, a Mousavi government would be worse than Ahmadinejad's regime, for it would give Iran's nuclear program a prettier face. ("To hell with those students; the PowerPoint is done.")

"Still, it is not military planners like Dagan who seem reprehensible to me. It is the politicians and writers who channel them. We pay people like Dagan to sum the weapons of potential enemies and come up with ways to foil them. (The only reason we'll be able to live with a nuclear Iran, should this become necessary, is because military planners will have figured out how to position Israel's own nuclear deterrent.) And Dagan's main job is to think like a "made man," turning worst case contingencies into scenarios, and scenarios into "predictions." Mossad people say they also look at motive, not just capability. But who doesn't know how easily military people assume that capability translates into motive, much the way economists assume big money translates into investment. Motive? We are not talking about James Joyce here.

"On the other hand, nothing seems more irresponsible to me than politicians and political analysts who lack the poise to stand up to military intelligence when important policy decisions are taking shape; politicians so eager to prove that they are not still trusting children that they remain forever sophomoric, defining the world as a test of wills, fearing (as Orwell did in "Shooting an Elephant") looking like a fool; writers so eager to prove that they are not just brainy wimps that they hang out with, and flaunt being respected by, officers.

"So before the moment passes, we should give thanks that, owing (among other things) to McCain's defeat, this was one attack that never took place--and now never will, since it is obvious, even to the mullahs, I suspect, how the regime can simply be waited out, much the way Communist regimes were waited out; how they have lost the young [and many other segments of Iranian society].

"And before the next moment of crisis, we should not fail to note some of the most irresponsible journalism of the last couple of years: Benny Morris' call for a limited nuclear strike last July, and, more recently, Jeffery Goldberg's implied endorsement of some kind of attack. (Both were given enormous space in, of all places, the New York Times op-ed section, so the editors should probably be remembered, too.) And who can forget Haaretz's Arie Shavit, who is silent about Iran this week, but is already taking credit instead for Netanyhu's policy of a demilitarized Palestine?

"This accounting may seem small of me, but the celebrity culture being what it is, the periodic violence of extremists being what it is--and the fears summoned by ordinary neurosis being what they are--these writers will no doubt hang on nicely, cultivating their reputation for toughness (though Goldberg, to his credit, is repulsed by Dagan's statements, and seems to have come around to the idea that warning against the reckless use of force is not the same as weakness). Anyway, there is often credit for talking tough, while warning against violence is thankless. Just not at this moment, surely, and not in this case."

This passage from a reformed Jeffrey Goldberg from June 16 is worth reproducing:

"...I care mainly about which Iranians have the bomb, rather than whether Iran has the bomb. Maybe this is naive -- and maybe I'm caught up, as a suspected neocon fellow traveler, in the excitement of watching Middle Easterners attempting to free themselves from such an obviously tyrannical regime -- but I have to think that the people flooding the streets in protest are not the sort of people who would want to see their country enter a nuclear confrontation with Israel. Not, God forbid, because they like Israel, but because they're rational enough, and interested enough in the betterment of their own lives, to demand a government that puts a limit on Iran's foreign adventures. I recognize that the people of Iran do not currently shape their country's nuclear policy -- and their country's policies to Israel and the West -- but one can hope for better days, when they do."

How to Responsibly Advocate for Human Rights in Iran--Listen to what Iranian human rights groups, and the protestors themselves, ask of us

Iranian Human Rights Group Hopes the U.S. Stays Out of Election
By Spencer Ackerman 6/13/09 6:15 PM
...The White House is trying to strike a balance between three pressures: speaking in a Samizdat fashion to the Moussavi supporters who have just seen the election stolen by Ahmadinejad and the regime; not interfering in post-election events out of a very justified concern that the appearance of U.S. involvement will act as a delegitimizing force; and preserving the administration’s freedom of action should it have to accept a second Ahmadinejad term.

And with the exception of respecting the third consideration, the strongly anti-Ahmadinejad Hadi Ghaemi, New York-based spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, doesn’t think the White House ought to say much else.

The White House statement may not fully capture the depth of the crime committed against the Iranian people. “But I think it’s wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance,” Ghaemi said in a phone interview. The White House can and should “show concern for human life and protesters’ safety and promote tolerance and dialogue.” But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the United States, whether under former President George W. Bush or under President Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

Ghaemi continues to say that the international community should present a united front that gives “no legitimacy” to the election. In particular, he wants United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express “serious grievances” about how the election was conducted. “Sanctions and military threats, all these things are counterproductive,” Ghaemi said. The initiative has to be expressed and promoted by the Iranians themselves, particularly from Moussavi and other exponents of popular Iranian outrage. “It very much depends on what leading reformers, including Moussavi, ask them to do, and how much responsibility do they take for exposing them to danger. If they put their tails between their legs and walk away, it will be very sad.”

And: “…government forces are already accusing protesters of collaborating with the U.S., and that protesters are actually worried that Obama will make an explicit show of support, as that would restore some credibility to what the government has said about the election and, more importantly, could undermine a reform coalition in which some factions are none-too-fond of America. http://washingtonindependent.com/47134/the-virtues-of-silence


This Is Not About Making the U.S. Feel Good About Itself

By Spencer Ackerman 6/15/09 3:30 PM
There’s a lot to agree with in my friend George Packer’s post about what’s happening in Iran. But I think George, who excels at intellectual history, might be missing a certain crucial component of the equation when viewing Obama’s actions here through the prism of realism vs. progressivism:

"With riot police and armed militiamen beating and, in a few reported cases, killing unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Iran’s cities, for the Obama Administration to continue parsing equivocal phrases serves no purpose other than to make it look feckless. Part of realism is showing that you have a clear grasp of reality—that you know the difference between decency and barbarism when both are on display for the whole world to see. A stronger American stand—taken, as much as possible, in concert with European countries and through multilateral organizations—would do more to improve America’s negotiating position than weaken it. Acknowledging the compelling voices of the desperate young Iranians who, after all, only want their votes counted, would not deep-six the possibility of American-Iranian talks. Ahmadinejad and his partners in the clerical-military establishment will talk to us exactly when and if they think it’s in their interest. Right now, they don’t appear to. And the tens of millions of Iranians who voted for change and are the long-term future of that country will always remember what America said and did when they put their lives on the line for their values."

What’s missing here is an effort at determining what the Iranian dissenters want from the Obama administration. The fact that it’s not clear what the answer to that question is itself serves as a powerful indicator that the protest movement is first and foremost concerned about handling this on its own. As best I can tell from NIAC and from Twitter and from talking with Iranian human rights advocates in the United States, the dissenters want the Obama administration to refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s claims of victory; to express concern for the safety of the protesters; and then to get out of the way. The Obama administration can be fairly criticized for not saying enough on the second point, though if, as Michael Scherer believes, Obama’s going to say something at 5 p.m., maybe that will change. But it doesn’t follow from Obama’s muted discussion of the dissenters that he’s indifferent to their plight. From talking to administration officials, I am convinced that they are very concerned that American rhetorical support will immediately become a cudgel in the hands of Ahmadinejad. Would that outcome advance human rights?

It’s emotionally unsatisfying not to proclaim unequivocal support for the protesters. But the truer measure of support, as Trita Parsi told me, is to follow their lead. Moussavi, for instance, has not issued any statement about what he wants the international community to do. If the protesters begin calling for a more direct American response, then that really will have to compel the administration to reconsider its position. But until then, with so many lives at stake, the administration can’t afford to take a stance just because it makes Americans feel just and righteous.

Trita Parsi on Obama’s Iran Comments
http://washingtonindependent.com/47203/trita-parsi-on-obamas-iran-comments
By Spencer Ackerman 6/16/09 9:35 AM
After two days of criticism that he should explicitly side with the Iranian opposition, President Obama yesterday said he was “deeply troubled” by the Iranian regime’s willingness to resort to violence, and while it’s “up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be,” he believes “the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.”

"Ahmadinejad prepared for dialogue with the US; clerical leaders would support a deal with the US on nuclear issue"

"Ahmadinejad...is even prepared for a dialogue with Washington under the right circumstances, as he stated earlier. But he is empowered now. The other leaders would support him to strike a deal with the US on the nuclear issue as long as it is in Iran's interest." Iran expert Flynt Leverett, Der Spiegel interview, June 15, 2009

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett in Politico: While I don't agree with their view that Ahamdinejad won the election without fraud ("Ahamdinejad won; get over it"), their prescription for what President Obama must do, once the internal crisis in Iran is resolved, is the larger point that we must not miss. Why so? Because the United States, Israel and our Sunni Arab allies are headed for a new and far more disastrous regional war with Iran in the coming months if we do not find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem:

"The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against engaging Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s victory may force Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the deficiencies and internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before the Iranian election, the Obama administration had fallen for the same illusion as many of its predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics is primarily about personalities and finding the right personality to deal with. That is not how Iranian politics works.

The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centers; within that system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of national security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program and relations with the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s election would have continued the nuclear program as Iran’s president; none would agree to its suspension.

Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening with the United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, respectful of Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional importance, accepting of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full range of civil nuclear technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle — and aimed at genuine rapprochement.

Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the interests of the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. It is time for the Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this approach — with an Iranian administration headed by the reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State university. Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both worked for many years on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including as members of the National Security Council staff.

Obama urges Iran to probe election tally as violence grows
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies, 6/16/09

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that he was deeply troubled by post-election violence in Iran, and urged the Islamic republic to investigate voting irregularities in a way that would not result in bloodshed. Obama said he would continue pursuing tough, direct dialogue with Tehran despite deep differences with incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was officially declared the winner of last Friday's vote.

"I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television," Obama told reporters after his meeting with Berlusconi. “The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent - all those are universal values and need to be respected," he said. Obama stressed that the United States respected Iran's sovereignty and could not judge how the election was run because neither U.S. nor international observers were present.

"The Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place," Obama said. "It's important that moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views."

Obama said the world was inspired by Iranian demonstrators who marched against what they say was a rigged election. "To those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was," Obama said.

Obama, a Democrat who has taken criticism from his Republican opponents for trying to engage with U.S. foes, said the election results did not alter his desire for direct diplomacy with Tehran. "We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries and we'll see where it takes us," Obama said.

"The use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy - diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries -- is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interest."

Should the US Ditch Diplomacy If Ahmadinejad's Power Grab Succeeds?

The violent suppression by the Iranian regime of democratic protests by supporters of the rightful winner of the Iranian election--Moussavi--is heart-rending. We must hope that the reformers will succeed in removing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, or pressuring him to reverse course, and conduct a truly free and fair election, which, by all indications, Moussavi would win. But, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof observed today, "at the end of the day, as I saw at Tianenmen 20 years ago, when Might and Right do battle, it's often prudent to bet on Might, at least in the short run"--at least in countries like Iran and China.

If, as is likely, Ayatollah Khameini and President Ahmadinejad succeed in violently suppressing the widespread protests, the US must act on the basis of our national security interests, which include a realistic assessment of what is best for our Middle East allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates, and not least the need for stablizing Iraq and Afghanistan and strengthening their governments. We must attempt to bargain with the Iranian regime to see if there is a basis for new arrangements which would defuse the grave threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism and war that we and our allies currently face.

Already voices on the right who never supported direct, comprehensive and unconditional US diplomacy with Iran in the first place--Netanyahu government hawks and their neo- and paleoconservative counterparts in the US--are using Iran's internal coup as a pretext for blocking the negotiations before they start. “In Israel, which has hinted that it might launch a military strike on Iran to disable its nuclear capability, officials said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory underscored the threat from Tehran and the need for a tough response rather than patient diplomacy. Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said in Tel Aviv that the victory [of Ahmadinejad] ‘sends a clear message to the world’ that Iran’s policies have broad internal support and will be continued. The results, he added, also ‘blow up in the faces of those’ who thought Iran was ready for ‘a genuine dialogue with the free world on stopping its nuclear program.’" (U.S. Officials to Continue to Engage Iran, N.Y. Times, 6/14/09 )

But Shalom's inference is groundless; the "victory" of Ahmadinejad shows nothing about whether Ayatollah Khameini or Ahmadinejad are interested in better relations with the US or in negotiating a new system of safeguards which would assure us that Iran was not weaponizing enriched uranium. "'It would be nice to have an environment without the kind of vitriol we see from Ahmadinejad,' a senior administration official said. 'There clearly would be differences in tone between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi, but not necessarily in policy.'” (NYT, 6/14/09)

Moreover, were the regimes in China and the Soviet Union any less repressive than in contemporary Iran? Did we not reach detente with them--under Nixon and Reagan--and advance our own security interests? Did we not negotiate arms limitation agreements with the Soviets, whom Reagan had called "the evil empire"? "'We should be clear about what we’re dealing with,' said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'Just as we deal with Assad’s Syria and Mubarak’s Egypt, we now have to deal with Khamenei’s Iran,' he said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad and President Hosni Mubarak." (NYT, 6/14/09)

Hawks in Congress and in Israel Will Now Try to Prevent or Encumber US-Iran Talks - The Case for Negotiations with Iran

To be sure, negotiations with Iran won’t be easy, as Iran expert Gary Sick, who worked on Iranian affairs for three administrations, reminds us in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday: “But now after this internal coup and all the coverage it has received, those people in the United States and particularly in Israel who really opposed the idea of having negotiations with Iran - who favored a pressure strategy to build up more sanctions - are now going to use their clout in Congress and elsewhere to slow down or stop the process.

"So it's not that we can't talk to the Iranian government - obviously it's going to be harder to talk to an Ahmadinejad government after it's stolen the election - but the real problem is a domestic one. The administration is going to have to overcome a whole series of domestic hurdles which previously had been in abeyance.

"...The problem has been and remains preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The fact is we've tried a pressure strategy for more than ten years going all the way back to the Clinton administration. Now after more than ten years of putting pressure on Iran they have far greater capacity than they had when we started. This has to tell us something about the policy. So the real question is what will work? What can you do that will actually have an effect? And the fact is that the only thing that's remaining for us to do is to actually talk to Iran about what we want, what they want, and look for common ground. It's not going to be easy. But it hasn't been tried, and the other things we've been doing haven't worked.

"People who say we haven't been tough enough with our sanctions are completely missing the point. Every time we've imposed sanctions, at whatever level, however stringent, Iran has upped its program, not reduced it. We need to be aware of that and think of what we can do. We probably will have to accept Iranian enrichment in one form or another. The trick is how do you monitor that and control it and get Iran's cooperation in insuring that the low-enriched uranium they are producing is not transformed into high-enriched uranium, and into nuclear weapons. That's the objective and that's still something we can talk about with Iran. They have an interest in finding some kind of agreement with the international community and we have a strong interest in getting them to back off and basically agree to a form of surveillance or monitoring that we've not had thus far."

From today's Boston Globe ("As Iran Roils, US Still Hopes for Talks"): "Trita Parsi, the president of the US-based Iranian-American Council, which calls itself the largest organization of Iranians living in the United States, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he was not surprised that the Obama administration is expressing a willingness to talk with Iranian leaders regardless of concerns about the election. 'The decision to negotiate with Iran has never been driven by any like or dislike of any particular candidate, but rather because it lies in the interests of the United States to get Iranian assistance in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan,' Parsi said. The rationale behind Obama's statement during his presidential campaign that he would make a diplomatic effort to improve relations with Iran still exists, Parsi said. As for the election results, Parsi said that while 'there is an overwhelming perception this was not a fair election,' it may never be known whether the results were rigged."

It also lies within our collective interests to fully explore whether an improvement in relations with Iran is possible which will allay Iran's well-founded fear of a US effort to change the regime by force or subversion, which in turn is the main motive, according to Israeli intelligence, impelling Iran to seek a nuclear weapon. If such a detente is possible--which can only be ascertained once the US fully pursues direct talks with representatives of Supreme Leader Khameini--a pragmatic rapprochement with Iran may enable us to offer political and economic incentives to end its opposition to an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, leading to changes in Iran's approach to Hezbollah and Hamas which might benefit Israel.

F. Gregory Gause III blogging at Foreign Policy:

"I know that it is way early, and we have to see how things develop, but let's assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the clerical elite get away with the power grab. What does Washington do? Put the outreach to Iran on hold?

"I'll start with a provocation: I think that the diplomatic outreach should continue as it started. It would be great if there were real democracy in Iran and the United States did not have to deal with the execrable incumbent president. But American interests here are not about Iranian domestic politics. They are about Iran's role in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf, the Arab-Israeli arena, and the nuclear program.

"I acknowledge that it would be much easier to come to some understanding on these issues with a different, more representative Iranian government. But it looks like we might not get that. So the United States might as well try to engage the incumbents in order to see if it can get some kind of deal on at least some of these issues that will help avoid a confrontation down the road.

"America deals with all sorts of governments whose domestic arrangements are, to put it mildly, less than compatible with American ideals. (The Saudis are Exhibit A.) I think that's how to deal with Iran."

F. Gregory Gause III is professor of political science at the University of Vermont and author of Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States.