And Happy Nowruz to You Too Mr. Obama!

Farideh Farhi

I must say that I am stunned by the tone and content of President Obama's message to Iran on the occasion of Iranian New Year or Nowruz. I am stunned because the message was great and on matters related to Iran I am not used to hearing what I like from Washington. So here are some quick thoughts.

Asides from being his gracious self, President Obama did several things that are significant. First and foremost was the fact that, unlike his predecessor, he did not attempt to drive a wedge between the people and government of Iran. He spoke explicitly to both the “people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” acknowledging their common history and culture. No more we love the people of Iran but hate their government taunt repeatedly brandished by the Bush Administration.


Second, he did not try to drive a wedge between the leaders of Iran. He addressed them all and in one brilliant move put to rest all the useless chatter about who the Obama administration should talk to. His focus was not on which Iranians the US wishes to talk to ("moderates" or "pragmatists") or should talk to (the ones who “really” wield power) but the fact that the two countries should talk on matters of mutual interest as well as about their differences.

Third, stating his commitment to meaningful diplomacy and avoiding demonizing rhetoric and peremptory demands, he simply stated the basic truth that the two long-time foes now face a chance for “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect” and addresses concerns of both. The process, he said in no uncertain terms, “will not be advanced by threats.”

This is the closest anyone in the US has come to ruling out the military option regarding Iran. Obama did not ignore “serious differences that have gown over time,” but did not validate "those who insist that we be defined by our differences." His commitment was clearly to “diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues” as well as “constructive ties” between the two countries.

Some Iranians, no doubt, will find fault in the following paragraph, deeming it a bit patronizing if not insulting:

The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.

But the general tenor of the speech was so different from what the Iranians are used to hearing that my bet at this point is that this part will be mostly ignored. The Iranians have been calling for a serious conversation and Mr. Obama has now promised them one. Let’s see if it happens.


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Rubin: U.S. and Iran in Afghanistan

An article I wrote with Sara Batmanglich about U.S.-Iran relations in Afghanistan has been posted on the website of MIT's Center for International Studies. It opens:

AFGHANISTAN IS ONE of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979, to the detriment of the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan. This confrontation has served the interests of the Pakistan military, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Re-establishing the basis for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan would provide significant additional leverage over Pakistan, on whose territory the leadership of both the Taliban and al-Qaida are now found.

And it ends:

There is, however, a major strategic judgment to be revisited. The military and intelligence agencies of both Pakistan and Iran have systematically used asymmetrical warfare, including terrorism, as a tool of their security policy. Which of them poses a greater threat to U.S. national interest and international peace and security? How should responses to these two threats be balanced? Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan, which is now home to the leadership of both al-Qaida and the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani). These countries are rivals for influence in Afghanistan and are sponsoring competing infrastructure projects for road transport and energy trade. Iran and India are building a combined rail and road link from the Iranian port of Chah Bahar to Afghanistan’s major highway. Pakistan, with Chinese aid, is building the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan, aiming at a north-south route to Central Asia. “Taliban” regularly attack Indian road building crews in southwest Afghanistan, and Pakistan charges that India is supporting Baluch insurgents from its consulates in Afghanistan.

A reevaluation of the threats originating in Iran and Pakistan should lead to a recalibration of U.S. policy in Afghanistan to tilt away from Pakistan and more toward Iran. Yet it would be wrong and destructive to treat Pakistan with the type of enmity now reserved for Iran. Like Iran, Pakistan’s policy is motivated by a combination of genuine security threats, ideological aspirations, and institutional interest. In Pakistan’s more open political system, it is far easier for the U.S. to engage with allies inside the country against the security services whose covert policies the U.S. finds threatening.

Ultimately, U.S. interests would be best served by supporting efforts to extend and improve governance and security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby depriving al-Qaida and its epigones of refuge on either side of the border. Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country’s most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.

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Rubin: Iran Saves the Surge

Has anyone noticed that Iran is saving the Bush administration's surge in Iraq?

CNN:

Iran was integral in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt attacks by his militia on Iraqi security forces, an Iraqi lawmaker said Monday.

Haidar al-Abadi, who is with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, said Iraqi Shiite lawmakers traveled Friday to Iran to meet with al-Sadr. They returned Sunday, the day al-Sadr told his Mehdi Army fighters to stand down. . . .

The lawmakers who traveled to Iran to broker the cease-fire were from five Shiite parties, including the Sadrist movement. Al-Abadi would not say where in Iran the meeting was held.

When Iran Revolutionary Guards helped the U.S. destroy al-Qaida's bases in Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and form an interim government under UN supervision, the Bush administration responded by putting Iran (then led by President Muhammad Khatami) on the "axis of evil." Now battles between the pro-Iranian militia brought to power by the U.S. (al-Da'wa) and a more Iraqi nationalist Shi'a militia (the Sadr movement) threaten to reverse the precarious security gains of the surge by dividing the ruling coalition of Shi'a parties. Iran convenes them on its territory, and the battle is calmed.

I wonder how Bush and Cheney will react this time.... Read more on this article...

The War Rollout Keeps Rolling Along.....

Scott Horton at Harper's has an update on the fall product rollout for war with Iran. He analyzes the full text of Dick Cheney's speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which I discussed yesterday based only on press reports. Horton summarizes Cheney's discussion of Iran: "Is Cheney threatening war against Iran? Yes, that’s exactly what he is doing."

But that's not all there is to the speech. Horton:

And while I pulled out the passages of the speech that constitute the most undisguised saber-rattling against Iran, the entire speech is worthy of careful study. It shows a man who has disintegrated into a moral sewer. He regales his audience with the need to use torture techniques, which he tells us elsewhere he learned of from “our friends” in the Middle East (a phrase which, I am told, describes the brutal techniques used by the Egyptians.) And he then proceeds to cite a positively insane op-ed by Bernard Lewis, the subject of one of my prior columns, in which the Soviet Union is held up as a wonderful model for the United States. So there you have Dick Cheney wonderfully summed up: traditional U.S. values are for sissies. Real international strongmen torture their own citizens like the Egyptians and bully the neighborhood like the Soviets.

Meanwhile the blogification of the foreign policy elite continues apace. Last June the New York Review of Books published an essay entitled Bush's Amazing Achievement, in which Jonathan Freedland discussed books by Chalmers Johnson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Dennis Ross:

One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve.

The consensus has now spread beyond Iraq. In this week's Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria observes, "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality." Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, is the former managing editor of Foreign Affairs and a Harvard Ph.D. (Yale B.A.), who studied under Samuel Huntington. He is the very image of the calm, intellectual realist (and he has written a wine column too). He's had it. Zakaria to Earth (come in, Earth):

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Earth, over and out.

Zakaria too comes back to the sage of Princeton:

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, "is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world" (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

When Fareed Zakaria is reduced to asking, "What planet are we on?" I have to wonder.... What planet ARE we on? Read more on this article...

Afghanistan and the Region: The View from Herat

This week (October 17-20) Afghanistan hosted the 17th meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization in Herat. This marked the first time that Afghanistan had assumed the chairmanship of the organization or that ECO, which is based in Tehran, had met in Afghanistan.

The meeting's official proceedings dealt with regional economic cooperation, but this meeting in western Afghanistan, which depends economically on Iran, provided an opportunity for staking out positions on regional tensions. During the meeting an as-yet unidentified suicide bomber attacked the homecoming motorcade of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi, killing 139 people and threatening the political transition negotiated between Bhutto and military ruler Pervez Musharraf with the support (or at the urging) of the U.S. The meeting also coincided with the resignation of Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. Larijani's replacement by a junior ally of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad just before a key meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana made a negotiated settlement of Iran's nuclear issue even less likely. As the meeting was ending, U.S. Vice President Cheney told a conference of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a think-tank closely associated with the "pro-Israel" lobby): "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences." Calling Iran "the world's most active state sponsor of terror," Cheney said, "Our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions."

President Karzai played a balancing act. Hosting this conference in Herat pleased Iran, which had consistently urged that ECO, based in Tehran, should play a central role in regional economic cooperation for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, over objections of the U.S. In his speech opening the conference, Karzai gave a nod to US concerns, which Kabul shares:

We, the Muslims, must show the true image of Islam to the world and this will be impossible unless we eliminate terrorists where ever they are and fight them collectively.

In a bilateral meeting with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki, however, Karzai emphasized the friendly ties between the two nations in a seeming rebuff to the U.S. position. Karzai had done so in the U.S. in August. Interviewed on CNN, Karzai characterized Iran as a "helper" of Afghanistan, a characterization with which President Bush took issue at a press availability after the two leaders' August 7 meeting in Camp David.

In Herat Mottaki appeared self confident. He announced an additional $600,000 in aid for Afghanistan. In answer to a journalist's question, he stated:

The people of Afghanistan will never allow America to use Afghanistan against any other country. This our belief, this is our trust.

Referring to the "people" implied that Iran might rely not solely on the Afghan government, but on its direct relations with the "people." Mottaki appeared to gloat over the U.S.'s situation:

Mottaki added that the United States had exhausted itself with the war in Iraq and "is not in a position to create another conflict in our region."

"Americans, not based on our statements ... but based on statements by American politicians have been defeated in Iraq," the foreign minister said.

Simultaneously, Tehran announced how it would respond to a U.S. attack:

"In the first minute of an invasion by the enemy, 11,000 rockets and cannons will be fired at enemy bases," said Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, a brigadier general in the elite Revolutionary Guards.

"This volume and speed of firing would continue," added Chaharbaghi, who is commander of artillery and missiles of the Guards' ground forces.

These "bases" are those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kabul has also received information that the Iranian government had informed its ambassadors that though Afghanistan is a "friend," one must sacrifice even friends when survival is at stake. This is a reference to Tehran's belief that the goal of U.S. policy is the overthrow of the Iranian regime, not simply the termination of uranium enrichment.

Karzai also met Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, who announced that Pakistan would host another meeting of the joint Afghan-Pakistani "Peace Jirga" after Pakistan's general elections next year. The attack on the Bhutto convoy, however, raised doubts as to whether those elections could be held. Writing in Asia Times Online, the consistently interesting (though inconsistently accurate) Syed Saleem Shahzad called the attack "The first shot . . . fired in the battle that Islamists have vowed to wage against the Washington-inspired and brokered attempt at regime change in Pakistan." According to Shahzad:

The attack was hardly a surprise. Militants see Bhutto's return to Pakistani politics as a Western-backed coup against Islamists in Pakistan, akin to the arrival in the Afghan capital, Kabul, of the US-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. Militant leader Baitullah Mehsud had instructed pro-al-Qaeda cells in Karachi to kill her for three major offenses against the Islamists, which he listed as:

- She is the only opposition politician who supported the military attack earlier this year on Islamabad's Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), a hotbed of Islamist radicalism, and she coninues to condemn the Lal Masjid ideologues; - She has stated that she would allow incursions by US forces into Pakistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden; - She has stated that she would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to question Dr A Q Khan, the former leading nuclear scientist accused of passing Pakistani nuclear technology to anti-Western countries.

Baitullah Mehsud, however, states he "had nothing to do with it," and many of Bhutto's supporters suspect that elements of the Pakistan military and intelligence apparatus were involved. Bhutto had previously told the Sunday Telegraph:

We need a security service that is professional in its approach, which rises above ties of religious or political sentiment. I have strong reservations about some of the people still operating within the intelligence services, and we need reforms to get rid of them.

Bhutto was referring to those in the ISI who support the Taliban and even al-Qaida. Her dismissal in 1990 of General Hamid Gul as Director of the ISI was key to the army's decision to oust her that year and defeat her in rigged elections. Military appointments and policy toward India and Afghanistan are considered by the Pakistan army to be off limits to civilian officials. Now, as in 1989-1990, it is likely that Bhutto's negotiations with the army (carried out though the current ISI director) also focus on this issue. Maintaining "reserve areas" of military control is a frequent demand of military institutions trying to negotiate their extrication from direct rule. By announcing her intention to clean up the ISI, Bhutto promised Kabul and Washington that she would carry out the policies they have been asking for, while threatening the most sensitive prerogatives of the Pakistani military.

Such is the region in which Vice-President Cheney aims to impose "serious consequences" on Iran if it moves toward acquiring the capability to manufacture the nuclear weapons that Pakistan already has. Pakistan, of course, is likely to have been a source of the technology used by Iran for uranium enrichment. But Pakistan is the U.S.'s most important non-NATO ally, while Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. The views from Washington and Herat could not be more different. Read more on this article...

Video Interview with Barnett R. Rubin on TPMTV

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and TPMmuckraker interviewed me on video last week about Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan.

TPM has now posted the segments dealing with Iran:



TPM introduces the segment as follows:

A Chat with Barnett Rubin, Part I

A few weeks ago Dr. Barnett Rubin, one of the world's premier Afghanistan experts at NYU, created a stir with a series of blog posts about signs the Bush administration might be gearing up for a military campaign against Iran. Last week I interviewed Rubin about the Bush administration's war talk against Iran and I asked him, Is there really any evidence that Iran is helping arm the Taliban, as the Bush administration keeps claiming?

Read more on this article...

Anidjar: "Columbia at its Best"

Columbia at its Best

by Gil Anidjar


On June 18, 2007, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger informed his “fellow members of the Columbia Community” that the university had just taken an important step, the completion of a formal application, bringing it closer to its planned expansion into Manhattanville in West Harlem. As official statements on the Columbia website have it, the expansion seeks to combine the fulfillment of Columbia’s role as a global university, and its place among a number of “the nation’s universities.”

This expansion, along with Columbia’s much publicized and repeated appearance in the media over a number of years now, perhaps provides an occasion to reflect on the relationship between the principles of education, which guide or should guide an institution of higher learning, and the political commitments of that institution. After all, much of the conversation surrounding universities these days – and Columbia foremost among them – is precisely with regards to this question: what is the nature of the connection between education and politics? This is a local as well as global question, one that is of national and international significance. And though it may have something to do with the much touted notion of “freedom,” we will see that it is hardly about “freedom of speech.”

The Local

Not that they are many, or that they have been able to gather much force, but there are those who oppose the expansion of the university. This, it will be granted, has little to do with freedom of speech; it has to do with a power differential. Insofar as the university intervenes in the environment of the neighborhood – for good or for ill – it is acting politically. It is exercising power. The university is not simply enjoying its right to freedom, much less exercising freedom of speech. As an established and highly recognized institution, it has a freedom which its opponents do not have, namely, the freedom to gather its extensive forces, negotiate with the New York City Council and other political bodies. It wields its legal, financial and political power – forgive me, its freedom – in order to reach its stated goal of expansion. To be on the receiving end of this deployed power means to confront an asymmetry that cannot be denied. It is an experience in powerlessness. The political lesson – for it is a lesson that comes from an institution of higher learning – should be clear. Columbia is a political actor and its actions have political effects as well as a political message (one could argue that this constitutes an ethical message as well): don’t get caught being the little guy. So much for the residents and businesses of Manhattanville.

The Global

One could here find grounds for an analogy when it comes to the “global” university: the role it plays, the actions it takes and the statements it delivers, in international politics. In fact, Columbia and its spokespersons (first and foremost its president, who can only speak the words of the institution, checked and approved by its lawyers and other authorizing forces, those who give the president his legitimacy as chief executive officer) have been quite outspoken about marking the global footprint of the institution: the international dimension of its faculty and student body is one instance, international collaboration of a scientific and financial nature is another. It is this footprint that constitutes one of the main reasons for a still larger campus in the city of New York.

The analogy between the local and the global is thus much more than a mere analogy. Turning our attention to a third dimension of Columbia’s political activities will in fact reveal the difficulty of fully distinguishing local from global in terms of political significance and effects. The word in vogue to signify this lack of distinction is, if I am not mistaken, “glocal.”

The Glocal

Now, it is important to remark that Columbia University has made perfectly clear that it is by no means a democratic institution (its decisions may be made in consultation, but there is no democratic commitment, nor a democratic obligation on these decisions or on any other matter pertaining to the university). Of course, we might want to recall once again that it is an educational institution. And it is indeed. But the meaning of that assertion must be related to an additional fact. The university is also a private corporation run by a board of trustees, most of whom have long and impressive affiliations with the corporate world (lawyers, bankers and business executives), with the political world (most often the federal government, but also state government) and with the medical world (doctors and nurses). The distinction between these three “worlds,” as can be gathered from the biographical data for each of the trustees, is not a categorical or hermetic one. And it should be noted that the two primary functions of an institution of higher learning, namely research and education, are not overwhelmingly represented. Of course, the other, if less important, governing body (namely, the Senate of the university) does have faculty and student representation. But what about freedom of speech?

Insofar as the chief executive officer of the university, designated by the trustees, speaks, he does so with the voice of the university, and justifiably so. This is why it is important to recognize that, despite statements to the contrary, an individual occupying an official (or simply, institutional) position is less exercising freedom of speech than enjoying both the privilege and the responsibility bestowed upon him by the institution of which he is the voice. In contrast to the speech of private individuals, here it is only the power invested in the institutional person (not the private individual) that authorizes and enables his capacity to speak. President Bollinger’s communications over the years must therefore be taken as statements of the university that have little to do with personal convictions or overstepping of boundaries (whatever these might be). They do not testify to personal opinions or to his right to freedom of expression (and let me add that insofar as they are posted on the university’s website, accessible and publicized as such, they receive additional material force from the university per se). When President Bollinger speaks, it is the university that speaks (even if dissenting voices might express themselves, might have the freedom – rather than the power and official, authorizing seal – to do so).

On the glocal scene, then, what has Columbia been saying? It has issued statements of compassion at national and international disasters (Katrina, the 2004 Tsunami) and disseminated news about its activities, particularly those of Jeffrey Sachs’ Earth Institute in the fight against poverty and disease. What the university has emphatically not done is express political judgments, taken explicit political action for or against any side involved in a conflict, against or on behalf of any partisan activity or expression of opinion in such conflicts.

But for one exception.

Western Asia.

From the outset, the new administration (Bollinger’s inaugural speech is dated October 3rd, 2002) had made clear that it was pursuing a policy of explicitness when it comes to Western Asia, whether on the divestment campaign (November 7, 2002), his statements on academic freedom (and accusations of political harassment and anti-Semitism made against Middle East studies faculty, March 29 2003, October 22, 27 and December 8, 2004; March 23, 31 and April 11, 2005), on the decision not to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (September 21, 2006), on the detainment of Iranian-American scholars (May 31, 2007), on the British Teachers Union’s proposal to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics (June 12, 2007), and more recently on the President of Iran.

Although it can be granted that a number of these statements have a local dimension, it is also the case that they have had Western Asia in their proximate background. It is simply a fact that no other region of the world has attracted the explicit, political attention of the university in its public statements. It should moreover be noted that words like “obscene,” “offensive,” “heinous,” “odious,” and “repugnant” (to mention but a few) have not been used in other contexts. It is in this peculiar context in fact that the university, deploying its commitment to global issues, has publicly claimed: “This is America at its best” (September 19, 2007), or, in a more elaborate version: “The kind of freedom that will be on display at Columbia has always been and remains today our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is the power and example of America at its best” (September 24, 2007). What is freedom then? As I was suggesting earlier and as is explicitly argued here, it is a weapon and a power. It is asymmetric. It is the differential capacity to exercise one’s power and to extend one’s pedagogical light to those who do not enjoy the same privilege, the same institutional authorization, the same power (whether they are guests, heads of states increasingly targeted for war, or individual faculty members like Joseph Massad or Nadia Abu el-Haj) To be on the receiving end is hardly an exercise in freedom. It is an exercise in powerlessness.

But it does teach us something. On the question of what should be the connection between education and politics (local and global), this must be the answer. Freedom – for the institution (or the country?) that wields it – is the exercise of political power and self-righteous pedagogy. This is, this must be, Columbia at its best.

And don’t get caught being the little guy.


Gil Anidjar is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. All the information mentioned here was gathered exclusively from the Columbia University, and most particularly from this site(accessed September 26, 2007). Read more on this article...

Bush-Cheney Threaten U.S. Security: Where's the Accountability?

I know that I am supposed to be writing here as a "highly respected," "wonky, moderate, and thoroughly analytical" scholar, not just another partisan blogger. But sometimes it's hard to make the distinction.

Last June 29, I was in Ohrid, Macedonia for a conference of the NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which brought together delegations from all members of NATO and the Partnership for Peace to discuss current issues, including the NATO mission in Afghanistan. (Left- Hekmat Karzai, Director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul, poses with me in front of the ancient Greco-Roman Theater in Ohrid). After the closing plenary, a U.S. NATO official came over to offer some friendly advice. I was losing credibility in international meetings, he suggested, because my (see adjectives above) expertise on Afghanistan was being colored by my domestic political agenda. I thanked him for his constructive criticism and began to consider whether he might be right. After all, the administration had changed many (though hardly all) of the policies I had been criticizing since 2001. Couldn't I take yes for an answer?

When I got back to the hotel, I found an e-mail from Juan Cole inviting me to join this group blog, which he was just setting up. Before answering, I glanced over at Informed Comment, to see what Juan was writing about. I found this:

Bush said in a speech on Thursday that he hopes Iraq will be like Israel, a democracy that faces terrorist violence but manages to retain its democratic character:

' In Israel, Bush said, "terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq." '

These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.

Juan noted that telling Middle Easterners that the U.S. wants Iraq to be just like Israel was not an effective way to build regional support for our effort. He archived this story under the tag, "Monumental stupidity."

I answered Juan, gladly accepting the invitation, and added a note telling him about the NATO official's comment. I concluded:

I thought maybe he was right. Then I went back to the hotel and read your post from today. I think my domestic political agenda is the result of my knowledge of the rest of the world.

In this spirit, I would like to draw readers' attention to the following bizarre fact: The Bush-Cheney administration still enjoys some vestige of credibility when claiming that its policies defend the national security of the United States, and the Democratic Party presidential candidates and Congressional Leadership sometimes seem afraid of challenging the administration too directly for fear of being seen as soft on terrorism.

As a wonky, moderate, highly respected, and thoroughly analytical scholar, I do not express myself in simplistic partisan formulae. But politicians do. That's their job. If I were a politician, for instance, I might say something like this:

The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida. They have turned most of Iraq over to Iran, creating the very danger over which they now threaten another disastrous war; they have strained the U.S. Armed Forces to the point of exhaustion, turned the Defense Department over to private contractors, the Justice Department over to the Republican National Committee, and the national debt over to foreign creditors, while leading a party whose single most basic belief is supposed to be that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions. And they dare to lecture us on national security?

Allow me to illustrate these (slight) overstatements with a few current reports.

On Afghanistan, I have already commented on recent analyses of how the Bush-Cheney adminstration fecklessly under-invested in Afghanistan, assuring that the weak government of Hamid Karzai would lack the resources needed to establish itself throughout the country. Since the recent New York Times report was based on interviews with most of the U.S.'s former ambassadors and military commanders in Afghanistan, I won't bother to re-argue the point here. Especially since a former CIA counter-terrorism official (who led the team that captured Abu Zubayda) and a former State Department official (now working for Kissinger Associates, not MoveOn.org) observe in Sunday's LA Times:

Afghanistan -- former Taliban stronghold, Al Qaeda haven and warlord-cum-heroin-smuggler finishing school -- feels more and more like Sept. 10, 2001, than a victory in the U.S. war on terrorism.

The country is, plain and simple, a mess. Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have quietly regained territory, rendering wide swaths of the country off-limits to U.S. and Afghan forces, international aid workers and even journalists. Violent attacks against Western interests are routine. Even Kabul, which the White House has held up as a postcard for what is possible in Afghanistan, has become so dangerous that foreign embassies are in states of lockdown, diplomats do not leave their offices, and venturing beyond security perimeters requires daylight-only travel, armored vehicles, Kevlar and armed escorts.

For more of the same, see Jim Rupert's report from the remote province of Nuristan in the northeast. Of course the administration has changed so much of its original policy on Afghanistan that its claims to have done the right thing there are in their last throes, supported by only a few dead-enders such as the delusional Donald Rumsfeld.

Pakistan? Here's another article from Sunday's L. A. Times:

Political turmoil and a spate of brazen attacks by Taliban fighters are forcing Pakistan's president to scale back his government's pursuit of Al Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence officials who fear that the terrorist network will be able to accelerate its efforts to rebuild and plot new attacks.

The development threatens a pillar of U.S. counter-terrorism strategy, which has depended on Pakistan to play a lead role in keeping Al Qaeda under pressure to reduce its ability to coordinate strikes.

It just gets better from there; you should read the whole article. As I noted previously, the legitimacy of the government is collapsing in Pakistan, the result of a fully predictable (and predicted) political crisis that has been gathering steam for over a year. How did the Bush administration respond? By announcing in January that Ambassador Ryan Crocker would be transferred from Islamabad to Baghdad and then by not replacing him until July. And by fully supporting General Musharraf's contempt for rule of law and democracy until he had provoked much of Pakistan's middle class to take to the streets against him.

Ambassador Crocker now has the demanding task of trying to nudge the Iranian backed Iraqi Shi'a factions that the U.S. installed in power to reconcile with the Sunni Ba'athi factions that the U.S. removed from power (but whose willingness to take arms and money from the U.S. is now cited as the main indicator of U.S. success). And good luck to him.

Meanwhile, back at the war on those who attacked us on 9/11 (not Iraqi Shi'a militias, Iran, or Ba'athists, as far as I know): according to the National Intelligence Estimate on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," which was prepared while the ambassador's residence in Islamabad was vacant:

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.

In the past few weeks, a reinvigorated Bin Laden has released both a video aimed at asserting his leadership of the global struggle against U.S. dominance, promising that "Islam" would solve the crises of imperialism, high taxes, and sub-prime mortgages, and an audio tape aimed at al-Qa'ida's most strategic target market, the population of Pakistan, where Bin Laden and his senior advisors are now safely ensconced. In the audio tape Bin Laden fulsomely praises the "tribes of Waziristan" and several Pakistani Taliban leaders, while omitting support for any Afghan group. This indicates where his real sanctuary in the region lies.

Iraq and Iran? I cede to Juan Cole, Scott Horton, and numerous others the thankless labor of documenting the administration's crimes and blunders in Iraq, a task I would compare to trying to convince a skeptical audience that water is wet. But since the administration (now abetted by CBS's 60 Minutes) is furiously accusing Iran of support for Shi'a militias in Iraq, it seems appropriate to recall a few basic facts about the situation in Iraq, helpfully laid out by Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books. Peter first visited Iraqi Kurdistan in, I think, 1989. He was one of the first outsiders to document the atrocities of Operation Anfal, at a time that the first Bush administration was giving Saddam a pass on killing Kurds, as long as he stood against Iran. At that time Peter was a senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since then he has been Ambassador to Croatia and held a senior U.N. post in East Timor. I last saw Peter in Heathrow airport just before Thanksgiving last year, when we crossed paths as he returned from Iraq and I from Afghanistan.

An Afghan friend once remarked that Americans, unlike Afghans, seemed to require "memory facilitation," which Peter's article helpfully provides:

Iraqi forces [in the south] are dominated by the Badr Organization, a militia founded, trained, armed, and financed by Iran. When US forces ousted Saddam's regime from the south in early April 2003, the Badr Organization infiltrated from Iran to fill the void left by the Bush administration's failure to plan for security and governance in post-invasion Iraq.

In the months that followed, the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appointed Badr Organization leaders to key positions in Iraq's American-created army and police. At the same time, L. Paul Bremer's CPA appointed party officials from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) to be governors and serve on governorate councils throughout southern Iraq. SCIRI, recently renamed the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), was founded at the Ayatollah Khomeini's direction in Tehran in 1982. The Badr Organization is the militia associated with SCIRI.

In the January 2005 elections, SCIRI became the most important component of Iraq's ruling Shiite coalition. In exchange for not taking the prime minister's slot, SCIRI won the right to name key ministers, including the minister of the interior. From that ministry, SCIRI placed Badr militiamen throughout Iraq's national police.

In short, George W. Bush had from the first facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a US withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia.

Peter notes, as seems obvious but is ignored by most discussion in the U.S., that the Bush administration's stupendous blunders in Iraq have handed Iran a "far-reaching" "strategic victory." He illustrates his claim that "the scale of the American miscalculation is striking" with one of the by-now familiar astoundingly wrong quotations from the administration's strategic thinkers, in this case Paul Wolfowitz confidently asserting that a Shi'a-led Iraq will undermine Iran.

On the exhaustion and depletion of the U.S. Army, see this, this, and many other stories, including the recent ones explaining how the post-"surge" troop reduction is required regardless of "success" in order to keep the Army from collapsing. Scott Horton at Harpers provides complete coverage (and original investigation) of both the privatization of the U.S. Defense Department and the transformation of the Justice Department into a branch of the RNC. On the financing of the debt caused by the combination of tax cuts and uncontrolled spending on everything but social services for those who really need them, see this table of foreign holders of U.S. Treasury Securities.

Accountability, anyone? Read more on this article...

Haleh Esfandiari Speaks to Gwen Ifill on the NewsHour

Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was released after 105 days in Evin Prison (known as "Evin University," because of the large number of intellectuals who have graduated). She spoke last night to Gwen Ifill of the NewsHour. Watch the video or read the transcript here.

On why she was arrested:

To this day, I really don't know why I was arrested. But having talked to these -- having been interrogated for almost eight months by people from the ministry of intelligence, I can explain what they believe in.

They believe that the United States is now entangled in Iraq and elsewhere. Therefore, it will not contemplate a military attack on Iran, but it is planning a Velvet Revolution. And the instruments for this Velvet Revolution, like the Ukraine or Georgia, are American and European foundations and think-tanks. And I think they thought that the Wilson Center was also involved in this program.

On her treatment:

I was treated in prison with utmost respect. And I think the reason was that I always kept a barrier between myself and the interrogator. And I was always very polite to them. And they were, as a result, very polite to me.

On contact with other prisoners:

I knew that Mr. [Kian] Tajbakhsh, who is still -- both are still in prison -- was there, because one day the interrogator was carrying five, six English books. And as my eyes lit up, and I said, "Oh, English books." I said, "Who's are they?" And he said, "These belong to Mr. Tajbakhsh." And I said, "Could you ask him whether I can borrow some from him?"

So then, at night, one of the female guards -- because, in the women's ward or quarter, we had female guards -- she brought me two books, and this was the beginning of borrowing books from Mr. Tajbakhsh. And on one occasion, I sent him some fruit with the permission of the prison authorities.

On why she was released:

I think my release came mainly because the President of the Wilson Center, Lee Hamilton, wrote a letter to the [Supreme] Leader [Ayatollah Khamene'i]. And I have not seen the text of the letter because it was confidential. And the Leader reacted to the letter positively and probably ordered my release.

Read more on this article...

Iran War "Rollout" Roils Blogosphere

Since my original post passing on an unverified but troubling report that Vice-President Cheney's office had asked neo-conservative institutions for help creating political support for an attack on Iran, this nugget has been batting around the internet like any good conspiracy theory.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories. Anyone who works on Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan has to reject a dozen a day just to keep in shape. But if you don't want to be constantly surprised, you also have to learn from the Red Queen and "believe six impossible things before breakfast." With experience you get better at keeping the balance right.

Conspiracy theories are easy targets for deflation, since, almost by definition, they lack evidence to support them. Sure enough, right-wing writers (I won't say "conservative," since I have a hard time imagining Edmund Burke or Michael Oakeshott going down this road) have rolled out an attack on this report. I may illustrate the common pattern of these attacks by reference to Eli Lake's September 10 column in the New York Sun. The argument (omitting a few flagrant misrepresentations of what I wrote, which are just distractions) is pretty simple:

1. It's typical left-wing conspiracy theory to imagine that Cheney's office would instruct neo-conservatives to campaign for war with Iran.
2. Neo-conservatives are campaigning for war with Iran because they sincerely support such a war, not because anyone told them to do it.
3. They're right to support such a war, because the Iranian mad-mullah regime is already at war with the U.S. and is making nuclear bombs right now in order to destroy Israel, the U.S., and the entire global order.

Somehow I don't find this line of argument reassuring.

Another warning I have received is not to rely on Alex Debat, whom I have never met or spoken to. (Update: the Weekly Standard just asked me if Debat was my source.) Reports are now circulating that he is a fabulist. I have no idea if he is or not. I cited an article in the Sunday Times of London in which he is quoted by the reporter as providing a detailed description of U.S. preparations for war with Iran.

A tall tale? Maybe. Or maybe Debat got an advance look at this 80-page study by Dr. Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. They summarize their principal findings:

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.

• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.

• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.

• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.

In case this turns out to be accurate, Iran has prepared to respond. Tehran Times reports:

Commander of the IRGC, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari here on Tuesday said that any attack against Iran would spark a crushing response from the country.

Iran has boosted its defense capabilities based on the weak points of the enemies, which occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, General Jafari said on Tuesday.

The newly appointed commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned that the IRGC is more than ready to defend Iran's against all security, political, cultural, and social threats.

Such preparations make a "provocation," which Reuel Marc Gerecht of AEI thinks is the most likely cause of war, more likely. In any case, General David Petraeus has told Congress that Iran has already launched such provocations. The National Review helpfully summarized them in order to savage Ambassador Ryan Crocker for supporting an “Iraq at peace with its neighbors.” Appeasement! Here is Petraeus' bill of particulars:

We have also disrupted Shia militia extremists, capturing the head and numerous other leaders of the Iranian-supported Special Groups, along with a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative supporting Iran’s activities in Iraq.

Foreign and home-grown terrorists, insurgents, militia extremists, and criminals all push the ethno-sectarian competition toward violence. Malign actions by Syria and, especially, by Iran fuel that violence.

In the ensuing months, our forces and our Iraqi counterparts have focused on improving security, especially in Baghdad and the areas around it, wresting sanctuaries from al Qaeda control, and disrupting the efforts of the Iranian-supported militia extremists.

In the past six months we have also targeted Shia militia extremists, capturing a number of senior leaders and fighters, as well as the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Qods Force. These elements have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran, and indiscriminately rocketed civilians in the International Zone and elsewhere. It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Qods Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.

The recommendations I provided were informed by operational and strategic considerations. The operational considerations include recognition that … success against Al Qaeda-Iraq and Iranian-supported militia extremists requires conventional forces as well as special operations forces[.]

[O]n a less encouraging note, none of us earlier this year appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq’s leaders all now have greater concern.

[Our] assessment is supported by the findings of a 16 August Defense Intelligence Agency report on the implications of a rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Summarizing it in an unclassified fashion, it concludes that a rapid withdrawal would result in the further release of the strong centrifugal forces in Iraq and produce a number of dangerous results, including … exacerbation of already challenging regional dynamics, especially with respect to Iran.

The weblog of Foreign Policy magazine originally adhered to the prescribed role of "moderates" in the rollout script by explaining "Why you should discount all the bomb Iran talk." Of course the administration was just engaging in coercive diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program in order to stiffen the backs of the Europeans. Clever negotiating tactic!

But this item from Fox News gave them second thoughts:

Political and military officers, as well as weapons of mass destruction specialists at the State Department, are now advising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the diplomatic approach favored by Burns has failed and the administration must actively prepare for military intervention of some kind. Among those advising Rice along these lines are John Rood, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; and a number of Mideast experts, including Ambassador James Jeffrey, deputy White House national security adviser under Stephen Hadley and formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs.

Consequently, according to a well-placed Bush administration source, "everyone in town" is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months, after the presidential primaries have probably been decided, but well before the November 2008 elections.

The discussions are now focused on two basic options: less invasive scenarios under which the U.S. might blockade Iranian imports of gasoline or exports of oil, actions generally thought to exact too high a cost on the Iranian people but not enough on the regime in Tehran; and full-scale aerial bombardment.

This could not be discounted as the ravings of the liberal blogosphere (even if Rupert Murdoch did give a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton). So today Foreign Policy warns:

Next thing you know, you'll start hearing folks at AEI saying that Iran was responsible for 9/11. Wait a minute, that's already happening, as Peter Beinart pointed out in Sunday's New York Times. "It's the 2007 equivalent of the claims made in 2002 and 2003 about Iraq," Beinart noted. "The years between 9/11 and the Iraq war gave rise to a cottage industry ... charging that Saddam Hussein was the hidden mastermind behind a decade of jihadist terror. While refuted by the 9/11 Commission and mainstream terror experts, these claims had a political effect."

Looks like it's time to stop the epidemic of denial that has the foreign-policy community convinced that an attack on Iran is out of the question. Before it's too late.

I once wrote a book about early warning and conflict prevention. There are two kinds of errors in early warning (as in statistical inference): believing something that ain't so and disbelieving something that is. You have to weigh the likelihood and the cost of each kind of error. That's the calculus behind Vice-President Cheney's One Percent Doctrine: the risk of not acting on a warning of nuclear terrorism is so great, that you have to treat a one percent possibility as a certainty.

I set the bar a bit higher than one percent. But in view of the record of this administration, including what its leaders and supporters have said themselves, the cost of not acting on these warnings is too great. The cost of acting (for me anyway) is being attacked by the New York Sun and the National Review and being supported by a few conspiracy theorists. I can live with it.

Update: In his speech yesterday in Clinton, Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said:

We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven't even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear - loud and clear - from the American people and the Congress: you don't have our support, and you don't have our authorization for another war.

Let's hear from other candidates and members of Congress. Read more on this article...

Update on Iran War Rollout

At UPI's "Outside View" feature, David Isenberg of the British American Security Information Council and the Cato Institute provides a summary of the campaign for war with Iran so far. He missed the Newsweek article by AEI fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht about why war is inevitable, the Washington Post's shameless reprise yesterday of its 2003 attack on Mohamed El-Baradei of the IAEA, the Anti-Defamation League's opening of its No Nuclear Iran campaign, and William Kristol's call for attacks on "Terrorist Training Camps" in Iran.

Update: The New Yorker used to have a capsule review of Night at the Opera which said, "The Marx Brothers do to Il Trovatore what ought to be done to Il Trovatore." See Salon, where Glenn Greewald does to Fred Hiatt and Michael Ledeen what ought to be done to Fred Hiatt and Michael Ledeen.

Update II: Interviewed by Spencer Ackerman of TPMMuckraker, Reuel Marc Gerecht of AEI good naturedly denies that he or AEI received any instructions from the Office of the Vice President to beat the drums for war with Iran. He even says something nice about me. Let's hope that he is right and my source is mistaken. For the record: I did not accuse "hardliners in Dick Cheney's office of giving right-leaning think tanks in Washington 'instructions' to start a drumbeat for war with Iran," as Ackerman writes. I passed on a credible report to that effect, explicitly saying I could not verify it, in order to draw attention to something I consider very dangerous. Let's see if empirical evidence confirms or disconfirms the hypothesis.
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Theses on Policy toward Iran

As I and many others have noted, there are increasing signs that the administration has decided or has nearly decided to launch an air and sea attack on Iran, which will include but not be limited to all installations connected to the country’s nuclear program. All military equipment is in place for such an attack (three carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf). As I wrote in a recent blog, there are credible reports of a concerted campaign to build public support for such an attack. The aim is said to be to get support in polls up to about 35-40%, but the most important goal is to intimidate the Democrats in Congress, in particular through AIPAC and allied groups, so that they will not use either the power of the purse or Congress’ war powers to impede the attack. The administration is counting on Democrats saying they don’t want to “tie the president’s hands” as he deals with this mortal threat to the U.S. and Israel. The Anti-Defamation League announced today a campaign with the theme "No Nuclear Iran."

Under the Cheney-Addington interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, there is no need for any Congressional consent to such an action by the President. In any case, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force of September 18, 2001, suffices, as it authorizes the use of such force against any terrorists or states harboring terrorists. There is no requirement that the President certify or Congress approve any such designation. The argument would be strengthened, however, if the administration formally designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran) or its elite unit, the Qods (Jerusalem) Force, as a terrorist organization, a proposal that has been floated in the press. In that case the Iranian state would be officially designated as harboring terrorists.

The rationale for such an act of war is likely to be that it is necessary to prevent a terrorist state from acquiring nuclear weapons. Any hint of Iranian compliance with international demands would interfere with the campaign. Hence part of the PR campaign that has started for the war will consist of attacks on Mohamed El-Baradei and the IAEA, as in 2002-2003 over Iraq, when, of course, the IAEA was proved right and its critics wrong. Such at attack, presumably authored by Fred Hiatt, commenced on the editorial page of the Washington Post today. For some reason, the Post editorial does not mention its similar editorial from January 28, 2003, where it made identical false charges against El-Baradei.

The Bush-Cheney policy on Iran is unlikely to have any outcome but war, not because of the threat of the use of force, but because of its objective: regime change. The President and Vice-President have never echoed the disavowals of this goal by other officials. Their supporters at AEI, the Weekly Standard, and elsewhere, make it clear that the goal of the policy is destroying the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even if this were not true, the government (and not only the government) of Iran believes it is true. In repeated discussions on several continents over the past five years, Iranian officials have told me that the main obstacle to improvement in U.S.-Iran relations is the agenda of regime change – not Israel, not Iraq, nothing else. No amount of pressure or threats will force the Iranian government to negotiate its own destruction. Therefore as long as regime change is the goal, or appears to be the goal, Iran has no credible incentives to comply with any demands. Threats are useless. Sanctions are useless. In any case, sanctions will strengthen and enrich the regime, as they almost always do.

The Bush administration discarded an opportunity to expand cooperation with the government of President Muhammad Khatami after the U.S. and Iran collaborated to remove the Taliban regime and establish the Government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. I witnessed that cooperation as a member of the UN team at the Bonn conference. The Bush administration threw that chance away, declaring Iran a member of the Axis of Evil. It did so under President Khatami, who never denied the Holocaust or said that the Israeli regime, like the Soviet Union, was destined to disappear from the pages of time (which is what Ahmadinejad actually said, not that Israel should be wiped off the map). Therefore Iran does not believe that there is any genuine link between the extremist statements of President Ahmadinejad and U.S. policy, as the Bush administration had exactly the same policy toward the Government of President Khatami. Ahmadinejad has indeed called Israel the “bearer of Satan,” the equivalent in Persian of calling a country a member of the “axis of evil.” There is a fearful symmetry of demonization.

The advocates of war claim that the Iranian regime is a monolithic, revolutionary regime whose aim is destruction of world order and in particular the U.S. and Israel. The argument is identical to that of Cold Warriors who argued that the USSR was a monolithic revolutionary regime with exactly the same aims. Because the regime is “evil” and monolithic, negotiations are impossible (see AEI fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht’s article in the current Newsweek). Internal change or reform is also impossible. There are no Iranian moderates or realists with whom one can work for change, just as there were no moderate or reform communists in the USSR. These same people argued that everything Gorbachev did was part of a plot to trick the West and strengthen Soviet Communism. They now make the same arguments about Iran.

In part thanks to them, we are now dealing not with the Iranian Gorbachev, but with the Iranian Putin, who is rather worse than the original. Nonetheless, the Iranian power structure still includes people with a range of views, from conservative realist to reformist, with whom it is possible to engage, if an agenda of regime change did not sabotage any efforts on their part. I meet with such people regularly. Certainly the Iranian democratic opposition has made clear its opposition to forcible regime change.

There is an alternative to war, but it has to start with an end to regime change as a policy goal. There are then a number of areas, such as counter-narcotics in Afghanistan and the territorial integrity of Iraq, where the U.S. and Iran have clearly complementary interests and could start a dialogue. I will not attempt to sketch a road map here, and it will be difficult to move far as long as the current administrations are in power in both countries.

The alternative of war will have terrible effects including:

• No support for the U.S. from any country but Israel (though Saudi Arabia and other Arab states may not be too unhappy) and the demolition of whatever still remains of the U.S.’s international standing except as a warmaking power; that reputation will also quickly dissipate as this war, too, fails to achieve its objectives.
  
• Rapid deterioration of security in (at least) Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; note that much of the support for Benazir Bhutto, whom the U.S. hopes will help shepherd a political transition in Pakistan, comes from Pakistani Shi’a, who will turn violently anti-American in the event of an attack on Iran; northern Afghanistan is also under the de facto control of groups supported by Iran against the Taliban; the government of Iraq in Baghdad will oppose an attack on Iran, but our new friends in Anbar province, whom President Bush visited on Labor Day and who fought Iran for Saddam Hussein, will support it and maybe even volunteer to fight.
• Gasoline prices may reach $7/gallon within a week and probably go higher rapidly, especially if Iran makes even partially successful attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz.
• Either there will be a movement of national solidarity against invasion in Iran from across the entire Iranian political spectrum, or (less likely) Iran will collapse into some kind of civil disorder, with nuclear materials littered about.
• Hizbullah and Hamas will unleash missile attacks and perhaps suicide bombings on Israel, and Israel will respond harshly in Lebanon and Gaza (at least).
• Such an attack will also have other unpredictable consequences, which I will therefore not try to predict.

What course of action do I suggest?

The immediate goal for Democratic presidential candidates and the Democrats (and sensible Republicans) in Congress should be to use the power of the legislative branch to prevent the administration from launching a war. I can think of two possible ways to do this:

• Pass an Act of Congress stating that the 2001 AUMF does not authorize a preemptive strike against Iran (or a strike in response to an alleged provocation – recall Tonkin Gulf). In this case, Congress would claim that war with Iran requires new authorization.
• Cut off funding for any war with Iran not specifically authorized by Congress in accordance with the law after September 30, when spending starts out of next year’s budget. Presumably they won’t be able to start the war by then and rely on the “support the troops” argument.

In coordination with this immediate response, responsible leaders in both parties should articulate an alternative policy toward Iran starting with the same principle as the Helsinki Accords of 1975 – no regime change. The same political groups that want war with Iran today opposed the Helsinki Accords of 1975 because they recognized the Soviet control of Eastern Europe. But these Accords were instrumental in bringing about the collapse of the USSR and rise of independent forces in Central and Eastern Europe.

Under different leaders, the U.S. could start work on such a détente today. It will take years and it cannot advance much while Bush-Cheney and Ahmadinejad are in power. But we should not let them destroy such opportunities for the future.

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Post Labor Day Product Rollout: War with Iran (Cross-posted at DailyKos)!

On September 7, 2002, The New York Times White House correspondent Elizabeth Bushmiller treated readers to an explanation of how the Bush administration planned to sell the invasion of Iraq:

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''

A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.

This September 11, we will have the reports from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, filtered through a White House drafted report.

I watched Vice-President Cheney's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, in the residence where I was staying in Kabul, Afghanistan. I heard Cheney deliver his famous falsehood:

The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.

We know the results.

This year, on August 28, President Bush spoke to another veterans' group, the American Legion. He called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," whose "active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He concluded:

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.

But this apparently is just test marketing, like Cheney's 2002 speech. After all "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hesitated before posting this. I don't want to spread alarmist rumors. I don't want to lessen the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government in Tehran. But there are too many signs of another irresponsible military adventure from the Cheney-Bush administration for me just to dismiss these reports. I am putting them into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed. Read more on this article...

Bush Warns Maliki, Corrects his Nuclear Gaffe and Acknowledges that the US is Trying to Deny the Iranian People Their Rightful Place in the World

In his pre-vacation news conference George Bush warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki against relying on Iran. Responding to a question regarding Maliki's trip to Iran (he visited both Tehran and Mashad; the latter city to meet with Ayatollah Khamenei) and his comments about Tehran's work in "providing security and fighting terrorism in Iraq,"Bush said, “If the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive.”

“My message to him is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay," Bush said in remarks which had to be corrected immediately after the news conference by the US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe who said the "price to pay" remark by Bush was directed at Iran.

Obviously flustered by the back to up back support Iran has received from two key American allies, Hamid Karzai and Nuri al-Maliki, Bush corrected his previous charge about Iran’s proclaimed intentions to acquire nuclear weapons but insisted on identifying Iran as very “troubling nation.” He also revealed that America’s Iran policy is designed to squeeze the people of Iran economically:

… should the American people be concerned about Iran. Yea we ought to be very concerned about Iran. They are a destabilizing influence. They are a government that's declared policy is very troubling obviously when they have announced, when Ahmadinejad has announced the destruction of Israel as part of his foreign policy. That’s something obviously we cannot live with.

They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program. That in itself coupled with their stated foreign policy is very dangerous for world stability They are funders of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is intent upon you know battling forces of moderation. And so it is a very troubling nation right now.

Iran can do better. The government is isolating its people. The government has caused America and other nations, rational nations, to say we will work together to do everything we can to deny you economic opportunity because of the decisions you are making.

My message to the Iranian people is that you can do better than this current government. You don’t have to be isolated. You don’t have to be in a position where you can’t realize your full economic potential, and the United States of America will continue to work with our friends and allies in the Security Council and elsewhere to put you in a position, to deny you your rightful place in the world, not because of our intention but because of your government’s intention.

So the bottom line, it seems, is that the Bush administration's now publicly acknowledged policy is to hold the people of Iran hostage economically ("to deny you your rightful place in the world" and "to deny you economic opportunity") because of their government. Note that Bush's direct message to the Iranian people does not end with the misdeeds of the Iranian government that can be changed. His words are that “you can do better than this current government.” And what if the Iranian people cannot? Well, they obviously have to pay for their misfortune.

Just imagine what the Iranian government and its Ministry of Intelligence which just a couple of days ago warned Iranian citizens about the multiple ways the American government is trying to cause political and economic instability and insecurity in Iran will do with these words. Read more on this article...