Valentina Pasquali

Washington D.C. – A rapidly shrinking, aging and increasingly expensive American military, which is unequipped to carry out real-life combat missions, is the worrying scenario presented in “America’s Defense Meltdown,” a recently published book that contains the results of a survey of the U.S. armed forces conducted by thirteen Pentagon insiders. Winslow Wheeler, Thomas Christie and Pierre Sprey, three of the authors, discussed the decades-long, and continuing, deterioration of America’s defenses at a book launch organized in Washington D.C. by five not-for-profit organizations active in defense-related issues: The Fund for Constitutional Government, the Center for Defense Information (CDI), the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Institute for Policy Studies.

According to official data from the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. military budget

America's Defense Meltdown

(in inflation-adjusted dollars) is higher today than it was during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which was heavy on defense spending. Today, the U.S. military budget approximates that of the rest of the world, noted Winslow Wheeler, and it is about three times as large as those of China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and North Korea combined – America’s potential short and long-term enemies. However, in terms of the size of forces, numbers are down from the past, even considering Iraq and Afghanistan. This is true for Army divisions, Navy combatant ships, and Air Force tactical wings; despite steady growth, figures suggest, the defense budget is capable of buying only a decreasing number of weapons systems. As a result, the forces are aging. While in the 1980s the average age of an American fighter aircraft was around 10 years, today it is between 15 and 20 years, and growing.

Thomas Christie, who has five decades of experience in defense acquisition, weapon testing and program evaluation, and who retired as the Pentagon’s most senior career civilian official in 2005, depicted a fouled DoD planning and budget process based on a series of flawed assumptions. For example, one assumption has been that future budgets will grow at a faster rate than the past or that weapon system procurement costs will decrease in the future. These constant misinterpretations of budget cycles lead, according to Christie, to the approval of programs that are unattainable in reality, with subsequent delays and ballooning costs. As a result, for example, the Air Force ended up with a dwindling fighter force because it banked on a higher modernization line than what it could have reasonably expected. According to Christie the problem is not in the acquisition process per se, but rather in the way defense managers have been using it. “We have had enough acquisition reform; we need no more acquisition reform. We need to take this process we have and make it work better,” Christie argued.

There could also be historic and philosophical roots to the failures in the DoD acquisition process. According to Pierre M. Sprey, who worked at the Pentagon and is known to have been part of a group that procured some of the most successful weapons in DoD history, the U.S. Air Force in particular still relies on a strategy devised in the early 1900s by an Italian General, Giulio Douhet. The driving idea of Douhet’s military philosophy was that one can win wars without the use of land force just by heavily bombing the enemy’s territory, population and economy. “This is an appallingly stupid idea,” said Sprey. He argued that this conceptualization of war has led the U.S. to develop the wrong military mission – with the attendant dominance of strategic bombing — and, subsequently, the wrong force, comprising ineffective and expensive bombers. In order to improve the state of things, the defense apparatus should review the last seventy years of military history, Sprey recommended, and should distill what really works in combat. DoD managers would discover that, through the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the war in Kosovo, what always worked best was a numerous, light and flexible force capable of providing efficient close air support to beleaguered ground troops. Such a force, Sprey argued, would be large, effective and much more affordable than the current shrinking pool of bomber aircrafts.

Not only was their analysis unforgiving but Wheeler, Christie and Sprey’ forecast for the future of the U.S. military was one might say, discouraging. Sprey admitted to be “extremely pessimistic,” while arguing that it is still important to speak out and try to create public outrage over the missed opportunities that the U.S. will incur if the Pentagon keeps going down the current path. “I’m very pessimistic about making the changes needed happen,” Thomas Christie echoed him, “for how concerning it is to see that we have lost most of the capabilities we had even only 20 years ago.” Winslow Wheeler even went so far as to express his disappointment over the early decisions of the Obama Administration as far as DoD appointments. “Obama has promised change, but so far we are getting none of that. They have brought in people from the past and, as a result, we are headed down the wrong path,” Wheeler said. Particular criticism came in for the selection of the newly confirmed Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, who served as the Under Secretary of Defense/Comptroller in the Clinton Administration, and who was responsible, according to Wheeler, Christie and Sprey, of making the acquisition process even less transparent than it already had been. “I doubt anything can happen until the whole ethos of our military changes,” Thomas Christie concluded emphatically.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – On the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s much anticipated visit to the Middle East, Elliott Abrams, former senior adviser on the Near and Middle East to the Bush Administration and currently senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, outlined the challenges Clinton will face as the new top U.S. diplomat, and portrayed a gloom state of affairs in the region, at the core of which is the stand-still in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There’s very little belief, in the Middle East, that political negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are possible,” Abrams, a leading neoconservative who was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, said in a conference call with reporters. Currently, it is impossible to say who would even be a legitimate representative of either party at a negotiating table. In addition to a long-standing split within the Palestinian camp – where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) represents only a part of the population, the other having embraced Hamas — the general elections recently held in Israel, and which have yet to yield a national government, only contributed to complicating the picture.

According to Abrams, the hope for a broad base coalition that would include both Likud and Kadima parties, an option more conducive to dialogue with the Palestinians, has already been crashed. Despite widespread popular support for such a solution, and Likud leader and Prime Minister-Designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts, Kadima’s Tzipi Livni is resistant to aligning her party with Israel’s more conservative factions. “The U.S. would prefer a broader base government,” Abrams said. Nevertheless, it unlikely that Washington will put any direct pressure on Livni. “It’s hard to know what the outcome of a direct intervention would be, and how Kadima would react to it,” Abrams explained.

Political negotiations over the future of Palestine have been languishing for a long time. Discussions have long reached a point where the minimum the Palestinian Authority is willing to accept is more than the maximum the Israeli Government is willing to concede. Increased Palestinian ambitions make things worse. In Abrams’ opinion, the idea that the creation of a Palestinian state is a matter of urgency and should be attended to immediately is relatively new and was not, for example, part of the road-map. The road-map contemplated incremental steps and an interim stage before a state could ever be created. “I think these issues shouldn’t be taboo. One can envision many different combinations beyond what the Palestinian Authority wants now,” Abrams claimed.

Because of the unlikelihood that a political agreement will be reached in the near-term, Abrams encouraged all parties involved to focus on a step-by-step approach aimed at improving material standards of living in the West Bank, leaving Gaza aside for the time being. “The economy in the West Bank has not collapsed yet. It is actually in a decent state. Even more could be achieved if the Israelis loosened road blocks and checkpoints. We should work to strengthen some of those Palestinian institutions, like the police force, that one day will be needed for a Palestinian state,” Abrams advised.

In this context, Abrams believes that the issue of Jewish settlements in the territories should be downgraded. In his opinion, population growth in the settlements doesn’t have, per se, a huge impact on the daily lives of Palestinians, nor does it hamper the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state. The real problem lies, instead, in potential land expansion. However, according to Abrams, there has been little evidence of this in recent years. “The U.S. should tell Israel to exercise pressure on its settlers to avoid outgrowth of the settlements. For the rest, we should keep our ammunitions for issues that affect Palestinians more deeply,” Abrams advised.

As for Gaza itself, the Israeli blockade still stands. As a consequence only humanitarian supplies (i.e. medicines and food) are being allowed in, while other kinds of products, for example materials needed for reconstruction efforts, are not. “I don’t think Netanyahu will mend this position,” Abrams predicted, indicating that one, although difficult, possibility would be to get these supplies into Gaza through Egypt. “The Egyptians will be resistant because they don’t want the Israelis to offload Gaza on them,” Abrams explained. Things are further complicated by the fact that Israel considers an even more porous border between Egypt and Gaza as a potential threat in terms of arms smuggling. The Israelis are convinced, and many Egyptians agree, that Iranian weapons come into Gaza via the tunnels under the Egyptian border. Reportedly, most arms shipments leave Iran by sea, circumnavigate the Gulf of Aden, and ultimately stop short of the Suez Canal and hit land in places such as Somalia and Eritrea, finally arriving in Gaza via land.

In the context of Iran, Abrams criticized the Obama Administration’s new approach. Irrespective of whether or not the U.S might eventually start direct diplomacy with Teheran, Abrams believes that Washington should have never taken the military option off the table. “We need to keep the Iranians off balance and we need to keep them worried,” Abrams said. “Instead, I think we left the Iranians with the feeling that the possibility of a U.S. strike is totally out of the question,” he regretted.

While it appears increasingly unlikely that the U.S. will attack Iran, it is hard to predict what Israel might do. “They do see Iran as an existential threat and they believe that a nuclear Iran could trigger a second holocaust,” Abrams explained. According to him, Israel will have to consider how effective a military strike could be and assess the political and social consequences it would have. Abrams disagreed that attacking Iran would trigger a backlash and increase support for the regime. While he conceded that this could happen in the short run, a military intervention could cause the Iranian people to doubt their choice of leadership in the long run.

Finally, Elliott Abrams touched on the nomination of Dennis Ross to be Secretary Clinton’s special adviser to South West Asia and the Persian Gulf. The choice of Ross, criticized in Iran for his pro-Israel stances, had long been expected and turned out to be for a less significant role than what had been anticipated.
“I’m not sure why he wasn’t officially nominated for Iran. There are many speculations as to why that happened,” Abrams said. Interestingly, Ross has not been given the role of an envoy, such as George Mitchell for the Middle East, and is not tasked with outreach. Rather, Ross might be assigned to a behind-the-scene role of private consultations with Secretary Clinton. Clearly, Ross’ final job will also depend on what approach the Obama Administration decides to take toward Iran and on when any form of direct engagement might actually start.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Seven years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. of September 11^th, and the subsequent launch of the United States’ so-called “war on terror,” the international community continues grappling with the Al-Qaeda brand of terrorism. Valentina Pasquali asked Gary LaFree, one of America’s foremost experts, to evaluate the strength of Al-Qaeda today, as President Barack Obama begins reviewing, and reforming, the policies adopted by his predecessor George W. Bush. A professor of criminology and criminal justice, LaFree is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a center of excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): In early January, CIA officials announced they had killed two top-level Al-Qaeda officers in Pakistan. This is the latest of several such successes, but what should we make of it exactly? What does it mean for the so-called “war on terror”?

Gary LaFree (GL): It seems to me that the majority of experts and analysts in the field of terrorism studies would agree that the United States has been relatively successful in crippling the leadership of Al Qaeda. The part that we probably have been much less successful with is stopping the social movement that has grown around Al Qaeda. START has conducted several polls of public opinion in the Middle East and we have found a fair amount of support from the general population for either Al Qaeda or ideas associated with it. There is an interesting split here, and researchers and policy-makers must deal with it in assessing the “war on terror.” On the one hand the U.S. has been relatively successful in either imprisoning, killing or isolating the top leadership, on the other hand the Al Qaeda social movement, this sort of Al Qaeda franchise, is very much alive and well. While, from the perspective of a conventional-war situation, removing leadership has always been a critical strategy of war-fighting, this is not as true anymore, considering the sort of conflict that we are fighting against Al Qaeda. Hitting the opponent’s leadership doesn’t have the same meaning when there is a fair amount of support and sympathy for the kind ideas that are being propounded.

VP: These latest killings were widely publicized in U.S. media. Do you think this is meant for domestic purposes, or is it also meant to demoralize Al-Qaeda’s members or potential recruits? How do people in the Middle East react to news that the Al-Qaeda leadership has suffered yet another blow?

GL: This is an interesting question, and probably above my pay grade. My guess is the media is too diverse and independent to be controlled by the political process in this way. I suspect that this hypothesis is much too sophisticated for the relative strength of the political establishment.

As far as the Middle East is concerned, in our polling of the region we haven’t framed the question in exactly this fashion. I would say that, in general, targeted assassinations are a real tricky business and that it’s easy to get a backlash from them. If you look at past studies we have done, especially in the case of the conflict in Northern Ireland, there is some evidence suggesting that the British strategy of relying on targeted assassination backfired, creating an important backlash and strengthening the goals of the Irish Republican Army. I think the same is true in Israel.

Vice-versa, what really has come through from the polls we have done in Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt and Indonesia, is that public opinion reacts very differently when terrorists attack the U.S. military or American civilians. Attacks on the military in Iraq, for example, have a much higher rate of support than attacks on citizens. I think this is interesting, because it shows that the public has not yet really caught on the very blurred relationship between civilians and the military that the U.S. has been creating in Iraq, where many private contractors and non-military personnel do essentially military jobs.

VP: How quickly do you think the Al Qaeda leadership is able to regenerate itself? How successfully can they find new leaders that are as influential and effective as the previous ones?

GL: First of all, let me make clear that we deal entirely with unclassified information. I guess that if you spoke to someone in the CIA you would get a very different picture. In any case, we have noticed that, beginning with 9/11 and then continuing with the attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai, we are experiencing more of the phenomenon that Mark Sageman called “the bunch of guys.” In other words, there is increased activity on the part of people that have very little or almost no contact with the central Al-Qaeda leadership. They are increasingly like a decentralized franchising operation.

As the U.S. puts increasing pressure on Al-Qaeda central, other outgrowths of the group spring up somewhere else. As a result, the connections between these separate groups are pretty much exclusively media-driven. I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of the world where we live in. This mechanism reminds me of that young boy in Minnesota, who, a few months ago, went into a school and started killing people. He later claimed to be have been inspired by right-wing organizations he read about on the web. He had no contact with these except through the internet. I think this scenario applies to a group like Al-Qaeda, where an increasing number of contacts happen outside of some centralized organization.

This creates real problems for our research. At START, we have been collecting records of terrorist attacks, from Al Qaeda as well as other terrorist groups, and we have now about 80,000 instances categorized, dating back to 1970. It is hard these days to decide how we should record the action of a group calling itself Al Qaeda of Iraq and committing a violent attack in Iraq. Whether it should be considered a case of domestic terrorism or whether everything that is linked to Al Qaeda should go under the label of international terrorism simply because the franchise operates in different countries. It has become a complicated question.

VP: From what you are saying, it appears that there is an increasing problem even just defining international terrorism and Al-Qaeda. Is this the case?

GL: Absolutely. The study of terrorism has always been based on the prototypical IRA or ETA-type of model, characterized by a strong organizational structure. Al-Qaeda’s kind of franchising operation, where a group of people in Europe, without any direct contact with Al-Qaeda’s central leadership, would launch an attack that they claimed was inspired by Al-Qaeda, is a very different model.

The definition of what Al-Qaeda really is and what can be counted as Al-Qaeda’s actions is especially problematic in Iraq. In this country the violence is so widespread that it is very difficult to separate out what might be just military actions, insurgencies, ordinary crime or terrorism.

Additionally, groups like the IRA and the ETA usually claimed responsibility for their acts, which always made it pretty easy to tell when they staged an attack. Al-Qaeda instead rarely does the same. In 55% of those 80,000 attacks listed on our database, a group or another has claimed some responsibility. Instead, if we look only at Iraq, after the U.S. led invasion in 2003, that number was only 9%. In other words, you have a ton of violence but you don’t really know what’s going on for sure.

VP: Compared to 2001, how would you assess today the strength and ability of organize to Al-Qaeda? To what extent do you think the “war on terror” may have crippled it?

GL: One of the ways we have tried to do this is by going through our records, all the way back to the beginnings of Al-Qaeda, and counting the number of fatalities and incidents that we could clearly attribute to Al-Qaeda. The highest number of attacks occurred in 2005; 2007 comes in second. So even if there has been a decline from 2005, it is not at all a huge decline. On the other hand, if you look at deaths and fatalities attributed to Al-Qaeda, 9/11 marked the highest point, because there were so many casualties just that day, since it was such an unusually big attack. The second highest years were 2004 and 2005, with both around 500 victims.

VP: What lessons can we learn from past mistakes and successes? What strategies do you think have worked best and which ones are ineffective?

GL: First and foremost that this is not conventional warfare. If we think we can rely on bombs and fighter planes without paying attention to the impact our actions have on the local population, we are very likely going to lose the conflict. I would say this is something that everybody agrees with at this stage of the game. It is clear that we have to remember that our opponents are providing social services, that they actually have a presence in the communities. Simply going after what the military calls “the bad guys,” has little impact on people living in a remote part of Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan: they don’t get any direct benefit out of the bomb going off in a distant location and they remain more concerned about their own safety and the safety of their family. If this battle is lost, then it is likely that the whole war will be lost too.

We also must learn that fighter bombers are not surgical instruments. Although they have become more sophisticated, they still make mistakes all the time, which create a backlash in how the local population looks at the military operation.

In a sense, this exemplifies exactly what is so effective about terrorism. It is a technique that takes the power of the other side and turns it against them. You can win a battle and still lose the campaign, and certainly lose out in world opinion.

Finally, one of the things that occurred to me after five years of running this center is that there is a curious kind of morality involved in terrorism. The public is really turned off when a large powerful army comes in and kills a bunch of people by mistake. They are also turned off, though, when terrorist groups do similar things. Most people are not thrilled to see beheadings on the internet. I think it works in both directions; government miscalculate and so do terrorist groups.

VP: Do you feel that the Al-Qaeda leadership has a sense of this public morality?

GL: They are sophisticated, they are very sophisticated. Yes, I’m absolutely sure they are aware. Blowing up innocent people, in general this sort of extreme violence, doesn’t play that well with public opinion. As I mentioned previously, we have done quite a bit of research on the British and the IRA — they are so well-studied and we thought we could learn a lot from them. The British lost a lot of ground with the population when they came down the hardest, because they were seen as cruel, while the IRA had people willing to take their own life to resist them.

VP: What are the steps ahead? What is your advice to the new Obama Administration?

GL: Above all else, I would say to him that if he wants to be successful, he has to look for international partners. At START, we have just finished a project for which we studied 53 terrorist groups identified by the U.S. Government as the most dangerous threats for the U.S. We found that a striking 97% of their attacks were in fact not carried out against American targets. In other words, countries like Pakistan have a huge interest in controlling terrorist groups that operate on their territories because they are the ones who get hit the worst. The idea that one country can go at it alone without international cooperation is a dangerous one, but I think the Obama Administration has really got that.

The world community as a whole is not happy with random violence and people being tortured and killed, no matter who is behind it. In fact, the U.S. had a tremendous amount of goodwill after 9/11. However, this doesn’t mean that you can be a bully. To the contrary, you have to be very careful how you exercise that kind of power and authority. In the Northern Ireland case, one of the British’s most successful decisions as far as public support was a military surge in 1972: they put many troops in with very little resistance to it, and allowed for very few casualties. The problem with this strategy is that, on the one hand, you must want to follow through and, on the other hand, you also have to be willing to get out as soon as possible. Most countries would not be thrilled with long-term occupations. Moreover, you have to be aware that the moment you start killing a lot of innocent people, the public gets tired of you.

VP: How do you see the future? Is there any reason to be optimistic?

GL: There are a couple of thoughts that can be comforting. Terrorism, while it appears from the outside to be incredibly prevalent, is much less common than people think. Consider all the vulnerable targets that fortunately people do not exploit or hit; an act of terrorism remains a relatively rare event. It is also a very cyclical phenomenon. So much of the terrorism from the 1970s was centered in Europe, and most of that has died out. In the 1980s, terrorism was predominantly Latin American, and most of that has disappeared as well. Now we are in a Jihadi period, but this also won’t go on forever. Terrorism tends to go in waves and fortunately we will get through this period; hopefully soon rather than later.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – On the 30^th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and as the new U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama promises to seek out channels for direct diplomacy with the Islamic Republic of Iran, American experts continue gathering in Washington to discuss the legacy of the 1979 take-over of Iran by the clergy. Despite the promise of new beginnings, old misconceptions and mutual mistrust continue to dominate the relations between the United States and Iran, which some fear might cripple renewed efforts toward engagement.

Two former Foreign Service officers who were posted in Iran during the lead-up to the revolution spoke at an event organized by the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C., pointing out the strings of developments and setbacks that drove U.S. foreign policy towards defeat in 1979.

Guilty of wishful thinking, the U.S. had a very inaccurate understanding of the situation on the ground in Iran, argued Charlie Haas, country director for Iran at the Department of State from 1975 to 1978 and Deputy Chief of Mission in Tehran in 1978-79. Up until the last few months of the regime of Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, Haas recalled, “Washington thought that Iran was on the march, that things in Teheran were looking good, that the Shah was solidly in control, and that we were getting a lot of value out of all of this.” By the fall of 1978, when the situation had turned for the worst, the U.S. had decided to support the Shah until the very end, no matter how unpopular he had become. Scant regard was also paid to how such a decision would potentially spoil any opportunity to maintain some, however diminished, level of engagement with the Islamic Republic.

To its own detriment, Washington had severely underestimated the magnitude of the Islamic revolution and proved unequipped to deal with the consequences it bore. According to Henry Precht, a political and military officer at the Embassy in Tehran for the four years prior to the Revolution and the then State Department country director for Iran during the hostage crisis, five factors played a central role in the unfolding of events: ignorance, ideology, inertia, insults and Israel – the five Is.

The U.S. showed a remarkable lack of understanding of domestic Iranian politics, as Washington obstinately equated the whole of Iran with the person of the Shah (a tendency that, inexplicably, remains alive even today when the U.S. equates all of Iran to the words and actions of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). Forgetting the existence and demands of the other forty millions Iranians, the U.S. ended up in an unsustainable position. Rigid anti-communism was partially responsible for such complete devotion to the Shah. Zbigniew Brzezinski, then National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, viewed Iran as the lynchpin in the wall of containment around the Soviet Union and wouldn’t let go of his ideologically aligned ally Mohamed Reza Pahlavi. In addition to flat-out misconceptions and inflexible ideological stances, a kind of inertia in U.S. policy also made it impossible for Washington to change course. In the years that preceded the Islamic revolution, Iran suffered from rampant inflation and economic chaos, and the regime was becoming increasingly unpopular. “Basically, we were witnessing a war between the Shah and his people and the Shah was not going to prevail,” Henry Precht recalled. He became convinced that the U.S. should change approach and adjust to the changing time, but “because of inertia nobody accepted to embark upon this path,” Haas said.

The rise to power of Iran’s Islamist regime presented the U.S. with many more unexpected turns. During his exile in Paris, surrounded by westernized mullahs, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had managed to convince the world that he was another Gandhi coming along to rescue Iran from foreign subjugation. However, once he returned to Teheran in February of 1979, the more conservative clergy that had never left the country and had suffered a great deal of persecution under the Shah successfully took the revolution into a more fundamentalist direction. This departure triggered two developments. The U.S. and Iran embraced the rhetoric of insults, sparring accusations and blame, which quickly caused the relationship to deteriorate and then entirely collapse. The arrival of the Iranian theocracy, and the implications for Israel, also meant that Jerusalem became a prominent consideration in shaping Washington’s policy toward Teheran. This had not necessarily been the case in the past.

Some of the same dynamics that characterized the days immediately preceding and immediately following the Iranian revolution are still at play thirty years later and will partly influence the way bilateral dealings will develop under President Obama. Alex Vatanka, US Security Editor of Jane’s Information Group, and Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), discussed the future of U.S.-Iran relationship at the Middle East Institute, in a separate panel.

The departing point for any new discussion about Iranian politics is the announcement made last Monday by former President Mohammad Khatami that he will run for office again this year, in the presidential elections scheduled for June. Since the ultimate power of the Islamic Republic lies in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and since all important decision-making happens behind closed doors, Vatanka speculated whether or not the Supreme Leader gave Khatami the green light. Ayatollah Khamenei might have had reasons to do so, especially considering the state of Iran’s economy and the increasingly unpopular government of President Ahmadinejad. In addition, and in spite of his reformist agenda, Khatami does not look like the confrontational personality that would ever truly challenge the Ayatollah and his supremacy. “If the Supreme Leader did give Khatami the ok, which I think is the case, Ahmadinejad’s road toward re-election will be steep,” predicted Vatanka. However, he added, if Khatami chose to run despite the opinion of Khamenei, “Iran is facing a period of political commotion like it hasn’t in a long time.”

Iran’s internal politics is increasingly fractured, Vatanka claimed, and the infighting between different factions is on the rise. This development should not be confused with a weakness of the regime. Rather, this is a testimony of how comfortable the Islamic Republic has grown, allowing for internal debate because it feels unchallenged otherwise. “I’m definitely not one of those who subscribe to the view that the regime is on the verge of collapse,” argued Vatanka, forecasting that the internal balance between reformists and conservatives and the debate on who holds the true legacy of the revolution will continue well into the next decade.

From the U.S. point of view, however, Vatanka reminded that reformists and conservatives are all Islamists and that the U.S. should not take the news of Khatami’s candidature as a reason to daydream about a complete change in Iran’s politics. After all, it is Ayatollah Khamenei who always has the last word, particularly with regard to matters of foreign policy. First and foremost, the U.S. should remember, Ayatollah Khamenei has an interest in preserving the supremacy of his office and, secondly, in guaranteeing the survival of the theocracy. As a result, one should expect that, in order to engage actively and directly with the U.S., Iran will ask for a full recognition of the regime as it is today, looking for a strategic shift on the part of Washington. “Once the regime is officially accepted by the U.S., and Iranians don’t feel it is at all right now, only then the debate on the U.S.-Iran relationship will change completely,” Vatanka speculated.

Trita Parsi echoed him, reflecting on a few questions that loom large on the Obama Administration as the President tries to find ways to open a fulfilling dialogue with Teheran. Parsi reiterated the fact that Iran wants security guarantees before it begins a direct diplomatic relationship with the U.S. The Iranian leadership has been talking about being included in the debate over the Middle East, to be granted a seat at the table. However, Parsi noted, Teheran has not yet put forward a comprehensive vision of what this inclusion should mean. He believes that the U.S. should seize this opportunity and be the first to lay out a plan for what the U.S.-Iran relationship should ideally look like in the future. “If we don’t present a long-term, strategic vision, Iranians will simply assume that the U.S. is only after regime change and, with that in mind, won’t fully cooperate even in areas in which we do share common interests,” Parsi claimed. After all, he recalled, Iranians were very disappointed when in 2002 President George W. Bush included Iran in the ‘axis of evil’ only weeks after Teheran had been cooperating with Washington on Afghanistan. President Obama should abandon all step-by-step and tactical-type approaches, which have failed in the past, and leave aside all remaining hesitation to move forward with a comprehensive vision and a strategic shift.

According to Trita Parsi, President Obama should also adopt a new kind of rhetoric when talking about Iran, like he did in his inaugural address, where he pledged to relate to the Muslim world on the basis of “mutual respect.” Americans should also finally drop the idea of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. Iranians are offended by it because it is a language normally reserved for donkeys.

In addition, there is a matter of timing: the U.S. Administration must decide whether or not to begin a dialogue with Iran before the Iranian presidential elections take place in June. There have been charges that initiating a relationship now would only help the electoral campaign of President Ahmadinejad. It has also been claimed that it would be much easier for President Obama to speak to Khatami than to President Ahmadiejad. “The truth is we really don’t know and any time we have tried to play Iranian politics in the past we failed,” Trita Parsi argued. As a result, he advises the U.S. to leave the elections issue aside and to establish government to government relations that are independent of individuals on either side of the aisle. Opening up talks immediately could also facilitate the task of a possible reformist government, were Khatami to win the vote. In fact, one could make the case that Iranian reformers would enjoy more leeway in continuing negotiations that were initiated under conservative rule, rather than launching diplomatic engagement themselves.

Finally, President Obama needs to decide how to approach the very delicate nuclear issue. According to Trita Parsi, the U.S. should remain focused on what is achievable, rather than relying on hawkish rhetoric that only contributes antagonizing the Iranians. “Washington should want to discuss weaponization rather than enrichment,” argued Trita Parsi. As a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is prevented from developing nuclear weapons and should be held accountable for that. However, the NPT entitles Iran to enrichment, making it pointless to try and stop Teheran from enriching uranium.

Concluding his presentation, Trita Parsi recognized that the chances for the kind of ambitious strategic approach he laid out are very slim, even under President Obama. Nevertheless, the matter of fact is that, for the first time in thirty years, Barack Obama ran and won his presidential campaign on the promise to engage Teheran. This, according to Parsi, is unprecedented and should not be discounted.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Iran and Russia have entertained a long and complex relationship for centuries, and one which goes well beyond the current contentious issues. Coexisting in the same delicate regional environment, spanning from the Caucasus to Central Asia and reaching all the way into the Middle East, Moscow and Teheran share a history of mutual engagement and have always tried to strike a difficult balance between their sometime overlapping and sometime conflicting interests.

Persian Dreams, a book by John W. Parker, unleashes an impressive wealth of details to unveil this story, thanks to first-hand interviews as well as in-depth research on primary and secondary sources. A self-described old school Sovietologist, Parker is the chief of the Division for Caucasus and Central Asia in the Office for Russian and Eurasian Analysis at the bureau of Intelligence and Research within the U.S. Department of State. Parker is also the author of the two-volume work Kremlin in Transition (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991.)

In 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Parker was assigned to follow the civil war that swept through the newly established Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan. It was then, for the first time, that Parker encountered the bilateral dealings between Russia and Iran and was surprised to discover that Moscow and Teheran were able to support opposing sides in the Tajik civil war while cooperating on a host of other issues, such as Afghanistan and arms trade.

Enticed by the complexities that characterized the Russia-Iran relationship, Parker decided to delve into its past, to the time of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and even further back to territorial disputes dating to the 1800s, before following the relation’s many twist and turns through the Islamic Revolution and well into the 21st Century, as the nuclear issue acquired increasing prominence in the post-9/11 world.

In this interview with Washington Prism, John W. Parker discusses some of the findings of his book and explains why Russia-Iran dealings deserve to be taken into more account.

Washington Prism (WP): From a reading of Persian Dreams, the Russia-Iran relation emerges as one of opposing tensions, mutual mistrust, and yet a continuous desire for engagement. Is that an accurate characterization?

John W. Parker (JP): Russia and Iran do have a long history with each other, dating back millennia. And there is a historical mistrust between them. But, at least from the Russian point of view, out of this mistrust the feeling is generated that they have to remain engaged with Iran, if only to keep Iran from doing more things that Moscow doesn’t like.

Additionally, there have been issues, particularly regional issues, where they have agreed and collaborated. Tajikistan after 1992 is an example of this. Prior to 1992, the Russians and the Iranians supported opposite sides in the civil war, and my reading is that the Iranians actually helped set the civil war in motion but then had to back down.

In any case, after the peace process started in Tajikistan, Moscow and Teheran worked together on it, in large part because of what was happening in Afghanistan. In fact, they both opposed the Taliban. Iran traditionally has felt it has a sphere of influence in Afghanistan’s western border regions, in places such as Herat.

Similarly, Russia would like the northern border regions to be fairly stable and friendly. The Taliban threatened both their interests causing Iran and Russia to support the United Front in Afghanistan in an effort to prevent the Taliban from taking over all of Afghanistan.

Another example of collaboration would be Chechnya. Despite Chechnya’s Muslim population, and in part precisely because of engagement with Russia over Afghanistan, Iran never really supported the Chechen Liberation Movement. When the first Chechen war broke out, Iran had already gambled and lost in Tajikistan and had a more realistic view of whether people inside the former Soviet Republics would support an Iranian-type of revolution. Then, by the time the second Chechen war began, the Taliban had taken over Kabul giving Iran even less of an incentive to make troubles for Russia in Chechnya, since even greater threats to Iran and Russia’s common interests were now posed by the Taliban.

This is a long way of saying that, historically, Russia and Iran have not trusted each other. However, there are issues that come along on which they have common interests and on which they work together despite their mistrust.

WP: How do you think Moscow and Teheran view their bilateral relation?

JP: I think they both look at it in a very utilitarian way.

Russia wants to continue being engaged and tries to dosage this engagement in the hope that, over the years, it will wind up with a better position that it has so far in post-Shah Iran. In my opinion this is the key to why Russia doesn’t do more on the nuclear issue: it hopes to do just enough to moderate Iran without angering it.

The Islamic Republic also seizes the engagement with Russia in a very utilitarian way. For example, when relations between Moscow and Teheran started warming up after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, during which bilateral dealings had been nearly frozen, Iran looked to Russia as a way to breaking out of what seemed to be encirclement by the rest of the world.

Basically, at all junctures both countries find a reason to deal with each other.

WP: Influence over Central Asia has been a key and always difficult aspect of the relation between Moscow and Teheran. Is influence in Central Asia somewhat settled for Moscow and Teheran, or what’s in store?

JP: My impression is that, for the short-term, Iran is not going to try contest with Russia in Central Asia and the Caucasus. In the long-run, however, I think Iran will always compete over those areas and Russia knows it.

It must be said that the Central Asians themselves play a fundamental role and not in favor of Iran, the intentions of which they never trust. There is a long history to this, going back the 19th Century and Sunni-Shi’a differences, even if people might not remember what were the religious origin of their dislike for Iranians.

In any case, Iranians have always been despised by the Sunni populations of Central Asia. You can see for yourself in the travel literature from the 19th Century. For example, one of my favorite is a book by Eugene Schuyler, the American Consul in St. Petersburg, who took a nine-month trip to Central Asia after Moscow conquered Tashkent and what is now known as Uzbekistan. In those decades, the 1860s and 1870s, the Turkmen’s attitude towards Iranians was that these were people to be captured and sold in the slave market.

Even in Tajikistan, although they basically speak Farsi, they are Sunni, not Shi’a. And in spite of the common cultural roots with Iranians, it didn’t take long for good feelings to wear off during the civil war of 1992-1993. In the Caucasus, the Azerbaijani are also very distrustful of Iran. Armenia, of course, has a modus vivendi with Iran and so does Georgia.

Basically they all have their unpleasant memories. For the time being, I think Iranians learned a bitter lesson in Tajikistan and they have sort of pulled back, as far as their revolutionary aspirations in Central Asia and the Caucasus are concerned. As we’ve seen, they refrained from repeating the Tajik experience in Chechnya.

In any case, this is not to say that Iran has given up. Teheran maintains a relatively long-term view of that part of the world, and it hopes to exert more influence there as Iran becomes stronger and as Russia becomes weaker.

Russians are aware of this, and some have openly commented about trend lines for Russia and Iran going into different directions from now on. They see the Russian population decreasing and the Iranian population increasing. They realize that Iran might be getting nuclear weapons and missiles, which would neutralize Russia’s trump card of nuclear weapons and missiles.

In the Middle East itself, Moscow sees Iranian influence degrading whatever strength Russia might have. Moreover, the Russians also remember that it wasn’t so long ago that they pushed Iran out of the Caucasus and Central Asia and a few ascribe to Iran ambitions to get back the “lost” territories. Indeed, on the Iranian side there is still heavy resentment over the Gulistan Treaty of 1813 (which confirmed inclusion of modern day Azerbaijan, Daghestan and Eastern Georgia into the Russian Empire,) and the Turkmenchay Treaty (signed by the Persian Empire after its defeat in the Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828, which recognized Russia’s control over the Erivan khanate, Nakhchivan khanate and the remainder of the Talysh khanate, today parts of Azerbaijan).

WP: The Caspian Sea and its energy resources have also represented a key point of confrontation between Russia and Iran. What is the road ahead, especially with regard to energy?

JP: In terms of Caspian delimitations and Caspian resources strictly speaking, things are at a standstill right now, but maybe not a standstill that Iran can’t live with.

Iran claims 20% of the Caspian Sea. By this current medium delimitation, Iran would only have 13 to 14%. During the Soviet period, Iran only worked south of the Astara/Hasanqoli line which gave it about 11%. In any case, wherever you draw the line, there isn’t that much gas in what would be Iranian waters. There isn’t much of it, it’s very deep, and it’s a lot harder and more expensive to get to it. So the question is, from an Iranian point of view, is this issue worth a war? Iran has been building a big deep sea drill, it was supposed to be a three-year project, but it hasn’t been deployed yet. However, whenever it is deployed, it could become a real challenge to what other countries believe is theirs portion of the Caspian. But, again, the question is whether Iran would really push it north of the Astara/Hasanqoli line and then, maybe, even outside of what would be the medium delimitations for boundaries. It could be sort of a shoe that falls on Iranian-Azerbaijani relations especially. So far the Iranians have chosen not to let it fall.

What will happen in the future I don’t know, but I believe the Iranians have come to realize how provocative would this action be.

As far as the Nabucco pipeline (a proposed natural gas pipeline to transport natural gas from Turkey to Europe, possibly originating in the Caucuses or Central Asia and bypassing Russia) I don’t think that you can rule out that Iran may sometime feed gas into it; who knows what’s going to happen in the next five to ten years. You have to build Nabucco first anyway. Even if they did, I don’t think it would be a cause of war with Russia or anything like that.

Nevertheless, Russian policy in terms of energy out of the Caspian Sea has been to do everything in its power to exclude Iran from the European market. If Iran began to feed into Nabucco, it would cut into the Russian market share in Europe.

Overall, whatever Iran does will be secondary to what Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan do anyway. Iran feeding into Nabucco would just be part of a larger challenge to Russian domination of the gas market. One should remember that Russia’s blue stream pipeline under the Black Sea was done as a response to Iranian plans to feed gas to Turkey. Russia just wanted to shut Iranian gas south and east and keep it from going to Europe and it has been fairly successful thus far.

WP: To remain in the energy sector, there have been talks about the creating of an OPEC-like consortium of natural gas producers, countries such as Russia, Iran and Qatar. Is this a reality?

JP: I think it’s kind of a scare crow, I’m not an expert in those matters but my impression is that it is unworkable and it is just something that people talk about. Iranians talk about when they want the West to believe that there is a lot more cooperation on energy matter with Russia than there is.

When the Iranians really push the issue hard, you start reading the Russian press and the Russians are saying that there is not much to work with. In any case, it wouldn’t be like OPEC or anything of that sort. As said, as far as the European energy market, Russia just doesn’t want Iran in there and will do everything that it can to cut it out.

WP: The nuclear issue, instead, seems to be one where Iran can play its cards in a very successful way. What might strike one as odd, for example, is that even when its relations with the United States peaked after September 11 2001, and while Russia partially conceded on the Iran nuclear issue, Moscow never gave up Iran and kept pushing ahead with the Bushehr project. Why do you think that is?

JP: I’d qualify what you said. Russia never gave up on Bushehr. It claimed, and it still claims, that Bushehr is a civilian nuclear power plant and doesn’t have anything to do with whatever Iran is doing on the enrichment front or about the nuclear weapons program.

Russia and Iran negotiated the contract to build Bushehr when Andrey Kozyrev was Foreign Minister in the early 1990s. It goes way back. So it’s true that Moscow hasn’t abandoned Bushehr.

But on other issues, and I have the details in the book, by then Russia was already much more cautious about what it was doing with Iran in terms of allowing proliferation of nuclear expertise and nuclear components. It began tightening up on its laws; on overseeing of exports; on Iran’s weapons shopping in Russia. This caution on the part of the Russians was immediately reflected in statements by Iranians leaders, including Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani. In 2002, he said that Russia just didn’t want a strong Iran and it was not going to sell to Iran the weapons that Iran really wanted. There was much bitterness on the arms-trade front from the Iranians toward the Russians. And even if the Russians have continued to sell weapons to the Iranians, it is never quite enough for Teheran.

WP: Do you think Iran ever looks to Russia when it thinks of developing nuclear weapons? Does Russia feel that it would be directly threatened?

JP: The reason why Iran started on his nuclear program certainly wasn’t the Soviet Union or Russia. It happened at the last stages of the Iran-Iraq war. You begin seeing then statements by people such as Rafsanjani, saying that Iran needed nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the Russians immediately recognized in 1998 the potential threat posed by an Iran with a Shahab-3 missile, which can reach the southern portions of Russia on either side of the Caspian. Those in Russia that want good relations with Iran emphasize that Iran never intends to fire these missiles in Russia’s direction. On the other hand, Putin made clear that the Russians knew how far those missiles could go and were very well aware of the danger. It is no coincidence that a real jolt hit security circles in Moscow right after Iran first tested the Shahab-3 in 1998, and that a lot came out in the press on how Iranians were circumventing all laws and stealing technology from the Russians. In short, nobody’s eyes are blind to this potential threat.

WP: What is the role of the U.S. in the Russia-Iran relation?

JP: In broad historical perspectives, the U.S. was dominant in Iran during the years of the Shah, and it has been absent from Iran in the last thirty-years. Russia has more of a relationship with Iran now than it had back at the time of the Shah and it would like to preserve it.

There is a kind of historical competition. I don’t think that Russia thinks that it can replace the U.S. in Iran but it certainly would like to improve its position there. At the same time it is fearful that there will be a deal between Iran and the U.S. and all of this effort Moscow has been putting in will be for nothing.

I think there is still a lingering memory in Moscow of the Iran-Contra episode. The Soviets realized then, all of a sudden, that there were people in the Islamic Republic willing to do a deal with Washington. As a result fears remain that in spite of Russia’s efforts to improve relations with Iran, in the end Iran prefers to deal with other countries over Russia.

WP: On a more personal level, as a U.S. Government official who has spent many years working on the USSR, Russia and Central Asia, what was the motivation behind your decision to write about Russia-Iran relations from the perspective of Moscow and Teheran, treating the U.S. only as an external player?

JP: The project simply began because, as a part of my briefing duties in the State Department, I kept running up against the issue of Moscow-Teheran relations and the charges that Russia was doing proliferation in Iran. The other part of it was that, in 1992, a great portion of my time was consumed with following what was going on in Tajikistan. I was watching Iranian interests and how Russia dealt with Iran and I found it so strange, as someone who didn’t know the deep history of the engagement between Russia and Iran, that they could be arming opposite sides in the Tajik civil war on one level yet simultaneously doing deals on Bushehr on another level. I wanted to try to get into the heads of decision makers on both sides to try to understand the relation better. That was the intellectual impetus for it. And I also think this is a different perspective on the matter of Russia-Iran relations that you would normally encounter in the U.S. Here we tend to look at them separately, wondering what we should do with Iran and how we should deal with Russia. In America there are certain assumptions and stereotypes as to how Russia and Iran are dealing with each other, but they are often very off.

WP: What was the most unexpected and important thing you learned about the Russia-Iran relation?

JP: That engagement above the table goes along with kicking each other under the table all the time. You have this tussling even while they are embraced. The fact is that they always deal with each other and they will always deal with each other. Because they are so close, they are never going to go away.

It’s not like a country in the Western Hemisphere dealing with a country in the Eastern Hemisphere where one can choose whether to deal with the other or not. Neither country has a choice in this case; they have to deal with each other.

Even now that they don’t have common borders, in their minds common borders remain and, actually, they do share the Caspian Sea. Russia and Iran have overlapping or conflicting interests in many areas: Central Asia, the Caucasus, South Asia, and the Middle East.

The other, more personal thing I had not really expected was that the title Persian Dreams attracted an audience that I hadn’t anticipated: the Iranian Diaspora and even people in Iran. This book was written by someone that had always studied Russia rather than Iran, but there’s probably less interest in the book from the Russian side than there has been from the Iranian side, at least so far.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – After 30 years of missteps and false starts, the new administration of President Barack Obama should embrace a completely new course of action in its approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This, in short, is the recommendation that emerged from a panel of experts hosted on Friday by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a think tank in Washington D.C. Although to different degrees, Giandomenico Picco, Robert Litwak, Robin Wright, and John Tirman, all advised the U.S. to abandon old postures toward Teheran and launch an entirely different policy approach aimed at building long-lasting mutual trust and move the bilateral relationship beyond those sensitive issues, such as Iran’s alleged proliferation activities, which have stalled it for the last three decades.

Counting on the fact that President Obama’s will be a “refreshing change” from past policies, Robin Wright proposed a five-step incremental approach to breaking the ongoing stalemate in U.S.-Iran relations. In the initial stage, argued the former Washington Post’s foreign correspondent and now scholar at the Wilson Center, the two parties should outline long-term goals for the relationship. “The U.S. needs to frame the debate in terms that are more appealing to the Iranians,” Wright said, suggesting that, for example, Washington abandon its ‘carrots and sticks’ rhetoric. Such language antagonizes the Iranians and will backfire. It is also overblown, since it is unlikely that new international sanctions will be agreed upon. “President Obama doesn’t need more sticks just yet,” claimed Wright.

The U.S. and Teheran should then launch a phase of more aggressive and meaningful confidence building measures. Among the ideas that Wright put forward was the creation of an American-Iranian joint commission on chemical weapons. Chemical weapons have been of great concern to the Iranians since the war against Iraq, during which Saddam Hussein famously used them against the Iranian forces. This commission would allow the U.S. to start a dialogue with Iran about WMD without addressing directly the nuclear issue.

In a third and more developed stage, Washington and Teheran should define an actual agenda for talks. According to Wright, issues of regional stability and power balance might offer the more fertile ground for negotiations, especially in the case of Afghanistan. This is an area where Iranian and American interests can overlap and where the two countries have cooperated in the past. Wright suggested, for example, that the two parties unite in the fight against the widespread cultivation of crops, such as poppy seeds, meant to be sold on the international drug market. The U.S. should encourage the Iranians, probably the world’s most competent pomegranate-growers, to help the Afghans turn their vast poppy seeds cultivations into pomegranates fields, which would represent a safer and more lucrative alternative for Afghan farmers.

If this type of engagement yielded positive results, the U.S. and Iran could move forward and extend the discussion to more sensitive and long-standing issues, in particular the stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program. Finally, Robin Wright’s five-step approach would reach the stage of a conclusive agreement. “But we are so far away from that that I really don’t want to even try to frame it,” Wright concluded.

John Tirman, the executive director of Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), agreed with Wright that it is important to let go of the ‘carrot and stick’ rhetoric, “because it suggests that Iranians can either be bought off or beaten into submission.” Tirman also confessed his disappointment at both President Obama and Vice-President Biden, who have already used this language several times. Beyond this, Tirman brought the discussion one step further and criticized Robin Wright’s approach as too timid.

The U.S. should accept the failure of the policy of coercion practiced in the last thirty years, Tirman argued. This policy has left Iran stronger as a regional player, more integrated economically with rising powers such as China and India, and a highly-regarded leader in the Muslim world. “Despite all predictions of its demise, Iran today is ever more bold, and the regime in Teheran partially democratic and partially even popular in the eyes of its own people,” Tirman commented. As a result, Washington should set aside all tendencies toward gradualism and embrace a much more courageous stance, which he called transformational diplomacy.

According to Tirman, a transformational diplomacy must be based on a new language of dialogue, which moves past the use of patronizing and often demeaning rhetoric defining Iran like a ‘rogue state.’ The U.S. should recognize Iran’s legitimate security interests, acknowledge Iran’s proud civilization and accept the Islamic Republic’s legitimate sovereignty on Iranian territory. To back this renewed language of dialogue with actions, Washington should also lift sanctions swiftly and unilaterally, Tirman argued. The U.S. and Iran should rapidly normalize their relationship and use it as an instrument to move forward, rather than as a reward in its own merit. Finally, Tirman urged the U.S. to abandon all threats, not just rhetorically. “There should be an actual disavowal of military actions, including covert operations, and of any aim at regime change, including the so called ‘democratization program’ and the use of soft-power,” concluded Tirman.

More cautious, although still a clear cut from the policies of the Bush’s years, was the assessment by Robert Litwak, the director of international security studies at the Wilson Center and former director for nonproliferation in the National Security Council under the first Clinton Administration. Approaching the stalemate from the nuclear perspective, Litwak argued for establishing direct and transparent dialogue, while keeping the pressure on the Islamic Republic. “Iran’s nuclear program is consequential and incremental, but it is not a crash course to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible,” Litwak said. Accordingly, a U.S. military strike on Iran would undoubtedly be dangerous and ineffective. It would not stop the development of nuclear weapons but only set it back some time – “you can’t bomb knowledge,” Litwak noted – and it would mark the beginning of an all-out war with the Islamic Republic and the people of Iran. Given these circumstances, Litwak believes that Washington should not so much abandon sanctions, but rather improve incentives for Teheran to comply with international rules. “The U.S. should send a clear signal that it would completely abandon any desire for regime change, if Iran followed through on the most sensitive issues,” Litwak suggested. By taking the regime change option off the table in Washington, Litwak concluded, it might be possible to put behavior change on the table in Teheran.

Finally, a former senior level diplomat at the United Nations shared his decade-long experience negotiating with the leadership of the Islamic Republic as a way to outline changes in the internal structure of the government in Teheran. Giandomenico Picco, who took active part in the talks that led to the August 8th 1988 cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war, described a regime increasingly controlled by the clergy and in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s will has become progressively more relevant. “The Supreme Leader would accept to be involved in diplomacy with the U.S. if he knew what the end game would be for Iran, but also for his own future,” said Picco. In more recent years, Picco has also been noticing a growing political relevance of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which has become a key player in Iran’s internal power struggles, one that cannot be underestimated. In the framework of renewed engagement with Iran, Picco recommended that he U.S. take these developments into account if it wants to achieve successful talks with the Islamic Republic.

Despite the broadly agreed call for more meaningful and comprehensive engagement, all panelists at the Wilson Center remained guarded on the prospects of what can actually be achieved. And, particularly in the case of Robin Wright and John Tirman, disappointment was palpable with President’s Obama selection of Dennis Ross, a big proponent of the ‘bigger sticks, bigger carrots’ approach, as a senior advisor on Iran.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition

Washington D.C. – Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution’s rise to power in Iran, a group of experts gathered last week at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington D.C., to assess the state of the government in Teheran and the future of U.S.-Iran relationships. The picture that emerged is one of a pragmatic regime, which has been shifting away from a purely ideological approach to policy, but is still solidly in the hands of the clergy; a regime that is undergoing a process of increasing militarization while the country suffers from a severe economic crisis. Iran, the speakers at AEI agreed, is by no means on the verge of a total collapse. However, it faces some internal criticism in the face of growing international isolation.

Ironically, while the stated goal of the 1979 revolution had been to break with the past, the Islamic Republic (IRI) is faced today with some of the same problems that plagued the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Ali Alfoneh, a researcher at AEI and a doctoral candidate at the University Copenhagen in Denmark, believes that, not unlike the Shah, the theocratic regime has contributed to modernizing the country, especially in the field of education. Yet the population is still starved for civil liberties. “Iran comprises an urbanized population with access to both state-controlled media and foreign broadcasts, and foreign products,” Mr. Alfoneh explained. “There is now a very large, urban, educated middle class that longs for political rights,” he continued. If the regime keeps denying freedom to its people, Mr. Alfoneh argued, Iranians could potentially take on a new revolutionary turn, similar to that of 1979. Well aware of this risk, the regime shows no qualms in using force to maintain control and is increasingly relying on its military wing, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to curb popular demands.

According to Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian journalist who was imprisoned in Iran after publishing criticism of the government on his blog Panjereh Eltehab and recently fled to the U.S., this is a betrayal of the promises of the revolution. The Islamic Republic came to power relatively easily and with wide support from the population because it had vowed to bring human rights and civil liberties. “In the end, however, the Islamic leadership defaulted on its own promises,” Mr. Sigarchi commented. He predicts that the regime’s only hope for long-term survival is by slowly conceding democratic freedoms to the Iranian people. “If the Islamic Government chooses such course, it will enjoy a good deal of endurance,” Mr. Sigarchi concluded, “but not if it continues on its current path.”

Looking to Iran from the outside in, Alex Vatanka — senior Middle-East analyst at Jane’s Information Group — outlined some of the latest developments with regard to Teheran’s posture on the regional and global stages. Vatanka described an increasingly daring regime, especially in its foreign policy. “Teheran used to just desperately try to reduce its isolation. Today, instead, the IRI is much bolder, and is aggressively trying to expand its influence,” Vatanka argued. In his opinion, the West should reassess its widespread overstatement of Iran’s ideological nature and begin looking at it as a pragmatic force driven by self-interest. “Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy is, at times, almost devoid of Islamist ideology,” Vatanka said. Beyond rhetoric, he claimed, there is no trace of any attempt by the Islamic regime to export the revolution. Despite this increased influence on the regional stage, the Islamic Republic is paying a high price for the maintenance of its independence, in the form of international isolation. “Isolation hampers economic growth and creates resentment among the population,” Vatanka pointed out.

The economy remains the Achilles’ heel of President Ahmadinejad. According to Patrick Clawson, an economist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the revolution of 1979 has been followed by 30 years of abysmal economic performance. This has been caused, in chronological order, by the war with Iraq, the decline in oil prices of the 1980s, and, more recently, because of the economic policies adopted by the regime. With a touch of monarchic nostalgia, Clawson attacked the widespread understanding among the Iranian people that the economic performance under the Shah had been at least as terrible. During the 1960s, Clawson argued, Iran’s economy was growing at the fastest rate in the world. “Iran is, by no means, on the edge of economic collapse,” Clawson said, taking note of the country’s modest growth. “However, modest growth has left Iranians terribly dissatisfied, since they expected extraordinary growth and since even the modest growth has been mismanaged by the regime,” Clawson commented.

In spite of its large reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran continues to be reliant on global oil prices. The regime has done an exceptionally poor job at developing the country’s oil fields, causing its oil production to be extremely rigid. “Just consider that, over the last ten years, Iran’s oil revenues increased seven-folds, while production remained stagnant,” pointed out Michael Makovski, the foreign policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center. According to Makovski, its incapacity to rapidly increase oil output exposes the regime to a series of vulnerabilities. A budget surplus, for example, can quickly become a budget deficit, hampering the ability of the government to give subsidies in exchange for favors. It also decreases Iran’s leverage against oil importing countries. Finally, it makes a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities less costly for the international markets, since only a relatively small percentage of global oil production comes from Iran.

In order to respond to growing challenges in the field of economics, the regime in Teheran has been pushing for an increasing militarization. According to Ali Alfoneh, this trend dates back to 1988 and the end of the Iran-Iraq war. At the time, IRGC soldiers had to return to a distraught Iran after paying great personal sacrifice on the altar of an unsuccessful holy war. “President Rafsanjani knew that these frustrated troops could stage a coup,” Aloneh explained. Rafsanjani then decided to help the IRGC carve an influential role within the Iranian economy, a way to bribe officers to stay out of politics. The IRGC’s growing relevance in all realms of life in the Islamic Republic has continued steadily over the following decades, peaking under Ahmadinejad: “Today the IRGC as an ideological army has gone completely out of control,” Ali Alfoneh declared.

Recently, the head of the IRGC Ali Jafari ordered a major restructuring of the corps. According to Michael Connell, director of the Iran project at the Center for Naval Analyses, Jafari’s main concern is the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” triggered by internal discontent brought upon the regime by U.S.-led soft-power operations. The basic principle of Jafari’s reform is one of decentralization. The leadership of the IRGC plans on giving lower-level officers more latitude. “More autonomy might guarantee longevity to the regime in case of an attempted coup or a decapitation from the top,” Connell explained. At the same time, he warned, this approach “exposes the regime to the threat of individual units going rogue.”

Where does the U.S. stand with regard to this picture and in what direction are U.S.-Iran relations headed? The bottom line, outlined Professor John Limbert of the U.S. Naval Academy, is that the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been estranged for thirty years: “we have been exchanging insults, calling each other names and we have misused history to make the other look like the perfect enemy; devious and evil.” In order to heal this very difficult relation, both parties must move past their long-standing grievances towards one another.

From the U.S. perspective, it was at the beginning of the revolution that the bilateral relation was almost fatally wounded. The hostage crisis of 1979-1981 — Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and kept 52 American officials (John Limbert among them) hostage for 444 days — had more of an impact on the psyche of the Americans than even the toppling of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a close ally for over two decades. “The hostage crisis was the biggest mistake in the history of Iranian diplomacy,” claimed Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian political activist that returned to Teheran from Paris on the same plane as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 1^st 1979 and held several high-ranking positions during the earlier years of the Islamic Republic. Today Sazegara, who tried to run for the Iranian presidential elections in 2001 until the Guardian Council rejected his application, lives in the U.S. Sazegara also lamented that too many Iranians still appear unwilling to put the 1953 coup behind them and continue resenting the U.S. for having facilitated the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq.

“In the history of diplomacy,” said Michael Metrinko, “thirty years is a very long time.” Metrinko, who was among the hostages taken at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and now serves as a Ministry Reform Advisor at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, noted that within Iran’s very young population there is little personal memory of the 1979 crisis and, therefore, this is an opportune moment for Washington and Teheran to move forward. “I don’t believe there is a place for emotions in politics, and for demonization in the relationship between countries,” he argued.

According to Ambassador Limbert, the way forward must start with leaving the “sermonizing and moralizing at the door.” The U.S. must stop asking Iranians for a change in behavior: “I can’t think of a language that sounds more condescending that that,” Limbert declared. Washington should also show more respect for the history of Iran, one of grandeur and grievances. In the last 100 years, the latter have taken the front seat, affecting Iran’s political mood. “Iranians believe that the West is always out to cheat,” Limbert pointed out. Finally, in the eventuality that the Obama Administration will act on its pledge to open up a direct diplomatic channel with Teheran, Americans must be prepared for the overture to be turned down at first. “We must expect progress to be slow and difficult, yet we must also abandon our misconceptions and expect Iranians to be professional and pragmatic in pursuing their self-interest,” Limbert concluded.

Less optimistic was Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We can’t fix the U.S. – Iran relation because anti-Americanism is too deeply engrained in the genes of the Iranian Revolution,” Alterman said. However, he continued, the U.S. can manage the hostility far better than it has in the past. This can only happen through increased contacts. “Our policy of isolation has not worked, to the contrary. Sanctions have had increasingly less effect,” Alterman claimed.

AEI’s Michael Rubin put forward some of the questions that the Obama Administration will be confronted with in the case it decides to push forward with a diplomatic overture toward Iran. In particular, Rubin discussed the matter of timing and advised against entering talks before Iran’s presidential elections scheduled for this upcoming June: “We don’t want to interfere, one way or another, or let Ahmadinejad claim negotiations with the U.S. as his own personal victory,” Rubin argued.

There was surprisingly little talk about other options on the table. With a new U.S. administration that just entered office and with a president that has promised to engage directly with Teheran, the speakers at AEI decided to address the ifs and buts of negotiations rather than entering a discussion about alternative courses of action. They were asked at one point about the reaction of the Iranian people in case Washington decided to pursue the military option. Most experts agreed that, independent of whether or not the people of Iran like the Islamic regime, in a scenario of a U.S.-led invasion of Iran, the population would rally behind its government because of national pride. “Any military action would feed in the Iranians’ long sense of grievance for the humiliation brought upon them by foreigners,” John Limbert argued. “Against an invasion, the people of Iran would defend the regime, even if they disagree with it,” echoed Michael Rubin. In any case, nobody argued for the full lifting of sanctions, but simply for a more varied and multi-faceted “carrot and stick” approach.

Despite widespread acceptance, even among these conservative analysts, of the intentions by the Obama Administration to pursue direct and high-level engagement with Iran, a sense of unease and suspicion towards Teheran remained palpable. This was made particularly clear by the words of the key-note speaker, President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Jeffrey Gedmin. Addressing issues of public diplomacy, Gedmin advocated for as large an engagement as possible with the people of Iran, using soft-power to mobilize public opinion from the bottom up. Quoting former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, Gedmin said: “In Iran today the critical divide is not between hard liners and moderates but between society and the regime.” He encouraged the use of foreign broadcasts, such as Voice of America, BBC Persian and his own Radio Farda to bypass the regime and speak directly to the Iranian people. Gedmin also advised the U.S. Government to open discussions with Iranian trade unions, environmentalist groups, cultural institutions and with women’s and minority rights groups. Advocating the use of soft power aimed at influencing the internal balance of power in Iran, Gadmin though seemed to miss a fundamental point: it will be hard for President Obama to convince the leadership in Teheran to talk openly and negotiate honestly, if the Islamic Republic continues to feel that the U.S. is simultaneously trying to overthrow the regime.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism