Valentina Pasquali

The results of two rounds of U.S.-led polling of public opinion in Iran, conducted in 2006 and 2008, portray a moderate Iranian people. The studies show Iranians as relatively pleased with their own system of government and electoral system, although critical of certain aspects of it. Iranians appear open to multilateralism and international organizations, even in the realm of human rights. While they are eager to push forward with the nuclear program, they don’t necessarily want to develop nuclear weapons. They long to be treated as an important regional actor but don’t wish for regional hegemony. They are suspicious of terrorist groups and even hold a generally positive view of the American people. In this overall temperate picture, deeply rooted animosity toward the U.S. Government remains as a fundamental component of the Iranian identity.

While Iran’s presidential elections approach, and as the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress discuss opportunities for an overture toward Teheran, Washington Prism’s Valentina Pasquali spoke to Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland, about his experience assessing the Iranian psyche. Mr. Kull is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues. He directed both the 2006 and the 2008 surveys in Iran.

Valentina Pasquali: What would you say was the most striking result of your two rounds of surveys in Iran?

Steven Kull: What comes through quite strongly is the extent to which Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. There is this image of Iranians being swept up by the kind of zeal one associates with the early days of the Bolsheviks, that they have an ideology that they are aiming to spread. I just don’t see any evidence of this, in the polling data and the focus groups. Iranians are supportive of an Islamic state, but they are also reaching out to the West in a variety of ways: they endorse democracy and human rights, and endorse changes for the role of women. They are evolving and trying to integrate these liberal ideas into their own system. But it is a struggle; they are not, by any means, ready to abandon their Islamic roots. They perceive the West, particularly the United States, as exerting a destabilizing effect on them and making it more difficult for them to find their way. In short, on the one hand, the number of people who truly identify with the revolutionary Islamic mindset is quite small. On the other, I should also underscore that the idea that Iranians, underneath it all, love America, love the West, and can’t wait for the current government to fall so that they can become a western-style democracy, is also a dream unsupported by reality.

VP: Where do Iranian people stand on the nuclear issue?

SK: Both in the polling and the focus groups we found widespread determination on the part of the Iranians to acquire a capacity to enrich uranium, combined with a strong sense of the constraints that should be put on developing a nuclear weapon. A fairly large majority perceives that developing a nuclear weapon would be contrary to the principles of Islam. The Iranian elite and religious leaders have put forward this view and it would be very difficult for them to change course. Maybe public opinion doesn’t determine their decisions, but there is something to be said about the normative environment the leadership has created, rooted in the idea that it would not be legitimate to acquire nuclear weapons. I think it would require a significant trigger for them to switch course, something would have to happen that dramatically increased the threat to Iran. It’s quite unlikely that they would just abruptly cross that line.

Now, it is also clear that the Iranians are aware of the fact that having a nuclear energy program serves more purposes than just nuclear energy. They want to be one step closer to having nuclear weapons capability. They perceive that this would give them a number of benefits: greater status and a deterrent effect on other parties. Moreover, there is a widespread perception that neighboring countries are not complying with the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iranians think that others are secretly developing nuclear weapons and that the NPT regime is fragile, and, as a result, they want to be well positioned should the NPT regime collapse.

VP: In the discussion of your work in Iran, you addressed the overstated perception Iranians have of American power in the world. Were you able to assess what this perception was born out of?

SK: The majority of Iranians we polled think the U.S. controls most of what happens in the world. In the focus groups we did, some of the views that were expressed were particularly potent, for example the idea that the U.S. controls Al-Qaeda. Why? I don’t have an easy answer to that. It is a belief that seems to have a quasi-religious connotation. When Iranians use the term ‘the Great Satan,’ they honestly describe how they perceive the U.S.; something like a cosmic principle, and not just an ordinary state that happens to be rather rich and well armed. Certainly the long history of the U.S. having a highly intrusive role in Iran matters. In general, I would say that there is a tendency in that part of the world toward conspiracy theory, a tendency to see complex organizing themes behind the surface of things. Even on the Al Jazeera website there is a section called conspiracy theory. With respect to Iranians in particular, there also is a history of discovering at a later time that America was behind something that they had not previously assumed. And so it has become a kind of default position to assume that America is behind something. Iranians’ perception of being under siege works as an important glue holding their society together. I think the best comparison to try understanding Iran is America shortly after 9/11. America was so cohesive, and there was very little criticism of the government. All the polls showed that the people’s attitude toward the government or everything American became much more positive. It’s not that people were lying, or making things up. But when people feel threatened, they tend to huddle closer together. Iran has that same quality, constantly feeling under siege.

VP: What do you think is the effect of international sanctions on the psyche of the Iranian people?

SK: It’s not something we polled on directly, but based on my experience, sanctions contribute to this generalized sense of being under pressure by the West. It also justifies the economic failures of the current government and it feeds into this idea that the U.S. is hostile to Islam itself and is out to undermine it.

VP: What was the people’s view of President Ahmadinejad, at least at the time of your most recent survey?

SK: About two-thirds of the people we interviewed at the beginning of 2008 expressed a favorable opinion. Because we heard so much about people coming to Iran and hearing negative views of the president we proofed further and divided people according to income and education. People with higher education or higher income were not as positive, they were more divided about Ahmadinejad. And those tend to probably be the people that Westerners encounter more often when they come to Tehran.

VP: How would you explain the animosity of the Iranian people toward the U.S. Government?

SK: I think it is important to recognize how deep the roots of this animosity are and how far back they go. For many people in Iran the experience of the Shah was a very negative one and the U.S. was always associated with it. I don’t think other Muslim countries have a history that could trigger that depth of animosity. However, it is also true that Iran has a stronger than average attraction to the west. It’s kind of a complex love/hate relation, which you can find broadly in the Muslim world but is more common in Iran. There is some magnetism, while, at the same time, animosity toward the U.S. plays a huge role in the structure of society. So much that it would be difficult to break away from it. Many politicians and leaders embrace this national narrative rooted in a negative relationship with the U.S. An effort to change this approach would rattle fundamental structures in Iran, and could be very destructive to the Iranian identity.

I do think that there is a genuine desire among most Iranians to improve relations; the question is whether or not this can be done in a way that does not make Iranians feel like they are just submitting. They have a strong sense of pride and any agreement would need not to be received as some kind of defeat, or capitulation. I think that the proposition that Tom Pickering, and others, have put forward as far as the nuclear weapons program, to multilateralize it or to create some kind of structure with intrusive inspections and a limit capacity to enrich uranium, would go over. We polled on it and the majority of Iranians said they would accept it. And it has been alluded to by a few Iranian leaders. To actually bring it about would probably require a more complex bargain touching on a wide array of components, as for example the removal of some or all of the economic sanctions. From the first to the second poll we conducted in Iran, we found an increase in the readiness to support steps that would improve relations with the U.S., such as growing diplomatic contacts and more people-to-people exchanges. Probably, some combination of removal of economic sanctions, limited enrichment capacity with highly intrusive inspections, and greater cultural contacts, could be a package that, from all the indications I have, would be feasible. Clearly, giving up the idea of regime change is a key part of this grand bargain. I don’t have poll data to show this but, from everything I see, the Iranian people as well as the Islamic regime find the rhetoric of regime change annoying and threatening. Iranians don’t react thinking that the U.S. is simply going after their government but not after them. Rather, they see this as part of the American attempt to undermine their way of life. And they identify with the regime. I think this is the most important thing that U.S. government leaders can understand better. When we threaten the Iranian government, the Iranian people feel threatened too.

VP: According to your study, Iranians view most terrorist organizations in a negative light. However, this doesn’t apply to Hezbollah and Hamas, outlining a difficult relationship with Israel. What is your understanding of the general perception of Israel among regular Iranian people?

SK: There is a very negative view. The polling numbers are extremely negative and there is definitely a lot of hostility. It’s also striking that, while Iranians reject attacks on civilians quite strongly, when asked about Palestinians attacking Israeli civilians they are more divided. I think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very engaging to Iranians, and other Muslims, because it is a very distinct and vivid narrative of Muslims being victimized, in their mind, by a Western based force that ultimately works on behalf of the United States. It’s not so much that they care about the Palestinians per se, but they identify with the Palestinians and the conflict strikes a very strong emotional chord.

But in all honesty, I don’t think you would find the desire to annihilate the state of Israel to be the majority opinion in Iran. My impression is that Iranians would probably be fine with the two-state solution, and that the Arab initiative that is in play right now would be attractive to them. I don’t see any real indication that Iranians are dead-set on some kind of maximal outcome where Israel is eliminated. They don’t perceive themselves as pursuing maximal outcomes at all. They perceive themselves as in a defensive mode.

VP: Do you have a sense of how consistent, or inconsistent, the mood of the Iranian public is? Your latest survey was conducted approximately 12 months ago; do you have reasons to believe that, were you to do another one now, the results would be fairly similar, or quite the contrary, completely different?

SK: All publics are pretty stable and so, as a general baseline, as a pollster you don’t expect big change. The most interesting question is what changes might be happening given the new U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama. To the extent that we have data from the Muslim world, but not Iran, I can tell you that people are hopeful, but on a wait-and-see mode. Iranians have an elaborate belief system that says it is impossible for the U.S. to change, that the U.S. is structurally the way it is, driven by lobbies, and particularly the Israeli lobby. There is this narrative that says that Obama couldn’t change these things even if he wanted to. But I still think that, underneath, there is hope nonetheless, and that, if the U.S. does offer an overture, it would be difficult for Iran not to respond in some way.

VP: While surveying people in Iran you were free to touch upon almost every topic, with the exception of the clergy and the role of the Supreme Leader. Do you have a sense of how much the lack of such discussion clouds the overall validity of the survey?

SK: To make things clear, it wasn’t the government that forbade us to ask these questions, they didn’t have any direct involvement; rather the local polling organization we selected did its own self-censorship. And I think that, if we had brought the issue of the role of the clergy up directly in the focus groups, people would have been uncomfortable. I certainly would like to understand this issue better. From what I read, I don’t see a lot of signs that people are burning to actually discuss it though. It’s not that they are fully content. In a sense, this is comparable to asking Americans about the Supreme Court. “Should we get rid of the Supreme Court?” Americans don’t really think about it. They generally like the Supreme Court, they have some respect for it, but it’s mostly just part of the furniture. In Iran, the clergy is not one of those things that people are accustomed to challenging, no more so than the Americans are accustomed to challenging the Constitution. It should be understood that the Council of Guardians can be criticized, for example, for excluding candidates from elections. People do it all the time in Parliament, and there are demonstrations against such decisions. Specific choices can be questioned. But whether the Council of Guardians ought to have any role at all, that’s probably a question beyond what Iranians are willing to discuss. This is, in a way, very similar to asking Americans whether the Supreme Court should have any role. Here, where we have a Constitution and a Supreme Court that interprets it. In Iran the idea that the clergy plays some role in the interpretation of Sharia law and the Koran is not seen as something to question. However people might have criticisms about specific decisions, like people here might have criticisms about specific Supreme Court decisions. To an extent that we have trouble understanding, Iranians don’t perceive Islam, and even the Islamic state they have, as intrinsically opposed to democracy. Again, we have constraints on democracy here as well, it’s not like the majority can make any decision it wants; it is limited by the Constitution and how the Supreme Court interprets it. Iranians would say that this is the same for them, although they would probably acknowledge that their system is more restrictive. But they don’t see it as intrinsically problematic. Words like democracy and human rights are popular words.

VP: What do you think a U.S. Government official should come away from these surveys with? What is most important to understand about the views of the Iranian people?

SK: The combination of openness to the West as well as the rootedness in the idea of an Islamic government. That democracy and an Islamic government are not contradictory. And that Iranians are not in a pre-revolutionary state, but even open to influences from the West. I think it’s very important to get rid of the notion that they are against us; they are simply struggling with the process of modernization, and that is a difficult process. They are people with very proud roots, they achieved very high level of culture, but in the current period they are not doing so well, which is humiliating to them. They are also not ready to abandon their roots. Even as they open up to Western influences. In the end, you have some rejectionists, as you might say, and you have those that are totally ready to go over to the Western model, but the big majority both wants to keep its root and be in a relationship with the West. The problem is that we are not good at talking to that group, we tend to threaten the former and seduce the latter, or treat them as some kind of ally, but we haven’t found a good voice for the middle masses. This approach is rooted in our fantasy that, underneath, everybody is like us and people really want what we have. I think we really must let go of this, while also understand more clearly that Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. A lot would follow from this, I think.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

On February 23rd, Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini publicly stated that his government is considering the possibility of inviting Iran to a Group of Eight’s (G8) ministerial conference scheduled for June in Trieste. The meeting, which falls under Italy’s G8 presidency, will focus on the stabilization of Afghanistan and Central Asia. Washington Prism talked with Maurizio Massari, head of the policy-planning unit at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about this Italian overture toward Iran.

Washington Prism: Italy’s invitation to Iran was driven by what considerations in particular? What does Italy believe can be achieved in the relations with Iran?

Maurizio Massari (MM): I wouldn’t call it so much an invitation, but rather a hypothesis for collaborative work. Our goal is the stabilization of Afghanistan and the region. We want to see whether Iran can, and is willing to, contribute to this goal. It has nothing to do with the nuclear issue, on which the standards put forward thus far still stand.

WP: Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has maintained a hard line on Iran up until now. How shall we understand this initiative of the Italian Foreign Ministry? Is this a signal that the Italian Government is ready to change approach?

MM: The hard line on the nuclear issue and international sanctions stands and it remains the approach of our government.

WP: Have there been consultations between the Italian Government and the U.S. Government, or those of the other members of the European Union, before the invitation to Trieste was officially extended to Iran?

MM: As far as Iran’s potential involvement in the stabilization process in Afghanistan and the region we are consulting with our American, European and Arab allies. It is not a unilateral initiative, rather we are trying to gather overall consensus on it.

WP: What is the Italian Government’s position as far as economic sanctions on Iran? What will Italy’s approach be over the course of the next few months?

MM: Italy will act in accordance to the decisions made between the EU and the U.S. If, within the framework of ‘bigger sticks, bigger carrots’, new sanctions will be imposed, we will also adopt them.

WP: Beyond Afghanistan, do you see other areas in which Italy thinks a positive dialogue and collaboration with Iran can be created?

MM: I think the Persian Gulf and Iraq, after U.S. troops withdraw, can become areas where we can test Iranian behavior and intentions.

Originally written and reported 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

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

Marina Ottaway is the Director of the Middle East Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She specializes in democracy and post-conflict reconstruction issues, particularly on problems of political transformation in the Middle East and reconstruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, and African countries. Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research and taught at universities in Africa and in the Middle East, including the American University in Cairo. She is the author of nine books and has edited another five. Her most recent work, Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World (edited with Julia Choucair-Vizoso), was published in January 2008. In her interview with Washington Prism, Ottaway explores issues of political transformation and democratization in the Middle East.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): You have studied political transformation in the Middle East for a long time. Why would you say democracy has not flourished in the region, at least so far?

Marina Ottaway (MO): This is a complicated issue and there is certainly more than one factor in play. I think that a very important element in impeding this transformation has been the nature of the ideas and of the political movements that have been at work in the Arab world.

There have been three main ideological currents in the modern Arab world. The first was nationalism, starting in the early 1930s. Egypt was the more important example. This type of nationalism had a democratic connotation. This kind of democratic, liberal nationalism emerged because it was driven by the educated elites, the bourgeoisie. These managed to win the support from the masses, not because the masses were democratic or liberal, but because they were nationalist. By doing so, they created a combination of nationalism and democracy that was successful for a certain period of time.

The nationalist-democratic trend died in the 1950s. In the post-war period socialism became the dominant ideology. Nationalism became coupled with socialism, whereas earlier on it had been connected to ideals of democracy.

In the 1970s, the socialist wave also started dying out, beginning with the death of Nasser. Ever since then, the liberals, the educated, the intellectuals who have always been behind the liberal trend, failed to find a language that would speak to the Arab population. One of the tragedies in the Middle East is that Arab intellectuals have been unable to turn their message of democracy into something that the masses can relate to. To this day, it remains an elite ideology. As a result, once socialism died, liberals lost out the Islamists in terms of popular language and popular message.

As a result, I think the reasons should be found in this history of the political movements in the Arab world and the failure to ever make democracy into a relevant ideology in and of itself, and not merely as an attachment to nationalism. I honestly don’t buy the argument that Arab countries don’t have a democratic culture. We can say that no country has a democratic culture before it turns into a democracy. All countries that became democratic were first authoritarian governments.

VP: There has been widespread criticism of the Bush Administration’s approach to democracy promotion. What is your assessment?

MO: The Bush Administration never stopped to think about what they were really looking for. In one sense, one could say that they wanted instant transformation, which turned out to be a very naïve expectation. They thought that if the United States put its foot down, if it told governments in the Middle East what to do and what they needed to change, all of a sudden change would happen.

However, they never paused to ask themselves whether movements existed in these countries that could make the idea of democracy relevant. One must remember that democratic transformation needs a political process. It is not a question of individual thinking but rather of group activity. The Bush Administration never inquired whether there were organizations in the Arab world ready to put up the democratic agenda. And it is quite clear that these organizations didn’t exist.

Secondly, the Bush Administration failed to recognize which were the best organized political movements and the best organized political parties and, therefore, who was likely to benefit the most from the democratic agenda. As soon as they faced the rise of the Islamists, they turned back. I still don’t understand how this happened. To me it’s a mystery that nobody ever predicted some of the outcomes.

At the time of the elections in Iraq, the Administration was really upset at the emergence of religious parties. And I never understood why that would be, since, if you looked at the parties that made up the Iraqi National Congress, you’d have seen that they were all religious parties, like the Dawa or the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution. It was all spelled out in black and white. But the Bush Administration did not know what it was doing and the mistakes were blatant.

VP:  Is there anything in the agenda of democracy promotion that you think might be worth salvaging for the future?

MO: The really important question now is whether the new Obama Administration can do something useful to promote democracy, but in a different way from Bush’s. I’m not sure that anybody knows what the U.S. can do. I think it would have to look for solutions on a country-by-country basis, searching for feasible next steps.

For example, I think it would make sense for the U.S. to put pressure on Egypt so that it opens up the process of registering political parties. At this point it is impossible to have meaningful elections there, because the government has killed all the relevant parties. The only ones that are still registered, and are allowed to participate, are unable to win votes and their leadership has not been rejuvenated in a long time. The government has allowed them to survive precisely because they don’t represent a threat.

But clearly, you can’t have meaningful elections if you don’t have working political parties. It seems to me that one concrete step we could take is to put pressure on the government to open up the registration of political parties and allow parties to function.

However, this is not a recipe that is good for all countries. If you take the other extreme, the most difficult case, what exactly does it mean to promote democracy in Saudi Arabia? In the realm of what is conceivable, what could be a meaningful step that the Saudi Government could take in the direction of democracy? They, of course, are not going to proclaim a constitutional monarchy tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question. I don’t know. I find it amusing to hear all these people saying that Obama should not drop the democracy agenda, that he should continue promoting democracy in the Middle East in a different way. That is nice. But what should he actually do? This issue is very nebulous. I don’t have the answer. To me, it is a question of keeping a low profile and seizing opportunities when they arise, but it is nothing like the democracy agenda of the Bush Administration.

VP: You have recently published a paper on Islamist movements and their demand for political participation in the Middle East. You see this as one of the strongest indications that there is a desire for democracy in the region. Do you see hope that some form of peaceful integration of these movements in the legitimate political sphere can occur? What are the steps that should be taken to achieve this goal?

MO: In the paper you mention we were referring to a specific category of political parties — Islamist political parties that already participate in the legal political process of the country. In other words, these are the parties that present candidates for elections.

The best example would be Morocco, where the PJD, Party for Justice and Development, is the second largest in the country. Recently it started talks with the USFP, the socialist party, as they began to see that they might have something in common as far as their political agenda and, that cooperating in parliament would make them more effective.

The Obama Administration should start treating these political parties like all other political parties. They should talk to them and maintain the same contacts they have with the other political organizations. They should make it clear that the U.S. recognizes parties that are non-violent political entities playing by the rule of the game, such as they are in their own countries. And this last caveat is important because one of the paradoxes of the U.S. policy toward the Middle East is that we expect these parties to be democratic when the countries in which they operate are not democratic. In any case, I think the US should make it clear that it considers them normal and legitimate movements. This would certainly help, it wouldn’t change everything, but at least it would represent a tangible step in the right direction.

This is important as ever because many governments in the region are making it increasingly difficult for these political parties to compete. If this continues, the danger is that the more moderate voices within the Islamist parties, the ones pushing for open political participation, will be silenced. At which point we are going to have a more radical leadership emerging, which I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest.

VP: What does the U.S., and the new Administration of President Obama, need to understand about the Middle East that it hasn’t so far?

MO: It is hard to say what will happen with the Obama Administration because we don’t know yet who is going to control the Middle East portfolio. Certainly the Bush Administration did not get that these movements are not going to disappear. They are too popular for a number of reasons and they are not going to go away simply because the U.S. ignores them. The idea that merely supporting Fatah in Palestine while allowing Israel to fight Hamas — because Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel — would cause Hamas to disappear is just not proving to be true.

Now, one must add that Hamas is an extreme example, for two reasons.

First of all, Hamas is a political party but also an armed movement. To be clear, Hamas did not win the elections because it was an armed movement, it won the elections because it is more popular than Fatah. Nevertheless it is an armed movement. Secondly, Hamas does not recognize the state of Israel. Again for clarity, the truth is that none of the other Islamist parties recognize the state of Israel as such, but the issue is only raised with regard to Hamas because we are wary of its influence.

VP: Do you see any chance that Islamist political parties might at some point decide to recognize Israel?

MO: Yes, absolutely, at least, within the framework of political movements, not the Jihadists. If there was an overall peace agreement, Islamist parties would accept Israel’s existence. I don’t think any Arab will ever accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel but they will adapt to its existence and to the fact that it is not going anywhere. Egyptians have not recognized the legitimacy of Israel, but they have recognized that, like it or not, there is a state there and that it is there to stay. They have learned to deal with it.

But this is true only if there is a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Only with the execution of the so-called Arab initiative — the proposal by Arab countries to recognize Israel once the problem of the refugees is solved and once the two-state solution is implemented. I think in those circumstances, most Islamist political movements would accept the existence of Israel.

VP: Tensions in the Gaza Strip are once again reaching new heights. Following the end of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas on December 19th, the Israeli government began carrying out air-strikes on the Palestinian territories, while Hamas responded firing rockets into Israel. Finally, Israel launched the currently ongoing ground invasion of Gaza. What do you think this means for the future of Israel-Palestine relationships? Is this invasion a game-changer or just yet another chapter in an already all too tragic story?

MO: This is essentially another chapter in the long saga, not a game-changer. Even Israel has been careful not to state that it is a game changer in the sense that Hamas will be eliminated. They hope to weaken it and slow down raw firing of missiles, but are not willing to pay the political and economic price of halting the missiles completely and destroying Hamas, which would require a long term occupation.

The operation postpones a serious peace process indefinitely, because it weakens not only Hamas but also Fatah, which would be seen as negotiating with the Israelis at the expense of the inhabitants of Gaza.

VP: In the last six years or so, Iraq has been at the center of the storm. Where do you think it is going now?

MO: It really depends on whether they find a way to reach an agreement amongst them, once the U.S. withdraws. It is already quite clear that they are not going to reach an agreement along the lines proposed by the Americans.

The U.S. has in mind a step-by-step process according to which a series of laws will be passed in order, one after the other. That is just simply not going to happen. It is possible that with a smaller U.S. presence, different groups will have to come to terms with each other and maybe reach an agreement. But at this moment there really is no agreement. The tensions with the Kurds are increasing. The same is true not only across confessional lines. Within each group there are tremendous tensions. The Sawha groups and the Sunni Islamist Party don’t see eye to eye. On the Shi’aa side, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council don’t see eye to eye. We are very far from a political pact.

VP: What lessons from Iraq should the new US. Administration apply to Afghanistan?

MO: I think there are two lessons that are relevant. First of all, the number of troops on the ground is crucial. All the experts I hear claim that 20.000 more troops in Afghanistan are not going to make a difference. Everybody says it is just a drop in the bucket considering the overall situation.

The second lesson is that you are not going to have any long lasting gain without a political settlement. The problem in Iraq now is that there is no political settlement, and the same is true for Afghanistan. But I honestly don’t see anybody having a clue of what a political settlement in Afghanistan might look like. This is probably the reason why they are beginning to talk to the Taliban. But any success in that department really is a long way off.

VP: It has been argued that Iran emerged from the two U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq a significantly more powerful player than it was before. Do you agree? Do you think the U.S. could ever use a more powerful Iran to its advantage?

MO: It is absolutely accurate that Iran has become more powerful. Just take a look at the countries around Iran. Iraq is now essentially a collapsed state. We might not talk about it in these terms because we rather talk about the progress that has been made. But the simple fact that there is a debate in this country about what would happen in Iraq if the U.S. withdrew is enough of an indication: a country that cannot fully function without the presence of U.S. troops is a collapsed state.

Saudi Arabia, which is the only country of any size in the Gulf, has never developed a strong foreign policy, it has no military experience, and the king has no desire for confrontation.

The other countries in the Gulf are midgets; what in the world can Bahrain do, except hoping not to be overrun? Egypt is also out of the picture, until at least after the succession. Whether after Mubarak dies and there is a succession Egypt will become a regional power once again I don’t know, but it is quite clear that, until all of that takes place, Egypt is completely out of the picture.

So, yes, Iran is in pretty good shape.

I think this would be tremendously beneficial to the U.S. if it could develop a working relation with Teheran. You have to remember that the U.S. benefited a great deal during the days of the Shah from the fact that Iran was a regional power. But we are a very long way from there.

I think the U.S. should aim to create some sort of regional pact, in which Iran and Iraq and the Gulf countries are all working together. Instead the Bush Administration tried to create an anti-Iranian alliance in the Gulf, which is something that the Gulf countries are not interested in because they don’t want to provoke Iran.

So I wouldn’t go as far as saying that a stronger Iran is a blessing in disguise. The question is, rather, could there be a positive outcome of this situation? Perhaps, but we are a very long way from there.

VP: Finally, do you think it is important to have democracy in the Middle East? Why?

MO: I would say that it is very important to have political systems that can actually govern the countries. One of the problems of many Middle Eastern countries, particularly in the Gulf but not exclusively, is that the political systems were designed for societies that were completely different from what they are now. The Saudi ruling family was put in charge of a very chaotic informal system meant to control a population of only about 4 millions and mostly Bedouins living in the desert. This political system has never evolved. These totalitarian rulers in the Gulf are completely outdated, if one considers the reality on the ground. Even in the case of Egypt, its cumbersomely bureaucratic system holds the country back. This is not a question of democracy; it is simply that the country cannot run itself.

What really is crucial is that these countries find more functional and efficient systems of governments. If they were also more democratic, it would be even better. As of now, the only way for an opposition to bring down a government that is unpopular is by an insurrection; they must overthrow the government. Such a system prevents these countries from ever achieving real stability.

I’ll just make one point to put my comments into perspective. I think that democracy is a pretty good political system. But at the same time I don’t think we have any evidence that allows us to say that it should be the inevitable destiny of all countries.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the United States Government has been hard-pressed to solve the riddle posed by Iran and, more recently, to curb Teheran’s nuclear ambitions and support for international terrorism. The latest American attempt centers on the implementation of economic sanctions tailored to hurt Iran’s private sector. This new refined sanctions policy is an idea of Stuart Levey’s, the Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Department of the Treasury. More sophisticated than the traditional reliance on comprehensive sanctions imposed on countries as a whole, Levey’s creation is yet to yield definite results.

“Entities that engage in nuclear proliferation, as well as terrorist organizations, need access to the global financial system in order to fund their activities,” Levey explained at a recent conference organized in Washington D.C. by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. As a consequence, the thinking is that if the U.S. Government manages to constrain these organizations’ transactions with recognized financial institutions, it can successfully curtail their unlawful activities.

The premise to Levey’s philosophy is that banks and financial institutions are risk-averse and are dependent on their credibility among clients to conduct business in a profitable way. If they were to recognize that a partner engaged in bad behavior, they would sever ties in order to preserve their standing. “In the case of Iran the evidence of bad behavior is very extensive,” Levey commented, claiming that Iran regularly abuses the financial system to pursue uranium enrichment and to fund organizations such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Once the Iranian entities involved in this back-door transactions are identified and sanctioned by the U.S. Government, and once their names become known to all financial institutions wishing to comply with international regulations, the latter will necessarily withdraw their support, protecting their business with the Americans and leaving the sinful to scramble for money.

Since the launch of the program, Stuart Levey has visited over 70 financial institutions worldwide, trying to convince them to cut off relations with selected Iranian entities. Since 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department designated, among others, banks Saderat, Sepah and Melli. “There is now a wide consensus that Iran poses a threat to the international financial system,” Levey said, noting that Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in Iran have dried up because nobody is willing to finance them anymore.

According to former Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright, who was also part of the discussion at the Wilson Center, an example of how the lack of foreign investments is already hurting Iran’s economy can be found in the South Pars gas field. The South Pars field, which Iran shares with Kuwait, is one of the biggest gas reserves in the world. “Yet, many multinational oil companies have been recently cutting their pledged funding and, as a result, Iran’s portion of the field is underdeveloped,” Wright pointed out.

Despite expressing harsh criticism of the Bush Administration’s policies toward Iran, Wright defended Stuart Levey’s endeavor: “Levey’s story is good,” she declared, noting that what started as a U.S.-only strategy is now being slowly embraced by many international partners. These include the European Union and Australia, but also multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the Financial Action Task Force – the world’s financial watchdog based in Paris and representing the 34 largest economies. Citing her own independent research, Wright said that over 90 major financial institutions worldwide have limited, if not entirely cut off, business with Iran – other than for those goods that are exempt from the sanctions regime, such as agricultural goods and medicines. “Iran has become a dangerous business,” Wright added.

If the slow siege brought onto the regime in Teheran by its financial isolation is progressively hampering Iran’s development, noted the speakers at the Wilson Center, the mismanagement of the country’s own resources perpetrated by the current leadership is rapidly accelerating the crisis. “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has squandered Iran’s reserves,” Robin Wright said. By some measures, she maintained, Iran currently holds only eight to nine billion dollars in its Oil Stabilization Fund, the country’s rainy-day account. Official government figures put this number around 25 billion, still much less than what it should have been considering the massive spike in gas prices this past summer.

In the meantime, falling oil prices in recent months have threatened Iran’s oil revenues, upon which the country’s economy is heavily dependent. The budget of the Islamic Republic relies on minimum price of about $60 a barrel. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that Iran will face an unsustainable deficit if oil remained under even $75 per barrel. In any case, Iran cannot afford current prices of around $46 a barrel. President Ahmadinejad’s first response to the crisis has been to lower interest rates below inflation levels, which, for economists worldwide, is the recipe for disaster. “Timing is on the side of the U.S. for the first time,” Wright commented.

As a result of a faltering Iranian economy, an increasing number of prominent figures, from senior clerics, to economists, to former government officials, have spoken out against the performance of President Ahmadinejad. According to both Stuart Levey and Robin Wright, this should be taken as an indication that an internal debate has been unleashed creating strong incentives for the leadership to change its behavior. This, ultimately, is Levey’s and the Department of Treasury’s goal.

However, according to former IMF Executive Jahangir Amuzegar, this interpretation overlooks other important facts. According to Amuzegar, in recent years Teheran has scored a series of successes, especially in the political and economic arena. First of all, Iran emerged from the two U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a much stronger player and is seen increasingly as the predominant power in the region. Teheran also managed to defy resolutions of the UN Security Council without serious repercussions, was invited to join the Gulf Cooperation Council – which ironically was first established to counter Teheran during the Iran-Iraq war – and to take on observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran has also been courted by India, China and a few countries in South America, primarily Venezuela, for its unparalleled oil reserves.

At the military level, Amuzegar explained, Iran is equipped today with more developed technology and has increased its number of active nuclear centrifuges. Even from the economic standpoint not all the news from Teheran has been gloomy. Some of its dollar-denominated transactions have simply been moved to Euros and Yen. Iran’s reserves in the European Union have gone up while Teheran’s liability against them has gone down. Big banks that have curtailed service to Iran have been substituted by smaller boutique institutions, especially banks based in the Far East that have few contacts with the U.S. And finally, U.S. exports to Iran have increased more than tenfold under George W Bush’s watch, particularly those traveling via Dubai.

“Iranians are very good at adapting,” commented Robin Wright, who agreed that many businesses already found their way around even the latest round of U.S. sanctions. To avoid the restrictions imposed on them by the international financial system, Iranians have been increasingly relying on an informal structure for transactions, an unofficial version of Western Union that is known as the Hawala system. Anybody can send money into Iran by using a network of private individuals that will pass it along a chain of personal connection until it reaches the final recipient. The money never goes through regular financial institutions and, as a result, is particularly hard to trace. In addition, many Iranian businesses hurt by the sanctions have simply been moved to Dubai, which now has a population of Persians as large as that of locals. Recently, Wright pointed out, Dubai has been collaborating more with the U.S., taking small steps in limiting the number of visas granted to Iranian citizens or enforcing stricter security controls on them. Nevertheless Dubai has become Iran’s number one trading partner and, as a result, is deeply invested in its relation with Teheran.

Sanction regimes also present another, fundamental challenge: their ability, or inability some would say, to hit the right target. According to Stuart Levey’s of the Treasury Department, this new strategy, comprising measures aimed at the private sector, should contribute to drying up financing for Iran’s businesses that operate at the international level. “Although it might not be the perfect target,” Levey conceded, “It is still a pretty good target, since these are people that have means and leverage.” In his opinion, these influential Iranians, unhappy at the consequences of the behavior of their own government, would pressure Teheran into adjusting its policies. As a consequence, they would help the U.S. achieve its goals.

Nevertheless, it appears that even Levey’s carefully crafted sanctions plan is failing to protect ordinary citizens in Iran. “Ali the plumber and Amid the carpenter, who eat rice and bread; that’s who has been hurt by the sanctions,” said Amuzegar, referring to Iran’s staggering inflation and rising cost of staple food. “The people who are suffering are precisely those that the U.S. Government keeps saying will not be touched,” Amuzegar continued, “everybody else is thriving.” The risk, Robin Wright noted, is that the U.S. could be alienating the people who least like the regime already, while government-controlled businesses are much better equipped to weather the storm. “So far we are targeting the 20% of businesses in private hands in Iran. But the 80% of the economy is in the hands of the government,” Wright commented.

Undoubtedly, President Ahmadinejad is facing rising criticism even within Iran, and his position has been severely weakened by the ongoing financial crisis. “If we continue on this trajectory, the regime might start considering Ahmadinejad as a liability,” argued Robin Wright. However, even if Ahmadinejad loses the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for June of 2009, politics in Iran is not bound to change very much, maintained Amuzegar, especially with regard to nuclear proliferation and support for terrorism. “I agree that Ahmadinejad might lose, but I doubt that anybody different would take his place,” Amuzegar insisted.

Despite the appreciation for Levey’s effort, there is widespread agreement that the ongoing attempts of the U.S. Government aimed at undermining the Iranian leadership might not pay off. While the development of a nuclear weapons program by Iran might still be negotiated and maybe prevented, “the U.S. will have to learn to live with uranium enrichment,” Robin Wright avowed. A recent report by the Peterson Institute of International Economics titled “Economic Sanctions Reconsidered,” says it best: “It’s hard to bully a bully with economic measures,” the authors suggest.

“Of course it hasn’t worked yet,” Stuart Levey said trying to respond to the criticisms of his sanctions plan. “But, as a government official, what I can do is keep going. We are getting the right signals,” he concluded.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition

Washington D.C. – The Bush Administration announced on Wednesday that it will send Ambassador William Burns, Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs and the White House specialist on Iran, as an observer to the talks that will take place between Iranian officials and the representatives of the P5 plus 1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 19^th. Moreover, on Thursday, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the US Government plans to return its diplomats to Iran for the first time since the Islamic Revolution and that it might staff a US interest section at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran beginning next month.

In order to continue promoting dialogue, the Stimson Center in Washington D.C. hosted Wednesday an event organized by the Stanley Foundation, bringing to the US capital two European experts, Riccardo Redaelli of Italy and Anoush Ehteshami of Great Britain. They outlined the European argument in favor of engagement with Iran and advocated the need for Washington to open up a diplomatic channel with Teheran.

Director of the Middle East program at the Landau Network – Istituto Volta, a think tank based outside of Milan, Mr. Redaelli emphasized the complexities of the Iranian constitutional, political and cultural systems, and argued the need for an elaborate policy in dealing with Teheran. Although the Iranian political elite appears to be fragmented and as having contradictory goals, especially as it tries to integrate an agenda for the promotion of a pan-Islamist ideal, while protecting its own identity as a Shiite Persian state and trying to secure its strategic national interest, it certainly doesn’t have “suicidal tendencies.” The main goal of the leadership in Teheran is, Redaelli said, “to guarantee the survival of the regime and as such it should be viewed as quite rational.”

A Western tendency toward the demonization of Iran is, according to the Italian researcher, at the roots of dangerous misinterpretations of the Islamic Republic. Western observers often over-simplify the Iranian political system and lack a real understanding of the delicate dynamics at play between the elected and un-elected institutions in Teheran. Furthermore, Mr. Redaelli believes that the labels normally used to explain the politics of Iran, such as the reformists, the pragmatists, the conservatives, fail to grasp the true essence of the regime and instead “they are very useful only not to understand Iran,” Mr. Redaelli said on Wednesday.

As a result of these misunderstandings, those in Iran who have always opposed engagement with the West are succeeding in what Redaelli called “the securization of all aspects of Iran’s foreign policy.” Teheran’s paranoia with its own isolation has become an important driver of its decision-making process. President Ahmadinejad has risen and held on to power, despite a fairly poor performance, thanks to the people’s fears. “He is able to exploit the atmosphere of isolation we have created,” highlighted Professor Anoush Ehteshami, Director of the Department of Political Sciences and International Affairs at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom.

“This is the time to speak to Iran,” Riccardo Redaelli advocated at the Stimson Center. It is precisely in a time of troubles that diplomacy becomes the most useful tool. After all, the other various policy alternatives have been already tried out at some point, echoed Mr. Ehteshami; “Washington first decided to ignore Iran, but that didn’t work, then it tried containment but in the long run containment ended up turning against Washington,” he continued. “Confrontation has been in the mix for a while,” he added, noting that preparing for a conflict would be too long and too costly for both Iran and the United States. “Overtime the policy options have been reduced to no-policy at all,” Mr. Ehteshami pointed out, concluding that engagement is the only alternative left.

Despite an apparent willingness on all sides to try talking to one another, deep mistrust remains and the moment where a “grand bargain” could be discussed hasn’t yet been reached. The parties should focus on developing a minimal agenda of a limited set of issues with the goal of building mutual trust, a plan which Mr. Redaelli called “selective engagement.” Among the areas that could be approached, he suggested the fight against drug smuggling from Central Asia, on which Teheran has already proved willing to cooperate, and the opening of a US consulate in Iran to ease and quicken the processing of visa applications. Finally, it is important that an agenda of regime change is taken off the table by Washington; otherwise the Iranians will never agree to talk. “If you want to engage them, they might be interested, but if you want to keep them in a corner until their current political system crumbles, they won’t accept that,” Mr. Redaelli warned.

Despite the opening on the part of the US Administration and the EU continued support for negotiations, Congress maintains an aggressive posture, focusing on an agenda of punitive measures. On July 15^th, Senators Dodd (D-CT) and Shelby (R-AL) announced that they will introduce a bipartisan proposal for the expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act, entitled the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2008. Simultaneously Congress is considering the draft of a resolution that would empower the Administration to enforce sanctions at all costs, a measure that many believe could lead to war with Iran. H. Con. Res. 362 e S. Res. 580, respectively at the House and the Senate, grant the Executive the authority to pursue the isolation of Iran via a naval blockade, which in military terms is considered an act of war.

“Not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis did President Kennedy order a naval blockade against the Soviets. Instead he called it ‘naval quarantine’ to try avoiding war,” Doctor Lawrence Korb told Washington Prism in a phone interview on Wednesday. Dr. Korb is former Assistant Secretary of Defense, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and one of the three co-signatories of a letter urging lawmakers to abandon the resolution. Dr. Korb, with retired Navy Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan and retired Army Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Nuclear Nonproliferation, wrote that the resolution “clearly risks sending a message to the Iranians, the Bush Administration, and the world that Congress supports a more belligerent policy toward, and, potentially, belligerent actions against, Iran.”

Dr. Korb believes that the resolution is a way for Congress to protect itself from potential criticisms of being too soft on Iran, in case anything tragic happens. “It’s their way of saying to the Executive: ‘we gave you all the authority you need so, from here on, Iran is your responsibility.” Despite the noise that H. Con. Res. 362 and its sister Senate draft S. Res. 580 have created, it is unlikely that the resolution will clear the floor any time soon, “unless its language is significantly changed,” Dr. Korb told Washington Prism.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition