Here a report from my new
CNAS colleague Patrick Cronin, who not only is a smart guy but also very
tolerant of the loud music he can hear through the wall separating his office
from mine.
By Patrick Cronin
Best Defense Senior Iranian
Affairs Correspondent
A high-powered group of Iranian
watchers gathered all day Tuesday at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy for an invitation-only not-for-attribution colloquium titled, "The
Perfect Handshake with Iran? Prudent
Military Strategy and Pragmatic Engagement Policy."
Workshop co-sponsors were
represented by Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, USMC, Deputy Commander of United States
Central Command, and Col. Edmund K. Daley, III, USA, Director of the Army
Directed Studies Office. Amongst the
speakers were former Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, former IAEA
Deputy Director General Bruno Pellaud, Farideh Farhi of the University of
Hawaii, former University of Glasgow professor Reza Taghizadeh, former Israeli
Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor, Houchang Hassan Yari formerly at
Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, and others.
First,
the center of the action is within Iran itself rather than in Washington or in
Vienna. Iran remains a divided society
and government, dangerously deadlocked between hardliners who wish to use the
security forces to oppress the democratic opposition, and the Green movement
which expanded after the contested June election and has refused to wither
despite facing immense coercion. In this
explosive domestic environment, there is no room to consider the question of
engagement with the United States -- save as a political football. Indeed, some experts view any overt
intervention to support the Green movement would only feed the Supreme Leader's
paranoia that the movement is externally driven. The diminishing inner circle is ready to call
for additional measures of oppression.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps, which originally
developed around a perceived just cause, is increasingly caught up in
perpetuating an ever more illegitimate government.
Second,
the threat of military force has lost the saliency it may have had in
2003. Whereas the threat of Israeli or
U.S. military strikes once induced some fear on the part of Iran's leadership,
several years of unfulfilled taunts and the new U.S. administration's policy of
engagement have pulled the teeth from that threat. The United States has not proven adept at
moving on two tracks of diplomatic engagement, on the one hand, and coercive
diplomacy, on the other hand. Iran's
current leadership thinks a military strike is improbable; some hardliners may
wish to provoke a strike precisely because it would further consolidate their
political power at a time of internal turmoil.
At the societal level, one expert suggested that military half measures
would anger the population; however, a strike that led to a regime change would
be likely to accepted and quickly forgotten.
Third,
sanctions have simply not persuaded Iranian leaders that the consequences of
pursuing their nuclear ambitions will be severe. Thus, sanctions may well impose additional
cost on Iran's nuclear program, they are highly unlikely to change the calculus
of decision-makers with respect to the nuclear program. The weight of the diplomatic pressure
accumulated under the banner of the international community has left Tehran
unimpressed, and it is highly dubious that the likelihood of some further
sanctions by early February will alter that sense. The fact that Russia and China neither place
an equal priority on nuclear proliferation nor are willing to forsake
prospective commercial and energy ties dictates inherent limits of
international sanctions. Moreover, the
United States and the European Union (the latter of which is the number one
trader with Iran, followed by China and Japan) have been unwilling to target
crippling sanctions on key individuals, entities (especially the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls up to one-third of Iran's economy),
or sectors (especially high-technology and energy).
Fourth,
engagement has its uses, although the present moment makes engagement
especially difficult. Iran's present
regime wants to buy time and divide the international community, keeping the
nuclear file out of becoming referred to the United Nations Security Council
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. In
the medium term, Iran's leaders may wish mostly to bust out of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, with a long-term aim of being treated like India-a
major power with a nuclear program.
Fifth and finally, U.S. policy may well be focused on
buying time-time for the further erosion of legitimacy of Supreme Leader
Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bring about a change in
government. Even so, politics in Iran
will persist, and every major policy will be played within the domestic context
of a struggle between these two camps to mobilize people around their
narratives and policies. At best a Green
government might be able to make the case for a freeze (not a complete end to a
nuclear program), but it would surely continue to assert Iran's right to
nuclear power.
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