Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Confronting Iran: Inverting the division of labor
First, many people in Iran are very dissatisfied with the regime, which is profoundly ideological and inimical to their interests. Many of them hope very much for the United States to create the conditions under which their government might liberalize or be overthrown.
Second, these people are equally patriotic, and believe that Iran has a right to both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Their affection for the West has limits:
These young Persians are pro-democracy and rather pro-American, but also fiercely patriotic. They have imbibed suspicion of the great powers--especially Britain and the United States--with their mother's milk. A wrong move by the West could swing a lot of them back behind the state.
"I love George Bush," one young woman told me, as we sat in the Tehran Kentucky Chicken restaurant, "but I would hate him if he bombed my country." Or even if he pushed his European allies to impose stronger economic sanctions linked to the nuclear issue alone.
Third, the geopolitical problem is "that the nuclear clock and the clock of democracy may be ticking at different speeds." Ash believes that it will take at least a decade for the regime to change from within, "although President Ahmadinejad is hastening that prospect as he sharpens the contradictions within the system."
Fourth, as a result, it is tremendously important that the West stick together, be consistent, and persistent:
First, understand what is happening in Iran. This is much easier for Europeans than Americans. We have embassies there. We do business there. We can travel there. As senior American officials freely admit, there is no country in the world they have less contact with.
So there's a particular obligation on us Europeans to go there, to look and listen and then to share our findings with our American friends....
If Europe and America split over Iran, as we did over Iraq, we have not a snowball's chance in hell of achieving our common goals. To be effective, Europe and America need the opposite of their traditional division of labor.
Europe must be prepared to wave a big stick (the threat of economic sanctions, for it's Europe not the United States that has the trade with Iran) and America a big carrot (the offer of full "normalization" of relations in return for Iranian restraint).
But the old transatlantic West is not enough. Today's nuclear diplomacy around Iran shows us we already live in a multipolar world. Without the cooperation of Russia and China, little can be achieved.
We also have to be consistent. Consistent in our policy to Iran, embedded in a kind of Helsinki process for the whole region. Consistent in advocating an international set of rules governing the use of nuclear power, not just for Iran, but for others as well. [This is code for enforcing rules against Israel, I imagine. One need not agree with this final bit to appreciate much of Gash's argument, and in any case, consistency can take many forms, including recognizing that nuclear weapons in the hands of a politically mature democratic government represent an entirely different risk than in the hands of an expansionist, ideologically suicidal regime. - ed.]
Consistent, too, in recognizing that our policy must be addressed as much to the people as the regime. For every step we take to slow down the nuclearization of Iran, we need another to speed up the democratization of Iran.
At every stage, we need to explain to the Iranian people, through satellite television, radio and the Internet, what we are doing and why.
There are at least two points that flow from this. First, if Gash is broadly correct, the Bush administration will need to reveal a heretofore invisible ability to communicate creatively and articulately across cultural and national lines.
Second, Ash's essay is not a complete strategy, insofar as it does not deal with containment of Iran in case regime change does not come. It is perhaps the best approach, given the poor policy options, but it must not be the only approach. It might, however, work well paired with a very subtle covert strategy.
Comments?
4 Comments:
By 
Final Historian, at
Wed Dec 07, 03:56:00 AM:
It would be nice, but I don't see the Europeans, at least, the French and Germans, going along with their role as the "bad cop".
And as far as I know the Russians and Chinese will not play along. There is nothing we can reasonably offer them to get them to do so.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Dec 07, 10:24:00 AM:
Cannot work.
First of all, Europe does not speak with one voice. It has fragmented interests and opinions. This reduces it ability to act with credibility as a "bad cop." Ultimately the only player with the cojones to try is Britain, and they lack the raw power to be credible.
I will give two failed examples of what in effect was the same strategy. The first is recent, and relates to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Britain, France and Germany were unable to act as one to prevent first the dissolution and second, the genocide which took place under the auspices of their UN "peacekeepers" - right undr the nose folks, in their backyard. Blair ultimately convinced Clinton to act unilaterall to prevent something which would have looked more like Rwanda or Darfur by the time it was over -- in the Balkans. It tool unilateral American power to stop it. In Europe proper.
The second example, far less current, was the US sitting out the lead up to WWII, and letting the British and the French try to deal with the rogue German tiger. They let Hitler march into Czechoslavakia in contravention of the Treaty of Paris, then appeased him via Chamberlain to effectively try to point Hitler east to Russia. When Stalin made Hitler a deal to neutralize this, Hitler had a free hand to attack to the west. The US did nothing, and 40 million dead later, the rest is history.
The same dynamic will certainly be at work today. History is nothing if not consistent. The British, French and Germans will not agree on a hard line formulation. And none of them individually has the power to credibly stop Iran.
Tyrannical regimes do not "moderate" without a cataclysm, particularly those which claim to have God on their side, as the mullahcracy does. So I am afraid that the historian's thoughtful formulation does not pay due respect to history.
In my estimation, if the current Iranian regime acquires nuclear capability, it will use it. It may choose to use it openly, or it may seek to use it for commercial Islamic purposes, spreading the capability in small doses to dangerous non-state actors like Hezbollah, for instance.
What nobody has addressed, interestingly, is the notion of a decapitating strike. I've seen many pieces talking about overt and covert action to address the nuclear capability. In reality, I think the US would live with nukes in Iran as we do with Pakistan. Iran is a particular problem, highlighted by its record to terror proliferation and the lesson of Dr. Khan.
The problem with Iran is not nukes per se, it is the toxic combination of its regime plus nukes. Given Gash's formulation that the Iranian people want nukes, but oppose the regime, I would suggest a decapitating strike aimed at essentially creating a new Iranian revolution, as in effect we have accomplished in Iraq.
By 
, at
Wed Dec 07, 11:30:00 AM:
Dear Mr. TigerHawk:
We addressed the latest developments in Iran in our post
The world hardens around Iran.
It seems as if Mr. Ahmadinejad's antics are convincing both the Russians and Chinese that they should not support Iran's recklessness. In this case, the IAEA/UNSC process may either remove Iran's nuclear enrichment capability or definitively expose Iran as an aggresive nuclear weapons-bound rogue. Either would be a good outcome for the U.S.
Iranians grumbling about their regime is just that, grumbling. The Iranian populace is too passive and will not change the regime within any relevant time frame. And even if that did occur and the new regime was pro-American, it still should not be a nuclear weapons state.
Westhawk
By , at
Sun Dec 11, 08:56:00 PM:
How many of our so called alies are selling weapons to iran?
