For a quarter of a century, Iran has been ruled by a militant theocracy. After the shah's regime--authoritarian, brutal, and backed by the United States--was overthrown, the new regime quickly proved itself to be authoritarian, cruel, and self-warranted by Islamic fundamentalism. Reform efforts have proved chimerical, and Tehran has pursued nuclear capabilities with vigor, long deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western interlocutors about its efforts. To what extent should the character of the Iranian regime govern Western responses to its ambitions? Should Iran be considered just one state among others, seeking its legitimate self-interests? What "threat" does the current Iranian regime pose in today's world? --Eds.
Read the responses: Shlomo Avineri, Michael W. Doyle, Yitzhak Nakash, Suzanne Nossel, Anne-Marie Slaughter.
SHLOMO AVINERI:
The Islamic Republic of Iran poses a unique challenge to world public opinion and the international community, especially since the election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as president.
Yet it should be remembered that the Islamists came to power in the wake of the authoritarian regime (the shah) whose main domestic characteristic was its attempt to create a faux-Western monarchy, deracinated from the Muslim ingredients of the country’s history and harking back to an imperial pagan tradition alien to contemporary Iranian society. The shah’s decision to abolish the Muslim calendar in favor of an invented one dating to the accession of King Cyrus (a pagan, to boot) is just one example of the cultural counterrevolution associated with the Pahlavi dynasty. Many of its symbols (including changing the country’s name to “Iran,” with its “Aryan” connotations) owe much to European integralist ideologies of the 1930s.
To imagine that there is, at the moment, a democratic alternative in Iran is a hallucination much like the belief that there were democratic forces in Iraq, just waiting to be liberated from Saddam’s shackles.
The Islamic revolution, while obviously not democratic, had deep popular roots in those sectors of Iranian society that were not linked to the narrow, westernized elites of Tehran. Surprising as it may sound to western ears, the constitution of the Islamic Republic tried to fashion a balance of power between the supreme leader, the Council of Guardians, the presidency, and the Parliament. The fact that presidential and parliamentary elections are contested (even if it is clear that the last ones were rigged) suggests an important element of representation. Women, for instance, have the right to vote (and helped to elect Mohammad Khatami twice). The system offers potential for change, even if former president Khatami failed to make use of it when he was in office. A relatively vibrant civil society—expressing itself among students and journalists—suggests a basic difference between Iranian society, blessed with the rich layers of Persian history, and the much more conformist and militarized Arab societies.
One should recall that Iran accelerated its nuclear research after it was attacked, and ultimately defeated, by Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s. With some justification, Iran viewed itself as the victim, and the fact that Saddam was then supported by the United States reinforced greatly in the Iranian collective psyche an image of America as arch-enemy. This lent itself to the regime’s fundamentalist ideology. Here was a beleaguered, God-fearing Islamic republic fighting against the Western, godless juggernaut.
The regime’s revolutionary zeal dimmed over the years, and the idea of exporting the Islamic revolution was replaced, if one may use the analogy with Stalin, with an “Islam in One Country” ideology. The Islamic Republic reached Thermidor.
This has changed with the election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Even if one views Khatami’s call for a dialogue between civilizations as a mere tactic, it did allow for some internal pluralism; fundamentalist views about Israel were not changed, but became more marginal. Ahmedinejad’s messianic version of Twelver Shia ideology revived the revolution’s radical élan. Ahmedinejad positioned himself as the ecumenical leader of a militant Islamic umma and gained a standing among Sunni Muslims, which overcame Iran’s minority Shia position. He has radicalized the public stance of Iran’s regime by relinquishing the dialogical language of Khatami, calling repeatedly for the elimination of Israel, denying the Holocaust, and making nuclear development into an issue of national pride and inherent right.
Iran lied consistently to the International Atomic Energy Agency during Khatami’s presidency as well. Then, however, it was an issue of diplomacy and realpolitik: Ahmedinejad has succeeded in making it an issue of national identity, transcending Islamic politics.
What is to be done? U.S. failure in Iraq makes even modest justifications for the war there sound hollow, but the basic premise was correct. An oppressive regime that uses poison gas internally and externally, attacks its neighbors and threatens others, and is ambivalent—at best—about weapons of mass destruction, should be challenged by the international community and, if necessary, toppled.
The same applies to Iran. Its political regime, unpalatable as it may be, is its internal affair. But there are certain ideologies, totalitarian in outlook and with universal aspirations, that spill immanently into external affairs. This is, at the moment, the case with Iran’s messianic fundamentalism, and it is expressed in threats to wipe off the map a UN member state, in denying the Holocaust (a universal, not only a Jewish concern), and in moving toward nuclear capabilities. All this calls for a robust international response.
Does this mean military action? Not necessarily. If the UN works as it should, there is a world of options between using force and maintaining the illusion that whatever happens in Iran is “an internal affair.’” In the 1930s, the world community failed dismally; in Iraq, recently, the United States botched a good case. One hopes that some lessons have been learned.
Shlomo Avineri teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He recently edited, with Zeev Sternhell, Europe’s Century of Discontent: The Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem).
MICHAEL W. DOYLE:
Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is desirable. But is it vitally necessary or just desirable? Is it doable, and, if so, at what cost? Answers to those questions will explain why I think we should try to prevent, but settle for deterring.
Prevention is not a radical policy. It is fully legal when authorized by the UN Security Council under Article 39 of the Charter, which calls upon the Council to determine “threats” to international peace and decide what to do about them. The Council imposed preventive sanctions on South Africa in 1977 to punish apartheid and prevent a regional race war. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962, the United States unilaterally—illegally but arguably justifiably—imposed a blockade to prevent the Soviet Union from making Cuba into a missile base threatening the United States. Responsible governments regularly face the choice of whether to try to deter a potential foe or to act first—that is, preventively—to save themselves from a blow that the other seems to intend, has delivered before, and could again deliver.
The international community is beginning to develop a jurisprudence of prevention focusing on lethality, likelihood, legitimacy, and legality—criteria that help assess the seriousness of threats not yet imminent and the appropriate responses to them.
• Lethality identifies the likely loss of life if the threat is not eliminated.
• Likelihood assesses the probability that the threat will occur.
• Legitimacy covers the proportionality, necessity, and deliberativeness of proposed responses.
• Legality asks whether the threatening situation is itself produced by legal or illegal actions, and whether the proposed remedy is more or less legal.
All four standards should be taken into account when considering prevention. Absent good reasons relevant to each standard, preventive action is not justified.
Preventing an Iranian bomb is clearly desirable, judging by those 4Ls, but not an immediate vital necessity. Lethality is fortunately not imminent. Iran is four to ten years away from nuclear weapons according to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. But there is a long-run lethal threat. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, judges that Iran is at least seeking a “screwdriver” bomb, one that would be a week or so away from assembly in a crisis. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map” and Iran’s arming of Hezbollah clearly threaten Israel. Annual “Death to America” celebrations and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that housed U.S. airmen convey continuing threats to the United States. Current threats may be so much hot air; but it is disturbing that, knowing how provocative they have been, Ahmadinejad has repeated them time and again.
Much more likely than a direct attack on either Israel or the United States (which would be met with an overwhelming response) is Iran’s continued funding, arming, and directing of Hezbollah. Iran could also tilt the regional balance of power in ways that threaten the world economy. The Bush administration eliminated Iran’s regional containment by creating power vacuums in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were once the barrier walls to Iranian expansion. All Iran needs is nuclear capability to serve as an umbrella over a much more adventurous and coercive policy toward the Persian Gulf and its cheap oil that fuels and controls world prosperity.
With regard to legality, Iran’s threats themselves violate the UN Charter (Article 2.4). But Iran’s current attempts to acquire a nuclear fuel reprocessing capability appear to be within the scope of peaceful energy in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iranian threats have generated responses that reveal a rising level of concern. Various Israeli officials off the record and Vice President Dick Cheney on the record say, “We join other nations in sending that regime a clear message. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
What is missing is a response that is both effective and legitimate—one that is proportionate to the threat. Even a Middle East hawk such as Kenneth Pollack who (in The Gathering Storm) made the case for war against Iraq, argues (in The Persian Puzzle) for caution in dealing with Iran. Iran is four times the size with three times the population of Iraq. An Iraq-style invasion would unify the country in resistance. A surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely miss many hidden sites, accelerate Iran’s program, and legitimate its acquisition of a full-scale nuclear weapon capability in the eyes of the Islamic world. Comprehensive sanctions and a steady campaign of air attacks such as was imposed on Iraq in the 1990s could degrade Iran’s nuclear program, as they successfully did Iraq’s. But the international community accepted the sanctions on Iraq only after Saddam Hussein twice invaded his neighbors. Many in the region are well aware of past Anglo-American covert interventions against Iran (against Mossadegh in 1953 and in support of the shah) and are not unsympathetic to Iran’s hyper-defensive nationalism.
The existing level of uncertainty and the immense costs of the military action both argue for trying an alternative mixed strategy of sticks and carrots, with multilateral authorization. Trade sanctions should be targeted narrowly on nuclear capacity and the governing regime. The current U.S.-European draft (October 26) circulating in the Security Council meets these standards, if we exclude the bizarre attempt to exclude Iranian students in foreign universities from classes in nuclear physics. (Completely apart from its implications for academic freedom, no one has suggested that Iran currently lacks the technical expertise to create a bomb.)
These sticks should be accompanied by carrots that take seriously Iranian denials of any intention of creating nuclear arms—if Iran is prepared to verify them. As a start, the United States should promise not to do what it neither can nor should; that is, change Iran’s regime by invasion. Beyond that, sanctions should be lifted in return for moderation, such as Iran’s recognition of Israel within its 1967 borders. Furthermore, as ElBaradei recently offered, the IAEA could guarantee full access to nuclear technology short of reprocessing by assuring access to reprocessed fuel on market terms from an IAEA facility. American billionaire Warren Buffett has offered the money to jump-start this nuclear fuel facility ($50 million). Even reprocessing could be permitted, if Iran is prepared to accept unrestricted, no-notice IAEA inspections. A moderate Iran could also be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization.
But at the end, there is no guarantee that this combination of preventive sticks and carrots will work. If they do not, deterrence is the best recourse. Iran should be informed that there will be no strategic gain from nuclearization. NATO should promise to defend the states of the Gulf from any Iranian attack. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the United States should give Israel access to a more robust, second-strike deterrent, such as a nuclear missile submarine. Recreating the cold war nuclear standoff in the Middle East is not a happy outcome. The citizens of Tel-Aviv and Tehran become hostages, their lives dependent on the prudence of their two governments. But if prevention fails, it does appear to be the least bad outcome.
Michael W. Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science at Columbia University. This essay draws from his Tanner Lectures on “Anticipatory Self-Defense,” delivered at Princeton University, November 8-9, 2006.
YITZHAK NAKASH:
American advocates of military or other tough action against Iran have based their case on the argument that its hard-line government’s pursuit of a nuclear program constitutes a grave threat to peace and stability worldwide. In reality, the development of a nuclear program is mostly a matter of national pride. A U.S. military strike against Iran, even if executed successfully, would unite Iranians and further isolate America in the international arena. A sanctions regime, including a travel ban on Iranian officials, would yield few benefits and is not likely to stop Iran from developing its nuclear program. Sanctions did not prevent North Korea from testing a nuclear device in October 2006.
What is required in Iran’s case is a psychological breakthrough between Washington and Tehran, an engagement of Iranian leaders over a range of issues—and a new strategy of deterrence in the event Iran develops a bomb. A U.S. policy based on carrots and sticks would be more effective in managing Iran’s growing power in the Middle East as well as its regional and nuclear ambitions.
Iran today is very different from the embattled Islamic Republic of the early 1980s, with a widespread women’s movement and a young generation of educated Iranians clamoring for reform and greater contacts with the West. The hard-liners in Tehran know that they will not benefit from a full-scale civil war in Iraq, which could destabilize the Persian Gulf and undermine Iran’s interests in the region. Hence they may be receptive to a détente with America in exchange for a grand bargain. If there is to be a deal with the current regime, it will have to be made not only with the reformers, but also with the more powerful conservative politicians and clerics in Iran.
This reality should not be obscured by the unfortunate denial of the Holocaust by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or by his outrageous statements that Israel should be wiped off the map—rhetoric that allowed him to occupy center stage in the Middle East. Ahmadinejad is not a messianic madman. Nor is he a Shiite version of Saddam Hussein, who launched two devastating wars in the Persian Gulf in the name of Arabism, or of Osama bin Laden, who declared jihad against America and the West in the name of Islam. Instead, he is a radical populist who has allied himself with a coalition of third world leaders, including Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, all of whom have capitalized on the general resentment against the world’s strongest power in the non-Western world. Ahmadinejad’s government may yet turn out to be the least religious in orientation that Iran has had since the start of the revolution. And should his socioeconomic policies fail to improve the living conditions of the poor classes in Iran, whose members voted for him overwhelmingly in 2005, he could lose office in the next elections.
Washington and Tehran would need to acknowledge the mistakes of the past and begin a dialogue intended, on our side, to encourage Iran to play a positive role in the U.S. effort to bring stability to Iraq and the larger Middle East. The need for a dialogue has become all the more pressing because of the recent vote by the Iraqi Parliament to approve the creation of autonomous regions—which could worsen sectarian and ethnic conflicts in Iraq and lead to the creation of a predominantly Shiite region uniting the nine provinces of southern Iraq.
Imagine the impact in Iran of a public announcement by the Bush administration that regime change is off the table, provided Iran accounts for its nuclear program, stops its support for terrorism, and acknowledges the right of all Middle Eastern states to exist in peace. Such an announcement, accompanied by an offer for improved political and economic relations and student exchanges with Iran, could put Ahmadinejad and the hard-line clerics on the defensive; enable the United States to build bridges to the reformers, the harbingers of any political change in Iran; and better contain Iran’s influence in the Middle East and its pursuit of nuclear capability. Improved U.S.-Iranian relations, moreover, will also weaken Syria and Hezbollah and in the long run could increase the prospects of peace between Israel and Syria and Lebanon.
In order to succeed, this policy will require the United States to develop robust means of deterrence that carry the threat of unbearable consequences to Iran in the event it succeeds in developing a bomb and attempts to use it. Should Iran reject a U.S. offer made in good faith for improved relations, there would be far greater international support for tough action against the regime in Tehran.
The rise of the Shia in the wake of the war in Iraq has coincided with increased violence in the Middle East. Although the war has resulted in unprecedented loss of U.S. credibility in the international arena, the outcome thus far suggests that Iran stands to lose from chaos in Iraq and further conflict in the Middle East. Both countries therefore have an incentive to seek a détente. A deal would help the United States to improve its standing in the world, and reassert its supremacy as a global power, and would allow Iran to assume the role of a power in the Persian Gulf committed to stability in the region. The price of confrontation may be too high for both countries, and the potential dividends of a deal too tempting to ignore.
Yitzhak Nakash is currently a Carnegie Corporation Scholar. He is the author of Reaching for Power: The Shi‘a in the Modern Arab World.
SUZANNE NOSSEL:
The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran—bent on regional domination, aggressive toward Israel, and hostile to the United States—is as serious a threat as the United States has confronted in recent decades. For at least two key reasons, that threat will not be directly confronted with force in the short term. First, there are genuine questions about how close Iran is to nuclear weapons capabilities. Estimates differ and are inconclusive. After the intelligence failure in Iraq, standards of proof are high, and policymakers in Washington and in capitals abroad will demand more certainty before taking aggressive action. Second, U.S. military capabilities, regional influence, and diplomatic leverage are effectively reduced by the grinding conflict in Iraq, making the prospect of a second simultaneous conflagration in the Middle East both politically and militarily untenable.
For now, containing the threat posed by Iran will center on diplomatic measures aimed at dissuading the Iranian regime from pursuing its nuclear ambitions, sustaining international unity in opposition to Tehran’s weapons program, and preventing escalation of the conflict to a point where force is the sole remaining option. The policy will amount to a carefully calibrated, hands-on holding pattern designed to draw out the problem to a point where it can be solved diplomatically and politically or where circumstances have changed to make the use of force feasible.
In this context, questions will arise about whether Washington is right to refuse direct talks with the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Current U.S. policy is that as long as Tehran declines to suspend uranium enrichment, direct talks are off-limits. The reasons for spurning face-to-face negotiations are clear enough. Ahmadinejad is a sworn enemy of Israel and a Holocaust denier. He has thumbed his nose at serious offers by the United States, Europe, China, and Russia to strike a bargain for economic and political rewards in return for nuclear safeguards. In engaging directly with such a leader, the United States risks dignifying and publicizing his cause. Ahmadinejad seems bent on positioning Iran as a power with global stature, and going toe-to-toe with Washington could advance that aspiration. There’s also little to suggest that direct talks between countries with competing worldviews and strategic objectives will bear fruit. After all, the United States and Iran do communicate regularly through foreign intermediaries and the media, such that each knows the other’s bottom line. Talking to Tehran is neither a solution to the crisis in itself, nor is it particularly likely to lead to one.
Although talking to Tehran will not end the brewing nuclear standoff, it could advance Washington’s goal of keeping a lid on it long enough for more appealing policy alternatives to ripen. The United States would not need to change its position on the acceptability of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, but rather agree simply to meet with no strings attached or concessions implied. Rather than singling out Iran, this should be done as part of a broader shift toward willingness to talk to just about any nation on matters of mutual concern.
The current refusal of the United States to talk directly to Iran, North Korea, and others allows these regimes to paint the United States as the obstacle to diplomacy, feeding perceptions that it is unilateralist and lacks respect for the views of others. A reversal of this policy would yield the opposite effect—countering perceptions of U.S. arrogance and intransigence. A blanket policy of willingness to meet bilaterally with any nation and without preconditions would blunt the perception that, in particular situations, willingness to talk reflects a weakening of the U.S. position. We would talk not because we thought talks would be fruitful, or because we necessarily credit what the other party would say, but rather because we followed a policy of readiness to hear others out, regardless of the repugnance of their views.
Agreeing to talk does not mean agreeing to talk endlessly. If talks prove unproductive, having done its part and made a genuine attempt at fruitful discussions, the United States is justified in walking away.
Although the Bush administration has on occasion resisted direct talks, claiming that they risk undermining multiparty negotiations underway, there’s no contradiction between bilateral talks and multilateral diplomacy. All effective multilateral negotiation processes are filled with bilateral sidebars, where much of the hard work happens. UN representatives spend much of their time in one-on-one discussions with other delegations. Because of their freewheeling and private character, such sessions can jostle loose ostensibly rigid positions. Even where no common ground is found, direct talks can expose vulnerabilities and motivations in ways that are easier to hide in more public forums.
Assuming Iran marches toward nuclear weapons development, but confrontation is deferred to a time when intelligence estimates are more conclusive and Washington is militarily and politically more up to the task of confrontation, attention at home and abroad will inevitably turn to whether means short of force were fully exhausted. By talking to Tehran now, Washington can pave the way for both domestic and international support in the event that the time for talks ultimately runs out.
Suzanne Nossel is a senior fellow at the Security and Peace Institute, a joint initiative of the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, and a founder of the democracyarsenal.org weblog.
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER:
An Iran with a popular, accountable, and rights-regarding (PAR) government would not be a threat, even if it developed a nuclear weapon. But an Iran with a president who denies the Holocaust, who will not deny that he called for the eradication of Israel, and who won popular election through a rhetoric and a radicalism that worry even the mullahs is a grave potential threat. At the same time, Iran is the modern heir to a great Persian culture, one of the cradles of civilization as we know it. It is a legitimate rising power, in the sense that its size, natural and human resources, history, and geography all entitle its people to aspire to be recognized as a major power in its region and the world. Our approach to Iran must acknowledge and proceed on both these realities.
The solution is to give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the bear-hug treatment. We should enfold him in an iron embrace, engaging him in ways that either tame him or expose him as a danger not only to the world but to the Iranian people. Concretely, we should engage Iran on three fronts: Iraq, a broader Middle East peace settlement, and nuclear weapons. On all three fronts, we must pursue diplomacy with Iranian political and religious leaders and dialogue, as much as possible, with the Iranian people.
On Iraq, the United States should begin from the premise that the Sunnis and the Shiites are now waging a civil war, leaving only two feasible options for the United States: (1) work with other powers in the region, particularly Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, to reach a political settlement that can be enforced; or (2) withdraw and leave a civil war raging on Iran’s borders. Iran has already signaled that it does not want a civil war that could spill over to Sunnis in Iran itself or that draws Iran directly into a much wider regional conflict. A simmering conflict that keeps the United States tied down is one thing. A raging conflict with the United States gone is quite another, creating a major incentive to negotiate, requiring Ahmadinejad and the mullahs at least to explain to the Iranian population why it is sometimes acceptable to sit down with the Great Satan.
In a broader Middle East settlement, the United States should embrace the plan put forward by King Abdullah of Jordan in March 2002 as the basis for a regional and international conference aimed at bringing peace to the Middle East as a whole. That plan proposed that the Arab world establish “normal relations” with Israel and recognize the Arab-Israeli conflict to be concluded in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, Israeli recognition of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution for Palestinian refugees. An additional topic for this peace conference would be the establishment of a Helsinki Process for all Middle Eastern countries, whereby they would agree to a set of political and economic “baskets” of commitments designed to bring all their governments up to PAR and establish a Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East to oversee a process of implementing these commitments. At the same time, we should encourage Israel to do everything possible to make a separate peace with Syria, leaving Iran deprived of its arc of influence and faced with the prospect of rising Saudi influence in the Middle East, unless it is willing to come to the table as well.
On nuclear weapons, the United States should be willing to offer Iran assurances that assuage its legitimate fears. These assurances might include a negative security assurance—a promise not to attack Iran except in response to Iranian military action or direct Iranian support of a terrorist attack against the United States, Europe, or Israel. This offer would hinge on an Iranian commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapons capability and Iranian willingness to allow that commitment to be verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. At the same time, the five nuclear powers and several leading non-nuclear powers should announce an emergency review conference at which the original bargain of atoms for peace will be updated and the restrictions on all declared nuclear powers will become more stringent, raising the cost of being a nuclear power. This will provide a face-saving device for the Iranians to suspend all uranium enrichment activities until the conclusion of the conference.
In all of these efforts, the United States must present a united front with Europe. Above all, our combined activity must be steady and constant, allowing no time for Iranian divide-and-conquer delay tactics. We should smother Ahmadinejad with attention. He will claim victories, but our response must be to demand genuine engagement, meaning a willingness to strike genuine and verifiable bargains. We must also be able to offer real carrots for more responsible behavior, such as the prospect of aid in developing gas supplies that will enable Iran to provide an alternative source to Russian gas fields, and/or the prospect of membership in a G-8 expanded to a G-15 or G-20.
If these combined initiatives fail either to rein in Ahmadinejad or to deprive him of support within Iran, then his personal pathologies and the profound dangers of the fanatical populism he is spreading will be clear to all responsible nations. At that point the case for direct action against him will be far more compelling.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton and co-convener, with G. John Ikenberry, of the Princeton Project on National Security. Some of the ideas presented here are drawn from the final report of the Princeton Project, “Forging a World of Liberty under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century,” September 27, 2006.
Homepage photo by Karl O'Brien.
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