Why economic sanctions on Iran won’t work

There are no good military options, and oil always finds a way around sanctions

By Juan Cole

Topics:Iran, Energy, U.S. Military, Middle East

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said at Columbia University that a military strike on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities would be his “last option.” He makes an excellent point, too often overlooked. In some instances the price of doing something is just about as high as the price of doing nothing. A U.S. strike on Iran would risk throwing Iraq and Afghanistan into chaos, with our troops in the midst of it.

The Obama administration is now moving to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, as an alternative to a more direct approach. These measures include pressuring countries and firms not to buy Iranian petroleum and gas; pressuring them not to sell gasoline to Iran; and attempting to make it difficult for Iranian banks to interface with the world economic system.

While these measures could impose costs on Iran, these costs can easily be borne by the country, and more especially by the regime.

Moreover, it is unclear that President Obama can even swing further sanctions on Iranian petroleum and gas. Such harsh measures are opposed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC bloc of nations that are emerging diplomatic and economic players outside the U.S.-dominated G-7 nations. At the BRIC summit in Brazil last week, a consensus emerged against strong new sanctions on Iran. Brazil is on the U.N. Security Council at the moment, and in May Lebanon will assume the rotating chairmanship of that body. Given that Turkey also currently has a seat and is strongly opposed to new Iran sanctions, it may be difficult for Obama to get a significant new resolution.

Financial sanctions are not all that they are cracked up to be. Iran Oil & Gas reports that from March ’09 to March ’10, Iran swapped 450,000 tons of petroleum products. Some 90 percent of the swaps were with nations of the former Soviet Union (CIS), and 10 percent were with Iraq. Likely we are talking about Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This item is an example of how Iran can import refined gasoline (it has a temporary shortage of refineries) without needing to go through the international banking system. Even if some sort of official ban on trading with Iran could be arranged by the U.S. with these CIS countries and Iraq, private traders and corrupt government officials would simply step into the resulting black market and make a pile. Smuggling oil products out of Iraq on trucks was a specialty of Jordan and Turkey in the 1990s, and that sort of black market would operate quite efficiently were Iran to be put under the sort of sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein.

Few commodities are more easily transported and more fungible (easily exchanged for other goods or for cash) than gasoline, and the plan for a gasoline embargo on Iran (popular in Congress) is a pipe dream.

But we are hardly in a stage of black marketeering. Rather, direct deals are being done by major players, despite the withdrawal of some players, such as Lukoil, from exporting gasoline to Iran. Chinaoil just directly sold Iran 600,000 barrels of gasoline, and Sinopec, another Chinese oil giant, is preparing to resume direct gasoline sales to Iran. Soft gasoline demand in Asia because of the global economic downturn has left petroleum companies with high inventories that they are eager to offload anywhere they can, and Iran as a destination suits them fine.

Reuters reports, “As long as there is money to be made, and economic benefits to be taken advantage off, Iran will always find ready sellers of gasoline from the international market,” a trader said. “The politicians don’t understand markets … sanctions are cosmetic.”

And if direct sales became difficult, indirect ones would be substituted. And if that became difficult, smugglers would step in. A lot of Iraqis would get rich. And while paying extra to smuggle things in would hurt ordinary Iranians, the regime would use its oil profits to cushion the elites and keep them happy. (That cushioning is why very severe sanctions on Iraq never had a chance of shaking the Baathist regime.)

The man said it all: “Sanctions” are purely cosmetic, designed to make it look as though U.S. politicians had taken some dramatic and effective step. It is odd that the politicians in Washington, who are always loudly proclaiming their belief in the market, think its iron laws can be suspended by a simple vote on their parts.

And another development taken as a bellwether of increasingly effective sanctions turns out to have been a mirage. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak clarified remarks he made last Thursday about creeping sanctions on Iran. He was misunderstood to have said that Petronas, the Malaysian petroleum company, had suspended gasoline sales to Iran, but he never said any such thing and it never happened. He referred to a canceled third-party spot oil deal that collapsed for purely economic reasons.

Moreover, Iran’s need to import gasoline is probably temporary. It has the wherewithal to build new refineries, and is doing so. Germany’s ABB Lummus has a a $512 million deal with the National Iranian Oil Co. and a consortium in Iran to raise gasoline production at the Bandar Abbas refinery to about 3.5 million gallons a day from the present 1.3 million gallons.

In fact, there are 10 such projects to expand existing refineries, which could allow Iran to nearly double its production of gasoline by 2012. In addition, Iran is investing nearly $40 billion in building seven new refineries. So even a successful squeeze on Iran’s gasoline imports, if it could be implemented right away, would only have much effect for two years. But such a squeeze is unlikely to be successfully implemented in the first place.

Nor is Iran lacking for customers. A Swiss company just signed a deal worth $13 billion to import Iranian natural gas over the next 25 years. As for financial sanctions, so far Iran is evading them through banking partners in the United Arab Emirates, and Iran and Venezuela have two joint banks. These measures provide Iran with a back door, allowing it to mitigate the effects of financial sanctions.

Very few sanctions have actually produced regime change or altered regime behavior. The U.S. could not even accomplish this goal with regard to a small island 90 miles off its shores, Cuba. That an oil giant halfway around the world with a population of 70 million that is as big as Spain, France and Germany can be effectively bludgeoned with sanctions is not very likely.

The U.S. needs to engage in comprehensive security talks with Iran, in hopes of striking a grand bargain. Because as Adm. Mullen rightly says, there are no good military options here.

: Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Engaging the Muslim World." More Juan Cole

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Iran’s Greens aim to rise again

A protest march Tuesday is a test of strength for a movement under siege

By Faraz Sanei

Leaders of Iranian opposition, Mahdi Karroubi, right, and Mir Hossein Mousavi talk in Tehran, Iran

The now-confined leaders of Iranian opposition, Mahdi Karroubi, right, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, talk in freer days in Tehran. (Credit: AP)

Topics:Iran, Mideast

At 80 years of age, Ebrahim Yazdi has the distinction of being Iran’s oldest political prisoner. Yazdi was one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s closest confidants, accompanied him during his triumphant return to Tehran in February 1979, and briefly served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Authorities arrested him three times after the disputed 2009 presidential election for his membership in a political opposition group. Yazdi spent months in jail, then was released for medical treatment.

But on Dec. 28, 2011, a revolutionary court sentenced him to eight years in prison and a five-year ban from civic activities for “acting against the national security” and “publishing lies.” It is often said that “revolutions eat their children.” In the case of Iran, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 swallowed up some of its children whole, chewed and spit out the ones who strayed from the proper path, and mercilessly gnaws on those it cannot disown.

On Feb. 11, Iran’s rulers commemorated the 33rd anniversary of the day in 1979 that demonstrators and armed opposition groups, inspired and guided by Ayatollah Khomeini, seized control and the shah’s imperial regime ended. Back then, the revolution’s children rejoiced, and those who had taken the lead – the clergy, Islamist parties, secular leftists and workers’ groups, and members of the intelligentsia – began working toward establishing a new government. Many hoped it would represent the popular will and respect human rights.

Fast-forward 33 years. Today the Islamic Republic faces a crisis, with punishing economic sanctions and increasing isolation over its nuclear program. But Iran’s real crisis is within. It is a crisis of legitimacy, rooted in its systematic denial of basic human rights and dignity and the steadfast refusal of some of the revolution’s most faithful children to stay silent in the face of injustice.

Beginning in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, as supreme leader, initiated a methodical march to consolidate power and eliminate the opposition, especially secularists, leftists and reformers. Along the way, many, including some who had once been the revolution’s most ardent supporters, died in extrajudicial killings and from torture, withered away in prison following unfair trials, or were harassed and threatened out of politics. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei replaced Khomeini in 1989, but the revolution’s methodical march continued to roll back reforms made during the late ’90s and to target reformist politicians like former President Mohammad Khatami.

Since its founding, the Islamic Republic has amassed an appalling human rights record. In the past year alone, prison authorities executed more than 600 people, including children. Security forces killed, beat, arrested and detained thousands of demonstrators demanding government accountability, reform and an end to discrimination against ethnic minorities. As of December, 42 journalists and bloggers were in prisons and detention facilities, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, making Iran the largest prison for reporters in the world.

And that’s just a small sample.

Iranian officials have dismissively rejected criticism from human rights groups and the U.N. Earlier this month, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, said it was a mistake for Iran to have agreed to the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Feb. 14 will be another anniversary, a year since the government put three of the revolution’s most faithful promoters under house arrest: former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi; a former speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mehdi Karroubi; and Zahra Rahnavard, a renowned academic, political advisor and Mousavi’s wife. Authorities initially placed Karroubi’s wife, Fatemeh, under house arrest but later released her. Their families face constant harassment and intimidation.

Their crime? In June 2010, Mousavi issued the Green Charter, a manifesto documenting the guiding ideals and principles of the Green Movement, formed after the June 2009 presidential election, and its bold rejection of the current path of the Islamic Republic. The charter identifies “respect for human dignity and human rights” as a primary demand, along with self-determination in the form of free and fair elections. Then in February 2011, Mousavi and Karroubi called for Iranians to fill the streets in support of the Arab Spring, and demand their basic rights.

Thousands filled the streets of Iran’s major cities. Armed police, intelligence agents and paramilitaries were waiting for them. Clashes left at least three protesters dead, and hundreds were injured or detained.

Yet despite their circumstances, the detained leaders have continued to speak out. On Dec. 26, Fatemeh Karroubi relayed a message from her husband calling the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 2, “a sham.” Several days later, the Iranian judiciary announced that any calls for a boycott of the elections constituted “a crime.” Authorities retaliated by preventing Karroubi’s family from visiting him.

Karroubi and Mousavi responded with another call for Iranians to fill the streets on Feb. 14.

On Feb. 4, 2009, less than four months before his first arrest, Yazdi spoke to a host on National Public Radio about the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. He ended his interview by saying that it was “unavoidable” that the “future belongs to democracy in Iran.”

Indeed, the Islamic Republic is facing an existential crisis. But at its very core, the crisis is less about the international power politics than about the irrepressible power of the revolution’s children demanding what they regard as rightfully theirs.

: More Faraz Sanei

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The neocons’ big Iran lie

The right-wing hawks who thought Iraq would be a cakewalk think it'd be easy to attack Iran. Real soldiers say no.

By Matt Duss

Pro-war historian Niall Fergusson and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen (Credit: nsb.com/AP)

Topics:Iran

In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Gen. Eric Shinseki told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would be required to occupy Iraq in order to stabilize it in the wake of an invasion.

What quickly followed is well known. Several days later, in what journalist James Fallows called “probably the most direct public dressing-down of a military officer, a four-star general, by a civilian superior since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur, 50 years ago,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called Shinseki’s estimate “wildly off the mark,” and said that “it’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.”

The cavalier dismissal by civilian officials and conservative pundits of military analysts’ predictions of the likely consequences of the Iraq war was symbolic of the entire hubristic enterprise. Over $800 billion and tens of thousands of civilian casualties later, the idea that America can deal with its problems and create specific outcomes simply through the application of its considerable military might is rightly understood as a mirage.

Fortunately, when it comes to the challenge posed by Iraq’s neighbor Iran, the current administration has shown itself to be far more reality-based. But this hasn’t stopped many pundits from making similar calls for military action, though now thankfully doing so from outside the halls of power. As with Iraq, these calls for action are couched in the rosiest of post-strike scenarios, which fly in the face of what a preponderance of military and civilian analysts have predicted would have extraordinarily negative consequences.

The latest upsurge in calls for military action against Iran began with a piece in Foreign Affairs by Matthew Kroenig, a former analyst at the Pentagon and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Time to Attack Iran.” The U.S. should carry out limited strikes on Iran’s key nuclear facilities, Kroenig argued, and could “reduce the political fallout of military action by building global support for it in advance.” “By building such a consensus in the lead-up to an attack and taking the outlined steps to mitigate it once it began,” Kroenig wrote, “the United States could avoid an international crisis and limit the scope of the conflict.”

The Internet quickly worked its magic, as numerous writers dismantled the elements of Kroenig’s argument. Among the most effective and devastating rebuttals came from Kroenig’s own former Pentagon boss, Colin Kahl, who wrote that Kroenig’s “picture of a clean, calibrated conflict is a mirage. Any war with Iran would be a messy and extraordinarily violent affair, with significant casualties and consequences.”

Regardless of its weaknesses, Kroenig’s piece opened the floodgates to calls for military action against Iran. Indeed, in a great demonstration of the Overton Window theory, many advocates of war have suggested that Kroenig did not go far enough, and that we should not settle for less than the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement,” wrote historian Niall Ferguson. “It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.” Illustrating the enormous chasm between clever and smart, the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Jamie Fly and the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary Schmitt suggested that, well, if we’re going to be there anyway, we shouldn’t stop at the nuclear sites, but instead go all the way and destroy the Iranian regime. “If strikes are chosen,” they wrote, “it would be far better to put the regime at risk than to leave it wounded but still nuclear capable and ready to fight another day.” The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens concurred. “Destroying Iran’s nuclear sites will be a short-lived victory if it isn’t matched to the broader goal of ending the regime,” Stephens wrote. “The ultimate remedy is Iranian regime change,” chimed in Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

As with the calls for war against raq, what all of these pieces share is a shockingly blithe attitude toward the likely costs of such a war, and a failure to seriously grapple with the consequences. (Though, it must be said, Niall Ferguson’s stands out for the clubby, back-slapping brio with which he advocates the “creative destruction” of Iran. Omelettes, eggs, right?)

But as with Iraq, perhaps even more so, U.S. military leaders have repeatedly made clear that they believe those consequences would be severe. Let’s review: In testimony to the Senate Armed Services committee in April 2010, then-Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright said that strikes would, at best, only delay the Iranian nuclear program for a few years, while at the same time solidifying Iranian domestic support for the regime and removing any hesitancy that may have existed over the necessity of obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Asked by Sen. Jack Reed whether the only way to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear capability was “to physically occupy their country and disestablish their nuclear facilities,” Cartwright answered: “Absent some other unknown calculus that would go on, that’s a fair conclusion.”

Cartwright’s comments echoed those of retired Gen. Anthony Zinni from a speech at the New America Foundation in September 2009. Zinni said that he liked to respond to advocates of strikes on Iran with “And then what?”

After you’ve dropped those bombs on those hardened facilities, what happens next? What happens if they decide, in their hardened shelters with their mobile missiles, to start launching those? What happens if they launch them into U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf? What happens if they launch into Israel, or somewhere else? Into a Saudi oil field? Into Ras Laffan, with all the natural gas? What happens if they now flush their fast patrol boats, their cruise missiles, the strait full of mines, and they sink a tanker, an oil tanker? And of course the economy of the world goes absolutely nuts. What happens if they activate sleeper cells? The MOIS, the intelligence service; what happens if there’s another preemptive attack by the West, the U.S. and Israel, they fire up the streets, and now we’ve got problems. Just tell me how to deal with all that, OK?

“Because, eventually, if you follow this all the way down, eventually I’m putting boots on the ground somewhere,” Zinni concluded. “And as I tell my friends, if you liked Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.”

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen also made a point of highlighting the costs of military action, telling a forum at Columbia University in 2010, “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome … In an area that’s so unstable right now, we just don’t need more of that.” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol dismissed this as “silly.”

Needless to say, it’s not silly. It’s deadly serious. This is not to suggest that debates over the appropriateness of military action should be the exclusive purview of the military. But when the overwhelming consensus among those in the business of war is that such action would have hugely negative consequences, that should tell us something. It should also tell us something when those who disagree do so entirely on the basis of best-case scenarios.

: Matt Duss, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, is a regular contributor to Salon. Follow him @mattduss More Matt Duss

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Israel’s real target: Obama

Prime Minister Netanyahu's threats have more to do with challenging Washington than with actually attacking Iran

By Gene Lyons

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama (Credit: AP)

Topics:Iran, Barack Obama

After being elected in large part because he’d opposed a “dumb” war in Iraq, President Obama finds himself confronting an even dumber one in Iran. Exponentially dumber, actually.

Dumb because like the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists rarely cited by columnist commandoes, bombing raids alone can’t achieve the alleged goal: preventing the Ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Slow them down, probably. Stop them, no. Short of a full-scale invasion and occupation of a nation three times larger than neighboring Iraq in population and five times larger in land area, that can’t be done. Global disapproval didn’t stop North Korea, Pakistan or, for that matter, Israel.

Exponentially dumb because it could set the entire Middle East aflame.

You’d think the Israelis, of all people, would recognize that threatening a people with death and destruction hardens their resolve. Yet the New York Times reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “told visitors that he believes the Tehran government to be deeply unpopular, indeed despised, and that a careful attack on its nuclear facilities might even be welcomed by Iranian citizens.”

Yes, and Dick Cheney predicted that U.S. forces invading Iraq would be greeted with candy and flowers. “Most analysts [in Jerusalem] and abroad,” the Times noted cautiously, “take a different view.” Indeed, historical examples of civilian populations cheering on aerial bombardments are rare, if not nonexistent. Despite his and Cheney’s obvious affinities, one would expect Netanyahu to be made of saner stuff.

Assuming that the Israeli prime minister’s motives for threatening a unilateral Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities are as reported. I suspect they are not. To put it bluntly, it’s not so much the regime in Tehran that Netanyahu is keen to destabilize as the one in Washington. The question now is how far he’s willing to take it.

Despite media chatter about “red lines” being crossed, it’s hard to point to anything the Iranians have done to provoke the current crisis. They’ve been trash-talking since 1979. Otherwise, no Iranian armies are massing. With its navy badly outgunned in the Persian Gulf, and a vestigial air force scarcely capable of defending against Israeli bombers, Iran sits surrounded by U.S. bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan — well, everywhere.

Iran’s last military action of any consequence was its catastrophic 1980s war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during which it suffered more than a million dead. The Persians haven’t actually invaded anybody for more than 300 years. The Shiite regime’s expanded regional influence came about as an unintended consequence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For what it’s worth, the Ayatollahs deny any intention of attacking the “Zionist Entity”— despite frequently wishing that it would vanish from the earth. Even Iranian clients Hezbollah and Hamas have been mostly quiet. With Iran’s economy faltering under economic sanctions engineered by the Obama administration, and much of its population seething with resentment amid an acrimonious feud between President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khameni, the Tehran regime’s got all it can do to survive, much less to start a suicidal conflict with Israel — not to mention the United States.

But when articles invoking the Holocaust and urging “creative destruction” in Iran appear on the same day (Feb. 7) in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Bloomberg News, a skeptical observer might be forgiven for suspecting a well-coordinated propaganda campaign.

Writing in Beirut-based Al-Akhbar, American journalist Max Blumenthal dates its inception to a Jan. 3 article in Israel Hayom revealing that Israel’s National Security Council — basically Netanyahu’s closest political allies — had concluded that “U.S. President Barack Obama is ‘naive’” and fails to understand Israel’s precarious position. Deemed a Likud Party organ, the newspaper is owned by multibillionaire Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who bankrolls Netanyahu and serves as Newt Gingrich’s Sugar Daddy too.

Netanyahu appears to see an Obama second term as an impediment to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank — or “Judea” and “Samaria,” as Likudniks style it — and has cast his lot with the Republican right. He’s made public appearances with notables like Glenn Beck and “End Times” evangelist John Hagee. Adelson himself has pledged his vast resources to Obama’s defeat.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama reiterated his determination to prevent Iran’s getting nuclear weapons. He said he was “taking no options off the table.” But he also expressed hope that international sanctions could lead to a peaceful resolution.

On cue, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen called this “startlingly naïve.” Only a fool or a Frenchman, the same pundit once opined, could doubt the existence of Saddam Hussein’s WMD. Bombs away!

President Obama also reportedly dispatched Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey to Israel to warn Netanyahu that if he tries to force the United States’ hand, he’s on his own.

But can he make it stick?

For his sake and everybody else’s, he’d better.

: Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons

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Chastened liberal hawk fears clash with Iran

Dealing with a nuclear state is preferable to another Middle East war, says Kenneth Pollack

By Jordan Michael Smith

Kenneth Pollack: one Mideast war was enough (Credit: The Daily Show)

Topics:Iran

Kenneth Pollack has been among the most influential Middle East experts in Washington over the last generation. He directed Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council and the CIA. His 2002 book “The Threatening Storm” was profoundly influential in convincing some Democratic Party intellectuals and lawmakers that invading Iraq was a national security imperative.

All of which makes his views on Iran both surprising and significant. Pollack’s 2004 book “The Persian Puzzle“ contended that containing a nuclear Iran was possible, if not desirable. Nearly eight years later, he has just written an important piece for the New Republic warning that the Obama administration’s policies are unwittingly leading us to war with Iran.

Pollack was one of the authors of America’s “dual-track” policy with Iran, whereby efforts at serious talks are coupled with sanctions. He is now convinced that policy is failing. “The problem is that Iran sees it very differently from the way we see it,” Pollack said in an interview. “They put our efforts in terms of human rights and reaching out to the opposition, as well as the sanctions, in the same scheme as what the Israelis are doing, which includes assassinations, acts of sabotage, cyberattacks; and what the Saudis are doing, which is aid to basically every group fighting the Iranian proxies all over the Middle East; and what the British are doing, which is gathering information.”

Cumulatively, he says, these efforts are convincing Iran not that it should relinquish its nuclear efforts but that it is under attack: “To the Iranians, this looks like a concerted Western covert war against them.” The current hard-line regime in Iran takes this as the threat of war, and is prepared to fight a war rather than back down, Pollack says. His TNR article points out the ways in which U.S. policies toward Iran, intended as an alternative to war, are leading us directly to that result.

“I do not think we should go to war with Iran, and it is very clear to me that the president doesn’t want to go to war with Iran, and my concern is that the way we are doing things makes it increasingly likely that we will go to war,” he says. Pollack doesn’t want to see Iran with nuclear weapons. He concedes that containing Iran will be difficult. The nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and the Americans in the Cold War was far more dangerous than people remember, says Pollack, and he shudders at those standoffs with Iran. But “if you give me a choice between war and containing a nuclear Iran, I will choose containment every time,” he says.

At the same time, he thinks diplomacy with Iran is probably a lost cause, but should still be attempted.

“I don’t think this regime has any interest in serious negotiations, because my reading of [Supreme Leader] Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard leadership, who are the ones running the Iranian government, is that they see engagement with the United States as subversive. They see it as what will bring about the end of their regime.” That is why when they do show up to talk, they send people to do nothing but read talking points, he says.

Still, even a tiny chance that negotiations will pay off is worth taking, because it is the best solution of all. At the very least, it’s important to show the world and the Iranian people that America doesn’t want a war with Iran, he says. “This is one of the great victories of the Obama administration — they convinced the Chinese and the Russians they we are not the problem, that Iran is the problem. They are right in saying that they have gotten unprecedented international support for the coalition.” The administration had the right policy, Pollack says, “but they need to ask themselves whether that policy can still work.”

Pollack’s perspective is informed by his experience with Iraq. He was instrumental at the CIA and NSC in implementing sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, sanctions that he rightly calls “the most draconian sanctions ever in history, probably.” Those sanctions ultimately failed, in preventing war, in being a humane policy, and in persuading the court of international opinion.

“Everyone assumed that Saddam Hussein would have to do what the international community wanted, because he wouldn’t dare to starve his people to death. But guess what? He decided to starve his people to death.” About Iran today, he says, “Everyone thinks now sanctions are so great, we’re putting so much pressure on the Iranians, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough pressure to get the Iranians to cave, and in one or two years we’re going to hear that the Central Bank sanctions are too harsh, and they need to be lifted. That’s what happened in Iraq.”

He grants that the failures of the Iraq War have “partly” shaped his thinking, but bristles at the suggestion that they play any larger role in his views on Iran.

“I know everyone loves to talk about Ken Pollack, the liberal hawk,” he says. “My argument in the book — you probably didn’t read my book because nobody bothered to read my book — was that Saddam was a unique character, and I think all the stuff we’ve learned about in the postwar has made that case that he was a unique, and a uniquely dangerous character. And while I don’t like the Iranian regime, and I think they are very problematic and troublesome in many ways, they aren’t Saddam Hussein. They don’t fall into the same category.”

In “The Threatening Storm,” Pollack argued that a large-scale war needed to be fought with Iraq. He seems now to believe not that the war was a mistaken idea but that it was improperly executed. By slipping into war with Iran without proper forethought and planning, the U.S. is repeating its mistakes.

“Wars are always opening Pandora’s Box and you just never know what you’re going to get,” he says. “And unless you’re prepared to fight a war all the way fully, you can get a bad outcome. And that’s what happened to us in Iraq. The Bush administration wanted to fight a war half-assed. And you can’t fight a war half-assed. You try and fight a war half-assed, it’s going to be a disaster.”

: Jordan Michael Smith writes about U.S. foreign policy for Salon. He has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post. More Jordan Michael Smith

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How Obama became vulnerable on Iran

By downplaying his diplomacy, he undermines a peaceful solution and encourages the false charge of weakness

By Trita Parsi

Is his Iran policy tough or smart? (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh/Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl)

Topics:Iran, Barack Obama

The Republican primary debates have revealed what was long suspected: The foreign policy issue that will dominate the general elections will be Iran. This is not surprising. Iran is the one issue the Republicans (except Ron Paul) can unite on, that enables them to portray President Barack Obama as insensitive to Israeli concerns, and that gives them an opportunity to cast Obama as weak.

What is more surprising, perhaps, is that Obama is vulnerable on this issue. After all, no US president has come as close as Obama in reaching a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran, no other US president has managed to create this degree of international mobilization against Iran, and no other US president has been able to impose so many crippling, indiscriminate sanctions on the Iranian economy.

Iran was fast expanding its influence in the region during the George W. Bush Presidency. “Iran was on a roll,” one Obama Administration official told me. But in the past three years, it has lost its regional momentum. Iran’s domestic political situation is much more unstable following the fraudulent 2009 elections, its source of soft power in the region has take a hit following the Arab uprisings, its economy is hurting under the crushing weight of government mismanagement and sanctions, and its ability to play the major powers against each other has been severely limited since Obama took office.

Yet, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC poll, Americans disapprove of the way Obama has handled the Iran issue by a 48 to 33 percent margin. This result is well below his overall job performance numbers and significantly worse than the approval ratings for his handling of terrorism and international affairs.

The numbers must have perplexed Democratic operatives. Efforts by the White House to showcase how tough Obama has been on Iran – including National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon’s triumphalist speech at the Brookings Institute in November 2011 – have failed to impress the public.

This can be explained partly by the fact that the Iranian nuclear program has progressed and the growing sense of crisis over Iran. After all, the pressure Obama has imposed on Iran has only brought the US and Iran closer to war and has not led to the resolution of even a single issue of concern.

But it is also because of the Obama administration permitted the Right to define the metrics of success on Iran. Obama has completely bought into the idea that a “strong” Iran policy is one that is tough, punishing and confrontational. As on so many other issues, Obama has permitted the debate to take place on the Right’s turf. In doing so, he has betrayed his own platform of pursuing “smart” rather than just “tough” policies.

The administration’s posture simply doesn’t convey confidence over its record and approach. Rather than standing behind the decision to try diplomacy after eight years of the Bush administration’s rejection of talks, the Obama White House has actively sought to downplay its diplomatic efforts. In spite of the fact that these talks likely would have succeeded in the assessment of many US and Western officials I interviewed had it not been for political infighting in Iran following the election scandal. “The bilateral outreach the Americans made fell victim to internal Iranian politics,” then-foreign secretary of the United Kingdom David Miliband told me.

The Obama administration does not stand up for diplomacy for its sound strategic rational or for the outcome that was sought. Instead, Obama has adopted a defensive posture and argued that his attempt at talking with Tehran failed to secure a nuclear deal but helped bring about unprecedented international backing for sanctions on Iran.

This argument, while technically correct, is the equivalent of defending one’s love for drinking wine, not because of its taste, but because one’s affection for the hang-over. Moreover, it is not compelling since pressure alone cannot make Iran change its behavior. That can only be brought about through diplomacy. Thus, arguing that diplomacy is only good to help bring about pressure only serves to undermine the message that there can be a peaceful resolution to the issue, and provides the appearance that the Administration is just trying to buy time rather than to solve the problem at hand. It’s a posture that doesn’t signal strength or confidence, but rather vulnerability and insecurity.

In fact, this lack of willingness to defend diplomacy or to create the necessary political space to allow the difficult process to succeed is a key reason as to why engagement was prematurely abandoned. As I describe in “A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran,” Obama enjoyed unprecedented political maneuverability to pursue diplomacy with Iran when he entered office. But he knew that this window would not last forever. Iran’s nuclear advances and pressure from Congress, Israel and Saudi Arabia would ensure its eventual closure.

While there was initially an inclination to push back against the skeptics of engagement, much of that fighting spirit was lost after the fraudulent Iranian elections in the summer of 2009. The massive human rights abuses committed by the Iranian government shook the administration’s moral confidence and further closed Obama’s political space. “After the elections, skepticism in Congress against our strategy turned to outright hostility,” a senior Obama administration official told me.

Rather than seeking to expand his options and maneuverability, an apologetic approach to diplomacy was adopted based on adjusting to the shrinking political space. By the time negotiations finally could begin in October 2010, the policy had become a gamble on a single roll of the dice. It either had to work right away, or not at all. Once the October talks failed to win Iran’s acceptance for a nuclear fuel swap proposal, diplomacy was abandoned in all but name.

Compare Obama’s handling of the domestic political landscape in pursuit of diplomacy with George W. Bush’s effort to win political support for the invasion of Iraq. Between January 2002 and March 2003, Bush gave 16 major speeches spelling out the (flawed) strategic logic for invading Iraq, in an attempt to create political space and support for his war plans. Bush and Cheney also conducted 11 major interviews with key media to make the case.

Obama, in turn, mainly spelled out the strategic rational for diplomacy when he was a candidate. Once President, the White House’s strategy was to avoid a national debate on Iran. Even when senior Democratic lawmakers offered to provide him with political cover and space, the political circle around Obama advised against it. Though diplomacy had been a winning electoral card in 2008, the assessment in 2009 was that it would be too costly to re-make the case for diplomacy to the American public.

A similar political skittishness exists in Iran, where fear of looking soft on America is as paralyzing as the fear of looking weak on Iran is in Washington DC. Rarely has decades-long enmities been overcome through an approach that adjusts to the very political landscape that has created and perpetuated the enmity. Diplomacy takes time, courage, persistence, political capital and the will to spend it.

Decision-makers in Washington and Tehran should learn from Israel’s former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Once he was convinced that a peace-settlement with the Palestinians lied in Israel’s strategic interest, he pursued it with ferocity in spite of the domestic political cost (including his eventual assassination.) His rational was powerful and most importantly, unapologetic: “One does not make peace with one’s friends. One makes peace with one’s enemy.”

: Trita Parsi is the author of the new book A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press, 2012) and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemayer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. More Trita Parsi