Engaging Iran: The Obama Administration, A Think Tank, and An Israel-First Policy?

Last week the Washington Institute for Near East Policy released its latest report on Iran, "Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress" . At its heart is a wonderful if dangerous (and unacknowledeged) tension. The influential think-tank thunders:

An Iran on the brink of possessing, or actually possessing, nuclear weapons would create a multitude of problems in the Middle East. Not only would the United States have to deter and contain an emboldened Iran, it could also have to forestall a cascade of destabilizing reactions by other states, whether they were to accommodate Iran, attack it, or match its capabilities. Preventing Iran’s acquisition or development of a military nuclear capability is therefore a vital national priority.

Yet, in the next breath, WINEP declares that the purpose of blocking Iran's "nuclear progress" (not "nuclear weapons" but "progress" towards any nuclear energy capability) is not defensive but ensure Washington remakes the region in its desired image:

Confronting the Iran nuclear program also offers other opportunities to advance U.S. interests: to demonstrate U.S. commitment to multilateral diplomacy, to deepen U.S. relationships with its Middle East friends, and to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime.

To do this, the report advocates a two-stage process. The Obama Administration can initially pursue diplomacy, but "time is short if diplomatic engagement is to have a chance of success":

If the international community appears unable to stop Iran’s nuclear progress, Israel may decide to act unilaterally. Whatever Americans may think, Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option....Israel...may feel compelled to act before the option disappears.

Thus, the US has to "use deterrence as an instrument of dissuasion", in other words, give a lot of weapons to Arab states and Tel Aviv: "The enhancement of the modern missile defenses already being deployed in Israel and purchased by several GCC states may introduce uncertainty into the minds of Iranian leaders about the military utility of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs." It also should "use the risk of cascading instability to produce more action now", which is none-too-subtle coding for more aggressive economic sanctions.

So, does this have any significance for policy inside the Obama Administration, rather than advice outside it? WINEP has received attention because, up to early 2009, its leadership and task forces included Obama officials such as Dennis Ross (now envoy for Southwest Asia and "the Gulf") and Susan Rice (Ambassador to the United Nations). This current report draws upon a June 2008 predecessor, signed by Ross and Rice, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge".

Yet, in that context, there is an important between the 2008 and 2009 WINEP approaches, one which may or may not point to the rapid-fire diplomacy of Obama's "engagement" and Hillary Clinton's wild ride across the Middle East last week. The earlier report advocated many of the measures in its 2009 successor, but this was founded on an important starting premise:

"That the president initiate, with the prime minister of Israel, a high-level dialogue on the most urgent security matters on our strategic agenda so as to ensure that common threat perceptions and
common interests translate into policies that are as coordinated as possible."

This dialogue would not be begun by the leaders of the US and Israel or their highest-level representatives --- this might be politically sensitive --- but by "one or two...aides...among the most trusted advisors to the president and prime minister --- officials or emissaries empowered to engage in all manner of discussion with the utmost creativity and maximum discretion."

"Preventing a Cascade of Instability" offers no such recommendation. So, has the starting point of an Iran policy based on discussions with Tel Aviv been dropped, by WINEP or --- more importantly --- the Obama Administration? Or, through an official such as Dennis Ross, has it simply been smuggled in quietly, pending the arrival of a new Israeli Government?

Clinton to Iran: You Can Play in the (Afghanistan) Sandbox

This is getting just a bit silly. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has wagged her finger at Iran all week, stoking up ideas of a renewed Iranian-Arab conflict, trying it on with the supposed letter to Russia linking missile defence to a cessation of support for Tehran's nuclear and missile programmes, and re-applying the label of Iran as supporter of "terrorism" (Hamas). So what is her encore?

Setting up the prospect of its first face-to-face encounter with Iran, the Obama administration has proposed a major conference on Afghanistan this month that would include Iran among the invited countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

“We presented the idea of what is being called a big-tent meeting, with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan,” she said at a news conference here after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. “If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited, as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”

In itself, that move is both wise and necessary. The Bush Administration never grasped, or chose to set aside, the significance of Iranian influence in the west of Afghanistan, and the recent travails of the US military --- supply lines closed, insurgency spreading, opium/heroin production out of control --- have only highlighted that Washington needs a regional strategy which includes Tehran.

But it's a bit rich, if not stupid, to do this after putting the rhetorical and diplomatic squeeze on Iran all week. The chances of a warm Iranian reception and possible attendance at the meeting, scheduled for the Netherlands on 31 March, would have been greater if the US Secretary of State had not spent the last 96 hours portraying Tehran as an untrustworthy, even pariah regime.

The resolution of this apparent contradiction in Washington policy is actually straightforward. What Clinton has attempted, rather crudely, is to define where the US will allow Iran to have influence. The Middle East, especially Israel-Palestine, is a no-go area. However, in Central Asia, Washington will accept that Iran has a role to play in logistics and support, while trying to ensure that Tehran has only a limited place in the re-arrangement of Afghan politics (and, of course, no place at all in US military operations in the centre of the country).

Clever, ain't it? Well, it would be, if you presume that Tehran will simply say, "Gee, thanks," and accept the American definition on where it is allowed to go. That's the naive response of The New York Times, which burbles, "Afghanistan may provide the most promising avenue for opening a diplomatic channel to Iran," --- and then forgets to mention Clinton's statements on the Middle East in the 1000-word article.

I could be wrong --- there might be winks, nudges, and secret discussions in which the Americans have tipped off Iranian colleagues, "OK, we're going to pose as if we really don't like you for a few days, but just go along with it until the next act" --- but I suspect the Iranian Government is going to bristle at the high-handed treatment since Monday. They may throw the Afghanistan offer back at the US; at the very least, I expect they will demand that Washington drop the hostile rhetoric on the Middle East and the Iran nuclear programme.

This latest Clinton move is the equivalent of a parent yelling at her child, "No, no, no!", then pointing the kid to the "right" place to play in. Well, I've done that, and I can tell you a litte secret:

The little b****** wouldn't stay in the sandbox.

Ms Clinton's Wild Ride: Iran is Still Very, Very Dangerous

Latest Post: Clinton/Gates to Israel (and Congress) - Back Off on Iran

More evidence, for me, that the mission of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (pictured) is more than a separation of Iran from the Palestine and Lebanon issues (a running debate amongst us and our readers, and one we'll return to later today). This is shaping up to be a major US diplomatic offensive to "put Iran in a box", whether in advance of another attempt at diplomacy from a position of strength or further pressure on Tehran.

On Wednesday, Clinton used a stopover at the European Union in Brussels to warn of Iran's threat to the Middle East via local groups: ""It is clear Iran intends to interfere in the internal affairs of all these people and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism -- whether it is Hezbollah or Hamas or other proxies."
She returned to the idea of missile defense devoted primarily, if not solely, to facing down Iran: ""We've made the point to Russia and will again, and I think they may be beginning to really believe it. We have real potential threats, and obviously Iran is the name we put to them as a kind of stand-in for the range of threats we foresee."

Clinton's latest verbal barrage was in part an effort to keep Iran at a distance from US policy on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world: ""There is a great deal of concern about Iran from the entire region. I heard it over and over and over again in Sharm el Sheikh, in Israel, in Ramallah." En route to Brussels, she reiterated to reporters on her plane that she heard "over and over and over again" from Arab representatives their deep-seated worries about Iranian threats.

At the same time there was clearly a general perspective to curb Iranian power beyond the region, ""We think Iran poses a threat to Europe and Russia. Well, how do we cooperate on that? ... I think this is a very rich area for exploration, and that's what we're going to do."

UPDATED Obama and Iran: Engagement, Muddle, and Hysteria

Update: Iran's Foreign Ministry has replied to Mullen's comment, ""All these statements regarding the production of a nuclear bomb are very baseless. It is baseless from a technical point of view and has propaganda connotations."

On Friday, after President Obama's speech on Iraq and its recommendation for talks with Iran and Syria, we wrote, "Watch the manoeuvres of those who are hostile to any engagement not only because they don’t like 'rogue states'."

And so it goes.

In a travesty of an interview on Sunday, CNN's John King led Admiral Mike Mullen (pictured), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, down the sensational road to Mullen's statement that Iran "has enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb": "And Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world."

Unsurprisingly, those sentences have become bold-letter headlines this morning. Here, though, is the essential context for what was either 1) an Admiral being manoeuvred into a very silly mistake or 2) another example of the US military trying to bump others in the Obama Administration into a harder line.

Near the end of an interview which was devoted mainly to Iraq and Afghanistan, King and Mullen stood in front of one of those multi-coloured plasma maps that CNN uses as eye-candy as the CNN anchorman said, "If we come down to the right here, Iran, obviously, the International Atomic Energy Agency said last week they think that they were wrong in the past, that Iran might now have enough fissile material to make a bomb. Does Iran have enough to make a bomb?"

King, who has risen through the CNN ranks because of chiseled looks and broad shoulders rather than any detail of knowledge, had asked an question based on a falsehood. The IAEA did not say "they were wrong in the past". Their report explained that quantities of Iran's enriched uranium were one-third higher than previously stated because the amounts were verified by observation rather than estimates. And the IAEA, while saying that Iran might soon have a quantity of uranium sufficienct for one bomb, also said that the uranium was not of sufficient quality (it is enriched to 4% and 90% is the magic number needed).

Mullen could have said, "The Administration is currently conducting a review of policy towards Iran" (or, in a dream world, "John, you're a mannequin posing as a reporter"). He could have left it at that, as there was little time left in the interview. Instead, he nodded at King and the multi-coloured map and said:

We think they do, quite frankly. And Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world.

And that was it for Tehran. CNN spun the lights and the geography to North Korea so King could ask about their bomb, to which Mullen gave a more sensible response, one guaranteed not to make headlines:

Secretary Gates and I have made no recommendations. But it’s -- it’s an area that we watch with great concern. And I would hope that North Korea would not be provocative.

It is notable that Mullen did not say a word about Iran in his other Sunday interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News. And it's even more notable that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates slapped down Mullen's claim when he talked with David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Press:

[The Iranians are] not close to a uranium stockpile. They’re not close to a weapon, at this point, and so there is some time.

Indeed, Gates' much-longer answer on Iran is the one that deserves to be dissected this morning. He effectively laid out the "engagement" strategy. Negotiate with Tehran --- if the talks aren't satisfactory, then Washington has the cause for tougher economic sanctions:

GATES: I don’t think that either the last administration or the current one have been distracted from the growing problem with Iran and its nuclear program in the least over the last number of years. We worried about it well before even the Bush administration.
So I -- I think that there has been a continuing focus on how do you get the Iranians to walk away from a nuclear weapons program?
They’re not close to a stockpile. They’re not close to a weapon, at this point, and so there is some time.
And the question is whether you can increase the level of the sanctions and the cost to the Iranians of pursuing that program at the same time you show them an open door if they want to engage with the Europeans, with us, and so on, if they walk away from that program.
Our chances of being successful, it seems to me, are a lot better at $35 or $40 oil than they were at $140 oil because there are economic costs to this program, they do have economic challenges at home.
GREGORY: You do see the need, though, for a -- some kind of strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iran?
GATES: Well, I think that -- that’s really up to the Iranians. I’ve been -- as I like to say, I’ve been in this search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years. I’m still looking.

Unfortunately, it's Mullen who has played into the more-established, if inaccurate, media line that Iran is about to get The Bomb. And with newspapers like The Times of London running hysterical campaigns on the Tehran threat --- see analyst Bronwen Maddox's Friday scenario of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain and Sunday's article claiming Tehran is funneling missiles to the Taliban --- it is that wave that could sink the Obama strategy of engagement.