William O. Beeman --The Iranian Chess Game Continues (Foreign Policy in Focus)

The Iranian Chess Game Continues
August 6, 2008

Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Diplomacy between Iran and the United States has entered the opening gambit stage and Iran appears to be winning at this point.

The game began on July 19, when Iranian nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili met with European negotiators with an American diplomat, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, present for the first time at such a meeting since the Iranian hostage crisis.

The presence of William J. Burns riled many anti-Iranian forces resulting in a flurry of pronouncements and articles about American "capitulation" to Iran. The recriminations continued. Even now, on August 5, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, a notorious anti-Iran detractor, wrote a fulminating article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes."

The Bush administration clearly found itself in a difficult situation, needing to placate hawks like Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney while seeming to allow diplomacy to have a chance, so they made the talks not about substance, but about power – which side could compel the other to toe the line.

So the Bush administration started with a big lie. At the time of the July meeting the press and the State Department announced that Iran had a two-week deadline to respond to the European proposals, (the exact details of which remain secret, but which are presumed to include an extensive basket of technology, economic, and trade incentives).

There was no such deadline. It appears to have been a fiction. However, this falsehood gave Washington and the press the opportunity on August 2 to announce that Iran had "rejected" the deadline. The New York Times went so far as to call it an "informal deadline," a head-scratching concept.

Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki was reported by Agence France Press to have said, "The language of deadline-setting is not understandable to us. We gave them our response within a month as we said we would, now they have to reply to us."

Even the State Department itself had to back down from the fictional deadline. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack threatened further sanctions if Iran did not respond on Wednesday, July 30. But he had changed his tune on Saturday, August 2, the putative deadline. "I didn't count the days. It's coming up soon," he said. And when asked when Washington would pull incentives off the table designed to persuade Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program, said "there is no indication of that.

So little happened at the July 19 meeting, it could hardly be called a diplomatic encounter. In fact, Iran has been pursuing a productive diplomatic course. Rather than responding to deadlines and ultimatums, Iran has steadily put forward proposals for resolving its differences with the European and American governments over its nuclear energy program. It is clear that Iran will not give up its "inalienable right" to peaceful development of nuclear energy, as enshrined in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it (but not India, Pakistan or Israel) is a signatory. It seeks other means, short of suspending uranium enrichment, to assure the world that it has no active nuclear weapons program.

Iran's proposal for negotiations presented to the European Nations is titled "The Modality For Comprehensive Negotiations" and sets out three stages of proceedings:

Preliminary Talks. Overall determination of the negotiating timetable.

Start of Talks. Actions against Iran would be suspended and common ground matters would be discussed.

Negotiations. Actual negotiating stage which the Iranians envision should last two months, but could be extended by mutual consent.

Iran does not agree in this document to suspend uranium enrichment. The document states in the negotiation stage that determinations regarding Iran's compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty would be "concluded in the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] and fully and completely returned to the Agency [The International Atomic Energy Agency]."

This is a reasonable blueprint for forward negotiations, and it represents a real diplomatic effort on Iran’s part. By contrast, the United States seems to have acted with a combination of bluff and muscle, and has gotten nowhere for their efforts.

This has not stopped the United States and its European allies for calling on August 4 for more sanctions based on Iran's violation of the "informal deadline." This is an astonishing exercise in diplomatic audacity – calling for punishment where there could be no violation, there being no mutual agreement of the conditions under which actions would be declared a violation. Unfortunately, the political climate against Iran being what it is, such an unwarranted bellicose move will likely go unquestioned.

Except by Iran.

Iran had its own gambits in mind to retain control of the process. After the accusations and the threats by the European and U.S. consortium, they countered with a grim reminder that they could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which two-thirds of OPEC crude oil passes. They tested some new conventional missiles. Then they announced that they would indeed answer the European proposals – but in their own time and on their own timetable, according to their own agenda. They were clearly working through their own negotiation plan step by step, catching the United States off guard, and throwing everyone in Washington off their game, leaving them to continue their slow burn.

The question is whether, out of frustration or pique, the impatient Washington detractors will upset the table.

Foreign Policy In Focus contributor William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the author, most recently, of The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

Ebneyousef--Attacking Iran: Probable Economic Consequences (Middle East Economic Survey)

Middle East Economic Survey



VOL. LI

No 31

04-Aug-2008



Comment by William O. Beeman

Elements of the Bush administration evidently think that attacking Iran would be cost-free, as they did with Iraq. Hosseein Ebneyousef, an oil expert tells the sobering truth.

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota


IRAN



Attacking Iran: Probable Economic Consequences

By Hossein Ebneyousef



The following article was written for MEES by Mr Ebneyousef. Since 1988 he has been the President of Washington-based International Petroleum Enterprises, having previously worked for ARCO for 14 years (e-mail Ebneyousef@AOL.com).



Considering the already overstretched US military assets, its engagement in two major and costly theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, deteriorating security conditions in Pakistan and Lebanon and Iran’s apparently softer approach on the nuclear issue, I am not sure that a military attack on Iran is imminent (that is, if one attributes a minimal level of rationality to the decision makers). Even an effective military blockade of Iran, which is an act of war in any case, does not seem feasible in light of Iran’s size, strategic location and lengthy maritime and land borders. Here, I would like to address the global economic impact of such potential actions, as it would likely be much more drastic and long lasting than has so far been explained.



Despite the existence at the time of more than 4.4mn b/d of spare oil production capacity worldwide, the limited nature of the reduction in the total oil output of the exporting countries, and the short duration of the implemented policy, the 1973 Arab oil embargo was a turning point for the oil and natural gas business. Oil prices never retreated to the pre-crisis level but kept going up by more than 400% into the next energy shock, which took place six years later. Notably, global oil output during the same time frame increased by more than 22% – even the Gulf producers raised their output by more than 20%. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect substantially higher oil prices for a longer period of time as a result of introducing any additional threat of a military attack.



Inflicting damages to oil facilities – intentionally or otherwise – can and will reduce production capacity. With today’s high cost of materials and services and severe manpower shortage, repairs would prove to be highly costly and time consuming. A similar but more manageable condition existed during the Iran-Iraq War and the subsequent reconstruction era in both countries. Thus, actual military operations have the potential to raise oil prices even further and for yet longer periods of time. The same is also true for post-natural disaster recoveries. For instance, the 2005 hurricane damage in the US Gulf coast is not yet fully repaired three years later, and its impact is still reflected in the current production figures.



Military conflicts have the tendency of spreading beyond their intended scopes, and could be devastating particularly in a region that houses close to two-thirds of the global oil reserves, with the probability of driving oil prices to even higher levels for a longer time interval and causing more ‘collateral damage’.



Unlike in the 1970s or the 1980s:

The industry now has very little spare oil production capacity left anywhere in the world;


Resource nationalism is on the rise;


Economic sanctions have eliminated up to 5mn b/d of oil production capacity from the market;


Strategic stocks have grown at a lower rate relative to the growth of global oil consumption; and


There are higher oil prices and high uncertainty over future prices, forcing refiners to minimize the size of their commercial stocks.

In short, at present the oil industry’s support systems are very limited and incapable of modifying the current and future risks. Therefore, I hope authorities realize the seriousness of the issue at hand and the potential disastrous consequences of making a wrong move at this crucial juncture. Runaway oil prices have the potential to force the Western economies, particularly that of the US which is already weakened by the housing crises and the declining dollar value, into a collapse.

John Bolton continues disinformation on Iranian nuclear program

Commentary from William O. Beeman:

It is astonishing that the Wall Street Journal continues to give Ambassador
John Bolton a standing platform to spread disinformation about the Iranian
nuclear program in the article below. He presents the misleading information currently being
promulgated by the American Enterprise institute and the Wasington
Institute for Near East Policy that the difference between Low Enriched
Uranium and High Enriched Uranium is trivial. This presupposes that Iran
actually has the reliable equipment to produce the High Enriched Uranium,
or the wherewithal to weaponize that material, which it does not, as Dr.
Behrad Nakhai, a real nuclear scientist, and I pointed out in an article on
July 16
.
Mr. Bolton writes: "every indication is that Iran is dispersing its nuclear
facilities to unknown locations . . ." What is the "every indication" that
he talks about. This is is some kind of fantasy on his part, because there
is no proof of this whatever. Finally, we have more alarmism about Iran's
conventional weapons, none of which can now deliver a nuclear weapon. Of
course, Mr. Bolton is not above simply asserting that Syria and the
Palestinians are so crazed and cowed by Iran that they would launch an
attack on Israel from their own territory, as if they were servile minions
of Tehran with martyr-like unconcern for the safety of their own people and
nations. Dr. Nakhai and I also pointed out in our article that Iran would
have to test a bomb before it used one, and this could never go undetected.
Iran is years away from anything resembling Mr. Bolton's apocalyptic
vision.

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota
President, Middle East Section, American Anthropological Association.

August 5, 2008

While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes
By JOHN R. BOLTON
August 5, 2008; Page A19

This weekend, yet another "deadline" passed for Iran to indicate it was seriously ready to discuss ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Like so many other deadlines during these five years of European-led negotiations, this one died quietly, with Brussels diplomats saying that no one seriously expected any real work on a Saturday.

The fact that the Europeans are right -- this latest deadline is not fundamentally big news -- is precisely the problem with their negotiations, and the Bush administration's acquiescence in that effort.

The rationality of continued Western negotiations with Iran depends critically on two assumptions: that Iran is far enough away from having deliverable nuclear weapons that we don't incur excessive risks by talking; and that by talking we don't materially impede the option to use military force. Implicit in the latter case is the further assumption that the military option is static -- that it remains equally viable a year from now as it is today.

Neither assumption is correct. Can we believe that if diplomacy fails we can still take military action "in time" to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons? "Just in time" nonproliferation assumes a level of intelligence certainty concerning Iran's nuclear program that recent history should manifestly caution us against.

Every day that goes by allows Iran to increase the threat it poses, and the viability of the military option steadily declines over time. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

First, while the European-led negotiations proceed, Iran continues both to convert uranium from a solid (uranium oxide, U3O8, also called yellowcake) to a gas (uranium hexafluoride, UF6) at its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. Although it is a purely chemical procedure, conversion is technologically complex and poses health and safety risks.

As Isfahan's continuing operations increase both Iran's UF6 inventory and its technical expertise, however, the impact of destroying the facility diminishes. Iran is building a stockpile of UF6 that it can subsequently enrich even while it reconstructs Isfahan after an attack, or builds a new conversion facility elsewhere.

Second, delay permits Iran to increase its stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) -- that is, UF6 gas in which the U235 isotope concentration (the form of uranium critical to nuclear reactions either in reactors or weapons) is raised from its natural level of 0.7% to between 3% and 5%.

As its LEU stockpile increases, so too does Tehran's capacity to take the next step, and enrich it to weapons-grade concentrations of over 90% U235 (highly-enriched uranium, or HEU). Some unfamiliar with nuclear matters characterize the difference in LEU-HEU concentration levels as huge. The truth is far different. Enriching natural uranium by centrifuges to LEU consumes approximately 70% of the work and time required to enrich it to HEU.

Accordingly, destroying Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz does not eliminate its existing enriched uranium (LEU), which the IAEA estimated in May 2008 to be approximately half what is needed for one nuclear weapon. Iran is thus more than two-thirds of the way to weapons-grade uranium with each kilogram of uranium it enriches to LEU levels. Moreover, as the LEU inventory grows, so too does the risk of a military strike hitting one or more UF6 storage tanks, releasing potentially substantial amounts of radioactive gas into the atmosphere.

Third, although we cannot know for sure, every indication is that Iran is dispersing its nuclear facilities to unknown locations, "hardening" against air strikes the ones we already know about, and preparing more deeply buried facilities in known locations for future operations. That means that the prospects for success against, say, the enrichment facilities at Natanz are being reduced.

Fourth, Iran is clearly increasing its defensive capabilities by purchasing Russian S-300 antiaircraft systems (also known as the SA-20) directly or through Belarus. In late July, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and his spokesman contradicted Israeli contentions that the new antiaircraft systems would be operational this year. Assuming the Pentagon is correct, its own assessment on timing simply enhances the argument for Israel striking sooner rather than later.

Fifth, Iran continues to increase the offensive capabilities of surrogates like Syria and Hezbollah, both of which now have missile capabilities that can reach across Israel, as well as threaten U.S. troops and other U.S. friends and allies in the region. It may well be Syria and Hezbollah that retaliate initially after an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, thus making further strikes against Iran more problematic, at least in the short run.

Iran is pursuing two goals simultaneously, both of which it is comfortably close to achieving. The first -- to possess all the capabilities necessary for a deliverable nuclear weapon -- is now almost certainly impossible to stop diplomatically. Thus, Iran's second objective becomes critical: to make the risks of a military strike against its program too high, and to make the likelihood of success in fracturing the program too low. Time favors Iran in achieving these goals. U.S. and European diplomats should consider this while waiting by the telephone for Iran to call.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

IRANIAN PROPOSAL TO THE US AND EUROPEAN POWERS

Note from William O. Beeman

Below is the proposal Iran made to the Eurpean powers and the Uni ted States. It scandalously remains unreported. It is a reasonable framework for diplomatic negotiations, and not the "runaround" cited by Secretary of State Condoleezza Ricehttp://www.payvand.com/news/08/aug/1009.html
08/01/08
Iran's proposal in Geneva: THE MODALITY FOR COMPREHENSIVE NEGOTIATIONS
Source: CASMII

THE MODALITY FOR COMPREHENSIVE NEGOTIATIONS
(None paper)

Stage one: Preliminary talks,

1) In this stage, a maximum 3 rounds of talks will take place between Dr. Jalili, representing the Islamic Republic of Iran and Dr. Solana, representing the 3+3.

2) By the end of the above stage, the parties will have agreed on a modality to govern the negotiations. They will have further agreed on the subsequent stages of negotiations, which will include the following.
A- Determination of the timetable and the agendas of negotiations that will take place in the stage – which will be based on the commonalities of the two packages. Subsequently the committees will be organised and their agendas' will also be determined.
B- Requirements, manner and time of entry into the next stage.


Stage two: Start of talks,

1) With completion of stage one and implementation of the agreed requirements, talks will start at the level of ministers.

2) At the beginning of the above stage, the 7 states will meet the following requirements:
A- The 3+3 will refrain from taking any unilateral or multilateral action – or sanctions – against Iran, both inside and outside the UNSC. The group will further discontinue certain unilateral measures taken by one or some of it's members.
B- The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to cooperate with the agency.

3) In this stage a minimum of 4 meetings will take place between Mr. Solana, the foreign ministers of the 3+3, and Dr. Jalili, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation, representing the Islamic Republic of Iran.

4) The guiding principles of the meetings that will be attended by the 3+3 foreign ministers, plus Mr. Solana, in which the Islamic Republic of Iran will be represented by Dr. Jalili and the relevant ministers, will be as follows:
A- The parties will abstain from referring to, or discussing, divergent issues that can potentially hinder the progress of negotiations.
B- The parties will start by discussing issues that are considered as common ground.
C- The parties will agree on a timetable, list of issues to be discussed, and priorities of the negotiations.

5) The talks will end by issuing an official joint statement on the agreements reached at the above stage.

6) Following the statement on the completion of the talks, the 3 specialized committees will produce and finalize agreements on comprehensive cooperation.


Stage three: negotiations,

1) Upon the completion of the second stage of the talks, the 6 states will discontinue the sanctions and existing UNSC resolutions. Iran, in turn, will implement the agreed action.

2) With the start of the third stage, the 7 states will start to negotiate to produce and sign a comprehensive agreement relating to their "collective obligations" on economic, political, regional, international, nuclear, energy, security and defense cooperation – whose proposals will be presented to them by the specialized committees.

3) The negotiations will be conducted within a 2 month period. However, the period can be extended by mutual agreement.

4) Following the conclusion of the comprehensive and long-term agreement on "collective obligations" Iran's nuclear issue must be concluded in the UNSC and fully and completely returned to the Agency. Moreover, the issue must be taken out of the board of Governor's agenda and the implementation of the safeguards must be returned to normal in Iran.
... Payvand News - 08/01/08 ...

West Retracts Ultimatum to Tehran (Fars News)

West Retracts Ultimatum to Tehran

TEHRAN (FNA)- The United States and its European allies have pulled back from setting Saturday as a firm deadline for Iran to reply to the West's offer of incentives for a freeze in its nuclear drive.

"I didn't count the days. It's coming up soon," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Thursday when asked if August 2 was the deadline for Iran to accept or reject the package.

Not only did McCormack omit to mention a strict deadline, he also said there was "no indication of that" when asked whether Washington would pull the incentives offer off the table.

Iran on Thursday rejected any deadline to give a final response to a package drawn up by world powers, and said there should be more negotiations to reach a deal.

"The language of deadline-setting is not understandable to us. We gave them our response within a month as we said we would, now they have to reply to us," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters on Thursday.

Mottaki said Iran and representatives of the major powers had agreed at a July 19 meeting in Geneva to find common ground on both sides' proposals aimed at ending the five-year standoff over Tehran's nuclear drive.

"Both sides said that in future meetings they should work on the communalities of both frameworks in a constructive way to reach an agreement that satisfies both sides, otherwise Iran's constructive activities will take their natural course," he said.

Tehran's arch-foe, the United States, insisted on Wednesday that Iran must give an answer on Saturday, warning of consequences of any defiance by the Islamic republic.

But, Washington took back its words on Thursday and denied its previous ultimatum to Tehran that it should present its answer till Saturday or face more sanctions.

Iran on July 4 handed major powers its "constructive and creative" response to their offer presented by EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana in June aimed at persuading Tehran to give up its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) right of uranium enrichment.

"Perhaps based on incorrect analysis, some of the Geneva participants got the wrong expectation, but our job was to give our views to the 5+1 framework... then we gave our own framework," Mottaki said.

Also on Wednesday, Mottaki said that no deadline was agreed upon during the meeting with EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana and P5+1 representatives in Tehran.

"No deadline was agreed upon during our meetings in Tehran. We delivered our opinions within a month and now they are obliged to announce their reaction," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said.

"The P5+1 should live up to the agreements reached during their negotiations with Iranian officials in Tehran," added Mottaki who was speaking at a press conference following the final session of the 15th Foreign Ministerial Conference of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran late Wednesday.

A diplomatic source in Brussels said an Iranian response could come in the next few days.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had given Iran two weeks to come up with a "serious" reply after an international meeting in Geneva on July 19.

Washington broke with past policy by sending top diplomat William Burns to the talks in Geneva.

Gary Sick of Columbia University, an Iran expert who was interviewed after the July 19 meeting, said Washington and Tehran were both showing an increased desire to end the showdown that had raised fears of a military conflict.

"Neither side wants to show that it is losing face, or that it is caving in or appeasing the other side, but both sides are interested in finding a way out of this conundrum," Sick told the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a US think-tank.

Sick said another change is Washington's willingness to look at opening an interests section in Iran - a first step toward restoring diplomatic ties cut three decades ago.

The expert said that Washington had learned that its past desire to isolate Iran with increasingly stiff sanctions had failed to stop Iran enriching uranium.

Along with the four other permanent UN Security Council members - Britain, France, China, and Russia - as well as Germany, the United States has taken a more conciliatory approach lately.

The so-called P5+1 have offered Iran economic and trade incentives if it gives up its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) right of uranium enrichment.

If Iran accepts the package, there would be pre-negotiations during which Tehran would add no more uranium-enriching centrifuges and, in return, face no further sanctions.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana delivered the incentives package to Tehran in June.

In Brussels, the diplomatic source, who asked not to be named, said that for the Europeans "the Iranian reply should come in the next few days," without setting Saturday as a strict deadline.

Rice has warned of more "punitive measures," an allusion to more sanctions.

The US is at loggerheads with Iran over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

Washington's push for additional UN penalties contradicted the report by 16 US intelligence bodies that endorsed the civilian nature of Iran's programs. Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head - one in November and the other one in February - which praised Iran's truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran seems to be completely irrational.

The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran's cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran's nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions.

Many world nations have called the UN Security Council pressure against Iran unjustified, especially in the wake of recent IAEA reports, stressing that Tehran's case should be normalized and returned to the UN nuclear watchdog due to the Islamic Republic's increased cooperation with the agency.

Scott Ritter--Acts of War (Truthdig - Reports)

Truthdig - Reports - Acts of War

Note from William O. Beeman

Scott Ritter's account includes new information about Olli Heinonen, the Finnish IAEA deputy for safeguards. Mr. Heinonen has been working in lockstep with the Bush administration to build a case for war against Iran.


Truthdig

Acts of War
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080729_acts_of_war/

Posted on Jul 29, 2008

By Scott Ritter

The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions that took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.

Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.

The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.

However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.

It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva Conventions. The MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.

The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.

Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.

The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.

A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner that results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort that have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.

Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality that long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which, of course, has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.

Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”

This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.

A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.

I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.

Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.

Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.

Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).

The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation that would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President John F. Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression.

One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.

Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and Marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.

AP photo / Brennan Linsley

Members of the Iranian resistance group Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, guard a road leading to the group’s main training camp, watched over by a U.S. Army Abrams tank in background, near Baqubah in north-central Iraq.
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran (National Geographic)

Marguerite Del Giudice has an excellent, comprehensive article on Iran at National Geographic. I have reprinted the entire article below, but I highly suggest visiting the National Geographic site to see the pictures and take the Iranian Culture Quiz.


Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran
A glorious past inspires a conflicted nation

by Marguerite Del Giudice

What’s so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran, an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered by Alexander the Great, is the absence of violent imagery on what’s left of its stone walls. Among the carvings there are soldiers, but they’re not fighting; there are weapons, but they’re not drawn. Mainly you see emblems suggesting that something humane went on here instead—people of different nations gathering peace­fully, bearing gifts, draping their hands amiably on one another’s shoulders. In an era noted for its barbarity, Persepolis, it seems, was a relatively cosmopolitan place—and for many Iranians today its ruins are a breathtaking reminder of who their Persian ancestors were and what they did.

The recorded history of the country itself spans some 2,500 years, culminating in today’s Islamic Republic of Iran, formed in 1979 after a revolution inspired in part by conservative clerics cast out the Western-backed shah. It’s argu­ably the world’s first modern constitutional theocracy and a grand experiment: Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?

Persia was a conquering empire but also regarded in some ways as one of the more glorious and benevolent civilizations of antiquity, and I wondered how strongly people might still identify with the part of their history that’s illustrated in those surviving friezes. So I set out to explore what “Persian” means to Iranians, who at the time of my two visits last year were being shunned by the international community, their culture demonized in Western cinema, and their leaders cast, in an escalating war of words with Washington, D.C., as menacing would-be terrorists out to build the bomb.

You can’t really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another—broadly speaking, it’s part Persian, part Islamic, and part Western, and the paradoxes all exist together. But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do with Islam, which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam (as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persepolis, a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic). This would be a story about those Iranians who still, at least in part, identify with their Persian roots. Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world’s ticking hot spots. Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature (wine, love, poetry, song) woven into the fabric of abstinence, prayer, and fatalism often associated with Islam—like a secret computer program running quietly in the background?

Surviving, Persian Style

Iran’s capital city of Tehran is an exciting, pollution-choked metropolis at the foot of the Elburz Mountains. Many of the buildings are made of tiny beige bricks and girded with metal railings, giving the impression of small compounds coming one after the other, punctuated by halted construction projects and parks. There are still some beautiful gardens here, a Persian inheritance, and private ones, with fruit trees and fountains, fishponds and aviaries, flourishing inside the brick walls.

While I was here, two Iranian-born American academics, home for a visit, had been locked up, accused of fomenting a velvet revolution against the government. Eventually they were released. But back in the United States, people would ask, wasn’t I afraid to be in Iran?—the assumption being that I must have been in danger of getting locked up myself.

But I was a guest in Iran, and in Iran a guest is accorded the highest status, the sweetest piece of fruit, the most comfortable place to sit. It’s part of a complex system of ritual politeness—taarof—that governs the subtext of life here. Hospitality, courting, family affairs, political negotiations; taarof is the unwritten code for how people should treat each other. The word has an Arabic root, arafa, meaning to know or acquire knowledge of. But the idea of taarof—to abase oneself while exalting the other person—is Persian in origin, said William O. Beeman, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Minnesota. He described it as “fighting for the lower hand,” but in an exquisitely elegant way, making it possible, in a hierarchical society like Iran’s, “for people to paradoxically deal with each other as equals.”

Wherever I went, people fussed over me and made sure that all my needs were met. But they can get so caught up trying to please, or seeming to, and declining offers, or seeming to, that true intentions are hidden. There’s a lot of mind reading and lighthearted, meaningless dialogue while the two parties go back and forth with entreaties and refusals until the truth reveals itself.

Being smooth and seeming sincere while hiding your true feelings—artful pretending—is considered the height of taarof and an enormous social asset. “You never show your intention or your real identity,” said a former Iranian political prisoner now living in France. “You’re making sure you’re not exposing yourself to danger, because throughout our history there has been a lot of danger there.”

Geography as Destiny

Indeed, the long course of Iranian history is satu­rated with wars, invasions, and martyrs, including the teenage boys during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s who carried plastic keys to heaven while clearing minefields by walking bravely across them. The underlying reason for all the drama is: location. If you draw lines from the Mediterranean to Beijing or Beijing to Cairo or Paris to Delhi, they all pass through Iran, which straddles a region where East meets West. Over 26 centuries, a blending of the hemispheres has been going on here—trade, cultural interchange, friction—with Iran smack in the middle.

Meanwhile, because of its wealth and strategic location, the country was also overrun by one invader after another, and the Persian Empire was established, lost, and reestablished a number of times—by the Achaemenids, the Parthians, and the Sassanids—before finally going under. Invaders have included the Turks, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, and, most significantly, Arabian tribesmen. Fired with the zeal of a new religion, Islam, they humbled the ancient Persian Empire for good in the seventh century and ushered in a period of Muslim greatness that was distinctly Persian. The Arab expansion is regarded as one of the most dramatic movements of any people in history. Persia was in its inexorable path, and, ever since, Iranians have been finding ways to keep safe their identity as distinct from the rest of the Muslim and Arab world. “Iran is very big and very ancient,” said Youssef Madjidzadeh, a leading Iranian archaeologist, “and it’s not easy to change the hearts and identity of the people because of this.”

They like to say, for instance, that when invaders came to Iran, the Iranians did not become the invaders; the invaders became Iranians. Their conquerors were said to have “gone Persian,” like Alexander, who, after laying waste to the vanquished Persia, adopted its cultural and administrative practices, took a Persian wife (Roxana), and ordered thousands of his troops to do the same in a mass wedding. Iranians seem particularly proud of their capacity to get along with others by assimilating compatible aspects of the invaders’ ways without surrendering their own—a cultural elasticity that is at the heart of their Persian identity.

Welcome to Aratta

The earliest reports of human settlement in Iran go back at least 10,000 years, and the country’s name derives from Aryans who migrated here beginning around 1500 b.c. Layers of civilization—tens of thousands of archaeological sites—are yet to be excavated. One recent find quickening some hearts was unearthed in 2000 near the city of Jiroft, when flash floods along the Halil River in the southeast exposed thousands of old tombs. The excavation is just six seasons old, and there isn’t much to see yet. But intriguing artifacts have been found (including a bronze goat’s head dating back perhaps 5,000 years), and Jiroft is spoken of as possibly an early center of civilization contemporary with Mesopotamia.

Youssef the archaeologist, an authority on the third millennium b.c., directs the digs. He used to run the archaeology department at the Univer­sity of Tehran but lost his job after the revolution and moved to France. Over the years, he said, “things changed.” Interest in archaeology revived, and he was invited back to run Jiroft. Youssef thinks it may be the fabled “lost” Bronze Age land of Aratta, circa 2700 b.c., reputedly legendary for magnificent crafts that found their way to Mesopotamia. But thus far there’s no proof, and other scholars are skeptical. What would he have to find to put the matter unequivocally to rest? He chuckled wist­fully. “The equivalent of an engraved arch that says, ‘Welcome to Aratta.’?”

Prospects for more digs at the thousands of unexplored sites seem daunting. In Iran the price of meat is high, there aren’t enough jobs, the bureaucracy is inscrutable, bloated, and inefficient, and state corruption—as described to me by three different people—is “an open secret,” “worse than ever,” and “institutionalized.”

“The country has many needs,” Youssef said, “and certainly archaeology is not the main subject.” But since Jiroft, “all the provinces are interested in excavating, and every little town wants to be known around the world like Jiroft. They’re proud, and there are rivalries.”

Youssef was slouched happily in a faux-leather chair in the offices of his publisher, munching tiny green grapes while musing about why Iranians are the way they are. As much as anything else, he thought, it was the geography, for when the Iranians were being overrun time after time, “where could they go—the desert? There was no place to run and hide.” They stayed, they got along, they pretended and made taarof. “The tree here has very deep roots.”

Superpower Nostalgia

The legacy from antiquity that has always seemed to loom large in the national psyche is this: The concepts of freedom and human rights may not have originated with the classical Greeks but in Iran, as early as the sixth century b.c. under the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus the Great, who established the first Persian Empire, which would become the largest, most powerful kingdom on Earth. Among other things, Cyrus, reputedly a brave and humble good guy, freed the enslaved Jews of Babylon in 539 b.c., sending them back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple with money he gave them, and established what has been called the world’s first religiously and culturally tolerant empire. Ultimately it comprised more than 23 different peoples who coexisted peacefully under a central government, originally based in Pasargadae—a kingdom that at its height, under Cyrus’s successor, Darius, extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus River.

So Persia was arguably the world’s first superpower.

“We have a nostalgia to be a superpower again,” said Saeed Laylaz, an economic and political analyst in Tehran, “and the country’s nuclear ambitions are directly related to this desire.” The headlines are familiar: A consensus report of key U.S. spy agencies—the National Intelligence Estimate—concluded last December that a military-run program to develop nuclear weapons in Iran was halted in 2003. Iran continues to enrich uranium, insisting that it wants only to produce fuel for its nuclear power plants, but highly enriched uranium is also a key ingredient for a nuclear bomb. As a deterrent, the UN has imposed increasing economic sanctions. But Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative hard-liner, is giving no ground while at the same time making frequent threatening remarks about nearby Israel, denying the Holocaust, and, according to the U.S. government, sending weapons and munitions to extremist militias in Iraq that are being used against Iraqis and U.S. forces there.

“At one time the area of the country was triple what it is now, and it was a stable superpower for more than a thousand years,” said Saeed, a slender, refined man in glasses and starched shirtsleeves rolled to three-quarter length, sitting in his elegant apartment next to a lamp resembling a cockatoo, with real feathers. The empire once encompassed today’s Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Jordan, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and the Caucasus region. “The borders have moved in over the centuries, but this superpower nostalgia, so in contradiction to reality,” he said, “is all because of the history.”

At the foundation of which, again, is Cyrus, and in particular something called the Cyrus Cylinder—perhaps Iran’s most exalted artifact—housed at the British Museum in London, with a replica residing at UN headquarters in New York City. The cylinder resembles a corncob made of clay; inscribed on it, in cuneiform, is a decree that has been described as the first charter of human rights—predating the Magna Carta by nearly two millennia. It can be read as a call for religious and ethnic freedom; it banned slavery and oppression of any kind, the taking of property by force or without compensation; and it gave member states the right to subject themselves to Cyrus’s crown, or not. “I never resolve on war to reign.”

“To know Iran and what Iran really is, just read that transcription from Cyrus,” said Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. We were in her central Tehran apartment building, in a basement office lined with mahogany-and-glass bookcases. Inside one was a tiny gold copy of the cylinder, encased in a Plexiglas box that she held out to me as if presenting a newborn child. “Such greatness as the cylinder has been shown many times in Iran,” but the world doesn’t know it, she said. “When I go abroad, people get surprised when they realize that 65 percent of the college students here are girls. Or when they see Iranian paintings and Iranian architecture, they are shocked. They are judging a civilization just by what they have heard in the last 30 years”—the Islamic revolution; the rollbacks of personal freedoms, particularly for women; the nuclear program and antagonism with the West. They know nothing of the thousands of years that came before, she said—what the Iranians went through to remain distinct from their invaders, and how they did it.

For instance, she said, after the Arabs came, and Iran converted to Islam, “eventually we turned to the Shiite sect, which was different from the Arabs, who are Sunni.”

They were still Muslims, but not Arabs.

“We were Iranian.”

In fact, the first thing people said when I asked what they wanted the world to know about them was, “We are not Arabs!” (followed closely by, “We are not terrorists!”). A certain Persian chauvinism creeps into the dialogue. Even though economically they’re not performing as well as Arab states like Dubai and Qatar, they still feel exceptional. The Arabs who conquered Iran are commonly regarded as having been little more than Bedouin living in tents, with no culture of their own aside from what Iran gave them, and from the vehemence with which they are still railed against, you would think it happened not 14 centuries ago but last week.

I met a woman at a wedding who gave off the air of an aging movie star, her dapper husband beside her wearing his white dinner jacket and smoking out of a cigarette holder, and it wasn’t five minutes before she lit into the Arabs.

“Everything went down after they came, and we have never been the same!” she said, wringing someone’s neck in the air. And a friend I made here, an English teacher named Ali, spoke of how the loss of the empire still weighed on the national consciousness. “Before they came, we were a great and civilized power,” he said, as we drove to his home on the outskirts of Shiraz, dodging motorcycles and tailgaters. Echoing commonly stated (though disputed) lore, he added: “They burned our books and raped our women, and we couldn’t speak Farsi in public for 300 years, or they took out our tongues.”

The Cult of Ferdowsi

The Iranians spoke Farsi anyway. The national language has been Arabized to some extent, but Old Persian remains at its root. The man credited with helping save the language, and the history, from oblivion is a tenth-century poet named Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi is Iran’s Homer. Iranians idolize their poets—among many, Rumi, Sa‘id, Omar Khayyám, H?fez (whose works are said to be consulted for guidance about love and life as much as, if not more than, the Islamic holy book, the Koran). When the people were oppressed by the latest invader and couldn’t safely speak their minds, the poets did it for them, cleverly disguised in verse. “Sometimes they were executed,” said Youssef the archaeologist, “but they did it anyway.” So today, although Iran is home to many cultural denominations (and languages) other than Persian—Turkmen, Arab, Azeri, Baluchi, Kurd, and others—”everyone can speak Farsi,” he said, “which is one of the oldest living languages in the world.”

The poet-hero Ferdowsi, a sincere Muslim who resented the Arab influence, spent 30 years writing, in verse with minimal use of Arabic-derived words, an epic history of Iran called the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings. This panorama of conflict and adventure chronicles 50 monarchies—their accessions to the throne, their deaths, the frequent abdications and forcible overthrows—and ends with the Arab conquest, depicted as a disaster. The most heralded character is Rostam, a chivalrous figure of courage and integrity, a national savior and “trickster hero,” according to Dick Davis, a Persian scholar at Ohio State University who has translated the Shahnameh into English. “The stories of Rostam are their myths,” he said. “This is how the Iranians see themselves.”

The tales involve feuding kings and hero-champions, in which the latter are almost always represented as ethically superior to the kings they serve, facing the dilemmas of good men living under an evil or incompetent government. The work is haunted by the idea that those ethically most fitted to rule are precisely the ones most reluctant to rule, preferring instead to devote themselves to humankind’s chief concerns: the nature of wisdom, the fate of the human soul, and the incomprehensibility of God’s purposes.

The original Shahnameh is long gone, and all that’s left are copies, including one in Tehran’s Golestan Palace museum. Its caretaker, a sweet-faced young woman named Behnaz Tabrizi, cleared a large table and covered it with a green felt sheet. She retrieved a black box from a safe in an adjoining bulletproof room equipped with fire and earthquake alarms and climate control and laid a red velvet cloth on top of the green felt cloth, because the Iranians like to make little ceremonies out of everything, if they can. I had to wear a surgical mask to protect the manuscript from stray saliva and the condensation from my breath, and Behnaz put on white cotton gloves. She gently lifted the book, which dates to about 1430, out of its box and gingerly turned the pages with the tips of her fingers while I examined its 22 illustrations with a magnifying glass. They depicted scenes the collective cultural memory is steeped in—someone tied to a tree while awaiting his fate; Rostam unwittingly killing his own son, Sohrab, in battle; men on horseback with spears fighting invaders on elephants—all precisely drawn and vibrantly colored, using inks that were made from crushed stones mixed with the liquid squeezed from flower petals.

It is said that just about anybody on the street, regardless of education, can recite some Ferdowsi, and there are usually readings going on at colleges or someone’s apartment or traditional Persian teahouses, like one in south Tehran called Azari. The walls were covered with scenes from the Shahnameh, among them the one of Rostam killing Sohrab. A storyteller did a one-man dramatic reading, and afterward musicians played traditional music and sang about yearning for the love of a woman or for the love of Allah. People sat together at long tables or stretched out on platforms covered with Persian rugs, smoking their tiny Bahman cigarettes and clapping to the music, while waiters brought dates and cookies and tea in delicate little glasses with little spoons, followed by kebabs, yogurt milk, pickles, and beet salad. Children danced on the tabletops as the patrons cheered them on and took pictures with their cell phones.

“They Can’t Control What’s Inside Us”

Thanks to Ferdowsi, the Iranians always had their language to unite them and keep them different from the outside world—and they also took pains to safeguard their cultural touchstones.

Take the New Year: Nowruz, a 13-day extravaganza during which everything shuts down and the people eat a lot, dance, recite poetry, and build fires that they jump back and forth over. It’s a thanksgiving of sorts, celebrated around the spring equinox, and a holdover holiday from Zoroastrianism, at one time the state religion of the Persians. Zoroastrianism’s teachings—good and evil, free will, final judgment, heaven and hell, one almighty God—have influenced many reli­gions, including the world’s three main faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. By the time the Arabs arrived, bringing what was for them the new idea of worshipping a single God, Persians had been doing it for more than a millennium.

These days some officials see the bond with antiquity as a focus for hope. “We are a nation with such a history that the world could listen to us,” Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaee told me. “We hope that by taking pride in our archaeological sites, the people realize their capabilities, and it imbues the soul of the nation.” But conservative Islamists who have no interest in reviving Persian identity can still hold sway. At times the government has tried to diminish the importance of Nowruz or replace it with a different New Year, such as the birthday of Imam Ali, the historical leader of the Shiite Muslims. “They would bring forces and arrest people,” my friend Ali said. “But they couldn’t get rid of Nowruz because we’ve been practicing Nowruz for 2,500 years! They don’t really control us, because they can’t control what’s inside us.”

That has never stopped Iran’s leaders from trying, or foreign powers from interfering—particularly after the country was discovered, around the turn of the 20th century, to be sitting on what Iran claims is an estimated 135 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. Adding to the drama is that the Persian Gulf is located along Iran’s southern border. On the other side lies much of the rest of the world’s crude, in the oil fields of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. There’s also a hairpin waterway in the gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil passes every day. So Iran is in a unique position to threaten the world’s oil supply and delivery—or sell its own oil elsewhere than to the West.

Oil was at the root of a 1953 event that is still a sore subject for many Iranians: the CIA-backed overthrow, instigated and supported by the British government, of Iran’s elected and popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had kicked out the British after the Iranian oil industry, controlled through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP), was nationalized, and the British had retaliated with an economic blockade. With the Cold War on and the Soviet bloc located just to the north, the U.S. feared that a Soviet-backed communism in Iran could shift the balance of world power and jeopardize Western interests in the region. The coup—Operation TP-Ajax—is believed to have been the CIA’s first. (Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Teddy’s grandson, ran the show, and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the father of the Persian Gulf war commander, was enlisted to coax the shah into playing his part. Its base of operations was the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the future “nest of spies” to the Iranians, where 52 U.S. hostages were taken in 1979.) Afterward, the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was returned to power, commercial oil rights fell largely to British and U.S. oil companies, and Mossadegh was imprisoned and later placed under house arrest until he died in 1967.

To Iranians like Shabnam Rezaei, who has created the online magazine Persian Mirror to promote Iran’s cultural identity, Operation TP-Ajax set the stage for later decades of oppression and Islamic fundamentalism. “I think if we had been allowed to have a democratic government,” she said, “we could have been the New York of the Middle East—of all of Asia, frankly—a center for finance, industry, commerce, culture, and a modern way of thinking.”

For the Love of God

The shah had his own uses for Persian identity. He was big on promoting Persepolis and Cyrus while at the same time pouring Western music, dress, behaviors, and business interests into Iran. One attempt to instill nationalistic pride, which backfired and helped turn public opinion against him, was the ostentatious celebration he staged in 1971 to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of Persian monarchy. It featured a luxurious tent city outside the entrance to Persepolis, VIP apartments with marble bathrooms, food flown in from Paris, and a guest list that included dignitaries from around the world but few Iranians.

The shah’s vision apparently involved too much modernizing too fast, and many Iranians bristled. “We were getting westernized,” said Farin Zahedi, a drama professor at the University of Tehran. “But it was superficial, because the public had no real under­standing of Western culture.” Iranians experienced it as a cultural attack and rebelled in the press and with street demonstrations. The more paranoid the shah became, the more heavy-handed were his secret police—SAVAK, created in 1957 with the help of American and Israeli advisers. At least hundreds of people are believed to have been executed by SAVAK; many others were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled, and more than a thousand were killed by the army during demonstrations. So when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spoke in the late 1970s of liberating the people from this latest yoke, they were moved by his eloquence and moral rectitude, and for a time the reemergence of religion after the shah’s relentless modernism felt like a cleansing.

Yet many Iranians by nature are not particularly religious, in the sense of being mosque­goers and fasters. “They have a powerful soul and spirit,” said a carpet salesman named Arsha, “but that is not the same.” There’s a tendency to follow more of a Zoroastrian model from antiquity, with its disdain for rules and for the presumption that an intermediary, such as a mullah, is required to know Allah. The spiritual journey has tended to be more inward, in keeping with the Persian proverb “Knowledge of self is knowledge of God.”

So while Iranians at first were open to the idea of an increased role of Islam in public life, they weren’t prepared for it to be forced on them with such rigor, especially given the Koran’s specific instruction that there should be “no compulsion in religion.” They certainly didn’t expect the clerics to take over commerce, government administration, the courts, and day-to-day life, down to and including how to go to the bathroom and how to have sex. Punishments reminiscent of the Dark Ages—public stonings, hangings, the cutting off of fingers and limbs—were put into effect. The central government now discourages some of these archaic practices, but stubborn conservative mullahs out in the provinces cling to the old ways. Beneath it all is the spiritual aim to serve Allah and prepare for paradise.

“They’re forcing heaven on me!” Ali said.

At his home one night, half a dozen friends sat in a circle and confided how awful it was to be trapped in an environment of fear and secrecy, not knowing if a friend or a loved one has been put in a position to make reports on what you’re thinking and saying and doing.

“The ayatollahs and the ordinary people—everyone has to pretend,” said a soft-spoken locksmith with a huge mustache named Mister D. “You don’t know who is telling the truth; you don’t know who is really religious and who isn’t.”

The Persians have a saying: The walls have mice, and the mice have ears.

“You can’t trust your own eyes,” Ali said.

“If you breathe in or breathe out,” Mister D said, “they know.”

The Generation of the Revolution

As for the revolution’s effect on Persian identity? A typically Iranian thing seems to have happened.

For ten years the doors to the West were closed, and conservative clerics running the government went about trying to minimize any cultural identification that was pre-Islamic, a period referred to in much of the Muslim world as Jahiliya, age of ignorance. In official documents, where possible, references to Iran were replaced with references to Islam. Zoroastrian symbols were replaced with Islamic symbols, streets were renamed, and references to the Persian Empire disappeared from schoolbooks. For a time it seemed that Ferdowsi’s tomb—a big, pale-stone mausoleum outside the holy city of Mashhad, with a beautiful reflecting pool leading up to it and chirping birds racing about the columns—might be destroyed. Even Persepolis was in danger of being razed. “But they realized this would unite the people against them,” Ali said, “and they had to give up.”

The people had welcomed the removal of cultural junk from the West, said Farin, the drama professor, as we sipped tea in her tasteful Tehran apartment. “But we soon realized that the identity the government was introducing also was not exactly who we were.” In the cultural confusion, “elements of the old culture”—traditional music, Persian paintings, readings from Ferdowsi—were rekindled. “We call it ‘the forgotten empire.’?”

A young underground Persian rap singer named Yas joined us then. He had black spiky hair, stylishly long sideburns, handsome eyebrows shaped like two black bananas, and around his neck he wore a silver fravahar, the Zoroastrian winged disk that signifies the soul’s upward progress through good thoughts, words, and deeds. He’s part of the Generation of the Revolution, who grew up after 1979 and account for more than two-thirds of the country’s 70 million people. Variously described as jaded and lacking belief in their futures—”a burned generation,” as Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi put it—they are increasingly leaving for Europe and elsewhere. Some have a rich consciousness of their Persian past while at the same time supporting the idea of Islamic unity; some feel only Persian or only Islamic; and others immerse themselves in Western culture through television programming received on illegal satellite dishes. Farin said: “They’re schizophrenic.”

Yas raps about Persian poets, grandparents, and the history of Iran. One of his most popular cuts, “My Identity,” was in response to the movie 300, about the famous battle at Thermopylae between the Spartans of Greece and the so-called Persian immortals. “The Greeks were portrayed as heroic, innocent, and civilized,” Yas said. “The Persians were shown as ugly savages with a method of fighting that was unfair.” The movie set off a tirade from Iranians here and abroad, who experienced it as a cultural attack. In defense, Yas rapped about Persepolis and Cyrus but also chastised his fellow citizens for resting on the laurels of greatness past.

An irony is that the Islamic revolution—at times referred to here as the “second Arab invasion”—appears to have strengthened the very ties to antiquity that it tried so hard to sever; it has roused that part of the national identity that remains connected to the idea, memorialized in places like Persepolis and Pasargadae, of Iranians as direct descendants of some of the world’s most ancient continuous people. A civil engineer named Hashem told me of a recent impromptu celebration at Cyrus’s tomb. People text messaged each other on their cell phones, and a couple of thousand “coincidentally” showed up, buying multiple entrance tickets to support restoration of the tomb. The celebration was informal. No speeches, no ceremony. “Just to honor Cyrus and show solidarity.”

As Farin put it, shaking her lowered head with an air of world-weariness, “there has been this constant onslaught on our identity, and the reaction has always been to return to that deepest identity. Inside every Iranian there is an emperor or an empress. That is for sure.”

Irancove @ July 26, 2008

MinnPost - After Obama's triumphant week abroad, voters get to assess trip's impact on candidate, foreign policy

MinnPost - After Obama's triumphant week abroad, voters get to assess trip's impact on candidate, foreign policy


Iran: Cryptic stands still unclarified
Looming over Obama's stops in Iraq and all of the Middle East are questions about he would handle tension with Iran.

In Israel, Obama told the Jerusalem Post that he would do "everything in my power" to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Obama has said he would engage in discussions with Iran; however, he also reminded the Post, "I would not take any options off the table, including military."

Professor William Beeman wishes he knew how Obama's tough campaign talk would translate into policy if the Democrat took office. Beeman chairs the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota. He has worked extensively in Iran. His latest book about the country is "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other."

"The plain truth is that any politician in the United States, whether Democrat or Republican, who talks about trying to improve relations with Iran through some kind of relaxation of the really hard line that the United States has taken are setting themselves up as a target for their opponents," Beeman said. "No politician has ever lost a vote by attacking Iran."

So Beeman discounts some of Obama's tough talk.

Recent Bush administration moves to at least open the door to meeting with Iranian officials were hard fought, Beeman said, because they were opposed by hardliners inside and outside government offices.

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to jawbone and fight and cajole over more than a period of a year," he said.

If Obama became president, though, he would be in position to take the talks much further, "because diplomacy is made in the White House," Beeman said.

While Obama has consistently advocated a more open dialog, he has been cryptic about how far he would go in any direction on the politically treacherous issue. And his trip didn't clarify his intentions.

Pakistan: Perhaps the most urgent issue
Also unclear, Beeman said, is how Obama would deal with Pakistan. Arguably, that is the most urgent issue facing the next administration because the Taliban and al-Qaida have moved to regroup in Pakistan's rugged mountain regions.

Everywhere he stopped on the trip, Obama called for stepping up military efforts in neighboring Afghanistan. And he leaned hard on Europe to do its part in that NATO-led effort.

But much of the problem is in Pakistan where the government has been in turmoil all year.

"It is very clear that the United States needs to have a complete re-evaluation of our relationships with the government of Pakistan," Beeman said. "Right now there is no incentive for the Pakistani government to aid the United States in trying to curtail the Taliban or al Qaida."

The havens for those groups are in Pakistan's remote and rugged regions, "where the urbanized and educated Pakistanis don't ever go and they don't care much about," Beeman said.

So there is little internal political pressure to confront the menacing groups. Meanwhile, as long as the groups remain a problem, the United States channels money to the Pakistani government. So there is no real economic incentive either.

Beeman worries that Obama "is very thin on the ground" in terms of foreign policy advisers regarding Pakistan as well as Iran. And he saw nothing in Obama's trip to reassure him on that count.

"I'm really quite worried about this, because I think he is not particularly well informed," Beeman said. "And this is potentially his biggest trouble in the long run."

Sharon Schmickle writes about foreign affairs and science. She can be reached at sschmickle [at] minnpost [dot] com.

William O. Beeman--Success in U.S. Iranian Negotiations Depends on Cultural Knowledge - New America Media

Success in U.S. Iranian Negotiations Depends on Cultural Knowledge - NAM

New America Media, News analysis,

William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 24, 2008

Editor's note: On July 19, 2008, U.S. and Iranian representatives met for the first time in almost 3 decades. Nothing substantive happened, and yet, as according to NAM contributing editor William O. Beeman, it was a diplomatic watershed. The event brings Iran closer to the conditions they eventually want for these talks--namely having the United Sates and Iran meet on equal terms.


Iran and America met openly in diplomatic talks on Saturday, July 19 in Geneva for the first time in 28 years. U.S. officials called the event a failure, for which they blamed Iran.

The Iranians, on the other hand, declared the event a success. The difference in assessment is due largely to a massive clash in cultural styles of negotiation. In this case, the event favored symbolism over substance--anathema to American negotiators. However, if both sides learn from this how better to talk to each other, future talks will be more productive.

Aside from European negotiators, the attention of the world was focused on William J. Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief secretary of its Supreme National Security Council, and by virtue of this office, the chief nuclear negotiator of Iran.

American expectations were undoubtedly too high. These talks were not in any way meant to be definitive. At best they were a prolegomena to a preface to an introduction of substantive talks to be undertaken in the future. Additionally, Mr. Burns was on a short leash as an "observer" only allowed one trick--to bark "Iran must suspend its uranium enrichment." Apparently he didn't even do that, so his presence could have only been symbolic.

Mr. Jalili gave a speech, and handed the European negotiators a two-page response to earlier proposals. The Europeans were disappointed that Iran didn't immediately acquiesce to demands to suspend uranium enrichment, gave Mr. Jalili two more weeks to respond and the meeting was essentially over. It did seem as if nothing much had happened.

However, the symbolism of the meeting was deeply significant for both the United States and Iran. The United States wanted to avoid what it saw as unfavorable symbolism in favor of immediate substantive agreement, while Iran wanted the event to be almost entirely symbolic in nature.

For Iranians, just to sit down face to face with an American official without having to acquiesce to pre-conditions was a diplomatic watershed. The event brings Iran closer to the conditions they eventually want for these talks--namely having the United Sates and Iran meet on equal terms.

The Bush administration has resisted this equality of status tooth and nail. President Bush worried publicly about giving Iran prestige as if the United States at this point had any prestige to confer to anybody, and when pressed, his administration made desperate, absurd analogies to "appeasement," invoking British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's acquiescence to Hitler.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who likely had to fight hard to allow Mr. Burns to appear at these talks, was noticeably frustrated. She reported in a public statement in the United Arab Emirates on July 21 that Iran had "given the runaround to envoys from the United States and five other world powers." She reported that instead of responding directly to U.S. and European demands, Mr. Jalili had delivered a "meandering" monologue full of irrelevant "small talk about culture."

As for Mr. Jalili, of course symbolism was all he had to show for this round of talks, so his statements to the Iranian press constituted a fine old Iranian tradition of verbal obfuscation, described by one of my Iranian friends as "chert o pert," roughly, florid nonsense. This is a form of discourse that every Iranian knows well, since it is used whenever someone doesn't know what to say and wants to put the best face on the situation. Mr. Jalili was at the height of his inspiration in his rhetoric, rambling on in an elaborate poetic metaphor about how the talks were analogous to weaving a Persian carpet where each tuft must be slowly incorporated into the whole "beautiful" pattern.

But no one should be fooled. A great deal transpired. It is the fact of the meeting that is important, not the substance of the discussion. We have very poor diplomats indeed if they don't understand this basic truth. Additionally, the Iranians scored a teeny little point getting Burns to the table. The point was not lost on Haaretz, the left-leaning Israeli newspaper going so far as to label Mr. Burns' minimal presence at the talks "détente" with Iran on July 23.

This prelude of a meeting also shows that if negotiations go forward, they will be protracted—as long as it takes to weave Mr. Jalili's rug, and then to sell it.

That analogy—buying and selling rugs—is overused when speaking of the Middle East, but in this case it is apt. Anyone who has ever bought a rug knows how lengthy and involved the process can be. The buyer and the seller drink endless cups of tea, they feign indifference, they shout, they walk away, they come back, they misdirect, and they finally come to a conclusion. American diplomats despise this kind of process, favoring quick and direct dealings based on the hard logic of mutual self-interest. However, the rug-buying process may be the only basis on which common ground for negotiation with Iran can proceed.

People can only imagine what they can imagine, and if one is serious about dealing with Iran, one has to understand at the very least where the Iranian imagination about negotiations is coming from. Mr. Jalili is an intelligent man—a Ph.D. scholar (as are Mr. Burns and Secretary Rice)—but he cannot escape his culture any more than Secretary Rice or Mr. Burns can escape theirs.

William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and former Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His most recent book is The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, University of Chicago Press.

Tell Me Again, Why Is Obama Being Popular With Our Allies a Bad Thing?

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William O. Beeman--Playing Games with Iran--(Foreign Policy in Focus)

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5387

Playing Games with Iran

William O. Beeman | July 21, 2008

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

By now the structure of the U.S. game with Iran is clear. In the first move, the United States and Iran make some small progress toward improved relations. In the counter move, hardliners in the United States and Israel launch attacks against Iran in order to sabotage these improving relations.

In the latest iteration of this game, the U.S. State Department has made an interesting gambit. It announced that Undersecretary of State William Burns would sit at the table on July 20 as members of the European Union entered into talks with Iran over its nuclear program. At the same time, the United States has been reported to be considering opening a formal American Interests Section in Tehran. These two actions will be the first serious public diplomatic activities between the two nations in nearly three decades. (Three earlier meetings in Baghdad between U.S. Iraqi Envoy Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi focused on security in Iraq).

The counter-moves came fast and furious. First, former UN ambassador and prominent neoconservative John Bolton launched a jeremiad against the U.S. government on July 15 in the Wall Street Journal. Criticizing the administration for failing to act militarily against Iran, Bolton placed his hopes on Israel to carry out the military attack that he fervently desires. “Instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran,” he wrote.
Following closely on Bolton’s editorial, The New York Times printed another attack against Iran on Friday, July 18, just one day before the opening of the European talks, by Benny Morris, an historian at Ben-Gurion University. Like Bolton, Morris presents an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an established fact, implies that Iran would make a first-strike attack on Israel, and thus justifies pre-emptive military action on Israel’s part.

Both Bolton and Morris base their attacks on false premises. Diplomatic dealings with Iran have, in fact, succeeded on the few occasions they have been tried. There is no proof anywhere that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program at present, a fact underscored by the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. In fact, Iran’s nuclear experiments are still at a primitive level, far from any possibility of manufacturing weapons. Iran has never directly threatened Israel and is not likely considering a first strike against Israel.

Such attacks have followed every minuscule improvement in U.S-Iranian relations during the Bush administration. Every first move in a warming trend – such as Iranian support for the U.S. war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. aid to Iran during the Bam earthquake in 2003, and Iran’s formal offer to enter into comprehensive negotiations with the United States in 2003 – has been followed by sharp criticism from both inside and outside of the Brush administration. Detractors have countered these advances with accusations of Iranian support for Hezbullah and Hamas, and support for “special groups” attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. True to form, the U.S. military announced the launching of a new crackdown on weapons smuggling from Iran to coincide with the Saturday talks,

None of these accusations, along with the Iranian weapons program and plot to launch a first-strike against Israel, has ever been proven. The most memorable of these attacks was the labeling of Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil” in President George Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address, just as Iran’s military aid to the United States was beginning to create a climate of trust between the two nations.

Bolton, Morris, and their ilk may represent the last, weak gasp of the hawks who would embroil the United States and Israel in a disastrous confrontation with Iran. Indeed, for the time being, it seems that cooler heads are prevailing. Though Western commentators described the talks at the one-shot Saturday meeting negatively as a “deadlock,” William Burns’ official presence at the table was an important benchmark. Iran did not accept the Western proposals on the spot, but was given two weeks to respond. The Iranians appeared pleased. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator, called the negotiating process a “very beautiful endeavor.”

Despite this progress, the power of the American and Israeli extremists should not be underestimated. They still have the ear of Vice President Dick Cheney and a dwindling coterie of his supporters in the Department of Defense. A group of Israeli politicians, including Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi, have arrived in Washington, according to Mother Jones magazine, presumably to convince the Bush administration to allow them to carry out their attack.

Hostile rhetoric against Iran also plays into the U.S. electoral process. For American politicians, Iran is a universal bogeyman, useful in an election year as a device to show elected officials as tough on foreign miscreants. Indeed, since the Iranian Revolution U.S.-Iranian relations have been a centerpiece in election debates. Conspiracy theorists believe fervently that the Republican Party engineered an “October Surprise” in 1980 with Iranian officials – delaying the release of the American Hostages until after the U.S. Presidential election – and thus denied Jimmy Carter a second term. The purported event -- true or not -- has supplied a permanent political term for American elections.

In every presidential election since, U.S.-Iranian relations have been featured in presidential debates and campaign ads, with universal negativity toward Iran. This year is no exception with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain all expressing hostile attitudes toward Iran. And this year’s October Surprise is the rumor that the Bush administration will bomb Iran just before the election to give a boost to John McCain. Unless the Israeli hawks get there first.

Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) contributor William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the author, most recently, of The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.