The Iranian Nuclear Crisis--Portland OR October 29, 2006

The Iranian Nuclear Crisis

William O. Beeman

Portland, Oregon

October 29, 2006

The United States and Iran are moving laboriously toward confrontation—perhaps military confrontation. John Bolton and Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns are working non-stop at the United Nations to try and get international sanctions imposed on Iran. The latest attempt is to get U.N. nations to prohibit Iranian students from studying certain subjects, such as engineering, in member nations.



Iran in turn has vigorously rejected any attempts to limit its development of a full nuclear enrichment cycle. The attempts on the part of the United Nations to impose trade or other sanctions on Iran is leading to diplomatic difficulties as Russia and China will likely oppose these measures.



An examination of the U.S. position vis-à-vis Iran leads inevitably to the conclusion that the nuclear issue is merely a pretext for action against the Iranian government, which the United States has been demonizing since the Revolution of 1978-79. The Bush administration’s real goal is regime change in Iran by whatever means, and finding an issue that can be trumped up enough to garner the support of the American public, and the international community has been a constant activity since President Bush came to office in his first administration.



Now the drive to destabilize Iran by whatever means has taken on a life of its own. It has become a dangerous obsession for the Bush administration, driving them increasingly to support actions that are not only counter-productive, but dangerous for the region and the world.



I want to make several points today.



First, that the Bush administration’s goal to attack Iran predates any concern about Iran’s nuclear program.



Second, that Iran’s nuclear development program poses no immediate danger for the United States, Israel or the Middle East region—because it is not a nuclear weapons program, and all attempts to prove that it is a weapons program are specious.



Third, Iran’s attempts to address American and European fears about the program have been systematically rejected by the United States, who wishes fervently to assure that this will continue to be a live issue



Finally, that potential U.S. actions against Iran pose far more danger than Iran poses for the region and for the world.



PRE-EXISTING PLANS



The attacks against Iran have their origins in longstanding concerns about the safety of Israel, ratcheted up by the extremist views of the neoconservatives that now dominate the Bush administration.



These concerns combined with decades long antipathy toward Iran, and the desire of the United States to dominate the oil-rich Middle East create a perfect storm of fervent desire on the part of the Bush administration to attack Iran.



The rhetoric against Iran has now pervaded American political culture to such an extent that no American lawmaker is willing to defend Iran. Conversely, no politician, Democratic or Republican ever lost a vote by attacking Iran.



According to journalist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon

>>>

>>>, the neocons in the administration, specifically Vice President Dick

>>>Cheney and National Security Agency Middle East Director Elliott Abrams,

>>>have been funneling U.S. intelligence intercepts to the Israelis as part

>>>of a plan to target Syria and Iran (see Tom Barry, Hunting Monsters with

>>>Elliott Abrams ).

>>>

>>>Those intercepts were behind the recent House Intelligence Committee

>>>report blasting U.S. spy agencies for their reluctance to say that

>>>Hezbollah is nothing more than an extension of Iran, that Tehran is on

>>>the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that Iran poses a clear and

>>>present danger to the United States.

>>>

>>>The author of the House report, Frederick Fleitz, was a former special

>>>assistant to current UN Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton was a key figure

>>>in gathering the now-discredited intelligence that Iraq had weapons of

>>>mass destruction.

>>>

>>>According to Blumenthal, Cheney and his Middle East aide David Wurmser

>>>have dusted off a 1996 document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for

>>>Securing the Realm." The study was authored by Wurmser, ex-Pentagon

>>>official Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, disgraced former head of the

>>>Defense Policy Board.

>>>

>>>The "Break"-originally written for then-Likud prime minister Benjamin

>>>Netanyahu-advocates that the Israelis, with support from the United

>>>States, dump the 1992 Oslo Agreement with the Palestinians, target Syria

>>>and Iraq, and redesign the Middle East.

>>>

>>>A key ingredient in the document, and one central to current

>>>administration thinking, is that since terrorism is state-supported, the

>>>war on terrorism can be won by changing regimes. Hence, to defeat

>>>Hezbollah, you have to overthrow Syria and Iran.

>>>



The only problem that the Bush administration felt they had was how to sell the overthrow of Iran to the American public. The fact that such an action would be a massive, stunning failure seems even now not to be of any great concern to them.



The only issue that really frightens and concerns the American public is their own safety. Raising the specter of atomic weapons that might be used against Americans worked effectively in convincing the U.S. public to support the Iraqi invasion. Having used this device once, the Bush administration has trotted it out again, and has fed the U.S. public a full measure of yellow journalism trying to frighten them into supporting an Iranian attack. Neoconservative Bush supporters wrote fantasy accounts of Iranian cataclysmic atomic attacks on America. Jerome Corsi, ghost author of Unfit for Command, the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry wrote Atomic Iran—in which a hyperbolic account of an Iranian atomic bomb dropped on New York’s Central Park vies for his accounts of Iranian mullahs abducting children to support their regime. Kenneth Timmerman, penned Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran in a similar vein. Let me read a passage from Ray Takyeh of the Council on Foreign Relations’ review of the book from the Washington Post:



Timmerman's thesis is simplistic and provocative: Iran is America's most militant, relentless enemy and has been involved in nearly every terrorist attack against the United States since 1979. Iran is also actively seeking the bomb -- not for deterrence, but to menace the United States and its allies. . . . Timmerman, the author of earlier books attacking France and Jesse Jackson, begins his book with the outlandish claim that Iran was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, atrocities. In his retelling of history, a craven CIA, determined to exonerate rogue states that sponsor terrorism, has deliberately withheld this information from the American public. The conclusions of the numerous congressional investigations and journalistic inquiries into Sept. 11 are simply ignored. The one independent examination that Timmerman does cite, the 9/11 Commission, is faulted for missing what he considers the all-too-apparent Iran link. The reader gets the impression that Timmerman would rather not bother with facts precisely because they undermine his conspiracy theory.

The book was praised by the right-wing Washington Times, New York Sun and New York Post and has been widely cited on Fox News and other sycophantic supporters of the Bush administration.



IRAN POSES NO DANGER



However, there is no proof whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.





President Bush declared on June 25, 2003 that "we will not tolerate" a nuclear armed Iran. His words are empty. The physical evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran simply does not exist.



Iran is completing a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr with Russian help. The existence of the site is common knowledge. It has been under construction for more than three decades, since before the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.



Two other nuclear research facilities, now under development, have come to light: a uranium enrichment plant in the city of Natanz and a deuterium ("heavy water") facility in the city of Arak. Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not.



The Bushehr plant is only part of the argument that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program, but it is the part that can readily be analyzed. State Department accusations of dangerous Iranian intentions for the Natanz and Arak facilities are based on a patchwork of untestable, murky assertions from dubious sources, including the People's Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen-e Khalq, MEK or MKO), which the United States identifies as a terrorist organization. These sources assert that there are centrifuges for enriching uranium (an alternative to fissile plutonium for bombs) or covert facilities for extracting plutonium. Neither of these claims are especially credible, since the sources are either unidentified or are the same channels which disseminated the stories about Iraq's non-conventional weapons or the so-called chemical and biological weapons plant in Khartoum.



The testable part of the claim -- that the Bushehr reactor is a proliferation threat -- is demonstrably false. There are several reasons, some technical, some institutional.



--The Iranian reactor yields the wrong kind of plutonium for making bombs.



--The spent fuel pins in the Iranian reactor would, in any case, be too dangerous to handle for weapons manufacture.



--Any attempt to divert fuel from the Iranian plant will be detectable.



--The Russian partners in the Bushehr project have stipulated that the fuel pins must be returned to Russia, as has been their practice worldwide for other export reactors.



Just as there are many different kinds of nuclear reactors, there are different forms of plutonium, distinctions that are almost never made in public discussions of nuclear proliferation.



There are two different kinds of reactors, heavy-water or graphite-moderated reactors; and pressurized, or "light water" reactors (PWRs). The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel is an example of the former. The Bushehr plant is the latter.



The Israeli plant is ideal for yielding the desirable isotope of Plutonium (Pu 239) necessary for making bombs. The Iranian plant will produce plutonium, but the wrong kind. It will produce the heavier isotopes, Pu240, Pu241 and Pu242 -- almost impossible to use in making bombs.



Crucial to extracting weapons-grade plutonium is the type of reactor and the mode in which it is operated. The Israeli-type plant can be refueled "on line," without shutting down. Thus, high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously. In the Iranian plant, the entire reactor will have to be shut down -- a step that cannot be concealed from satellites, airplanes and other sources -- in order to permit the extraction of even a single fuel pin.



In the Israeli reactor, the fuel is recycled every few weeks, or at most every couple of months. This maximizes the yield of the highest-quality, weapons-grade plutonium. In the Iranian-type reactor, the core is exchanged only every 30-40 months -- the longer the fuel cycle, the better for the production of power.



For the Iranian reactor at Bushehr, any effort to divert fuel will be transparent because a shutdown will be immediately noticeable. No case of production of bomb-grade material from fuel from an Iranian-type plant has ever been reported.



No one can read the collective mind of a government. But even if Iran proves in the future to have ambitions for developing nuclear weapons, any actual production is years, perhaps decades away. Furthermore, Iran has fully acquiesced to the international inspections process. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). On June 22, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, reiterated that all of Iran's nuclear facilities are open for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in compliance with treaty guarantees.



Of course, Iran is developing other facilities—an enrichment plant in Isfahan, and a deuterium production plant in Natanz have been opened. These plants are entirely legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and they are entirely consistent with power generation. Much has been made in the last week of the fact that Iran has placed two cascades of 164 centrifuges on line which now have produced enriched uranium at a lower grade than is even needed for power generation (5%). Production capacity would require 50,000 centrifuges and enrichment to a level of 90%. All intelligence experts agree that Iran is years away from coming even close to producing enough weapons grade uranium to produce even a single bomb. The German intelligence office last week estimated that if it worked non-stop on this level of enrichment, it might have enough weapons grade uranium by 2015. U.S. Intelligence Director John Negroponte agrees with this assessment. Mohammad el Baradei of the IAEA last week once again reiterated that he was “unconvinced” that Iran had any weapons program.



The deuterium plant has resulted in some interesting press. The U.S. press regularly reported that the plant has the capacity to produce weapons grade fuel. Of course this is absurd. The plant produces heavy water, which would then be used in a heavy water reactor, designed to be completed in 2009 or 2010. The spent fuel from the reactor would then have to be processed to extract any weapons-grade fuel, and another plant to build any weapons. The idea that this operation could go undetected by international inspection teams is absurd.



IRANIAN NEED



The furor in Washington over possible nuclear weapons development in Iran is fueled in part because Bush administration officials claim that Iran doesn't need to generate nuclear power. They assert that Iran's nuclear energy program is unnecessary given its oil reserves. Therefore, officials say, its nuclear plants must exist for weapons production.



In fact, for Iran, generating nuclear power makes sense. Moreover, the plans to do this were started decades ago, and with American approval.



Ex-CIA director James Woolsey, in an interview on the PBS program Frontline on Feb. 23, 2003 claimed "there is no underlying (reason) for one of the greatest oil producers in the world to need to get into the nuclear (energy) business."



At first glance, such logic seems sound. Countries with vast oil reserves also have large reserves of natural gas sitting on top of those reserves. Some years ago, the natural gas was regularly burned off to get at the oil beneath. However, technological advances today make it feasible to use this gas for power generation.



Even so, nuclear power still makes sense in a country with vast amounts of natural gas, particularly given the unusual circumstances in the Iranian hydrocarbons industry. There are needs for gas in Iran that command much higher priorities than the construction of gas power plants.



First, gas is vitally needed for reinjection into existing oil reservoirs (repressurizing). This is indispensable for maintaining oil output levels, as well as for increasing overall, long-term recovery of oil.



Second, natural gas is needed for growing domestic use, such as in cooking fuel and domestic heating (Iranians typically use kerosene for both), where it can free up oil for more profitable export. New uses such as powering bus and taxi fleets in Iran's smoggy urban areas are also essential for development.



Third, natural gas exports -- via pipelines to Turkey or in liquefied form to the subcontinent -- set an attractive minimum value for any available natural gas. With adequate nuclear power generation, Iran can profit more from selling its gas than using it to generate power.



Fourth, the economics of gas production in Iran are almost backwards, certainly counter-intuitive. Much of Iran's gas is "rich" -- it contains by-products, such as liquid-petrolem gas (LPG, better known as propane), which are more valuable than the natural gas they are derived from. Iran can profit by selling these derivatives, but not if it burns the natural gas to generate power. Furthermore, Iran adheres to OPEC production quotas, which combine oil and natural gas production. Therefore Iran cannot simply increase natural gas for export to make up for what it burns at home.



Overall, therefore, it can reasonably be argued that natural gas in Iran has economic uses that are superior to power generation, in spite of Iran's much-touted large reserves. The economic rationale is therefore plausible -- the costs of gas versus nuclear power generation are sufficiently close that the choice is a standoff, especially given the reported bargain price for the Russian reactor.



The great irony in America's accusations is that Iran's nuclear program was first developed on the advice of American specialists, who urged the government of the Shah to begin producing nuclear power in order to save oil reserves for more lucrative purposes than fuel. The prospect of an industrial base built on petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals never materialized, but the nuclear power program continued unabated.



Now, to have American officials express alarm over the exact same program is illogical at best and utterly disingenuous at worst. Much of the criticism of Iran's nuclear program comes from the same people who insisted that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons development program before the American invasion of that nation on March 19. That fact alone should raise severe skepticism throughout the world.





AMERICAN REJECTION



The potential impasse in the Iranian nuclear program could have been forestalled long ago, but the United States has regularly rejected all attempts on the part of Iran to negotiate this matter. The Bush administration should be called to explain why it seems to be driving the Iranian nuclear matter to crisis level.



As everyone in the world must now know, the United States maintains that Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapons. It has convinced a number of European nations of the correctness of its suspicions. Iran maintains that its nuclear development is for domestic power generation purposes only, and everything it is doing is allowed under the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Iran is a signatory.



There is no objective evidence whatever that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program—only the suspicions of the United States and its ally, Israel, that this is true.



As part of the basis for its suspicions, the United States maintains that Iran had concealed its nuclear program for many years—the number of years varies depending on which official one asks. In fact, Iran has done no such thing. First and foremost, as mentioned previously, Iran’s nuclear program is more than 30 years old, and was started with the encouragement of the United States. President Gerald Ford offered the Iranians a full nuclear cycle in 1976 before the Revolution of 1978-79. Despite the change in government, the program has been implemented largely as conceived with U.S. approval.



Regarding concealment of Under the NPT Iran is not required to disclose its facilities until it begins to process nuclear material. This had not taken place when the United States began to object to the Iranian nuclear development in 2003.



However, that consideration aside, Iran offered as early as 1997 to make its nuclear development known to the world through inspections. The United States was fully apprised of these developments at that time.



For example, Iran offered to provide the land for EU-United Nations University nuclear enrichment facilities to be staffed exclusively by non-Iranian personnel, with no Iranians allowed to enter the facility -- very much treated as a foreign Embassy. This proposition was rejected.



In 1997, at the request of Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Behrad Nakha’I arranged for a group of prominent US nuclear scientists to visit Iran's nuclear facilities. After couple of days of discussions, he was able to get US State Department's agreement, but the United States Department of Defense absolutely refused this offer from the beginning to the end of the two months that we were interacting, trying to make these arrangements.



He responded to all of the concerns, but just like a telemarketer reading from a prepared statement, his contact at the Department of Defense repeated the same sentence over and over, rejecting such a visit. He offered to include a representative from the DOD of the U.S. government’s choice in the inspection group, but to no avail. Since these scientists had the highest clearance from US government, requiring government permission for them to maintain their status. he had to call off the visit. This was a huge missed opportunity, among many others.



In 2003, Iran, under the presidency of moderate Mohammad Khatami issued a general offer to negotiate all outstanding issues with the U.S. These included addressing the question of Iran’s nuclear development as well as coming to agreement on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The offer had the full support of Iran’s spiritual Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Bush administration not only rejected the offer, they excoriated the Swiss diplomatic officer who brought the offer.



Iran also was the only nation to publicly accept the 2003 U.N. proposal by Mohammad El Baradei that weapons-usable fissile materials be placed under international control . This would be a step leading to fulfillment of the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). This earlier treaty was passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 over U.S. objections. El Baradei’s proposal was passed 149-2, the United States and Palau being the only dissenting votes with Israel and Great Britain abstaining. El Baradei's proposal would monitor all nuclear fission and guarantee that non-nuclear weapons states would be able to obtain adequate supplies for their nonmilitary usage of enriched plutonium. If implemented, this proposal would have ended the Iranian nuclear crisis, but at the price of establishing controls that would be incumbent on other nations as well—the basis for the U.S. objection to the FMCT.



It is hard to know precisely why the United States is driving the specter of Iran’s nuclear development so hard that it ignores all the attempts on Iran’s part to allay international concerns, and ignores even its own previous knowledge of and involvement with Iran’s nuclear program.



ATTACKING IRAN



The conclusion that Iran has drawn is that the nuclear issue is a pretext on the part of the United States to vilify Iran before the international community, perhaps as a prelude to a military attack. With President Bush continuing to insist that with regard to Iran “all cards are on the table,” it is easy to see how they might reach that conclusion. Iran is conducting military maneuvers on all of its borders this week (August 20). Perhaps this is coincidence, or perhaps they anticipate that whatever they do regarding the nuclear issue will not preclude hostile American action.



Just now, however Americans should be on guard—a real war may break out at any minute and the resulting conflagration would likely engulf the region, and then the world. Even now, Daniel Ellesberg in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine, Seymour Hirsh in the New Yorker, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, eminent historian William Polk and numerous others have written about the coming war between the United States and Iran that few in the United States know about, but which seems to be immanent.

Polk Writes:

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, while the Iran “desk” at the State Department has been augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful naval battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for the Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations. These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the aerial assaults on Iraq.

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was regarded as “a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.” They did terrible damage and killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As Bush’s former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, “If the most dominant military force in the region – the Israel Defense Forces – can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million…The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population against the Israelis.”

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals, Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

This is it folks. As I have warned, history changes on October 31st. It is now apparent that Bush does intend to have our ships sunk in the Gulf by Iran in a last-ditch effort to save himself and the GOP with a short bounce in the polls caused by a New Pearl Harbor. The USS Boxer Strike Group has now joined the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the Eisenhower and Enterprise Carrier Groups off the coast of Iran.

IRANIANS DON’T HELP

In closing I should make it clear that Iranians have not helped the situation very much. They have continued to antagonize the United States, largely due to their anger about being singled out for attack by the United States. Iran views nuclear energy development as a hallmark of modernization and a source of national pride. They think the United States is putting them down and trying to keep them backward. It is for this reason that although the majority of Iranians do not support their government, the absolutely support the development of nuclear energy.

President Ahmadinejad has also exacerbated Iran’s situation. He has been misquoted on his views on Israel and the holocaust, but he has also learned that making extreme statements raises his own political stock at home. He needs public support for his domestic political agenda -- an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.



This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a "spiral conflict" in which both parties escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.



What have the Iranians done? True to fashion, they have declared the U.S. action a bluff, and have behaved in an even more defiant manner. The spiral conflict continues to everyone’s detriment.

Obviously the most reasonable position for both the United States and Iran is for the two states to sit down and talk face to face. As I have pointed out, Iran has tried to get the United States to respond to this need, but the U.S. has thus far refused. One obstacle is that Iran wants talks constructed between equals; the United States refuses to treat Iran as an equal, preferring to continue to denigrate and demonize the Islamic Republic. The U.S. wants to bring Iran to its knees or destroy its current government, and face-to-face talks are not likely to achieve that goal.

So, we have gunboats in the Persian Gulf this week. A conflagration that should never take place is ever more likely. It is a tragedy in the extreme.

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Persistence of Illusion

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Persistence of Illusion

The Persistence of Illusion
Conn Hallinan | August 30, 2006

Editor: John Feffer, IRC


Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org


The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. In 1095, Pope Urban's religious mania launched the Crusades, the reverberations of which still echo through the region. In 1915, Winston Churchill's arrogance led to the World War I bloodbath at Gallipoli. In 2003, George Bush's hubris ignited a spiral of chaos and civil war in Iraq.

Illusions once again threaten to plunge the Middle East into catastrophe. The central hallucination this time is that the war in Lebanon was a “proxy war” with the mullahs in Tehran, what one senior Israeli commander has called “Iran's western front.” Behind this hallucination is yet another. According to William O. Beeman, a professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Brown University, there is “a longstanding U.S. foreign policy myth that believes terrorism cannot exist without state support.”

In short, if Hezbollah exists, it is solely because of Iran. This particular illusion, according to a number of journalists, is behind the carte blanche the White House handed the Israelis during the war in Lebanon (see Stephen Zunes, How Washington Goaded Israel).

Israeli Fallout
As a result of the Lebanon debacle, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party is almost certainly dead. A Dahaf Institute poll found that 63% of Israelis want the Prime Minister out, and 74% want to oust Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Amir Peretz. The latter is busy trying to shift the blame to Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. General Dan Halutz (54% want him to resign) for claiming that Hezbollah could be destroyed from the air.

The army is whispering that the politicians held them back, and the politicians are grumbling that the army mishandled its budget. Olmert is stonewalling a formal inquiry on the war, which almost 70% of the population is demanding, and the reservists are up in arms. After 34 days of war, Hezbollah is intact, and the two soldiers whose capture kicked the whole thing off are still in its hands. Last but not least, the war knocked 1% off Israel's GNP.

The war's outcome is giving some Israelis pause, and there are some interesting straws in the wind. Amir Peretz, for instance, has called for negotiations with the Palestinians. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says she is willing to “explore” the idea of talks with Syria. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter has gone even further and says Israel should give up the Golan Heights.

It is not clear where these discussions are going. If nothing else, however, the war has energized an Israeli peace movement, one rather more inclusive than such movements in the past.

Islamofascists?
For the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies, the ceasefire is just a break between rounds in the president's war on “Islamofascism.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the United States is “in an emerging third world war.” William Kristol calls the Lebanon war an “act of Iranian aggression” and urges the United States to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, neocon heavy Max Boot calls for a U.S. attack on Syria.

According to journalist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon, the neocons in the administration, specifically Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Agency Middle East Director Elliott Abrams, have been funneling U.S. intelligence intercepts to the Israelis as part of a plan to target Syria and Iran (see Tom Barry, Hunting Monsters with Elliott Abrams).

Those intercepts were behind the recent House Intelligence Committee report blasting U.S. spy agencies for their reluctance to say that Hezbollah is nothing more than an extension of Iran, that Tehran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that Iran poses a clear and present danger to the United States.

The author of the House report, Frederick Fleitz, was a former special assistant to current UN Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton was a key figure in gathering the now-discredited intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

According to Blumenthal, Cheney and his Middle East aide David Wurmser have dusted off a 1996 document called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The study was authored by Wurmser, ex-Pentagon official Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, disgraced former head of the Defense Policy Board.

The “Break”—originally written for then-Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—advocates that the Israelis, with support from the United States, dump the 1992 Oslo Agreement with the Palestinians, target Syria and Iraq, and redesign the Middle East.

A key ingredient in the document, and one central to current administration thinking, is that since terrorism is state-supported, the war on terrorism can be won by changing regimes. Hence, to defeat Hezbollah, you have to overthrow Syria and Iran.

Iran's Non-Role
Brown University's Beeman argues that Iran has no direct control over Hezbollah. While Iran does provide the organization some $200 million a year, that money “makes up a fraction of Hezbollah's operating budget.” The major source of the group's funding is the “sakat,” or the tithe required of all Muslims.

Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman, writing in Foreign Affairs, says that Iran “lacks the means to force significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It [Iran] has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah's leadership, or at least its most militant elements, to simply sever ties with Tehran's leadership.”

If a wider war is to be avoided, argues Christopher Layne of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, the United States “will have to engage in direct diplomacy with Syria and Iran—both of which have important stakes in the outcome of security issues in the Middle East, including those involving Israel's relations with the Palestinians and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

Recently a group of 21 former generals, admirals, ambassadors, and high ranking security advisers proposed exactly that, calling on the Bush administration to “engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions.” The group warned that “an attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and U.S. forces in Iraq. It would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims everywhere.”

Just as Middle East illusions have done for almost a millennium.


Conn Hallinan is an analyst for FPIF.




Progressive Response

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Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). ©Creative Commons - some rights reserved.

Recommended citation:
Conn Hallinan, "The Persistence of Illusion" (Silver City, NM and Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, August 30, 2006).

AlterNet: Cheney Gets Flawed Neocon Briefings on Iran

AlterNet: Cheney Gets Flawed Neocon Briefings on Iran: "


Cheney Gets Flawed Neocon Briefings on Iran
By Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story
Posted on August 19, 2006, Printed on August 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/40539/
The Bush administration continues to bypass standard intelligence channels and use what some believe to be propaganda tactics to create a compelling case for war with Iran, US foreign experts and former US intelligence officials have said.

One former senior intelligence official is particularly concerned by private briefings that Vice President Dick Cheney is getting from former Office of Special Plans (OSP) Director, Abram Shulsky.

"Vice President Cheney is relying on personal briefings from Shulsky for current intelligence on Iran," said this intelligence official.

Shulsky, a leading Neoconservative and member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), headed the shadowy and secretive Department of Defense's OSP in the lead-up to the Iraq war -- helping to locate intelligence that would support the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq.

In an earlier report by Raw Story on an OSP spin-off dubbed the Iranian Directorate (ID), Lt. Col. Barry E. Venable -- a spokesman for the Pentagon -- confirmed that Shulsky was consulting for this new initiative as well.

"Mr. Shulsky continues in his position as Senior Advisor to the USD, focusing on Mid-East regional issues and the [global war on terror]," stated Venable.

Several foreign policy experts, who wish to remain anonymous, have expressed serious concern that much like the OSP, the ID is manipulating, cherry picking, and perhaps even -- as some suspect -- cooking intelligence to lead the U.S. into another conflict, this time with Iran.

"Cheney distrusts the information being disseminated by CIA on Iran," said one former senior intelligence official. "The reports assembled by the Iranian Directorate at the Pentagon differ significantly from the analysis produced by the Intelligence Community. The Pentagon Iranian Directorate relies on thin and unsupported reporting from foreign sources."

In the build-up to the Iraq war, Cheney relied on intelligence almost exclusively from the OSP, which leveled allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was later debunked, but no OSP or DOD officials were held accountable for what many believe was a "deliberate effort" to mislead the nation into war.

New uranium allegations

Adding to the similarities between the pre-war build up to Iraq, new allegations of Uranium transactions began aggressively circulating earlier this month. For example, in an August 6th Sunday Times of London article entitled "Iran's plot to mine uranium in Africa," Iran is alleged to have purchased Uranium from the Democratic Republic of Congo:


A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was 'no doubt' that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.


Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.

The UN report, however, does not mention Iran. It is only the Tanzanian official who does.

The article also quotes the Tanzanian official on his description of the uranium amounts found in each container and how it was located.


This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan. Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed, the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.

Experts familiar with both African mining and atomic energy have expressed serious concern about these allegations, which have been circulating for some time.

According to a source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the story is "highly unlikely" and "not well researched."

This source, who wished to remain anonymous given the nature of the subject, explained that the main concern in the Congolese mines is environmental waste and how it affects workers and villages near the areas where the mining is done.

A former senior US official with experience in the region also finds the story improbable, in this case regarding the Tanzanian interception of a Congo- to- Iran based shipment and the amount transferred.

"My understanding is that the Congolese mines were closed years ago and that any mining now is purely artisanal," said this official.

"[It] would take a lot of labor to produce the volume of uranium they are talking about. The reduction ratio of rock to ore is roughly one hundred to one in the Niger mines. I can't imagine the vein is any richer in the Congo." Still other experts took issue with the description of the uranium and its suggested purpose, including the sentiment that u-238 is "highly radioactive."

Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), an organization that was formed in 1945 by atomic scientists from the Manhattan Project, is doubtful. "U-238 is one of the isotopic forms of uranium. Another isotopic form, [for example], U-235, is used in fission bombs," explained Aftergood.

"U-238 is not highly radioactive. On the contrary, it decays very slowly. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. That means that a given quantity of u-238 would radioactively decay by 50% in 4.5 billion years. So you could hold it in your hand without any adverse effect. On the other hand, it is a toxic metal, and you wouldn't want to inhale or ingest uranium dust if you could avoid it."

But the stories of Iran attempting to purchase uranium from abroad leave many experts highly concerned.

One official close to the United Nations Security Council explained that Iran has its own mines, making any allegations of imported uranium from abroad highly questionable.

"Why would Iran import U-238 when it mines it itself?" The official asked. "This makes no sense whatsoever."

Several sources suggested that the Iranian Directorate, as did its predecessor -- the OSP, may be cherry picking, manipulating, and even planting intelligence abroad that would support a case against Iran in the minds of the public.

Expressing great frustration, one former high ranking intelligence officer said "it is all the Neocons." Asked about the allegations of the uranium transaction from Congo-to-Iran, this source remarked: "Total bullshit."

Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Jay Rockefeller, would not confirm or deny that the committee had received any information regarding the Iran uranium purchase. "We can't comment on what briefings the committee has received," Morigi stated in an email response.

Morigi did, however, explain that as with any sensitive information, "Generally speaking, it's safe to assume that the committee closely follows everything related to Iran's nuclear program."


© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/40539/

Examining Iran's ties to Hezbollah -- In These Times

Examining Iran's ties to Hezbollah -- In These Times

William O. Beeman

The conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah had hardly begun when the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters began blaming Iran for the conflagration. On July 25, Henry Crumpton, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, told a reporter that Iran is “clearly directing a lot of Hezbollah actions. Hezbollah asks their permission to do things, especially if it has broader international implications.” Meanwhile, in the July 24 Weekly Standard, William Kristol called Hezbollah’s fighting an “act of Iranian aggression” and suggested “we might consider countering [it] … with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.”

However, giving Iran another tongue lashing, or worse, deciding to attack it, will do nothing to stop the violence in the region. Not only is there no evidence that Iran had a role in instigating this round of violence, the possibility itself is unlikely.

Iran’s control over Hezbollah has been steadily declining since approximately 1996, during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami. Money does continue to come “from Iran” to support Hezbollah, but not the Iranian government. Instead, it’s private religious foundations that direct the bulk of support, primarily to Hezbollah’s charitable activities. Nor are the amounts crucial to Hezbollah’s survival; even the high estimate frequently cited in the press—$200 million per annum—is a fraction of Hezbollah’s operating funds. However, the most important reason for not targeting Iran for the continued fighting in Lebanon is that this conflict is antithetical to Iran’s interests.

Neoconservatives clearly have another agenda in attacking Iran besides stopping Hezbollah. By blaming Iran for this latest flare-up, neoconservatives are following their decade-long program to encourage a military attack against the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s support for Hezbollah
The broad assertion that Iran supports Hezbollah is verifiable, but it is important to understand what the nature of this support is, and the extent to which Iran is able to influence the actions of this Shi’ite Lebanese group.

Since 90 percent of Iran’s population is Shi’ite, its citizens had an undeniable interest in the fate of its co-religionists in Lebanon following the Revolution of 1978-79. Like Iranians, the Lebanese Shi’ite community was under oppression both from Sunnis and Maronites. Moreover, Palestinian refugees, settled in Lebanon without consultation with the Shi’ite community, served as a drain on weak local economic resources and drew fire from Israel. The Shi’ites felt helpless and frustrated. The successful revolution in Iran was enormously inspirational to them. While the Iranian central government was weak and scattered after the Revolution, semi-independent charitable organizations, called bonyad (literally, “foundation”) sponsored by individual Shi’ite clerics began to help the fledgling Hezbollah organization establish itself as a defense force to protect the Shi’ite community. This was simply not state support. Given the semi-independent corporate nature of Shi’ite clerics, especially in the early days of Iran’s revolution, when internal power struggles were endemic, there was little the Khomeini government could do to curtail these operations.

Now, after nearly two decades, this ad hoc export of Iranian revolutionary ideology may have succeeded too well. Whereas today the bulk of the Iranian population has at least some doubts about their government, Hezbollah maintains a stronger commitment to the symbolic legacy of the Iranian Revolution than Iranians, according to Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman. In a 2003 Foreign Affairs article, Byman pointed out that, “[Iran] lacks the means to force a significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah’s leadership, or at least its most militant elements, simply to sever ties with Tehran’s leadership.”

In short, Hezbollah has now taken on a life of its own. Even if all Iranian financial and logistic support were cut off, Hezbollah would not only continue, it would thrive.

Hezbollah has achieved this independence by becoming as much a social welfare and political organization as a militant resistance organization. In a 2004 speech, Dwight J. Simpson, a professor of international relations at San Francisco State University, reported that it had “12 elected parliamentary members…[and] many Hezbollah members hold elected positions within local governments.” At that time, the group had already built five hospitals and was building more. It operated 25 primarily secular schools, and provided subsidies to shopkeepers.

The source for their money, Simpson reported, is zakat—the charitable “tithe” required of all Muslims. The Shi’ites, having seen their co-religionists in Iraq succeed in initial elections there in 2005, had hopes that they too would assume the power in Lebanon that accorded with their status as the nation’s largest community, approximately 40 percent of the population. The growth of Hezbollah’s charitable operations increased non-state-level financial support for the organization not only from Iran, but from the rest of the Shi’ite world, since formalized charity is a religious duty. As this charitable activity increased, Hezbollah was on the road to ceasing its activities as a terrorist group and gradually assuming the role of a political organization. Even in its current engagement with Israel, its “terrorist” activities have been reframed as national defense, especially as Hezbollah began to use conventional military forces and weapons.

Many of these weapons, it is claimed, have been acquired from Iran over the years, but even this is not fully verified. The rockets used by Hezbollah have been tentatively identified as Katushya rockets, of the form manufactured by Iran, and known as Fajr-3 and Fajr-5. But the United States has not been able to identify that these rockets are absolutely Iranian.

Moreover, although it is certainly possible that branches of Iran’s Islamic guard may be operating in Lebanon without the full knowledge of the central government of Iran, no country has yet been able to verify their presence in the current conflict, and rumors that they have aided in the firing of the rockets have been vehemently denied by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Given the loose and ambiguous nature of the Iranian government’s control over support for Hezbollah, claims by U.S. officials that Iran has an organized state-level support system for such activities are clearly exaggerated.

Added to all of this is the fact that the Lebanese violence does not serve Iran’s political purposes. The verbal attacks of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Israel would cause it to be targeted if Israel were ever involved in a wider conflict with the Islamic world. Although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has claimed that Iran instigated this attack to draw attention away from criticism of its nuclear development program, this scenario seems far-fetched. Indeed, Iran’s strategic situation has certainly been worsened by this fighting. Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, recently told Voice of America: “Iran is viewed, widely viewed, as at least complicit in what is going on, supporting Hezbollah. And that is likely to make some of the fence-sitters, I guess Russia and China perhaps, take a dimmer view of Iranian intentions and perhaps be more amenable to U.S. and other arguments that Iran is playing a destabilizing role in the region and needs to be confronted by the [U.N. Security] Council.”

Beyond state support
Why would the United States repeat such unfounded assertions with such incessant regularity as if they were established fact? Aside from their continuity with 27 years of ongoing attacks against Iran, such assertions accord with a longstanding U.S. foreign policy myth that believes terrorism cannot exist without state support. If a state is needed to explain the continued existence of groups like Hezbollah, then Iran is an ideal candidate. Ergo, the connection must exist. Such claims serve to bolster the central, but fallacious, political doctrine for the Bush administration that the Global War on Terrorism really exists.

The alternative is to understand that terrorism is fundamentally community-based. Sub-state groups with grievances that they feel cannot be addressed in any other way resort to terrorism as a way of increasing attention to their plight and pressuring those whom they perceive to be oppressing them. Though they may welcome external financial support, the impetus and motivation for terrorist groups’ actions is not dependent on it. Indeed, the more pressure they are subjected to, the stronger their collective will to resist increases.

When this dynamic is understood, the problems of addressing terrorism also come into focus. Rather than looking for global fantasy structures such as al-Qaeda and their state supporters, the international community needs to employ methods to address the needs of sub-state groups, while simultaneously working to curtail their activities as conditions improve. For the Shi’ites in Lebanon, it may be far too late to employ such a strategy.

William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and 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.

Attacking Iran Will Not Stop the Violence in Lebanon

Attacking Iran will not Stop the Violence in Lebanon

William O. Beeman

Blaming Iran for the horrific violence between Israel and the Arabs of Lebanon and Palestine is a popular stance in the world today. Although it might make many people feel good to give Iran another tongue lashing, such an exercise will do nothing to stop the violence and destruction going on in the region. Paradoxically, however, Iran could play a role in bringing about peace if it were allowed to do so.

Iran makes a convenient scapegoat. It has no defenders. Americans and Europeans are already furious with Tehran over the development of Iran's nuclear program. The Sunni States in the region--principally Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are worried about growing Iranian power as Shi'a forces throughout the region grow in influence. The Sunnis are uncomfortable defending the Shi'a community in Lebanon, and are quite happy to have Iran bear blame for the war, even if the reasoning is weak. Meanwhile in the United States, neoconservatives are primed with a decade-long program to attack Iran that they have conveniently grafted onto the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict as a suggested response.

However, both of these positions are mistaken in their analysis and in their strategic goals.

The Sunni States' position is short-sighted and pusillanimous. Perhaps they hope that the Shi'a world as a whole will be weakened through Israel's actions. But there is no magic Israeli bullet that will eliminate the need of the nations in the region to come to peaceful terms with Iran, which grows stronger and more prosperous every day with every American misstep and every increase in the price of oil. Nor can the Sunni states avoid accommodating the significant, growing non-Iranian Shi'a population in the region. Standing silent and allowing the Lebanese Shi'a to be attacked is also bringing about the destruction of the Sunni population in Lebanon--including the "Jewel of the Eastern Mediterranean," the Sunni/Christian city of Beirut, long a financial and tourist center for the Sunni Arab community. Standing on the sidelines in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict also effectively ignores the backlash that is being felt by the Palestinians and their supporters as Israel lashes out at Hamas.

The neoconservative position is far more complex, and potentially more dangerous. The neoconservatives purposely ignore the fact that their basic thesis is wrong. Hamas and Hezbollah are not puppets. They have control of their own actions and destinies. More importantly, the neoconservative proposed action--attacking Iran militarily--is impossible at present; a campaign against Iran is acknowledged by American military strategists to be impractical and potentially ineffective. Finally, even if the United States or Israel could be successful in destroying Iran's government through a military attack, this action would not curtail violence against Israel. More specifically, it would not destroy Hezbollah or Hamas, as the neoconservatives claim.

One can only conclude that the neoconservatives have been calling for Iran's destruction for so long, they can not give up the habit. William Kristol writing in the Weekly Standard and London's Financial Times on July 16 writes: "No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . . little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. "The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page has stated flatly: "Keep in mind that Hezbollah is not the indigenous Lebanese "resistance" organization it claims to be, but is a military creature of Tehran." Neoconservative guru Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute writes: "there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable." Finally, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, picking up these themes announced on July 19 that Hezbollah timed the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, the event which set off the violence, to deflect world attention away from Iran's nuclear development program.

These representative positions sound reasonable in Washington only because they perpetuate the dominant mythology in American foreign policy that State support is the only thing that sustains groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. The glib neoconservative solution: destroy the State supporters, in this case Iran, and the offending groups will be destroyed in turn, sounds great to sound-byte driven legislators who have no knowledge of the Middle Eastern region.

However, with a little reflection, Washington policy makers should be running away from the neoconservatives on this point, since their spiel should sound ominously familiar. It is the precise formula promulgated by a major group of neoconservative advisors, including Richard Pearle, and Douglas Feith to Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. Their paper, entitled "'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," called for the overthrow of the governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria as a way to eliminate threats to Israel, on the theory that this would undercut support for groups opposing Israel.

This call for action was repeated by many of the same neoconservative group members, along with William Kristol, Dick Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad under the rubric of the organization, The Project for the New American Century in 1998. This group wrote a recommendation to President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich calling again for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, in part to obtain security for Israel. The basic logic in these position papers drove the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Then as now, the idea that regime change in the region will secure Israel's safety is wrong. It is mistaken both in its reasoning and in its understanding of basic facts about Hezbollah and Hamas, their history and their purpose.

Hamas, as some, including Kristol, actually point out, is an emanation of the Muslim brotherhood, now enjoying resurgence in Egypt. Hamas predates the Iranian Revolution, since the pedigree of its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 19th Century and the original Islamic Movement led by reformer Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani, designed to counter European powers and the Middle Eastern rulers who collaborated with them to rob the people of the region of their patrimony.

Iran has no control at all over Hamas' actions or its political agenda. The closest Iran comes to actually influencing Hamas is financial support provided based on a general open appeal from Hamas leader Khaled Mesha'al after Hamas came to power in Palestine in a democratic election, and was subsequently isolated by Israel and the United States.

Hezbollah would never have existed if the French had not created a state where the plurality of Shi'a Muslims would be ruled by minority confessional groups in their own nation--groups that had no interest in protecting the Shi'a as they were attacked by Israel throughout the late 20th Century.

Iran was instrumental in the birth of Hezbollah in the early 1980's when it was the only defense available for the Shi'a community. However, today, though Hezbollah uses Iranian arms (Iran in fact sells to many nations), and Iran has communication with Hezbollah, every expert on Hezbollah today agrees that Iran has had no effective control over Hezbollah's actions for several years--especially since Hezbollah has become largely a political and charitable organization. As former CIA analyst and now Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Iran "lacks the means to force a significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah's leadership, or at least its most militant elements simply to sever ties with Tehran's leadership."

In short, both Hamas and Hezbollah have their own history, their own reasons for existing, and their own agendas regarding Israel and the West. The idea that they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with an Iranian agenda is absurd in the extreme. Even if Iran were leveled, like Carthage in Roman times, both Hamas and Hezbollah would continue their struggle against Israel, and the Shi'a world, energized by the outrages perpetrated against it, would continue to grow in strength and defiance.

It is better by far to embrace Iran as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Many Westerners, noting the hostile rhetoric against Israel emanating from Iran may find it hard to believe that Iran could ever play a positive role in a conflict of this sort. However, this attitude is part of the problem. Iran talks the way it does in great part to retaliate against the United States for its actions against Iran. The fact that the United States has not yet found a way to actually talk to Iran exacerbates this situation, promoting even more Iranian hostility.

Iran craves the respect of the international community more than any other commodity one might offer, though Western observers will find their methods for obtaining that respect counter productive. Nevertheless, Iran models its macho posturing on those who confront it-primarily the United States. Iran relishes the idea that it might be offered a respectful position as a peacemaker. In practical terms, the Islamic Republic may not directly influence the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas, but they offer a way to talk to the two groups.

Iran has been willing to serve as mediator in the past in the region, notably in working with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and has garnered bona fides for its efforts. Moreover, Iran has hinted in the recent past that it would drop its hostile posture toward Israel if relations with the United States were to improve. Many Middle Eastern problems will be solved once the United States decides to get serious about dealing with Iran, as myriad foreign policy advisors, including former National Security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinsky and the Council on Foreign Relations have recommended. Vilifying Iran is not doing anyone any good, but asking them for a little help might do a great deal to bring peace to the region.

_____________________
William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for more than thirty years. His most recent book is The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

William O. Beeman
Professor, Anthropology; and Theatre, Speech and Dance
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: (401) 863-3251
Academic Papers and Vita: http://www.williambeeman.com
Blog and current Op-ed pieces--Culture and International Affairs http://www.wbeeman.com
(2004-2005 Visiting Professor, Cultural and Social Anthropology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

My latest book: The "Great Satan" vs. The "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. (Praeger/Greenwood).
More information at:
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Embrace Iran as Part of the Solutiion--William O. Beeman

Printed from projo.com:


Embrace Iran as part of the solution
William O. Beeman
01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 31, 2006

BLAMING IRAN for the horrific violence between Israel and the Arabs of Lebanon and Palestine is a popular stance. But though it might make people feel good to give Iran yet another tongue-lashing, such an exercise would do nothing to stop the violence going on in the Mideast. And, paradoxically, Iran could play a role in bringing about peace -- if it were allowed to try.

Iran makes a convenient scapegoat. It has no defenders. Americans and Europeans are furious with Iran over the its development of a nuclear program. The region's Sunni states (principally Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt) are worried about growing Iranian power as Shi'a forces throughout the Mideast grow in influence. The Sunnis are uncomfortable defending the Shi'a community in Lebanon, and are quite happy to have Iran bear blame for the war, even if the reasoning is weak.
Meanwhile, in the United States, neo-conservatives are primed with a decade-long program to attack Iran. They have conveniently grafted this onto the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict as a suggested response.

However, both of these positions are mistaken, in their analysis and their strategic goals.

The Sunni states' position is short-sighted and pusillanimous. Perhaps they hope that the Shi'a world as a whole will be weakened through Israel's actions. But there is no magic Israeli bullet that will eliminate the need of the region's nations to come to peaceful terms with Iran, which grows more prosperous and stronger with every American misstep and every increase in the price of oil. Nor can the Sunni states avoid accommodating the growing non-Iranian Shi'a population in the region.

Standing silent as the Lebanese Shi'a are attacked is also bringing about destruction of the Sunni population in Lebanon -- including the "Jewel of the Eastern Mediterranean," the Sunni-and-Christian city of Beirut, long a financial and tourist center for the Sunni-Arab community. Standing on the sidelines in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict also effectively ignores the backlash being felt by the Palestinians and their supporters as Israel lashes out at Hamas.

The neo-conservative position is far more complex, and potentially more dangerous. The neoconservatives purposely ignore that their basic thesis is wrong. Hezbollah and Hamas are not puppets; they have control of their actions and destinies. More important, the neo-conservatives' proposed action -- attacking Iran militarily -- is impossible at present. A campaign against Iran is acknowledged by U.S. military strategists to be impractical and potentially ineffective.

Finally, even if the United States or Israel could destroy Iran's government through a military attack, this action would not curtail violence against Israel. More specifically, it would not destroy Hezbollah or Hamas, as is claimed by the neo-conservatives.

One can only conclude that the neo-conservatives have been calling for Iran's destruction for so long that they can't give up the habit. William Kristol, writing in The Weekly Standard and London's Financial Times on July 16, says: "No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . . little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. "

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has stated flatly: "Keep in mind that Hezbollah is not the indigenous Lebanese 'resistance' organization it claims to be, but is a military creature of Tehran."

Neo-conservative guru Michael Ledeen, of the American Enterprise Institute, writes: "There is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable."

These representative positions sound reasonable in Washington only because they perpetuate the U.S. foreign-policy myth that state support is the only thing that sustains such groups as Hezbollah and Hamas. The glib neo-conservative solution -- destroy the state supporters (in this case, Iran) and the offending groups will be destroyed -- sounds great to sound-bite-driven legislators with little knowledge of the Mideast.

However, with a little reflection, Washington policymakers should be running away from the neo-conservatives on this point, since the latter's spiel should sound ominously familiar. It is the precise formula promulgated by a major group of neo-conservative advisers (including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith) to then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 1996. Their paper, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," called for overthrowing the governments of Iraq, Iran, and Syria as a way to eliminate threats to Israel, on the theory that this would undercut support for groups opposing Israel.

This call for action was repeated by many of the same neo-conservative group members -- including Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and Zalmay Khalilzad, under the rubric The Project for the New American Century -- in 1998. They wrote a recommendation to President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich calling for overthrow of Saddam Hussein, in part to obtain security for Israel. The basic logic in these position papers drove the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Then as now, the idea that Mideastern regime change would secure Israel's safety is wrong. It is wrong both in its reasoning and in its understanding of the facts about Hezbollah and Hamas -- their history and their purpose.

Hamas (as some neo-conservatives, including Kristol, actually point out) is an emanation of the Muslim Brotherhood, now enjoying resurgence in Egypt. Hamas predates the Iranian Revolution, and the Muslim Brotherhood's pedigree goes back to the 19th Century and the original Islamic Movement, led by reformer Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani. The movement was designed to counter European powers and the Mideastern rulers who collaborated with them to rob the region's people of their patrimony.

Iran has no control over Hamas's actions or political agenda. The closest Iran comes to influencing Hamas is in financial support. This is based on a general open appeal from Hamas leader Khaled Mesha'al after Hamas came to power in Palestine -- in a democratic election -- and was subsequently isolated by Israel and the United States.
Hezbollah would never have existed if the French had not created a state where the plurality of Shi'a Muslims would be ruled by minority confessional groups in their own nation -- groups that had no interest in protecting the Shi'a as they were attacked by Israel throughout the late 20th Century.

Iran was instrumental in the birth of Hezbollah, in the early 1980s, when it was the only defense available for the Shi'a community. For several years, however -- although Hezbollah uses Iranian arms and Iran communicates with Hezbollah -- Iran has had no effective control over Hezbollah's actions, especially since Hezbollah has become largely a political and charitable organization. As former CIA analyst and now Georgetown University Prof. Daniel Byman wrote in Foreign Affairs, in 2003, Iran "lacks the means to force a significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon, and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah's leadership, or at least its most militant elements, simply to sever ties with Tehran's leadership."

In short, both Hamas and Hezbollah have their own history, their own reasons for existing, and their own agendas regarding Israel and the West. The idea that they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with an Iranian agenda is absurd. Even if Iran were leveled -- like Carthage in Roman times -- both Hamas and Hezbollah would continue their struggle against Israel, and the Shi'a world, energized by the outrages perpetrated against it, would continue to grow in strength and defiance.

It is better, by far, to embrace Iran as part of the solution than as part of the problem. Iran may not influence the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas, but it offers a way to talk to the two groups. In the past, it's been willing to serve as a mediator in the region, and because Iran craves the international community's respect -- more than any other commodity -- it relishes the idea of being offered a position as a peacemaker.

Vilifying Iran is not doing anyone any good. Asking it for a little help might, on the other hand, do much to bring about Mideastern peace.

William O. Beeman is a professor of anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University.

Online at: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060731_31ctbee.17249fc.html

Salon.com News | The "hiding among civilians" myth

Salon.com News The "hiding among civilians" myth

The "hiding among civilians" mythIsrael claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.
By Mitch Prothero
Jul. 28, 2006 The bombs came just as night fell, around 7 p.m. The locals knew that the 10-story apartment building had been the office, and possibly the residence, of Sheik Tawouk, the Hezbollah commander for the south, so they had moved their families out at the start of the war. The landlord had refused to rent to Hezbollah when they requested the top floors of the building. No matter, the locals said, the Hezb guys just moved in anyway in the name of the "resistance."
Everyone knew that the building would be hit eventually. Its location in downtown Tyre, which had yet to be hit by Israeli airstrikes, was not going to protect it forever. And "everyone" apparently included Sheik Tawouk, because he wasn't anywhere near it when it was finally hit.
Two guided bombs struck it in a huge flash bang of fire and concrete dust followed by the roar of 10 stories pancaking on top of each other, local residents said. Jihad Husseini, 46, runs the driving school a block away and was sitting in his office when the bombs struck. He said his life was saved because he had drawn the heavy cloth curtains shut on the windows facing the street, preventing him from being hit by a wave of shattered glass. But even so, a chunk of smoldering steel flew through the air, broke through the window and the curtain, and shot past his head and through the wall before coming to rest in his neighbor's home.
But Jihad still refuses to leave.
"Everything is broken, but I can make it better," he says, surrounded by his sons Raed, 20, and Mohammed, 12. "I will not leave. This place is not military, it is not Hezbollah; it was an empty apartment."
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.
For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.
But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.
In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?
The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.
People throw the phrase "ghost town" around a lot, but Nabatiya, a bombed-out town about 15 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border, deserves it. One expects the spirits of the town's dead, or its refugees, to silently glide out onto its abandoned streets from the ruined buildings that make up much of the town.
Not all of the buildings show bomb damage, but those that don't have metal shutters blown out as if by a terrible wind. And there are no people at all, except for the occasional Hezbollah scout on a motorbike armed only with a two-way radio, keeping an eye on things as Israeli jets and unmanned drones circle overhead.
Overlooking the outskirts of this town, which has a peacetime population of 100,000 or so -- mostly Shiite supporters of Hezbollah and its more secular rival Amal -- is the Ragheh Hareb Hospital, a facility that makes quite clear what side the residents of Nabatiya are on in this conflict.
The hospital's carefully sculpted and trimmed front lawn contains the giant Red Crescent that denotes the Muslim version of the Red Cross. As we approach it, an Israeli missile streaks by, smashing into a school on the opposite hilltop. As we crouch and then run for the shelter of the hospital awning, that giant crescent reassures me until I look at the flagpole. The Lebanese flag and its cedar tree is there -- right next to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It's safe to say that Ragheh Hareb Hospital has an association with Hezbollah. And the staff sports the trimmed beards and polite, if somewhat ominous, manner of the group. After young men demand press IDs and do some quick questioning, they allow us to enter.
Dr. Ahmed Tahir recognizes me from a funeral in the nearby village of Dweir. An Israeli bomb dropped on their house killed a Hezbollah cleric and 11 members of his immediate family, mostly children. People in Lebanon are calling it a war crime. Tahir looks exhausted, and our talk is even more tense than the last time.
"Maybe it would be best if the Israelis bombed your car on the road here," he said, with a sharp edge. "If you were killed, maybe the public outcry would be so bad in America that the Jews would be forced to stop these attacks."
When I volunteered that the Bush administration cared little for journalists, let alone ones who reported from Hezbollah territory, he shrugged. "Maybe if it was an American bomb used by the Israelis that killed an American journalist, they would stop this horror," he said.
The handful of people in the town include some from Hezbollah's political wing, as well as volunteers keeping an eye on things while the residents are gone. Off to the side, as we watch the Israelis pummel ridgelines on the outskirts of town, one of the political operatives explains that the fighters never come near the town, reinforcing what other Hezbollah people have told me over the years.
Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons -- they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed -- but for military ones.
"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians -- no discipline and too much showing off."
Perhaps once a year, Hezbollah will hold a military parade in the south, in which its weapons and fighters appear. Media access to these parades is tightly limited and controlled. Unlike the fighters in the half dozen other countries where I have covered insurgencies, Hezbollah fighters do not like to show off for the cameras. In Iraq, with some risk taking, you can meet with and even watch the resistance guys in action. (At least you could during my last time there.) In Afghanistan, you can lunch with Taliban fighters if you're willing to walk a day or so in the mountains. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Fatah or Hamas fighter is almost ubiquitous with his mask, gun and sloganeering to convince the Western journalist of the justice of his cause.
The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind -- journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters -- is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.
Even before the war, on many of my trips to the south, the Lebanese army, or the ubiquitous guy on a motorbike with a radio, would halt my trip and send me over to Tyre to get permission from a Hezbollah official before I could proceed, usually with strict limits on where I could go.
Every other journalist I know who has covered Hezbollah has had the same experience. A fellow journalist, a Lebanese who has covered them for two decades, knows only one military guy who will admit it, and he never talks or grants interviews. All he will say is, "I'll be gone for a few months for training. I'll call when I'm back." Presumably his friends and neighbors may suspect something, but no one says anything.
Hezbollah's political members say they have little or no access to the workings of the fighters. This seems to be largely true: While they obviously hear and know more than the outside world, the firewall is strong.
Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.
Earlier in the week, I stood next to a giant crater that had smashed through the highway between Tyre and Sidon -- the only route of escape for most of the people in the far south. Overhead, Israeli fighters and drones circled above the city and its outlying areas and regular blasts of bombs and naval artillery could be heard.
The crater served as a nice place to check up on the refugees, who were forced by the crater to slow down long enough to be asked questions. They barely stopped, their faces wrenched in near panic. The main wave of refugees out of the south had come the previous two days, so these were the hard-luck cases, the people who had been really close to the fighting and who needed two days just to get to Tyre, or who had had to make the tough decision whether to flee or stay put, with neither choice looking good.
The roads in the south are full of the cars of people who chose wrong -- burned-out chassis, broken glass, some cars driven straight into posts or ditches. Other seem to have broken down or run out of gas on the long dirt detours around the blown-out highway and bridge network the Israeli air force had spent days methodically destroying even as it warned people to flee.
One man, slowing his car around the crater, almost screams, "There is nothing left. This country is not for us." His brief pause immediately draws horns and impatient yells from the people in the cars behind him. They pass the crater but within two minutes a large explosion behind us, north, in the direction of Sidon, rocks us.
As we drive south toward Tyre, we soon pass a new series of scars on the highway: shrapnel, hubcaps and broken glass. A car that had been maybe five minutes ahead of us was hit by an Israeli shell. Three of its passengers were wounded, and it was heading north to the Hammound hospital at Sidon. We turned around because of the attack and followed the car to Sidon. Those unhurt staked out the parking lot of the hospital, looking for the Western journalists they were convinced had called in the strike. Luckily my Iraqi fixer smelled trouble and we got out of there. Probably nothing would have happened -- mostly they were just freaked-out country people who didn't like the coincidence of an Israeli attack and a car full of journalists driving past.
So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well -- with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to take the Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.
And the civilians? They see themselves as targeted regardless of their affiliation. They are enraged at Israel and at the United States, the only two countries on earth not calling for an immediate cease-fire. Lebanese of all persuasions think the United States and Israel believe that Lebanese lives are cheaper than Israeli ones. And many are now saying that they want to fight.
-- By Mitch Prothero

Attacking Iran Will Not Stop the Violence in Lebanon--William O. Beeman

Attacking Iran will not Stop the Violence in Lebanon

William O. Beeman

Blaming Iran for the horrific violence between Israel and the Arabs of Lebanon and Palestine is a popular stance in the world today. Although it might make many people feel good to give Iran another tongue lashing, such an exercise will do nothing to stop the violence and destruction going on in the region. Paradoxically, however, Iran could play a role in bringing about peace if it were allowed to do so.

Iran makes a convenient scapegoat. It has no defenders. Americans and Europeans are already furious with Tehran over the development of Iran's nuclear program. The Sunni States in the region--principally Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are worried about growing Iranian power as Shi'a forces throughout the region grow in influence. The Sunnis are uncomfortable defending the Shi'a community in Lebanon, and are quite happy to have Iran bear blame for the war, even if the reasoning is weak. Meanwhile in the United States, neoconservatives are primed with a decade-long program to attack Iran that they have conveniently grafted onto the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict as a suggested response.

However, both of these positions are mistaken in their analysis and in their strategic goals.
The Sunni States' position is short-sighted and pusillanimous. Perhaps they hope that the Shi'a world as a whole will be weakened through Israel's actions. But there is no magic Israeli bullet that will eliminate the need of the nations in the region to come to peaceful terms with Iran, which grows stronger and more prosperous every day with every American misstep and every increase in the price of oil. Nor can the Sunni states avoid accommodating the significant, growing non-Iranian Shi'a population in the region. Standing silent and allowing the Lebanese Shi'a to be attacked is also bringing about the destruction of the Sunni population in Lebanon--including the "Jewel of the Eastern Mediterranean," the Sunni/Christian city of Beirut, long a financial and tourist center for the Sunni Arab community. Standing on the sidelines in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict also effectively ignores the backlash that is being felt by the Palestinians and their supporters as Israel lashes out at Hamas.

The neoconservative position is far more complex, and potentially more dangerous. The neoconservatives purposely ignore the fact that their basic thesis is wrong. Hamas and Hezbollah are not puppets. They have control of their own actions and destinies. More importantly, the neoconservative proposed action--attacking Iran militarily--is impossible at present; a campaign against Iran is acknowledged by American military strategists to be impractical and potentially ineffective. Finally, even if the United States or Israel could be successful in destroying Iran's government through a military attack, this action would not curtail violence against Israel. More specifically, it would not destroy Hezbollah or Hamas, as the neoconservatives claim.

One can only conclude that the neoconservatives have been calling for Iran's destruction for so long, they can not give up the habit. William Kristol writing in the Weekly Standard and London's Financial Times on July 16 writes: "No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . . little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. " The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page has stated flatly: "Keep in mind that Hezbollah is not the indigenous Lebanese "resistance" organization it claims to be, but is a military creature of Tehran." Neoconservative guru Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute writes: "there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable." Finally, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, picking up these themes announced on July 19 that Hezbollah timed the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, the event which set off the violence, to deflect world attention away from Iran's nuclear development program.

These representative positions sound reasonable in Washington only because they perpetuate the dominant mythology in American foreign policy that State support is the only thing that sustains groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. The glib neoconservative solution: destroy the State supporters, in this case Iran, and the offending groups will be destroyed in turn, sounds great to sound-byte driven legislators who have no knowledge of the Middle Eastern region.

However, with a little reflection, Washington policy makers should be running away from the neoconservatives on this point, since their spiel should sound ominously familiar. It is the precise formula promulgated by a major group of neoconservative advisors, including Richard Pearle, and Douglas Feith to Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. Their paper, entitled "'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," called for the overthrow of the governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria as a way to eliminate threats to Israel, on the theory that this would undercut support for groups opposing Israel.

This call for action was repeated by many of the same neoconservative group members, along with William Kristol, Dick Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad under the rubric of the organization, The Project for the New American Century in 1998. This group wrote a recommendation to President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich calling again for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, in part to obtain security for Israel. The basic logic in these position papers drove the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Then as now, the idea that regime change in the region will secure Israel's safety is wrong. It is mistaken both in its reasoning and in its understanding of basic facts about Hezbollah and Hamas, their history and their purpose.

Hamas, as some, including Kristol, actually point out, is an emanation of the Muslim brotherhood, now enjoying resurgence in Egypt. Hamas predates the Iranian Revolution, since the pedigree of its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 19th Century and the original Islamic Movement led by reformer Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani, designed to counter European powers and the Middle Eastern rulers who collaborated with them to rob the people of the region of their patrimony.

Iran has no control at all over Hamas' actions or its political agenda. The closest Iran comes to actually influencing Hamas is financial support provided based on a general open appeal from Hamas leader Khaled Mesha'al after Hamas came to power in Palestine in a democratic election, and was subsequently isolated by Israel and the United States.

Hezbollah would never have existed if the French had not created a state where the plurality of Shi'a Muslims would be ruled by minority confessional groups in their own nation--groups that had no interest in protecting the Shi'a as they were attacked by Israel throughout the late 20th Century.

Iran was instrumental in the birth of Hezbollah in the early 1980's when it was the only defense available for the Shi'a community. However, today, though Hezbollah uses Iranian arms (Iran in fact sells to many nations), and Iran has communication with Hezbollah, every expert on Hezbollah today agrees that Iran has had no effective control over Hezbollah's actions for several years--especially since Hezbollah has become largely a political and charitable organization. As former CIA analyst and now Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Iran "lacks the means to force a significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah's leadership, or at least its most militant elements simply to sever ties with Tehran's leadership."

In short, both Hamas and Hezbollah have their own history, their own reasons for existing, and their own agendas regarding Israel and the West. The idea that they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with an Iranian agenda is absurd in the extreme. Even if Iran were leveled, like Carthage in Roman times, both Hamas and Hezbollah would continue their struggle against Israel, and the Shi'a world, energized by the outrages perpetrated against it, would continue to grow in strength and defiance.

It is better by far to embrace Iran as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Many Westerners, noting the hostile rhetoric against Israel emanating from Iran may find it hard to believe that Iran could ever play a positive role in a conflict of this sort. However, this attitude is part of the problem. Iran talks the way it does in great part to retaliate against the United States for its actions against Iran. The fact that the United States has not yet found a way to actually talk to Iran exacerbates this situation, promoting even more Iranian hostility.

Iran craves the respect of the international community more than any other commodity one might offer, though Western observers will find their methods for obtaining that respect counter productive. Nevertheless, Iran models its macho posturing on those who confront it—primarily the United States. Iran relishes the idea that it might be offered a respectful position as a peacemaker.

In practical terms, the Islamic Republic may not directly influence the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas, but they offer a way to talk to the two groups. Iran has been willing to serve as mediator in the past in the region, notably in working with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and has garnered bona fides for its efforts. Moreover, Iran has hinted in the recent past that it would drop its hostile posture toward Israel if relations with the United States were to improve.

Many Middle Eastern problems will be solved once the United States decides to get serious about dealing with Iran, as myriad foreign policy advisors, including former National Security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Council on Foreign Relations have recommended. Vilifying Iran is not doing anyone any good, but asking them for a little help might do a great deal to bring peace to the region.
_____________________

William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for more than thirty years. His most recent book is The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

Pragmtism May Trump Zeal as Iran's Power Grows--Christian Science Monitor

Christian Science Monitor
July 6, 2006
Pragmatism may trump zeal as Iran's power grows
Iran faces a July 12 deadline on the West's incentives intended to defuse nuclear standoff.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – Iranians tearfully remember the moment when a US Navy cruiser shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the hazy Persian Gulf, killing all 290 on board.
Eighteen years ago this week, Iranian TV flashed images of bodies and debris floating in the water and the Islamic Republic accused the US of a "barbaric massacre." It added the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655 and its "martyrs" to a long list of grievances that continue to stoke US-Iran hostility.
Now, as Iran prepares to respond to a US offer of direct talks over its nuclear program - the first such high-level public offer since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution - its officials are reexamining their past.
How is the thinking of Iran's arch-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the more powerful clerics led by Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, shaped by their difficult and sometimes violent experience with the US?
That history includes US support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - and Western silence about Iraq's flagrant use of chemical weapons at the time - as well as President Bush's inclusion of Iran in his "axis of evil."
But despite the decades of mistrust, disrespect, and anger, analysts say that Iran's leaders feel they are now in a position of power like never before, so revolutionary zeal is giving way to a new pragmatism that could break the taboo over talks.
"You can't deal with the US from a position of weakness. The only way the US will come around to treat you with respect is from a position of power," says Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii, currently in Tehran.
The US has "historically proven its intent to weaken" Iran, says Ms. Farhi. Iran's leadership shares this view, as do many ordinary Iranians, who otherwise often hold Americans themselves in high regard. "Even among the Iranian population, you can sense a tremendous distrust of US intentions."
Wednesday, Iran postponed talks with the European Union on a bundle of incentives put forward by Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, and the US to ease tensions over its nuclear program. Talks were rescheduled for Thursday to discuss the offer before a July 12 deadline imposed on Iran to respond to the package.
Iran's current sense of strength comes from a coincidence of factors. Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory a year ago placed every lever of power into conservative hands; last April, during the back-and-forth with Europe and the US over Iran's disputed nuclear program, Tehran achieved low-level uranium enrichment.
Iran is buoyed also by a glut of cash from high global oil prices, and has watched as the US military machine - once seen as a tool of "regime change" that would be aimed at Iran - is bogged down fighting an insurgency in Iraq.
"Thanks to the US government, two of Iran's main threats - Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda - have been removed from power," says Abbas Maleki, Iran's former deputy foreign minister, currently at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. "So it's a different situation."
Iran and its leadership have also changed over time, experts say. Dreams of exporting the revolution evaporated long ago. "Twenty years ago, the Iranian public sphere was [still] ideological.... At that time, talk of US-Iran relations was taboo," says Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, a US hostage-taker, former intelligence officer, and provincial governor.
"Now, the Iranian public sphere is pragmatic," says Mr. Jalaiepour, who today teaches political sociology at Tehran University. "The two sides are willing to negotiate. But both sides are bargaining for the price, for their own conditions."
There is new "common ground," because US military control of adjacent Iraq and Afghanistan means "the US is a close neighbor of Iran," says Jalaiepour. Populists like Ahmadinejad "are looking for development [and] need votes"; the US likewise "can't solve its problems through another war, or through sanctions."
There is even a mechanism in Iranian culture that can overcome "all these insults, annoyance, and sabotage" of two estranged parties, says William Beeman, an anthropologist and Iran specialist at Brown University, contacted in Tokyo. "Once reconciliation takes place, it is total, it is absolute sweetness and light from then on."
But sitting down for talks will require some humility. Washington alleges that Iran is the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism," for supporting Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.
And in Tehran, true believers of the revolution can't count the number of American flags they have burned over the years, or effigies of Bush they have torched.
"History is important, but for a new relationship we should forget everything in the past, because those bad events do not help solve the problem," says Amir Mohebian, political editor of the conservative Resalat newspaper in Tehran. "It has been a cold war between the two countries, and it could be a hot war any moment, so each [side] should try to bury the history."
"I think it is a good opportunity for the US, because the generation of the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war are showing that they [can] forget all these problems of the past," says Mr. Maleki, whose brother was killed at the Iran-Iraq front. "All of us - we are ready to forget. We have moved on."
The US experience with Iran fixates on the hostage crisis, when radical students seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and held and humiliated 52 US diplomats for 444 days. US officials also saw an Iranian hand in bomb attacks against US Marines and US Embassy targets in Lebanon, and even the kidnapping of Americans there in the 1980s. They add the Khobar Towers bomb in Saudi Arabia in 1996, and charge that today Iran is meddling in Iraq.
Iranian baggage with the US stretches back to a CIA-engineered coup in 1953, that restored Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi to the Peacock Throne. And to that morning in 1988, when the USS Vincennes mistook the airliner for an attacking Iranian jet. In a result that still galls Iranians, the US never apologized for the incident; the ship's air-warfare chief won the Navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement," and all crew received combat-action ribbons.
"It still resonates [in Iran], because it reaffirms the narrative that is already there: that Americans are hypocrites who talk about justice, but when it comes to wars and other people's interests, they always work to undermine it," says the University of Hawaii's Farhi.
A key case was Iranian help to the US on Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. Both Iranian and American officials hoped it would be a seed for US-Iran détente. But instead, within weeks Bush had included Iran - under reform-leaning President Mohammad Khatami - in his "axis of evil."
"Axis of evil was a fiasco for the Khatami government," says Farhi. "That was used by the hard-liners, who said: 'If you give in, if you help from a position of weakness, then you get negative results.' "
Similarly, US officials capped a series of modest goodwill gestures in the late 1990s with a March 2000 speech by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She apologized for the 1953 coup, lifted import restrictions on foodstuffs and carpets, and called for dialogue.
Within days, Khamenei dismissed the apology as too late and irrelevant, because the US "might be committing similar crimes now," according to Kenneth Pollack, then head of Gulf affairs at the US National Security Council. "The hard-liners were just not interested in a rapprochement," Mr. Pollack writes in his book, "The Persian Puzzle."
The same uncompromising approach may apply to American neo-conservatives today. Both US and Israeli voices have excoriated the Bush administration for even considering talks with Iran.
"In the US, demonizing Iran is such an amazingly potent asset for US politicians, that you just don't have anyone cheering for this kind of improvement," says Beeman, author of "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs.'"
Analysts say Iranians - and especially war veterans like Ahmadinejad - still smart from the support by the US and Europe of Hussein's Iraq. The result is a degree of stubborn conviction, that makes Iran's leadership less susceptible to penalties like economic sanctions.
"For a certain segment of people running the country - like Ahmadinejad - they have a can-do mentality [that] gives confidence,'" says Farhi. "They got through the [Iran-Iraq] war. They willed the defense of Iran."
But radicals in Iran have become "officials and statesmen," and the "state machine ... evolves radicals to a pragmatic way," says Jalaiepour. "Maybe the main obstacle today are hard-liners in the US - they are very dangerous - who don't like to solve the US-Iran problem through negotiation."
"This regime has invested heavily in anti-Americanism [and] they can't easily retreat from that position," says Abbas Amanat, professor of Middle East history at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.
"The fact there was a hostage crisis, or the Iran-contra scandal, or even support for Iraq in the war - I don't think these are substantial barriers" to reconciliation, says Mr. Amanat. "What is a barrier is the rhetoric, and memories, of course."

William O. Beeman
Professor, Anthropology; and Theatre, Speech and Dance
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912

Beeman Guest Editorial: The Journalism/Think Tank Merry-Go-Round

Beeman Guest Editorial: The Journalism/Think Tank Merry-Go-Round,

Posted on Informed Comment, Blog maintained by Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2006/06/beeman-guest-editorial-journalismthink.html#comments

William O. Beeman

"The Journalism/Think Tank Merry-Go-Round
And the Dilemma of the Academic Public Intellectual"

' [I want to address] the question of the sad, sad state of American academics in policy formation in the United States today. Think tanks, where no one ever has to go through peer review before publishing the most questionable material, are in the ascendancy. Real scholars are derided as the academy is openly attacked by these quasi-intellectual bodies. No wonder! If the think-tankers' shoddy methods and ideological biases were subject to the scrutiny they deserve, 90% of the garbage that is self-published by their house organs and pushed by their publicity machinery would never see the light of day.

It is so sad now that governmental bodies are no longer calling on academic experts for public testimony in even the most crucial matters where they have unique knowledge. On no subject is this more true than in the Middle East area. If you are not in a think tank in Washington, apparently your expertise matters not at all. Never mind that that the think tank denizens were never in the region, don't know the languages, and never did any research in their lives. If their ideology is in line with the White House, that is good enough.

The media bears a great deal of responsibility in this matter. Lazy, news-cycle driven and subject to the pressure of ideology and publicity flackers, it is so much easier to just call the think tank down the street, or a PR firm like Benador Associates where someone is on call and already in suit and tie, or skirted suit to get to the studio within the next 20 minutes, than to spend the extra half-hour trying to locate an ISDN feed in . . . Minneapolis or Austin to get the best possible expertise on a subject at hand. For the print media a quote--any quote--is often good enough to anchor a story. No time to wait for someone to call back after a seminar! If the reporter can't get the quotable phrase on the first phone call, its on to the next, or once again, to the on-call quotables at the think-tank around the corner.

Even when someone with real expertise can be located, the media vitiates the message by making a fetish of "balance"--an odd feature of American public discourse, documented by my colleague Deborah Tannen in her classic book, The Argument Culture. This means that whatever the subject, a pro and con side must be represented--even if one of the positions is absurd, or representative of an extreme fringe opinion. This results in match-ups like Paul Krugman debating Bill O'Reilly on economic matters and other such ludicrous pairings. This situation has created careers for people like Anne Coulter, David Frum and Jonah Goldberg, who otherwise know very little--but they are reliable as "cons" (pun intended) on virtually any topic that requires an expansion of intellect. No wonder the public doesn't know which way is up.

Sadly, the academy has reacted badly to this state of affairs--not by encouraging its members to shine the light on the slime and mold generated by these propaganda machines, but by fomenting retreat into its own dark little corner where it can be safe and "uncontroversial." The better not to run afoul of its more vocal and ideologically driven alumni and trustees, who believe along with Bill O'Reilly that all knowledge is just opinion anyway, so why not just tell the professoriate what they should be teaching, and what positions they should be espousing? Writing for the public is not only unrewarded by the academy, it is absolutely detrimental to academic careers. Thus fine scholars who do decide to speak out are hit both ways--both by the ideological hacks for whom their truths are uncomfortable, and by their own institutions who see their public activities as controversial and undignified.

Contrast this with the situation in Japan, France, Brazil--in fact, anywhere else in the world--where academics are welcomed and respected in the field of public discourse, and move readily in and out of positions of public responsibility. Likewise, scholars of distinction, such as the incomparable Eric Rouleau, are prized and well-compensated members of the fourth estate.

Despite these stringencies, those of us who are tenured at institutions of higher learning have a special responsibility--a sacred duty--to speak out at every turn to defend free inquiry, and solid knowledge. We are privileged to be able to have careers in research, writing and teaching, and are in debt to society for this. We have the obligation as patriotic citizens and seekers of truth to use, as Juan has consistently, the fruits of our research and knowledge to inform not just the dozen or so colleagues who share our academic sub-specialization, but the public who is hungry for this material, and in the current intellectual desert in America, who desperately needs it. '


William O. Beeman
Professor, Anthropology; and Theatre, Speech and Dance
Brown University

Blog and current Op-ed pieces--Culture and International Affairs
(2004-2005 Visiting Professor, Cultural and Social Anthropology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

Professor Beeman's latest book: The "Great Satan" vs. The "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. (Praeger/Greenwood). '

Comment on the United States State Department offer to Iran by Gary Sick, Director of Gulf2000, Columbia University. Response from William O. Beeman

Comment on the United States State Department offer to Iran by Gary Sick, Director of Gulf2000, Columbia University

I start from the assumption that Rice's statement was a compromise document that was fought out over a period of weeks, perhaps months, in Washington between the warring tribes (the Washington Post in particular documents this in some detail in their front-page story today). One tribe seems to be centered in the State Department in the persons of Condoleeza Rice and Nick Burns; the other tribe is headed by VP Cheney and operates out of his black-box counter-policy staff in the White House -- a new phenomenon in the history of US foreign policy.

Neither side appears to have won an outright victory, though Rice & Co. were able to win the tactical victory of an offer to Iran of possible diplomatic contact. It is important to remember that every word of this statement was weighed and was subject to arguments and objections. So it is possible to learn a lot just by a careful reading.

The entire first half of the document is devoted to a restatement of the US objections to Iran and its nuclear program. This is to appease the Cheneyites that Bush and Condi have not gone wobbly on Iran. At the same time, the word "diplomacy" shows up over and over, which I take as a signal that Bush and Condi have looked at the likely outcome of a military strike and have decided that it is a losing proposition. But they dare not "take it off the table," both as a negotiating tactic and as a necessary sop to those lusting for more blood sport after Iraq.

The preamble also stresses multilateral approaches, identifying the US with its European allies and "the international community." This is, if nothing else, a measurement of how the Cheney forces have been weakened by the unilateralism of Iraq and its aftermath. They must at least pretend to build international support, even if at heart they don't believe in it.

For those of us who have followed the various proposals in op-eds, study groups, and Track II meetings concerning possible contact between Iran and the US, we will appreciate that the language of this statement, though tough, does not resort to the more extravagant rhetoric of the past. There is no talk here of an Axis of Evil, or rogue state, or outlaw regime, or central banker of terror, that have characterized so many American statements about Iran. Remember, in the negotiations of this text, those words were not just casually omitted; they had to be resisted or excised.

Outsiders may find it hard to understand what an accomplishment that may have been.

About half way down, Rice states, "The Iranian people believe they have the right to civil nuclear energy. We acknowledge that right." Although technically that is not new, it effectively defines the boundaries of the discussion. This is not about depriving Iran of nuclear technology (as we tried to do not so very long ago) or even about nuclear power stations or even, in the final analysis, about enrichment -- all of the "red lines" that the US has adopted at various times.

Instead, the US position is now defined very clearly (in the press conference that followed the announcement): "There is a strong international consensus that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, . . .and that if Iran is to have a civil nuclear program it needs to be one in which the international community can have confidence that they're not trying to build a nuclear weapon under cover of civil nuclear power. We have complete and total agreement on that."

That is altogether sensible, but it is also a position that the US has come to adopt only slowly and, in my view, belatedly. It even leaves room -- perhaps inadvertently -- for an outcome in which Iran would preserve some degree of enrichment (laboratory level centrifuge operation under close IAEA supervision?) as a face-saving measure. But that would have to come later in the negotiating process.

Then it gets to the central point: ". . .to underscore our commitment to a diplomatic solution and to enhance the prospects for success, as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran's representatives."

It is an amusing little irony that the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, who is one of the hardest of all hardliners on this subject, and who presumably resisted it in the internal debate, was appointed to be the messenger to deliver advance notice of the decision to the Iranian UN ambassador, Javad Zarif, who is widely regarded as a proponent of better US-Iran relations. It would have been interesting to listen to that conversation.

Immediately thereafter, the text slips back to more hardline dogma. President Bush, it notes, "wants a new and positive relationship between the American people and the people of Iran." This relationship is to be between the peoples of the two countries, not their governments; and all talk of more formal relations is dismissed. There is not even a substantive hint about the possible agenda for US-Iran interaction in the nuclear talks. Instead, "We believe the Iranian people want a future of freedom and human rights-. the right to vote, to run for office, to express their views without fear, and to pursue political causes. We would welcome the progress, prosperity, and freedom of the Iranian people."

That is merely a polite way of saying that we want the present Iranian government to go away and be replaced by something else, i.e. regime change. So the US hardliners get the last word, albeit in softer language than they might otherwise prefer. That is why Condi Rice must react in horror to the idea that this might be the beginning of a "grand bargain" with the Iranian regime. That is anathema to neo-Cheney dogma.
However, if you think that this is simply a neo-con package with a bit of new ribbon, just consult the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal today, or the article by Michael Rubin in the National Review Online entitled "Damage Is Done: The Bush administration's bad Iran move" And there will be much more. This was a major battle; it inspired outrage by those whose ideological convictions failed to carry the day; and it's not over.

So what should we make of all this?

First of all, it really is a major shift in US policy. Regardless of spin, the offer to join the talks is a reversal of previous US positions and was achieved only after a good bit of bureaucratic blood was spilled.

Second, it is also a compromise, consequently unsatisfactory to purists of all stripes. However, in comparing this US initiative to Ahmadinejad's crude letter, this comes out looking pretty good.

Third, its outcome is quite uncertain. If Iran's leaders see it as a potential opening to satisfy Iran's national pride and also to pursue its larger goals of integration and respect in the international community, they could construct a tentative but positive response that would challenge the US side to go beyond the bare bones of this statement.

That could be the beginning of a useful process that could address a larger range of issues that divide the two countries. Secretary Rice protests that no such outcome is envisaged, and the neo-con publicists tremble at the thought that Iran just possibly might not reject the offer out of hand, thereby starting an actual negotiating process that would address more than the nuclear issue and might even lead to evolution rather than revolution in Iran.

If, however, Iran follows the dictates of its own neo-conservatives who believe that the US is presently a toothless tiger that can be dismissed with impunity, then the hardliners in Washington will also win and we will have missed still another opportunity to resolve some of the issues between the two countries, which have festered unattended for more than a quarter of a century.

We will also edge closer to the time when Iran gets into the nuclear weapons business. If we had decided ten years ago that our objective was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and if we had been willing to engage with them then and put a reasonable offer on the table, it is very likely that Iran would not have even a nascent enrichment capability today. But several US administrations deluded themselves into thinking that we could keep the Iranians technologically dumb and deprived, by pure coercion and pressure. Now they have at least a rudimentary enrichment capability, and it is delusional to think that they will give it up entirely.

Both sides have walked away from potentially beneficial arrangements over the years. Later we both look back and realize that the price of a new bargain will be far higher than the one we earlier rejected. This is merely the latest in this sad procession, and it is too early to say which of the warring tribes -- whether in Washington or Tehran -- will ultimately prevail.


Response from William Beeman

I thank Gary Sick for his wise and insightful analysis of the current turning point in U.S.-Iranian affairs. I recognize from Gary's careful reading of the Rice document that genuine change is in the offing, and am persuaded that the situation is indeed conducive to easing tensions, and even to creating eventual rapprochement between the United States and Iran. The question will be whether people of good will in both Iran and the United States will have the courage and the resources to stay the course despite the considerable forces that will be working hard to sabotage the process.

Massive political and economic forces in the United States are deeply invested in preserving enmity between the two countries. Both Democrats and Republicans have shamelessly used attacks on Iran as an all-purpose posture whenever they were empty of any thoughtful opinion on foreign policy. Getting these politicians to recant those positions is going to be hard--since changing a strongly expressed public opinion gives one's political enemies an easy route of political attack. Political advocacy groups such as AIPAC, AEI and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy have built permanent attacks on Iran into their fundamental operating and funding procedures. The editorial pages of major newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times know they have a boost in reader approval every time they deliver a body blow to Iran. Iran and 9/11 are the all-purpose excuses for everything that goes wrong in the world for the Bush administration. Attacking Iran is an industry, in fact, and getting all those people to give it up will be very hard, as Madeline Albright found out in her first brave effort during the Clinton administration.

Iranian officials are no less shameful in using "The Great Satan did it" as the excuse for their failures, or justifying their more questionable actions as defense against American attacks. Remove the putative American threat and all those flaws and failures will have to be addressed.

As fervently as forces in the U.S. political establishment would like to see the Iranian government dry up and blow away, it just will not happen--not with bombing, not with subversion, and not by trying to create dissention among Iran's ethnic and religious groups. Nor will Iran relinquish rights that it shares with other nations just because the United States wants it to happen. From the Iranian side, the United States is not going to remove itself from the Gulf region very soon, nor will it give up supporting Israel; and this will not change whether Democrats or Republicans are in power. These are hard facts that both sides will have to learn to live with.

The simple truth is that these hard facts are not so hard to live with after all when the opportunity to talk them over exists on a regular basis in the context of a community of nations who share a common view of the need to promote the welfare of the world, not just the interests of a narrow spectrum of nations. The present situation is indeed a watershed. Even if the entire effort falls apart, it will be easier to return to this same point now that it has been attained.