Tehran Wanted to Deny Carter any Kind of Victory
Interview with William O. Beeman - 2009.01.21
Barack Obama’s views on the Middle East are not very different from the Bush Administration’s, said Professor William Beeman, Chair of Anthropology and specialist in Middle East Studies at the University of Minnesota, in an interview with Rooz.
However Barack Obama’s promise of change during the presidential election has led many to expect his Middle East foreign policy approach to differ from that of President Bush.
Almost thirty years ago Iran’s revolution, and the hostage taking tragedy, was tied to U.S. presidential elections and now, once again, Iran seems to be one of the major foreign policy issues that the new President will face in the White House. Iran’s increasing influence throughout the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Lebanon and Palestine, and Tehran’s nuclear program has been the major concerns of the U.S. towards Iran over the past years.
Beeman's most recent work, The “Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other”, deals with the highly negative rhetoric and discourse between Iran and the United States over the three decades since the Iranian revolution, and its effects on national attitudes toward the Bush administration's policy towards Iran, as well as the possibility of military confrontation between the two nations.
In an interview with Rooz, Beeman explained how the delay in releasing American hostages in 1980, contributed to the fall of President Jimmy Carter. “I believe the Iranian government wanted to deny Carter any kind of victory, so yes, I believe the delay from the Iranian side was enacted on purpose,” said Beeman adding that, “The characterizations of Carter in Iran were very bitter, likening him to all kinds of mythological villains.”
At this time many Iranians are hoping that Obama’s election will bring a new approach by the new administration to start talking to the Iranian government, and an end to three decades of punishment of the Iranian people because of Iranian government’s international defiance, Beeman believes that picking Denis Ross, as the key person at the State Department to deal with Iran will be a mistake. “The neoconservatives do not want a different policy,” said Beeman adding that, “They want to continue to attack Iran, or have Israel do it, and the Obama administration is not able to do anything about it.”
Rooz: Do you believe that in 1980 there existed politicians in the United States who were interested in using the hostage issue in order to influence the results of the presidential elections?
William Beeman (WB): We will probably never know whether there was a real "October Surprise," though there has been much evidence in support of it. There is no question that ANY issue coming before an election is used by both parties to affect the outcome of the election--even the silliest and most trivial matters become important, largely because voters are very shallow in their opinions and in their research of candidates.
Rooz: Do you believe in the October Surprise Conspiracy theory in the 1980 elections? And that Ronald Reagan’s elections campaign had attempted to convince Iranian officials in its talks with them to postpone the release of the American hostages until after the elections in the US in return for providing American weapons to Iran?
WB: Personally, I don't believe in the conspiracy. Moreover, the hostage crisis had been settled by the time of the elections. It was only the actual release of the hostages that was delayed. I think that Carter's overall incompetence, particularly the abortive rescue mission, was the more important factor affecting the election.
R: Why did the congressional and the Senate investigations about the possibility of an October Surprise lead to no proof in this regard?
WB: I am assuming that there was no proof because there was no proof. As I said above, it almost doesn't matter. The hostage crisis had already doomed the Carter administration. I suppose that if the hostages had been released before the election, things might have been different, but Carter was already far down in the polls. Also, the U.S. economy was in terrible shape, and that usually is more important than any foreign policy issue in determining the election.
R: Was there a pre-determined desire to disprove the October Surprise possibility?
WB: Certainly, the Republicans wanted to disprove this. They wanted their candidate to be elected on his merits, not by default.
R: In the last meeting of the Iranian Parliament on the subject in October 1980, in which it had to decide on the release of the hostages, representatives who were opposed to the release of the hostages who constituted a minority prevented Parliament from reaching a decision through an obstruction thus postponing the release of the Americans to after the elections (specifically, 20 minutes after President Reagan was sworn in). Do you believe that this was an accidental event?
WB: Quite aside from whether Reagan made a "deal" with the Iranians, I believe the Iranian government wanted to deny Carter any kind of victory, so yes, I believe the delay from the Iranian side was enacted on purpose. The characterizations of Carter in Iran were very bitter--likening him to all kinds of mythological villains, like Zohak, the White Div, and Yazid.
R: To what extent did the hostage taking of American diplomats in Iran impact the outcome of US presidential election in 1980?
WB: It was important, because it showed Carter to be ineffective.
R: In addition to some American analysts supporting the October Surprise theory, the then-President of Iran and the Foreign Minister at the time (who was subsequently executed by the regime) have both stressed how Iranian officials from the ruling party met with officials from the US Republican party and agreed to postpone releasing the hostages to after the 1980 elections so that Carter would not use the opportunity for his re-election bid. The Russian intelligence apparatus in 1993 in response to a Congressional inquiry about the October Surprise, also confirmed the views of the Iranian officials. Were the above-mentioned Russians and Iranians points either wrong or they have been untruthful?
WB: There was definitely a confluence of interests between the Republicans and Iranian officials, all of whom wanted to deny Carter a victory. There is some indication that Iran and the U.S. were on somewhat better footing in the Reagan administration than, say, today. The Iran-Contra affair could not have taken place if there was not some kind of communication between the two parties. Also, accusations of support of terrorists, despite Iran's support of Hezbollah, did not occur during the Reagan administration. The U.S. was blaming Libya during this time for support of terrorism (under AIPAC guidance). Also, Iran was engaging in arms trafficking with Israel, so things were somewhat friendlier between Iran and the U.S. It certainly could stem from this communality of interest. It is also interesting that initially, Iranian officials expressed a preference for George W. Bush, saying that Iran had generally fared better under Republicans than Democrats. Of course the Bush administration broke that pattern.
R: Tuesday, the 20th, is the swearing in day of Barack Obama as the next President of the U.S. In your view, what role did issues in the Middle East, and particularly Iran, play in electing Obama to the presidency?
WB: Not very much. Obama's views on the Middle East are not very different from the current administration. He has called for negotiations in preference to force as a way of dealing with the problems of the region, and he called for American withdrawal from Iraq. The Republicans tried to use these two positions against him without success. Most Americans seem to agree with Obama on these points.
R: What has been the impact of issues regarding Iran on the US presidential election until now?
WB: Only Obama's opinion that talks should be undertaken with Iran was even used in debate. Obama has officially called for Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment and "stop supporting terrorism." The neo-cons are very cynical. They think that they can agree to let talks take place on the assumption that they will fail, and then the U.S. can go ahead with its former hostile posturing.
R: Do you have a personal anecdote that may be of interest to Iranian readers about the U.S. presidential election in 1980 and the impact of the timing of the release of the American hostages after the election?
WB: Yes, Professor Marvin Zonis and I were consulting with Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. As soon as we left his office, he resigned his position. He showed us that he was disgusted with the ineffectiveness of the Carter administration and was furious at the rescue mission, which was undertaken without his knowledge while he was on vacation. The mission (which failed) was a total surprise to him. I later cited this incident in calling for Colin Powell to resign after his fatal speech to the United Nations, because he had been equally badly used by the Bush administration.
You should know that I was in Iran until February 1979, and witnessed the entire revolution, but not the hostage crisis. A number of my friends were hostages.
R: You mentioned that Obama's foreign policy would not be much different than George W. Bush. With Denis Ross, as the key person to deal with Iran at the State Department, and given his background in this field, how will Obama's premise of change be accomplished?
WB: Clearly, it won't. Ross is being pushed by the neocons (WINEP, AEI), and the Obama transition team is in the pocket of AIPAC. They want to plant their operatives in the Obama administration.
R: President Bush changed the Republican's pattern toward Iran. Is there any potential that Democrats break their pattern as well and initiate a more friendly relation with Iran?
WB: Obviously, I hope so, but both Democrats and Republicans have had more or less the same policy toward Iran since the Revolution. No politician ever lost a vote by attacking Iran.
R: Thomas Friedman once said, Iran and the United States are natural allies. How does the possible designation of Denis Ross contribute to this?
It won't. Picking Ross is a mistake, if the idea is to have a different policy toward Iran. The neocons do not want a different policy. They want to continue to attack Iran, or have Israel do it, and the Obama administration not able to do anything about it.
R: The United States is facing with a variety of difficulties in the Middle East and the possibility of going to war with Iran seems pretty slim. Can the Obama administration live with a nuclear Iran, in case both countries compromise on some of their positions and policies?
WB: Do you believe Iran has an active nuclear weapons program? I don't. We can definitely live with Iran having nuclear power. The US is selling nuclear power to the UAE for heaven's sake.
Regarding the wall of mistrust between the two countries, in what sort of scenario would negotiations with Iran succeed?
It all starts with opening formal relations. Right now the U.S. and Iran have no relations whatever. Until they do, nothing can proceed.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Obama pledges new tack on Iran (The National--Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Obama pledges new tack on Iran
Michael Theodoulou, Foreign Correspondent
* Last Updated: January 12. 2009 9:30AM UAE / January 12. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Commentary by William O. Beeman: President Elect Obama's transition team is notoriously weak on comprehensive Middle East expertise, and the persons who have been advising the Obama transition team are closely associated with neoconservatives who have dominated the Bush administration. Dennis Ross is on the roster of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) which has kept up the drumbeat for attacks on Iran, and has urged a hard military line against the Palestinian community. Another Obama advisor is Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and co-founder of WINEP. These individuals will largely assure that Bush-era policies in the Middle East will continue during the Obama administration.
Yasser Arafat, right, the late Palestinian president, welcomes Dennis Ross, a US state department co-ordinator in the Middle East, on his arrival for a meeting in Gaza City in this Dec 1996 file photo. Mohammed Rawas / AP
Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has renewed a pledge to engage Iran swiftly in a new approach to curb Tehran’s nuclear quest that he portrayed as one of the “biggest challenges” facing his administration.
His remarks, made in an interview with a US television network yesterday, will offer some reassurance to those in Tehran and Washington hoping for an improved relationship between the superpower and the strategically important Islamic republic.
That scenario is unlikely to please Israel, which is striving to present its onslaught against a vastly outgunned Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a proxy war against Iran, which is supposedly committed to the destruction of the state.
Advocates of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran were dismayed by credible reports in recent days that Mr Obama is ready to make Dennis Ross his main point man on Iran. Although Mr Ross is a highly experienced diplomat, his critics say he is too close to Israel and hawkish on Iran, a bewilderingly complex country of which he has little experience. Similar misgivings apply to Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, and to Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state.
Mr Obama acknowledged that “Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges” and warned that a nuclear-armed Iran “could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East”.
He also expressed concern about Iran’s support for Hizbollah and Hamas. But he promised: “We are going to have to take a new approach. And I’ve outlined my belief that engagement is the place to start.” He would make clear “that we respect the aspirations of the Iranian people, but that we also have certain expectations in terms of how an international actor behaves”.
Mr Obama had raised hopes of better relations early during his election campaign by promising to break with George W Bush’s policy of not talking to Iran until it suspended uranium enrichment.
But following his presidential victory, Mr Obama served notice he would be no pushover, declaring: “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that happening.”
His words yesterday signal a different approach to that supported by Mr Ross, who apparently has been offered a new state department post designed to manage Washington’s relationship with Iran. But the suggestion that Mr Ross will be an exalted Middle East super-envoy with a defining say on Iran policy may be fanciful. That he had secured such a post came in a leaked internal memo between members of a pro-Israeli Washington think tank for which Mr Ross works.
Instead, it is likely Mr Ross will be one of a “team of [state department] equals” advising Mr Obama on Iran, according to a blog by Jim Lobe, a Washington-based expert on US foreign policy.
Mr Ross put his name to a bipartisan report in November that urged Mr Obama to beef up the US’s military presence in the Gulf to strengthen Washington’s negotiating hand immediately on taking office. If muscular diplomacy failed, the United States would then be primed for military action “as a last resort”, the report said.
“Ross is in lockstep with the Bush administration on Iran – including ritual recitation of neo-conservative talking points on Iran’s nuclear programme. He is not likely to be trusted or welcomed by Iranian officials,” said Professor William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota.
Mr Ross is a veteran of the Arab-Israeli conflict, having led US peace efforts in the Middle East peace efforts for both Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush.
He played a leading role in an interim peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1995, worked on the failed effort to arrange peace between Israel and Syria and the ultimately unsuccessful Camp David talks between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000.
Palestinians regarded Mr Ross as pro-Israeli in peace talks – a reputation he shares among Iranian officials. Press TV, Iran’s English language satellite channel, has described him as a “notorious Israel-firster”.
Henry Precht, a retired US diplomat who headed the state department’s Iran desk during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, suspects that Mr Obama will be loath to upset Israel by pressing it simultaneously on two issues.
“If he wants to appear to be doing something un-Bush-like on the Arab-Israeli front and working seriously for land for peace, he will have to forgo any real and positive change on the Iran front,” he said in an interview.
“Dennis Ross will do nicely in holding that front stable.” Putting Iran “in the ice box” might also appeal to Washington because “progress in any conceivable event will come very slowly”.
mtheodoulou@thenational.ae
Michael Theodoulou, Foreign Correspondent
* Last Updated: January 12. 2009 9:30AM UAE / January 12. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Commentary by William O. Beeman: President Elect Obama's transition team is notoriously weak on comprehensive Middle East expertise, and the persons who have been advising the Obama transition team are closely associated with neoconservatives who have dominated the Bush administration. Dennis Ross is on the roster of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) which has kept up the drumbeat for attacks on Iran, and has urged a hard military line against the Palestinian community. Another Obama advisor is Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and co-founder of WINEP. These individuals will largely assure that Bush-era policies in the Middle East will continue during the Obama administration.
Yasser Arafat, right, the late Palestinian president, welcomes Dennis Ross, a US state department co-ordinator in the Middle East, on his arrival for a meeting in Gaza City in this Dec 1996 file photo. Mohammed Rawas / AP
Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has renewed a pledge to engage Iran swiftly in a new approach to curb Tehran’s nuclear quest that he portrayed as one of the “biggest challenges” facing his administration.
His remarks, made in an interview with a US television network yesterday, will offer some reassurance to those in Tehran and Washington hoping for an improved relationship between the superpower and the strategically important Islamic republic.
That scenario is unlikely to please Israel, which is striving to present its onslaught against a vastly outgunned Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a proxy war against Iran, which is supposedly committed to the destruction of the state.
Advocates of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran were dismayed by credible reports in recent days that Mr Obama is ready to make Dennis Ross his main point man on Iran. Although Mr Ross is a highly experienced diplomat, his critics say he is too close to Israel and hawkish on Iran, a bewilderingly complex country of which he has little experience. Similar misgivings apply to Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, and to Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state.
Mr Obama acknowledged that “Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges” and warned that a nuclear-armed Iran “could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East”.
He also expressed concern about Iran’s support for Hizbollah and Hamas. But he promised: “We are going to have to take a new approach. And I’ve outlined my belief that engagement is the place to start.” He would make clear “that we respect the aspirations of the Iranian people, but that we also have certain expectations in terms of how an international actor behaves”.
Mr Obama had raised hopes of better relations early during his election campaign by promising to break with George W Bush’s policy of not talking to Iran until it suspended uranium enrichment.
But following his presidential victory, Mr Obama served notice he would be no pushover, declaring: “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that happening.”
His words yesterday signal a different approach to that supported by Mr Ross, who apparently has been offered a new state department post designed to manage Washington’s relationship with Iran. But the suggestion that Mr Ross will be an exalted Middle East super-envoy with a defining say on Iran policy may be fanciful. That he had secured such a post came in a leaked internal memo between members of a pro-Israeli Washington think tank for which Mr Ross works.
Instead, it is likely Mr Ross will be one of a “team of [state department] equals” advising Mr Obama on Iran, according to a blog by Jim Lobe, a Washington-based expert on US foreign policy.
Mr Ross put his name to a bipartisan report in November that urged Mr Obama to beef up the US’s military presence in the Gulf to strengthen Washington’s negotiating hand immediately on taking office. If muscular diplomacy failed, the United States would then be primed for military action “as a last resort”, the report said.
“Ross is in lockstep with the Bush administration on Iran – including ritual recitation of neo-conservative talking points on Iran’s nuclear programme. He is not likely to be trusted or welcomed by Iranian officials,” said Professor William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota.
Mr Ross is a veteran of the Arab-Israeli conflict, having led US peace efforts in the Middle East peace efforts for both Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush.
He played a leading role in an interim peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1995, worked on the failed effort to arrange peace between Israel and Syria and the ultimately unsuccessful Camp David talks between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000.
Palestinians regarded Mr Ross as pro-Israeli in peace talks – a reputation he shares among Iranian officials. Press TV, Iran’s English language satellite channel, has described him as a “notorious Israel-firster”.
Henry Precht, a retired US diplomat who headed the state department’s Iran desk during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, suspects that Mr Obama will be loath to upset Israel by pressing it simultaneously on two issues.
“If he wants to appear to be doing something un-Bush-like on the Arab-Israeli front and working seriously for land for peace, he will have to forgo any real and positive change on the Iran front,” he said in an interview.
“Dennis Ross will do nicely in holding that front stable.” Putting Iran “in the ice box” might also appeal to Washington because “progress in any conceivable event will come very slowly”.
mtheodoulou@thenational.ae
Saturday, January 10, 2009
UNSC Votes for Ceasefire in Gaza
UNSC votes for ceasefire in Gaza
09 January 2009 Friday 22:14
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Coverage of the fighting in Gaza has been scant in the United States. Iran's PressTV is one of the only entities with broadcasts on the ground and running commentary. Their coverage is being picked up by the international press, including this story from Haber27 (Haber="news"), a major Turkish news site. Americans who want accurate information about the events in Gaza are advised to seek non-U.S. sources for their information.
The UN Security Council has voted for an immediate and durable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces. However, the United States abstained from voting on the ceasefire resolution while all other fourteen members voted in favor of the binding resolution.
Resolution 1860 also called for 'unimpeded provision' and distribution of aid in the coastal enclave and the reopening of all border crossings to the region, which has been under Israeli siege during the past eight months.
Earlier Friday, Saudi Arabia and Britain said that a final text on the Gaza conflict was agreed on by Western and Arab nations.
And they were expecting a vote by the UN Security Council in New York, after diplomats spent three days forging the language.
Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, called the compromise 'a historic event,' speaking to reporters late Thursday following hours of negotiations between the two sides.
However, after showing up late for the meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abstained from voting.
The US abstention dashed all the hopes that diplomats had previously fostered for a unanimous vote in favor of the resolution, Press TV's Mike Mazzocco reported from the UN headquarters on Thursday.
Now all delegations, especially those looking for a ceasefire, are looking to Israel to stop its military incursion into Gaza, he added.
"At this point no one is sure whether this resolution will be backed up by force or at all if Israel does not withdraw its forces from Gaza. Palestinian delegation says they expect two more days of the Israeli incursion into Gaza," said the correspondent.
Mazzocco pointed out that Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev had walked out of the meeting in a huff, brushing off reporters and giving no indication that Tel Aviv planned to implement the resolution.
"Responsibility for the current hostilities lies squarely with Hamas… The international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas's terrorist activity," Shalev told the Council.
Rice's comments during the meeting indicated that the US was unhappy with the fact that the resolution did not include an explicit condemnation of Hamas, Mazzocco reported.
Commenting on the resolution, Professor William Beeman of the University of Minnesota said that the call for ceasefire endangers the absolute victory that Israel seeks.
Despite US efforts to give Israel more time to destroy Hamas the regime has been battling in Gaza for two weeks without much success, said Beeman, referring to the three UN motions that the US has vetoed since the beginning of the conflict.
"Israel can not be successful in Gaza. Nevertheless they are reaching very hard for a victory that can not take place," he added.
Meanwhile, Arab League chief Amr Mussa welcomed the resolution and stressed that 'there was no American veto.'
"The important thing is for Israel to respect and implement the will of the international community," he added.
Other Arab officials also welcomed the motion as they are under heavy pressure from their people to prevent the continuation of Israel's 14-day onslaught against Gazans.
Following the adoption of the resolution, US Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that he was relieved to see the motion pass through and called on all sides to 'fully' respect its content.
"I am heartened and relieved at the adoption by the Council today of a resolution to bring an end to this tragic situation. Your decision signals the will of the international community. It must be fully respected by all parties to this conflict," he said.
Just hours after the council voted for the resolution Israeli fire hit at least thirty targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least nine other Palestinians including four children.
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09 January 2009 Friday 22:14
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Coverage of the fighting in Gaza has been scant in the United States. Iran's PressTV is one of the only entities with broadcasts on the ground and running commentary. Their coverage is being picked up by the international press, including this story from Haber27 (Haber="news"), a major Turkish news site. Americans who want accurate information about the events in Gaza are advised to seek non-U.S. sources for their information.
The UN Security Council has voted for an immediate and durable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces. However, the United States abstained from voting on the ceasefire resolution while all other fourteen members voted in favor of the binding resolution.
Resolution 1860 also called for 'unimpeded provision' and distribution of aid in the coastal enclave and the reopening of all border crossings to the region, which has been under Israeli siege during the past eight months.
Earlier Friday, Saudi Arabia and Britain said that a final text on the Gaza conflict was agreed on by Western and Arab nations.
And they were expecting a vote by the UN Security Council in New York, after diplomats spent three days forging the language.
Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, called the compromise 'a historic event,' speaking to reporters late Thursday following hours of negotiations between the two sides.
However, after showing up late for the meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abstained from voting.
The US abstention dashed all the hopes that diplomats had previously fostered for a unanimous vote in favor of the resolution, Press TV's Mike Mazzocco reported from the UN headquarters on Thursday.
Now all delegations, especially those looking for a ceasefire, are looking to Israel to stop its military incursion into Gaza, he added.
"At this point no one is sure whether this resolution will be backed up by force or at all if Israel does not withdraw its forces from Gaza. Palestinian delegation says they expect two more days of the Israeli incursion into Gaza," said the correspondent.
Mazzocco pointed out that Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev had walked out of the meeting in a huff, brushing off reporters and giving no indication that Tel Aviv planned to implement the resolution.
"Responsibility for the current hostilities lies squarely with Hamas… The international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas's terrorist activity," Shalev told the Council.
Rice's comments during the meeting indicated that the US was unhappy with the fact that the resolution did not include an explicit condemnation of Hamas, Mazzocco reported.
Commenting on the resolution, Professor William Beeman of the University of Minnesota said that the call for ceasefire endangers the absolute victory that Israel seeks.
Despite US efforts to give Israel more time to destroy Hamas the regime has been battling in Gaza for two weeks without much success, said Beeman, referring to the three UN motions that the US has vetoed since the beginning of the conflict.
"Israel can not be successful in Gaza. Nevertheless they are reaching very hard for a victory that can not take place," he added.
Meanwhile, Arab League chief Amr Mussa welcomed the resolution and stressed that 'there was no American veto.'
"The important thing is for Israel to respect and implement the will of the international community," he added.
Other Arab officials also welcomed the motion as they are under heavy pressure from their people to prevent the continuation of Israel's 14-day onslaught against Gazans.
Following the adoption of the resolution, US Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that he was relieved to see the motion pass through and called on all sides to 'fully' respect its content.
"I am heartened and relieved at the adoption by the Council today of a resolution to bring an end to this tragic situation. Your decision signals the will of the international community. It must be fully respected by all parties to this conflict," he said.
Just hours after the council voted for the resolution Israeli fire hit at least thirty targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least nine other Palestinians including four children.
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Wednesday, January 07, 2009
LA Times--William O. Beeman Response to Halevi and Oren "Defeat Iran to Defeat Hamas"
Re “Defeat Hamas to defeat Iran,” Opinion, Jan. 4
In maintaining that Israel is really fighting Iran in Gaza, not Hamas or the Palestinians, Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren conveniently ignore the historical relations between Hamas and Iran. <
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
>
Hamas arose during the first Palestinian intifada with its own philosophy and beliefs. Iran's initial offers of aid were spurned by Hamas' leadership as pure opportunism.
Today, Iran provides little more than lip service to Hamas' cause for its own propaganda efforts.
Even now, the Israeli government seems to be exaggerating Iran's role in order to create an enemy proportionate to Israel's hammering of the people of Gaza. It is despicable to cruelly smash a small, inadequately armed group of virtual prisoners.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis
The writer is a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
In maintaining that Israel is really fighting Iran in Gaza, not Hamas or the Palestinians, Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren conveniently ignore the historical relations between Hamas and Iran. <
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
>
Hamas arose during the first Palestinian intifada with its own philosophy and beliefs. Iran's initial offers of aid were spurned by Hamas' leadership as pure opportunism.
Today, Iran provides little more than lip service to Hamas' cause for its own propaganda efforts.
Even now, the Israeli government seems to be exaggerating Iran's role in order to create an enemy proportionate to Israel's hammering of the people of Gaza. It is despicable to cruelly smash a small, inadequately armed group of virtual prisoners.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis
The writer is a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet--William O. Beeman (New America Media)
Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2008
Editor’s Note: The popular wisdom that Iran is pulling the strings behind
Hamas doesn’t take into account the geography of Gaza argues William O.
Beeman. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and past-president of the Middle East Section
of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of “The
‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran
Demonize Each Other,” published by the University of Chicago Press
(2008).
________________________
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and
Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and
is now widely promulgated with little or no support.
Iran has, it is true, been sympathetic to the Hamas situation, particularly
since the U.S.-endorsed Palestinian elections of 2006, when Hamas won a
plurality of votes, allowing it to form a government. Subsequently, the new
Palestinian government was rejected by Israel and the United States, and an
economic embargo plunged the Palestinians into economic chaos. At that
point Iran provided substantial humanitarian aid.
In the present conflict, Iran is also sending two ships to provide
humanitarian assistance.
However, American and Israeli analysts would have the world believe that
Hamas could not carry out any actions against Israel if they were not
directed by Iran. As George Joffee of the Cambridge Centre of International
Studies maintained in 2006 in an interview with U.S.-based Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty, “The Israeli government has alleged that
indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to
control the events inside the Occupied Territories and there have been
allegations with no proof at all, of involvement in some of the more
violent activities there. Those links I suspect are largely Israeli
propaganda and don't really carry water.”
The same is true today.
No one promulgating the theory that Hamas’s attacks on Israel are
directed by Iran bothers to think much about geography. Hamas has been
effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt. The Israelis
have essentially controlled the import of food and medical supplies. The
idea of Iran shipping arms to Hamas under these conditions is patently
absurd. The rockets launched against Israel that started the current
conflict were clearly homemade, low-level weapons, not sophisticated arms.
A parallel claim is that Iranians are providing training to Hamas. Given
the rhetoric, one would imagine that this is being done on a massive scale.
However, on March 9, 2008 the Times of London reported that 150 Hamas
fighters were being trained in Tehran. Hamas itself claims to have 15,000
fighters, and Israel has millions of potential fighters at its command.
Thus training for a team of 150, if the facts are correct, is hardly much
of a threat to Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is sometimes cited as an Iranian cat’s-paw in the
region, but Hezbollah has no geographical access to Gaza. Therefore they
are limited to leading protests in Lebanon. Timur Goksel, former adviser to
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon, told Reuters News Agency on Dec. 30, “With
all their rhetoric about Palestine, there is not much [Hezbollah] can do
about Gaza, short of getting Lebanon involved in another disaster. So they
are leading the popular reaction.”
Egypt is not a conduit for Iranian arms either. President Hosni Mubarak is
caught in a dilemma with regard to Gaza. He receives aid from the United
States, and has a long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Moreover, his
secular government is desperately afraid of Islamic extremism, which they
see as a threat. Because Hamas has a religious base, not a secular one like
Fatah, its rival for power in the Palestinian community, they are seen as
dangerous. For this reason, Egypt has kept the border crossing to Gaza
firmly closed except for humanitarian emergencies.
Why then does the myth of Iranian military support persist? One reason is
that it has been a long-standing American foreign policy belief that
resistance movements cannot exist without state support. Before Iran was
targeted as the source for support, Libya was the U.S. bogeyman. It is
instructive to look at rhetoric against Libya from the 1980s and see that
exactly the same accusations that were leveled at Libya then are being
hurled at Iran today.
Finally, Iran does not help matters. The rhetoric of the original Iranian
revolution is still alive and well in some segments of Iranian political
life. Iran ousted a Western-supported leader, the Shah, and tried in the
early days of the revolution to promulgate this action elsewhere in the
Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas were sympathetic rhetorical partners. Iran
supported Hezbollah in its early days, but no longer controls its
operations. Iran had nothing to do with the founding of Hamas, but sees its
conflict with Israel as sympathetic with its revolutionary ideals. This
does not mean that Iran is controlling the action.
The more apoplectic visions of Iranian involvement see Iran developing
nuclear weapons and supplying them to both Hezbollah and Hamas. However,
not only is there no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program; the
simple logistics of transfer of such weapons to a place like Gaza are
virtually impossible.
For Israel, and the world, blaming Iran for its troubles with Hamas does
not advance the peace process. Nor would attacking Iran mitigate in any way
the tensions that exist between Israel and its neighbors.
(Note: Please consult the original article for links to references and footnotes to quoted sources)
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2008
Editor’s Note: The popular wisdom that Iran is pulling the strings behind
Hamas doesn’t take into account the geography of Gaza argues William O.
Beeman. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and past-president of the Middle East Section
of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of “The
‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran
Demonize Each Other,” published by the University of Chicago Press
(2008).
________________________
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and
Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and
is now widely promulgated with little or no support.
Iran has, it is true, been sympathetic to the Hamas situation, particularly
since the U.S.-endorsed Palestinian elections of 2006, when Hamas won a
plurality of votes, allowing it to form a government. Subsequently, the new
Palestinian government was rejected by Israel and the United States, and an
economic embargo plunged the Palestinians into economic chaos. At that
point Iran provided substantial humanitarian aid.
In the present conflict, Iran is also sending two ships to provide
humanitarian assistance.
However, American and Israeli analysts would have the world believe that
Hamas could not carry out any actions against Israel if they were not
directed by Iran. As George Joffee of the Cambridge Centre of International
Studies maintained in 2006 in an interview with U.S.-based Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty, “The Israeli government has alleged that
indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to
control the events inside the Occupied Territories and there have been
allegations with no proof at all, of involvement in some of the more
violent activities there. Those links I suspect are largely Israeli
propaganda and don't really carry water.”
The same is true today.
No one promulgating the theory that Hamas’s attacks on Israel are
directed by Iran bothers to think much about geography. Hamas has been
effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt. The Israelis
have essentially controlled the import of food and medical supplies. The
idea of Iran shipping arms to Hamas under these conditions is patently
absurd. The rockets launched against Israel that started the current
conflict were clearly homemade, low-level weapons, not sophisticated arms.
A parallel claim is that Iranians are providing training to Hamas. Given
the rhetoric, one would imagine that this is being done on a massive scale.
However, on March 9, 2008 the Times of London reported that 150 Hamas
fighters were being trained in Tehran. Hamas itself claims to have 15,000
fighters, and Israel has millions of potential fighters at its command.
Thus training for a team of 150, if the facts are correct, is hardly much
of a threat to Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is sometimes cited as an Iranian cat’s-paw in the
region, but Hezbollah has no geographical access to Gaza. Therefore they
are limited to leading protests in Lebanon. Timur Goksel, former adviser to
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon, told Reuters News Agency on Dec. 30, “With
all their rhetoric about Palestine, there is not much [Hezbollah] can do
about Gaza, short of getting Lebanon involved in another disaster. So they
are leading the popular reaction.”
Egypt is not a conduit for Iranian arms either. President Hosni Mubarak is
caught in a dilemma with regard to Gaza. He receives aid from the United
States, and has a long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Moreover, his
secular government is desperately afraid of Islamic extremism, which they
see as a threat. Because Hamas has a religious base, not a secular one like
Fatah, its rival for power in the Palestinian community, they are seen as
dangerous. For this reason, Egypt has kept the border crossing to Gaza
firmly closed except for humanitarian emergencies.
Why then does the myth of Iranian military support persist? One reason is
that it has been a long-standing American foreign policy belief that
resistance movements cannot exist without state support. Before Iran was
targeted as the source for support, Libya was the U.S. bogeyman. It is
instructive to look at rhetoric against Libya from the 1980s and see that
exactly the same accusations that were leveled at Libya then are being
hurled at Iran today.
Finally, Iran does not help matters. The rhetoric of the original Iranian
revolution is still alive and well in some segments of Iranian political
life. Iran ousted a Western-supported leader, the Shah, and tried in the
early days of the revolution to promulgate this action elsewhere in the
Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas were sympathetic rhetorical partners. Iran
supported Hezbollah in its early days, but no longer controls its
operations. Iran had nothing to do with the founding of Hamas, but sees its
conflict with Israel as sympathetic with its revolutionary ideals. This
does not mean that Iran is controlling the action.
The more apoplectic visions of Iranian involvement see Iran developing
nuclear weapons and supplying them to both Hezbollah and Hamas. However,
not only is there no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program; the
simple logistics of transfer of such weapons to a place like Gaza are
virtually impossible.
For Israel, and the world, blaming Iran for its troubles with Hamas does
not advance the peace process. Nor would attacking Iran mitigate in any way
the tensions that exist between Israel and its neighbors.
(Note: Please consult the original article for links to references and footnotes to quoted sources)
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Still Preparing to Attack Iran: The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era
Still Preparing to Attack Iran: The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era
Tuesday 02 December 2008
by: Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch.com
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Robert Dreyfuss makes it clear that the neoconservatives bent on attacking Iran are not going to give up just because Barak Obama has been elected President. His cynical portrait of Patrick Clawson's strategy to placate the American Public with insincere, empty talks with Iran just to be able to say, "we tried!" before dropping the bombs, shows just how sick organizations such as WINEP and AEI really are in their obsession with Iran. Iran is waiting for the United States to acknowledge its inalienable rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, rights which include the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes. Iranians are proud people, and they will not be treated as a nation less than Pakistan or India, who have been given a pass by the United States on nuclear development, despite frightening violence in their borders. Until the United States stops targeting Iran for exceptional treatment, the Iranians are not going to cooperate with American demands. Notably, they are cooperating fully with the IAEA, whom they respect as a bona fide international agency.
What, exactly, does Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail - and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.
Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.
It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.
"Kinetic Action" Against Iran
When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama - including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton - have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.
Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.
Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'" and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.
WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.
Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.
The report of the Coats-Robb task force - "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" - went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock.'"
Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "prepositioning military assets," coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action."
That "kinetic action" - a U.S. assault on Iran - should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."
This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and wreak havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these - and mean it - can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to President-elect Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.
Palling Around With the Neocons
At a November 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace - before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.
"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."
The Coats-Robb report, Meeting the Challenge," was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no," although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:
"If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone."
The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama's éminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.
Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Senator John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.
UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world."
Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table."
Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree - and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.
--------
Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, is a contributing editor at The Nation magazine, whose website hosts his The Dreyfuss Report, and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam."
Tuesday 02 December 2008
by: Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch.com
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Robert Dreyfuss makes it clear that the neoconservatives bent on attacking Iran are not going to give up just because Barak Obama has been elected President. His cynical portrait of Patrick Clawson's strategy to placate the American Public with insincere, empty talks with Iran just to be able to say, "we tried!" before dropping the bombs, shows just how sick organizations such as WINEP and AEI really are in their obsession with Iran. Iran is waiting for the United States to acknowledge its inalienable rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, rights which include the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes. Iranians are proud people, and they will not be treated as a nation less than Pakistan or India, who have been given a pass by the United States on nuclear development, despite frightening violence in their borders. Until the United States stops targeting Iran for exceptional treatment, the Iranians are not going to cooperate with American demands. Notably, they are cooperating fully with the IAEA, whom they respect as a bona fide international agency.
What, exactly, does Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail - and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.
Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.
It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.
"Kinetic Action" Against Iran
When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama - including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton - have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.
Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.
Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'" and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.
WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.
Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.
The report of the Coats-Robb task force - "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" - went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock.'"
Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "prepositioning military assets," coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action."
That "kinetic action" - a U.S. assault on Iran - should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."
This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and wreak havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these - and mean it - can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to President-elect Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.
Palling Around With the Neocons
At a November 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace - before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.
"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."
The Coats-Robb report, Meeting the Challenge," was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no," although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:
"If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone."
The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama's éminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.
Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Senator John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.
UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world."
Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table."
Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree - and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.
--------
Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, is a contributing editor at The Nation magazine, whose website hosts his The Dreyfuss Report, and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam."
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
'Joint experts' statement on Iran' recommends sweeping changes to US policy
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=97803
'Joint experts' statement on Iran' recommends sweeping changes to US policy
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Commentary by William O. Beeman: This represents a consensus by all credible experts dealing with Iran. I fully subscribe to these remarks.
Document
Editor's note: The following is a declaration put out by the American Foreign Policy Project, a group of top experts from across the political spectrum who work together to come up with policy ideas on the major foreign affairs issues facing the United States.
Despite recent glimmers of diplomacy, the United States and Iran remain locked in a cycle of threats and defiance that destabilizes the Middle East and weakens US national security.
Today, Iran and the United States are unable to coordinate campaigns against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, their common enemies. Iran is either withholding help or acting to thwart US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza. Within Iran, a looming sense of external threat has empowered hard-liners and given them both motive and pretext to curb civil liberties and further restrict democracy. On the nuclear front, Iran continues to enrich uranium in spite of binding UN resolutions, backed by economic sanctions, calling for it to suspend enrichment.
US efforts to manage Iran through isolation, threats and sanctions have been tried intermittently for more than two decades. In that time they have not solved any major problem in US-Iran relations, and have made most of them worse. Faced with the manifest failure of past efforts to isolate or economically coerce Iran, some now advocate escalation of sanctions or even military attack. But dispassionate analysis shows that an attack would almost certainly backfire, wasting lives, fomenting extremism and damaging the long-term security interests of both the US and Israel. And long experience has shown that prospects for successfully coercing Iran through achievable economic sanctions are remote at best.
Fortunately, we are not forced to choose between a coercive strategy that has clearly failed and a military option that has very little chance of success. There is another way, one far more likely to succeed: Open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level where personal contacts can be developed, intentions tested, and possibilities explored on both sides. Adopt policies to facilitate unofficial contacts between scholars, professionals, religious leaders, lawmakers and ordinary citizens. Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran.
Here are five key steps the United States should take to implement an effective diplomatic strategy with Iran:
1. Replace calls for regime change with a long-term strategy
Threats are not cowing Iran and the current regime in Tehran is not in imminent peril. But few leaders will negotiate in good faith with a government they think is trying to subvert them, and that perception may well be the single greatest barrier under US control to meaningful dialogue with Iran. The United States needs to stop the provocations and take a long-term view with this regime, as it did with the Soviet Union and China. We might begin by facilitating broad-ranging people-to-people contacts, opening a US interest section in Tehran, and promoting cultural exchanges.
2. Support human rights through effective, international means
While the United States is rightly concerned with Iran's worsening record of human rights violations, the best way to address that concern is through supporting recognized international efforts. Iranian human rights and democracy advocates confirm that American political interference masquerading as "democracy promotion" is harming, not helping, the cause of democracy in Iran.
3. Allow Iran a place at the table - alongside other key states - in shaping the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region.
This was the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group with regard to Iraq. It may be counter-intuitive in today's political climate - but it is sound policy. Iran has a long-term interest in the stability of its neighbors. Moreover, the United States and Iran support the same government in Iraq and face common enemies (the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Iran has shown it can be a valuable ally when included as a partner, and a troublesome thorn when not. Offering Iran a place at the table cannot assure cooperation, but it will greatly increase the likelihood of cooperation by giving Iran something it highly values that it can lose by non-cooperation. The United States might start by appointing a special envoy with broad authority to deal comprehensively and constructively with Iran (as opposed to trading accusations) and explore its willingness to work with the United States on issues of common concern.
4. Address the nuclear issue within the context of a broader US-Iran opening
Nothing is gained by imposing peremptory preconditions on dialogue. The United States should take an active leadership role in ongoing multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear impasse in the context of wide-ranging dialogue with Iran. Negotiators should give the nuclear talks a reasonable deadline, and retain the threat of tougher sanctions if negotiations fail. They should also, however, offer the credible prospect of security assurances and specific, tangible benefits such as the easing of US sanctions in response to positive policy shifts in Iran. Active US involvement may not cure all, but it certainly will change the equation, particularly if it is part of a broader opening.
5. Re-energize the Arab-Israeli peace process and act as an honest broker in that process
Israel's security lies in making peace with its neighbors. Any US moves towards mediating the Arab-Israeli crisis in a balanced way would ease tensions in the region, and would be positively received as a step forward for peace. As a practical matter, however, experience has shown that any long-term solution to Israel's problems with the Palestinians and Lebanon probably will require dealing, directly or indirectly, with Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran supports these organizations, and thus has influence with them. If properly managed, a US rapprochement with Iran, even an opening of talks, could help in dealing with Arab-Israeli issues, benefiting Israel as well as its neighbors.
Long-standing diplomatic practice makes clear that talking directly to a foreign government in no way signals approval of the government, its policies or its actions. Indeed, there are numerous instances in our history when clear-eyed US diplomacy with regimes we deemed objectionable - e.g., Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Libya and Iran itself (cooperating in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban after 9/11) - produced positive results in difficult situations.
After many years of mutual hostility, no one should expect that engaging Iran will be easy. It may prove impossible. But past policies have not worked, and what has been largely missing from US policy for most of the past three decades is a sustained commitment to real diplomacy with Iran. The time has come to see what true diplomacy can accomplish.
Annex: Basic Misconceptions about Iran
US policies towards Iran have failed to achieve their objectives. A key reason for their failure is that they are rooted in fundamental misconceptions about Iran. This annex addresses eight key misconceptions that have driven US policy in the wrong direction.
Myth # 1. President Ahmadinejad calls the shots on nuclear and foreign policy.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has grabbed the world's attention with his inflammatory and sometimes offensive statements. But he does not call the shots on Iran's nuclear and foreign policy. The ultimate decision-maker is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the commander-in-chief of Iran's forces. Despite his frequently hostile rhetoric aimed at Israel and the West, Khamenei's track record reveals a cautious decision-maker who acts after consulting advisors holding a range of views, including views sharply critical of Ahmadinejad. That said, it is clear that US policies and rhetoric have bolstered hard-liners in Iran, just as Ahmadinejad's confrontational rhetoric has bolstered hard-liners here.
Myth # 2. The political system of the Islamic Republic is frail and ripe for regime change.
In fact, there is currently no significant support within Iran for extra-constitutional regime change. Yes, there is popular dissatisfaction, but Iranians also recall the aftermath of their own revolution in 1979: lawlessness, mass executions, and the emigration of over half a million people, followed by a costly war. They have seen the outcome of US-sponsored regime change in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They want no part of it. Regime change may come to Iran, but it would be folly to bet on it happening soon.
Myth # 3. The Iranian leadership's religious beliefs render them undeterrable.
The recent history of Iran makes crystal clear that national self-preservation and regional influence - not some quest for martyrdom in the service of Islam - is Iran's main foreign policy goal. For example:
l In the 1990s, Iran chose a closer relationship with Russia over support for rebellious Chechen Muslims.
l Iran actively supported and helped to finance the US invasion of Afghanistan.
l Iran has ceased its efforts to export the Islamic revolution to other Persian Gulf states, in favor of developing good relations with the governments of those states.
l During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran took the pragmatic step of developing secret ties and trading arms with Israel, even as Iran and Israel denounced each other in public.
Myth # 4. Iran's current leadership is implacably opposed to the United States.
Iran will not accept preconditions for dialogue with the United States, any more than the United States would accept preconditions for talking to Iran. But Iran is clearly open to broad-ranging dialogue with the United States. In fact, it has made multiple peace overtures that the United States has rebuffed. Right after 9/11, Iran worked with the United States to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan, including paying for the Afghan troops serving under US command. Iran helped establish the US-backed government and then contributed more than $750 million to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Iran expressed interest in a broader dialogue in 2002 and 2003. Instead, it was labeled part of an "axis of evil."
In 2005, reform-minded President Khatami was replaced by the hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the same Supreme Leader who authorized earlier overtures is still in office today and he acknowledged, as recently as January 2008, that "the day that relations with America prove beneficial for the Iranian nation, I will be the first one to approve of that." All this does not prove that Iran will bargain in good faith with us. But it does disprove the claim that we know for sure they will not.
Myth # 5. Iran has declared its intention to attack Israel in order to "wipe Israel off the map."
This claim is based largely on a speech by President Ahmadinejad on Oct. 26, 2005, quoting a remark by Ayatollah Khomeini made decades ago: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be wiped off/eliminated from the pages of history/our times." Both before and since, Ahmadinejad has made numerous other, offensive, insulting and threatening remarks about Israel and other nations - most notably his indefensible denial of the Holocaust.
However, he has been criticized within Iran for these remarks. Supreme Leader Khamenei himself has "clarified" that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country" and specifically that Iran will not attack Israel unless Iran is attacked first. Ahmadinejad also has made clear, or been forced to clarify, that he was referring to regime change through demographics (giving the Palestinians a vote in a unitary state), not war.
What we know is that Ahmadinejad's recent statements do not appear to have materially altered Iran's long-standing policy - which, for decades, has been to deny the legitimacy of Israel; to arm and aid groups opposing Israel in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank; but also, to promise to accept any deal with Israel that the Palestinians accept.
Myth # 6. US-sponsored "democracy promotion" can help bring about true democracy in Iran.
Instead of fostering democratic elements inside Iran, US-backed "democracy promotion" has provided an excuse to stifle them. That is why champions of human rights and democracy in Iran agree with the dissident who said, "The best thing the Americans can do for democracy in Iran is not to support it."
Myth # 7. Iran is clearly and firmly committed to developing nuclear weapons.
If Iraq teaches anything, it is the need to be both rigorous and honest when confronted with ambiguous evidence about WMDs. Yet once again we find proponents of conflict over-stating their case, this time by claiming that Iran has declared an intention to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, Iranian leaders have consistently denied any such intention and even said that such weapons are "against Islam."
The issue is not what Iran is saying, but what it is doing, and here the facts are murky. We know that Iran is openly enriching uranium and learning to do it more efficiently, but claims this is only for peaceful use. There are detailed but disputed allegations that Iran secretly worked on nuclear weapons design before Ahmadinejad came to power, concerns that such work continues, and certainty that Iran is not cooperating fully with efforts to resolve the allegations. We also know that Iran has said it will negotiate on its enrichment program - without preconditions - and submit to intrusive inspections as part of a final deal. Past negotiations between Iran and a group of three European countries plus China and Russia have not gone anywhere, but the United States, Iran's chief nemesis, has not been active in those talks.
The facts viewed as a whole give cause for deep concern, but they are not unambiguous and in fact support a variety of interpretations: that Iran views enrichment chiefly as a source of national pride (akin to our moon landing); that Iran is advancing towards weapons capability but sees this as a bargaining chip to use in broader negotiations with the United States; that Iran is intent on achieving the capability to build a weapon on short notice as a deterrent to feared US or Israeli attack; or that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to support aggressive goals. The only effective way to illuminate - and constructively alter - Iran's intentions is through skillful and careful diplomacy. History shows that sanctions alone are unlikely to succeed, and a strategy limited to escalating threats or attacking Iran is likely to backfire - creating or hardening a resolve to acquire nuclear weapons while inciting a backlash against us throughout the region.
Myth # 8. Iran and the United States have no basis for dialogue.
Those who favored refusing Iran's offers of dialogue in 2002 and 2003 - when they thought the US position so strong there was no need to talk - now assert that our position is so weak we cannot afford to talk. Wrong in both cases. Iran is eager for an end to sanctions and isolation, and needs access to world-class technology to bring new supplies of oil and gas online. Both countries share an interest in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, which border Iran. Both support the Maliki government in Iraq, and face common enemies (the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Both countries share the goal of combating narco-trafficking in the region. These opportunities exist, and the two governments have pursued them very occasionally in the past, but they have mostly been obscured in the belligerent rhetoric from both sides.
About the signatories: who they are and what they've done
l Ali Banuazizi
Professor of Political Science and Director, Islamic Civilization and Societies Program, Boston College. Dr. Banuazizi is the Past President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and of the International Society for Iranian Studies. He served as the Editor of the Journal of Iranian Studies from 1968 to 1982. A leading expert on Iran and the Middle East Politics, he was a member of the Council of Foreign Relations' Task Force on Public Diplomacy.
l Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; Founding Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. Dr. Boroujerdi is the author of "Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism" (1996). His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and more than a dozen edited books and Persian-language journals. He is the general editor of the "Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East" series published by Syracuse University Press and served for seven years (2000 to 2007) as the book review editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. He is currently engaged in a major study of the current and next generation of political leaders in Iran.
l Juan R.I. Cole
Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Juan Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and has lived in various places in the Muslim world for extended periods of time. He also brings three decades of experience in studying and writing about contemporary Islamic movements and the relationship of the West and the Muslim world. His most recent book, "Engaging the Muslim World," will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in March 2009. He has a regular column at Salon.com, and is a frequent guest commentator on national radio and television news shows.
l Ambassador James F. Dobbins.
Former Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Representative to the Afghan opposition in the wake of September 11, 2001. For over three decades, Ambassador Dobbins has served both Republican and Democratic administrations in diplomatic roles around the world, often in times of crisis. Immediately after September 11, 2001, he served as the Bush administration's Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Representative to the Afghan opposition, interacting successfully with the Iranians in a cooperative effort to topple the Taliban and promote the emergence of a friendly and democratic government in Kabul. His many other high-level posts include service as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe; Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere; Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans; Ambassador to the European Community; and the Clinton Administration's Special Envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
l Rola el-Husseini.
Assistant Professor, the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. Rola el-Husseini specializes in Lebanon and Shi'a political thought. She is finishing a book on elite politics in postwar Lebanon, along with a comparative study of the impact of Iran on Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'a political thought. At the Bush School, she teaches courses on Middle East Politics, Political Islam, and Authoritarianism in the Arab World.
l Farideh Farhi
Independent Researcher and Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. Farideh Farhi is the author of "States and Urban-Based Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua" along with numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. She also authored the Asia Society's report on Iran's 2001 elections; the International Crisis Group's report on the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran; and, a soon to be published World Bank study, "Contested Governance and the Need for Reform: The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran." She has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Hawai'i; University of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Her research sponsors include the United States Institute of Peace, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she was recently a Public Policy Scholar. She travels widely and lectures regularly on Iranian politics and foreign relations at research institutions in Washington, D.C. and around the country.
l Geoffrey E. Forden
Research Associate in MIT's Program on Science, Technology and Society. Geoffrey Forden is among America's foremost experts on how proliferators acquire the know-how and industrial infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction. In 2002-2003, Dr. Forden served as the first Chief of Multidiscipline Analysis Section for UNMOVIC, the UN agency responsible for verifying and monitoring the dismantlement of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He has also served as a strategic weapons analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office.
l Hadi Ghaemi
Coordinator, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Hadi Ghaemi is the coordinator of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and an internationally recognized expert on the situation of human rights in Iran. Ghaemi's reports and writings have focused international attention on the Iranian government's repression of free speech and persecution of civil society activists. He works closely with human rights defenders inside Iran to document and report on human rights violations. In 2003, he received a research and writing grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He served as the Iran and UAE researcher for Human Rights Watch until 2007. Ghaemi received his Ph.D. in physics from Boston University in 1994, and he was on the faculty at the City University of New York until 2000.
l Philip Giraldi
Former CIA Counter-terrorism Specialist. Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain, where he was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992. As a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues he has appeared often on radio and TV, including "Good Morning America," "60 Minutes," MSNBC, NPR, BBC World News, FOX News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television, al-Jazeera, and al-Arabiya. Currently, he is President of San Marco International, a consulting firm that specializes in international security management and risk assessment, and also a partner in Cannistraro Associates, a security consultancy located in McLean, Virginia.
l Farhad Kazemi
Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University. As a leading scholar on issues of the Middle East, Dr. Kazemi is a member of the Advisory Group for Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, appointed in 2003. He is also President of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, former President of the Society for Iranian Studies, and a leading member of such organizations as the American Political Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Atlantic Council.
l Stephen Kinzer
Author and award-winning foreign correspondent. Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents - primarily for the New York Times, where he worked for more than 20 years. He is the author of numerous books and articles focusing on Iran and the Middle East, including "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" and "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." He now teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University, contributes articles to the New York Review of Books and other periodicals, and writes a world affairs column for The Guardian.
l Ambassador William G. Miller
Senior Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Ambassador (ret.) William Green Miller has been a Senior Advisor for Search for Common Ground's US-Iran Program since 1998. The former US Ambassador to Ukraine (1993-1998) served six years in Iran as an FSO and fourteen years on Capitol Hill as staff director for three Senate committees. He served as President of the American Committee on US-Soviet relations and the International Foundation. Formerly an Associate Dean and professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Ambassador Miller is presently a Senior Policy Fellow the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
l Emile A. Nakhleh
Retired Senior Intelligence Service Officer and Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. During his fifteen years of service at the CIA, Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh held a variety of key positions, including Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence and Chief of the Regional Analysis Unit in the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis. Dr. Nakhleh was a founding member of the Senior Analytic Service and chaired the first SAS Council. He was awarded several senior intelligence commendation medals, including the Intelligence Commendation Medal (1997), the William Langer Award (2004), the Director's Medal (2004), and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal (2006). His research has focused on political Islam in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world as well as on political and educational reform, regime stability, and governance in the greater Middle East.
l Augustus Richard Norton
Professor of International Relations and Anthropology at Boston University. A. Richard Norton served as an advisor to the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission), and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His research experience in the Middle East spans near three decades, including residences in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. His current research interests include inter-sectarian relations in the Middle East, reformist Muslim thought, and strategies of political reform and opposition in authoritarian states. In the 1990s he headed a widely-cited three-year project funded by the Ford Foundation that examined the state-society relations in the Middle East and the question of civil society in the region. He is also a co-founder of the Boston Forum on the Middle East and the Conference Group on the Middle East.
l Richard Parker
Founder and Executive Director, American Foreign Policy Project; Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law. Dr. Parker is a professor at University of Connecticut School of Law and Founder and Executive Director of the new American Foreign Policy Project (AFPP). AFPP convenes large teams of top experts to collaboratively develop sound policy on the toughest national security and foreign policy issues of the day. It translates these policies into effective messages in ready-to-use talking point format, and then disseminates these messages to leaders, key influencers and the public through a variety of channels - briefings, traditional media, blogs, and a unique, highly-searchable website, americanforeignpolicy.org. Dr. Parker has served as Assistant General Counsel in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and Special Counsel to the Deputy Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. He holds a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a DPhil in International Relations from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
l Trita Parsi
Award-winning author; President, National Iranian-American Council. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States," which won the 2008 Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. Fluent in Persian/Farsi, Dr. Parsi is regularly consulted by Western, Middle Eastern and Asian governments on Middle East affairs, and he is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council, a non-partisan, non-profit organization promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life. His articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the numerous newspapers and magazines and he is a frequent commentor on radio and television news shows. He has also worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, serving in the Security Council handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Western Sahara, and the General Assembly's Third Committee addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq. Dr. Parsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden.
l Ambassador Thomas Pickering
Vice-Chairman, Hills & Company; Former US Ambassador to the UN, Russia, Israel and other nations. Ambassador Pickering has had a career spanning five decades as a US diplomat, serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, Nigeria, Jordan and El Salvador. He also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service. He has held numerous other positions at the State Department, including Executive Secretary and Special Assistant to Secretaries Rogers and Kissinger and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs. He is currently Vice-chairman of Hills & Company, an international consulting firm providing advice to US businesses on investment, trade, and risk assessment issues abroad, particularly in emerging market economies. He is based in Washington, DC.
l Barnett R. Rubin
Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University; Former Special Advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan. Barnett Rubin has written numerous books and articles on conflict prevention, state formation, and human rights. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. In late 2001, he served as Special Advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement, and he also advised the United Nations on the drafting of the constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Compact, and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. He has served as the Director of the Center for Preventive Action, and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University. Currently, he is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, where he directs the program on the Reconstruction of Afghanistan.
l Gary G. Sick
Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University SIPA's Middle East Institute; Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at SIPA. Professor Sick served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a Captain (Ret.) in the US Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to US foreign policy. He is also a member of the board (emeritus) of Human Rights Watch in New York and the chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.
l John Tirman
Executive Director & Principal Research Scientist, Center for International Studies, MIT. Tirman is the author or co-author and editor of ten books on international affairs and US foreign policy, including "Terror, Insurgency, and States" (2007), "The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After 9/1" (2004) and "By the Crusader's Sword: The Human Toll of American Wars" (forthcoming). His articles on Iran have appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, including the Boston Globe, Strategic Insights, and AlterNet, as well as reports published by MIT. He has organized projects on Iran, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and MIT, as well as a major historical research effort on the history of the US-Iran relationship in partnership with the National Security Archive and Brown University's Watson Institute.
l James Walsh
Research Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Walsh's research and writings focus on international security, and in particular, topics involving weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. He has testified before the United States Senate on the issue of nuclear terrorism as well as on Iran's nuclear program. He has also chaired the Harvard University International Working Group on Radiological Terrorism. Among his current projects are two series of dialogues on nuclear issues, one with representatives from North Korea and one with leading figures in Iran. He has appeared frequently in the media as an expert on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism issues, including more than 300 appearances on CNN. His most recent publications include a chapter on Iran's nuclear program in "Terrorist Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation: Strategies for Overlapping Dangers" and a chapter on nuclear weapons in "A Muslim-Christian Study and Action Guide to the Nuclear Weapons Danger." He has also published "Learning from Past Success: The NPT and the Future of Non-proliferation" for the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by Hans Blix (2006).
'Joint experts' statement on Iran' recommends sweeping changes to US policy
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Commentary by William O. Beeman: This represents a consensus by all credible experts dealing with Iran. I fully subscribe to these remarks.
Document
Editor's note: The following is a declaration put out by the American Foreign Policy Project, a group of top experts from across the political spectrum who work together to come up with policy ideas on the major foreign affairs issues facing the United States.
Despite recent glimmers of diplomacy, the United States and Iran remain locked in a cycle of threats and defiance that destabilizes the Middle East and weakens US national security.
Today, Iran and the United States are unable to coordinate campaigns against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, their common enemies. Iran is either withholding help or acting to thwart US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza. Within Iran, a looming sense of external threat has empowered hard-liners and given them both motive and pretext to curb civil liberties and further restrict democracy. On the nuclear front, Iran continues to enrich uranium in spite of binding UN resolutions, backed by economic sanctions, calling for it to suspend enrichment.
US efforts to manage Iran through isolation, threats and sanctions have been tried intermittently for more than two decades. In that time they have not solved any major problem in US-Iran relations, and have made most of them worse. Faced with the manifest failure of past efforts to isolate or economically coerce Iran, some now advocate escalation of sanctions or even military attack. But dispassionate analysis shows that an attack would almost certainly backfire, wasting lives, fomenting extremism and damaging the long-term security interests of both the US and Israel. And long experience has shown that prospects for successfully coercing Iran through achievable economic sanctions are remote at best.
Fortunately, we are not forced to choose between a coercive strategy that has clearly failed and a military option that has very little chance of success. There is another way, one far more likely to succeed: Open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level where personal contacts can be developed, intentions tested, and possibilities explored on both sides. Adopt policies to facilitate unofficial contacts between scholars, professionals, religious leaders, lawmakers and ordinary citizens. Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran.
Here are five key steps the United States should take to implement an effective diplomatic strategy with Iran:
1. Replace calls for regime change with a long-term strategy
Threats are not cowing Iran and the current regime in Tehran is not in imminent peril. But few leaders will negotiate in good faith with a government they think is trying to subvert them, and that perception may well be the single greatest barrier under US control to meaningful dialogue with Iran. The United States needs to stop the provocations and take a long-term view with this regime, as it did with the Soviet Union and China. We might begin by facilitating broad-ranging people-to-people contacts, opening a US interest section in Tehran, and promoting cultural exchanges.
2. Support human rights through effective, international means
While the United States is rightly concerned with Iran's worsening record of human rights violations, the best way to address that concern is through supporting recognized international efforts. Iranian human rights and democracy advocates confirm that American political interference masquerading as "democracy promotion" is harming, not helping, the cause of democracy in Iran.
3. Allow Iran a place at the table - alongside other key states - in shaping the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region.
This was the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group with regard to Iraq. It may be counter-intuitive in today's political climate - but it is sound policy. Iran has a long-term interest in the stability of its neighbors. Moreover, the United States and Iran support the same government in Iraq and face common enemies (the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Iran has shown it can be a valuable ally when included as a partner, and a troublesome thorn when not. Offering Iran a place at the table cannot assure cooperation, but it will greatly increase the likelihood of cooperation by giving Iran something it highly values that it can lose by non-cooperation. The United States might start by appointing a special envoy with broad authority to deal comprehensively and constructively with Iran (as opposed to trading accusations) and explore its willingness to work with the United States on issues of common concern.
4. Address the nuclear issue within the context of a broader US-Iran opening
Nothing is gained by imposing peremptory preconditions on dialogue. The United States should take an active leadership role in ongoing multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear impasse in the context of wide-ranging dialogue with Iran. Negotiators should give the nuclear talks a reasonable deadline, and retain the threat of tougher sanctions if negotiations fail. They should also, however, offer the credible prospect of security assurances and specific, tangible benefits such as the easing of US sanctions in response to positive policy shifts in Iran. Active US involvement may not cure all, but it certainly will change the equation, particularly if it is part of a broader opening.
5. Re-energize the Arab-Israeli peace process and act as an honest broker in that process
Israel's security lies in making peace with its neighbors. Any US moves towards mediating the Arab-Israeli crisis in a balanced way would ease tensions in the region, and would be positively received as a step forward for peace. As a practical matter, however, experience has shown that any long-term solution to Israel's problems with the Palestinians and Lebanon probably will require dealing, directly or indirectly, with Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran supports these organizations, and thus has influence with them. If properly managed, a US rapprochement with Iran, even an opening of talks, could help in dealing with Arab-Israeli issues, benefiting Israel as well as its neighbors.
Long-standing diplomatic practice makes clear that talking directly to a foreign government in no way signals approval of the government, its policies or its actions. Indeed, there are numerous instances in our history when clear-eyed US diplomacy with regimes we deemed objectionable - e.g., Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Libya and Iran itself (cooperating in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban after 9/11) - produced positive results in difficult situations.
After many years of mutual hostility, no one should expect that engaging Iran will be easy. It may prove impossible. But past policies have not worked, and what has been largely missing from US policy for most of the past three decades is a sustained commitment to real diplomacy with Iran. The time has come to see what true diplomacy can accomplish.
Annex: Basic Misconceptions about Iran
US policies towards Iran have failed to achieve their objectives. A key reason for their failure is that they are rooted in fundamental misconceptions about Iran. This annex addresses eight key misconceptions that have driven US policy in the wrong direction.
Myth # 1. President Ahmadinejad calls the shots on nuclear and foreign policy.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has grabbed the world's attention with his inflammatory and sometimes offensive statements. But he does not call the shots on Iran's nuclear and foreign policy. The ultimate decision-maker is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the commander-in-chief of Iran's forces. Despite his frequently hostile rhetoric aimed at Israel and the West, Khamenei's track record reveals a cautious decision-maker who acts after consulting advisors holding a range of views, including views sharply critical of Ahmadinejad. That said, it is clear that US policies and rhetoric have bolstered hard-liners in Iran, just as Ahmadinejad's confrontational rhetoric has bolstered hard-liners here.
Myth # 2. The political system of the Islamic Republic is frail and ripe for regime change.
In fact, there is currently no significant support within Iran for extra-constitutional regime change. Yes, there is popular dissatisfaction, but Iranians also recall the aftermath of their own revolution in 1979: lawlessness, mass executions, and the emigration of over half a million people, followed by a costly war. They have seen the outcome of US-sponsored regime change in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They want no part of it. Regime change may come to Iran, but it would be folly to bet on it happening soon.
Myth # 3. The Iranian leadership's religious beliefs render them undeterrable.
The recent history of Iran makes crystal clear that national self-preservation and regional influence - not some quest for martyrdom in the service of Islam - is Iran's main foreign policy goal. For example:
l In the 1990s, Iran chose a closer relationship with Russia over support for rebellious Chechen Muslims.
l Iran actively supported and helped to finance the US invasion of Afghanistan.
l Iran has ceased its efforts to export the Islamic revolution to other Persian Gulf states, in favor of developing good relations with the governments of those states.
l During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran took the pragmatic step of developing secret ties and trading arms with Israel, even as Iran and Israel denounced each other in public.
Myth # 4. Iran's current leadership is implacably opposed to the United States.
Iran will not accept preconditions for dialogue with the United States, any more than the United States would accept preconditions for talking to Iran. But Iran is clearly open to broad-ranging dialogue with the United States. In fact, it has made multiple peace overtures that the United States has rebuffed. Right after 9/11, Iran worked with the United States to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan, including paying for the Afghan troops serving under US command. Iran helped establish the US-backed government and then contributed more than $750 million to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Iran expressed interest in a broader dialogue in 2002 and 2003. Instead, it was labeled part of an "axis of evil."
In 2005, reform-minded President Khatami was replaced by the hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the same Supreme Leader who authorized earlier overtures is still in office today and he acknowledged, as recently as January 2008, that "the day that relations with America prove beneficial for the Iranian nation, I will be the first one to approve of that." All this does not prove that Iran will bargain in good faith with us. But it does disprove the claim that we know for sure they will not.
Myth # 5. Iran has declared its intention to attack Israel in order to "wipe Israel off the map."
This claim is based largely on a speech by President Ahmadinejad on Oct. 26, 2005, quoting a remark by Ayatollah Khomeini made decades ago: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be wiped off/eliminated from the pages of history/our times." Both before and since, Ahmadinejad has made numerous other, offensive, insulting and threatening remarks about Israel and other nations - most notably his indefensible denial of the Holocaust.
However, he has been criticized within Iran for these remarks. Supreme Leader Khamenei himself has "clarified" that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country" and specifically that Iran will not attack Israel unless Iran is attacked first. Ahmadinejad also has made clear, or been forced to clarify, that he was referring to regime change through demographics (giving the Palestinians a vote in a unitary state), not war.
What we know is that Ahmadinejad's recent statements do not appear to have materially altered Iran's long-standing policy - which, for decades, has been to deny the legitimacy of Israel; to arm and aid groups opposing Israel in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank; but also, to promise to accept any deal with Israel that the Palestinians accept.
Myth # 6. US-sponsored "democracy promotion" can help bring about true democracy in Iran.
Instead of fostering democratic elements inside Iran, US-backed "democracy promotion" has provided an excuse to stifle them. That is why champions of human rights and democracy in Iran agree with the dissident who said, "The best thing the Americans can do for democracy in Iran is not to support it."
Myth # 7. Iran is clearly and firmly committed to developing nuclear weapons.
If Iraq teaches anything, it is the need to be both rigorous and honest when confronted with ambiguous evidence about WMDs. Yet once again we find proponents of conflict over-stating their case, this time by claiming that Iran has declared an intention to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, Iranian leaders have consistently denied any such intention and even said that such weapons are "against Islam."
The issue is not what Iran is saying, but what it is doing, and here the facts are murky. We know that Iran is openly enriching uranium and learning to do it more efficiently, but claims this is only for peaceful use. There are detailed but disputed allegations that Iran secretly worked on nuclear weapons design before Ahmadinejad came to power, concerns that such work continues, and certainty that Iran is not cooperating fully with efforts to resolve the allegations. We also know that Iran has said it will negotiate on its enrichment program - without preconditions - and submit to intrusive inspections as part of a final deal. Past negotiations between Iran and a group of three European countries plus China and Russia have not gone anywhere, but the United States, Iran's chief nemesis, has not been active in those talks.
The facts viewed as a whole give cause for deep concern, but they are not unambiguous and in fact support a variety of interpretations: that Iran views enrichment chiefly as a source of national pride (akin to our moon landing); that Iran is advancing towards weapons capability but sees this as a bargaining chip to use in broader negotiations with the United States; that Iran is intent on achieving the capability to build a weapon on short notice as a deterrent to feared US or Israeli attack; or that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to support aggressive goals. The only effective way to illuminate - and constructively alter - Iran's intentions is through skillful and careful diplomacy. History shows that sanctions alone are unlikely to succeed, and a strategy limited to escalating threats or attacking Iran is likely to backfire - creating or hardening a resolve to acquire nuclear weapons while inciting a backlash against us throughout the region.
Myth # 8. Iran and the United States have no basis for dialogue.
Those who favored refusing Iran's offers of dialogue in 2002 and 2003 - when they thought the US position so strong there was no need to talk - now assert that our position is so weak we cannot afford to talk. Wrong in both cases. Iran is eager for an end to sanctions and isolation, and needs access to world-class technology to bring new supplies of oil and gas online. Both countries share an interest in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, which border Iran. Both support the Maliki government in Iraq, and face common enemies (the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Both countries share the goal of combating narco-trafficking in the region. These opportunities exist, and the two governments have pursued them very occasionally in the past, but they have mostly been obscured in the belligerent rhetoric from both sides.
About the signatories: who they are and what they've done
l Ali Banuazizi
Professor of Political Science and Director, Islamic Civilization and Societies Program, Boston College. Dr. Banuazizi is the Past President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and of the International Society for Iranian Studies. He served as the Editor of the Journal of Iranian Studies from 1968 to 1982. A leading expert on Iran and the Middle East Politics, he was a member of the Council of Foreign Relations' Task Force on Public Diplomacy.
l Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; Founding Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. Dr. Boroujerdi is the author of "Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism" (1996). His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and more than a dozen edited books and Persian-language journals. He is the general editor of the "Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East" series published by Syracuse University Press and served for seven years (2000 to 2007) as the book review editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. He is currently engaged in a major study of the current and next generation of political leaders in Iran.
l Juan R.I. Cole
Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Juan Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and has lived in various places in the Muslim world for extended periods of time. He also brings three decades of experience in studying and writing about contemporary Islamic movements and the relationship of the West and the Muslim world. His most recent book, "Engaging the Muslim World," will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in March 2009. He has a regular column at Salon.com, and is a frequent guest commentator on national radio and television news shows.
l Ambassador James F. Dobbins.
Former Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Representative to the Afghan opposition in the wake of September 11, 2001. For over three decades, Ambassador Dobbins has served both Republican and Democratic administrations in diplomatic roles around the world, often in times of crisis. Immediately after September 11, 2001, he served as the Bush administration's Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Representative to the Afghan opposition, interacting successfully with the Iranians in a cooperative effort to topple the Taliban and promote the emergence of a friendly and democratic government in Kabul. His many other high-level posts include service as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe; Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere; Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans; Ambassador to the European Community; and the Clinton Administration's Special Envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
l Rola el-Husseini.
Assistant Professor, the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. Rola el-Husseini specializes in Lebanon and Shi'a political thought. She is finishing a book on elite politics in postwar Lebanon, along with a comparative study of the impact of Iran on Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'a political thought. At the Bush School, she teaches courses on Middle East Politics, Political Islam, and Authoritarianism in the Arab World.
l Farideh Farhi
Independent Researcher and Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. Farideh Farhi is the author of "States and Urban-Based Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua" along with numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. She also authored the Asia Society's report on Iran's 2001 elections; the International Crisis Group's report on the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran; and, a soon to be published World Bank study, "Contested Governance and the Need for Reform: The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran." She has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Hawai'i; University of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Her research sponsors include the United States Institute of Peace, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she was recently a Public Policy Scholar. She travels widely and lectures regularly on Iranian politics and foreign relations at research institutions in Washington, D.C. and around the country.
l Geoffrey E. Forden
Research Associate in MIT's Program on Science, Technology and Society. Geoffrey Forden is among America's foremost experts on how proliferators acquire the know-how and industrial infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction. In 2002-2003, Dr. Forden served as the first Chief of Multidiscipline Analysis Section for UNMOVIC, the UN agency responsible for verifying and monitoring the dismantlement of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He has also served as a strategic weapons analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office.
l Hadi Ghaemi
Coordinator, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Hadi Ghaemi is the coordinator of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and an internationally recognized expert on the situation of human rights in Iran. Ghaemi's reports and writings have focused international attention on the Iranian government's repression of free speech and persecution of civil society activists. He works closely with human rights defenders inside Iran to document and report on human rights violations. In 2003, he received a research and writing grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He served as the Iran and UAE researcher for Human Rights Watch until 2007. Ghaemi received his Ph.D. in physics from Boston University in 1994, and he was on the faculty at the City University of New York until 2000.
l Philip Giraldi
Former CIA Counter-terrorism Specialist. Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain, where he was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992. As a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues he has appeared often on radio and TV, including "Good Morning America," "60 Minutes," MSNBC, NPR, BBC World News, FOX News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television, al-Jazeera, and al-Arabiya. Currently, he is President of San Marco International, a consulting firm that specializes in international security management and risk assessment, and also a partner in Cannistraro Associates, a security consultancy located in McLean, Virginia.
l Farhad Kazemi
Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University. As a leading scholar on issues of the Middle East, Dr. Kazemi is a member of the Advisory Group for Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, appointed in 2003. He is also President of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, former President of the Society for Iranian Studies, and a leading member of such organizations as the American Political Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Atlantic Council.
l Stephen Kinzer
Author and award-winning foreign correspondent. Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents - primarily for the New York Times, where he worked for more than 20 years. He is the author of numerous books and articles focusing on Iran and the Middle East, including "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" and "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." He now teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University, contributes articles to the New York Review of Books and other periodicals, and writes a world affairs column for The Guardian.
l Ambassador William G. Miller
Senior Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Ambassador (ret.) William Green Miller has been a Senior Advisor for Search for Common Ground's US-Iran Program since 1998. The former US Ambassador to Ukraine (1993-1998) served six years in Iran as an FSO and fourteen years on Capitol Hill as staff director for three Senate committees. He served as President of the American Committee on US-Soviet relations and the International Foundation. Formerly an Associate Dean and professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Ambassador Miller is presently a Senior Policy Fellow the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
l Emile A. Nakhleh
Retired Senior Intelligence Service Officer and Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. During his fifteen years of service at the CIA, Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh held a variety of key positions, including Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence and Chief of the Regional Analysis Unit in the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis. Dr. Nakhleh was a founding member of the Senior Analytic Service and chaired the first SAS Council. He was awarded several senior intelligence commendation medals, including the Intelligence Commendation Medal (1997), the William Langer Award (2004), the Director's Medal (2004), and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal (2006). His research has focused on political Islam in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world as well as on political and educational reform, regime stability, and governance in the greater Middle East.
l Augustus Richard Norton
Professor of International Relations and Anthropology at Boston University. A. Richard Norton served as an advisor to the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission), and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His research experience in the Middle East spans near three decades, including residences in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. His current research interests include inter-sectarian relations in the Middle East, reformist Muslim thought, and strategies of political reform and opposition in authoritarian states. In the 1990s he headed a widely-cited three-year project funded by the Ford Foundation that examined the state-society relations in the Middle East and the question of civil society in the region. He is also a co-founder of the Boston Forum on the Middle East and the Conference Group on the Middle East.
l Richard Parker
Founder and Executive Director, American Foreign Policy Project; Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law. Dr. Parker is a professor at University of Connecticut School of Law and Founder and Executive Director of the new American Foreign Policy Project (AFPP). AFPP convenes large teams of top experts to collaboratively develop sound policy on the toughest national security and foreign policy issues of the day. It translates these policies into effective messages in ready-to-use talking point format, and then disseminates these messages to leaders, key influencers and the public through a variety of channels - briefings, traditional media, blogs, and a unique, highly-searchable website, americanforeignpolicy.org. Dr. Parker has served as Assistant General Counsel in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and Special Counsel to the Deputy Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. He holds a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a DPhil in International Relations from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
l Trita Parsi
Award-winning author; President, National Iranian-American Council. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States," which won the 2008 Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. Fluent in Persian/Farsi, Dr. Parsi is regularly consulted by Western, Middle Eastern and Asian governments on Middle East affairs, and he is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council, a non-partisan, non-profit organization promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life. His articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the numerous newspapers and magazines and he is a frequent commentor on radio and television news shows. He has also worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, serving in the Security Council handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Western Sahara, and the General Assembly's Third Committee addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq. Dr. Parsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden.
l Ambassador Thomas Pickering
Vice-Chairman, Hills & Company; Former US Ambassador to the UN, Russia, Israel and other nations. Ambassador Pickering has had a career spanning five decades as a US diplomat, serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, Nigeria, Jordan and El Salvador. He also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service. He has held numerous other positions at the State Department, including Executive Secretary and Special Assistant to Secretaries Rogers and Kissinger and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs. He is currently Vice-chairman of Hills & Company, an international consulting firm providing advice to US businesses on investment, trade, and risk assessment issues abroad, particularly in emerging market economies. He is based in Washington, DC.
l Barnett R. Rubin
Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University; Former Special Advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan. Barnett Rubin has written numerous books and articles on conflict prevention, state formation, and human rights. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. In late 2001, he served as Special Advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement, and he also advised the United Nations on the drafting of the constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Compact, and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. He has served as the Director of the Center for Preventive Action, and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University. Currently, he is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, where he directs the program on the Reconstruction of Afghanistan.
l Gary G. Sick
Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University SIPA's Middle East Institute; Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at SIPA. Professor Sick served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a Captain (Ret.) in the US Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to US foreign policy. He is also a member of the board (emeritus) of Human Rights Watch in New York and the chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.
l John Tirman
Executive Director & Principal Research Scientist, Center for International Studies, MIT. Tirman is the author or co-author and editor of ten books on international affairs and US foreign policy, including "Terror, Insurgency, and States" (2007), "The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After 9/1" (2004) and "By the Crusader's Sword: The Human Toll of American Wars" (forthcoming). His articles on Iran have appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, including the Boston Globe, Strategic Insights, and AlterNet, as well as reports published by MIT. He has organized projects on Iran, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and MIT, as well as a major historical research effort on the history of the US-Iran relationship in partnership with the National Security Archive and Brown University's Watson Institute.
l James Walsh
Research Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Walsh's research and writings focus on international security, and in particular, topics involving weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. He has testified before the United States Senate on the issue of nuclear terrorism as well as on Iran's nuclear program. He has also chaired the Harvard University International Working Group on Radiological Terrorism. Among his current projects are two series of dialogues on nuclear issues, one with representatives from North Korea and one with leading figures in Iran. He has appeared frequently in the media as an expert on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism issues, including more than 300 appearances on CNN. His most recent publications include a chapter on Iran's nuclear program in "Terrorist Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation: Strategies for Overlapping Dangers" and a chapter on nuclear weapons in "A Muslim-Christian Study and Action Guide to the Nuclear Weapons Danger." He has also published "Learning from Past Success: The NPT and the Future of Non-proliferation" for the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by Hans Blix (2006).
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Obama's Iranian Opening--William O. Beeman (New America Media)
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=88a1d22a728c890da5ad472365553a50
Obama’s Iranian Opening
New America Media, News Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 12, 2008
Editor’s note: Diplomacy between the United States and Iran has been at a standstill. President-elect Barack Obama has a great opportunity to end the cold war between the two nations. NAM contributing writer William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
President-elect Barack Obama has a serious opening to improving relations with Iran, if he knows how to exercise it. Unfortunately, his transition advisory team is weak on Middle East affairs, and almost non-existent on Iran. This leaves the president-elect prey to the same forces that have tried to sabotage progress on rapprochement with Iran during the Bush administration.
Paradoxically the Bush administration in its last days is flirting with a thaw on Iranian relations. They have been giving serious consideration to establishing a real United States Interests Section in Tehran. Iranians have had an Interests Section in Washington for decades. By contrast, the Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests with Swiss personnel.
The difficulty facing Obama is that U.S.-Iranian relations have fallen into the general question of Israel’s difficulty with the Palestinian community. This line has been promulgated by Israel, and also by American lobbyists for Israel, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Any move toward rapprochement with Iran is now seen as anti-Israel. In his appearance before AIPAC during the campaign, President-elect Obama vowed to protect Israel, putting him at odds with an earlier pledge to talk to Iran “without preconditions.”
In fact, Iran poses no danger to Israel, a fact acknowledged by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as well as Kadima Party leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who said as much in private talks reported by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in October 2007.
Obama’s successful election has created an unprecedented positive climate in Iran toward the United States. This is based not only on the substantive hope for change, but also on the person of Barack Hussein Obama. Symbolism matters. President-elect Obama’s middle name, which was used to induce suspicion among the American public by Republicans during the presidential campaign, is pure gold in Iran. Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad, is the central religious figure in Shi’ism. His martyrdom in the 7th Century is the centerpiece in religious observance in Iran. Moreover, there are prophetic rumors flying in Iran of a new “dark” leader coming from the West to bring reform and salvation.
Merely talking to Iran would not pose a problem. Iran’s detractors, however, object strenuously to going to the conference table without making Iran pay a price up front.
It is important to clarify what the portmanteau concept "without preconditions" really refers to. Every time the Bush administration has professed its willingness to talk to Iran, it has made it a precondition that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. Iran did this unilaterally in 2003, and – guess what – the Bush administration still wouldn't talk to them, having utterly rebuffed the famous proposal sent to them via the Swiss embassy.
The call for Iranian suspension of uranium enrichment was clearly stated in Security Council Resolution 1696 not as an end in itself, but as a confidence-building measure to assure Iran's non-violation of Article IV of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), while asserting Iran's "inalienable right" (NPT preamble) to peaceful nuclear development, including uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes. Because there has never been any proof of an Iranian nuclear arms program, and the U.S. NIE report of 2007 asserted that Iran had no nuclear arms program, the resolution is effectively moot. Moreover it is not "international law" as the Bush administration has asserted. For this reason the precondition that Iran cease uranium enrichment before the United States would talk to it is anathema to Iran. It is tantamount to de facto deprivation of what Iranians see as their inalienable right under the NPT.
If the Obama administration would drop this sole precondition—there has never been any other— Iran's nuclear program could still be on the table for discussion, and Iran-U.S. relations would move forward.
William O. Beeman is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years. The second edition of his book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," has been published by the University of Chicago Press.
--
Obama’s Iranian Opening
New America Media, News Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 12, 2008
Editor’s note: Diplomacy between the United States and Iran has been at a standstill. President-elect Barack Obama has a great opportunity to end the cold war between the two nations. NAM contributing writer William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
President-elect Barack Obama has a serious opening to improving relations with Iran, if he knows how to exercise it. Unfortunately, his transition advisory team is weak on Middle East affairs, and almost non-existent on Iran. This leaves the president-elect prey to the same forces that have tried to sabotage progress on rapprochement with Iran during the Bush administration.
Paradoxically the Bush administration in its last days is flirting with a thaw on Iranian relations. They have been giving serious consideration to establishing a real United States Interests Section in Tehran. Iranians have had an Interests Section in Washington for decades. By contrast, the Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests with Swiss personnel.
The difficulty facing Obama is that U.S.-Iranian relations have fallen into the general question of Israel’s difficulty with the Palestinian community. This line has been promulgated by Israel, and also by American lobbyists for Israel, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Any move toward rapprochement with Iran is now seen as anti-Israel. In his appearance before AIPAC during the campaign, President-elect Obama vowed to protect Israel, putting him at odds with an earlier pledge to talk to Iran “without preconditions.”
In fact, Iran poses no danger to Israel, a fact acknowledged by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as well as Kadima Party leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who said as much in private talks reported by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in October 2007.
Obama’s successful election has created an unprecedented positive climate in Iran toward the United States. This is based not only on the substantive hope for change, but also on the person of Barack Hussein Obama. Symbolism matters. President-elect Obama’s middle name, which was used to induce suspicion among the American public by Republicans during the presidential campaign, is pure gold in Iran. Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad, is the central religious figure in Shi’ism. His martyrdom in the 7th Century is the centerpiece in religious observance in Iran. Moreover, there are prophetic rumors flying in Iran of a new “dark” leader coming from the West to bring reform and salvation.
Merely talking to Iran would not pose a problem. Iran’s detractors, however, object strenuously to going to the conference table without making Iran pay a price up front.
It is important to clarify what the portmanteau concept "without preconditions" really refers to. Every time the Bush administration has professed its willingness to talk to Iran, it has made it a precondition that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. Iran did this unilaterally in 2003, and – guess what – the Bush administration still wouldn't talk to them, having utterly rebuffed the famous proposal sent to them via the Swiss embassy.
The call for Iranian suspension of uranium enrichment was clearly stated in Security Council Resolution 1696 not as an end in itself, but as a confidence-building measure to assure Iran's non-violation of Article IV of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), while asserting Iran's "inalienable right" (NPT preamble) to peaceful nuclear development, including uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes. Because there has never been any proof of an Iranian nuclear arms program, and the U.S. NIE report of 2007 asserted that Iran had no nuclear arms program, the resolution is effectively moot. Moreover it is not "international law" as the Bush administration has asserted. For this reason the precondition that Iran cease uranium enrichment before the United States would talk to it is anathema to Iran. It is tantamount to de facto deprivation of what Iranians see as their inalienable right under the NPT.
If the Obama administration would drop this sole precondition—there has never been any other— Iran's nuclear program could still be on the table for discussion, and Iran-U.S. relations would move forward.
William O. Beeman is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years. The second edition of his book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," has been published by the University of Chicago Press.
--
Monday, November 10, 2008
Brown Daily Herald: Brown, Military's Research Connections Up for Debate: Broad Range of Faculty Stances
Brown, military's research connections up for debate
Broad range of faculty stances
Alex Roehrkasse
Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: Campus News
A Human Terrain System soldier conducting interviews in Afghanistan. Brown professors have both participated in and criticized the program.
Media Credit: File Photo
A Human Terrain System soldier conducting interviews in Afghanistan. Brown professors have both participated in and criticized the program.
The question of the military's support for university research has been a sticking point in ethical discourse among academics at least since World War II. Then, researchers in the physical sciences engaged in intense debates over the ethical implications of their work in developing the atomic bomb.
Now, with the recent inception of a handful of new military programs for research funding and the growth of available military research money despite dwindling financial awards from other government agencies, the debate has once again flared up. As both participants in and critics of military-supported research programs, some Brown faculty have placed themselves at the center of this debate.
On the one hand, Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz has been an outspoken opponent of the military's efforts to draw from university expertise, having published extensively on the subject. On the other hand, former Watson Institute fellow Michael Bhatia '99, who was killed this May while participating in a military research program in Afghanistan, was a strong supporter of such efforts. Another perspective on the merits and pitfalls of such collaboration is held by Brown researchers in the physical sciences, who have been less present in public debates on the ethics of military work but have received approximately $8.6 million - six percent of Brown's research budget - in fiscal year 2008 from the Department of Defense, according to University records.
An anthropological quandary
The most noticeable upsurge in the discourse on the ethics of collaboration with the military has been among anthropologists. With two ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has been exploring new ways to bring ethnographers into the fold of security research and operations.
As early as 2003, the Department of Defense began hiring anthropologists to find ways to ameliorate U.S. troops' unfamiliarity with Iraqi culture and society. With a substantial monetary infusion into the program in 2007, the Human Terrain System began to reach out more broadly to American academics willing to be embedded with combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Through the program, participating scholars who do research in these places have the opportunity to conduct their work with the protection of U.S. security forces. In exchange, these specialists help soldiers navigate unfamiliar and uncertain terrain, serving as linguistic and cultural liaisons.
"The use of social science is necessary to and legitimate in military operations," the program's Web site states.
The Human Terrain System program sparked an intense and ongoing debate within the anthropological discipline. Many anthropologists took issue with the dangers of sharing their specialized knowledge with an organization that could endanger the people they study.
"Anthropologists are in an absolutely unique position," said William Beeman, adjunct professor of anthropology. "We're the people who really know the situation on the ground. We know the languages. We know the culture. So you really walk a fine line deciding to what degree you're going to advise people."
Beeman said he has done extensive consulting with the Department of Defense and other government agencies, and called the idea that social science researchers can and should abstain completely from military work both "unreasonable" and "unethical."
Last year, the American Anthropological Association denounced the program on the grounds that researchers could not obtain informed consent from their subjects in a combat environment and could endanger them by providing information to the military. The association also formed a commission to reevaluate the ethics of anthropologists' engagement with the military and intelligence communities.
"We do not recommend non-engagement, but instead emphasize differences in kinds of engagement and accompanying ethical considerations," the commission said in its November 2007 report.
In September, the association approved amendments to its code of ethics.
"In relation with his or her own government, host governments, or sponsors of research, an anthropologist should be honest and candid. Anthropologists must not compromise their professional responsibilities and ethics and should not agree to conditions which inappropriately change the purpose, focus or intended outcomes of their research," the revision stated.
Brown faculty enter the debate
At Brown, debates about the Human Terrain System took a more solemn turn after Bhatia's death in May. Bhatia was a graduate student at Oxford in the department of politics and international relations. He had been preparing a dissertation on combatant motives of the Mujahideen, a militant group in Afghanistan.
"The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/(International Security Assistance Force) strategy becomes better attuned to the population's concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan," Bhatia wrote about the Human Terrain System in November 2007.
The American Anthropological Association is now undertaking a much more sweeping revision to its ethics guidelines to be concluded in late 2010. Those revisions will have to tackle not only the question of the Human Terrain System program, but also a host of other issues revolving around the rising amount of proprietary research being conducted by anthropologists, Beeman said. Beeman participated in the last major revision to the anthropological association's code of ethics in the late nineties.
Beeman, a Middle East expert who has briefed both military personnel and policy makers, recalled being contacted by Army representatives for consultation before the invasion of Iraq. He said he told them the United States shouldn't do it.
"They say 'Well, that doesn't help us much because we're about to.' Then you say 'All right, look. I'll come and talk to you and I'll tell you why you shouldn't do it.' I can't refuse those sorts of invitations because it wouldn't be ethical," Beeman recounted. "We can't pass up those opportunities if we're serious academics."
The newest military program to draw on the expertise of social scientists in academia is the Minerva Initiative, a $50 million program announced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in April. The initiative aims to channel military funds toward research on issues such as terrorist organization and ideologies, Chinese military technology and the strategic impact of cultural and religious change in the Islamic world. The first round of grants is expected to be announced this year.
"This is the first significant effort in 30 or 40 years to engage social sciences on a large scale by the Department of Defense," said Thomas Mahnken, a deputy assistant defense secretary for policy planning, according to a Washington Post article published Aug. 3.
"There was an effort during (the Vietnam era) that ended up being ill-conceived and burned bridges on both sides, and, unfortunately, these attitudes have persisted," Mahnken told the Post. "This effort is about rebuilding those bridges."
Like the Human Terrain System, the Minerva Initiative - named after the virgin Roman goddess of both wisdom and warriors - has sparked a new wave of controversy within the anthropological discipline.
In a guest editorial titled "Selling Ourselves?" featured in the most recent edition of the journal Anthropology Today, Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz argued that the program will distract the research of anthropologists, who should avoid military funding.
"(The Minerva Initiative) represents an important attempt to garner ideological acceptance among anthropologists for doing military research," Lutz wrote in the editorial. "This money could shape and distort our field in significant ways, as has happened with other disciplines that have been the recipients of Pentagon largesse."
The journal edition that featured the editorial was devoted to a discussion of a number of different ways in which anthropologists and the military have recently come into contact and often collaboration.
"The military as a funding source often portrays itself as an un-self-interested or a national interest centered organization, but in fact has institutional interests in getting certain kinds of research results," Lutz said.
Less concern in physical sciences
In contrast to anthropologists' sharp sensitivity to the ethical quandaries of military collaboration, researchers in other disciplines do not seem to have the same degree of concern. Beemen said that political scientists have a long tradition of collaborating in intelligence and security efforts. He added that political scientists frequently contest anthropologists' objections to such work - and even question their patriotism.
In the physical sciences, academics also seem to be more comfortable doing research with the military. This may be due to the generally detached and often exclusively financial relationship that most science researchers have with military agencies, as most military grants to universities are for elementary research that may or may not underpin future developments in military laboratories or in the private sector. On the other hand, it could be the result of the Department of Defense's strong - in certain fields almost ubiquitous - presence as a source of significant and reliable funding.
"The most successful groups in my area have military funding," said Pascal Van Hentenryck, a professor of computer science whose research focuses on optimization - a field he said the military had been funding for at least 60 years - which includes designing emergency response systems. He and other science researchers and administrators interviewed by The Herald all echoed the idea that at least in some fields, the military was a necessary source of funding for scientific research.
Public debates on the ethics of research in Van Hentenryck's field are not common, he said. But Van Hentenryck recalled ethical debates in computer science from his days as a graduate student, when he and his colleagues contemplated among themselves whether or not cooperative decisions to refrain from developing missile systems would halt their development.
Van Hentenryck said that his graduate students frequently raise the same questions, and that a responsive instructor should answer them.
He also stressed the fact that his research, like that of most other scientists, is useful in myriad fields, not just military matters, and that university researchers usually have little idea about how their ideas are eventually put into practice.
Vice President for Research Clyde Briant said that there is no ethical discourse about the sources of research funding at the university level, and that such debates would be personal ones among professors.
He said that professors at Brown tend to exhibit a high demand for knowledge about military funding opportunities, especially as other federal funding resources dry up.
Brown's principal criteria for accepting research funding are that research can be neither proprietary - there can be no restrictions on publication rights - nor classified, according to Briant.
Director of Government Affairs and Community Relations Tim Leshan lobbies on behalf of Brown with the Department of Defense to ensure that policy makers in Washington know about the University's research capabilities and that Brown professors are aware of the military funding available to them.
"While funding at the (National Institutes of Health) and the (National Science Foundation) has not kept up with inflation in the last five years," Leshan said, "Department of Defense research funding has grown."
Broad range of faculty stances
Alex Roehrkasse
Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: Campus News
A Human Terrain System soldier conducting interviews in Afghanistan. Brown professors have both participated in and criticized the program.
Media Credit: File Photo
A Human Terrain System soldier conducting interviews in Afghanistan. Brown professors have both participated in and criticized the program.
The question of the military's support for university research has been a sticking point in ethical discourse among academics at least since World War II. Then, researchers in the physical sciences engaged in intense debates over the ethical implications of their work in developing the atomic bomb.
Now, with the recent inception of a handful of new military programs for research funding and the growth of available military research money despite dwindling financial awards from other government agencies, the debate has once again flared up. As both participants in and critics of military-supported research programs, some Brown faculty have placed themselves at the center of this debate.
On the one hand, Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz has been an outspoken opponent of the military's efforts to draw from university expertise, having published extensively on the subject. On the other hand, former Watson Institute fellow Michael Bhatia '99, who was killed this May while participating in a military research program in Afghanistan, was a strong supporter of such efforts. Another perspective on the merits and pitfalls of such collaboration is held by Brown researchers in the physical sciences, who have been less present in public debates on the ethics of military work but have received approximately $8.6 million - six percent of Brown's research budget - in fiscal year 2008 from the Department of Defense, according to University records.
An anthropological quandary
The most noticeable upsurge in the discourse on the ethics of collaboration with the military has been among anthropologists. With two ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has been exploring new ways to bring ethnographers into the fold of security research and operations.
As early as 2003, the Department of Defense began hiring anthropologists to find ways to ameliorate U.S. troops' unfamiliarity with Iraqi culture and society. With a substantial monetary infusion into the program in 2007, the Human Terrain System began to reach out more broadly to American academics willing to be embedded with combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Through the program, participating scholars who do research in these places have the opportunity to conduct their work with the protection of U.S. security forces. In exchange, these specialists help soldiers navigate unfamiliar and uncertain terrain, serving as linguistic and cultural liaisons.
"The use of social science is necessary to and legitimate in military operations," the program's Web site states.
The Human Terrain System program sparked an intense and ongoing debate within the anthropological discipline. Many anthropologists took issue with the dangers of sharing their specialized knowledge with an organization that could endanger the people they study.
"Anthropologists are in an absolutely unique position," said William Beeman, adjunct professor of anthropology. "We're the people who really know the situation on the ground. We know the languages. We know the culture. So you really walk a fine line deciding to what degree you're going to advise people."
Beeman said he has done extensive consulting with the Department of Defense and other government agencies, and called the idea that social science researchers can and should abstain completely from military work both "unreasonable" and "unethical."
Last year, the American Anthropological Association denounced the program on the grounds that researchers could not obtain informed consent from their subjects in a combat environment and could endanger them by providing information to the military. The association also formed a commission to reevaluate the ethics of anthropologists' engagement with the military and intelligence communities.
"We do not recommend non-engagement, but instead emphasize differences in kinds of engagement and accompanying ethical considerations," the commission said in its November 2007 report.
In September, the association approved amendments to its code of ethics.
"In relation with his or her own government, host governments, or sponsors of research, an anthropologist should be honest and candid. Anthropologists must not compromise their professional responsibilities and ethics and should not agree to conditions which inappropriately change the purpose, focus or intended outcomes of their research," the revision stated.
Brown faculty enter the debate
At Brown, debates about the Human Terrain System took a more solemn turn after Bhatia's death in May. Bhatia was a graduate student at Oxford in the department of politics and international relations. He had been preparing a dissertation on combatant motives of the Mujahideen, a militant group in Afghanistan.
"The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/(International Security Assistance Force) strategy becomes better attuned to the population's concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan," Bhatia wrote about the Human Terrain System in November 2007.
The American Anthropological Association is now undertaking a much more sweeping revision to its ethics guidelines to be concluded in late 2010. Those revisions will have to tackle not only the question of the Human Terrain System program, but also a host of other issues revolving around the rising amount of proprietary research being conducted by anthropologists, Beeman said. Beeman participated in the last major revision to the anthropological association's code of ethics in the late nineties.
Beeman, a Middle East expert who has briefed both military personnel and policy makers, recalled being contacted by Army representatives for consultation before the invasion of Iraq. He said he told them the United States shouldn't do it.
"They say 'Well, that doesn't help us much because we're about to.' Then you say 'All right, look. I'll come and talk to you and I'll tell you why you shouldn't do it.' I can't refuse those sorts of invitations because it wouldn't be ethical," Beeman recounted. "We can't pass up those opportunities if we're serious academics."
The newest military program to draw on the expertise of social scientists in academia is the Minerva Initiative, a $50 million program announced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in April. The initiative aims to channel military funds toward research on issues such as terrorist organization and ideologies, Chinese military technology and the strategic impact of cultural and religious change in the Islamic world. The first round of grants is expected to be announced this year.
"This is the first significant effort in 30 or 40 years to engage social sciences on a large scale by the Department of Defense," said Thomas Mahnken, a deputy assistant defense secretary for policy planning, according to a Washington Post article published Aug. 3.
"There was an effort during (the Vietnam era) that ended up being ill-conceived and burned bridges on both sides, and, unfortunately, these attitudes have persisted," Mahnken told the Post. "This effort is about rebuilding those bridges."
Like the Human Terrain System, the Minerva Initiative - named after the virgin Roman goddess of both wisdom and warriors - has sparked a new wave of controversy within the anthropological discipline.
In a guest editorial titled "Selling Ourselves?" featured in the most recent edition of the journal Anthropology Today, Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz argued that the program will distract the research of anthropologists, who should avoid military funding.
"(The Minerva Initiative) represents an important attempt to garner ideological acceptance among anthropologists for doing military research," Lutz wrote in the editorial. "This money could shape and distort our field in significant ways, as has happened with other disciplines that have been the recipients of Pentagon largesse."
The journal edition that featured the editorial was devoted to a discussion of a number of different ways in which anthropologists and the military have recently come into contact and often collaboration.
"The military as a funding source often portrays itself as an un-self-interested or a national interest centered organization, but in fact has institutional interests in getting certain kinds of research results," Lutz said.
Less concern in physical sciences
In contrast to anthropologists' sharp sensitivity to the ethical quandaries of military collaboration, researchers in other disciplines do not seem to have the same degree of concern. Beemen said that political scientists have a long tradition of collaborating in intelligence and security efforts. He added that political scientists frequently contest anthropologists' objections to such work - and even question their patriotism.
In the physical sciences, academics also seem to be more comfortable doing research with the military. This may be due to the generally detached and often exclusively financial relationship that most science researchers have with military agencies, as most military grants to universities are for elementary research that may or may not underpin future developments in military laboratories or in the private sector. On the other hand, it could be the result of the Department of Defense's strong - in certain fields almost ubiquitous - presence as a source of significant and reliable funding.
"The most successful groups in my area have military funding," said Pascal Van Hentenryck, a professor of computer science whose research focuses on optimization - a field he said the military had been funding for at least 60 years - which includes designing emergency response systems. He and other science researchers and administrators interviewed by The Herald all echoed the idea that at least in some fields, the military was a necessary source of funding for scientific research.
Public debates on the ethics of research in Van Hentenryck's field are not common, he said. But Van Hentenryck recalled ethical debates in computer science from his days as a graduate student, when he and his colleagues contemplated among themselves whether or not cooperative decisions to refrain from developing missile systems would halt their development.
Van Hentenryck said that his graduate students frequently raise the same questions, and that a responsive instructor should answer them.
He also stressed the fact that his research, like that of most other scientists, is useful in myriad fields, not just military matters, and that university researchers usually have little idea about how their ideas are eventually put into practice.
Vice President for Research Clyde Briant said that there is no ethical discourse about the sources of research funding at the university level, and that such debates would be personal ones among professors.
He said that professors at Brown tend to exhibit a high demand for knowledge about military funding opportunities, especially as other federal funding resources dry up.
Brown's principal criteria for accepting research funding are that research can be neither proprietary - there can be no restrictions on publication rights - nor classified, according to Briant.
Director of Government Affairs and Community Relations Tim Leshan lobbies on behalf of Brown with the Department of Defense to ensure that policy makers in Washington know about the University's research capabilities and that Brown professors are aware of the military funding available to them.
"While funding at the (National Institutes of Health) and the (National Science Foundation) has not kept up with inflation in the last five years," Leshan said, "Department of Defense research funding has grown."
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Former Officials Say Iran Helped on Al-Qaeda (AP)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iran;_ylt=AiiymPbtqjCtDDCupADcFJ4LewgF#
Former officials say Iran helped on al-Qaida
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday 7 October 2008, 6:23 PM ET
Commentary by William O. Beeman:
One of the ways that the Bush administration has tried to make a case for attacking Iran is to identify it as "the chief state sponsor of terrorism." As part of this campaign, the Bush administration has tried ruthlessly to tie Iran to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. One way is to claim that Iran is supporting Al-Qaeda. This makes no sense, since Al-Qaeda is dominated by extremist Salafi Muslims who, in their most severe pronouncements call for the killing of Shi'a Muslims as blasphemers. This article shows that the Bush accusations about the connections to Al-Qaeda are lies. Barry Schweid is a veteran AP reporter with impeccable credentials.
In an effort to help the United States counter al-Qaida after the 9/11 attack, Iran rounded up hundreds of Arabs who had crossed the border from Afghanistan, expelled many of them and made copies of nearly 300 of their passports, a former Bush administration official said Tuesday.
The copies were sent to Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, who passed them on to the United States, while U.S. interrogators were given a chance by Iran to question some of the detainees, Hillary Mann Leverett said in an Associated Press interview.
Leverett, who said she negotiated with Iran for the Bush administration in the 2001-3 period, said Iran sought a broader relationship with the United States. "They thought they had been helpful on al-Qaida, and they were," she said.
For one thing, she said, suspected al-Qaida operatives were not given sanctuary in Iran.
Some administration officials took the view, however, that Iran had not acknowledged all likely al-Qaida members nor provided access to them, Leverett said.
Many of the expelled Arabs were deported to Saudi Arabia and to other Arab and Muslim countries, even though Iran had poor relations with the Saudi monarchy and some other countries in the region, Leverett said.
James F. Dobbins, the Bush administration's chief negotiator on Afghanistan in late 2001, said that Iran was "comprehensively helpful" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack in working to overthrow the Taliban and collaborating with the United States in installing the Karzai government in Kabul.
Iranian diplomats made clear at the time they were looking for broader cooperation with the United States, but the Bush administration was not interested, the author of "After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan," said in a separate interview.
The Bush administration has acknowledged contacts with Iran over the years even while denouncing Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and declining to consider a resumption of diplomatic relations.
"It isn't something that is talked about," Leverett said in describing Iran's role during a forum at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute.
Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, a former career CIA analyst and a former National Security Council official, jointly proposed the next U.S. president seek a "grand bargain" with Iran to settle all major outstanding differences.
"The next president needs to reorient U.S. policy toward Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s," Flynt Leverett said.
Among the provisions: The United States would clarify that it is not seeking change in the nature of the Iranian regime but rather in its policies, while Iran would agree to "certain limits" on its nuclear program.
Iran considers most of its neighbors as enemies. Among its incentives for improving U.S. relations is that they feel that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would be less provocative, the Leveretts said.
Former officials say Iran helped on al-Qaida
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday 7 October 2008, 6:23 PM ET
Commentary by William O. Beeman:
One of the ways that the Bush administration has tried to make a case for attacking Iran is to identify it as "the chief state sponsor of terrorism." As part of this campaign, the Bush administration has tried ruthlessly to tie Iran to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. One way is to claim that Iran is supporting Al-Qaeda. This makes no sense, since Al-Qaeda is dominated by extremist Salafi Muslims who, in their most severe pronouncements call for the killing of Shi'a Muslims as blasphemers. This article shows that the Bush accusations about the connections to Al-Qaeda are lies. Barry Schweid is a veteran AP reporter with impeccable credentials.
In an effort to help the United States counter al-Qaida after the 9/11 attack, Iran rounded up hundreds of Arabs who had crossed the border from Afghanistan, expelled many of them and made copies of nearly 300 of their passports, a former Bush administration official said Tuesday.
The copies were sent to Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, who passed them on to the United States, while U.S. interrogators were given a chance by Iran to question some of the detainees, Hillary Mann Leverett said in an Associated Press interview.
Leverett, who said she negotiated with Iran for the Bush administration in the 2001-3 period, said Iran sought a broader relationship with the United States. "They thought they had been helpful on al-Qaida, and they were," she said.
For one thing, she said, suspected al-Qaida operatives were not given sanctuary in Iran.
Some administration officials took the view, however, that Iran had not acknowledged all likely al-Qaida members nor provided access to them, Leverett said.
Many of the expelled Arabs were deported to Saudi Arabia and to other Arab and Muslim countries, even though Iran had poor relations with the Saudi monarchy and some other countries in the region, Leverett said.
James F. Dobbins, the Bush administration's chief negotiator on Afghanistan in late 2001, said that Iran was "comprehensively helpful" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack in working to overthrow the Taliban and collaborating with the United States in installing the Karzai government in Kabul.
Iranian diplomats made clear at the time they were looking for broader cooperation with the United States, but the Bush administration was not interested, the author of "After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan," said in a separate interview.
The Bush administration has acknowledged contacts with Iran over the years even while denouncing Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and declining to consider a resumption of diplomatic relations.
"It isn't something that is talked about," Leverett said in describing Iran's role during a forum at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute.
Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, a former career CIA analyst and a former National Security Council official, jointly proposed the next U.S. president seek a "grand bargain" with Iran to settle all major outstanding differences.
"The next president needs to reorient U.S. policy toward Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s," Flynt Leverett said.
Among the provisions: The United States would clarify that it is not seeking change in the nature of the Iranian regime but rather in its policies, while Iran would agree to "certain limits" on its nuclear program.
Iran considers most of its neighbors as enemies. Among its incentives for improving U.S. relations is that they feel that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would be less provocative, the Leveretts said.
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