US-Iran relations: Pundita names winners of her 2007 Silliest Analysis Award

I don't have to wait until the end of the year to bestow the award; nothing can top The Iran Option That Isn't on the Table by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, which popped up on The Washington Post editorial page on February 8. The entire analysis is loopy but here is the passage that netted the authors a coveted Pundita prize:

... More than sanctions or threats of military retribution, Iran's integration into the global economy would impose standards and discipline on the recalcitrant [Iranian] theocracy. International investors and institutions such as the World Trade Organization are far more subversive, as they would demand the prerequisite of a democratic society -- transparency, the rule of law and decentralization -- as a price for their commerce."

The closer Russia edged toward WTO membership, the more they flouted democratic reforms. If the WTO carrot didn't bring China and Russia to transparency, the rule of law and decentralization, why should it work for Iran?

Messrs Nasr and Takeyh have no answer, no argument to support their observations -- unless they expect the reader to accept as answer their claim that "Iran has a political system without precedent or parallel in modern history."

Even so, the claim is not reason enough to overlook the lessons of China and Russia and embrace the fallacy of a cause-and-effect relationship between increased global trade and the institution of democracy.

Now what would cause two scholars to mount a downright silly argument? The only clue is the point of the opinion piece. What is the option for dealing with Iran that Nasr and Takeyh want the US administration to take up?

"... to liberalize the theocratic state [of Iran], the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief.

That explains why The Washington Post doesn't mind egg on its face for publishing silly putty; the Post is a conduit for opinion at the US Department of State and we can assume that at least one faction State favors the Iraq Study Group advice that the US should engage Iran in diplomatic dialogue.

As for Nasr and Takeyh, they are associated with the Council on Foreign Relations Cooking School. The think tank, which exists to support Nato doctrine, became a cooking school when a US administration had the temerity to reject a Nato-oriented foreign policy in favor of a US-centric one.

If the CFR was to keep a foot inside the door in official Washington after 9/11, they had to cook up analyses that made a nod to the US-centrics (often wrongly lumped with Neocons) while keeping the Natoists happy. No small feat of fusion cooking but the meals tend to be flavored to Brussels's taste.

Professor Nasr is also closely associated with the US military. He is Associate Chair of Research at the Department of National Security Affairs of the Naval Postgraduate School. Of course the official policy of the United States is to support Nato.

And Nasr is one of the go-to guys whenever the Bush administration wants a lesson on Sunni-Shia affairs. Nasr is considered by many in Washington to be an expert in contemporary Middle Eastern affairs and Islamic politics.

From all this, we can assume two things: 1) Nasr's advice on Iran meshes with the Nato view on whether the US should directly engage with Iran on the diplomatic front and suspend sanctions, and 2) There are factions in State and the Pentagon that favor the carrot approach to US relations with Iran.

Do Nasr and Takeyh present any reasonable argument in favor of rapprochement? Not that Pundita can see; they tend to contradict themselves. They fall back on blaming the US for the power that the Iran's hardliners enjoy; at the same time the authors observe:

The public sector accounts for more than 80 percent of the Iranian economy, and the constitution gives the clerical leadership most of the power.

I think they are correct in drawing a general conclusion that it's not so much the type of people who hold the power in Iran; i.e., clerics, as the amount of power they hold that is the deciding factor in how much they will fight to hold onto power. However, by that argument, the US is simply the handiest excuse for the clerics to keep an iron grip on power. Take away the US, Israel, and Islam, and those who hold vast power will find another excuse to hold onto it.

The authors also mount a very strange argument: After acknowledging the role that containment played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they claim that Iran would not buckle to the same pressure. It's unclear why they think Iran would not buckle; all they seem to offer by way of a reason is the following, after telling us that Iran's political system has no parallel in modern history:

The struggle [in Iran] is not just between reactionaries and reformers, conservatives and liberals, but fundamentally between the state and society. A subtle means of diminishing the state and empowering the society is, in the end, the best manner of promoting not only democracy but also nuclear disarmament.

Yet the state is always a perfect reflection of the society (often in the manner of the portrait of Dorian Gray) unless the government has been imposed from the outside. That does not seem to be the case in Iran.

However, from what I recall of the lessons taught by an Iranian author who guested on John Batchelor's program a few years back, it could be that the influx of non-Iranian Arabs to Iran's government during the Iranian revolution, and specifically Arabs who represented the brand of Islam that the Saudis sponsored, injected an element of foreign control into Iran's government, or at least foreign influence.

(Her name escapes me at the moment but I recall the author's account of her childhood in Iran during the revolution. Arab teachers replaced the Persian ones at her school and she was forced to learn to speak Arabic.)

In any case, Nasr and Takeyh do not explain how nuclear disarmament could flow from more power-sharing in the Iranian society. It didn't flow that way in France, India, the US or Israel.

Another tortured argument turns on itself:

[Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric and populist posturing did not impress the Iranians who turned out in large numbers to elect city councils and members of the Assembly of Experts. Voters favored pragmatic conservatives and reformers who oppose their president's policies abroad and his economic programs at home.

Two paragraphs down -- and clearly on the assumption that readers of the Washington Post editorial page have the attention span of a gnat -- the authors inform us that:

The clerical regime has also proved to be enterprising in facing demands for reform, particularly by using elections to manage opposition within the bounds of the Islamic republic."

"Managing opposition" includes vote rigging. In other words, if Iran's clerics are now stuffing the ballot boxes against Ahmadinejad, it is not necessarily a sign of the collective will of the Iranian people to censure him or that they're rejecting him. However, it is a very clear sign that Berlin, Paris and Brussels are leaning hard on Iran's clerics to put a muzzle on Maddy.

Iran in the raw does not play well in West Europe's capitals and in particular with the EU. In years prior to Maddy's election Brussels went to great trouble to help Tehran's government present Iran to the world as a modern, forward-looking country that is just trying to make a buck in international trade.

Brussels does not want the entire Iranian society to be revealed to the world. Berlin does not want censure from the US because of Germany's trade with Iran; the same could be said for all EU members that do business with Iran. And New Delhi and Moscow don't want Iran's true face hanging out there for the world to see -- again, for reasons of trade with Iran.

Can the same be said for the technocrats in Iran's government who want to wrest power from the clerics? It is certain that the technocrats want Iran to show a moderate face to the world; I doubt that is the only factor influencing their tussle with the clerics but it's an important one.

What I find astonishing about the blizzard of opinion on Iran during the past year is that it avoids focusing on Iran's military. I don't see Iran's technocrats and theocrats as calling the shots; I look at Iran's government as a thinly disguised military dictatorship.

In any case if Iranians came from another planet, that would be the only reason for the US government to reference sociological studies of Shia-Sunni affairs and political analyses of Iranian society while trying to construct policy toward Iran. But the golden rule for developing foreign policy initiatives is to keep in mind that human nature trumps differences between cultures.

Learning about the sociology stuff and becoming expert on a country's political system is for the diplomats -- those who must help convey policy in a negotiation framework. But first must come the policy, which should be shaped by a nation's self interest and an awareness of the byways of human nature.

The US is confronted with a purely military situation. The bottom line is that no matter how much talking we might do with Iran, the US will not stand down in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Is this enough reason not to talk with Iran? No. It is the height of stupidity for a hyperpower to prod other countries to do their talking for them, and it causes the hyperpower to lose face.

The US practically invented the modern form of multilateralism and our government has clung to multilateralism even if this meant accepting massive contradictions in US defense policy. So the US needs to poop or get off the pot.

If you push multilateralism at all costs you can't tell other countries, "You go talk to that fiend government. I'll make comments on the side."

Life won't let you get away with that much contradiction. If you espouse a multilateral approach to problem-solving in foreign relations, you have to make yourself part of the approach.

So if Washington wants to stick with the multilateral approach, which Pundita does not favor on principle, we should definitely join the EU3 (Britain, Germany and France) at the negotiation table with Tehran. For many reasons, not the least of which pouring oil on troubled waters, the US should also publicly invite Moscow to get more involved the talks and work hard behind the scenes to bring Russia to the negotiations.

Should we ditch the multilateral approach with Iran and offer Iran bilateral talks? I think we have gone too far down the road with the EU3 to ditch them at this point. But if I could turn back the clock to 2003, I'd say that bilateral talks couldn't have done worse than years of the EU3 playing cat and mouse with Tehran -- and certainly, bilateralism in this case would have saved US face.

With regard to sanctions on Iran, check out this development: Iran loses more aid from nuclear agency:

(Associated Press) VIENNA - February 9: The International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday suspended nearly half of the technical aid it was providing Iran, carrying out sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council because Tehran refuses to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

As the agency's director general issued the report to his 35-nation board, Iran's top nuclear negotiator reversed course on a decision to stay away from a security conference in Germany. After telling organizers earlier Friday that he would not attend for health reasons, the negotiator, Ali Larijani, said in the evening that he would go to Munich, said Klaus Treude, a spokesman for the conference. [...]

The rest of the report is interesting but the above is enough to convey a general rule: if you want a government to engage in serious negotiations with you, you have to give them at least one serious reason to come to the table in a negotiating frame of mind. If Tehran is not yet in a serious frame of mind about negotiations, sanctions should remain and increase.

I've already received letters asking whether I think the recent six-party negotiations with North Korea should serve as a model for US negotiations with Iran. I will reply in tomorrow's post.