The Great Debate

Don’t forget Iran’s record of deception

Alan Elsner

May 22, 2012 14:12 EDT

Optimism that this week’s talks in Baghdad about Iran’s nuclear weapons program could produce a deal should be tempered with extreme skepticism and caution in light of the Islamic Republic’s long record of lies and deception.

The international media is awash with speculation that some kind of agreement is in the offing between the six nations that make up the so-called P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) and the Iranians.

Such a deal, we read, would require Iran to stop enriching uranium above 5 percent and ship its stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium (currently estimated at more than 100 kilograms) out of the country. Enrichment at the reinforced underground facility in Fordo, near Qom, would have to stop.

This is a key demand. It is clear from the size of the site that it has a military purpose: It can hold only 3,000 centrifuges – far fewer than the number needed for industrial-scale fuel production, but ideal for quick production of 90-percent-weapons-grade-enriched uranium.

In return, the international community would agree not to impose further economic sanctions, though current measures would remain in place. Additionally, the six powers would agree to help the Iranians fuel a small reactor for medical purposes and send them fuel rods for a civilian research reactor.

No one knows if the Iranian leadership will agree to such a package. But their past record leaves little room for confidence, and many analysts believe the Iranians are engaged in this process in an effort to buy yet more time so that they can continue enriching uranium and move even closer to a nuclear weapon.

Although not part of the P5+1, no country has more at stake in these talks than Israel, which remains the most likely target of a nuclear-armed Iran. Just this past weekend, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, told a defense gathering in Tehran that the Iranian nation remained committed to the “full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.”

from Paul Smalera:

What real Internet censorship looks like

Paul Smalera

Feb 27, 2012 13:44 EST

Lately Internet users in the U.S. have been worried about censorship, copyright legalities and data privacy. Between Twitter’s new censorship policy, the global protests over SOPA/PIPA and ACTA and the outrage over Apple’s iOS allowing apps like Path to access the address book without prior approval, these fears have certainly seemed warranted. But we should also remember that Internet users around the world face far more insidious limitations and intrusions on their Internet usage -- practices, in fact, that would horrify the average American.

Sadly, most of the rest of the world has come to accept censorship as a necessary evil. Although I recently argued that Twitter’s censorship policy at least had the benefit of transparency, it’s still an unfortunate cost of doing global business for a company born and bred with the freedoms of the United States, and founded by tech pioneers whose opportunities and creativity stem directly from our Constitution. Yet by the standards of dictatorial regimes, Internet users in countries like China, Syria and Iran should consider themselves lucky if Twitter’s relatively modest censorship program actually keeps those countries’ governments from shutting down the service. As we are seeing around the world, chances are, unfortunately, it won’t.

Consider the freedoms -- or lack thereof -- Internet users have in Iran. Since this past week, some 30 million Iranian users have been without Internet service thanks to that country’s blocking of the SSL protocol, right at the time of its parliamentary elections. SSL is what turns “http” -- the basic way we access the Web -- into “https”, which Gmail, your bank, your credit card company and thousands of other services use to secure data. SSL provides data encryption so that only each end point -- your browser and the Web server you’re logging into -- can decrypt and access the data contained therein.

By blocking SSL, Iran has crippled Tor, a program that enables Internet users to anonymize not just their content but their physical location as well. Tor is a very common workaround for users in totalitarian regimes to access Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and other services. It’s hard to come up with an apt analogy for Iran’s unprecedented blockage -- it’s not just that the letters you send are read by the Post Office and photocopied for their records, it’s that the Post Roads themselves have been closed off, so you can’t even send a letter in the first place. That’s the net effect of blocking SSL in Iran.

The hacking group Anonymous has brought down all kinds of websites in protest, mostly over copyright, in the U.S. and Europe. I don’t advocate their targeting any country’s servers for retribution, but where is the outrage or public demonstration or media attention over the denials of Iranians’ basic freedoms to communicate, via the Internet?

Unfortunately, it’s still too easy for Internet companies and even the Internet’s founding fathers to dismiss the importance of the tools they created in fostering free and open public dialogue, especially in places like Iran. Recently, legendary engineer and Google Vice-President Vint Cerf published a New York Times op-ed entitled “Internet Access is Not a Human Right,” where he wrote: “Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important.” How wrong he is. Cerf’s line of thinking eviscerates the Internet -- the wonder of the modern world he helped build. Cerf argues that humans have the right to “lead healthy, meaningful lives,” including having “freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.” Yet, we live in the 21st century: It’s hard to see how, among people whose economies are developed enough to afford them communication devices, Cerf would excuse governments that curtail their citizens’ freedom and right to use the ultimate communications tool -- the global network of the Internet. In fact, in underdeveloped parts of the world, the cost to have a cell phone that connects to the Web can be quite affordable.

I’m not arguing semantics here -- if our society excludes the Internet from the fundamental rights of human communication, we also excuse totalitarian regimes like Iran’s from any repercussions when it comes to blocking that avenue of human contact. It’s a dangerous compromise to make in a world that only gets more digital with each passing day. And it also conveniently excuses the free world from having to do much of anything about it. We wouldn’t forgive Iran if it threw 30 million citizens into solitary confinement -- so why would we ignore it when the Iranian government effectively cuts the entire population off from the outside world, to stifle their voices during a critical electoral cycle?

What does Iran want?

Daniel Serwer

Feb 16, 2012 12:08 EST

Dennis Ross, until recently in charge of Iran in the Obama White House, has outlined why he thinks strengthened sanctions have created an environment in which diplomacy may now work to block Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is being reported that Iran has finally responded to a European Union letter requiring that renewed talks focus specifically on ensuring that the Iranian nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.

These are important developments, but they leave out half the equation. What can Iran hope to get from nuclear talks with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China — plus Germany? Iran will certainly seek relief from sanctions, which have become truly punishing. But they will want more.

It is clear that Tehran’s first priority is an end to American efforts at regime change. This is not an issue Americans know or think much about, but it obsesses the Iranians. They believe that Washington has tried to bring about regime change in Tehran for decades. Iranian officials can entertain you for hours with stories about American (and Israeli) assistance to Azeri, Baloch and Kurdish rebels. The Arab Spring uprisings took their inspiration in part from Iran’s own “Green Movement,” which protested fraud in the 2009 presidential elections before being brutally repressed. While some in Congress view President Obama as insufficiently supportive of the Greens, the regime in Tehran thought the Americans were behind the whole movement.

The nuclear program, in addition to beefing up Iran’s military muscle and regional prestige, is also intended to end attempts at regime change, as it is thought in Tehran that the U.S. will not attack a nuclear weapons state for fear of the consequences. To those looking for it, there is ample supporting evidence: Witness the contrast between North Korea, a severely repressive regime that has obtained nuclear weapons, and Libya, which gave up its nuclear efforts and suffered a NATO air war that brought about regime change.

So the question becomes this: Will the Americans be prepared to take regime change off the table if the Iranians are prepared to give ironclad and verifiable assurances that their nuclear program is entirely peaceful? The answer to that question is not obvious. While it is barely possible to picture Washington recognizing Tehran and re-establishing diplomatic relations after a 32-year hiatus, it is far harder to picture a bilateral agreement promising mutual noninterference in internal affairs. Certainly an agreement of that sort would not find ready approval in Congress.

Another key question is whether the U.S. is prepared to accept Iran holding on to sensitive nuclear technology, in particular, uranium enrichment, even if Tehran can use that technology only under tight international controls. Many countries have this arrangement: No one took uranium enrichment or reprocessing technology away from Argentina and Brazil when they mutually agreed to back off the development of nuclear weapons. Japan, South Korea, Sweden and many others are presumably no more than a couple of years (and probably far less) away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran, however, is not Sweden. It isn’t even North Korea, a country far more readily sanctioned and bribed back into line and unable to produce more than a few relatively primitive atomic bombs. Iran, once it has the capacity to enrich uranium to bomb grade (90 percent or more), will be no more than a few years from getting an arsenal of nuclear weapons. In the meanwhile, it will presumably continue to develop and deploy longer-range missiles that could target Israel and Europe, if not the U.S. Can the United States, and Israel, live with that short a fuse?

from Ian Bremmer:

The truth about Israel’s rumored strike on Iran

Ian Bremmer

Feb 9, 2012 12:39 EST

At a time when President Obama has moved troops out of Iraq and is moving them out of Afghanistan, it’s looking increasingly like our worries in the Middle East are far from over. Maybe it’s not unprecedented, but it’s highly unusual for a sitting secretary of defense to worry in print (to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius) that Israel could launch a strike against Iran as early as this spring. The point of the Israeli attack, according to Ignatius and Panetta, would be to stop Iran before it begins building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. is saying that it would find such a move foolhardy, and yet also reassuring both the Israeli and American publics that it is committed to Israel’s security.

But it’s probably not Israel’s true intention to strike Iran anyway.

According to Ignatius and many others, the Israelis, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, believe that waiting for the U.S. to strike Iran is an unwise stance. That’s because the U.S.'s threshold for sufficient proof of a nearly finished or completed Iranian nuclear weapon is likely much higher than that of Israel. If such proof came to light, only the U.S. at that point would have the capacity to take out the leadership in Tehran singlehandedly. But such an operation would create a leadership vacuum and leave whoever was running Iran with the bomb. Right now, Israel feels that it can make a dent with its own operation, heading off Iran’s bomb-making before it becomes an issue only the U.S. can deal with. But the window for that option is rapidly closing.

Despite Panetta’s public warnings, and despite Israel’s sudden silence (which many are taking as a sign that it’s gearing up internally for such a mission as this one), an attack on Iran isn’t as likely to occur in the spring as Washington or Tel Aviv would have us believe. That’s because even though new U.S. sanctions on the country went into effect this week, the real test of Iran’s economic fortitude will come around July 1, when the European Union's gradual introduction of a ban on oil from the country takes full effect. Unfortunately, even those sanctions are unlikely to do much to deter Iran, as India, China and African nations will likely continue to buy much of Iran’s oil production, and they will gain some concessions on price due to the artificially limited market. Nevertheless, Israel will presumably wait to see what happens.

Any smaller strikes that Israel makes against Iran before the economic sanctions would bring down on Israel the ire of the international community, along with that of the Obama administration. Not to mention that Israel certainly wouldn’t want to risk a counterattack if it didn’t have to. So it won’t.

If all of this is true, why would the Israelis telegraph an attack on Iran that is unlikely to happen quite so fast? Well, it’s in their best interests to talk the talk. By using coordinated speaking points they’re bringing Iran front and center on the global stage, while the international community still has time to deal with it. Since the last thing the Israelis want to do is rely on the U.S. to fight their battles for them, they have to press on the Iran issue now, and threaten to act unilaterally, to get the U.S. and EU to act with alacrity. In fact, sources close to the Israeli decision-making process have told me that no final decision has been reached about when or whether to strike Iran. Simply put, it would be premature for Netanyahu and Barak to have made up their minds already. But why would they tell this to the rest of the world when they are convinced the Iranian nuclear threat will soon be very, very real?

To build a bridge to Iran, tap the diaspora

Alidad Mafinezam

Dec 23, 2011 14:19 EST

By Alidad Mafinezam The views expressed are his own.

The online opening earlier this month of the “Virtual United States Embassy, Tehran, Iran” was billed by the U.S. government as an attempt at building a “bridge between the American and Iranian people.” Since the two countries haven’t had diplomatic relations for over three decades, this could mark the beginning of a proactive approach by the U.S. government toward Iran, suggesting a new focus on engaging the Iranian people and their government, an attempt at opening a new chapter in the hitherto fraught relationship between the two countries.

Yet, true to form, the Iranian government rejected the U.S. move, immediately blocked access to the site to those inside Iran, and called the initiative an attempt at spying on Iranians. Thus the opening of what was intended as a bridge between the two countries has turned into an exercise in information warfare and cyberspace competition.

The relationship between the American and Iranian people is too important to be left to governments alone. It is the Iranian diaspora in general, especially the million-strong Iranian- American community, who constitute the main human bridge between the U.S. and Iran, and they hold many of the solutions to Iran’s currently antagonistic relationship with North America and Europe.

Over three decades after a revolution that dethroned their westernized Shah, and the passage of a full generation, hundreds of thousands of Iranian émigrés have productively integrated into their new homes. They aren’t “exiles,” since they are largely fulfilled by their careers and live outside Iran. But they still maintain their bonds to the motherland.

The sizable and growing communities of Iranian origin in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and among Iran’s neighbors in the UAE and Turkey, represent a potentially instrumental bridge to the Islamic Republic. Since they are literally situated “in-between,” the Iranian diaspora has a great stake in, and is ideally positioned to lead dialogue and engagement efforts between Iran and their new home. This is especially needed at a time when Iran is becoming progressively more closed to the outside world. Who better to help Iran understand and build bridges to the world, and vice versa?

Many émigrés left Iran escaping political persecution, and many for better economic opportunities abroad: to put their resources and talents to use in more welcoming environments, striving, as immigrants do, for a chance at advancement.  And they have indeed advanced.

Why the U.S. couldn’t stay in Iraq

Christopher Hill

Oct 23, 2011 23:12 EDT

By Christopher R. Hill The opinions expressed are his own.

So be it. In a perfect world, the United States and Iraq would have worked out an arrangement by which some U.S. forces would have remained – probably considerably less than 10,000 – to continue to train Iraqi units, to cooperate with Iraqis on anti-terrorism operations, and to provide the necessary signal to all the neighbors – and not just Iran – to keep their hands off Iraq. But this isn’t a perfect world.

Why the deal didn’t happen had little to do with the so-called immunity issues that the U.S. insisted on, protections that our troops have when deployed to many other far-flung countries in the world. The reason was very simple: even Iraqis who benefitted enormously from the security provided by our troops, and for whom the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the happiest moment of their lives, could not, in the end, support a continuation of foreign troops in their country. Call it visceral. Call it cultural. The fact is, no one likes to be invaded and occupied, and for eight years, told what to do and how to behave. To extend the stay of even just a few U.S. troops was to extend what many Iraqis, mindful of their country’s history, considered another occupation. In the end, Prime Minister Maliki got very little support from any other Iraqi political identity. The Sunnis opposed the extension. So did the Shia. The Kurds, the third element in Iraq’s body politic, may have supported an extension, but they could not carry the day without the Iraqi Arabs.

What happens next, of course, is what everyone wants to know. President Obama talked positively about counting the days until Christmas when the troops will be home. But for many Iraqis, there has been a longstanding, deep-seated view that somehow the Americans, like the many previous foreigners in their lands, would never leave voluntarily. Those Iraqis, many of whom are on the violent fringes of Iraq’s politics, are about to learn something new about these latest “occupiers.”

Much has been made about Iran’s intentions. No doubt, it has been a good few days in Tehran as the Iranians celebrate the departure of U.S. troops from their border. But those Iranians, like the skeptical Iraqis, will keep their fruit juice on ice until the Americans actually leave, because many of them also do not believe that we will leave voluntarily.

Iran has interests in Iraq, but there are definite limits to its influence. Iraq’s Shia don’t need a pep talk about the dangers posed by the Persian Shia. It is instructive to recall that the hated Saddam fought an eight-year brutal and bloody war of attrition against Iran with an army that was 80 percent Arab Shia. True, the Iraqis would like a peaceful relationship with their Iranian neighbor. But they have no interest in falling under their influence. They know the Iranians very well.

But even less understood in the rest of the world is that most Iraqis also have no interest in seeing their Sunni Arab neighbors try to increase their influence in the country. Iraq remains the only Shia-led Arab state. Its transition, at the hands of the US-led invasion, from a Sunni minority-led government to Shia majority rule has never gone over well in the rest of the Arab world. For some Sunnis, the U.S. somehow dumbly handed Iraq to Iran. But for many others, for whom the Shia including in their own countries is not their favorite team, the American departure may be a time to influence events and to bring Iraq back to the Sunni fold.

America, Iran and a terrorist label

Bernd Debusmann

Nov 19, 2010 11:52 EST

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Who says that the United States and Iran can’t agree on anything? The Great Satan, as Iran’s theocratic rulers call the United States, and the Islamic Republic see eye-to-eye on at least one thing, that the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) are terrorists.

America and Iran arrived at the terrorist designation for the MEK at different times and from different angles but the convergence is bizarre, even by the complicated standards of Middle Eastern politics. The United States designated the MEK a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997, when the Clinton administration hoped the move would help open a dialogue with Iran. Thirteen years later, there is still no dialogue.

But the group is still on the list, despite years of legal wrangling over the designation through the U.S. legal system. Britain and the European Union took the group off their terrorist lists in 2008 and 2009 respectively after court rulings that found no evidence of terrorist actions after the MEK renounced violence in 2001.

On July 16, a federal appeals court in Washington instructed the Department of State to review the terrorist designation, in language that suggested that it should be revoked. But Hillary Clinton’s review mills appear to be grinding very slowly.

A group of lawmakers from both parties reminded Clinton of the court ruling this week and drew attention to a House resolution in June — it has more than 100 co-sponsors and the list is growing — that called for the MEK to be taken off the terrorist list. Doing so would not only be the right thing, the six leading sponsors said in a letter, it would also send the right message to Tehran. Translation: using the terrorist label as a carrot does not work, so it’s time to be tough.

Come January, when a new, Republican-dominated House of Representatives begins its term, Clinton and President Barack Obama are likely to come under pressure from hawkish members of congress to act tough towards Iran, further tighten economic sanctions and ensure that those already existing don’t erode.

Nuclear bombs and the Israeli elephant

Bernd Debusmann

Nov 15, 2010 09:40 EST

-The views expressed are the author’s own-

For the past four decades, there has been an elephant in the room whenever experts and government officials met to discuss nuclear weapons. The elephant is Israel’s sizeable nuclear arsenal, undeclared under a U.S.-blessed policy of “nuclear opacity.”

It means neither confirming nor denying the existence of nuclear weapons. “Deterrence by uncertainty,” as Israeli President Shimon Peres has called it. The United States became a silent partner in Israeli opacity with a one-on-one meeting between President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on Sept. 26, 1969.

That policy made strategic and political sense 40 years ago but it has outlived its usefulness, conflicts with Israel’s democratic values, is counter-productive and should be abandoned. So argues Avner Cohen, one of the world’s leading experts on Israel’s bomb, in a new book “The Worst-Kept Secret”, which delves deeply into the history and strategic and political implications of the policy.

The book’s publication coincided with a rising chorus of warnings by U.S. and Israeli hawks over the dire consequences of Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb, an aim Iran firmly denies. In several essays over the summer, American neo-conservatives pounded the drums of war against Iran. On a visit to the U.S. last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a “credible threat of military action” from the West was necessary to stop Iran from making a nuclear bomb.

In his book, Cohen says it is almost impossible to predict the outcome of the current battle of wills between Iran and the West. But if Iran were willing to negotiate seriously, it might agree to substantial concessions only on a regional basis, as a step towards establishing a nuclear-free zone.

“In such a case, Israel could be pressed to make its own nuclear contribution, possibly even to shut down the Dimona reactor as part of the price for halting Iran’s (uranium) enrichment activities at Natanz.”

The U.S. war in Iraq is over. Who won?

Bernd Debusmann

Sep 3, 2010 09:43 EDT

The end of America’s combat mission, after seven and a half costly years, has raised questions that will provide fodder for argument for a long time to come: Was it worth it? And who, if anyone, won?

It’s too early to answer the first question, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a man of sober judgment. “It really requires a historian’s perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run … How it all weighs in the balance over time remains to be seen.”

For a sizeable group of Middle East experts, the second question is easier to answer than the first. “So, who won the war in Iraq? Iran,” says the headline over an analysis by scholar Mohammed Bazzi for the Council on Foreign relations, a New York-based think-tank. His argument: “The U.S. ousted Tehran’s sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. Then Washington helped install a Shi’ite government for the first time in Iraq’s modern history.

“As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over all of Iraq’s Shi’ite factions.” As a consequence, U.S. influence has been waning, Iran’s has been rising, and there are predictions that Iran will fill the vacuum created by the drawdown of U.S. troops to 50,000 who will “advise and assist” the Iraqis.

When President Barack Obama announced the completion of the drawdown in a somber speech on August 31, he made no reference to Iran – a curious omission – but said that “in an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners.” In the case of Iraq, only optimists find it easy to see shining success.

Six months after national elections, there is still no Iraqi government, with Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds unable to agree on how to share power and, as importantly, the country’s enormous oil wealth. A squabbling, deadlocked parliament is not much to show for more than 4,000 American, up to 100,000 Iraqi deaths and $1 trillion in war spending.

Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, and the neoconservative war hawks who agitated for an attack on Iraq, predicted that the country would become a model of democracy that would inspire the rest of the Arab world, largely run by autocratic regimes, to follow suit. That proved a pipedream. Instead, in the words of Wathiq al-Hashemi, a political analyst in Baghdad, Iraq has become a theatre for settling foreign disputes.

Obama, Iran and Alice in Wonderland

Bernd Debusmann

Jun 11, 2010 11:02 EDT

Here we go again. That shape-shifting entity known as “the international community” has moved once more to try and stop Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. In the process, the community shrank by two countries, Turkey and Brazil.

That is the conclusion one can draw from President Barack Obama’s statements on the U.N. Security Council’s vote on June 9 to sanction Iran for failing to halt its production of nuclear fuel. The vote, Obama said, was “an unmistakable message” by the international community and showed its united view on Iran and nuclear arms.

That doesn’t quite square with the fact that Turkey and Brazil, two increasingly important players on the world scene, voted against the 15-member council’s resolution. (Lebanon abstained). But it confirmed an apparent tendency by Western leaders to draw inspiration from Alice in Wonderland (where Iran is concerned).

They echo Humpty Dumpty’s famous assertion on the use of words: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” The modern, Iran-related version: “When I talk about the international community, I mean those who are with me. Neither more nor less.”

The June 9 resolution vote was the fourth on sanctions and the first with “no” votes. In 2006 and 2007 sanctions resolutions passed unanimously. In 2008, one council member, Indonesia, abstained.

Obama termed the new sanctions the most comprehensive the Iranian government had faced but said they did not close the door to diplomacy. If that were to happen, he would serve the cause of international diplomacy by setting an example and burying the over-used and empty phrase “international community” with its misleading implication of global consensus.

The question now is whether the latest set of sanctions will have any more effect on the Iranian nuclear programme than the preceding ones and even Obama expressed doubts: “We know that the Iranian government will not change its behaviour overnight.”