First thoughts on the Iranian election outcome

The election of Hassan Rouhani to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of Iran can only be regarded as good news, as he is a substantial figure in Iranian politics who has declared an intention to steer Iran towards a more moderate position in the world and to seek to re-establish diplomatic relations with the United States, which were cut during the 1979 siege of the US Embassy in Tehran.

This presents the United States with an opportunity to normalise its relationship with Iran, an opportunity which, sadly, I expect the United States will hasten to squander. The principal reasons for this bleak prophesy are:

(1)    I believe that the Americans have painted themselves into a corner on the Iranian nuclear program and that that there is an irreconcilable gap between the US and Iran on this matter no matter who is in power in Tehran (and we need to remember that it is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who is in power – Iranian Presidents have rather limited powers). For reasons set out in my 2009 post Iran position on nuclear deal no surprise, Iran will not agree to any proposal which accords it a status that is inferior to that of other nations, and has absolutely no reason to trust the West on the matter of access to nuclear technology and supplies. The US is making demands that no Iranian Government can agree to, its attitude to “negotiations” throughout the process has been that they are an opportunity for Iran to come to the table and agree to do exactly as it is told, and it has left itself no wriggle room.

(2)    The US, having now imposed the “crippling sanctions” so desired by Hillary Clinton throughout her term as Secretary of State, will find it very difficult to remove them. In order to remove them President Obama will need to go to Congress. No matter what deal may be hammered out between US and Iranian negotiators the Republicans in Congress will say it is not enough and that Obama is being “weak” on America’s national security and the security interests of Israel. For his part, President Obama will not use any of his political capital with Congress on behalf of the Iranians. I always thought that sanctions were a dumb idea, for reasons set out in Iran: Sanctions are in the air and Iran: sanctions still on the agenda).

(3)    Claims that Iran is not doing enough and is only playing for time while it develops a nuclear weapons option will be backed very vociferously by Binyamin Netanyahu and his supporters in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

(4)    Iran sees itself (rightly) as a key player in the region, and must be brought to the table in the settlement of the Israel-Palestine mess and now even more so any possible solution in Syria. But I see no sign that the US is prepared to acknowledge that Iran has any legitimate interests outside its own borders, or to enlist Iranian help in solving regional problems – see for example the US attitude to offers of Iranian assistance in dealing with the Taliban in Western Afghanistan immediately after the invasion).

It is not as though there aren’t voices calling for something different: see for example Golnaz Esfandiari’s recent interviews with Vali Nasr and Ryan Crocker. But the third leg of that trifecta is Dennis Ross, with his arrogant commentary about what Iran must and must not be “allowed” to do, and I fear his views will prevail in Washington.

For a think-piece post by me on the Iranian nuclear issue see What should we make of Iran's nuclear program? (November 2011), and for a contemporary view by the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission under the Shah, see Akbar Etemad on the Iranian nuclear program.

As former President Dr Mohammad Khatami is one of Rouhani’s supporters, my notes on his Friday 27 March 2009 address to  the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Institute of International Affairs makes interesting reading – see Dr Khatami at AIIA Victoria.

Sanctions do more harm than good

Guest post by Professor Ramesh Thakur

I have an almost pathological dislike of sanctions, so it is with great pleasure that I republish this article by my Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry colleague Professor  Ramesh Thakur, first published in

The Australian

January 4, 2012

(Access published article here)

SANCTIONS became popular as a bridge between diplomacy and force for ensuring compliance with UN demands, yet their track record in ensuring compliance is pitiful. They inflict pain on citizens while imposing questionable costs on leaders.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan acknowledged that "humanitarian and human rights policy goals cannot easily be reconciled with those of a sanctions regime". Sanctions all too often are a poor alibi for, not a sound supplement to, a good foreign policy. They are ineffective, counterproductive, harmful to the economic interests of those imposing sanctions, damaging to relations with allies, morally questionable, yet difficult to lift once imposed.

The target country can choose from a range of sellers in the international market place. Iran has progressively shifted its trade patterns from North America and Europe to Asian partners and is now exploring Latin American prospects. It is virtually impossible to secure universal participation in embargoes and difficult to police their application in participating countries. The incentive to make large profits by circumventing sanctions is more powerful than the motive for enforcing them, and a variety of means and routes exist to camouflage sanctions-busting contacts: think AWB and Saddam Hussein.

Sanctions offer an easy scapegoat for ruinous economic policies: economic pain is simply blamed on hostile and ill-intentioned foreigners. Sanctions create shortages and raise prices in conditions of scarcity. The poor suffer; the middle class, essential to building the foundations of democracy, shrinks; the ruling class extracts fatter rents from monopoly controls over the illicit trade in banned goods. Moreover, scarcity increases the dependence of the population on the distribution of necessities by the regime, giving leaders yet more leverage over their people.

Once imposed, ineffectual sanctions fall into a termination trap. Sanctions on Cuba remain in place, not because they serve any purpose, not because they are achieving their original goals, but because of the power of a domestic electoral lobby with a crucial swing vote in Florida.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, the highest-ranking member of Iran's political elite living in the US, notes that since the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran in 2006 "the number of centrifuges increased eight times. Instead of one enrichment facility, Iran now possesses two facilities. Additionally, the fact the unilateral US sanctions are not readily reversible exacerbates Iran's scepticism about Washington's real intentions behind sanctions and removes any incentives for co-operation with the West".

Support for sanctions rests in their image as a humane alternative to war. Yet they cause death and destruction through structural violence -- starvation, malnutrition, the spread of deadly diseases, curtailed access to medicines -- that can exceed the cleaner alternative of war. John Mueller and Karl Mueller argued in Foreign Affairs that sanctions caused more deaths in the 20th century than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.

Sanctions have succeeded sometimes, including persuading Libya to give up on weapons of mass destruction. National drug regulators will ban any drug that betrays, say, a 10 per cent serious side-effect. Yet with sanctions we seem prepared to tolerate an 80 per cent failure rate, some with grave consequences.

Sanctions have failed to change policy and behaviour in Fiji (the New Year concessions are not due to sanctions), North Korea, Burma, India and Pakistan (for the 1998 nuclear tests), Iran or Cuba. China and Russia are too big to punish; Pakistan, central Asia and Turkey (for its invasion of Cyprus) are too-valuable allies to be sanctioned. Perversely, we did impose sanctions on Vietnam for ridding us of the monstrous Khmer Rouge.

Not one of the five Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty-licit nuclear powers has been sanctioned for violating Article 6 obligations to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Nor have any of the three belligerent countries for their illegal aggression against Iraq in 2003. In the 1980s, the UN imposed sanctions on Libya for the Lockerbie bombing, under US pressure, while Washington promoted the military officer responsible for shooting down a commercial Iranian aircraft.

Remarkably, no Western country has ever been subjected to any coercive action, economic or military, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Is Chapter 7, then, a tool to be used only by the West against the rest, provided they are weak and vulnerable non-allies such as Burma, neither a major power with clout like China nor an ally like Israel? And will such an equation continue to be acceptable standard operating procedure with the centre of gravity of the emerging global order shifting east and south?

Against this formidable list of non-sanctions, dubious sanctions and the failure of sanctions, the list of successful outcomes of sanctions policies is thin and patchy. France used it successfully against New Zealand in punishment for those who sunk the Rainbow Warrior being tried, convicted and imprisoned: how dare they! Sanctions advocacy relies on an ideological faith in the instrument quite disconnected from the mass of evidence since before World War II -- Italy in Abyssinia -- that point to their futility rather than utility.

The trend to smart sanctions that impose travel bans on leaders and freeze their overseas bank accounts and assets shows that we can learn. But even their success remains to be proven.

Ramesh Thakur is professor of international relations in the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, and adjunct professor in the Institute for Ethics, Governance, and Law, Griffith University

No British bases for US attack on Iran

The Thursday 25 October 2012 edition of The Guardian carried a report that the British Government had rejected a United States request for the use of British bases for the purposes of a pre-emptive attack on Iran.

The article begins:

Britain has rebuffed US pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice which states that any pre-emptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law.

The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories.

The US approaches are part of contingency planning over the nuclear standoff with Tehran, but British ministers have so far reacted coolly. They have pointed US officials to legal advice drafted by the attorney general's office which has been circulated to Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.

This makes clear that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, does not currently represent "a clear and present threat". Providing assistance to forces that could be involved in a pre-emptive strike would be a clear breach of international law, it states.

This sounds very much like the tenor of the advice tendered to Tony Blair by his Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, prior to the latter’s remarkable U-turn on the eve of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is a good account of this sequence of events in a 1 July 2010 article in The Independent by Defence Correspondent Ken Sengupta, published following the release of the relevant papers by the Chilcot Inquiry. As the synopsis at the head of the article puts it:

For seven years, Britain has wanted to see how the legal case for invading Iraq was made. Yesterday, at a public inquiry that is going on unnoticed, official documents were released for the first time that showed the grave reservations of the Attorney General, his remarkable U-turn, and how the basis for the Iraq war was built on sand.

Let us hope there is no U-turn this time. I am not optimistic. If the US is intent on invading Iran, or becomes so in the future, the pressures on the British Government will be enormous.

Read the full Guardian story about the current standoff regarding Iran here.

Juan Cole on Mitt Romney

On 2 October 2012 US Middle East expert Juan Cole published a piece on his Informed Comment blog entitled Top Ten Things Mitt Romney Gets Wrong About US Middle East Policy. As Mitt Romney may well become the President of the United States in three months’ time, what he gets wrong about Middle East policy is important to all of us.

Cole starts by noting that Romney had published an op-ed the previous day criticising President Obama’s Middle East policies, but that op-ed, apart from urging ‘strength’, offered no concrete alternative.

And, he completely misunderstands the history of the US role in the region, which causes him to misunderstand its present dilemmas.

Cole then goes on to list the ‘ten top things Mitt Romney gets wrong’ in delicious detail, the first five of which fly in the face of Romney’s foundation proposition that the US got to where it is today in the Middle East by ‘promoting human rights, free markets and the rule of law”. The others reveal a flawed understanding of more contemporary events.

He concludes:

Romney’s understanding of the challenges for the US in the Middle East is backwards, and so are his vague prescriptions. Military might, which you trumpet as the solution, is useless in the face of popular movements, Mr. Romney, and the US army could have done nothing to keep Mubarak in power or to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from winning elections. An even more fawning policy toward the Israeli Right Wing is not going to solve any of our problems in the Middle East, but rather will exacerbate them as Apartheid becomes more severe. And we’re already on a war footing with Iran, and any increase in tensions is very dangerous unless it has a clear and achievable policy objective (dissuading Iran from nuclear enrichment is not achievable).

As a new generation democratizes and public opinion becomes important, US public diplomacy and reaching out to young people becomes crucial. Seeking a modus vivendi with ascendant political Islam is now pivotal, because the US has fewer and fewer puppets under its thumb. Are you good at public diplomacy toward the Muslim world, Mr. Romney?

This is a great read, and an important one. Read it in full here.

The Middle East legacy of Dennis Ross

Readers of this blog will be aware that I am no fan of US Middle East “expert” Dennis Ross, one of those members of the US foreign policy establishment who migrates between the State Department and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its offshoot and its offshoot the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), one of those people of whom I feel if you asked the question, “Do you serve the United States or Israel”, they would not understand the question.

Ross, who is known around Washington as “Israel’s lawyer” has never made any secret of his feelings towards Israel, so there is nothing stealthy or furtive about his manoeuvring in support of that country, but this being the case, the reliance that the Obama Administration, supposedly dedicated to creating a new relationship with the Muslim world and with Iran in particular, placed upon him is nothing short of extraordinary.

In March 2009, in Hillary's envoy: not everyone is cheering, I commented on his bizarre appointment as Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, and followed up with a post in May 2009 – Iran: Hillary’s envoy (contd.) – in which I noted the views of an Orthodox Jew who had served as US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, who commented that in Middle East peace negotiations:

The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.

Further posts included Dennis Ross on the move?, noting rumours that he was moving to the White House, and Making U.S. Iran policy, an extended analysis of the dysfunctional way in which the US Administration was approaching Iran, and Dennis Ross’s role in that.

Andrew Sullivan addressed this theme in March 2010 in a post Dennis Ross Bats for Netanyahu on The Atlantic’s blog The Daily Dish.

A more extended summary of Ross’s contribution to the failure of Obama’s Middle East policy may be found in my 15 January 2011 post Pro-Israel control of Obama’s Middle East Policy.

An interesting addition to the dossier was published as an op-ed piece in Al Jazeera, 23 November 2011, following the announcement that Ross is leaving his post. Entitled The incomplete legacy of Dennis Ross, it was contributed by Robert L. Grenier, chairman of ERG Partners, a financial advisory and consulting firm. Grenier retired from the CIA in 2006, following a 27-year career in the CIA's Clandestine Service. He served as Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2006, coordinated CIA activities in Iraq from 2002 to 2004 as the Iraq Mission Manager, and was the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad before and after the 9/11 attacks.

During the Clinton era he was the deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, and saw at first hand how Ross exercised his undoubted influence to undermine rather than strengthen efforts to create a durable peace following the signature of the Oslo accords.

Grenier’s summary assessment of Ross’s contribution over his time in US Government is:

During his eight years as chief architect of the peace process under Bill Clinton, Dennis was not so much a cause as a symptom of the deep, disqualifying political dysfunction at the heart of US policymaking in the Middle East. Without the dysfunction, you would not have had a Ross to exploit it.

And now, we are told, Dennis is leaving, after nearly three years in the Obama administration. His increasing prominence over those three years is a mark and a measure of Obama's growing disappointment and failure. For an administration which started with such elevated goals in the Middle East, it has come to this: Instead of engaging Iran constructively, as it had hoped, it has devolved instead to a sterile, sanctions-based stalemate, with scant international support, strongly shaped by Ross, who advocates an Israel-centric posture against the Islamic Republic. And instead of exerting judicious pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians to achieve the two-state breakthrough which US interests would dictate, Obama has had to cave instead to the overwhelming political influence of Binyamin Netanyahu, and has looked to Ross as his shield against a pro-Israel lobby which would otherwise turn against him, and may yet do so.

The problem is, as Grenier puts it:

In his many years of successful advocacy, he has precisely mirrored both the strengths and weaknesses of his client, and therefore must be assessed as having represented his client badly: Like the Israelis, he is a brilliant tactician and a strategic ignoramus. A better advocate might have saved his client from himself. Instead, Dennis' many years of successful temporising have helped to bring Israel to the point where a two-state solution is no longer possible. Thanks in some measure to Dennis' efforts, Israel in future can be Jewish, or it can be democratic: It cannot be both. Having served Israel to the point of helping to destroy Zionism: That is the very definition of catastrophic success.

Read the complete Grenier piece here.