gary's choices
Commentary by Caryle Murphy:
The Pentagon recently announced Washington’s approval of a new USD 10 billion arms sale that for the first time involves three of its Middle East allies: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The arms deal came after “intensive defense shuttle diplomacy” over many months and “is one of the most significant and complex and comprehensive that we’ve seen,” senior Pentagon officials said at a media briefing, according to a transcript. Its price tag makes it second only to the nearly USD 30 billion that Saudi Arabia agreed to pay in 2010 for eighty-four F-15 fighter jets, the New York Times noted.
Under the new agreement, all three countries will be allowed to purchase advanced US weaponry that will significantly enhance their fighting capabilities, although Israel’s military superiority relative to its Arab neighbors is maintained.
Israel will get advanced radar for its fighter jets, anti-radiation missiles, upgraded KC-135 refueling tanker planes, and V-22 Ospreys—a troop transport that lands and takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane. It is the first time that Washington has sold Ospreys to a foreign country.
The Saudis and Emiratis will, for the first time, be able to buy so-called stand-off missiles that can precisely hit targets from long distances, according to Pentagon officials. In addition, the Emiratis plan to purchase twenty-five more F-16s.
The tripartite package is a “very clear signal” to Iran, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said during his first official trip to the Middle East shortly after the arms sale was announced on April 19.
Iran got the signal and its state-owned PressTV responded by saying that justifying the latest arms deal by citing “the so-called Iran threat” was another example of the Obama administration’s efforts “to incite regional conflicts in the Middle East.”
But certainly, this huge transfer of weaponry to the Middle East is meant to telegraph other things as well.
“To me, it’s a bigger signal to Saudi than to Iran,” said Gary Sick, executive director of the Gulf/2000 project at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Gulf countries, and Saudi Arabia in particular, have become increasingly disenchanted with the United States for a variety of reasons, Sick explained. Those reasons include the US occupation of Iraq, which allowed Iran to significantly increase its presence there; the declared “pivot” to Asia as a region of US attention; Washington’s willingness let Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak fall to a revolution, as well as its reluctance to get more involved in the Syrian civil war.
In addition, the Saudis fear that Washington wants to closely re-engage with Iran in a relationship similar to the one it had before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, adversely affecting Riyadh’s alliance with the United States, Sick said.
So, with the latest arms deal, he added, “we’re sending them a clear signal that we trust them, that we intend to work with them in the future, that we share their views about Iran” and that “their fears are unfounded.”
For Israel, the arms deal was meant to once again demonstrate US commitment to Israel’s security. “This is a concrete thing that [President Obama] set out to do as part of [making] the US–Israel defense relationship stronger than ever,” one Pentagon official said, according to the media briefing transcript.
The officials were at pains to point out that Israel’s military edge over its neighbors was not affected by the new arms package. In fact, it was probably strengthened, and that was the sine qua non for selling more advanced weaponry to the Saudis and Emiratis. As one Pentagon official noted at the briefing: “Qualitatively, it really raises the level of Israel’s military superiority to a level it has not been before, and I think that has allowed us to provide a rise in the level of the Gulf partners, as well.”
And yet, this new arms package raises some significant and troubling questions.
For one, if the Obama administration is seeking to restrain Israel from militarily attacking Iran’s nuclear development facilities, then why does the new arms package allow it to purchase more advanced refueling tanker planes? These will enhance Israel’s ability to carry out long-distance aerial strikes.
Second, with international sanctions hurting Iran, its military capabilities and equipment are ever more decrepit relative to its neighbors. So why load up US allies with advanced weaponry that is unlikely to be needed defensively?
More broadly, one can ask whether the United States is being responsible by continuing to arm its Middle East allies with ever more sophisticated arms when the dire problems of this unstable region are not amenable to military solutions.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, the implosion of Egypt’s economy, the sectarian violence in Iraq, the lack of political and civil rights in the Gulf and Iran’s ambitions to become a nuclear weapons power are what makes the region unstable.
None of them will be cured by V-22 Ospreys, F-15 fighter jets or precision-guided missiles.
Questioning Washington’s transfer of ever-more advanced weaponry to the Middle East is legitimate, Sick says. But this latest arms deal is just another instance of how the US has long approached the region.
“Arms are the coin of the realm,” he said. “It’s the way we conduct diplomacy in the Middle East … It’s an old game. It’s one that’s been played for the last 30, 40, 50 years. But it keeps getting escalated because the level of arms gets more sophisticated.
“Of course,” he added, “we’re making money at the same time.”
May 2013
2 posts
by Gary Sick
Farideh Farhi has done her usual excellent job of unwrapping the Iranian internal political scene. I very much share her surprise about this weekend’s events.
I thought that the Supreme Leader had decided unequivocally that there was to be no repetition of 2009, i.e. no credible individuals challenging the existing system and no mobs in the street with grievances after the vote. He had even talked about eliminating the presidency entirely, in favor of a parliamentary system.
So what has happened?
Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie (among others) must have believed that Ali Khamenei: (1) acquiesced in their candidacy; or (2) could not prevent it; or (3) was essentially irrelevant. Whatever the rationale, their decision to proceed with their candidacy implies that Khamenei was either unable or unwilling to exercise control of the process or that his objectives were quite different from what we had understood from his observable actions and words.
At a minimum, these candidates were willing to put Khamenei in an embarrassing position by publicly ignoring his well-known preferences, apparently without concern for the consequences.
Of course, it is still possible that the Guardian Council will simply disqualify all but the “safe” candidates, despite the past history of leaders like Rafsanjani and their intimate association with both the Leader and the revolution. That would confirm the cynical interpretation of Iran’s leadership after 2009 — that it realized the revolution was dead and there was no need to pretend that it was about anything other than raw power. That would be the counterpart of the Soviet Union in the 1930s when Joseph Stalin killed off his fellow revolutionaries and simply seized power.
But if that was his intent, why permit these troublesome characters to register at all? Could Khamenei not tell Rafsanjani simply to stay out of the race (the story is that he gave an ambiguous response to Rafsanjani’s query)? And how about all those obvious Khamenei supporters? Why not designate one of them to carry the banner and let the others know that they were not welcome? For those who believe that he didn’t care because he can easily jigger the voting system, I draw attention to the fact that the president of Iran has a horse in this race and that he has unequaled access to the voting process. He could make 2009 look like a picnic.
At this point, the most likely interpretation is that each of the candidates was in it for himself, and the Supreme Leader had very little to say about it. The notion that the Supreme Leader is far less supreme than his clique would pretend is neither new nor surprising. But this apparent evidence that he is not only lacking in political clout but is in fact essentially irrelevant to the decision-making process is something new — especially if this plethora of candidates risks another train wreck of the magnitude of 2009.
As Farideh says, Iranian politics still has the capacity to surprise.
March 2013
3 posts
[This article will appear, in Italian, in the next issue of Aspenia, Aspen Istitute Italia’s highly regarded journal on international affairs, with the following title: Il problema visto da Washington: oltre i pregiudizi”, Aspenia 60, conti del Golfo, aprile 2013.]
US Persian Gulf Policy in Obama’s Second Term
By Gary Sick
The beginning of a second term for an American president is a magical mystery moment: he is free (or so it is believed) of all political restraints and can therefore vanquish all the intractable problems of the first term. The reality is very different. Presidents still have political constraints, and those may actually increase in the second term as the incumbent is perceived as a lame duck. Still, at the start of his second four years, President Obama can be sure of one thing: there will be no shortage of free advice, on every subject under the sun.
The president probably is not listening. He has had four years of on-the-job training; now he has another four years to leave a permanent mark on his times, and he knows it will not be easy. So I will resist the temptation to offer my own personal wish list. Instead, here are a few issues that will require decisions in the next four years. His choices will determine how his presidency is viewed by future generations.
A new war in the Middle East?
There are powerful voices in the United States pushing Obama in the direction of direct U.S. military action in the Middle East. Specifically, there are calls for more active intervention in Syria and in favor of explicit threats of military action against Iran.
In Syria, the rationale begins with the horrors of the humanitarian disaster, as the Alawite government of Bashar al-Assad fights, literally, for its life. A second reason put forward by proponents of a more muscular policy is to neutralize Iran’s role in the Levant and counteract its direct assistance to Damascus. A third reason, which goes to the very heart of America’s policy dilemma in the 21st century, is that the United States, according to these voices, is still the indispensable nation and should not be satisfied to “lead from behind.”
With regard to Iran, the reasoning is somewhat different. Despite the most stifling precautionary economic sanctions ever imposed against a member state of the United Nations, Iran continues to pursue its nuclear development program. The sanctions, it is argued by some, must be reinforced with clear promises of military action if Iran fails to comply with the demands of the United Nations Security Council.
In both cases, a more aggressive U.S. posture carries real risks that minor skirmishes or even accidents could escalate quickly into a full blown war. After two enormously costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public is war weary. And most observers recognize that combat in either Iran or Syria would be far more dangerous than anything experienced since 2001.
Obama sent a clear signal on this subject in the early days of his new term. He nominated Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and former Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Despite the controversy surrounding the nomination of Hagel, both he and Kerry are establishment politicians who are known to be non-ideologues and moderate representatives of the “realist” school of foreign policy. Hagel is known to be his own man and to speak his mind bluntly, without regard for the conventional wisdom, which is dangerous in polarized Washington.
Nevertheless, both Kerry and Hagel reflect Barack Obama’s pragmatic, centrist approach to international politics. Both men are veterans of the Vietnam War, and both have been outspoken in their opposition to war under any but the most extreme circumstances. That is not a popular position with many on the right wing of American politics, but it almost certainly corresponds with the views of their commander-in-chief.
Military Presence in the Persian Gulf
As recently as 1986, the United States had only a tiny presence in the Gulf. Until the early 1970s, America relied on the British to handle security in the region. Then, after the British withdrawal, America turned to the shah of Iran as the proxy defender of their interests. Even after the collapse of the shah’s regime in 1979, the United States resisted stationing significant military forces in the region – partly due to Arab opposition to American bases on their soil. Even during the early years of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), American involvement was largely indirect – the so-called “over-the-horizon” strategy.
In 1986, as the tanker war between Iran and Iraq expanded, the Arabs finally concluded that a permanent U.S. presence was required, and they invited Washington to provide escorts for Kuwaiti shipping. Within two years, the United States was drawn into sporadic combat with the Iranian navy and had established operational military facilities in several Arab states. That presence was greatly augmented when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in 1990. The United States responded by mobilizing a vast coalition of forces, operating from an array of regional military bases, which succeeded in driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
When that war was over, the United States did not withdraw. Instead, it continued to maintain a massive presence in the region, with Arab approval and cooperation, to prevent Saddam Hussein from launching still another invasion. In retrospect, it is obvious that the rapid expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf was due almost exclusively to the actions of one man, Saddam Hussein. It is hugely ironic, therefore, that the existence of this enormous military machine made it possible for President Bush to launch his invasion of Iraq in 2003.
For a decade now, the U.S. military has fought two wars from military bases in the Gulf. Al-Udeid outside Doha, Qatar, is the most active U.S. military air field in the world.[i] The facilities on land have been greatly augmented by U.S. naval and amphibious forces. In recent years it has been typical to have two carrier task forces on station in the region at all times. This is a huge investment of resources, which is not only expensive in dollars but also represents an important opportunity cost, since these forces are not available for other major theaters of operation.
The U.S. war in Iraq has now ended, and American forces will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The U.S. military presence in the Gulf is also almost certain to decline over the next four years. President Obama will set the time and pace for this withdrawal. No one expects it to be sudden or complete. However, the president has sent some important signals about his view of the future.
The January 2011 defense planning paper, Sustaining US Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense called for a “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region as military demands decline in Southwest Asia. Officials have emphasized that this does not imply an abandonment of U.S. security responsibilities in the Gulf and Indian Ocean.
A second signal came much more recently with the announcement that the second carrier task force scheduled for deployment to the Gulf would remain in its home port due to prospective cuts in defense funding being debated in the Congress. While this may be a political ploy to apply pressure to the legislature, it no doubt also reflects the new strategic reality. It will be interesting to see if and when there will be two carriers on station again in the Persian Gulf region.
Oil
The availability of oil for the world’s industrialized economies is and will remain a major concern for the United States. The United States assumed responsibility to protect the sea lanes to and from the Persian Gulf after the British withdrawal in 1971. At that time, the principal threat was considered to be the Soviet Union. Today, the nature of threats to oil supplies is more ambiguous.
In the past few years, the United States has collaborated with many of its allies to impose sanctions on Iran that have removed about one million barrels per day of Iranian oil off the market. That was accomplished with only a minor increase in the price of oil because of (1) the global recession, which reduced demand; (2) the parallel increase in production by Saudi Arabia to compensate for the loss of Iranian oil; and (3) the availability of substantial new oil and gas supplies from Iraq and from the United States itself, where a revolution is underway in the production of oil and gas from shale deposits. Thus, at least for the present, the availability of an ample global supply of oil appears to be assured, and the biggest threats to supply tend to come from natural disasters rather than any strategic interference.
Iran at least theoretically has the possibility of interfering with shipping through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the southern entrance into the Persian Gulf, either by attacking shipping directly or by sowing mines in the area. But in reality that is not a realistic option. Iran would soon find itself engaged in a military confrontation with all of the major Western powers, a confrontation it could not possibly win. Moreover, Iran relies on the Strait for its own oil exports, so closure of the Strait would be a losing strategy in every way.
The question is not whether the United States would abdicate from its responsibilities for protection of the Arab Gulf states and the continued flow of oil to the world’s industrialized economies. Still, it is often forgotten that the United States fulfilled those responsibilities as recently as the first term of the Reagan administration relying on a handful of warships and virtually no shore bases. No one anticipates a hasty return to that situation; however, if oil supplies are generally secure, and particularly if a modus vivendi with Iran can be negotiated, it is reasonable to expect a gradual process of attrition, as scarce U.S. military resources are needed more urgently elsewhere.
The Centrality of Iran
The common element in all three of the decision issues above is Iran. Iran’s interaction with the United States and its allies will have an important influence on issues of peace and war, the need for large military deployments, and the security of oil flow from the Persian Gulf. As a simple rule of thumb, a hostile and confrontational relationship with Iran will increase the risks of war and interference with the regular flow of oil, thereby increasing pressure for the United States and others to maintain large standing military forces in the region. Alternatively, a diplomatic resolution of some outstanding issues and a more businesslike relationship on both sides could relieve many of the tensions in the region.
This is not a utopian idea. Although Iran has a well-deserved reputation for radical Islamist governance and brutal repression of its own people, its foreign policy has tended to be cautious. Iran is willing to support proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, who engage in direct conflict with Israel; however, it carefully avoids direct military confrontation itself. The great exception of course is the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran was invaded by Iraq. That war had several important lessons: with great sacrifice, Iran was able to defend its own territory but it could not project its power across the border. At the end of eight years of brutal combat, Iran was losing. Iran and Iraq together lost about 400,000 dead and probably twice that many seriously wounded. The economies of both states were devastated.
Since that time, Iran has made occasional displays of its swarming small boats and has taken some hostages who had strayed off course, but it has been careful not to get into a shooting incident with the many naval forces that patrol off its shores in the Persian Gulf. On the nuclear side, despite the hysteria in the media, Iran has avoided any actions that would indicate that it is producing a bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s active nuclear sites, routinely reports that no material has been diverted for military use. Lately, Iran has been converting its 20% enriched uranium to keep it below the quantity needed for a bomb.
Many experts who watch the Iranian nuclear program closely are convinced that Iran wants to have the capacity to build a bomb, which gives it status and negotiating leverage; not an actual weapon, which would make Iran a target. Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, appeared to confirm this interpretation when he recently said “We do not want to build nuclear weapons… .We believe that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and should not be built; and whatever weapons there are in the world should be destroyed. This is what we believe in; and this has got nothing to do with you (Americans). If we did not have such a belief and had decided to build nuclear weapons, no power could have stopped us. “[ii] This typically belligerent formulation seems to reinforce the view that Iran does not plan to build a nuclear weapon but intends to have the capability to do so independently if necessary.
Policy Contradictions
The policies of the West – and particularly the United States – toward Iran are based on two contradictions. The first is woven into the very fabric of nuclear non-proliferation agreements.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guarantees that non-nuclear signatories can pursue peaceful nuclear development in return for a promise not to produce nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, activities related to peaceful nuclear development are often identical to those that may eventually produce a nuclear weapon. As a consequence, many countries in the world have the technical capability to produce a nuclear weapon if and when they should decide to do so. The world lives with that ambiguity.
Iran is an original signatory of the NPT. It is much further away from an actual nuclear weapon than, say, Japan. But the world does not trust Iran to keep its promise, so a massive international campaign has been mounted to prevent Iran from doing what countries such as Brazil are doing with no criticism.
Iran resists these demands as evidence of a double standard and refuses to submit with “a gun at its head,” in the words of Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran’s indignation is understandable, but the concern of many other countries that Iran is actually taking advantage of the loophole in the NPT is equally comprehensible. The underlying contradiction does, however, weaken the legal case against Iran.
The second major contradiction in U.S. policy is that we proclaim Iran to be a mortal threat, yet we craft our policies as if Iran can do us no harm.
Iran is not, and will not become, a serious military threat to the United States in the foreseeable future. Iran is a midlevel power with a dysfunctional and unpopular government. Iran’s GDP is about the same as the state of Georgia in the United States, and its defense budget is a fraction of its Arab neighbors or Israel, not to mention the United States.
Iran has a robust self-defense capability but very little power projection capability. Its nuclear program may have attracted great political attention, but it has consistently failed to live up to its hype. Politicians have been (falsely) predicting the imminent appearance of a bomb in Iran’s arsenal for twenty years, and Iran’s ballistic missile development has proceeded much slower than expected by Western intelligence estimates. There is still time to pursue a negotiated settlement.
However, U.S. and Western strategy to deal with Iranian defiance has been to impose crippling sanctions in an effort to force Iran to change its policies. Those efforts have proved utterly unsuccessful over a period of several decades, and at each stage the Western response has been to add still more sanctions. Today, the sum total of the sanctions imposed against Iran is the equivalent of a national blockade, arguably an act of war.
Half of Iran’s oil exports have been blocked, their research and development has been starved, and the current banking restrictions are beginning to affect middle class families. In addition, Iranian scientists have been murdered, cyber warfare attacks have been launched against Iran’s nuclear program, and American drones have been operating in Iranian air space.
The implicit rationale for such strategies is that Iran, despite its fearsome reputation, cannot retaliate. That has been true, at least until recently. In the last year there have been a series of attempted assassinations of Israeli and other diplomats, a cyber attack on the computers of the giant Saudi Aramco oil company, and concentrated denial of service internet attacks against major American banks. Iran is widely suspected to be involved in all of these. In an amusing twist, the virus that wiped out thousands of Aramco computers contained a snippet of code that was taken from the Stuxnet virus that Israel and the United States are suspected of infiltrating into Iranian computers several years ago.
By launching what was apparently our own cyber attack against Iran, we may have opened Pandora’s Box. Our military might dwarfs Iran, but the internet is a much more level (and anonymous) playing field. Iran produces large numbers of IT engineers from its elite universities every year. This may be the first round of salvoes in what could be the first actual combat – or at least a cold war competition – in cyberspace.
Is Agreement Possible?
The differences between Iran and the United States, which have prevented a resumption of diplomatic relations for 34 years since the Iranian Revolution, are rooted more in the domestic politics of the two countries than in their respective foreign policies. In the United States, attitudes toward Iran were permanently crystallized by the 444 days that Iran held American diplomats hostage. In that heavily televised crisis, Iran came to be perceived as an unruly mob of fanatics waving their fists and shouting “Death to America.” No American politician wins any votes by taking a moderate stand on Iran; instead, there is a competition to demonstrate who can take the hardest line. Hence the proliferation of harsh sanctions and the denunciation of former Senator Hagel for his expressed preference for a diplomatic solution.
Iran, in turn, is a product of its revolution, which was anti-American as much as anti-shah. Iran today is still being governed by some of the same people who made the revolution, and they cling to the old slogans. In many cases, slogans are all that remain of a revolution that has failed to produce efficient governance and has replaced legitimacy with repression. There is a heavy measure of paranoia in the aging Iranian leadership, which prefers to blame Western interference for all its troubles, rather than critically examine its own failings.
The historical landscape of U.S.-Iran relations is littered with misunderstandings and missed opportunities. It takes real political courage in Washington and in Tehran to articulate a negotiating agenda based on compromise and mutual confidence-building. Each side is wedded to its maximum demands, fearful that the other side will trick them or simply pocket any concessions without a reciprocal gesture.
If the international community is willing to accept an Iran that, like Japan or dozens of other countries, has the technical capability to produce a nuclear weapon, it would almost certainly be possible to negotiate a settlement of the nuclear issue. Western negotiators have instead insisted that Iran must give up its entire uranium enrichment program. Iran, for its part, insists that its rights to pursue a full nuclear fuel cycle must be acknowledged before any progress is possible. That is a recipe for the kind of inertia and stagnation that have characterized the nuclear negotiations for the past decade.
What is required is a working agenda that defines an end point that is acceptable to Iran but is preceded by a series of verifiable steps and confidence-building measures. The West must accept that Iran is permitted to conduct a civilian nuclear energy program, and Iran must accept limitations on its stockpiles of enriched uranium and extensive international monitoring of its nuclear activities. Both sides have indicated at times that this arrangement would be acceptable, but neither has yet been able to put a persuasive negotiating package on the table.
In his first term, President Obama indicated his willingness to engage with Iran, but his actions fell short of his words. If he is willing to invest real political capital and diplomatic creativity in a negotiating process, he could change the face of the Middle East. Past history, however, provides little basis for optimism.
It is usually overlooked, but each time the United States imposes a new
coercive restriction on Iran, Iran responds by upping the ante on its
nuclear program. When the US began imposing sanctions on Iran, Iran had
zero centrifuges turning. Now, after more than a decade of ever-increasing
sanctions, Iran has some 12,000 centrifuges turning. A new round of
sanctions at this moment, when serious talks seem to be getting underway
for the first time in eight months, risks sabotaging the limited progress
that has been made.
This is a 30-minute Google hangout with four experts on Iranian political and security issues. There are some interesting takes on the recent Iranian talks at Almaty, Khazakhstan, with the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (the so-called P5+1).
On the whole, the talks were seen producing some modestly promising results. However, the push back in Washington by congressional proponents of ever-greater sanctions and symbolic support of Israel in any military showdown was reminiscent of the past, when domestic politics (in both Iran and the US) thwarted signs of progress.
January 2013
1 post
It is quite unusual for a group of senior Iranian politicos to get together voluntarily and apparently spontaneously and then to issue such a clear, constructive and non-histrionic statement, without reference to their own mistreatment by the regime. These are all people who have had political differences with the Islamic Republic, which has led to their exile. They have put that aside in the interest of seeking some kind of progress on the nuclear issue. Clearly they believe that this is an important moment.
Their views deserve to be taken with the utmost seriousness.
Gary Sick
++++++++++++++++++++
Letter to Our Leaders on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Posted: 01/15/2013 6:13 pm
07.01.2013
His Excellency Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Islamic Republic of Iran
His Excellency Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
Her Excellency Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Following the recent U.S. presidential election, the peoples of the world long for peace and international security, and along with many politicians, who oppose war, they expect from you responsibility, prudence and more pragmatism regarding a de-escalation of tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.
Given the critically important timing of the negotiations, we the undersigned, former members of the Iranian Parliament, pursuant to our deeply held sense of duty and convictions, would like to underscore the following points:
- At this juncture, we believe transparent and bilateral dialogue between the U.S. and Iranian governments regarding Iran’s nuclear program would be beneficial and effective. We therefore support such a discussion. Furthermore, we believe continued direct talks without intermediaries could be elevated to the highest levels of both governments. By providing more guarantees in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the talks could create fertile ground for serious discussions on many outstanding and complicated problems between the two nations.
- The Iranian nuclear program is a vastly complex and controversial issue affected by international and regional problems including over three decades of hostile relations between the United States and Iran. In view of the abundance of goodwill between the peoples of both nations, we believe if the political leadership on both sides is resolute, finding a realistic and peaceful resolution of the problem is not beyond reach and will ensure success in the coming round of negotiations.
- A basic principle of any effective negotiation is to explicitly acknowledge the goal of the negotiations is a win-win outcome. To resolve the conflict, therefore, we believe the following points must be taken into account:
- According to international regulations and treaty obligations, Iran has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This right must actually be explicitly recognized, which means Iran would be able to enrich uranium up to 5 percent.
- If the 20 percent enrichment of uranium is to be stopped, and 20 percent stock pile should be controlled by IAEA, a long-term guarantee should be given to Iran. This guarantee would provide the sufficient fuel to research reactors, which has only scientific and medical functions.
- Iran should take the confidence-building step of accepting the implementation of the Additional Protocol. Moreover, its nuclear program must be subject to technical and legal, and certainly impartial, inspections by the IAEA. Such a step would provide sufficient oversight by the IAEA.
- Concurrent with the halting of twenty percent enrichment process, the P5+1 should create a specific timetable to lift international sanctions imposed by UNSC, EU, and the U.S. related to the nuclear program.
It is obvious that the Iranian nuclear program dossier has become a chronic, complex issue that if not resolved sooner, may endanger international peace and the long-term interests of Iran, the United States, and European countries.
Best regards,
Former Members of the Islamic Iranian Parliament
Ahmad Salamatian
Member of the 1st Parliament, Former Deputy Foreign Minister and residing in Paris, France
Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari
Member of the 1st Parliament and residing in Bonne, Germany
Rajabali Mazrooei
Member of the 6th Parliament and residing in Brussels, Belgium
Nouradin Pirmoazen
Member of the 6th and 7th Parliaments and residing in Boston, U.S.
Esmail Gerami Moghaddam
Member of the 7th Parliament and residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo
Member of the 6th Parliament and residing in Boston, U.S.
Seyed Aliakbar Mousavi
Member of the 6th Parliament and residing in Maryland, U.S.
December 2012
2 posts
This is a little slow at the beginning. But the points I make in the body of this interview are ones that I feel very strongly about. Regrettably, Washington and Tel Aviv are not listening.
Posted on December 1, 2012
This is the English language transcript of the November 28 interview the host of VOA Persian’s Ofogh Siamak Dehghanpour did with Gary Sick, who served on the US National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. The Persian language transcript can be found here.
Siamak Dehghanpour: You recently wrote that if President Obama attempts to address every development in the Middle East at once it is a recipe for failure. You suggested that one of the most pressing issues was Iran. How urgent is this issue for President Obama, and how does a new cabinet affect how he approaches it?
Gary Sick: I’m not sure how urgent it is. Obviously President Obama came into office originally on the idea that he wanted to have some kind of engagement or opening to Iran. That’s been four years and nothing has happened. I believe that in his second term he is going to want to deal with a number of issues in the Middle East. The argument that I made was that by starting with the Iranian issue we might be able to simplify some of the other issues that are involved. If he has some success with an Iranian negotiation he then would be in a better position to deal with some of the issues that I think he cares about also.
SD: What impact will Iran’s elections in June of 2013 have on the negotiations given that Khamenei will have the final say?
GS: My own view is that the Iranian elections are not a very serious problem. Frankly I do not expect the next election in Iran to be a very contested election. I fully expect it to be an election that resembles Mubarak’s election in Egypt for instance where everyone from the beginning knew what the outcome was going to be. So basically, the other thing is that the president of Iran over the years has gradually seen his authority decline as one thing after another has been taken away. And so who the president is at any moment has only a minor effect on the actual possibility of the negotiations. From my perspective the elections coming up in Iran are not likely to be an impediment to going ahead. If I were in the White House right now I would suggest lets ago ahead immediately and see if we could get something done rather than wait for the Iranian election.
SD: You’ve presented a deal in which the US agrees to some enrichment and removes sanctions and Iran agrees to limits and full monitoring of its nuclear program. Do you see any readiness from either side toward this final deal?
GS: I think as with most long running problems the outlines of the solutions are pretty well known. It is not a mystery what would need to be done by either side. The question is really one of political will. Is Iran willing in fact to have private negotiations with the United States, creating an agenda that would then be used for public negotiations? Would the United States officially accept the reality that Iran is enriching and will probably continue to enrich? Again, it’s not so much that these are difficult things to imagine, it’s that they carry very heavy political consequences. For Iran the United States is the Great Satan. It is the enemy. And so by dealing with the United States you undercut that position and that has political consequences in Iran. In the United States Iran is a very unpopular country, there is no constituency for Iran; so taking a step that is contrary, for example, to what Israel would like to do is going to have real consequences for the United States politically. So it takes political sacrifice or political courage on each side and over the last 30 some years it has been very unusual to have a time when both parties were actually prepared to exercise that kind of courage. So the solution is there but getting to the solution is much, much harder than just describing it.
SD: How do you believe the Iranian people will perceive US officials negotiating with the Iranian officials? On one hand, they might be relieved if sanctions are lifted, on the other hand, the US could be seen as compromising with a dictatorship that is suppressing them.
GS: In my view the problem is true both in the case of the American people and the Iranian people. And that is if you ask them the question, “Which would you rather have? War or negotiations? Would you rather have a good faith negotiating effort or face the prospect of actual military conflict? It seems to me that probably both Iranians and Americans would agree that negotiations are the way to go. It is a problem in the sense that both countries have never really held that out as a very realistic prospect. And their people, the people of both countries, are not really prepared to think about it very seriously. So some political effort has to be exerted by both parties to prepare their people for the fact that this is something that is valuable to both countries and both countries could benefit from them.
SD: You have written that while negotiating with Iran, the US must reassure its allies both in Israel and Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. How worried are Israel and Arab countries about US-Iran relations?
GS: There is a long history between America and Iran, as everyone will recall. The United States had a very close relationship with Iran during the days of the Shah. It was a very close relationship of mutual dependency actually. Then after the Iranian revolution that came to an end. But then a few years later in the course of the Iran-Iraq war the United States had a covert relationship with Iran, where it attempted to sell arms to Iran, right in the middle of the war when the United States was actually supporting Iraq. That was a shocking event for the Arabs. Then the Arabs in particular have watched the United States invade Iraq and install a Shia government for the first time in a long, long time. So they look at all of that and say perhaps the United States really wants to do a deal with Iran. Viewed from the United States, that sounds absolutely absurd. But for the Arabs of the Persian Gulf it’s not hard to imagine and I think we will have to deal with that. I think our diplomats will have to make an effort to explain that this is something that is to the benefit of everybody involved and Israel falls in the same category. The kind of agreement that might be reached in real negotiations is probably not going to satisfy the real hardliners in Israel. And they will make their voices heard in the United States as well. That will be have to dealt with as well. So I think both the Israelis and the Arabs will be skeptical about any kind of deal between the United States and Iran. That however is no excuse for not doing it.
SD: What does Russia and China have to lose in negotiations between the US and Iran?
GS: I think actually China in particular has been the beneficiary of the United States presence in the Persian Gulf, protecting sea lanes. Those sea lanes are actually delivering goods from Iran and other countries to China. So I can’t believe that the Chinese have any opposition whatsoever to a negotiated agreement between the United States and Iran. And the Russians are actually encouraging the United States to undertake private negotiations that would possibly lead to some kind of outcome. So my perspective, from everything I know, is that both Russia and China are quite prepared for the idea of an American negotiation with Iran leading to some kind of settlement.
SD: Where do the US and Iran have the most pressing mutual interest? Is it an end to the conflict in Syria?
GS: Actually I think Syria is more like the end of the process not the beginning. The United States and Iran have a number of things in common. We would both like to see the drug trade end, that is coming in and out of Afghanistan. I think both countries would like to see a stable situation both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are things that we share. We would like to see a calm and stable Persian Gulf. And normal oil trade going on in the gulf. Those are all things that I think we could agree on. The question is how do you get there? If the United States and Iran are able to find a common ground to settle the nuclear issue that then removes a lot of problems for other areas including Syria. The situation in Syria will require Iran to be involved at some stage. And up until now the United States has resisted the idea of engaging Iran over Syria. If we should have at least moderately successful nuclear negotiations, I think it would break the ice and permit the United States and other countries in the region to deal with Iran more directly on the issue of Syria, among many other things.
As usual, Stephen Walt gets it right. The hysteria about what might happen with a nuclear Iran — quite apart from the improbability of that actually happening — is hugely exaggerated. And it leads to the very thing it purports to avoid.
November 2012
8 posts
Lecture delivered by Matthew Machowski at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary, University of London.
This is a factual, non-hysterical presentation about what is actually going on in Iran.
A top notch panel of experts discuss US-Iran relations. Keynote speaker is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who commented: “I don’t think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do! If they decide to start a war, simply on the assumption that we’ll automatically be drawn into it, I think it is the obligation of friendship to say, ‘you’re not going to be making national decision for us.’ I think that the United States has the right to have its own national security policy.”
The conference was co-hosted by the Arms Control Association and the National Iranian American Council.
Longtime Iran observer Shaul Bakhash enumerates the pros and cons of a new negotiating effort with Iran. He concludes:
There are clearly men in Khamenei’s inner circle who are urging him to at least test the waters with the United States; and he may have allowed them to publicly discuss the possibility, even the desirability, of direct talks. It is also conceivable that Khamenei will find acceptable a deal which gives the United States most of what it wants but which he can present to Iranians as a great victory for Iran. But in the same way that the United States is demanding from Iran what Khamenei is not ready to give, Khamenei will need from the United States what it is unrealistic for him to expect—a rapid lifting of sanctions, acknowledgment of Iran’s right to enrich (even if Iran does not choose to exercise this right), and recognition of Iran as a major player in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East, with a seat at the table when regional issues are discussed.
The winds are shifting in Iran; but, so far, only slightly.
By Gary Sick
NEW YORK, Nov 26 2012 (IPS) - I have never read a book quite like this. “Becoming Enemies” is the latest product of the indispensable National Security Archive, the Washington non-profit that has given new meaning to the Freedom of Information Act.
They not only use their skills to get major U.S. policy documents declassified, but they take those documents and find innovative ways to illuminate important historical episodes. This book is a living example.
It covers the period of the Iran-Iraq war, during which U.S.-Iran relations hardened into the seemingly permanent enmity that has characterised their relations ever since. NSA assembled a group of individuals who were deeply involved in the making of U.S. policy during that time, backed up by a small group of scholars who had studied the period.
They provided them with a briefing book of major documents from the period, mostly declassified memos, to refresh their memories, and then launched into several days of intense and structured conversation. The transcript of those sessions, which the organisers refer to as “critical oral history”, is the core of this book.
No one can emerge from this book without a sense of revelation. No matter how much you may know about these tumultuous years, even if you were personally involved or have delved into the existing academic literature, you will discover new facts, new interpretations, and new dimensions on virtually every page.
I say this as someone who was part of the U.S. decision-making apparatus for part of this time and who has since studied it, written about it, and taught it to a generation of graduate students. I found little to suggest that my own interpretations were false, but I found a great deal that expanded what I knew and illuminated areas that previously had puzzled me. I intend to use it in my classes from now on.
Iranians tend to forget or to underestimate the impact of the hostage crisis on how they are perceived in the world. Many Iranians are prepared to acknowledge that it was an extreme action and one that they would not choose to repeat, but their inclination is to shove it to the back of their minds and move on.
This book makes it blindingly clear that the decision by the Iranian government to endorse the attack on the U.S. embassy in November 1979 and the subsequent captivity of U.S. diplomats for 444 days was an “original sin” in the words of this book for which they have paid – and continue to pay – a devastating price.
Similarly, U.S. citizens tend to forget their casual response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, our tacit acquiescence to massive use of chemical weapons by Iraq, and the shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane by a U.S. warship, among other things.
The authors of “Becoming Enemies” remind us that, just as Americans have not forgotten the hostage crisis, Iranians have neither forgotten or forgiven America’s own behaviour – often timid, clumsy, incompetent, or unthinking; but always deadly from Iran’s perspective.
It is impossible in a brief review to catalogue the many new insights that appear in this book for the first time. However, one of the most impressive sections deals with the so-called Iran-contra affair – the attempt by the Reagan administration to secretly sell arms to Iran in the midst of a war when we were supporting their Iraqi foes.
This, of course, exploded into a major scandal that revealed criminal actions by many of the administration’s top aides and officials and nearly resulted in the impeachment of the president. The official position of the administration in defending its actions was that this represented a “strategic opening” to Iran.
Participants in this discussion, some of whom had never before publicly described their own roles, dismissed that rationale as self-serving political spin. President Reagan, they agreed, was “obsessed” (the word came up repeatedly) with the U.S. hostages in Lebanon and was willing to do whatever was required to get them out, even if it cost him his job.
Moreover, the illegal diversion of profits from Iran arms sales to support the contra rebels in Central America was, it seems, only one of many such operations. The public focus on Iran permitted the other cases to go unexamined.
Another striking contribution is the decisive role played by the U.N. secretary-general and his assistant secretary, Gianni Picco (a participant), in bringing an end to the Iran-Iraq war. This is a gripping episode in which the U.N. mobilised Saddam’s Arab financiers to persuade him to stop the war, while ignoring the unhelpful interventions of the United States. They deserved the Nobel Peace Prize they received for their efforts.
There are, however, some lapses in this otherwise exceptional piece of research. One of the “original sins” of U.S. policy that are discussed is the U.S. failure to denounce the Iraqi invasion of Iran on Sep. 22, 1980, thereby confirming in Iranian eyes U.S. complicity in what they call the “imposed war”. I am particularly sensitive to the fact that the discussion of the actions of the Carter administration in 1980 is conducted in the absence of anyone who was actually involved.
Those of us in the White House at the time would never have failed to recall that direct talks with the Iranians about the release of the hostages had begun only days earlier. So there was for the first time in nearly a year a high-level authentic negotiating channel with Iran.
My own contribution to the missed opportunities that are enumerated at the end of the book would, in retrospect, have been our lack of courage or imagination to use our influence with the United Nations Security Council to bargain with Iran for immediate action on the hostages. If we had taken a principled position calling for an immediate cease-fire and Iraqi withdrawal, the entire nature of the war could have been transformed.
To my surprise, Zbigniew Brzezkinski, my boss at the time, sent a personal memo to President Carter (which I had never seen until now) that argued for “Iran’s survival” and held out the possibility of secret negotiations with Tehran. This was a total revelation to me, and it was so contrary to the unfortunate conventional wisdom that Brzezkinski promoted the Iraqi invasion that even the authors of this book seemed at a loss to know what to make of it.
The other huge disappointment with this initiative, which is not the fault of the organisers, was the absence of any Iranian policymakers. Iranian leaders and scholars should read this book. Perhaps one day their domestic politics will permit them to enter into such a dialogue. That day is long overdue.
“I’m weary of the two sides’ followers, waving the flags of Israel and Palestine as if these were rival football teams: black v white; my team all good, their team all bad: my team the perennial David, the pure, unblemished victim; their team a permanent Goliath, capable only of wickedness and immune to pain. Those who feel anything at all for these peoples, or even just for one of them, need to end this wearying, deadening obsession with scoring points …”
Reza Marashi provides a marvelous synopsis of recent US policy toward Iran. This is important reading for anyone who really wants to understand what has happened so far and where we might go from there.
- by GARY SICK, SPECIAL TO CNN
- NOV. 16, 2012
Editor’s note: Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and he was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University, a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and founding chair of its advisory committee on the Middle East and North Africa.
(CNN) — President Barack Obama is getting a lot of free advice. Here’s a question, not an answer: With every issue in the Middle East intertwined with every other, like a giant bowl of spaghetti, where do you begin?
In reality, no matter where you begin in the Middle East, each strand connects to almost every other:
Syria? Immediately you must think of the Turks who are harboring refugees and fighters just across the border, and Syrian Kurds, who are beginning to harbor thoughts of autonomy and are increasing contacts with their ethnic brothers in Iraq and Turkey.
Gary Sick
Iran, of course, is aiding the beleaguered Bashar al-Assad but also trying to organize an exit strategy; Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pouring money and arms into the country with the sole purpose of cracking the Syria-Iran entente; Iraq fears that a Sunni takeover in Syria will revitalize its own restless Sunnis.
The Palestinian issue? No need to elaborate. That is tangled up with everything in the Middle East.
The Arab awakening? The policies you adopt with the emerging Islamist governments will affect every strand you touch in the region, from relations with Israel to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf that are terrified of sweeping change.
The president will not have the luxury of choosing a single issue and ignoring or postponing all the others. The whole Middle East has a habit of intruding, and policy choices will have to be made about each of the major issues, even if it is not convenient.
Still, in plotting a second term, the president must establish some priorities. Trying to do everything at once is not only bad strategy, it is a certain recipe for failure across the board.
A point of entry: Possibly the most promising strand to pull when trying to unravel the Mideast problem is the Iranian dilemma. When Obama came into office four years ago, he courageously promised to engage Iranian leaders. He made a genuine attempt, but he quickly pulled back in the face of Iran’s brutal suppression of a civil uprising, Israeli demands for an early deadline on the nuclear issue and the fact that he had a lot on his domestic plate. Trita Parsi evocatively describes that episode in the book “A Single Roll of the Dice.”
There was no staying power. Instead, the United States reverted to its default position of sanctions while maintaining the framework for serious negotiations with Iran as part of the so-called P5+1 — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia) plus one (Germany).
The sanctions did their job. Iran has gladly accepted the invitation of the P5+1 to return to the negotiating table. However, in the run-up to the presidential election, the United States was unwilling to put a meaningful offer on the table, and the negotiating track languished in a kind of limbo.
The value of sanctions: Sanctions have two useful purposes. One is to persuade Iran to return to the negotiating table. That has happened. The other is to give the sanctioning party something to bargain away in return for concessions.
Up to this point, the United States has been unwilling to offer significant sanctions relief in return for significant concessions from Iran. Sanctions have assumed a life of their own and are gradually becoming politically untouchable. If that remains true, then there is no prospect of serious negotiations.
There is another use of sanctions — to punish a party you don’t like and potentially coerce them into submission or collapse. The current sanctions regime is taking on that coloration, even if it is seldom discussed as such.
The record of sanctions in producing abject surrender or regime change is not promising. Instead, the sanctions typically hurt the average citizen, while leaders escape most of the effects and adopt a defiant posture, blaming their own failings on outside interference. This is beginning to happen in Iran today.
Vicious assaults on the well-being of a country’s population can produce popular bitterness and hostility against the “enemy” that can last for generations.
The shape of an agenda: As with many long-standing disputes, the broad outlines of a settlement are well-known to the parties. What is lacking is the political judgment by both sides that now is the moment to proceed with a deal that will require mutual compromise.
The United States and its allies will have to accept a measure of Iranian domestic enrichment of uranium. Iran will have to accept limits on its entire nuclear infrastructure, subject to intrusive inspections and monitoring. Iran will need to document the history of its nuclear program, and the West will need to remove sanctions. All of this must happen in a step-by-step process with safeguards and verifications at each stage.
There is nothing easy about it. The Iranians are known as obstinate and often infuriating negotiators. The United States is not known for its patience, and it can be clumsy and ponderous as it attempts to please multiple constituencies at the same time. Iran is certain to face strong objections from its hardliners, and the same will apply in the United States.
The hardliners on both sides, who regard another Middle East war as an acceptable option, reinforce each other and impede efforts to find mutually acceptable compromises. Israel and the U.S. Congress will try to impose impractically tight deadlines. And events in the region, such as the recent case of Iranian aircraft firing on a U.S. surveillance drone, can sabotage negotiations.
The Arab states of the Gulf will be intensely suspicious of any hint of a secret deal between the United States and Iran. They remember America’s strategic reliance on the shah, the Reagan administration’s covert sale of weapons to Iran in the mid-1980s and America’s installation of a Shia government in Iraq. They (and Israel) will have to be persuaded that any accommodation with Iran is not at their expense.
Private and public negotiations: The starting point must be private U.S.-Iran discussions, leading to an agreed agenda. Both sides have recently hinted that such talks are under consideration, and reactions from the European Union, Russia and even the American people have been undismayed, even openly supportive.
The choice of representatives and venues is less important than confidence that delegates credibly reflect the view of their leaders. Experience suggests that an agreed agenda is more likely to emerge from bilateral discussions outside the glare of publicity. If that is accomplished, then the actual negotiations could be carried out within the existing P5+1 framework.
Even a preliminary agreement — establishing a mutually acceptable process with a defined end point — would help to unravel some of the tangles of Middle East issues.
The threat of a new war in the Middle East would be reduced. The possibility of getting Iranian cooperation on Syria would be improved. The threat of nuclear proliferation in the region would be tamped down at least temporarily. And the multiple flash points in the Gulf could potentially cool down, leaving opportunities for more constructive initiatives.
The history of U.S.-Iran relations is a story of relentless hostility and serial missed opportunities. Chances for genuine progress come along scarcely once in a decade.
So, Mr. President, here is one more piece of free advice: The present constellation of circumstances with Iran is probably the best you’re going to get. Don’t let it pass.
October 2012
3 posts
It is easy to forget that lop-sided victories often have unpleasant long-term consequences. Stephen Walt reminds us that the harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WW I, led directly to WW II.
Since he is talking about Iran, he could also have mentioned the coup of 1953 that removed a nationalist figure, Mohammed Mossadeq, and put the shah back on the throne. Although it is regarded as one of the great CIA covert action successes of all time, it also led Iranians to believe that the US was henceforth responsible for everything the shah did. That feeling revealed itself in the Iranian revolution a quarter of a century later, which was as much anti-American as anti-shah, and the vengeful hostage crisis that followed.
Be careful what you wish for…
I had a chance to spend 20 minutes with Neil Conant this afternoon discussing Argo on the NPR program Talk of the Nation. The audio should be up in an hour or two.
The Middle East news service Al-Monitor publishes my review of Ben Affleck’s new film, Argo:
The American embassy in Tehran was attacked and its residents imprisoned almost exactly 33 years ago, November 4, 1979. The 444-day ordeal of the hostage crisis burned itself into the American collective consciousness. It was America’s first contact with radical Islam. It was our first televised foreign policy crisis. It was the subtext for Jimmy Carter’s unsuccessful reelection campaign. And it has shaped US attitudes and policies toward Iran ever since.
Most Americans — even the under-33 generation — have some recollection of those events: photos of blindfolded diplomats; angry crowds of bearded young men waving their fists at the TV cameras; wreckage of helicopters in the Iranian desert after the failed rescue mission; triumphal homecoming parades.
Several episodes, however, have largely been forgotten. Who recalls that 13 blacks and women were released by the Iranians in the first few weeks of the crisis in a crude bid to polarize American public opinion? And how many people remember the six Americans who hid out in the Canadian embassy after evading capture, and who were later smuggled out of Iran in full sight of the militiamen at Mehrabad Airport?
This latter part of the story, dubbed the “Canadian Caper,” was a brief burst of good news in the midst of an otherwise grim daily dose of frustration and anger. Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor rightly became an American hero. However, the details of the rescue were classified. Any direct connection of the CIA to the operation, or even excessive gloating, could have been dangerous to the remaining 53 hostages. So it was not until many years later that the full story was revealed. For most Americans, it receded to the status of a footnote.
No longer. Ben Affleck has taken the essence of the story, given it the full Hollywood treatment, and released it this weekend to excellent reviews. Affleck directs and stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA disguise specialist who came up with the unlikely cover story and personally shepherded the six through the airport on January 28, 1980, in the guise of a Canadian film crew exploring sites for a sci-fi thriller named Argo.
Viewed simply as a spy thriller, Argo is brilliantly edgy and entertaining. Affleck doesn’t overplay his role. He resists what must have been a temptation to inject a large dose of James Bond into his character. Instead, he plays a talented guy separated from his young son, as he and his wife take some “time off.” As Mendez, he comes up with an outlandish plan and sells it with some difficulty to a skeptical bureaucracy as, admittedly, the “best bad idea we’ve got.” It was a time, after all, when almost all options available to the US administration were unattractive.
Argo mixes archive footage seamlessly with utterly realistic sets and performances. Whether the action is taking place in the sterile confines of a CIA office, the slightly claustrophobic guest quarters of the Canadian embassy, or the tumultuous chaos of the Tehran bazaar, the producers and editors of the film have made it easy to suspend judgment. Portrayals of White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and Ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber) were almost eerily accurate — right down to the tiniest body language.
In addition to the harrowing vision of a country in full revolutionary fury, Affleck accurately captures the stifling internal rivalries among government departments. Needless to say, since the hero of this tale is the CIA, the State Department and the White House come off as rather more stodgy and unimaginative than was actually the case, in my experience. To be fair, the Agency does not escape unscathed. When an underling asks Mendez’s boss (Bryan Cranston as Jack O’Donnell) how he is supposed to find the White House chief of staff, O’Donnell snarls “We’re supposed to be a spy agency. Just find him!”
The best writing in this film was reserved for the segment about inventing a fake film company producing a fake picture. John Goodman and Alan Arkin do star turns as an award-winning makeup artist and a famous but aging director. Between them they have seen it all, and their cynical repartee leaves no dirty linen of the movie game unexposed. Tinseltown meets the Puzzle Palace. It is a comic gem, and Affleck wisely restricts himself to the role of straight man.
Like many of us in the government at that time, I was aware that a number of Americans had managed to escape into Tehran and had taken refuge in the Canadian Embassy. I shared the widespread (and very real) concern that some news organization would get word of this and rush it into print — thereby insuring that they would never escape. Even printing the complete photo set of those at the embassy would have quickly revealed the truth. In fact, several reporters were onto the story. In the end, all of them resisted printing the story. However, it was clear that the story could not be suppressed forever. The pressure of time was not a movie invention.
The escape of the six was a cause for total celebration, even by those of us who were only on the periphery of the plan. We especially had a hard time controlling our mirth as the Iranian Foreign Minister complained with a straight face about the unacceptable violation of Iranian sovereignty by the Canadian chicanery.
I have always had a special affection for Ken Taylor, who became a good friend. His willingness to risk his own life for a group of fugitives says something important about the much maligned diplomatic service. I also mourn the fact that the Canadian embassy would not be available to help if something happened today. It was recently closed by an ideologically rigid Canadian prime minister.
The reality of six fugitives living in the knowledge that any moment could be their last is the very essence of tension. But that is not enough for the movies. The film has added a terrifying visit to the Tehran Bazaar by the six members of the “film crew” — a risk their handler would surely have been fired for attempting in real life. The end of the film is a real nail-biter, with the Iranians in the process of discovering the truth and with the US government suddenly backing away from the whole venture. As far as I know, none of that was true.
But hey, this is Hollywood, not history. The film works. Enjoy it!
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iran relations, in addition to several other edited books and articles dealing with U.S. Middle East policy. He blogs at http://garysick.tumblr.com/
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/washington-insider-reviews-argo.html#ixzz29HJpn22E
September 2012
2 posts
Roger Cohen in the NY Times looks unblinkingly at the antics of Israel’s Prime Minister which, he says, are “undermining of Israel’s true strategic interests.”
