gary's choices

How serious is Iran's threat to build ten more nuclear enrichment sites?

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:18:00 -0500

From Gary Sick:

A proposed new 10 enrichment sites were reportedly “decided” by Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet earlier today. There are several aspects of this announcement that raise real questions in my mind. The most important may be the fact that the so-called decision was taken by the Cabinet, even though it is the Supreme National Security Council that is normally responsible for major security decisions. The major power centers, e.g. the Revolutionary Guard and the Supreme Leader, are not represented directly in the Cabinet. Perhaps they were consulted, but that is not clear.

But there are a couple of other factors that occur to me on first reaction:

1 - Ahmadinejad is calling for a total of 500,000 centrifuges. Fabrication of centrifuges by Iran began in a major way about the year 2000. Iran to date has constructed and installed fewer than 9000 centrifuges, of which only about half are actually producing low enriched uranium (LEU). Taking the actual record of adding roughly 1000 working centrifuges per year over 10 years as a baseline, it would take 500 years to complete the program as announced.

2 – Everyone today is aware of the so-called Fardo enrichment site that was recently disclosed on a Revolutionary Guard base near Qom. Iran says its construction began in 2003. If that is true, in 6 years they have installed the piping and fittings for a total of 3000 centrifuges; but no centrifuges have actually been installed, and the site is actually scheduled to be completed by 2011. Using a rough estimate of 9 years per site, it could require 90 years to build ten more, if the sites were developed sequentially.

But Ahmadinejad was talking about ten new sites the size of the major facility at Natanz, which is eventually intended to house 54,000 centrifuges. Natanz has two underground halls buried deep in a mountain under masses of concrete and constituting two halls of more than 60,000 square feet. Constructing ten of these enormous underground sites would place immense pressure on Iran’s ability to excavate and equip such a vast array of production sites. Given the amount of time Iran has spent developing Natanz, and the problems they have encountered, the project imagined by Ahmadinejad would be limited by the very size of the Iranian economy and its manufacturing capabilities.

At a minimum, this is a project that would require Iran to mobilize all of its resources in a national effort over many years. It is not something that could be done quickly. It also may not appeal to other parts of the government in light of Iran’s huge economic deficiencies.

In my view, this is a classic Ahmadinejad blustery response to the recent IAEA resolution that criticized Iran. It is also the kind of ante-raising that one might expect in a negotiating game of “chicken.” We have also heard various Iranian commentators in the past few days say that Iran might withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and others threaten that Iran would enrich their own fuel cells to power their nuclear research reactor (though they don’t have the technology to manufacture the fuel cells), etc. These statements appear to be political hot air coming from people who don’t know what they are talking about.

Unless and until we hear any of these “decisions” from responsible decision-makers in Iran, I think it is premature, as our British friends might say, to get our knickers in a twist.

gary

Informed Comment: IAEA Condemnation of Iran: An Omen of New Sanctions or a Symbolic Slap on the Wrist?

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:52:38 -0500

Informed Comment: IAEA Condemnation of Iran: An Omen of New Sanctions or a Symbolic Slap on the Wrist?:

Juan Cole, who blogs at “Informed Comment” above, has a sharp analysis of the recent IAEA vote censuring Iran.

Iran: Back to the Future - Gary Sick in The Daily Beast

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:28:07 -0500

Iran: Back to the Future - Gary Sick in The Daily Beast:

Iran is at a revolutionary juncture, one of those hinge moments in history when an exposion of actions and debates produce towering outcomes—often unintended—that bend the course of events the way a black hole in space bends a beam of light. In the tumult of these moments, it is almost impossible to know how it will end; only in retrospect does the outcome appear inevitable.

This hinge moment began on 22 Khordad—June 12 on the Western calendar—the date of Iran ’s electoral debacle. On that date, all the old rules changed and a new set of rules began to be devised. There is evidence of deep political fissures among the ruling elite and signs of fierce debate. At the moment, Iran ’s political leadership finds it convenient to pretend that all is as before. But in fact, there has been a political earthquake and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is moving to consolidate its power. Before it is over, we may see a new strongman emerge from the military, as has happened in so many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere when the political status quo was shattered and everything was in flux.

Iran , of course, has experienced such hinge moments before: notably the 1979 collapse of the shah and the replacement of his monarchy with a revolutionary Islamic government. Its effects extended far beyond the borders of Iran . I was in the White House at the time that Iran invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held its occupants prisoner for 444 days. That action arguably insured the defeat of President Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan. It also indelibly imprinted an image of a fanatical, hostile Iran on the psyches of Americans who watched it play out as the first major U.S. foreign policy crisis to be televised live and broadcast into the living rooms of every family in the United States .

Part of the problem that Washington had in attempting to negotiate an end to that deadly dispute was the absence of an address in Iran . We knew that the hostages had been taken by a group of radical students; we knew that the revolutionary regime had thrown its support to the students; we knew that the supreme revolutionary authority was Ayatollah Khomeini, but he would not talk to us, and the Iranians who did talk to us proved to have no real authority.

Today I am experiencing a back-to-the-future moment.

The election debacle on 22 Khordad (June 12 on the Western calendar) was in my view the final, bungled stage of what was intended to be a gentle coup propelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the pasdaran, into a position of unassailable power behind the scenes. The amazing rise of the Green Movement, under the almost accidental leadership of Mir Hossein Moussavi and later Mehdi Karroubi, threatened to upset these plans, and panicked efforts to prevent it brought the pasdaran out of the shadows and into the full glare of international attention.

The pasdaran had begun playing an overtly political role a full decade earlier. Its insinuation into the economy of Iran had been widely observed for years. It also controlled the nationwide paramilitary force known as the basij. Its association with a radical faction of Iranian clerics, led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who preached that the word of the Supreme Leader in Islamic Iran was absolute—the very voice of God—was well known. But the election of 22 Khordad propelled the pasdaran into an active role in domestic politics, just as it forced Ayatollah Khamene`i, the Supreme Leader who is supposed to remain above politics, to align himself with a specific political faction and thereby sacrifice his legitimacy as an objective arbiter.

I am personally convinced that the Revolutionary Guard Corps is now rapidly becoming the dominant force in Iranian politics—greater than President Ahmadinejad, and greater even than Ayatollah Khamene`i himself, though the pasdaran and others continue to pay lip service to his “leadership.” I base this judgment, among other things, on the fact that senior leaders of the pasdaran no longer have any compunction about taking positions that differ from those of the President or the Supreme Leader; yet neither the President nor the Supreme Leader ever dare disagree with the pasdaran. But if that is true, who exactly is calling the shots?

The political decision-making apparatus of the pasdaran is totally opaque. It is possible to conjecture a circle of dogmatic officers together with a narrow faction of clerical advisers who share a belief in the divine right of rulers. But it is impossible to give a list of the members of this circle, let alone the process by which they arrive at policy positions.

This uncertainty is what reminds me of the days of the revolution and the murky operations of what was then the Revolutionary Council. The U.S. government spent a tremendous amount of time and effort during the hostage crisis trying to identify the key members of the Revolutionary Council and to develop channels for communicating with this central policy-making body.

The results were less than satisfactory, partly no doubt because the group was itself a mirror image of the political chaos after the Iranian revolution. The Council had a fairly well established membership, but influence on specific policies varied from one moment to the next according to the shifting political winds, and there was no reliable process by which decisions were taken and implemented. There was, in short, no reliable address where a U.S. initiative might be registered and acted on.

It is 30 years later, and we have arrived at another hinge moment in history. And the Obama administration has a serious problem, scarcely discussed but eerily familiar. How do you engage with Iran when there is no reliable address in Tehran ?

Former Prisoner Maziar Bahari: Why the U.S. should still talk with Iran - washingtonpost.com

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:32:24 -0500

Former Prisoner Maziar Bahari: Why the U.S. should still talk with Iran - washingtonpost.com:

My colleague Maziar Bahari offers some sharp insights on political developments in Iran, which he observed from the inside — the inside of Evin prison. He says:

“The West has to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear program and the stability of Iraq and Afghanistan. Not talking to Tehran doesn’t work: The hostile rhetoric and actions of the Bush administration against even the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami helped the hard-liners to consolidate power. Only by engaging, even with a more radical regime, can the West force Tehran to measure the costs and benefits of dealing with the outside world… .[With regard to the Iranian people] We have been brutalized to think of the world in black and white. Seeing the shades of gray can be our strongest weapon against those who would jail, beat and torture us.”

More invented charges against a colleague in Iran

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:40:00 -0500

More invented charges against a colleague in Iran:

Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American sociologist who was scheduled to teach this year at my university, has been brought before a new court run by the Revolutionary Guards and charged with spying. The reason? He participated in the online forum that I run at Columbia. And I am once again accused of being a CIA agent, involved in efforts to overthrow the Iranian government in a “velvet revolution.” (This comes in the same week that U.S. neoconservatives in the New York Post insinuated that I am in the pay of the Iranian government — you simply can’t make this stuff up!) But Kian is not faced with foolish and invidious comments in a yellow tabloid; he has already been sentenced to 15 years in prison, and these are new charges piled on the old ones. He is trapped in an increasingly lawless system that uses the “law” for its own purposes. It is essential to keep the spotlight of publicity on these Iranian show trials. The best place to stay abreast of this consolidation of power by an illegitimate power structure is the website of The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, at the link above.

Iran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition - NYTimes.com

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:59:05 -0500

Iran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition - NYTimes.com:

Robert Worth of the NY Times provides a valuable and insightful perspective on the way the Iranian regime is reacting to popular dissent about the election (and their own performance). The Revolutionary Guard is moving into every corner of Iran’s society, and the country (in my view) is approaching a state of outright military rule.

Newsweek Reporter's Ordeal in Iran

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:19:00 -0500

Newsweek Reporter's Ordeal in Iran :

Maziar Bahari, a journalist and filmaker and colleague, writes in Newsweek of his ordeal in Evin Prison in Iran, which is becoming the Iranian gulag for those who are willing to question the actions of the regime. His touching account not only opens a window into the ugly world of the treatment of political prisoners in Iran, but it also offers a peek into the minds of the Revolutionary Guard interrogators who appear to believe all their own propaganda.

They seem to believe that any contact with the West is evidence of treason. In one amusing segment, that even includes a satirical interview he gave to the Daily Show when it was filming in Tehran. As I’ve said before, there is no way to caricature a regime that constantly caricatures itself.

Cleric Wields Religion to Challenge Iran’s Theocracy - NYTimes.com

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:48:04 -0500

Cleric Wields Religion to Challenge Iran’s Theocracy - NYTimes.com:

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, himself a founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran together with Ayatollah Khomeini, is now the fiercest critic of the current government. He says plainly and clearly what the leaders of the Green Movement hesitate to express. His religious qualifications — the highest of any cleric in Iran and far greater than those of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei — give his words the kind of weight that the “house” clerics of the regime can only envy and fear.

Will Iran Dominate Iraq? | Gary Sick in The Daily Beast

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:17:00 -0500

Will Iran Dominate Iraq? | Gary Sick in The Daily Beast:

Are we witnessing a historic shift in the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, with Iran assuming dominance over Iraq? A recent fact-finding trip to Baghdad and Najaf suggests that such fears are exaggerated.

In 2003, the United States overturned the secular but predominantly Sunni Arab regime of Saddam Hussein and then presided over the installation of a more representative Shiite government in Baghdad. This was a huge gift to Iran —itself a Shiite state—and represented a historic shift. Although Iraq is a majority Shiite state, never in more than a thousand years had a predominantly Shiite government ruled there.

The U.S. invasion removed an implacably hostile enemy of Iran that had invaded it in 1980, fought a brutal eight-year war against it in the southern marshes, and created a Sunni Arab coalition with the intent of overturning the Iranian revolution. In an apparent fit of absentmindedness, the G.W. Bush administration succeeded in removing both of Iran’s key rivals—the Taliban was similarly routed in Afghanistan —effectively elevating Iran to the position of a regional superpower.

This, in turn, gave rise to cries of alarm that Iran would parlay this double-barreled and unparalleled act of strategic generosity into a “Shiite crescent” that would threaten the entire Middle East from the Levant to Afghanistan. Many of these voices of apprehension and disdain belong to the tier of old Sunni states in the Middle East—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—that regard themselves as the legitimate arbiters of regional power and policies but which are finding themselves rendered increasingly impotent by the rise of Israel and Iran as the two leading “regional influentials.”

Perhaps the shrillest voices are the Sunnis in Iraq who recognize that they will no longer be able to dominate the policy-making process in the post-Saddam era. A disgruntled former Iraqi (Sunni) official, when pressed by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius about what his country would look like in five years in the absence of American help, answered bluntly: “Iraq will be a colony of Iran.”

Much of this pointing with alarm can be written off as status envy or political sour grapes or even uneasiness that Iraq, unlike nearly all its neighbors in the Middle East, holds elections that are not rigged in favor of the current rulers. But underlying the grumbling is a deep and abiding opposition to the emergence of the Shiites as a political force in the region. Traditionally, except in Iran, the Shiites have been relegated to the status of second-class citizens, and their new prominence in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon (through Hezbollah) is regarded by many Sunni Arabs as intolerable.

There are also whispered concerns that the United States, in granting Iran such political influence in the region, had ulterior motives. Memories are long in the Middle East, and no one has forgotten the special relationship between the United States and the Iran of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. If the United States endowed Iran with its new political clout, the conspiracy theory goes, can a special deal between the Americans and Iranians, at the expense of America’s traditional Sunni—or Israeli—allies, be far behind?

Finally, there is an underlying fear of the Iranian revolution and its establishment of a Shiite Islamist clerical state. Is that to be the future of the new Middle East?

I recently had an opportunity to test out some of these suspicions during a trip to Iraq and the Iraqi holy city of Najaf. As a member of a small group of visiting scholars, I participated in discussions with three grand ayatollahs (not including Grand Ayatollah Sistani) over several days.

Our group of four non-Muslim American scholars with diverse academic interests was a bit unusual, but these ayatollahs meet daily with pilgrims from every corner of the world, and they are neither surprised nor offended by tough questions. Religious education in the Shiite seminaries uses the Socratic method—challenge and response—and nothing is off limits. As it happened, I was the eldest of our group, so in accordance with Iraqi protocol I posed the first question. In each case, I asked the religious scholars what the proper role of religion would be in the new, post-Saddam Iraq. In various words, they all replied that religion can only persuade, it has no power to control or force. These religious leaders saw their function as providing guidance or suggestions to the political leaders, but they had no desire or inclination to run the government.

These were not political discussions, but of course everything has a political dimension. We did not ask them directly to compare their understanding of the role of Islam with that of the theocratic system in Iran. Nevertheless, the subject came up in various ways.

The two most telling moments for me were during our lengthy discussion with a group of perhaps 15 senior religious scholars that extended from morning through lunch and well into the afternoon. These men are all teachers in the hawza, the religious establishment of Najaf.

One scholar responded to a question about whether scholars moved freely back and forth between Najaf and Qom, the counterpart seminary town in Iran. At first he said yes, that the three levels of traditional instruction were largely in common. Then he changed his mind. We would not recommend that our students go to Qom for the first (basic) level of instruction, he said; in Iran the first level courses have become a training program for future officials in an Islamic government.

Clearly the Najaf hawza had no intention of playing such a role. (An ayatollah had told us the previous day that the relationship between Najaf and Qom was one of “friendly competition.” No progress, he said, is possible without competition.)

The point was driven home by another scholar, from a famous Iraqi family of clerics, some of whose members had sheltered in Iran during the oppression and persecution of Shiite clerics and institutions under Saddam Hussein’s rule. A number of his relatives were killed by Saddam. He said quite matter-of-factly that after the collapse of Saddam’s rule, the hawza had considered whether it would follow the Iranian model of a theocratic state, and had decided that it would not.

Khomeini’s concept of the velayat-e faqih has always been controversial in Shiite Islam, and the spectacular failure of Iran’s theocracy to bring competence, justice, prosperity or tranquility to Iran does not appear to have been lost on their co-religionists in Iraq. But that does not prevent the hawza from playing an important role in Iraqi politics. Grand Ayatollah Sistani has offered his advice at several critical junctures, promoting non-violence and more transparent democratic procedures. Transparency generally favors a majority Shiite populace, but Sistani’s interventions have also found favor with non-sectarian proponents of Iraqi democracy.

One other issue that arose naturally in the course of our conversations in Najaf was the subject of terrorism, particularly suicide bombings and the killing of civilians in the name of Islam. The passion of our interlocutors’ responses on this subject were exceeded only by their denunciations of Saddam Hussein. The extremist takfiri ideology of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, which permits such excesses as suicide bombings, attacks on civilians, abductions, mutilations, and beheadings, was denounced unequivocally and disdainfully as contrary to Islam itself.

It is perhaps no coincidence that of the hundreds of suicide bombings that have plagued Iraq in the past six years, most if not all appear to have been carried out by Sunni extremists (often imported from neighboring Arab countries), not Shiites. Today, Sunni clerics, recognizing the immense harm that such behavior is visiting on Islam itself, are increasingly joining their Shiite brethren in denouncing these atrocities.

There is no doubt that the present Iraqi government is more friendly to Iran than any Sunni government would likely be, and the risk of high-level conflict between these neighbors is greatly reduced from the days of Saddam Hussein. Iran can expect to have a respectful hearing in Baghdad, and the level of economic and security cooperation is going to give Iran more influence over the policies of the Iraqi government than could have been imagined only six years ago.

But any talk of Iraq becoming a colony (or even a major dependency) of Iran seems to me utterly misplaced. On the contrary, the Iraqi political experiment, messy as it may be, is showing signs of genuine representative government at a time when Iran seems to be sliding into a corporatist military dictatorship with an Islamic veneer.

Iran is presently stronger than Iraq in military organization, industrial development, and policy reach. But as Iraq recovers from the multiple disasters of Saddam Hussein’s rule, a sectarian civil war, and the calamitous mismanagement of a U.S. occupation, the existing balance is going to shift.

Iraq is now beginning to see an inflow of investment capital that is likely to grow. Recent contracts for the development of Iraq’s enormous oil fields have the promise of increasing Iraq’s oil production to more than double Iran’s waning production within less than a decade. And Iraq, given the less intrusive presence of the Najaf hawza, has the prospect of presenting a more attractive model of governance than the failed theocratic experiment next door. Continued “friendly competition” seems a more plausible model than Iranian domination, and that competition is likely to favor Iraq.

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.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean.

Fariba Amini: Interview with Gary Sick

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:10:00 -0500

Fariba Amini: Interview with Gary Sick:

Israel is not Going to Attack Iran - roozonline.com

Fariba Amini

Gary Sick was on the staff of the National Security Council under President Jimmy Carter and a White House aide during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the director of Gulf/2000. He is also on the board of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. He recently spoke at a symposium at the University of Maryland titled “Iran after the 2009 Elections.”

[N.B. I have lightly edited the version below for clarity. gs]

Rooz: You just came back from Iraq, where you spoke with a few ayatollahs. What was the content of those talks?

Gary Sick: The bottom line of what I heard is that the grand ayatollahs, on each of the occasions that we talked, when asked how they see the role of Islam in the new Iraqi state, in the post Saddam Hussein era, were unanimous in their answer. They indicated that they have no interest in a theocratic state or the Iranian model. The role religion has to play is only one of discovering the truth and persuading people. I take that as very strong evidence that they think differently from the Iranians.

Religious scholars in Iraq and in Najaf believe that Islam’s job is not to control people or to make laws. One of the senior clerics explicitly said that after the invasion they decided that the new Iraqi state will not go the same route as Iran. This was the statement of not just a few clerics but reportedly represents the opinion of the Shi’a establishment in Iraq.

Rooz: How did you find the situation in the country, the places you visited? Was it calmer?

Gary Sick: I can’t really characterize it. I simply didn’t spend enough time there to make a judgment. We were treated as official visitors but we were just four scholars. We were the guests of the vice-president and treated very well. We spent one day in Baghdad, essentially in the Green Zone, thus we didn’t see much of the capital. Then we went to Najaf to see how the situation was in that city. Even though we were provided with security, we didn’t really need it. We wandered freely. We didn’t encounter problems of any sort. Evidence of past troubles could be seen and the bombing continues in parts of Iraq but Najaf was quiet. We were there for several days and walked at ease. We went to the Mosque of Imam Ali and met with people. We visited schools, religious establishments and libraries. Life was pretty normal and people were going on with their lives.

Rooz: How do you see the security of the Persian Gulf in light of all the verbal tensions? Do you see any real and present danger or do you think it is going to subside?

Gary Sick: I don’t see any immediate security threats. I realize there is a threat from Israel possibly bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. But I think I was pretty clear in my talk that I don’t share those views. Right now I would say the degree of threat, at least a cross-border one, i.e. one country threatening another, is very low. Iran is not militarily threatening Saudi Arabia or the other Gulf states. Iran and Iraq get along. From an international point of view, the US is reducing its military force in Iraq. Overall, given the very high level of tensions that we had previously, the multiple wars we had — Iran–Iraq, US-Iraq-Kuwait, the U.S. invasion — at the moment there are no such tensions in the Gulf. Relatively speaking things are quiet but of course we know from the past that there is no guarantee things will stay that way.

Rooz: You said in your talk at the University of Maryland that the Israeli threat may be a bluff. Why do you say this?

Gary Sick: I think the Israelis feel very strongly that Iran is a major threat to them. I also think that Israel has the technical capability of bombing a number of targets in Iran; but in my judgment they are not going to blindly use that capability. This is based on the fact that everything would be worse for them if they decide to bomb. It would be worse not just because of what Iran would do but also, if they do it without having the support of the U.S., they would risk the relationship they have with the United States as well their own security.

My view is that a lot of this rhetoric is used for political purposes. It is more of a bluff. If for example you convince the United States and the European Union that an attack, with all its terrible consequences, is inevitable barring some solution to the Iranian nuclear program, at a minimum you insure that the Iranian issue is very near the top of their national agendas. That is surely one of Israel’s objectives.

Rooz: What could happen in case of a strike?

Gary Sick: As I said in my talk, when Israel keeps talking practically every day of attacking Iran, to me, that is the best evidence that they are not going to do it. If you look back at almost all the raids and operations they have carried out whether it was in Entebbe, in the alleged Syrian nuclear site recently, or on Iraq’s nuclear facilities in 1982, all of those took place absolutely without any previous warning. They were treated as state secrets. Israel knew that one of their strengths was the element of surprise.

In this case, by talking about it for several years, Iran has responded by diversifying its program; they have tucked away their supplies. The storage site that was recently found near Qom was clearly meant as an alternative option in case Israel bombed Iran’s main centrifuge site in Natanz. Iran has been able to put things underground, which makes it harder for a possible strike. It would be very difficult for Israel to destroy Iran’s program in a single strike. And they do not have the capacity to come back and bomb for several days or a month, the way the US did in Iraq.

Israel could do some damage but they could not wipe out the whole system. When they hit the facilities in Iraq, there was no defense, everything was above ground. There were no preparations made and it was a very straightforward bombing of a single target. That is not true in Iran today. It is a peculiar strategy to use because you are basically telling your opponent to take as many precautions as possible, or to hide the materials in question, and that is exactly what Iran has done and is doing. Israel can only hit specific targets on one occasion but cannot continue for several days. Iran will retaliate and things will be far worse.

Of course things could change if Iran decides for example to kick out the IAEA and its inspectors or to go all the way to build nuclear weapons. Then, everyone will rethink their positions.

ROOZ: How do you see the current US-Iran relations? At the moment, there are talks taking place between the Obama administration and some high-level Iranian officials. You compared U.S.-Iran relations to a seesaw, constantly going up and down. Do you have any hope that these talks will lead to some positive changes in a near future?

Gary Sick: There is already some sign of positive change when a senior US official can meet face to face with a top Iranian official in an international setting. This is a major shift. These talks are clearly going on in order to solve some major problems. It is unlike any other time during the last 30 years. It doesn’t mean that everything between the U.S. and Iran is solved but there is certainly a different atmosphere.

Today, there is huge debate going on inside Iran whether they should accept the offer that was made by the P5+1. Curiously, a few hardliners are supporting this and a number of others are criticizing it. It is a political game basically between those in Iran who say that this is a giveaway and those who are willing to make some concessions. I don’t think there was a single time during the last 30 years when there was any public debate in Iran whether they should deal with the U.S. or not. The issue was always that it would be illegitimate for any Iranian to meet with the Americans.

There is an offer now on the table. They are asking themselves: Will this work to the advantage of Iran or not? Now, such debate would not be going on with Iran if there were not some prior steps. I think the Obama administration has in fact created a new environment where it is more difficult for Iran to reject engagement. The debate has shifted to a new set of concerns. The issue now is no longer whether Iran should talk to the Americans but rather what they should talk about or agree to.

This debate has just begun. I can’t really say where it is going to lead because both sides have their own interests. Both sides are bargaining. At the same time that international negotiations are going on, there are domestic debates taking place within all the countries involved, which makes everything enormously complicated.

I think we just have to wait and see. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I think a process has started and I am not terribly surprised that it has triggered a serious debate. Each side has to make up its mind as to which way it should go, what the objectives are. What is important is that nobody in Iran is saying we should walk away or that we should boycott future meetings. Nobody is saying that Jalili [the lead Iranian negotiator] exceeded his authority when he met with the Americans, and nobody in Iran is saying that he should be punished (as happened in the past).

I am never one to expect miracles given the current situation in Iran where there is a huge debate about legitimacy, about the elections, about the treatment of Iranian people and freedom of speech and civil liberties. It was surprising to me that given the tremendous domestic upheaval in Iran, they were able to go to the meeting and seriously and candidly talk about accepting a deal. It is just the beginning of a very long road and I don’t think anybody can predict where it is going to end up.

ROOZ: How do you view the role of Russia in all of these? Are they playing a double role?

Gary Sick: The Russians have their own interests as well. They have commercial interests with Iran that they want to preserve. Russia wants to play a major role in the Middle East. Their relationship with the Iranians gives them leverage on a whole set of issues, whether it is missiles placed in Europe or the nuclear development between the US and Russia and so forth.

They are playing a very complicated game. The Russians do not want to see Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and I think they have made it absolutely clear to the Iranians in private that, if you break your word and suddenly develop a covert nuclear program or if we find out that all along you were developing the bomb, don’t expect us to stand with you. We will come down very hard on you. They are saying that they don’t think sanctions work, but if things don’t proceed properly and if Iran won’t cooperate at all, there may be no other choice. They are telling the Iranians that we will walk away from you if you are uncooperative.

It gives them leverage with the Americans and it keeps the Iranians on their toes. At the same time, they want to maintain a good relationship with Iran. In that sense, the Russians are playing a perfectly predictable diplomatic game to maximize their ability to get the most from all sides.

ROOZ: What do you think of the appointment of John Limbert [former US hostage in Iran] as the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran?

Gary Sick: I think it is absolutely a perfect appointment. He has all the qualifications. He knows Iran inside and out. He is a sophisticated Persian speaker. He has written serious intellectual work which has insight into the problems between the U.S. and Iran. He has an excellent diplomatic background. Virtually no diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service today has the kind of firsthand experience with Iran that he has.

A new position has been created for him which upgrades the Iranian portfolio to a much higher level, and from my point of view he is exactly the right person for that position. I applaud the authorities at the State Department and the White House for this appointment.

Gateway | American Foreign Policy Project

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:34:22 -0500

Gateway | American Foreign Policy Project:

I am co-chair of a project intended to provide analysis and answers about US-Iran relations, with particular emphasis on the nuclear program. A great collection of reference materials and simply straight talk on this complex subect is provided at the link above.

Truth is stranger than irony

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:33:00 -0500

In my posting below on Oct 26 I denounced the fact that my fellow academic Kian Tajbakhsh was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Iran, in part because he had met with me and because I was falsely accused of being a CIA agent. I commented ironically:

… .I have been in meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on four different occasions over the past three years. I have spent at least nine hours with him, much more than I ever spent with Kian… .Iranian security officials are notably lacking in any sense of irony or humor. But I do wonder whether President Ahmadinejad is being considered for indictment because of his extensive contacts with me over the past four years… .

I have now discovered that my words have proved truer than I could ever have imagined.

Earlier today it was reported by Scott Lucas’ blog Enduring America that the Iranian Labor News Agency features an interview with conservative activist Mojtaba Shakeri, who says that some of the journalists and scholars who met with Ahmadinejad, presumably during the President’s trip to New York, were undoubtedly CIA operatives. This in turn was picked up by the opposition press, which is accusing Ahmadinejad of consorting with CIA agents.

My ironic comment seems to have been transformed into a straight-faced criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad with an utter disregard not only for the truth but also for any appreciation of the humor of the accusation.

It is impossible to parody a system that constantly parodies itself by its actions and words.

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s views on hostages and Iran's international relations

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:22:08 -0500

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s views on hostages and Iran's international relations:

The invaluable website Enduring America (see link above) has published the comments of Iranian Grand Ayatollah Montazeri on a set of contemporary political issues. Montazeri was, together with Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic. He later became critical of the way it was developing and was dismissed by Khomeini. Montazeri spent years under house arrest but has become even more outspoken in the wake of the June elections. These comments were made on the day before 13 Aban (November 4 in the Western calendar), the anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran and the beginning of the 444-day hostage crisis.

Here are some excerpts:

The seizure of the America Embassy in the beginning of the Revolution, which was supported by most of Revolutionary classes of people and the late Imam Khomeini, was also supported by me. However, due to the negative consequences and the excessive sensitivity that this has provoked amongst the American people which still exists today, it is evident that this was a mistake… .

If national interest calls for relations with America, tensions and distrust must not be aggravated by empty slogans. It is obvious that Israel and its lobby in America have been and will be completely against the Iranian-American relationship and find their interests in the continuation of the current crisis between America and Iran. It is unfortunate that statesmen of the country do not pay attention to this fact… .

It is obvious that with the crisis that the government created after that “magnificent” election [of 12 June], it cannot negotiate with the powerful governments of the world from a strong position… .

I believe that, in a wise and calculated decision, the government can immediately free all the political prisoners, free all the press, and strip away the prejudices of government institutions and universities. It can replace this with a hiring process that looks at those who are capable and deserve their positions. With such a revolutionary and pious decision, the government can return the lost authority of the establishment. It is through this [solution] that the establishment can negotiate with the powerful nations with power and authority… .

A government that keeps its people unsatisfied, oppresses and desecrates rights of people, and imprisons a large group of educated scholars and political activists with unknown accusations cannot claim to be in a struggle against the imperialists and imperialism. Without attending to public dissent to gain the support of people, without revival of the rights of all classes and freedom of the journalists and media, fighting imperialism is impossible and impractical… .

IRAN - After the 2009 Elections: Domestic, Regional and International Dimensions - Session 2

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:30:00 -0500

IRAN - After the 2009 Elections: Domestic, Regional and International Dimensions - Session 2:

I spent all day today at the conference on “Iran After the 2009 Elections” that was hosted by the University of Maryland’s Roshan Center for Persian Studies and The Sadat Chair for Peace and Development. It was a star-studded event and is available in its entirety on streaming video. My own participation was on the second panel, dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, which you can watch at the above link (I appear at the 48th minute). For all three panels, go to http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/uniini/release.cfm?ArticleID=2001 If you have a real interest in what is happening in Iran today, this is a very good place to start.

Amanpour on the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis | CNN.com

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:20:00 -0500

Amanpour on the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis | CNN.com:

Christiane Amanpour of CNN, on her new show for CNN International that bears her name, put together a 30-minute show featuring former hostage John Limbert, myself, and (from Tehran) Ebrahim Asgharzadeh who was the mastermind of the embassy takeover in 1979. It was broadcast today.

Also of interest, on the website is some footage shot in the newsroom after the program of a three-way conversation between Limbert, me and Amanpour that expands the discussion considerably. You can see it at the link above.

Incidentally, on the day after this was filmed, John Limbert assumed a new post as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the U.S. State Department.

Star student lectures Iran's Supreme Leader | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:21:00 -0500

Star student lectures Iran's Supreme Leader | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times:

Mahmoud Vahidnia, a star math student at one of Iran’s most prestigious universities, took advantage of a visit by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, to deliver a face-to-face 20-min critique of the actions of the Islamic Republic and of the institutions run by Khamenei himself. One of those institutions is the national TV network, which was broadcasting the event live but turned off the cameras when they discovered what was happening. This link from the blog of LA Times reporter Borzou Daragahi includes a photo of the event and embedded video of the response of Khamenei and of his fellow students. Despite concern for Vahidnia’s safety, he insists he has not been arrested. Heroes come from the least likely places…

Human Rights Watch Reporting on Israel

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:11:00 -0400

Human Rights Watch Reporting on Israel:

As some may know, I have a long association with Human Rights Watch. Recently HRW has come under attack for its reporting on Israel. Below is the text of a letter from the Executive Director of HRW, Ken Roth, which was published in Haaretz newspaper, replying to these charges:

Critics of Human Rights Watch’s work on Israel raise three main points. First, they say we disproportionately focus on Israel, and neglect other countries in the Middle East. Second, they claim our research methodology is flawed - relying on witnesses with an agenda. Third, as recently expressed by our founding chairman Robert Bernstein, they argue that we should focus on “closed” countries such as China rather than “open” societies like Israel.

I reject all three claims.

Human Rights Watch currently works on seventeen countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iran, Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Israel accounts for about 15 percent of our published output on the region. The Middle East and North Africa division is one of 16 research programs at Human Rights Watch and receives 5 percent of our total budget. Israel is a small fraction of what we do.

Our war coverage in the region has documented violations by all sides. No international human rights organization has done more to highlight the war crimes of Hezbollah and Hamas, challenging their leaders and the Arab public to think critically about the unlawful conduct of these groups. Our Civilian Protection Initiative, launched five years ago, has sought the support of Arab civil society leaders to discredit terrorist attacks.

The research methodology employed in these wars is the same we use around the world: in-depth private interviews with multiple witnesses. We corroborate their accounts with field visits, ballistics evidence, medical records and other means. Unfortunately, since late 2008, the Israel Defense Forces have refused to meet with us or answer any of our detailed written questions.

The problem of witness intimidation is not new, and we take it into account.

Contrary to the claims of some critics, in Gaza we found there were Palestinians who would speak about violations by Hamas. Palestinian victims and witnesses of abuse were the primary source for a report we published on Hamas torture and executions - a report cited publicly by the Israeli government.

We apply the same international human rights standards to all countries, open and closed. We work extensively on China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but we also investigate abuses in the American criminal justice system, police killings in India, “disappearances” in Sri Lanka, and migrants’ rights in Europe. All governments, regardless of their political system, are obliged to uphold the same international norms.

At the heart of our critics’ arguments lies the view that we should hold Israel to lower standards. There is no dispute that the country was founded on the ashes of genocide and is surrounded by hostile states and armed groups. But some believe that these circumstances give Israel’s democratic government the right to take whatever steps it deems necessary to keep the country safe.

A country’s conditions do not remove its obligations under international law, though. Whether a state is an aggressor or acting in self-defense, whether it faces a regular army or insurgents that commit abuses, the laws of war apply, imposing a duty to minimize civilian harm.

And being a democratic country prevents Israel from committing wartime abuses no more than it stopped the United States from torture and unlawful detentions at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The serious Israeli abuses we documented also put the country at greater risk. By failing to hold those responsible to account, Israel increases anger and resentment among the Palestinian population and in the wider Arab world, and undercuts moderates who wish to pursue peace.

Our critics have every right to challenge the substance of our findings on Israel or any other country, though they rarely find errors. But if they want to challenge repressive regimes and combat armed groups that terrorize civilians, they will not serve that cause by trying to exempt Israel from human rights laws that are the best defense against such abuse. Nor does it help to attack those organizations that are working to uphold those laws around the world.

The writer is executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Inside Iran's Intimidation Campaign | How I Got Dragged into an Iranian Show Trial | by Gary Sick

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0400

Inside Iran's Intimidation Campaign | How I Got Dragged into an Iranian Show Trial | by Gary Sick:

The Ahmadinejad regime just hit an Iranian-American scholar with a 15-year prison sentence. The Daily Beast’s Gary Sick on his role in the case—and why it’s proof of Tehran’s moral bankruptcy.

———————-

Last week, an Iranian-American colleague of mine, Kian Tajbaksh, was sentenced in Tehran to 15 years in prison. The indictment included the charges that (1) he was in contact with me; (2) that he was part of the Gulf/2000 network that I manage; and (3) that I am an agent of the CIA.

Normally, I simply ignore silly accusations such as this. They are nothing new. On one hand, it has been intimated that I must be under the influence of Iranian intelligence (by prominent neoconservatives who believe that my views on Iran’s political development and especially its nuclear program are not sufficiently alarmist). I have also been accused (by such worthies as Hossein Shariatmadari, the ultra-radical editor of Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, who is also a representative of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei) of being a CIA agent. I regard these insinuations as badges of honor, since they merely confirm that I do not subscribe to the ideological extremes of either of these groups. I have always felt that my reputation could speak for itself and required no public defense.

However, this time the accusations are really not about me but about a friend and colleague. Moreover, they are not just newspaper hyperbole by people who have an ax to grind and whose desire to make a political point exceeds their respect for the truth. These assertions are a matter of law—an official indictment by the judicial authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is often said that it is impossible to prove a negative. How do I prove that I am NOT an agent of the CIA? How do I prove that the Gulf/2000 Internet project is NOT engaged in overthrowing governments? How do I prove that Kian—a friend and a colleague—was NOT trying to lead a “velvet revolution” against the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Let me simply reverse the questions. I spent 24 years in the U.S. Navy—my only connection with the U.S. government. The Navy sponsored my education at the University of Kansas. It took me to the Persian Gulf for my first exposure to the region that has become my professional specialization. It sponsored my graduate work for a Ph.D. degree at Columbia University. And it paid my salary while I was on the National Security Council staff at the time of the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. I never received a paycheck from any other agency of the U.S. government. Do the prosecutors in Iran have evidence to the contrary? If so, please let me know.

There are a number of commentators on Iran, such as Reuel Gerecht, Graham Fuller, and Bruce Riedel, who indeed worked for the CIA. Although their political views disagree sharply, they always identify themselves as former CIA employees. I do not identify myself that way for the very simple reason that I never worked for the CIA.

The prosecutors charge that Kian was in touch with me. Right. We were both academics in New York, and we saw each other from time to time. However, I have gone back over the past 20 years with that in mind, and I am struck by something quite different. Over that period of time, I have known every Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and many members of the staff of the Iranian U.N. mission. I have spent much more time with them than with Kian.

More important, I have been in meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on four different occasions over the past three years. I have spent at least nine hours with him, much more than I ever spent with Kian. In my last meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad, I told him that if he were simply a lowly academic, instead of the president of Iran, he would be subject to arrest upon his return to Iran for meeting with the roomful of U.S. academics and think tank representatives that he had assembled at his hotel. He scoffed at the idea. Now one of my colleagues, a lowly Iranian-American professor who was about to take up a position at my university, is being condemned to 15 years in prison because, among other things, he had contact with me.

Iranian security officials are notably lacking in any sense of irony or humor. But I do wonder whether President Ahmadinejad is being considered for indictment because of his extensive contacts with me over the past four years.

The Gulf/2000 network is an Internet project that began 16 years ago to facilitate communication and information sharing among individuals who have a professional association with issues involving the Persian Gulf. It includes individuals of widely differing backgrounds and opinions, including both private citizens and government officials from countries around the world, including Iran. If any Iranian government official wishes to know about G2K, as we call it, he need only consult his colleagues who are members.

G2K is routinely cited in international conferences in Tehran and elsewhere as a reliable source of informed commentary and factual information about issues involving the Persian Gulf. It is limited to specialists, but it is not a secret. It includes individuals of every possible political persuasion. And it is not engaged in overthrowing governments.

The indictment against Kian is in fact an indictment of the legal and security structure of the Iranian government. The charges are false, deliberately false. They consist of a series of political fabrications devoid of even the flimsiest effort to verify the truth.

These accusations cast shame on any institution that professes respect for justice and law. They substantiate the words of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that this government is no longer either Islamic or a republic but merely the latest in the shabby succession of Middle Eastern military regimes. These charges remind us of the excesses of the Stalinist show trials and the abominations of the Chinese Red Guards—examples of revolutions that betrayed their own ideals.

This is not about Kian, and it is certainly not about me. It is about the abject failure of a ruling clique that has lost the confidence and support of its own people and must contrive scapegoats to excuse its own deficiencies.

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.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.

Couch-Crashing in Tehran | Foreign Policy

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:15:48 -0400

Couch-Crashing in Tehran | Foreign Policy:

A brief peek at Iran’s youth culture by a writer who spent the summer there “crashing on couches.” Bottom line: there is no agreement about anything among the members of the coming generation.

Ahmad Sadri | Iranian Greens are not Revolutionaries | FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau| PBS |

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:39:00 -0400

Ahmad Sadri | Iranian Greens are not Revolutionaries | FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau| PBS | :

A tough but fair appraisal of the situation in Iran today, with some perceptive thoughts on what has brought Iran to this point. The author, Ahmad Sadri, is a first rate analyst and an Iranian-American who is committed to a less repressive Iran.