I Don't Go Where I'm Invited - Khamanei

There were a lot of conservatives - still are, I suppose - who criticized Barack Obama's campaign promise to negotiate with Iran "without preconditions." I do believe that Ms. Clinton herself criticized that initiative as naive. Well, as this report indicates, we really have nothing to fear. It doesn't matter how naive we are in asking the Iranians to the diplomatic ball, if they follow the supreme leader's advice, they won't dance.

Realism and Morality

In the enclosed article Rick Moran argues that President Obama has chosen realism over morality with regard to Iran. I think that a) he's incorrect, and b) that's exactly the choice the president should have made.

I think all this realism vs. morality talk is mistaken because there is, as far as I know, no moral rule at all that says that the United States should encourage people in other countries to get themselves killed. You may recall that a lot of people found the results of such encouragement disheartening in Hungary in 1956 and Iraq in 1991.

And, in any event, the president has to deal with the world as he finds it. That doesn't mean he can't work to change it. It does mean that it isn't very wise to run into a stone wall again and again.

Speak Softly ...

I notice that a lot of conservative commentators are urging President Obama to speak out on the events in Iran. These are the same people, of course, who identified Iran as the source of all of the evil in the Middle East, and who condemned anyone who wanted to open a dialogue with the country's leadership. Now they want President Obama to speak out on one side of an internal Iranian fight.

There are two good reasons for the President of the United States not to jump into the Iranian melee. There are lots of other reasons, some formal, some shaky, but there are two good ones.

First, most Iranians are not big fans of the United States. Even those who are not enamored of the present regime have been raised to believe that the United States, along with Britain, has played the villain more than once in Iranian affairs. It is one thing to note that some Iranians share some of our values. It is another to cause the broad mass of Iranians to identify the students and other protestors with the United States. There is no way that most Iranians would see that as us merely supporting a movement we like. They would have to see us as Khamanei wants to portray us - as puppetmasters of these brave young people.

Second, working out an arrangement which keeps Iran's nuclear program from becoming a nuclear weapons program is more important that who the political leader of Iran might be. If Mousavi wins, we'll have to deal with him (and he ain't no George Washington). If Ahmadinejad wins, we'll have to deal with him. In no case should we make it easy for these guys to refuse to talk with us.

Let's also remember that, as in most of the Middle East, public opinion is more anti-American and anti-Israeli than elite opinion. Iran might be an exception, but I'd be somewhat cautious about accepting the idea that a more "democratic" government would necessarily better for us.

In 1956 we spoke out in favor of the Hungarian revolution, and then we stood by and did nothing while the Red Army stormed Budapest. In 1991 we urged the Shi'ites to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and then we stood by and did nothing while Saddam's army and the mukhabarat massacred thousands of people. Let us remember the first half of Teddy Roosevelt's famous injunction, "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, France. He was the author of Pensees. I have a copy, but had not even opened it until today.

"The power of kings is founded on the reason and the folly of the people, but especially on their folly. The greatest and most important thing in the world is founded on weakness. This is a remarkably sure foundation, for nothing is surer than that the people will be weak. Anything founded on sound reason is very ill-founded, like respect for wisdom." (330)

I am drawn to reflect upon that passage in light of the recent events in Iran. The power of the ayatollahs has been founded upon the folly of the people. Then again, the power of the Shah was also founded upon the weakness of the people. Unfortunately, I don't suppose that the overthrow of the current, theocratic regime will result from the triumph of reason, either.

In fact, a lot of the problems which have caused so much dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad and the regime are due to economic policies common in the Middle East and Asia. Staples such as bread and gasoline are subsidized in the cities, in order to avoid giving the people cause for unrest. But Iran is now having to import refined petroleum products, and the program is becoming unsustainable as 70% of Iranians now live in cities. At some point the government is going to have to adopt some unpopular policies, at which point the people will be in the streets again. It would be better if that were to happen under Ahmadinejad than under a government identified with political reform.

Victor Hanson's Nightmare

Victor Davis Hanson works out of California. He was a professor of classics, and now he has a gig at the Hoover Institution. He is a frequent contributor to Commentary (neocon alert!) and other conservative mags. In this piece, Hanson takes his criticism of Mr. Obama's rhetoric on international affairs into the land of the strawman.

To give Hanson his due, some countries do have their own ambitions for power, glory, or ideological transformation which might be hampered by America's presence. However, it isn't our mere existence that bothers Iran, to use his most extensive example. We and the Iranians have acted against one another. We backed the Shah for years, when it was obvious that the Iranian people weren't buying his brand of modernization. This identified us with the source of evil for all of the theocratic revolutionaries. When the Shah fell, they went after us, too. They went after us in Iran. They went after our embassy and our CIA station, where, in their mythology, we had developed plans to help the Shah torture and kill his Islamist enemies.

Maybe he's right that Khomeini was after regional power when he ordered human wave attacks in the war with Iraq. But it's also true that 1) Iraq started that war (and expected to win it) to gain regional hegemony; 2) the United States backed Iraq against Iran (at least until the arms for hostages deal); and, 3) an overexcited American Navy captain shot down an Iranian airliner loaded with civilians.

I think Michael Scheuer, in his 2008 book Marching Toward Hell, has some of this right. No, the Iranians aren't nice people, and neither are Al Qaeda and the other Islamist groups. But they wouldn't be turning their anger against us if we were not present in their world. To be more precise, it is the United States' uncritical support for Israel, our support for nasty dictatorships in a number of countries, and our outright warfare against Arab and Muslim people that causes these people to hate us.

Hanson is right about one thing. If Mr. Obama only changes the rhetoric of American foreign policy, the results are going to be disappointing. There is substance to the reasons some countries are hostile to us, and that substance is not going to evaporate under a wave of oratory. If we keep doing what we've been doing, we'll keep getting what we've been getting.

Knight's Reading List IV: April 2007

During the month of April, 2007, I finished reading these books:

Robert Gates, From the Shadows, 1996. 604 pages. Begun March 13, 2007 and completed April 5, 2007.

This is Robert Gates’ memoir of his years with the CIA and the National Security staff that led to his becoming Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush. Gates shows flashes of humor and a greater willingness to admit mistakes than I have found in the memoirs of many political leaders.

I discovered from this book that Gates and I were both in Algiers, Algeria, in early November of 1979. In fact, we may have met, though I do not recall meeting him, and I’m sure he wouldn’t remember me. Gates was then working for Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, and had accompanied Brzezinski to Algiers to represent the United States on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Algerian revolution. I was working at the American Embassy in Algiers, and went to the Aurassi Hotel, with several other embassy staffers, to meet Mr. Brzezinski.

I do not, at this remove, recall exactly why we went to see Brzezinski, but I have a recollection that I carried his tennis gear to the car, as he set off to play against our Ambassador, Ulrich Haynes. From comments Gates makes, I suspect that we in the embassy heard nothing of the results of the game because Bzrezinski won handily.

Of far more importance than my moment in the presence of the great and powerful, was that it was during the Algerian anniversary celebrations that a mob seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Because of the presence of both Mr. Brzezinski and high Iranian officials in Algiers, the Algerians provided some facilities for opening communications between the two sides. I understand that Algiers continued to play a role in the hostage drama until its end on January 20, 1981.

On January 20, 1981, I was with my three-year-old son on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., where we watched the inaugural parade bearing Ronald Reagan to the Capitol to become the 40th President of the United States. Mr. Reagan’s victory was due in part to his predecessor’s failure to resolve the hostage crisis in a favorable sense.

Those events, and the way in which the participants, and their successors, view them, have continued to mark U.S.-Iranian relations. We continue to see the Iranians as violent extremists, in part because their action in attacking the Tehran Embassy was such a grave violation of international law and the principles that govern relations among nations. They continue to believe that our interference in their internal affairs, conducted from that same embassy, was both inimical and illegitimate. And each side has continued to try to manipulate the politics and policies of the other, mistaking at times parochial interests for universal principles.

Robert Jordan, The Conan Chronicles, 1995. 510 pages. Begun April 1 and finished April 12, 2007.
Conan the Invincible
Conan the Defender
Conan the Unconquered

Jordan collects several novels in the sub-sub-genre of the Conan pastiche.

John Kaufeld, Access 2002 for Dummies, (2001). xxii + 234 pages. Begun March 2, 2007 and completed April 9, 2007.

Good as long as you need answers to the questions Kaufeld asked.

John Katzenbach, The Analyst, 2002. 424 pages. Begun April 6 and completed April 28, 2007.

Quiet, retiring shrink becomes the target for revenge for a former patient. Death Wish by way of a 12-step program.

Jonathan Kellerman, Flesh and Blood, 2001. 371 pages. Begun April 6 and completed April 20, 2007.

This is another in the Alex Delaware, shrink-wrapped detective series. Past misdeeds always return to haunt us.

John G. Miller, QBQ! 2004. 115 pages. Begun April 17 and finished April 25, 2007.

Miller’s idea of getting to the Question Behind the Question makes for a pretty good example of the inspirational management book. The best thing about it may be that Miller doesn’t try to carry a huge tome on the back of his slender idea; this is a fast and easy read. The idea? Ask questions that begin with “what” or “how,” rather than with “who” or “why.” This is Miller’s way of saying that it is more important to fix the problem, provide the service, or satisfy the customer, than it is to assign blame.

That’s true enough, to a point. It is also true that, whatever you mean by the question, your listeners tend to become adopt a defensive posture as soon as they hear “Why?” It took me a long time to learn that my innocent “why” questions were often perceived as a form of attack. I would say, “Why was this report so late?” I would mean, “What was the chain of events that caused the report not to be finished until after the due date?” They would hear, “Who screwed up?” People do not give helpful answers to the question “Who screwed up?”

Miller also encourages a positive, forward-looking attitude. This is also usually good. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to look at the reasons for deficiencies and improve the processes, the inputs, or the personnel.

Commentaries on Foreign Affairs: "Time for Detente with Iran"

Commentaries on Foreign Affairs: “Time for Détente with Iran”

Ray Takeyh, “Time for Détente with Iran,” pages 17-32 in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007.

It seems that, for every adversarial regime the United States has faced in its history, there is some group of Americans promoting the idea that we need only appeal to the “moderates” in the other regime in order to stymie the “hardliners” who are the source of all that hostility. There are a number of problems with this view, not least the invisibility of the “moderate” forces just when their influence would be most helpful. With regard to Iran, whose relations with the United States have been troubled for the past three decades, Ray Takeyh is a member of that optimistic group.

I should mention that Mr. Takeyh is the author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic. I have not read that book, so I cannot draw upon it for further elucidation of Mr. Takeyh’s views.

First, from the title of this article, we can see that Mr. Takeyh is advocating détente with Iran. This by itself places Mr. Takeyh on the liberal end of the American foreign policy spectrum. Détente is a perfectly fine word with a simple definition: “a relaxation of strained relations or tensions (as between nations).” It was most popular when indicating the relaxation of American-Soviet tensions during the early 1970s, under the aegis of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, by Raymond L. Garthoff (1985) indicates in the sub-title the progression of the reputation of the word. Conservatives came to associate détente with the granting of a form of legitimacy to the Soviet Union, and they asserted a preference for confrontation, returning to that old Republican desire for a “rollback” of Communism.

The problem is two-fold: First, more conservative observers think that tensions are only relaxed when the United States makes concessions to the other side; and, second, any improvement of relations generally rests upon some sort of commitment not to take military (or other strongly damaging) action against the other party. It is, after all, hard to relax and enjoy friendly relations when the other party keeps threatening to invade you. Conservatives of the stamp of Vice-President Cheney are made uneasy at the thought of the renunciation of the military option.

So far I haven’t said very much about what Ray Takeyh actually says in this article, so it’s time to turn to his very own words.

“[Iran’s} regime has not only survived the U.S. onslaught (sic) but also managed to enhance Iran’s influence in the region.” (Page 17)

“Ever since the revolution that toppled the shah in 1979, the United States has pursued a series of incoherent policies toward Tehran.” (Page 17)

“If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away any time soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente.” (Page 18)

“In order to develop a smarter Iran policy, U.S. leaders must first accept certain distasteful facts – such as Iran’s ascendance as a regional power and the endurance of its regime – and then ask how these can be accommodated.” (Page 21)

“Iran’s need for a foreign policy better adapted to changes in the Middle East, the regime’s perennial factionalism, and, perhaps most significant, the rise of a new generation of leaders in Tehran have sparked important internal debates within the regime. If the United States plays its cards right, it could become an important arbiter in those deliberations.” (Page 22 – emphasis added)

Aha! Here’s where the United States can appeal to the “moderates” within the Iranian regime, and, the next thing you know, we’ll “normalize” relations with Iran. Why, Iranian politicians will begin to show up at diplomatic receptions and try to keep pace with American political officers at downing ice-cold vodka martinis. (It can’t be done.) Then they’ll welcome American contractors, such as Halliburton, back to Iran to recondition their petroleum infrastructure. And the next thing you know, Iran will be the new Pakistan. (Won't that be nice?)

Mr. Takeyh identifies a “new right” group, which is itself divided, so that a “pragmatic” group of educated younger political types is ripe to establish more normal relations with the U.S. Lest we think that the religious leadership would put the kibosh on such openness to Western influence, Takeyh asserts that Supreme Leader Khamenei “has tentatively supported the pragmatists’ drive for negotiations with the United States.” Page 27)

Mr. Takeyh then lays out a strategy (with four negotiating tracks) for the United States to pursue, and urges U.S. policymakers to “focus on the challenge of managing [Iran’s] that power constructively.” (Page 31)

In conclusion, Takeyh says, “A new paradigm cannot preclude tension, or even conflict, but it could persuade Tehran that its interests would be best served if it voluntarily restrained its radical tendencies. Iran will remain a problem for the United States for the foreseeable future; the question is how best to manage its complexities and contradictions. An offer by the United States to normalize relations and start talks on all outstanding issues between the two states would give Iran a chance to choose whether it wants to be a nation defending legitimate imperatives or one guided by self-defeating delusions. And for the first time in decades, there is an indication that Iran may opt for the former.” (Page 32)

What can I say? Well, lots, because Takeyh is so eager to see us offer the world to Ali Larijani (his number 1 “pragmatist”) that he ignores a few problems with his analysis and his thesis. First, by his own account, Takeyh notes that the new right is divided, and, at this point, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on top. Moreover, he admits that Khamenei, due to his “deficient religious credentials,” is forced to “rely on reactionary elements.” So the United States should make an offer to Iran designed to appeal to a minority of a minority of the political class, and we should make that offer generous and comprehensive. And the people at whom we are aiming the offer, may be in no position to consider it, let alone accept it.

Then there’s Tehran’s “need” for a new policy. Didn’t Mr. Takeyh spend the first half of this article pointing out how successful Iran has been at foiling all of the American plots and initiatives in the area? Didn’t he tell us that Iran’s “growing regional influence cannot be limited”? So, where is the pressing need for Tehran to turn to the United States? Normal relations with the U.S. would make some things easier for Tehran; they might finally be able to get spare parts for any F-4 Phantoms they still have lying around. I don’t see the compelling driver for a new policy.

Given that the United States as been unrelentingly, if also unsuccessfully, hostile to Iran for the past 28 years, why should Tehran trust us? We backed Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, in which about 500,000 Iranians (and an equal number of Iraqis) died. We even shot down a civilian Iranian airliner. (See Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation for a full account of that murderous fiasco.) We’ve tried – and failed – to mess up Iranian relations with Russia and China, which tells them that we are both hostile and weak, a really bad combination.

Then there’s all this talk of “managing” Iranian politics. Isn’t that where we came in, in 1954, managing Iranian politics for the benefit of U.S. and British oil companies? Isn’t that one of the reasons the Iranians view us as the source of all evil? Haven’t we figured out yet that no foreign government can successfully “manage” the internal politics of any country sophisticated enough to have politics? From West to East, we have Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We’ve managed to mess up in all four of them, and Ray Takeyh thinks we should try to “manage” the internal politics of Iran, the only one in which we don’t have any American lives at risk at the moment.

Finally, on the question of whether one should let foreigners tell you how to run your country, there are no “moderates.” There are patriots and corrupt sellouts. From Benedict Arnold to Ahmad Chalabi, we have found that the corrupt sellouts don’t make good partners. Not just because they’ll rip off their sponsors, but because they cannot deliver the goods.