Max Marder

Two articles regarding Iran’s nuclear program appeared in the New York Times yesterday. They could not have been more opposite.

The first article by Scott Shane, entitled “In Din over Iran, Echoes of Iraq War,” made a compelling case that the coverage and rhetoric vis-à-vis Iran is eerily similar to statements and logic espoused in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.  The author asks why, in “what by some measures is the longest period of war” in the United States’ history, “is there already a new whiff of gunpowder in the air?”

The article, refreshingly, goes so far as to criticize the New York Times own coverage of Iran in recent weeks. The article warns that journalists may be overstating Iran’s nuclear weapons progress and capability.

In the same issue, an article entitled “Nuclear Inspectors Say Iran Mission Has Failed” by David E. Sanger and Alan Cowell categorically ignored all of the warnings of Shane’s article. The title of the article portends a crisis, while it concedes in the body that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors were only denied access to one of Iran’s nuclear sites, a minor site at Parchin. IAEA inspectors remain active in the country and have access to Iran’s major reactors at Natanz and Isfahan.

Crucially, Iran would need to expel almost every IAEA inspector before making overt attempts to develop their nuclear weapons program, which for now remains only hypothetical. Sanger and Cowell’s article even quotes the IAEA (emphasis mine) as saying activity at Parchin consist of “strong indicators of possible weapons development.” Israeli and American intelligence officials have testified that Iran has not yet made the decision to weaponize.

In media coverage, phrasing, even of a single word, can frame an article in a decisive light. Shane’s article says “the oratory of American politicians has become more bellicose and Iran has responded for the most part defiantly.” The first phrase of this sentence is hard to argue with, especially after last night’s CNN Republican Presidential Debate in which candidates Gingrich, Romney and Santorum lined up to threaten Iran with military action in defense of Israel. Referring to military options regarding Iran, Mitt Romney said “They’re not just on the table. They’re in our hand.”

This contrasts with a passage from Sanger and Cowell article: “Iran struck an increasingly bellicose tone on Tuesday, with an Iranian official warning that the country would take pre-emptive action against perceived foes if it felt its national interests were threatened.” It would be difficult to find a country on earth that wouldn’t take the same actions to prevent threats to its national security. But the word “bellicose” changes the perception of the statement, the article, and Iran’s intentions drastically.

Their article concludes with a quote from Iran’s deputy armed forces head, “Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions.” While this statement would not raise an eyebrow if it were made by an American, Israeli or European official, Sanger and Cowell characterize it and demonstrating “a new level of aggressiveness” from Iran.

Worrisomely, while both articles used the word bellicose in different contexts, Shane’s article is considered “news analysis” while Sanger and Cowell’s article passes for objective, expository reporting. Since Shane’s article was published, its title has been changed from “In Din over Iran, Echoes of Iraq War” to the tamer “In Din over Iran, Rattling Sabers Echo.”

Phrasing and framing matter a great deal in journalism because small details can change our perception of an issue. An article in Foreign Policy uses recent polling data on Iran to make this point clear with a recent PEW survey that said 58% of Americans would approve of war with Iran while 30% would be opposed.  Only 17% of Americans, according to a CNN/ORC poll wanted to go war with Iran.

What explains the stark discrepancy? PEW asked is more important to “prevent Iran from developing weapons, even if it means taking military action” than to “avoid military conflict, even if Iran may develop nuclear weapons” while CNN/ORC asked if Americans would support “military action right now.”

Special consideration must be given to phrasing and coverage of Iran amidst this time of increased tension. The foreign policy debate has shifted from repeating commitments that all options are on the table, up to and including military force, to taking some important options off the table. Diplomacy has all but been scrapped, as Trita Parsi makes clear in his new book A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran. Harsh, crippling sanctions, which are largely counterproductive, perversely pass as diplomacy today.

As for true diplomacy? A bipartisan group of senators wrote in a letter to President Obama that renewed talks with Iran over its nuclear program would be a “dangerous distraction,” allowing Iran more time to proliferate.

The same senators aver that containment of a nuclear Iran should be taken off the table. It is ominous that Congress is attempting to limit the President and the State Department’s options in the biggest foreign policy crisis of President Obama’s first term. The legislation “urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.” In an excellent article, MJ Rosenberg states that “Presidents need latitude to make decisions affecting matters of national security …But, in the case of Iran, the rules are changing.”

The word capability makes the legislation particularly distressing. The determination of whether or not Iran has nuclear weapons capability is subject to semantics and subjectivity. What defines capability? The worry is that this ambiguous red line, which the senators maintain should be enforced martially, could be judged to have been violated at any moment.

Many American politicians misunderstand Iran, and view it through Orientalist shaded glasses. Joe Lieberman has gone so far as to say that Iran can’t be contained like the Soviet Union was contained. Really? The second-tier regional power Iran? Certainly the Soviet Union, a global juggernaut with a vast nuclear arsenal and gargantuan reach was a more difficult opponent to contain. Newt Gingrich called Iran a “dictatorship” in last night’s debate. Even if that were true (Iran is more of a multi-institutional theocracy), he wrongly thinks the dictator is President Ahmadinejad and not Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Fortunately, the Obama administration has handled the situation coolly enough thus far, maintaining that military options are on the table while making it clear that war is not the preferred course of action. General Martin Dempsey, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel that an attack on Iran would be “destabilizing” and “not prudent.” Israeli officials characterized Dempsey as “serving Iran’s interests.”

Congress and the GOP presidential candidates are attempting to use Iran as an issue to make Obama look weak, despite the testimonies of the American military and intelligence communities which largely play down the Iran threat.

It seems like behind the scenes, Obama hasn’t given Netanyahu the green light that he would need to carry out an effective attack on Iran. Netanyahu might still call Obama’s bluff, knowing that it would be hard for Obama to resist populist pressure to declare war with November looming. The Israeli Prime Minister knows all too well that he’ll have much less leverage during a second-term Obama presidency.

Perhaps the most tragic thing about the Iran warmongering is that the Iranian regime’s actual crimes are being overshadowed. The Ayatollahs have detained journalists and political dissidents, tortured prisoners, rigged elections, restricted civil liberties and killed protesters. If war with Iran is forthcoming, it will be for the wrong reasons.

The saber rattling, assassinations, threats and retaliations have made war in 2012 a distinct possibility. Furthermore, the truculent rhetoric during election season has provided a powder keg. We can only hope that the Lusitania doesn’t sink and Archduke Franz Ferdinand doesn’t get assassinated.

The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Rowshan on June 11^th has sparked a full-on international espionage murder mystery. Iran has accused the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel of the assassination, claiming it has evidence that the CIA was involved. An Israeli intelligence official was quoted as saying that he “doesn’t feel sad” about Rowshan’s death. A proxy organization may have been employed to carry out the operation, like the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) or the Pakistan-based Jundallah network.

The assassination has come at a tense time in American-Israeli-Iranian relations. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s report on Iran in November stoked fresh fears in Washington and Jerusalem of a nuclear Tehran. Israel threatened to launch a preemptive war to disarm Iran. Ever since, Washington has been walking a tightrope. The Obama administration has been attempting to restrain their allies from launching a catastrophic war while assuring Jerusalem that the military option remained “on the table.”

On New Year’s Eve, nudged by the Israelis, President Obama approved the toughest round of sanctions against Iran to date, restricting transactions with Iran’s Central Bank. The escalation prompted renewed brinkmanship. Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil passes daily.

The sanctions have inflicted marked damage on Iran’s economy, but are unlikely to achieve their ostensible goal of forcing disarmament or unseating the regime.

The assassination also makes Iran less likely to engage in genuine diplomacy over its nuclear program. Partly due to the severe depreciation of the Iranian rial and endemic inflation, Iran agreed to hold fresh talks, mediated by Turkey, with the P5+1—the permanent five members of the UN Security Council (the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia) and Germany. 

Before the assassination, the talks would be unlikely to supply a breakthrough. Now, they’ve entered the same realm of futility as the latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Amman.

It’s difficult to negotiate when people are being killed and conflict is worsening. The Syrian opposition won’t enter into dialogue while Bashar al-Assad’s regime is killing protestors. The Palestinian Authority won’t enter into negotiations with Israel until settlement construction, which illegally claims Palestinian land, is frozen. The least Tehran could ask for in entering into negotiations would be for its scientists not to be bombed during Tehran’s morning rush hour.

Rowshan is the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist to be killed in the last two years. American and Israeli media and politicians make ubiquitous references to Iran being irrational, aggressive and violent. The Jerusalem Post even has its very own page devoted to the ‘Iran Threat’ on its website. However, despite targeted killings, sanctions and computer viruses, Iran and its proxies have not declared war on the United States or Israel.

This latest row between Iran and the West also highlights some of the inherent hypocrisies in the West’s conception of “terrorism.”

Since September 11^th, the state has had a monopoly on the definition of terrorism. It seems that governments, particularly Western ones, cannot be guilty of such a crime. However, upon further scrutiny, it’s unclear how American military campaigns of “shock and awe” and Israeli military campaigns that include “collateral damage,” both of which incur thousands of civilian deaths, don’t constitute terrorism. This claim has been most ardently presented by Naomi Klein in her book, the Shock Doctrine, which claims that the aims of terrorism and “shock and awe” military tactics are eerily similar.

Neoconservative Jonathan S. Tobin, writing in Commentary magazine, says that killing Iranian nuclear scientists is not terrorism, since it could avert a “dangerous and possibly catastrophic development.”  He claims that Iran placed itself “outside the law” and that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu can be forgiven for forgoing any “legal niceties.” Tobin also makes the obligatory fearmongering reference to the Nazis, averring that such assassinations must be untaken to avoid a “potential second Holocaust.” Never mind that Israeli Defense Minister Barak has already claimed that Iran doesn’t pose an existential threat to Israel.  

It’s far more likely that an Iranian bomb would pose a threat to unrivaled American and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East than the entire population of the Jewish State.

Tobin clearly misses the double standard. For him, even if a Western government employed a known terrorist organization like the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, it’s not terrorism because the Iranians “must be stopped before they kill.” In a sense, he is saying they (the Iranians) are the terrorists, we (the West)cannot be such.

Furthermore, all of Iran’s nuclear crimes, Tobin himself declares to be hypothetical, potential, or possible. Certainly many terrorist attacks have been perpetrated against the West for hypothetical and potential crimes. Far more have been executed for very real grievances. Whoever is responsible for Rowshan’s assassination is not providing moral superiority, but moral ambiguity.

This double standard regarding terrorism was exposed even further on Friday. Mark Perry reported in Foreign Policy that Israel’s intelligence organization, Mossad, enlisted the help of Jundallah, a Pakistani-based Sunni extremist organization, in killing Iranians in the past. Even more galling was that Mossad recruited Jundallah operatives in a “false flag” operation, in which the Israelis claimed to be CIA.

The murder of an Iranian scientist in cold blood is clearly an act of terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise. The judgment of an act should be based on the act itself and not who perpetrated it. Would it be considered terrorism if the MEK killed Rowshan without any backing from a Western state? Would it be considered terrorism if Iranian intelligence operatives assassinated an Israeli or American nuclear scientist?

American or Israeli (or maybe Saudi Arabian) influence is likely in Rowshan’s death. Not only is the act wrong, illegal and uncivilized but it’s counterproductive in its probable aim of derailing the Iranian nuclear program. In fact, the assassination will only make it clearer to Tehran that it needs a nuclear weapon to act as a deterrent against these actions.

Iranians feel like there’s a Western conspiracy to destabilize their country and that they are under siege. When taking note of the facts—crippling sanctions, targeted assassinations, cyber-attacks and a nuclear-armed Israel, Pakistan and North Korea—it’s hard to blame them.

Such assassinations are not going to cause Iran to disarm. Rowshan, like most of his colleagues, were trained at universities in Iran and are therefore replaceable. These acts of terrorism, which Secretary of State Clinton swore no responsibility, should be swiftly condemned and disposed of as acceptable policy. They are far more likely to precipitate a devastating war than a peaceful and subservient Iran.

A new round of sanctions against Tehran, signed into law this weekend, have caused the Iranian rial to plummet to historic lows, depreciating 12% against the dollar. The conventional wisdom is that this is a sign that the sanctions are working. But this conclusion is a misconception given what the Obama administration and its European allies want to achieve.

Sanctions are an economic weapon for a political purpose. Hurting the Iranian economy is not enough when the goals of the sanctions are to destabilize the regime or at the very least force it to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. While the sanctions are undoubtedly affecting Iran’s economy, they are unlikely to achieve their political aims and will probably hurt Western economies in the process.

The biggest threat to the Iranian regime is not Western sanctions but its own citizens. The Green Revolution in 2009 posed the biggest challenge to clerical rule in 30 years. The Arab Spring has demonstrated the power of the people in deposing their autocratic leaders themselves.

US interference in Iranian affairs is only counterproductive. Western and Iranian leaders are equally blameworthy for the economic crisis, which has been a distraction from political activism instead of a generator of one. Iranians are running to trade rials into Swiss francs instead of planning revolutions.

The sanctions, which target Iran’s central bank (in some circles, an act of war in itself), effectively forces global actors to choose: Iranian petroleum or business with American financial institutions. Because of the fragility of the global economy, many US allies like Japan, India and South Korea face an impossible choice.

The sanctions will irk the Turks, Iran’s neighbor and trading partner, who have advocated for fuel swaps instead of aggressive sanctions in dealing with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Ankara imports a third of its oil from Iran, which it sees as a hedge against dependency on Russian energy.

This says nothing of the irritation this will cause Russia and China, both permanent members of the Security Council, and critics of past rounds of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Middle East expert Juan Cole goes so far as to make the compelling point that while the sanctions, if effective, could reduce Iran’s income from oil and hurt the regime, the devaluation of its currency would help make Iran’s exports more affordable and attractive. Cole also points out that the US may grant exceptions to allies who are dependent on Iranian energy and that non-NATO members, primarily Russia and China, will be able to circumvent the sanctions, easing pressure on the regime.

Importantly, this round of sanctions had resulted from—and will perpetuate—a feedback loop of Iranian-Western confrontation that at worst will result in a catastrophic war. Case in point, in response to the new sanctions this week, Iran has test fired cruise missiles, launched naval exercises in the Gulf, and threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane through which a sixth of the world’s oil passes.

It’s also sad that Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the ire of the West for almost two decades, always takes center stage over Iran’s deplorable human rights record, the source of much more death and suffering. Fraudulent elections, violent repression of dissent and torture will continue to cause more injustice than an Iranian nuke ever will. In this sense, the aggression towards Iran is for all the wrong reasons. Like the Iraq War, which unseated a vicious and genocidal dictator, the campaign against Iran is really about Western self-interest, regional hegemony and power politics instead of human rights.

Unfortunately, this round of sanctions and the vitriol from the campaign trail fits into the Iranian leadership’s narrative perfectly. They see themselves as the heirs of the great Persian legacy, entitled to recognition as a great civilization. In this narrative, it has been Western intervention and power, from 17^th and 18^th century imperialism; to the 1953 CIA and MI-6 coup against democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddeq; to helping Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, which has hurt Iran. To the Iranians, they are under siege from the West. The West is doing little to refute that claim.

Iranians ask: if the Americans, Israelis, North Koreans and Pakistanis can have nuclear weapons, why not us?

Tragically, this Kafkaesque maelstrom of attrition could easily lead to war over Iran’s nuclear program. Many of the neoconservative advocates of the Iraq War, leading Republican presidential candidates, and Israeli leaders are calling for a preventative strike against Tehran.

While the Iranian regime may be brutal, it is not suicidal. The Ayatollahs aren’t crazier than the decision-makers in North Korea or Pakistan. Even Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said that an Iranian weapon isn’t an existential threat to Israel.

Iran’s pursuit of a weapon is not based on a desire to annihilate Israel, which would in turn ensure its own destruction. Iran’s nuclear ambitions ostensibly stem from three things: national (and civilizational Persian) pride, preventing invasion and attaining regional hegemony vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Iranian nuclear program under the Shah (and revitalized in the 1980s partly by Green Movement leader Mir Hussein Mousavi) saw it as a counterweight to Iraq.

In effect, going to war with Iran would transform a situation which would cause zero casualties (a nonexistent, imaginary Iranian nuclear strike) into a war which would cause thousands of Israeli and American lives and possibly send the global economy back into the cellar.  Furthermore, war would be unlikely to prevent Iran from continuing or restarting its nuclear progress once the dust settled.

The Iranian nuclear program is spread throughout the country and located underground. American and Israeli officials have testified that it would be difficult, even in a full-scale invasion, to dismantle the entire program, especially while Israel would be absorbing thousands of rockets and long-range ballistic missiles fired by Hezbollah and the Iranian military.

Green Movement members have even stressed that a military attack would sideline the domestic opposition to clerical rule and help to solidify support for the regime.

What is clear (and also impossible in an election year) is that, if robust diplomacy fails, the US must be prepared for the eventuality that Iran will achieve nuclear breakout capacity if it wishes. War and sanctions won’t deter the regime. The clerics have seen what happened to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi after he surrendered his program. They have seen how the late Kim Jong Il successful outmaneuvered the West using enriched uranium as leverage. American aggression will only harden the theocracy’s nuclear resolve.

In short, sanctions will hurt the Iranian economy but not its leadership or its nuclear weapons and in the process, the US is further damaging the prospect of rapprochement with Iran, its relationship with key allies and its own economy.

The inflation and economic crisis in Iran is much more pronounced than it has been after other rounds of sanctions. Because of this, Tehran has simultaneously issued military threats and signaled that it was ready to resume talks on its nuclear program with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany that stalled in January. The economic downturn in Iran gives the 5+1 parties some moderate leverage, especially since Iran’s military threats are not credible. Yet the Kim-Qaddafi case studies demonstrate why it’s likely that Iran will stomach the sanctions and keep the centrifuges running.

These 5+1 countries should make a genuine diplomatic effort to get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Fuel-swap deals proposed by Brazil and Turkey that were lambasted in the West should be reconsidered.

If diplomacy fails, cost of containing a nuclear Iran, in both blood and gold, are minimal compared to war. The United States’ best chance to bring down the Iranian regime is to step back, and let the Ayatollahs’ (and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’) mismanagement and repressive policies bring themselves down.

Iran has been a loser from the Arab Spring. There is little enthusiasm for the Iranian model in North Africa or the Levant. The massive anti-regime protests by the Green Movement in 2009 had nothing to do with sanctions or US pressure. If the United States and the Western powers are patient, the winds of change might just blow further East. Until then, sanction will prove counterproductive, despite being infinitely preferable to war. The Catch-22 with Iran is that Western efforts towards regime change fall into step with the regime’s narrative and make the Ayatollahs stronger.