THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 179, September 20, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE U.S.A. VERSUS IRAN
By Dr. Michael Rubin
UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY & THE PROBLEM OF IRAN: THE ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EMPLOYING
DIPLOMACY AS AN EFFECTIVE INSTRUMENT OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN DEALING WITH THE THREAT TO THE
U.S.A. & THE WEST POSED BY THE ISLAMIST POLITICAL REGIME IN IRAN -- OVERT & COVERT WARFARE AS THE ONLY
POSSIBLE MEANS OF SOLVING THE IRANIAN PROBLEM -- MASSIVE PREEMPTIVE & RETALIATORY MILITARY ACTION,
THOROUGHGOING PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE & FORCIBLE ELIMINATION OF THE PROBLEM, RATHER THAN FUTILE
ATTEMPTS TO NEGOTIATE & COMPROMISE WITH THE IRANIAN REGIME
FULL STORY:
The Iranian government continues to enrich uranium, despite U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generous package
of incentives -- and in defiance of the Unites Nations August 31, 2006, deadline. Still, European officials hold out hope for
the success of diplomacy. On September 15, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said;
"We are really making progress. Never before have we had
a level of engagement . . . as we have now."
Diplomats will look for any hopeful sign from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's forthcoming U.N. speech. But
can talk work? Successful diplomacy requires that both sides negotiate in good faith and honor commitments. That
Tehran's track record undercuts confidence should not surprise. From its very inception, the Islamic Republic has
eschewed diplomatic norms.
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 hostages for 444 days. Warren
Christopher, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State during the crisis, called the Iranian move a "flagrant violation" of the 1961
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. But Iranian officials
endorsed the seizure. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini praised the students. His successor as Supreme Leader, Ali
Khamenei, showed support with a visit to the U.S. Embassy soon after its seizure. Ironically, while the Iranian leadership
often demands apologies for transgressions both real and imagined, it continues to uphold the righteousness of hostage
seizure, underscoring official contempt for diplomatic convention.
Still, the Embassy seizure might be long forgotten had Tehran's disdain for diplomatic norms been the exception, rather
than the rule. While the Iran-Contra Affair is remembered today for the Reagan administration's attempts to circumvent
Congressional prohibition of funding of the Nicaraguan resistance, it also illustrates the inadvisability of trusting Tehran.
In 1986, former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane's traveled to Tehran. President Ronald Reagan sought
to win the release of American hostages in Lebanon, but, as soon as Washington compensated Tehran for its bad
behavior, its militias accelerated hostage seizure. Diplomatic enticement -- bribery by another name -- backfired. But
diplomacy is not just about incentives; it is also about trust. What could have been just a failed initiative turned to
scandal when, on the seventh anniversary of the Embassy seizure, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, today the Chairman
of the Iranian Expediency Council, broke a pledge of secrecy and revealed the meetings to the international press.
Iranian authorities showed diplomatic duplicity once again after Khomeini issued a declaration calling for author
Salman Rushdie's death. Four months before Khomeini's death, then-president Khamenei demanded that Mr. Rushdie
apologize, in exchange for cancellation of a religious edict ordering his murder. Mr. Rushdie apologized, but the Iranian
government nevertheless kept the bounty in place. President Khamenei was insincere, his diplomacy was a tactic. By
winning an apology, he confirmed Mr. Rushdie's guilt.
Iranian lying should not surprise; what should is how often Western governments fall prey to it. The British
government demanded that Tehran lift the bounty on Mr. Rushdie's head as a precondition to re-establish diplomatic
relations. On September 24, 1998, the Iranian government said it would do nothing to harm Mr. Rushdie. No sooner
had London and Tehran exchanged ambassadors, than Iranian authorities once again reversed themselves.
For U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the cost of Iranian lying is high. While Iranian diplomats pledged not to
destabilize Afghanistan and, indeed, cooperate in its reconstruction, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps sent in
operatives disguised as school teachers to further instability. As Afghan President Hamid Karzai struggled to wrest
control away from warlords, Afghan commanders intercepted a dozen Iranian agents and proxies organizing armed
resistance.
In Iraq, too, Iranian diplomacy has been duplicitous. Prior to the Iraq war, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi
and Iran's UN Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif, pledged Iranian noninterference to British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook and Zalmay Khalilzad, then President George W. Bush's envoy to the free Iraqis. But, Iranian journalists
now describe how, days after Saddam Hussein's fall, the Iranian leadership dispatched 2,000 Revolutionary Guards,
replete with radio transmitters, money, and supplies.
On November 18, 2003, Mr. Kharrazi again pledged Iran's good behavior, as regards Iraq.. He lied outright; his
promise coincided with a new deployment of Iranian intelligence personnel across Iraq. The Revolutionary Guard
stepped up its training of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.
Hasan Kazemi Qomi, previously Iran's liaison to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, became Tehran's top diplomat in
Baghdad. Mr. Qomi assured diplomats that "Iran will not accept anything that destabilizes Iraq." Four months later,
Iraqi forces captured 30 Iranians fighting alongside Sadr's militia.
Earlier this month, I traveled to the Middle East to meet Shiite tribal leaders and urban notables from southern Iraq.
They described how Iran has transformed its consulates in Karbala and Basra into distribution points for
everything from money to shaped charges.
That Tehran uses diplomatic pouches and protocols to safeguard its terrorist network reflects the Iranian
government's insincerity. While the West approaches diplomacy with sincerity, the Islamic Republic mocks
diplomatic convention to shield subversion.
Iran's nuclear program raises the stakes of its deceit to U.S. national security. There is little doubt that Tehran's
nuclear program is not peaceful. On February 14, 2005, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, Secretary-General of
Iranian Hezbollah, promised, "We are able to produce atomic bombs, and we will do that." In February, 2006,
Mohsen Gharavian, a Qom theologian well connected to the Islamic Republic's staunchest ideologues, called Iran's
possession of nuclear weapons "natural."
Iran's nuclear program has advanced through the trust of diplomats and their willingness to provide hard currency in
the name of dialogue and engagement. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled. Tehran
invested much of this money in arms and nuclear infrastructure. For more than a decade, through both the Rafsanjani
and Khatami administrations, Iranian authorities hid the existence of a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy
water plant at Khondab. That Western diplomats label Mr. Rafsanjani a pragmatist and Mr. Khatami a reformer
underscores the danger of judging Iranian officials by style rather than action.
In February, 2003, the Iranian authorities opened the secret plants to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspectors. The IAEA inspectors' subsequent report was damning: Not only had the Iranian government designed the
Natanz facility to house at least 50,000 centrifuges, but Tehran had imported from China almost a ton of uranium, and
could not account for missing processed uranium. During subsequent inspections, Iranian authorities repeatedly
changed their stories when asked about the origin of weapons-grade uranium traces. Subsequent inspections
exposed other lies. Finally, on September 24, 2004, the IAEA Board of Governors, after recalling a litany of Iranian
mistruths, found Iran in breach of its Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement.
While Iranian officials have made many subsequent pledges to cooperate, their actions belie their words. They have
yet to abide by the Additional Protocol's inspection standards and, earlier this year, turned away IAEA inspectors
from Natanz in violation of the NPT.
While diplomacy necessarily involves talking to adversaries, Washington should not assume that the Ayatollahs operate
from the same set of ground rules. During his long exile in Najaf, Khomeini endorsed taqiya, religiously sanctioned
dissembling. From his perspective and that of his followers, the ends justify the means. Hence, Khomeini saw nothing
wrong when he told the Guardian newspaper, just months before his return to Iran:
"I don't want to have the power of government in my hand;
I am not interested in personal power."
Tehran may still conduct diplomacy to fish for incentive and reward, but, at its core, Iranian diplomacy is insincere. The
Iranian leadership will say anything and do anything to buy the time necessary to acquire nuclear capability. That Foggy
Bottom still advises against any strategy that might undercut the possibility of some illusionary diplomatic breakthrough
signals triumph, not of realism, but of negligence. Diplomacy cannot succeed, if one side is playing for real and the other
only for time.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
Military Weaponry & International Security:
Weapons of Mass Destruction & Arms Control
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff
advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense (2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of
History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of
Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at
the Council of Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2006, and can be
found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
September 20, 2006
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