[lit-ideas] Iran's Realists
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: polidea@xxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 23:49:13 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE31Ak03.html
Khamenei in control and ready to 'haggle'
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - For months, the US news media, the
attention of pundits and elected officials have been
riveted on the provocative rhetoric of
ultra-conservative Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad. President George W Bush in particular has
invoked Ahmadinejad's alleged drive for nuclear
weapons and desire to destroy Israel to justify US
isolation and pressure on the regime.
But the almost exclusive focus on Ahmadinejad has been
misplaced, because all the evidence indicates that it
is Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Ahmadinejad, who
is directing Iranian foreign policy. Despite
Ahmadinejad's clever exploitation of the nuclear issue
to strengthen his domestic political position, he is
playing second fiddle on this issue.
Ahmadinejad "doesn't have much to do with the nuclear
issue", David Albright of the Institute for Science
and International
Security in Washington, the most experienced US
non-governmental expert on Iran's nuclear program,
told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty immediately after
the Iranian president's election. Albright observed
that the policy on Iran's nuclear program is run by
the Supreme National Security Council "directly under
the Supreme Leader" (Khamenei).
At a briefing in Washington last week, Hadi Semati, a
professor at Tehran University who is now a visiting
fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, said
Ahmadinejad "is third in command" after Khamenei and
the Supreme National Security Council. Khamenei and
the council, he said, "are not going to let the
president decide anything on the nuclear issue".
The Supreme National Security Council includes
representatives appointed by the Supreme Leader as
well as top officials from the military, foreign
affairs, intelligence and other
national-security-related agencies, including the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It determines
national-defense and security policies on the basis of
general guidelines laid down by the Supreme Leader.
Khamenei has not hesitated to set the record straight
when Ahmadinejad has strayed from the foreign-policy
line he and the Supreme National Security Council have
set. Ten days after Ahmadinejad declared in a speech
last October 25 that Israel should be "wiped off the
map", Khamenei clarified Ahmadinejad's remarks,
declaring that Iran "will not commit aggression
against any nation. We will not breach any nation's
rights anywhere in the world."
By shifting the focus from Ahmadinejad's provocative
speeches and rambling letter to Bush to the thinking
of Khamenei and his senior advisers, one can see the
outlines of a consistent and coherent strategy toward
the nuclear issue, the region and relations with the
United States. These men may hold a theocratic
perspective on Iranian politics and social life, but
they base their national-security strategy on an
assessment of international power relations and their
own bargaining leverage.
Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council are
keenly aware that Iran must exist in a region in which
US military might is far superior to their own. But
they have long viewed negotiations with the United
States as the key to Iran's security, as well as its
re-emergence as a regional power.
They have long pondered the question of when to
negotiate with Washington. When then president
Mohammad Khatemi proposed in an interview with CNN in
January 1998 to engage the US in a dialogue, Khamenei
responded several days later by denouncing the idea of
talks or of relations with the United States.
But historian Shaul Bakhash of George Mason University
recalls that one of the arguments Khamenei cited in
the speech against engaging the United States was that
Iran should not negotiate until it was in a stronger
position. Since that January 1998 speech, much has
happened to change Khamenei's perspective.
When the United States signaled that it intended to
overthrow Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq, Iranian
leaders saw both danger and opportunity. On one hand,
they were concerned about a possible US attack against
Iran if it could consolidate power over Iraq. But they
also reasoned that the United States would need their
help to stabilize the post-Hussein political situation
there, especially given Iran's special relationships
with militant Iraqi Shi'ite political-military
organizations that would re-enter Iraq from their
exile in Iran.
Iranian policymakers also knew that Washington wanted
their help on apprehending al-Qaeda leaders who had
been detained in Iran after fleeing from Afghanistan.
Even more important was Washington's evident concern
over progress in Iran's nuclear research program by
late 2002.
The awareness of a changed bargaining relationship
opened a new stage of Iranian diplomacy. The first
effort to engage the United States was the secret
proposal of April 2003, conveyed to the State
Department through the Swiss ambassador in Tehran,
which Bush chose to ignore.
Khamenei and his advisers believe Iran's leverage on
US policy toward Iran has actually increased since
that failed initiative. The United States has become
hopelessly bogged down in Iraq, and allies of Iran are
in positions of power in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Palestine. And most important of all, Washington is
now in crisis mode over Iran's uranium-enrichment
program.
Those developments are shaping the views of Iran's top
policymakers about negotiations. The best indication
of Khamenei's current strategic thinking is a recent
statement by his top foreign-policy adviser Ali Akbar
Velayati, foreign minister from 1981 to 1997.
Velyati's closeness to Khamenei is indicated by the
fact that, when Khamenei was president in 1981,
Velyati was his first choice as prime minister.
At a seminar in Tehran on May 18, Velyati addressed
the evolution of Iran's bargaining position in
relation to the United States. "We have at no time
until now had such powerful means for haggling," he
said, nor "the influence we have now in Iraq and
Palestine". He referred to friendly forces in power or
in key positions in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.
Velyati drew the obvious conclusion: "Now that we have
the power to haggle, why don't we haggle?" The word
"haggle" suggests bargaining over a Persian rug rather
than negotiations on international security issues.
But it conveys accurately the present mentality of the
Iranian leadership about negotiations over the nuclear
program.
Merchants "haggle" over the price of the goods, and
Khamenei and his advisers are hoping to extract a high
price from the United States in regard to a new
regional order in return for guarantees against an
Iranian nuclear-weapons program and other concessions
of concern to the Bush administration.
The secret Iranian proposal of 2003, which called for
US "recognition of Iran's legitimate security
interests in the region with according [that is,
concomitant] defense capacity", suggests what Iran
hopes to get from the haggling with Washington. The
regional order sought by Tehran would still recognize
the predominance of US power, but with new limits.
The evidence suggests that the realists who rule in
Tehran are offering Washington a transition to a new,
more stable Middle East in which Iran's role is more
prominent but also more consciously devoted to
bringing about change without violence. Up to now,
however, the Bush administration has not been willing
to accept any such limitation on its power.
Gareth Porter is a historian and national-security
policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in June 2005.
(Inter Press Service)
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