By Prem Shankar Jha
NEW DELHI, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

The euphoria that spread though the world after the Iran nuclear agreement reached in Lausanne in April this year with the United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom and Germany, plus the European Union, is  proving short-lived.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have made it clear that they will spare no effort to block it.  Hilary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presidential hopeful, is keeping her options open. Whispers are escaping from European chancelleries that the sanctions on Iran will only be lifted in stages. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have responded by insisting that they must be lifted “at once”.

Prem Shankar Jha

But the agreement’s most inveterate enemy is Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. In the week that followed the Lausanne agreement, he warned the American public in three successive speeches that the agreement would “threaten the survival of Israel” and increase the risk of a “horrific war”. This is a brazen attempt to whip up fear and war hysteria on the basis of a spider’s web of misinformation.

Netanyahu is not new to this game. At the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, he unveiled a large cartoon of a bomb and drew a red line across it, just below the neck. This was how close Iran was to making a nuclear bomb, he said. It could get there in a year. Only much later did the world learn that Mossad, Netanyahu’s own intelligence service, had told him that Iran was very far from being able to build a bomb.

Mossad probably knew what a U.S. Congress Research Service (CRS) report revealed two months later:  that although Iran already had enough five percent, or low-enriched,  uranium in August 2012 to build  five to seven bombs, it had not enriched enough of it to the intermediate level of  20 percent to meet the requirement for even one  bomb. The CRS had concluded from this and other evidence that this was because  Iran had made no effort to revive its nuclear weapons programme after stopping it ‘abruptly’ in 2003.“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is following a two-pronged strategy: first to get the U.S. Congress to insert clauses in the nuclear treaty draft that Iran will be forced to reject, and second to take advantage of the spike in paranoia that will follow to push the West into an attack on Iran”

Another of Netanyahu’s deceptions is that he only wants to punish Iran with sanctions until it gives up trying to acquire not only nuclear weapons but any nuclear technology that could even remotely facilitate this in the future. However, he knows that no government in Iran can agree to this, so what he is really trying to steer the world towards is the alternative – a military attack on Iran.

What is more, because he also knows that destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities will not destroy its capacity to rebuild these in the future, he does not want the attack to end until it has destroyed Iran’s infrastructure (as Israel destroyed southern Lebanon’s in 2006), its industry, its research facilities and its science universities.

He knows that Israel cannot undertake such a vast operation without the United States. But there is one stumbling block – President Barack Obama – who has learned from his recent experience that, to put it mildly, U.S. interests do not always tally with those of its allies in the Middle East.

So Netanyahu is following a two-pronged strategy: first to get the U.S. Congress to insert clauses in the nuclear treaty draft that Iran will be forced to reject, and second to take advantage of  the spike in paranoia that will follow to push the West into an attack on Iran.

He has been joined in this endeavour by another steadfast friend of the United States – Saudi Arabia. At the end of February, Saudi Arabia quietly signed an agreement with Israel that will allow its warplanes to overfly Saudi Arabia on their way to bombing Iran. This has halved the distance they will need to fly. Then, four weeks later, on Mar. 26,  it declared war on the Houthis in Yemen, whom it has been relentlessly portraying as a tiny minority bent upon taking Yemen over through sheer terror, with the backing of  Iran.

This is a substantial oversimplification, and therefore distortion, of a complicated relationship.

Iran may well be helping the Houthis, but not because they are Shias.  The Houthis, who make up 30 percent of Yemen’s population, are Zaidis, a very different branch of Shi’a-ism than the one practised in Iran, Pakistan and India. They inhabit a region that stretches across Saada, the northernmost district of Yemen, and three adjoining principalities, Jizan, Najran and Asir, that Saudi Arabia annexed in 1934.

The internecine wars that Yemeni Houthis have fought since the 1960s have not been sectarian, or even against the Saudis specifically, but in quest of independence and, more recently, a federal state. This is a goal that several other tribes share.  

The timing of Saudi Arabia’s attack, four weeks after its overflight agreement with Israel, and its incessant portrayal of the Houthis as proxies of Iran, hints at a deeper understanding between it and Israel. The Houthis’ attacked Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, in September last year. So why did Saudi Arabia wait until March this year before sending its bombers in?

Iran has kept out of the conflict in Yemen so far, but the manifestly one-sided resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council and the immediate resignation of the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Jamal Benomar, who had been struggling to bring about a non-sectarian resolution of the conflict in Yemen and been boycotted by the country’s president Abed Rabo Mansour Hadi for his pains, cannot have failed to raise misgivings in Tehran.

Iraqi President Haydar Abadi’s sharp criticism of the Saudi attack in Washington on the same day reflects his awareness of how these developments are darkening the prospect for Iran’s rehabilitation, and therefore Iraq’s future.

To stop this drift Obama needs to tell his people precisely how far, under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel’s interests have diverged from those of the United States, and how single-mindedly Israel has used its special relationship with the United States to push it into actions that have imperilled its own security in the Middle East.

Instead of dwelling on how the nuclear treaty will make it practically impossible for Iran to clandestinely enrich uranium or produce plutonium, he needs to remind Americans of what Netanyahu has been carefully neglecting to mention: that a nuclear device is not a bomb, and that to convert it into one Iran will need not only to master the physics of bomb-making and reduce its weight to what a missile can carry, but conduct at least one test explosion to make sure the bomb works. That will make escaping detection pretty well impossible.

Finally, the White House needs to remind Americans that Iranians also know the price they will pay if they are caught trying to build a bomb after signing the agreement. Not only will this bring back all and more of the sanctions they are under,  but it will vindicate Netanyahu’s apocalyptic predictions and make a pre-emptive military strike virtually unavoidable.

Should a  military strike, whether deserved or undeserved,  destroy Iran’s economy, it will add tens of thousands of Shi’a Jihadis to the Sunni Jihadis already spawned in Libya, Somalia, Chechnya and  the other failed states and regions of the world. The security that Netanyahu claims it will bring will turn out to be a chimera.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Prem Shankar Jha
NEW DELHI, May 10 2015 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s Nowroz greeting to the Iranian people earlier this year was the first clear indication to the world that the United States and Iran were very close to agreement on the contents of the nuclear agreement they had been working towards for the previous 16 months.

In contrast to two earlier messages which were barely veiled exhortations to Iranians to stand up to their obscurantist leaders, Obama urged “the peoples and the leaders of Iran” to avail themselves of “the best opportunity in decades to pursue a different relationship between our countries.”

Prem Shankar Jha

This moment, he warned, “may not come again soon (for) there are people in both our countries and beyond, who oppose a diplomatic solution.”

Barely a fortnight later that deal was done. Iran had agreed to a more than two-thirds reduction in the number of centrifuges it would keep, although a question mark still hung over the timing of the lifting of sanctions against it. The agreement came in the teeth of opposition from hardliners in both Iran and the United States.

Looking back at Obama’s unprecedented overtures to Iran, his direct phone call to President Hassan Rouhani – the first of its kind in 30 years – and his letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in November last year, it is clear in retrospect that they were products of  a rare meeting of minds between him and  Rouhani and their foreign ministers John Kerry and Muhammad Jawad Zarif that may have occurred as early as  their first meetings in September 2013.

The opposition to the deal within the United States proved a far harder obstacle for Obama to surmount. The reason is the dogged and increasingly naked opposition of Israel and the immense influence of the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) on U.S. policymakers and public opinion.

Both of these were laid bare came when the Republican party created constitutional history by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address  a joint session of Congress  without informing the White House, listened raptly to his diatribe against Obama, and sent a deliberately insulting letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in a bid to scuttle the talks.

Obama has ploughed on in the teeth of this formidable, highly personalised, attack on him  because he has learnt from the bitter experience of the past four years what Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt had exposed in their path-breaking  book, ‘The Israel lobby and American Foreign Policy’ in 2006.“Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort”

This was the utter disregard for America’s national interest and security with which Israel had been manipulating American public opinion, the U.S. Congress and successive U.S. administrations, in pursuit of its own security, since the end of the Cold War.

By the end of 2012, two years into the so-called “Arab Spring”, Obama had also discovered how cynically Turkey and the Wahhabi-Sunni sheikhdoms had manipulated the United States into joining a sectarian vendetta against Syria, and created and armed a Jihadi army whose ultimate target was the West itself.

Nine months later, he found out how Israel had abused the trust the United States reposed in it, and come within a hairsbreadth of pushing it into an attack on Syria that was even less justifiable than then U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.  And then the murderous eruption of the Islamic State (ISIS) showed him that the Jihadis were out of control.

Somewhere along this trail of betrayal and disillusionment, Obama experienced the political equivalent of an epiphany.

Twelve years of a U.S. national security strategy that relied on the pre-emptive use of force had  yielded war without end, a string of strategic defeats, a  mauled and traumatised army, mounting international debt and a collapsing hegemony reflected in the impunity with which the so-called friends of the United States were using it to serve their ends.

Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort. His meeting and discussions with Rouhani and Iranian foreign minister Zarif gave him the opportunity to begin this epic change of direction.

Obama faced his first moment of truth on Nov. 28, 2012 when a Jabhat al Nusra unit north of Aleppo brought down a Syrian army helicopter with a Russian man-portable surface-to-air missile (SAM).

The White House tried to  pretend that that the missile was from a captured Syrian air base, but by then U.S. intelligence agencies were fed up with its suppression and distortion of their intelligence and  leaked it to the Washington Post that 40 SAM missile batteries with launchers, along with hundreds of tonnes of other heavy weapons had been bought from Libya, paid for by Qatar, and transported to the rebels in Syria  by Turkey through a ‘rat line’ that the CIA had helped it to establish, to funnel arms and mercenaries into Syria.

A day that Obama had been dreading had finally arrived: heavy weapons that the United States and the European Union had expressly proscribed, because they could bring down civilian aircraft anywhere in the world, had finally reached Al Qaeda’s hands

But when Obama promptly banned the Jabhat Al Nusra, he got his second shock. At the next ‘Friends of Syria’ meeting in Marrakesh three weeks later, not only the   ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels that the United States had grouped under a newly-formed Syrian Military Council three months earlier, but all of its Sunni Muslim allies condemned the ban, while Britain and France remained silent.

Obama’s third, and worst, moment of truth came nine months later when a relentless campaign by  his closest ‘allies‘, Turkey and Israel, brought him to the verge of launching an all-out aerial attack  on Syria in September 2013 to punish it for “using gas on rebels and civilians in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus.”

Obama learned that Syria had done no such thing only two days before the attack was to commence, when the British informed him that soil samples collected from the site of the Ghouta attack and analysed at their CBW research laboratories at Porton Down, had shown that the sarin gas used in the attack could not possibly have been prepared by the Syrian army.

This was because the British had the complete list of suppliers from which Syria had received its precursor chemicals and these did not match the chemicals used in the sarin gas found in the Ghouta.

Had he gone through with the attack, it would have made Obama ten times worse than George Bush in history’s eyes.

Hindsight allows us to reconstruct how the conviction that Syria was using chemical weapons was implanted into policy-makers in the United States and the European Union.

On Sep. 17, 2012, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the highly-reputed German magazine Der Speigel, had learned, “quoting several eyewitnesses”, that Syria had tested delivery systems for chemical warheads   at a chemical weapons research centre near Aleppo in August, and that the tests had been overseen by Iranian experts.

Tanks and aircraft, Der Speigel reported, had fired “five or six empty shells capable of delivering poison gas.”

Since neither Der Speigel nor any other Western newspaper had, or still has, resident correspondents in Syria, it could only have obtained this report second or third-hand through a local stringer. This, and the wealth of detail in the report, suggests that the story of a test firing, while not necessarily untrue, was a plant by an intelligence agency. It therefore had to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

One person who not only chose to believe it instantly, but also to act on it was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Dec. 3, 2012, Haaretz reported that he had sent emissaries to Amman twice, in October and November, to request Jordan’s permission to overfly its territory to bomb Syria’s chemical weapons facilities.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

* The second part of this two-part analysis can be accessed here.

Excerpt:

View of Zahedan, administrative capital of the troubled Iranian Sistan and Balochistan region whose population “has decreased threefold since the times of the Pahlevis”. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
GENEVA, Apr 17 2015 (IPS)

Nasser Boladai is the spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), an umbrella movement aimed at expanding support for a secular, democratic and federal Iran. IPS spoke with him in Geneva, where he was invited to speak at a recent conference on Human Rights and Global Perspectives in his native Balochistan region.

Could you draw the main lines of the CNFI?

There are 14 different groups under the umbrella of the CNFI: Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Baloch, Kurds Lors and Turkmen … all of which share a common cause vow for a federal and secular state where each one´s language and culture rights are respected.

Nasser Boladai, spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), an umbrella movement aimed at expanding support for a secular, democratic and federal Iran. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The CNFI is meant to be a vehicle for all of us as there are no majorities in the country, we are all minorities within a multinational Iran. Today´s is a regime based on exclusion as it only recognises the Persian nation and Shia Islam as the only confession.

Which poses a biggest handicap in Iran: a different ethnicity or a religious confession other than Shia Islam?

Iran’s population is a mosaic of ethnicities, but the non-Persian groups are largely located in the peripheries and far from the power base, Tehran.

Elements within the opposition to the regime claim that religion is not an issue and some centralist groups would support a federal state, but not one based on nationalities. The ethnical difference is doubtless a bigger hurdle in the eyes of those centralist opposition groups as well as from the regime.

Iran appears to have been unaltered by turmoil in Northern Africa and the Middle East region over the last four years. Is it?

In 2007 we had several meetings in the European Parliament. Our main goal was to convey that, if any change came to Iran, it should not be swallowed as happened with [Ayatollah] Khomeini in 1979.“Islamic extremism of any kind, no matter if it comes from the Ayatollahs or ISIS [Islamic State], cannot solve the people´s problems so both are condemned to disappear” – Nasser Boladai, spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI)

In May 2009 there were demonstrations against the regime in Zahedan before the controversial elections but the timing could not have been worse for a change. Mir-Hussein Moussavi was leading the so called “green movement” against [incumbent President Mahmoud] Ahmadineyad but he had no real intention of diverting from Khomeini´s idea.

Among others, the green movement failed because the people´s disenchantment was funnelled into an electoral dispute, but also because that movement did not include the issue of nationalities in its programme.

However, the changes in North Africa and the Middle East will have a positive psychological effect on the Iranian psyche in the long run in the sense that they can see that a tyrannical system cannot stay forever.

Islamic extremism of any kind, no matter if it comes from the Ayatollahs or ISIS [Islamic State], cannot solve the people´s problems so both are condemned to disappear.

Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadineyad in the 2013 presidential elections. Was this for the good?

Not for us. Since he took power there have been more executions and more repression. Rouhani is not only a mullah; he has also been a member of the Iranian security apparatus for over 16 years.

The death penalty continues to be applied in political cases, where individuals are commonly accused of “enmity against God”. Iran´s different nations´ plights have not yet been discussed. They have often promised language and culture rights, jobs for the Baloch, the Kurds, etc., but we´re still waiting to see these happen.

You come from an area which has seen a spike of Baloch insurgent movements who seemingly subscribe a radical vision of Sunni Islam.

It´s difficult to know whether they are purely Baloch nationalists or plain Jihadists as their speech seems to be winding between both in their different statements.

However, insurgency against the central government in Iran has a long tradition among the Baloch and we have episodes in our recent history where even Shiite Baloch were fighting against Tehran, an eloquent proof that their agenda was a national one, completely unrelated to religion.

Paradoxically, Tehran is to blame for the rise of Sunni extremism in both Iranian Kurdistan and Balochistan. Both nations are mainly Sunni so they empowered the local mullahs; they were brought into the elite through money and power to dissolve a deeply rooted communist feeling among the Kurds and the Baloch.

Khomeini just stuck to a policy which was introduced in the region by the British. They were the first to politicise Islam as a tool against Soviet expansion across the region.

You once said that Iranian Balochistan has become “a hunting ground”. Can you explain this?

It´s a hunting ground for the Iranian security forces. Even a commander of the Mersad [security] admitted openly that it had been ordered to kill, and not to arrest people.

As a result, many of our villages have suffered house-to-house searches which has emptied them of youth. The latter have either been killed systematically or emigrated elsewhere.

The fact that our population has decreased threefold since the times of the Pahlevis speaks volumes about the situation in our region.

Human Rights Watch has further documented the fact that the Baloch populated region has been systematically divided by successive regimes in Tehran to create a demographic imbalance.

Less than a century ago, our region was called “Balochistan”. Later its name would be changed to “Balochistan and Sistan”, then “Sistan and Balochistan”… The plan is to finally call it “Sistan” and divide it into three districts: Wilayat, Sistan and Saheli.

How do you react to the claims of those who say that Iran also played a role in the creation of ISIS, similar to Tehran’s backing of Al Qaeda in Iraq to tear up the Sunni society and prevent it from sharing power in post-2003 Iraq?

The theocratic regime in Iran indirectly supports extremist religious forces and, at the same time, manipulates them to control and deter them from becoming moderate and uniting with moderate religious, liberal or democratic forces in Iran.

The Iranian and Pakistani governments cooperate in the building and using of the extremist groups to first, create controlled instability in Balochistan, and second, to create false artificial political dynamics in the form of Islamic extremists to obstruct and distort Baloch struggles for sovereignty and self-determination.

They also try to change the Baloch liberal and secular culture, which is based on moderate Islam, into an extremist version of their own creation of fundamentalist Islam.

Balochistan’s geopolitical location allows access to the sea, something that the Islamic groups need. Balochistan’s division between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan enables the groups to communicate with each other across the borders and move to and from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.

With the support and tacit consent of both Iranian and Pakistani government, they also use the region to transport fighters and suicide bombers to the Arab countries and other locations in the world. From there, financial help is brought to extremist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Excerpt:

Rouhani greets a crowd in Lorestan Province on Jun. 18, 2014. Credit: Iranian President's Office

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

When Hassan Rouhani was declared Iran’s president last year, large crowds gathered in the streets of Tehran to celebrate his surprise victory. But while hope for a better life persists, Iranians continue to face harsh realities.

“I think Rouhani has done a very good job,” Hassan Niroomand, the 62-year-old director of a steel company in Tehran, told IPS.“There are certain factions within the regime that are not comfortable with the way things are moving forward and are trying to make it as hard possible for Rouhani to achieve his goals.” -- Ali Reza Eshraghi

“He does not have all the power, but he has taken advantage of what he can control and I am hopeful,” said Niroomand, citing Rouhani’s handling of the nuclear negotiations, his universal health insurance initiative, and his leadership style.

“He knows how to deal with extremists who are trying to make Iran another Afghanistan,” he added.

Not all Iranians share Niroomand’s positive assessment.

“Everyone says he is better than [former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad], but I don’t see a difference,” said Fariba Hosseini, a 39-year-old part-time student who is currently unemployed.

“Prices are still high and girls are being bothered again about their veils,” she said, referring to Iran’s morality police who have taken to the streets in the sweltering summer heat to ensure women comply with clothing regulations.

“I don’t think life will get better,” she said.

Rouhani, a centrist cleric and former advisor to the Supreme Leader who was inaugurated one year ago today, promised to improve the economy, solve the conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme, and de-securitise the political environment.

Had his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif failed to achieve the historic interim nuclear accord with world powers in November 2013, and had negotiations toward a final deal broken down, many more Iranians might share Hosseini’s pessimistic view.

But while Iran’s economy continues to limp due to previous governmental policies and sanctions, slight improvements have kept people looking forward to the future.

“Rouhani and his team’s efforts to reduce sanctions on Iran through the nuclear talks has so far prevented the further cutting of Iranian crude oil production and exports,” said Sara Vakhshouri, an energy expert and former advisor to the National Iranian Oil Company.

“The [sanctions relief] has not had an immediate significant effect on the economy, but it has certainly had a positive psychological impact on the people,” she said.

Iran’s oil exports, which fund nearly half of government expenditures, were slashed by more than half in 2012 following the imposition of stringent U.S. and EU sanctions targeting Iran’s oil and banking sector.

Iran’s currency, the rial, went into freefall, dropping by more than 50 percent in October 2012.

But since November’s interim deal, which halts Iran’s nuclear programme from further expansion in exchange for moderate sanctions relief, the rial has strengthened and inflation is down by more than half from over 40 percent a year ago, due in part to improved governmental policies.

The temporary sanctions relief on Iran’s petrochemical exports and the unfreezing of some of Iran’s assets abroad have also positively impacted the economy, according to Vakshouri, who noted that Rouhani has changed investment regulations to attract more international investors.

But potential investors will maintain their distance until the energy-rich country’s release from the strangulating sanctions becomes certain.

Meanwhile, international human rights organisations have decried the rise in executions since Rouhani took office, while the sentencing of journalists and activists who were apprehended during the Ahmadinejad era for political reasons continue under Rouhani’s watch.

Domestic news media has become more openly critical of the government, but a number of reformist-minded journalists have been detained in recent months.

Iran’s Culture Minister Ali Jannati made headlines last year when he said Iran’s ban on social networks including Facebook and Twitter should be lifted, but while he and Rouhani have publicly criticised the Islamic Republic’s control over people’s personal lives, leading conservative factions retain their hold on Iranian society.

The shocking Jul. 21 arrest of a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a reporter, has led many to speculate that domestic political infighting has resulted in the 38-year-old Iranian-American being used as a pawn.

The location of Rezaian, an Iranian resident, remains unknown despite outcry in the U.S. from the State Department and multiple rights-focused organisations.

Iran does not recognise dual citizenship and no charges have been announced.

Analysts have argued that Rezaian could have been detained to embarrass Rouhani ahead of the resumption of talks in September.

“There are certain factions within the regime that are not comfortable with the way things are moving forward and are trying to make it as hard possible for Rouhani to achieve his goals,” said Ali Reza Eshraghi, a former editor of several Iranian reformist dailies.

“Jannati summed the situation up well when he said that the only thing that has changed in Iran is the executive branch,” Eshraghi, the Iran project manager at the U.S.-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told IPS.

Yet Eshraghi points out that while Rouhani may have no control over the judicial and legislative branches, he has proven adept at closed-door negotiations.

“Rouhani and his team have a modernising agenda, but they are not pursing it through radical statements or intense pressure on their political opponents. He is quietly negotiating and making pacts,” he said.

While Eshraghi sees the election as having energised activists to pressure Rouhani to force change despite his inability to do so, he also believes average Iranians remain patient.

“People have modest expectations, they are realistic about Rouhani’s ability to achieve his goals,” he said.

It remains to be seen how long Iranian patience will last, especially if the Rouhani government fails to secure a nuclear deal resulting in substantial sanctions relief.

Thus far Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has maintained his distaste and lack of trust of the U.S., has voiced support for Iran’s negotiating team. But while Iran seeks a final deal on the international stage, the domestic negotiating front appears to be getting tougher.

“Jason was trying to colorise the very black and white frame that Western mainstream news media has used for Iran,” said Eshraghi.

“His arrest ironically indicates that there are certain factions inside the country who are very happy with that framing.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

A screen shot from the Iranian 'Happy' homemade video. The original has since been marked 'private' on YouTube.

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, May 21 2014 (IPS)

It was a perfect headline for the satirical online news site, ‘The Onion.’

“Young Iranians Arrested for Being Too ‘Happy in Tehran’,” reads a May 20 New York Times blog title, with similar reports produced by news media from all over the world.

But the true story began a month ago when a group of young men and women in Iran produced a homemade music video to the hit song ‘Happy’ by U.S. entertainer Pharrell Williams.

The fan video, featuring three men and three women happily dancing with one another in various Tehran settings, received more than 100,000 hits after being uploaded to YouTube before it was marked private, and the actors and the director arrested May 20.

The women were not wearing mandatory headscarves in the video and the opposite sexes were touching one another in public, all of which are forbidden in the Islamic Republic.

The video has since been reproduced, however, with one version receiving over 300,000 hits and counting since its May 19 posting.

YouTube is illegal in Iran and can only be accessed through private-browsing networks, but some of the fan video did make its way onto Iranian state news television.

After the six Iranians were arrested, a clip appeared on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), featuring the participants claiming that they didn’t know the video would be made public, with blurred clips of their video appearing in the background.

A tagline at the end of the video read: “We have made this video as Pharell William’s fans in 8hrs with IPhone 5s. ‘Happy’ was an excuse to be happy. We enjoyed every second of making it. Hope it puts a smile on your face.”

While at least one of the six young Iranians, Reihane Taravati, confirmed her release on Instagram, with reports surfacing that all except the director have been freed on bail, the event has received worldwide attention.

“It is beyond sad that these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness,” said Pharrell Williams in comments posted to his popular social media accounts yesterday.

CNN’s famous anchor Christiane Amanpour has since applauded the Iranians’ release, but had earlier tweeted an observation about the dynamics of the event.

“Tragic. Ordinary Iranians doing nothing wrong caught in a fight between hard-liners and moderates,” she said.

“If it was not for the international outcry at how ridiculous these arrests were, these youth probably would have faced the fate of other people who have been arrested for no justifiable reason and spent months or even years in prison,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights In Iran (ICHRI).

Ghaemi told IPS that he worries the director of the video will be used as a scapegoat after the other participants were pressured into putting the blame on him in their “forced confession” and could face serious jail time.

“This is a critical time for [Iranian President Hassan Rouhani] to act on the promises he made to the people who voted for him,” he said.

While no member of the Rouhani government has directly commented on the issue, Rouhani’s semi-official English Twitter account raised a few eyebrows by quoting a statement by the president from June 2013 today.

“#Happiness is our people’s right. We shouldn’t be too hard on behaviors caused by joy.” 29/6/2013

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) May 21, 2014

Ghaemi, an internationally recognised expert on Iranian rights issues, told IPS Rouhani hasn’t focused on remedying Iran’s heavily securitised domestic environment since his June 2013 election, despite campaigning with that promise.

“He has been very gently verbally advocating for greater freedom, but with actions he has been very timid,” he said.
Ghaemi said that the police commander featured in the state news clip proudly touting the arrest operates under Iran’s interior ministry, which is under Rouhani’s cabinet, so the president could use his executive powers to enforce some punitive action, but has not done so yet.

“Rouhani is walking a fine line,” said Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, an expert on Iranian politics.

“He needs popular support, that’s how he came to power, at the same time, he doesn’t want to upset the security apparatus in Iran,” said Tabaar, a faculty member at Texas A&M University.

“He needs to say things so that the people who voted for him don’t think he’s betraying them, but this is exactly what happened to former President Mohammad Khatami,” he added.

The early years of the former reformist president are remembered as a time of loosened restrictions on daily life in Iran.

But while Khatami came to power on a liberal campaign platform, he ultimately failed to reform Iranian society against a powerful conservative backlash.

“Under Rouhani we are still in a honeymoon phase, but this may be déjà vu,” said Tabaar.

Yet Tabaar admits that Rouhani still holds considerable sway in Iranian politics for now, and may have even pressured those controlling the arrest of the Iranians to release them.

“He probably does not approve of what has happened; he’s expressing discontent, and protesting against the arrest of those people,” said Tabaar, when asked about why Rouhani may have quoted his own words from Jun. 29, 2013, on Twitter today.

“It is possible he is doing a lot behind the scenes,” he added.

“On the other hand, he doesn’t want to say it directly because he doesn’t want to provoke the conservative establishment.”

Can Rouhani get a nuclear deal accepted by that same establishment, which continues to criticise the negotiating strategy of Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif?

Tabaar thinks it’s possible.

“Khamenei wants a limited success that he can portray as an utter failure,” he said.

“A limited success in the sense that Iran’s enrichment right will be recognised and a lot of sanctions will be removed so Iran’s economy can thrive again, but he will still portray this as a failure so Rouhani won’t become too popular.”

Back in Tehran an Iranian analyst speaking on the condition of anonymity told IPS this event foreshadows Rouhani’s coming domestic battles.

“A lot of what you are seeing now on the social scene is the result of a less securitised atmosphere after [the] June 2013 election,” said the analyst, adding, “Can you imagine a ‘Happy’ video if former conservative presidential contender Saeed Jalili had been elected?”

“Part of the battle will involve, as witnessed, efforts to torpedo Rouhani’s effort to reframe the image of Iran in international discourse,” said the analyst.

“This fight will not be totally quiet, and it won’t be clean.”

(END)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a live interview with Iranian TV on Apr. 29, 2014. Courtesy of President Rouhani's official website

By Sussan Tahmasebi
WASHINGTON, May 2 2014 (IPS)

While enjoying unprecedented successes in international relations, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seems to be suffering a stalemate when it comes to building trust and cooperation between different factions in the Iranian state. As a result, he seems plagued by continuous human rights disasters at home, while issuing no public condemnations. 

Indeed, during an official event he held to mark Labour Day on May 1, wherein he encouraged citizens to set up organisations to advocate for their rights, approximately 25 labour activists were arrested in Tehran.Iranians, increasingly weary and angry, are holding their government and officials accountable.

The detained included members of Tehran’s bus trade union, who had gathered outside the Ministry of Labour to offer the public sweets and flowers.

Prior to this event, during a live state television interview Tuesday, Rouhani vowed that he has not forgotten his 2013 presidential campaign promises. This vague declaration was interpreted by many as a reference to the continued house arrest, without charge or trial, of 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi.

During that same interview, Mousavi was rushed to the hospital with reported heart problems.

Mousavi’s ailments, which have been ongoing during his detention, came on the heels of another human rights crisis in Iran.

On Apr. 17, prison officials and security forces stormed the men’s “Ward 350,” at Evin prison in Tehran, where a number of political prisoners are being held.

According to reports, the prisoners were beaten violently, many were moved to solitary confinement, and some had their heads shaved to humiliate them.

The prisoners and their families claim that those in need of serious medical attention have yet to receive proper care in an equipped medical facility.

Despite the fact that government spokesperson, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, announced that an investigation was underway, Rouhani and his administration have been largely silent on the issue, refusing to publicly condemn the prison raid. 

This silence extends to other human rights issues, such as the high rate of executions in Iran.

Observers and analysts agree that Rouhani has little influence over other branches of government, including the judiciary, which is responsible for stays in execution, overseeing courts and prisons, and issuing early prison releases.

There is much speculation on the reasons behind this lack of coordination between Rouhani and other branches of government on a variety of issues, including human rights.

Some analysts believe that the stepping up of executions since Rouhani took office is intended to embarrass and weaken his position on national and international stages.

Others, such as Isa Saharkhiz, a political analyst and journalist, have offered a different analysis.

In a recent article published on the Paris-based Rooz Online, this former political prisoner argues that the raid and recent arrests are intended to send a message from hardliners to Iranian dissidents, saying that while international relations may be changing, domestic policies will remain the same and little dissent will be tolerated.

In his election campaign, Rouhani repeatedly promised to ease the impact of Iran’s security state on citizens, and while in office, has welcomed constructive criticism and encouraged Iranians abroad to return home.

However, despite his new approach to Iranian human rights, throughout these many crises, Rouhani has refused to publicly and clearly condemn the actions of hardline groups, opting instead for a quiet, diplomatic approach to solving problems.

He alluded to this approach in his televised interview, when he stated that he has started a process of peacebuilding and reconciliation both internationally and nationally.

He also claimed that he is “committed to his campaign promises but realising them will take time.”

But patience is wearing thin among Rouhani’s critics and supporters.

Many are angry at the slow pace of change and the continued repression and rights abuses in Iran.

While Rouhani, hardliners and reformers engage in a battle of wills and shows of strength, the Iranian public is reaching its own understanding on human rights.

Iranians, increasingly weary and angry, are holding their government and officials accountable.

Last week, when families of prisoners in Ward 350 were staging a protest outside the presidential offices to demand an investigation into the prison raid, something strange and unexpected happened.

The incident was widely reported on social media.

One account reported: “Today while the families of prisoners were outside the president’s office, a group of women approached and pulled out a banner that read: ‘We want an end to executions’ and began chanting their demands.”

These women were relatives of prisoners who had been sentenced to death because of petty drug dealing, according to other accounts.

The women had come to the office of the president to demand justice and to prevent the execution of their sons.

According to a Facebook report, “the women were very direct and forward in expressing their demands…unlike any human rights activist. One of the women asked: ‘they want us to have more children, so they can execute them?’”

“They went on to complain about their poor economic situation, which forced their children to turn to selling drugs,” continued the report. “[T]hey lamented that they have no money to feed their families and that their utilities had been turned off.”

The understanding that the public has reached on human rights issues demonstrates a serious rift between the state and the public.

Across the country, Iranians, including family members of death-row inmates, disenfranchised youth from ethnic-minority communities, and the working poor, are rapidly changing their view of and approach toward the state in their demand for human rights.

The state, however, seems unwilling to respond to these demands.

While this boiling-point situation may be the legacy of the Ahmadinejad era, or those who have come before him, it is still a legacy that President Rouhani must address.

These demands will likely, if left unanswered, prove problematic for moderates like Rouhani, and the hardliners who prefer swift reprisals.

Since his June 2013 election, Rouhani’s concentrated efforts have achieved considerable success in reforming Iran’s image internationally.

When under pressure, Rouhani often strategically boasts about holding a legitimate mandate from the Iranian “public.”

So far, though, Rouhani’s efforts at national reconciliation have been narrowly focused on peacebuilding between political foes — hardliners and reformers — rather than the public.

This effort has been carried out in silence and behind closed doors.

To be successful national reconciliation needs to include a broader segment of the Iranian population.

Rouhani should take cues on his successes internationally and begin building trust with the “public” that seems to have been forgotten.

This trust-building must extend beyond economic reforms.

Solving Iran’s human rights situation should be seen by Rouhani as a critical strategy for ensuring national and human security in Iran.

Sussan Tahmasebi is an Iranian women’s rights activist, who lived and worked in Iran between 1999 and 2010. She is the co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), where she serves as the Director of the MENA/Asia programme on women’s rights, peace and security.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed presents his report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Mar. 14, 2014. Courtesy of Mr. Shaheed's office.

By Omid Memarian
GENEVA, Mar 14 2014 (IPS)

Following the release Friday of his report to the Human Rights Council on the situation in Iran, U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed urged Tehran to engage with U.N. mandates – firstly by permitting him to enter the country.

“Nobody has been able to go to Iran as a U.N. mandate-holder for nine years now,” Shaheed told IPS in Geneva, Switzerland, where the council is based."Personal attacks are nothing new...just think what Iranian citizens in Tehran or elsewhere might get if they speak out.” -- Ahmed Shaheed

“The next step would be Iran engaging with my mandate or if they wish with the other mandates as well,” said Shaheed, who was appointed to his post in June 2011 and has issued two earlier reports.

The 104-page report is based primarily on interviews with 72 Iranians living in three European countries in December 2013 and 61 statements by Iranians inside Iran and Turkey between September and December 2013.

The special rapporteur also examined reports compiled by organisations focusing on ethnic and religious minority rights in Iran.

While welcoming “positive overtures” made by the Iranian government since Hassan Rouhani became president in August 2013, the report states “they currently do not address fully the fundamental human rights concerns” raised by the U.N. and other human rights-focused bodies.

An estimated 1,539 individuals have been executed, including at least 955 for drug trafficking, since the establishment of the special rapporteur’s mandate in 2011, according to the report.

Some 687 individuals are also believed to have been executed in 2013, 369 of which were announced by official or semi-official government sources.

At least 57 individuals were publicly hanged (one of whom was pardoned after surviving the execution), including at least 28 women, in 2013, according to the report.

In addition to focusing on allegations of the abuse and imprisonment of activists, ethnic and religious minorities and members of the press, the special rapporteur estimates that 900 political prisoners are currently being held in Iranian jails.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director for Middle East & North Africa at Human Rights Watch, told IPS the report’s “findings are consistent with what we’ve been documenting in Iran.

“If Rouhani really wants to make an impression as a leader who is serious about reform in Iran, the first thing he should do is call for a moratorium on executions,” she said.

“The gruesome numbers in a patently unfair justice system cry out for careful review and scrutiny of the evidence against all those facing death sentences in Iran,” added Whitson.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Rouhani has not delivered on his human rights promises after the release of his own report on Iranian human rights to the General Assembly.

His remarks were met with sharp condemnation from Tehran.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Ban “the weakest secretary-general [in the history] of the U.N.”

Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Ali Larijani said the report was “dictated by Mossad and the CIA.”

Ban also called for Iran to allow Shaheed, who previously served two terms as the foreign minister of the Maldives, to visit Iran and investigate the charges that have been laid against it.

Last January, when a draft of the special rapporteur’s report was presented to Iran for feedback, Iran’s judiciary head Sadegh Larijani publicly spoke about the report, which violated a U.N. protocol requiring Iran to keep the report confidential until its release to the Human Rights Council.

“It is clear to all that preparing biased reports about the situation of human rights in Iran is aimed to exert more pressure on the Islamic Republic, and the Westerners don’t really have any human rights concerns,” said Larijani at a meeting of high-ranking judicial officials.

“Personal attacks are nothing new,” Shaheed told IPS, adding that “If a U.N. mandate holder, or the U.N. secretary-general, or other officials can be attacked so much for what they say, just think what Iranian citizens in Tehran or elsewhere might get if they speak out.”

“Iran is much better served if it engages in a debate,” he said.

The special rapporteur’s findings criticise the Iranian Supreme Leader’s extensive influence on the judiciary and the fact that his judgments can supersede judicial rulings.

The report also states that most reported violations of human rights in Iran occur during pre-trial stages, in detention centres or in court.

“The situation in Iran is not as bleak as Mr. Shaheed reflects in his report, but so long as there is no constructive dialogue between the two sides, nothing can be resolved,” a member of the Iranian delegation who asked not to be named told IPS.

The judiciary is constitutionally independent from the executive branch in Iran, but since the election of Rouhani, who campaigned on a platform of moderation, there has been a growing expectation for him to implement reforms.

But apart from the release of 80 political prisoners last year under Rouhani’s watch, which is noted by the report, hardline conservatives who dominate the Judiciary and the security establishment have shown little flexibility on the issue of reforms .

“Every country has issues, and Iran has a large share of that and it should address it by engagement,” Shaheed told IPS.

The Human Rights Council will vote on the renewal of his mandate following the report’s review on Mar. 17.

A mass demonstration in Tehran around the time of the 1979 Revolution. Credit: GNU license

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 2014 (IPS)

Thirty-five years ago today, millions of Iranians embraced a religious leader promising freedom from a corrupt monarchy and national independence. Now many want a better standard of living and improved civil rights.

“Living standards are 50 percent higher today than they were before the revolution, but so are expectations, which is why the average person believes they had a better time before the revolution,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist who regularly visits Iran."Living standards are 50 percent higher today than they were before the revolution, but so are expectations." -- Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

After years of sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank and integral oil revenue, and government mismanagement of funds, the country is financially devastated, with a depleted budget and unemployment above 14 percent (25 percent for youth).

“Early on, revolutionaries focused their attention on the provision of health, education, and infrastructure [electricity, clean water, and roads] for underprivileged areas,”  the Virginia Tech professor told IPS.

“These developments have helped move large sections of the poor into the middle class and a modern life style,” he said.

Today, citizens from that expanding middle class and across Iranian society — now more educated than ever — desire better social and civil freedoms in addition to improved work opportunities.

“The Iranian president [Hassan Rouhani] has released a citizen bill of rights and one positive thing he did is put this out there and ask for comments, but it really falls short on women’s rights and the rights of minorities,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, an Iranian women’s rights activist and the co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), an NGO dedicated to women’s rights.

Tahmasebi, who lived and worked in Iran from 1999-2010, also decried the continued imprisonment of student activists and reformist leaders, as well as Iran’s high rate of executions, which have increased in recent months.

“Iranians want to live in an environment that’s safe, where the law is there to protect them rather than punish them,” she told IPS.

Still, Tahmasebi acknowledges that the Rouhani government’s top agenda items are resolving the nuclear issue and improving Iran’s economy.

“Once he has made serious progress at the international level, he will have more clout to push for more controversial issues at home,” she said.

Iran’s ruling elite has meanwhile experienced a major overhaul since the June 2013 presidential election of Rouhani, a centrist cleric promising “hope,” “prudence” and “moderation.”

While Rouhani’s election would have been unlikely without the backing of reformist and centrist leaders, he must now maintain their support while also dealing with hardliners eager to regain their upper hand in politics.

Iran is currently implementing the first-phase “Joint Plan of Action”, a deal achieved with world powers known as the P5+1 in Geneva on Nov. 24, 2013. Talks for a comprehensive solution to the nuclear issue are set to begin in Vienna on Feb. 18.

Meanwhile, some of Iran’s most stalwart revolutionaries have raised the volume on their criticism of the Rouhani government’s handling of the nuclear issue.

Members of the Revolutionary Guard, a powerful paramilitary unit, and several parliamentarians claim that Rouhani has given much more than Iran has received in negotiations.

On Tuesday, anniversary commemoration rallies attended by millions in Tehran, according to state media, featured banners and posters responding to a Barack Obama administration mantra on Iran: “all options are on the table,” a reference to military force.

“We are eager for all options on the table,” read some of the placards.

Marchers also reportedly shouted an Iranian revolutionary mantra, “Death to America,” while others added, “Death to [Wendy] Sherman,” the U.S.’s lead negotiator and under secretary of state for political affairs.

But despite domestic criticism, the Rouhani administration enjoys the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who has repeatedly urged unity and faith in the government.

“Considering the fact that it is only a few months [since] the administration has taken charge of the country, we should give executive officials time so that, by Allah’s favour, they can move things forward in a firm and powerful way,” said the Grand Ayatollah in a Feb. 9 speech to air force commanders posted on his website.

“We should not allow the enemies’ agents inside the country to take advantage of weak points and to create disorder,” he added.

Since last week, Iranian news outlets have been featuring stories on Iran’s military, showcasing comments by commanders stressing Iran’s preparedness to respond to military threats, and military weapons tests, such as the test-firing of domestically made missiles on Monday.

In a speech celebrating the revolution on Tuesday morning to a rally at Tehran’s Freedom Square, Rouhani declared, “Today, if any side plans to launch aggression against Iran, it should know that the Iranian nation will stand against aggressors with its full might and make them sorry,” according to the Iranian Student News Agency.

The president also emphasised Iran’s willingness to engage in “fair” and “constructive” talks on the nuclear issue.

“Our negotiations with the P5+1 have all been based on Iranians’ peace-seeking nature,” he said.

“We wanted to convey the Leader’s Fatwa [a religious decree against the creation of nuclear weapons] to the whole world during the negotiations and help them understand the Iranophobia project is a big lie,” stated Rouhani.

“While negotiating with the world powers, we want to say sanctions against Iranians are cruel and inhuman,” he added.

In Washington on Monday, a former hostage from Iran’s seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, John Limbert, noted at the Wilson Center that some Iranian participants in that divisive event, “now older and wiser”, joined reformist administrations in Iran.

Limbert, a historian who speaks fluent Persian, added that the recent opening of the embassy to the public “may be symbolic of larger changes in the Islamic Republic’s relations with the rest of the world, especially with the U.S.”

“Both sides, after 34 years, have made a very startling discovery, that diplomacy — long-neglected tools of listening, of seeking small areas of agreement, of careful choice of words — can actually accomplish more than shouting insults, making threats and the wonderful self-satisfaction of always being right,” he said.

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Hassan Rouhani tried to persuade world business leaders to invest in Iran, especially in its hydrocarbon and automobile sectors. 

Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Mojtaba Salimi/CC-BY-SA-3.0

His appeal is not likely to set off a gold rush; investors will wait to see if the nuclear agreement with the P5+1 is successfully concluded sometime this summer.

But broadening his call for engagement with the rest of the world beyond the nuclear deal indicates that his initiative is more than a charm offensive; it represents deeper social and economic change in Iran.

The implicit assumption behind the “charm offensive” discourse is that the Iranian leadership is only engaging in talks because it needs to gain some respite from sanctions to buy time to reach nuclear weapon capability.

But luring foreign investors into Iran does not fit well with that strategy because any gains would only become apparent after the nuclear deal is concluded and would be reversed as soon as the deal falls apart and sanctions are once again implemented.

From Rouhani’s perspective, an open invitation to foreign investors risks expanding the ranks of his domestic foes beyond the growing opposition to the nuclear deal. Why add Islamists and leftists opposed to the penetration of Western culture and capital unless he really believes he can turn Iran into a hospitable place for outside investment?

Mark Landler of the New York Times played down Rouhani’s appeal by noting its “eerie echo” to a similar pitch by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami in 2004, which was followed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ascendance a year later and a decade of hostility.

Suggesting that Rouhani’s Davos promises might end similarly ignores several important differences between the two presidents and between the Iran of 2014 and that of 2004. Ignoring the obvious — in 2004 Khatami was on his way out while Rouhani is just starting his first term — there are at least two other distinctions.

Philosophically, Khatami and Rouhani share a moderate view of coexistence with the West, but when it comes to economic integration, they read from very different scripts.

Iran’s economy in 2014 bears little resemblance to that of a decade earlier. In 2004, thanks to a massive oil boom, Iran was bursting with economic optimism and feeling prosperous without foreign investment. Since the 1970s, except during the reconstruction period after the war with Iraq, Iran has not sought or depended on foreign investment for its economic growth. 

Higher oil prices nearly tripled the oil revenues in Khatami’s last budget in 2004 compared to his first in 1998. Unemployment had been declining steadily, from 14.3 percent in 2000 to 10.3 percent in 2004, and inflation seemed low by today’s standards — averaging 14 percent per year instead of 35 percent in the last two years.

Today, after several years of harsh sanctions, Iran’s economy is in deep trouble and the government is broke. While inflation is coming down, unemployment is still above 14 percent (above 25 percent for youth). The 4.2 billion dollars that the U.S. is releasing as part of the interim Geneva agreement adds only five percent to this year’s budget. It will not go very far in bringing public investment even close to its historical record of more than 15 percent of the GDP.

Public investment for the Iranian year starting this March is only 15 billion dollars, which is four percent of the GDP. It is not even enough to pay for the repair of — much less build new — public infrastructure or assist the private sector. The government actually owes private contractors about 20 billion dollars for work they have already performed on various public projects.

The private sector is also in a serious bind. In addition to unpaid government bills, the depressed economy has cut demand for its products, leaving many employers short of cash to even pay their workers. The auto industry, which was a focus of Rouhani’s appeal at Davos, is producing at less than half its capacity. The interim agreement restores the auto industry’s access to critical imports, but additional capital is what they need to create new jobs.

While financial necessity may be Rouhani’s reason for inviting foreign businesses to Iran, he also has reasons to be optimistic about the outcome of their engagement. First, he knows that more than three decades of revolutionary rhetoric and eight years of failed populist economic policies under President Ahmadinejad have tired out the general population and caused a major shift in the attitudes of Iran’s intellectual and technocratic classes.

There is now a wider consensus in favour of private enterprise and engagement with the global economy than during the time of the Shah. This is why Rouhani has the most pro-business economic team in Iran’s history.

Second, in the last 10 years, Iran’s workforce has become younger, better educated, and less expensive — all attractive features for foreign capital. The loss of value in Iran’s currency last year has brought labour costs in Iran below that of China. Were it not for their lower productivity, Iranian industrial workers would be able to outcompete East Asian workers. Foreign investment along with its superior technology and management is what Iran needs to raise its workers’ productivity.

The fate of global engagement for the Islamic Republic is not solely determined by these economic calculations. Many in the highest position of political power in Iran view rapprochement with the United States, which Rouhani considers a condition for meaningful global engagement, with deep suspicion.

They fear that hostility toward the Islamic Republic runs deeper than the nuclear issue. They point to new sanctions legislation before the U.S. Senate that requires Iran to make concessions unrelated to the nuclear dispute. A New York Times editorial did much to justify their fears by recommending that “Iran’s full reintegration into the international system” should depend on its “ending the hostility toward Israel.”

For Rouhani, after Davos, the path to global engagement remains uphill.

*Djavad Salehi-Isfahani conducts research on the economics of the Middle East and is currently a professor of economics at Virginia Tech. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and is also serving as the Dubai Initiative fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the ministerial-level meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement on Sep. 27, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jan 17 2014 (IPS)

After 34 years of enmity, Tehran and Washington are heavily invested in the success of a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme achieved through teamwork. Now the political future of Iran’s new moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, depends on this issue.

“Resolving the nuclear impasse is President Rouhani’s signature policy initiative,” Mohsen Milani, a professor of politics at the University of South Florida, told IPS.“The analogy is with President Obama’s affordable health care act - if he doesn’t succeed with that, his legacy will be in big trouble." -- Prof. Mohsen Milani

“If he can’t bring about a nuclear resolution, he will not be able to pursue his other major foreign and domestic policy initiatives, hardliners will have a better chance to gain a majority in the 2016 parliamentary elections and his re-election will be jeopardised,” said the Iran expert.

“The analogy is with President Obama’s affordable health care act – if he doesn’t succeed with that, his legacy will be in big trouble,” he said.

The Joint Plan of Action, a historic first-phase agreement reached in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) on Nov. 24 is scheduled for implementation on Jan. 20.

During the “first step” of the deal, Iran will scale back and limit significant parts of its controversial nuclear programme in exchange for limited sanctions relief. The “final step” of a “comprehensive solution” includes the dismantling of the sanctions regime, according to the text.

Since Nov. 24, the Rouhani administration, which inherited an isolated and economically ailing Iran after winning the June presidential election, has been touting its achievement at home and abroad.

“The Geneva accord means the great powers’ surrender to the great Iranian nation,” said Rouhani during a Jan. 14 speech in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s oil-producing Khuzestan province.

“The Geneva accord means breaking the dam of sanctions that was unduly imposed on the dear and peace-loving Iranian nation,” declared the centrist cleric to a cheering crowd.

Iran is also expected to repeat its readiness for a new era in international relations when Rouhani attends the World Economic Forum in Davos next week. The last Iranian leader to attend was the reformist President Mohammad Khatami a decade ago.

But while foreign investors may be eager to cash in on Iranian markets that have been heavily restricted due to sanctions, many barriers need to be lifted before they will be confident enough to do so.

Beyond the logistical and technical complexities involved in the implementation of the monumental accord, the deal also faces external challenges.

The Barack Obama administration is trying to prevent Congress from passing new sanctions on Iran, warning they can derail a peaceful solution to the nuclear conflict and even lead to war.

While no vote has been scheduled on the “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013,” which would impose sweeping new sanctions against Tehran if it fails to comply with the terms of the Nov. 24 accord or reach a comprehensive deal within one year, Obama is still battling a heavily pro-sanctions Congress.

On Thursday, Obama even targeted Senate fellow Democrats by urging them to resist new sanctions while the deal is being implemented during a meeting about his legislative agenda.

“The president did speak passionately about how we have to seize this opportunity,” Senator Jeff Merkley told the Associated Press. “If Iran isn’t willing in the end to make the decisions that are necessary to make it work, he’ll be ready to sign the bill to tighten those sanctions. But we’ve got to give this six months.”

So sensitive are the negotiations that the Obama administration only released a nine-page text of the implementation details to lawmakers and senior aides with security clearances on Thursday after serious pressure.

Meanwhile, Iranian hardliners who oppose any U.S.-Iran rapprochement would use any failure of the deal, particularly the imposition of new sanctions, as proof that the Rouhani administration is not fit to lead Iran or protect its interests.

“He campaigned on a pledge to lift the sanctions, end Iran’s isolation and resolve in an honourable and peaceful way Iran’s nuclear impasse with the West,” said Milani. “A lot of people voted for him precisely for that pledge.”

Having lost their political upper hand after failing to unite in producing an attractive presidential candidate in June, these hardliners are currently sidelined.

Even Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who issued multiple public messages of support for Iranian diplomats during and after the Geneva talks, has urged domestic critics to support Rouhani’s efforts on the nuclear issue.

But the Ayatollah has also repeatedly said he does not trust the West to keep up its side of the bargain.

“No one should be under the illusion that the enemies of the Islamic revolution have today given up their enmity,” he said during a speech in the holy city of Qom on Jan. 9.

“Of course, it’s possible any enemy might have no choice but to step back, but the enemy and the enemy’s front-line must not be ignored,” he said.

The Rouhani government has warned of repercussions if new sanctions are passed while negotiations are in process.

“U.S. sanctions against Iran have had no positive results,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told a Russian Newspaper on Jan. 16.

“If radical legislators make an effort to increase sanctions, they will not like the results,” said the lead nuclear negotiator, who also recently warned that “the entire deal is dead” if new sanctions are issued.

“I do believe the Iranians when they say they would quit the talks if more sanctions are imposed,” Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told IPS.

“If Congress passes such legislation but not by a veto-proof margin, I think the impact would be serious – a short walk out – but not necessarily fatal,” said the Iran expert, who last visited Iran for Rouhani’s inauguration in August.

“However, it would undermine Obama’s credibility severely if he is perceived as incapable of controlling even the Democratic-led Senate and that would have negative implications for negotiating a comprehensive deal,” she added.

P5+1 foreign ministers after negotiations about Iran's nuclear capabilities concluded on Nov. 24, 2013 in Geneva. Credit: U.S. Dept of State/CC by 2.0

By Jasmin Ramsey
GENEVA, Nov 24 2013 (IPS)

A momentous agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme was officially announced shortly before 3:00 am local time via Twitter by the spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Michael Mann, on Nov. 24, after more than four days of grueling talks.

The deal occurred after years of negotiations with Iran but only three and a half months after the inauguration of Iran’s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, who has already overseen several historic foreign policy milestones.

“We just finished many days of hard work,” said Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the night’s first press conference shortly after signing a four-page agreement with his P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) counterparts at the Palais des Nations.

“Now we are in the process of moving forward the resolution based on mutual respect and equal footing,” the veteran diplomat, who has enjoyed consistent support from Iranians and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei since talks resumed in October, added.

“While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a late-night statement from the White House.

In Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Zarif’s role in the talks and Tehran’s decision to “come to the table”, which he credited to the very sanctions Iran has vehemently dismissed as a motivator.

He emphasised to reporters that the first-step agreement aimed at reaching a final, comprehensive solution includes significant limits on Iran’s nuclear programme and addresses the international community’s concerns.

Reciprocal accord

“All sides would gain [from this deal], except those few who believe that it’s feasible to expect that Iran could be sanctioned enough to give up enrichment entirely,” George Perkovich, a nuclear non-proliferation and strategy expert focused on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told IPS.

Under the six-month phase of the deal, Iran is expected to halt uranium enrichment above five percent; convert its existing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium to fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor or dilute it to five percent grade; halt “further advances of its activities” at its Natanz and Fordow Fuel Enrichment facilities and at its Arak reactor; and implement further, advanced monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In return Iran will gain approximately 7 billion dollars of sanctions relief; Iran will be given relief from U.S. sanctions on its auto industry as well as spare parts and repairs for its aviation industry; no further U.N., EU or U.S. nuclear sanctions will be issued; and a channel will be established to better facilitate humanitarian trade.

But any gains would be “provisional,” cautioned Perkovich, adding that “the ultimate measure will be in a final agreement.”

U.S., Iran disagree over interpretation

Like many other Iranians, Maryam Askari, a 38-year-old Tehran-based researcher, stayed awake as long as she could to hear news of the negotiation results.

“Many people are doing the same, even housewives – even a servant in my friend’s house asked her about the results of the negotiations,” Askari told IPS shortly before the deal was announced.

Askari added that she wants a deal that eases tensions with Western countries, reduces pressure on Iran’s dilapidated economy and recognises what she considers Iran’s right to peacefully enrich uranium as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“I am looking for a fair deal,” said Askari.

But what Iran considers its “inalienable right” to enrich uranium – something it has been emphasising for years – was addressed differently by U.S. and Iranian representatives here.

Zarif not only insisted that Iran would continue enriching uranium but he also referenced “two distinct places” in the agreement that have “a very clear reference to the fact that the Iranian enrichment programme will continue and will be a part of any agreement now and in the future.”

But Kerry reiterated that the United States does not recognise any country’s right to uranium enrichment.

“This first step…does not say that Iran has a right to enrichment, no matter what interpretation the prime minister made, it is not in this document and there is no right to enrich within the four corners of the NPT,” responded Kerry.

He added that as per the signed text, “it can only be by mutual agreement that enrichment might or might not be able to be decided on in the course of negotiations.”

Criticism and relief

“We can expect a strong amount of pushback from critics in the U.S. and Israel, and we’ll have to see how hardliners in Iran react,” Alireza Nader, an international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, told IPS.

Although Kerry stressed that this agreement will bring security to the region and make U.S. ally Israel “safer”, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu today called the deal reached in Geneva “a historic mistake”.

Key members of U.S. Congress also criticised the deal shortly after it was announced.

“Unless the agreement requires dismantling of the Iranian centrifuges, we really haven’t gained anything,” tweeted the hawkish Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, who features in media coverage of U.S. foreign policy debates.

“You’re going to see a bipartisan effort that enrichment is not in the final agreement,” predicted Senator Bob Corker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Fox News Sunday.

In his speech, Kerry said he looked forward to working with Congress in upcoming discussions over the deal but also acknowledged a presidential “possibility of a veto” in an apparent reference to Congress trying to pass more sanctions on Iran during this phase of the deal.

Iran’s team, at least, has returned to much praise from Iranians, who through interviews with IPS and various illegal social media in Iran have been expressing joy since news of the deal broke.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also expressed his blessing through a tweet and a letter addressed to President Rouhani.

“The content of the agreement will be closely examined, but generally speaking, the mere fact of an agreement has lead to a sigh of relief for most Iranians,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii who has been in Iran for the last several months, told IPS.

“It signals a desire for de-escalation from all sides, away from a troubling dynamic that many feared would not only mean more economic hardship but also eventually war,” she said.

By Ignacio Ramonet
PARIS, Nov 12 2013 (Columnist Service)

Signs of rapprochement between Tehran and Washington are growing. A new era seems about to begin. It is now possible to imagine a political solution that would put an end to the 33-year confrontation between Iran and the United States.

In early September, we were once more on the verge of war in the Middle East. The big global media players published headline after headline on the United States’ “imminent attack” on Syria, a key ally of Iran, accused of committing a “chemical massacre” on the outskirts of Damascus on Aug. 21.

All signs pointed to a new conflict – which, in that danger zone, ran the risk of soon turning into a regional conflagration.

Russia (which has a geostrategic naval base in Tartus, on the Syrian coast, and supplies Damascus with weapons on a large scale) and China (in the name of the principle of national sovereignty) had warned that they would veto any request for United Nations Security Council approval for an attack.Iran seems to have understood that having a nuclear bomb that it would not be able to use, and finding itself in the same situation as North Korea, is not an option.

For its part, Tehran, while it denounced the use of chemical weapons, also opposed a military intervention, because it feared that Israel would take advantage of the occasion to attack Iran and destroy its nuclear installations…

Hence, the powder kegs in the Middle East, including Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, faced a risk of exploding.

But all of a sudden the “imminent attack” was abandoned. Why?

In first place, there was strong rejection on the part of Western public opinion, which was largely hostile to a new conflict whose main beneficiaries, on the ground, could only be Jihadists linked to Al Qaeda – against whom the Western forces are fighting in Libya, Mali, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.

Later, on Aug. 29, came David Cameron’s humiliating defeat in the British parliament, which left Britain out of the game.

Then on Aug. 31 came the shift by Barack Obama, who decided, to gain time, to ask for a green light from the U.S. Congress.

And last, on Sep. 5, during the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin suggested putting Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under U.N. control, so it could eventually be destroyed.

This solution, an indisputable diplomatic triumph by Moscow, was in the interests of Washington as well as Paris, Damascus and Tehran.

But it also meant, paradoxically, a diplomatic defeat for some of the United States’ allies (and enemies of Iran): namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.

There is no doubt that this solution should transform the diplomatic atmosphere and accelerate the rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

Actually everything had started on Jun. 14, when Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran, to succeed the polemic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At his Aug. 4 inauguration, the new president said a different era was starting, and that he would, through dialogue, pull his country out of its diplomatic isolation and confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme.

His principal objective, he said, was to ease the pressure of the international sanctions that are strangling the Iranian economy.

The sanctions are among the toughest ever imposed on a country in peace time.

On Sep. 25, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held, for the first time since relations between the two countries were broken off on Apr. 7, 1980, a bilateral diplomatic meeting, on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The atmosphere, characterised by a conciliatory tone and small steps on the road to reconciliation, was seen more spectacularly during the now-famous Sep. 27 telephone conversation between Obama and Rouhani.

With the exception of Israel’s ultra-conservative government, which is trying to torpedo the rapprochement, other U.S. allies do not want to be the last to jump on the peace bandwagon. And above all, they do not want to let juicy trade deals with a country of 80 million consumers escape.

So everything indicates that the current thaw will intensify. Objectively, Iran and the United States have an interest in making peace.

On the geostrategic front, Obama is trying to free himself up in the Middle East in order to focus more on Asia, which the U.S. sees “as the future in terms of economic growth in the 21st century,” in the words of Simon Kahn, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore.

U.S. involvement in the Middle East, which has been steady since the end of World War II, was justified by the existence in the region of most of the world’s oil reserves, essential for the U.S. productive machine.

But that has changed since the discovery of large shale gas and oil deposits in the United States, which could help the country make significant progress towards energy autonomy.

Tehran, for its part, needs this deal to ease the pressure of the sanctions and reduce the difficulties plaguing Iranians in their day-to-day lives – because the country is not safe from a major social uprising.

With respect to the nuclear question, Iran seems to have understood that having a nuclear bomb that it would not be able to use, and finding itself in the same situation as North Korea, is not an option.

At the same time, the status of regional power to which Tehran has always aspired would require an agreement (or even alliance) with the United States, as is the case with Israel and Turkey.

And finally, a far from negligible aspect: time presses. There is a risk that Obama’s successor will turn out to be more intransigent, three years from now.

There will be no shortage of obstacles on either side. The adversaries of an accord are not few, and they have power. To sign any deal, Washington, for example, needs approval from Congress, where Israel has many friends. In Tehran there are also fearsome adversaries of an agreement.

But everything points to the end of a cycle. The logic of history is pushing Iran and the United States, which share a common faith in economic liberalism, towards what we could call “a heroic agreement”.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

On the 34^th anniversary of the seizure by Iranian militants of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, a growing number of experts here believe Washington and the Islamic Republic may be moving toward détente, if not rapprochement.

Demonstrators in the streets of Tehran Monday outside the former U.S. embassy. Credit: Farideh Farhi

While hardline demonstrators in Tehran Monday marked the anniversary with ritual chants outside the long-abandoned embassy of “Death to America!”, U.S. negotiators and their Iranian counterparts were preparing for critical talks in Geneva later this week on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme later this week with their partners from the so-called P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany).

The talks are also likely to include a bilateral tete-a-tete between the heads of the countries’ delegations. It would be the third such session since Secretary of State John Kerry spent an hour with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif on the sidelines of a P5+1 meeting at the U.N. General Assembly in New York at the end of September.

That meeting – the highest-level talks between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Revolution – was followed by the unprecedented phone call by Barack Obama to Hassan Rouhani, as Iran’s new president was making his way to JFK airport after his highly successful four-day sojourn at the U.N.

The speed and intensity of these exchanges have clearly injected growing confidence here, and apparently in Tehran, too, that both sides are seriously committed to reaching an accord on Iran’s nuclear programme — and thus opening a new chapter in bilateral relations — despite opposition from powerful hard-line constituencies who, for now at least, have been put on the back foot.

Thus, while Monday’s demonstration celebrating the embassy seizure – which launched the 444-day “hostage crisis” that no doubt contributed to the 1980 election defeat of President Jimmy Carter and seared a deeply hostile image of Iran in the U.S. collective consciousness of most Americans – drew thousands of anti-U.S. protestors Monday, the ruling authorities had made clear in previous days that diplomacy would go forward.

Thus, banners attacking “the Great Satan” and the alleged naivete of Zarif and Rouhani that appeared last week in various parts of Tehran in advance of Monday’s anniversary were removed by municipal workers. According to a tweet by the New York Times correspondent in the Iranian capital, they also “rushed” to the demonstration to quickly dispose of its remnants after the crowd had dispersed.

More important, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had earlier suggested disapproval of Rouhani’s conversation with Obama, came out firmly in favour of the president and his team in a speech to students on the eve of the anniversary.

“No one should consider our negotiators as compromisers. They are our children and children of the revolution. They have a difficult mission, and no one must weaken an official who is doing his job,” he declared in what was widely considered here as his strongest defence of Rouhani and Zarif to date.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has taken pains ever since the last P5+1 talks with Iran in Geneva Oct. 15-16 to deal with opposition to engagement both here, where it is centred in Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence, and among its allies abroad, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel.

On the home front, a series of high-level meetings appears to have persuaded key senators from both parties to hold off on acting on a pending sanctions bill already passed by the House of Representatives that would punish foreign companies or countries for importing any Iranian oil until at least after this week’s talks, scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

Iran experts have warned that new sanctions would almost certainly strengthen Iran’s hard-liners, forcing a suspension in negotiations at the least. The administration also argued that such legislation, coming at a moment of growing optimism, also risked fracturing the international coalition that has so far mostly respected the sanctions regime.

Speaking Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sen. Carl Levin, who heads the powerful Armed Services Committee, insisted that Washington had an obligation to test Rouhani’s promises to clear up doubts about the peacefulness of Iran’s nuclear programme.

“Whether it is a 10 percent, 40 percent, or 60 percent chance, it should be tested and probed,” he said. “We should not at this time impose additional sanctions.”

Even some Republicans suggested they were willing to be patient. Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who noted he has voted for every previous sanctions bill, said he was “open” to waiting. “The whole idea behind sanctions was to get people to talk, to deal with the issue,” he told ‘The Hill’ newspaper.

Senior administration officials have also met with leaders of key hawkish Jewish organisations, including the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which, aside from Christian Zionist groups, make up the influential Israel lobby.

Along with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, these groups have pushed hardest for tougher sanctions, as well as concrete moves to make the threat of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities more credible.

While accounts of these consultations have conflicted, the administration appears to have asked for a pause in lobbying for new sanctions for at least a few months.

The Jewish leaders reportedly agreed to a limited “time out” during which they would neither actively push for nor lobby against any sanctions legislation, although one of the participants, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, called for Senate approval of the pending package in an op-ed published by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper Monday.

On the foreign front, meanwhile, Kerry was dispatched late last week to the Middle East to reassure Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s arch-rival whose recent blunt criticism of U.S. policies in the region has shocked many observers, and its Gulf allies that Obama was indeed determined to prevent Iran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon. He will be travelling on to Israel later this week.

At the same time, Wendy Sherman, Washington’s chief negotiator at the P5+1 talks, appeared on Israel’s Channel 10 news programme to convey a similar message of the administration’s determination. Washington, she said, had no intention of abandoning key oil and banking sanctions until a comprehensive agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme was reached but was prepared to ease some sanctions as part of an interim confidence-building process.

She did not provide details on what a final agreement or interim measures would consist of. While Israel publicly insists that the price for lifting sanctions should be Iran’s total dismantling of its nuclear programme, experts here believe that is not a realistic goal.

“…[N]o matter how devastating the sanctions, no matter how persistent we are at the negotiating table, and no matter how credible the military option we are able to threaten – Iran will not agree to the maximalist terms that the Israeli government and some Americans advocate,” warned Robert Einhorn, who served as a top non-proliferation adviser at the State Department in Obama’s first term, in a widely-noted speech late last month in which he laid out details of what he called a “good deal,” as opposed to an “ideal” one.

The former would limit Iran’s ability to quickly achieve “breakout capability” – that is, to move quickly to build a nuclear weapon before the U.S. or the international community could take effective action against stop it. Such a deal would include, among other measures, a significantly enhanced inspection regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), strict limits on uranium enrichment (five percent), the number of centrifuges, and stockpiles of enriched uranium.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Women’s sexuality is one of the most sensitive battlefields within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Credit: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi/cc by 2.0

By Fariba Parsa
WASHINGTON, Nov 1 2013 (IPS)

While U.S. and Iranian negotiators prepare for another round of nuclear talks in Geneva next month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been silent about another matter that could be even more indicative of his willingness to take on hardline conservatives.

On Sept. 22, the Iranian parliament passed a law with an innocuous title but frightening potential. The “Protection of Children and Adolescents without Guardians or with Bad Guardians” allows a man to marry his stepdaughter or adopted daughter, in effect legalising child abuse.In Iran, women’s bodies are a political subject; control over their bodies is a reflection of political power.

The law repeals a previous piece of legislation passed by parliament in February that forbade such marriages. However, the Council of Guardians, a clerical body dominated by hardliners, disapproved the earlier law, finding it against sharia.

The latest iteration added an article (27) which says that a father may marry his stepdaughter or adopted daughter if the marriage is approved by the State Welfare Organisation and a court. In spite of this addition, many Iranians fear the new law will undermine the welfare of thousands of families with stepdaughters and adopted daughters.

Iranian women’s organisations and human rights activists both inside Iran and in the diaspora have organised massive protests against the law on Facebook. The rights groups and activists assert that the law legalises pedophilia, child abuse and rape under the guise of protecting children. Most Iranians were not aware of the controversy until the second bill passed in parliament last month.

Women’s sexuality is one of the most sensitive battlefields within the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Iran, women’s bodies are a political subject; control over their bodies is a reflection of political power. Women’s sexuality is a tool for Islamic conservatives to demonstrate their interpretation of Islamic ideology and identity.

While President Rouhani has talked repeatedly of his respect for women’s rights, he has been silent about the new law. In ratifying the law on Oct. 2, the 12 Islamic conservatives who make up the Council of Guardians demonstrated that they still have power and control over the most sensitive political matters. These are the same individuals who, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will approve or reject any nuclear compromise Rouhani makes with the United States.

Women’s activists are wondering whether Rouhani will speak out about the marriage law in the near future. If the president and his cabinet oppose this radical and immoral law, he will show that he supports democracy and equal rights for women. If he is silent, it will show that he either will not or cannot oppose the Islamic conservatives on a crucial matter.

Iranian women have shown that they have potential power to affect change in Iran in the direction of more democracy and human rights. Iranian women have been fighting for their rights for more than a century and the women’s movement began with the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. Beginning in the 1920s, women began to attend universities although they did not achieve the right to vote and be elected to office until 1963.

Women were also in the front lines of the 1979 revolution against the Shah. But the Islamic government that replaced the monarchy diminished women’s rights, scrapping the Shah’s progressive family law and reducing the legal age of marriage from 18 to nine.

A re-invigorated movement succeeded in raising the age to 13. Today the average age of marriage for girls is 24. Iranian women have also attained a high educational standard, comprising more than 60 percent of university students. Population growth has slowed as women have become more educated; the average number of children women bear has dropped from seven in 1960s to two in 2010.

Women are also the most organised element of Iranian society, with about 5,000 women’s groups. They work together to promote their rights despite differences in religious beliefs, ethnic identity and political factions.

The best known effort is the One Million Signatures Campaign for Gender Equality, which has been promoted by key figures including human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The campaign has mobilised several thousand women debating women’s rights and collecting signatures to change laws that discriminate against women.

More than 70 women’s activists were arrested and sent to prison for their participation in this campaign, which was the most organised element during the 2009 Green Movement. “Women will build democracy in Iran,” Ebadi has said.

A victory for Iranian women is a failure for Islamic conservatives who view controlling women’s sexuality and oppressing women’s organisations as part of conservatives’ fight for survival.

In negotiating with Iran about its nuclear programme, the Barack Obama administration should not forget about women’s rights and the need to strengthen civil society and support for human rights and democracy in Iran.

Fariba Parsa is a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Gender and Conflict, George Mason University School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif before the talks of E3/EU+3 in Geneva. Credit: EEAS/cc by 2.0

By Jasmin Ramsey
GENEVA, Oct 15 2013 (IPS)

Iran offered a new proposal in much-anticipated talks over its nuclear programme here Tuesday in a meeting with the P5+1 negotiating team comprising the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany.

In a closed-door morning session, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif presented a three-phased offer to the world powers in a PowerPoint presentation titled, “Closing an Unnecessary Crisis and Opening New Horizons,” according to Iranian press reports, although no details were made public.

Inside Iran, people remain hopeful for a resolution to the international conflict over Tehran’s nuclear programme, which has resulted in several rounds of unilateral and multilateral sanctions.

Iran’s economy has suffered from a major reduction in its vital oil exports. Almost exactly one year ago, Iran’s currency, the rial, dropped to more than half its dollar value.

Maliheh Ghasem Nezhad, a 65-year-old retired teacher, told IPS she had voted for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in June and was “very hopeful that this new team can finish this issue soon.”

“We want a conclusion that is good for us and our economy,” she said.

“No one in Iran wants nuclear bombs but we have the right to safe energy. We just want less stress in our daily lives,” Nezhad told IPS.

After years of increasing isolation and economic pressure from the U.S. and other world powers that intensified significantly during the final term of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, much of Iran seems at least open to a deal with the West.

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei raised more than a few eyebrows around the world when he said he wasn’t “opposed to correct diplomatic moves” during a Sep. 17 speech to commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to Iranian press reports.

“I believe in what was described years ago as heroic flexibility,” he said.

But some Iranians remain sceptical about the possibility of a deal.

“I do not think they can get to an agreement because from many sides there are a lot of pressures,” Bahman Taebi, a bank employee, told IPS.

“There are countries in our region that do not want Iran and the West to get close, so they try to do everything they can to impede an agreement,” he said, adding that he believed “Mr. Zarif and his team were very capable for the talks and much better than the previous teams.”

Still, the Iranian delegation’s trip to the United Nations General Assembly, which resulted in a historic phone call between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani and a private meeting between Zarif and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry — the highest-level official meet between the two countries since Iran’s 1979 revolution — have left Iranians wanting more.

“All I want Dr. Zarif and his team do in Geneva is to continue with the same approach they had in New York,” Reza Sabeti, a 47-year-old employee of a private firm, told IPS.

“From what saw in New York, I guess this will be another diplomatic victory for the Rouhani government and also for the U.S. because both sides need an agreement,” he said.

Few details, positive first takes

Iran’s proposal has only been made available to the participating negotiating parties, but both sides concluded the day with positive statements.

“For the first time, very detailed technical discussions continued this afternoon,” said Michael Mann, the spokesperson for EU High Representative Catherine Ashton.

A senior state department official offered the same statement.

Mann later reiterated his positive first take while speaking to reporters but said “there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Iran’s FM, who has been appointed by President Rouhani to lead the Iranian nuclear negotiating team, was only present during the morning session. The talks will continue through Oct. 16th at the deputy ministerial level.

Zarif is reportedly suffering from intense back pain and was bedridden during his trip to Geneva, but did, however, manage to have a bilateral meeting with Ashton following the afternoon plenary.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later met bilaterally with lead U.S. representative Wendy Sherman, the State Department’s under secretary for political affairs.

A Senior State Department official said the discussion was “useful, and we look forward to continuing our discussions in tomorrow’s meetings with the full P5+1 and Iran.”

Sense of Iran’s new proposal

“We have explained our negotiation goals,” said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Persian to a swarming crowd of reporters before the afternoon session began.

“We want to guarantee Iran’s right to nuclear technology and assure the other side of the table that our nuclear programme is peaceful,” said the deputy FM, who will be Iran’s lead representative to the P5+1 during the remainder of the Geneva talks.

“The first step includes rebuilding mutual trust and addressing the concerns of both sides,” he said, adding that the “verification tools” of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could be utilised during the process.

The final step includes using Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Fatwa (a religious ruling) against Iran building nuclear weapons as “the most important point,” stated Araghchi.

“Iran will use its own nuclear facilities including its nuclear research reactor for peaceful purposes,” he noted, adding that the last phase of Iran’s offer includes “the lifting of all sanctions against Iran.”

Roadblocks in the U.S.

But Iran’s insistence that its right to home-soil enrichment must be recognised as part of any deal remains a problem for the U.S. Congress.

In an Oct. 11 bipartisan letter sent to Obama, 10 senators said “Iran does have a right to a peaceful nuclear energy program; it does not have a right to enrichment.”

The senators, including traditional hawks Sen. Robert Menendez, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, as well as more moderate Democrats, said they “prepared to move forward with new sanctions to increase pressure on the government in Tehran.”

“The administration has to do much more hard lobbying to prevent Congress from enacting measures that could spoil the chance for a sound agreement with Iran,” Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst, told IPS.

“The presence of names of otherwise reasonable members of Congress on such letters is evidence of the political power of those endeavouring to subvert the negotiation of any agreement with Iran,” he said.

The day that the much-heralded new round of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 world powers opens might seem like the wrong day to pick up Unthinkable, Kenneth Pollack’s new exploration of what to do if talks fail.

After all, the Iranian side talked almost giddily on Saturday about setting a road map by Wednesday for an agreement that would freeze Iran’s nuclear programme and subject it to inspection in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

More than a few in Washington — Pollack, who says a negotiated outcome along those lines is the best possible outcome, among them — will be hoping that this week’s talks begin to move toward making Pollack’s thesis irrelevant.

Pollack’s central point is this: negotiations have failed before and are likely to do so again. The lure of regime change is also likely to continue to disappoint. This leaves Western policymakers two options: a military attack on Iran or a policy of containment.

Pollack explores all four options, and Western policymakers’ and analysts’ views of the pros and cons at length to reach his conclusion: all options are bad, but containment is more likely to produce less bad results for U.S. interests, and thus is to be preferred.

Between the clashing interests, painful history, and forces on both sides that do not favour agreement, it seems all too likely that the data and arguments Pollack marshals will be needed along the way. For whatever happens in Geneva this week, it is likely to be the barest beginning of a process that must play out primarily in the internal politics of both societies.

Thus the book’s chief weakness — that it fails to explore much that might happen outside Washington’s interests defined as they have been for the last several decades, or why they are defined that way — is also its strength. Pollack’s sense of the Beltway milieu combines the anthropologist and the bureaucrat, making the book an almost encyclopedic reference of any claim you are likely to hear about the US’ Iran policy.

Most, in fact, are presented more lucidly by Pollack than by their own champions. For that reason alone, the book deserves to be widely read, and will improve the quality of debate if it is.

Like his 2001 book The Threatening Storm: The Case For Invading Iraq, Unthinkable is perfectly timed to condense and crystallise a Washington policy debate. Like its predecessor, Unthinkable seeks to shift the terms of debate by layering a counter-intuitive argument over densely-argued, fact-heavy analysis, in the style of the CIA analyst Pollack once was.

He presents an excellent, thorough and readable summary of U.S. concerns, priorities and policy options for preventing Iran’s nuclear programme from threatening U.S. interests or compromising U.S. freedom of action. He works unusually hard to both acknowledge and present even-handedly the favourite concerns of various ideological factions in Washington; he references enough past U.S. misdeeds to keep the left engaged and enough Iranian aggressions to hold the right’s attention.

One other aspect of this volume makes it highly unusual for a product of the think-tank industrial complex (to which, full disclosure, this reviewer also belongs). It is the use, over and over again, of the words “humility” and “uncertainty.”

The phrase “limited U.S. knowledge of Iran” has 11 entries in the index. “U.S. invasion of Iraq” has 22 — of which at least one-third are Pollack noting things that the U.S. intelligence community, decision-makers, and he personally got wrong in the run-up to that war. He explores, again and again, what it would mean if Western intelligence were to be similarly mistaken about Iran — either seeing a full weapons programme where none existed or missing a dash for a bomb until it was too late to do anything but respond to one’s existence.

Readers who have sought this kind of accountability and acknowledgement in U.S. planning since the Iraq debacle should seek out this book. Yet they will not like all of what they find. No readers will, for even as Pollack faithfully considers all sides’ orthodoxies on Iran he pokes holes in… most of them.

On negotiations: “There is real reason to doubt that its government will make meaningful compromises on its nuclear programme despite the painful impact of the sanctions.”

On sanctions:  “The problem is that, historically, sanctions don’t work that way.”

On an Israeli strike: “Israel does not have a good military option. And that is why it would be better for everyone – Israel, the United States, the rest of the world, maybe even the Iranian people, too – if Israel were not to attack Iran.”

On a U.S. strike: “We could end up paying all of those costs and risks without getting any of the advantages.”

On containment: “I expect that a nuclear Iran would become more aggressive in its support for terrorism, insurgents, and other subversive groups.”

His dispassionate tone breaks down, however, in his flirtation with a regime change strategy. A book of 400 pages devotes barely three to the dangers and difficulties of regime change.

Pollack explores the difficulty in making the case that military action against Iran would be legal under international law, but fails to mention that regime change is also proscribed except under the most extreme circumstances. Nor does Pollack consider at much length which Iranian interests and behaviours could be expected to change with the regime, and which of those will not.

A more secular Iranian regime might still seek regional hegemony and nuclear weapons and fight against Sunnis across the region, for example.

Pollack gets out from under his dilemma by saying that his prescription is only that Washington should seriously explore the possibility of regime change. Intellectually, this is a bit of a cop-out; practically, however, in the Beltway milieu for which this book was written it is a strength. Pollack cannot be accused of being a dove.

That a serious analyst with a yearning to remake societies by force would look at the Iran case and conclude that ultimately, realpolitik, negotiations and if necessary, containment are the better choices ought to give pause to the broad swath of Washington that talks glibly about what options are “off the table” and what are “on” it.

Heather Hurlburt is a Senior Advisor at the National Security Network. She served on Capitol Hill as a speechwriter to President Bill Clinton, and a speechwriter and member of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (far left) sitting next to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 27. Credit: European External Action Service/cc by 2.0

By Jasmin Ramsey
GENEVA, Oct 13 2013 (IPS)

Almost exactly four months after the election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, talks over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear programme will resume here on Tuesday.

Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) were last held in April in Almaty, Kazakhstan, when the Iranian team was headed by former presidential candidate Saeed Jalili, a hardliner who was defeated by the moderate cleric in Iran’s June election.“No one should expect a decade-old impasse to be resolved in just two days." -- Ali Vaez of ICG

The closest Iran came to reaching a nuclear deal under Jalili’s watch was in October 2009 when his direct meeting with then under-secretary of state William Burns resulted in a tentative agreement that included transferring most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed into fuel rods for medical purposes.

But hopes were dashed when “Iran’s tumultuous post-election environment, combined with a lack of transparency regarding the agreement’s details, led to opposition across the political spectrum,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.

“Eventually the inability of both Jalili and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to convince others in Iran that the agreement included an explicit acceptance of Iran’s enrichment programme led to Leader Ali Khamenei’s withdrawal of support for the agreement,” she said.

Iran’s new team

Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiating chief (2003-05) who has promised “moderation” and “constructive interaction with the world,” has raised hopes among Iranians that his administration will secure a deal that will include relief from the many rounds of sanctions Iran is currently enduring.

His trip with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to New York last month resulted in Iran’s highest-level formal direct meeting with a U.S. official since its 1979 revolution.

Zarif was “optimistic” after meeting with the P5+1 and a private 30-minute discussion with Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 27.

“Now we have to match our words with action. And that’s, I hope, not a challenge,” the Western-educated diplomat said at the end of a talk by Rouhani.

The meeting was followed by a brief but cordial phone call between President Barack Obama and Rouhani that suggested a thaw in the icy relations of the two countries.

While Obama’s announcement that Kerry would be directly involved in negotiations with Iran was received positively by diplomacy advocates, the secretary of state is not expected to attend the Geneva talks, where the U.S. lead representative will continue to be Wendy Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs.

That the U.S. side will now include Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury agency that administers and enforces sanctions (OFAC), also indicates the U.S. is evaluating its sanctions policy.

Zarif will only reportedly attend an introductory session of the two-day talks (Oct. 15-16) that will include EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton. The Iranian side will then be led by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to Iranian press reports.

“I am reassured by the possibility that the Iranian side will be led by Minister Zarif, because he is a brilliant diplomat, and by the hints that the purpose of the meeting is for Iran to present ideas and for the others to get clarification and report back to Principals,” Peter Jenkins, who served as the UK’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2001-06), told IPS.

“But problems could arise if either side sought to move too far too fast, meaning that they demanded commitments from the other side without volunteering commitments of their own,” he said.

Leaks and speculation

“We will present our views, as agreed, in Geneva, not before. No Rush, No Speculations Please (of course if you can help it!!!),” tweeted Zarif from his official account on Oct. 11.

Two days earlier, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani seemed to suggest that Iran was willing to talk about its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium.

“We have some surplus, you know, the amount that we don’t need. But over that we can have some discussions,” Larijani, currently Iran’s Parliament Speaker, told the Associated Press on the sidelines of an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Geneva.

The Iranian parliament’s news website later described those comments as “contrary to reality and baseless,” according to a translation by Al-Monitor.

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile reported on Oct. 9 that Iran has been preparing a proposal that’s very similar to the P5+1’s Almaty proposal.

The P5+1’s last confidence-building offer, which Iran did not formally respond to, included demands that Iran suspend 20-percent enrichment, ship some of its existing uranium stockpiles abroad and temporarily shutter its Fordow enrichment facility in return for relief from U.S. and EU sanctions on precious metals and petrochemicals and on sanctions targeting Iran’s airline industry.

On Sunday, the Iranian Student News Agency reported that Iran would be presenting a three-phased proposal that includes enrichment inside Iran.

Later that day, negotiator Araqchi was quoted saying “Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of [uranium] enrichment, but the shipping of materials out of the country is our red line,” according to Reuters.

Experts, however, urge caution on these reports.

“Unsubstantiated leaks so far have only created inflated hopes that could be dangerous and lead to disappointment,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

“No one should expect a decade-old impasse to be resolved in just two days…At best, the two sides could narrow their differences on the broad contours of an end game and a road map for getting there,” he said.

Restricted timeframe 

Rouhani stressed in New York last month that he hopes a deal can be reached within three to six months. After that point hardliners could regain the upper hand domestically if Rouhani’s foreign policy has not resulted in any wins for Iran.

Meanwhile Congress is preparing to push forward more sanctions legislation.

The Senate Banking Committee agreed to delay the evaluation of a sanctions bill passed in July that further targets Iran’s oil exports after pressure from Kerry, but will proceed in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times.

When asked how increased sanctions would affect the diplomatic process, Farhi said “it depends on whether some sort of agreement is reached in Geneva or not.”

“With no agreement, the imposition of sanctions will be the public announcement of failure of talks. If there is an agreement and the U.S. Congress still insists on ratcheting up sanctions, then it is yet another announcement of Obama’s political weakness,” the Iran expert told IPS.

“I hope that all parties have enough foresight to know that, given the publicly expressed desire to resolve the issue, this is the time for flexibility and a step by step process of mutual trust building for the sake of avoiding a path that neither side desires,” said Farhi.

Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands behind the conversation and how deep the ties are between America and Iran.”

Never mind that there are no “ties” between Washington and Tehran, let alone “deep” ones. His article reflected concern among Saudis that the United States might negotiate some wide-ranging settlement of its issues with Iran and that any such deal would automatically be detrimental to Saudi interests.

Such anxiety has surfaced in Riyadh many times over the past two decades, dating to Madeleine Albright’s unsuccessful efforts to reach out to Iran when she was secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s second term. No doubt many prominent Saudis share the journalist’s sentiment, not just in the ruling family but in the Sunni religious establishment.

In their short-sighted view, regional security is a zero-sum game: if it benefits Iran, it must be bad for Saudi Arabia. To this group, as the authors of a major RAND Corp. study noted in 2009, “the prospect of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement (or even near-term coordination on Iraq) would appear to jeopardize the privileged position Riyadh has long enjoyed in Gulf affairs.”

Since that study appeared, Saudi antipathy to Iran has only increased. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, its all-out support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its perceived instigation of civil unrest in Bahrain have exacerbated Saudi anxieties and reinforced the kingdom’s determination to keep Iran isolated and economically constrained.

At the same time, the Saudi perception that the United States abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally, and might do the same to them if regional circumstances changed, has led some Saudis to doubt the long-term reliability of the United States as anchor of the kingdom’s security. Their doubts were not alleviated when panelists at a Gulf security conference in Washington earlier this year projected a reversal of the regional alignment over the coming decade, with Iran emerging as more friendly to the United States and Saudi Arabia less so.

The Saudis have also been peeved about the inability of the United States to deliver on its commitment to a two-state solution that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That diplomatic stalemate has allowed Iran, which refuses to acknowledge Israel’s existence and openly supports Hezbollah, to present itself to the Arab world as the true champion of justice for the Palestinians, as opposed to the Saudis, who have offered a comprehensive plan for peace with Israel.

Furthermore, the Saudis went all-in to try to engineer the ouster of Assad, believing that they were in tune with U.S. policy. Now they may be feeling exposed as the United States and Russia appear to be pursuing a different course.

And it is certainly true that many of Saudi Arabia’s leading officials, including some diplomats in the foreign ministry, harbor a deep loathing for, and suspicion of, all things Shia. A softer U.S. line on Iran would not make those Saudis more comfortable in the bilateral relationship.

Moreover, the Rouhani initiative, assuming it is genuine rather than cosmetic, coincides with a growing realization in Saudi Arabia that the United States is becoming steadily less dependent on Gulf oil. Could the Obama administration’s announced shift of strategic resources to Asia presage a reduction of U.S. commitments in the Gulf? Senior U.S. officials say no: Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few months ago that “You can take it to the bank” that the U.S. will maintain its posture in the Gulf for the foreseeable future.

Thus, recent reports of anxiety in Riyadh about a possible shift in relations between Washington and Tehran were predictable, and may well have some basis in fact.

But there are also Saudis who understand that a better relationship between Washington and Tehran might actually benefit the kingdom. After all, the two countries shared a strategic alignment with the United States before the Iranian revolution.

In that era, Iran was far more powerful than Saudi Arabia militarily and economically, but the Saudis did not perceive it as a strategic threat, partly because it was influenced by the United States and partly because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq provided a protective buffer — a buffer that the United States dismantled with its invasion of Iraq a decade ago.

Even during the past decade, when tensions were high over Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and other issues, the Saudis and Iranians found ways to work cooperatively when it was in the interests of both countries. “Such calculations often take place independently of U.S. pressure or encouragement,” the RAND report noted, adding that in past times of tension with Washington the Saudis have been more flexible, rather than less so, in their regional rivalries.

“With the ‘moderation’ discourse strengthened during the presidency of recently elected Hassan Rouhani, pragmatism will be enhanced in Iran’s regional policy,” the columnist Kayhan Barzegar, an experienced analyst of Gulf affairs, predicted in the online magazine al-Monitor after Rouhani was inaugurated.

“This development will weaken the existing ‘mutual threat’ perception between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is rooted primarily in the policies of both countries in response to regional issues. Such a development will also consequently strengthen relations between the two.

“Iran and Saudi Arabia are not interested in an intensification of sectarian or geostrategic regional rivalries. They are well aware that such rivalries will eventually be instrumentalized and used politically, draining energy from both sides. The result will be increased instability and growth of extremist trends in their backyard. Conflict between the two also provides an opportunity for other rival actors, such as Turkey and Qatar, to play an active role in regional issues at their expense, such as happened with the Syrian crisis, which is not currently welcomed by the Iranians or the Saudis.”

In fact, there are several ways in which a lessening of tensions between Iran and the United States could actually benefit Saudi Arabia. To achieve some form of rapprochement with the United States now, Iran would be required to forgo definitively any attempt to build or acquire nuclear weapons — a development that could hardly be depicted as detrimental to Saudi interests.

The United States would also press Iran to curtail the aggressive policies that have destabilised the region for years. If Iran’s leaders truly want relief from international economic sanctions, they will have to persuade the countries that imposed them that they will be good neighbours to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Would that not assuage some of the security concerns that have prompted Saudi Arabia to spend tens of billions of dollars on new U.S. weapons?

If Iran were to curtail its support for Hezbollah in order to improve relations with Washington and the West, it might forfeit its position as “more Arab than the Arabs” on the issue of Israel, another development that could be to Saudi Arabia’s advantage.

And Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbours such as Qatar might no longer feel the need to hedge their bets by keeping some distance between themselves and Saudi Arabia and maintaining correct relations with Iran, thus facilitating Saudi Arabia’s desire to exert the regional leadership to which it feels entitled.

On a visit to South Asia when she was secretary of state, Albright chided the Pakistanis for opposing a U.S. initiative to expand economic ties with India. The initiative was not aimed at undermining Pakistan, she said, and might actually be helpful if an expanding Indian economy brought greater cross-border trade.

The Pakistanis didn’t buy it, but that did not diminish the validity of her message. It might be useful now for Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry to explain to the Saudis that any deal with Iran will be a long time in the making and will not damage U.S. ties with Riyadh unless the Saudis want it that way.

Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 1, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 2 2013 (IPS)

Like the proverbial skunk at the garden party, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his turn at the podium at the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday to pour scorn on Iran’s new president, 96 hours after a smiling Hassan Rouhani departed New York after a momentous four-day stay that raised unprecedented hopes for détente with the United States and the West.

Echoing his early assessment of the Iranian leader, Netanyahu described Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wolf who thinks he can pull the eyes – the wool over the eyes of the international community”. He demanded that Iran completely abandon its nuclear programme as the price for lifting existing sanctions against Tehran.“Clearly, Rouhani had scored some points in his latest visit. This was Netanyahu's way of trying to even the score." -- Gary Sick

“The international community has Iran on the ropes,” Netanyahu said in reference to U.S.-led economic sanctions. “If you want to knock out Iran’s nuclear weapons programme peacefully, don’t let up the pressure. Keep it up.

“If Iran advances its nuclear weapons program during negotiations, strengthen the sanctions,” he added.

In a speech that dwelt almost exclusively on Iran, the Israeli leader also suggested, as he has oftentimes in the past, that he was prepared to order unilateral military action against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he declared. “And in standing alone, Israel will know that we are defending many, many others.”

Netanyahu’s speech, which came just four days after a telephone conversation between Rouhani and Barack Obama – the first between the leaders of the U.S. and Iran since 1979, followed a more restrained performance by the Israeli leader here Monday during his White House meeting with the U.S. president.

At that meeting, he contented himself with advising that Iran’s “conciliatory words must be met with real actions” – a point which Obama himself has stressed since last week’s momentous events – although Netanyahu also emphasised that “the ultimate test of a future agreement with Iran is whether or not Iran dismantles its military nuclear programme.”

Netanyahu’s appearance here and at the U.N. this week in some ways could not come at a worse time for the Israeli leader for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the extremely positive impression left behind by Rouhani and his foreign minister and former U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif.

Zarif remains in New York both to continue consultations with key U.S. opinion-shapers and prepare for the Oct. 15-16 negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The message conveyed repeatedly by both Iranians in an intense, seemingly non-stop stream of meetings with influential media figures, Iranian Americans, think-tank scholars, and former senior U.S. diplomats and other officials – not to mention Thursday’s 30-minute one-on-one exchange between Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the P5+1 attended by Zarif – was that Tehran was prepared to negotiate verifiable limits to its nuclear programme so long as its right to enrich uranium under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was recognised and sanctions were lifted.

After those meetings were capped by Obama’s 15-minute phone call to Rouhani as the latter was being driven to JFK airport for his return flight to Iran, the atmosphere surrounding the visit turned almost euphoric, comparable in some ways to Washington’s rapprochement with China in the early 1970s.

Media commentators on weekend talk shows and columnists in U.S. newspapers called the visit “historic” and a potential “turning point” in U.S. relations with a country which it has treated as an enemy for some 34 years.

“The Israeli government has clearly been rattled by the Iranian charm offensive,” noted the New York Times in what has to be considered an understatement given what it called the “dizzying diplomatic developments” set off by Rouhani’s visit.

But aside from being thrown off-balance by Rouhani’s success, Netanyahu also faced an unusual public-relations problem this week: Tuesday’s partial shutdown of the U.S. government resulting from the budgetary impasse between the White House and the Republican-led House of Representatives dominated the news agenda, effectively diminishing Netanyahu’s customary command of the media spotlight and hence, his message.

But even his message – particularly, his demands that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear programme and abandon its right to enrich under the NPT – has come to be viewed by a large consensus of Iran and foreign-policy specialists here as a non-starter for negotiations and clearly identifies Israel as a spoiler.

“We all know that the chance of a [negotiated] settlement is reduced to near zero when we start with pre-conditions that Iran must totally dismantle its entire scientific infrastructure,” said Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan.

“Limits yes, but the days of zero or near-zero centrifuges are long past,” he told IPS.

Indeed, key figures in the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross, counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a spin-off of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has argued for more than a year that Washington should test Iran on whether it will accept strict limits on its enrichment programme and, if so, accept it in exchange for eliminating sanctions.

Indeed, as early as 2011, when Ross was still serving as Obama’s chief Iran aide, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly hinted that Washington could eventually accept a peaceful nuclear programme that included some enrichment capabilities.

Even as Rouhani’s U.N. sojourn was unfolding last week, David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), another major Israel lobby group, warned Netanyahu that his dismissive attitude – as evidenced then by Israel’s boycott of Rouhani’s speech to the General Assembly — toward the Iranian leader risked isolating Israel.

“Did [the boycott] help or hurt Israel to make its case?” he asked in Israel’s ‘Haaretz’ newspaper. “Some would argue it helped by stressing the danger and willingness to act, even if alone. Others, however, would say that Israel only demonstrated its unwillingness to hear the message, even if Rouhani turns out to be, say, the next Mikhail Gorbachev.”

Indeed, Sick said Netanyahu sounded “defensive and shrill” in his U.N. speech Tuesday. “Clearly, Rouhani had scored some points in his latest visit. This was Netanyahu’s way of trying to even the score.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

From Tehran’s perspective, the current negotiations between Iran and the United States may be best described as a wrestling match.

Before President Hassan Rouhani’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke of “heroic leniency” toward the United States. Subsequently, Khamenei’s office issued a telling graphic that depicted a set of guidelines for negotiations. The graphic also called to mind an Iranian zoorkhaneh, or house of strength, where men perform traditional weightlifting and wrestling, one of the most popular sports in Iran.

According to Khamenei, the Islamic Republic is willing to engage its enemy, or show “flexibility,” in order to win the overall competition. However, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards have also laid out clear red lines for Rouhani. He is to demonstrate no weakness or “humility” with the opponent, the United States. And he should not weaken Iran’s ties and alliances with Islamic and resistance groups, especially Hezbollah.

Rouhani’s recent charm offensive has greatly raised expectations amongst those wishing for U.S.-Iran reconciliation. However, this is not Rouhani’s mandate; rather, the Islamic Republic has tasked him with negotiating the nuclear crisis away and alleviating pressures faced by the regime. Although this may not seem the perfect outcome, it nevertheless presents a unique opportunity for the United States.

It is unlikely that Khamenei and his supporters will ever change their fundamental views of America. Suspicion of the United States may be motivated by religious and cultural values, but only to a limited extent. The regime’s revolutionary ideology and geopolitical interests play a bigger role.

Khamenei sees the global order as tilted in the West’s favour. The United States is the latest of a long line of imperialist powers that have attempted to dominate the Middle East. He views his regime, which replaced Iran’s last monarch, as the focal point of resistance to Western domination.

This has meant an Iranian policy of containment with limited engagement in which Iran limits and rolls back Washington’s influence while pursuing diplomacy when it suits regime “expediency.” (The United States has also pursued a similar policy of containment).

Khamenei has said that he does not oppose negotiating with the United States in principle as long as it does not violate Iran’s interests.

For a long time, his policy seemed to work. Iran carved out a sphere of influence from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, and could count on its allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond to help maintain its interests. Iran’s economy, while never great, functioned and at times prospered until the imposition of the most punishing sanctions.

Iran earned an estimated 500 billion dollars from oil and natural gas sales during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, while its nuclear programme progressed in the face of Western opposition. Khamenei was willing to engage the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to enhance Iran’s influence, and no more.

But Ahmadinejad’s monumental incompetence made Iran the loser, not the champion. Iran’s economy is in the dumps, the people are unhappy, and Tehran’s regional influence is in decline. Khamenei needed a new wrestler, and Rouhani appears more than capable. He can manage the economy, negotiate away sanctions, and give the Iranian people a bit more freedom, but not too much.

It is not too surprising that Rouhani did not shake President Obama’s hand during the United Nations General Assembly confab. He may have a mandate to negotiate, but he cannot appear to be weak in the face of the enemy. Khamenei’s “heroic leniency” means a well-defined set of red lines and parametres, rather than gestures that call into question the very purpose of the wrestling match.

However, this does not mean that Rouhani’s diplomacy is false or that Khamenei is merely buying time. In the past, U.S. engagement with Iran has produced results. Iran’s support was crucial in establishing the government of Hamid Karzai after the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Limited engagement with Iran focusing on the nuclear programme and perhaps even Syria can work.

Real U.S. wrestlers have competed with Iranians, and have always been greeted in Iran with open arms. However, no one should expect Rouhani to change the dynamics between Iran and the United States, or apparently, to even offer his hand in friendship. The wrestling match is not over, but for now some flexibility from both sides can ensure a managed rivalry, rather than a bloody mess between a beleaguered superpower and its frustrated but determined regional rival.

Alireza Nader is a senior international policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

While the U.S. and Iranian heads of state have yet to meet, the 68^th session of the United Nations General Assembly may mark a new era between the two countries.

After more than 30 years of frozen US-Iran relations, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday during his address to the world body that Secretary of State John Kerry would be directly involved in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.“As Javad [Zarif] has said, now is the time to stop behaving like carpet merchants." -- William Luers of the Iran Project

Obama’s announcement comes on the heels of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s decision earlier this month to move Iran’s nuclear negotiating file from the Supreme National Security Council to its Foreign Ministry headed by Kerry’s counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Kerry and Zarif are scheduled to meet on Thursday, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton announced on Monday, adding that Zarif and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) would meet in Geneva in October.

The Kerry-Zarif meeting would be the highest-level formal encounter of the two countries since the 1979 U.N. General Assembly when then Secretary of State Cyrus Vance met with Provisional Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi seven months after the Islamic Revolution, according to Columbia University Professor Gary Sick.

“It’s very important if what Obama said meant that Kerry will be negotiating with Zarif directly and permanently,” Iran expert Trita Parsi told IPS.

“The U.S. would then be investing more in the diplomatic process, which means more political will and a greater cost of failure, and that is exactly what we need to overcome the political obstacles,” said the president of the National Iranian American Council.

The “mistrust” between the U.S. and Iran “has deep roots”, Obama said before acknowledging the U.S. role in “overthrowing an Iranian government” as part of U.S. “interference” in Iranian affairs.

Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, addresses the general debate of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Sarah Fretwell

He went on to cite some of Washington’s own grievances, including the 1979 Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and Iran threatening Israel “with destruction”.

But in a speech that emphasised the importance of pursuing diplomacy before resorting to force in securing U.S. interests, Obama’s message on Iran was clear.

“We should be able to achieve a resolution that respects the rights of the Iranian people, while giving the world confidence that the Iranian programme is peaceful,” he said.

“The fascinating thing is that he’s talking to multiple audiences and re-explaining to Americans why negotiating with Iran is the way to go,” Heather Hurlburt, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, told IPS.

“We are not seeking regime change and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.  Instead, we insist that the Iranian government meet its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.N. Security Council resolutions,” said Obama.

“He’s signaling to Iran that we’re prepared for mutual rights and mutual respect at a moment when the Iranians seem more ready to hear that than in past and he’s signaling how we see that piece of the puzzle fitting in with other regional issues,” noted Hurlburt, who heads the DC-based National Security Network.

While Zarif listened to Obama’s morning address in the General Assembly auditorium, no U.S. delegate was visible during Rouhani’s afternoon speech.

For Iran’s part, Rouhani did not attend a lunch hosted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at which Obama was present. Iran also reportedly rejected a U.S. offer for an encounter earlier in the day.

But some experts suggest that too much attention has been placed on an Obama-Rouhani meeting.

“Expectations are already high on both sides but if nothing concrete is ready, a meeting without something solid would be damaging for each president,” William Luers, a former senior U.S. official and ambassador, told IPS in an email.

“As Javad [Zarif] has said, now is the time to stop behaving like ‘carpet merchants’,” said the director of the prominent Iran Project.

“Zarif and Kerry are as good a pair as we could ask for to find out whether diplomacy can succeed. We all believe it can. The handshakes can wait,” he said.

“The important development is that both sides appear to be serious at pursuing direct talks at a high level, and the important issue is whether those talks will make substantive progress,” international relations expert Stephen Walt told IPS.

“A brief meeting between Obama and Rouhani would have been stagecraft, but not statecraft,” said the Harvard Kennedy Professor.

During his speech, Iran’s president spoke strongly against foreign military intervention in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, and against the rounds of sanctions that have been imposed on Iran.

“Unjust sanctions, as manifestation of structural violence, are intrinsically inhumane and against peace. And contrary to the claims of those who pursue and impose them, it is not the states and the political elite that are targeted, but rather, it is the common people who are victimised,” he said.

“Rouhani had the delicate task of delivering a speech that addresses multiple audiences, and the first part of his speech, especially the part about the sanctions, was addressing a domestic hardline audience,” Yasmin Alem, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told IPS.

“The second part was about Iran’s commitment to constructive dialogue and its willingness to negotiate and reach a settlement,” said the Iran expert.

“Iran seeks constructive engagement with other countries based on mutual respect and common interest, and within the same framework does not seek to increase tensions with the United States,” said the Iranian president, adding that he “listened carefully” to Obama’s speech.

“Commensurate with the political will of the leadership in the United States and hoping that they will refrain from following the short-sighted interest of warmongering pressure groups, we can arrive at a framework to manage our differences,” said the recently elected centrist cleric, who served as a nuclear negotiator under reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

“It was interesting to hear him to talk about how we can ‘manage’ relations,” Alem told IPS.

“Iran is still a long way from establishing normal relations with the U.S. and this echoes Obama’s words this morning in saying all that is down the road,” said Alem.

“It’s a good sign that both leaders are clear about the situation and on the same page,” she said.

President Barack Obama talks with Amb. Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sept. 12, 2013. Credit: White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 24 2013 (IPS)

On the eve of a possible – if seemingly accidental – encounter between U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the corridors of the U.N. Secretariat building Tuesday, speculation over the possibility of détente between Washington and Tehran has become rampant.

A series of conciliatory statements and steps taken by both sides in recent weeks has fuelled the imaginations of foreign policy mavens here, with some warning against possible U.S. “appeasement” of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called, in a reference to Rouhani, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, and others giddy with the possibilities of ending 34 years of mutual hostility.

So far, the former group, which has clearly been spooked by the remarkably successful public relations offensive conducted by Rouhani and his less-than-two-month-old government, is more vocal, particularly in the Congress where the Israel lobby enjoys its greatest influence.

But among the traditional foreign policy elite and Iran specialists, the optimists appear dominant, encouraged and very pleasantly surprised by developments on the Iranian side of the past few weeks.

Not the least of these was last week’s clear alignment, at least for now, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – regarded as the ultimate “decider” when it comes to matters of foreign and strategic policy – behind Rouhani in an appearance before the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Not only did Khamenei call for “heroic flexibility” in negotiating a resolution to the long-running stand-off with the U.S.-led West over Tehran’s nuclear programme in a joint appearance with Rouhani. He also backed up the new president in reminding the IRGC, long regarded as a potential spoiler in any détente strategy, that the Islamic Republic’s founder, the revered Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had warned against its involvement in politics.

“To the best of my knowledge, the Supreme Leader has never made a statement like that; nor has anybody at a senior level made a public reference to Khomeini’s injunction. I don’t think you’ll ever get a clearer statement,” according to Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served on the National Security Council during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.

“To me, that sounded like an endorsement of what Rouhani was doing and warning …that, ‘if you’re thinking about a spoiling operation, think again’,” he told IPS.

The current speculation goes beyond a possible resolution of Iran’s nuclear programme to include possible cooperation on regional security issues, including Syria and Afghanistan.

It comes as both Obama and Rouhani prepare to address the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, a coincidence that has already sparked debate over the pros and cons of the two men “accidentally” meeting and exchanging greetings or more as they pass through the building’s hallways.

Republican leaders generally opposed the idea, while Democrats offered wary support Monday. At the same time, half a dozen activist groups, including MoveOn.org and Win Without War, submitted on-line petitions with nearly 111,000 signatures calling on Obama to meet with Rouhani, while the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal warned that such a move would confer on Iran’s “dictatorship new international prestige at zero cost”.

While such a rendezvous would undoubtedly carry considerable symbolic importance, of more practical significance may have been the announcement after a bilateral meeting Monday between Rouhani’s foreign minister, Javad Mohammad Zarif, and his European Union counterpart, Catherine Ashton, that Zarif, a U.S.-educated former U.N. ambassador, will take part in a meeting of the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this week.

Secretary of State John Kerry is also expected to attend the meeting, a prelude to a long-awaited negotiating session to take place in Geneva next month and the highest-level meeting of the two countries since the 1979 U.N. General Assembly when then Secretary Cyrus Vance met with Provisional Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi seven months after the Islamic Revolution, according to Sick.

Meanwhile, however, speculation about the possibility of détente continues apace. Of central importance, according to experts here, will be whether the two sides can agree relatively quickly on interim confidence-building measures (CBMs) surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, at the very least – something that is likely to be touched on in the P5+1 meeting later this week and explored more fully next month.

At issue here is whether and to what extent the U.S. and its partners should offer sanctions relief – or pile on more pressure – in exchange for Iran’s implementation of CBMs. Most Iran experts here believe that there should be a reciprocal process and that Washington should be prepared to offer more relief than it has tabled in the past.

But Netanyahu, who will address the General Assembly later this week and meet with Obama next week, argues that the West should actually tighten existing sanctions and add new ones until Iran effectively abandons its nuclear programme altogether. In the meantime, he is demanding that Obama take steps to make more credible his pledge to take military action, if necessary, to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Lawmakers close to the Israel lobby from both parties are urging much the same line. One letter to Obama from Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer released Monday said there should be “absolutely no relaxing of pressure on the Iranians until the entirety of their nuclear situation has been addressed” and warned that “(r)emoval of any existing sanctions must depend on Iran’s halting of its nuclear program.”

Apart from the nuclear front, speculation about U.S.-Iranian cooperation on regional issues has grown quickly in the wake of the U.S.-Russian accord on placing Syria’s chemical weapons under international control, particularly since Rouhani and Zarif have endorsed it.

Obama himself has hinted that he is prepared to lift U.S. opposition to Iran’s participation in a Geneva II conference to end the civil war in Syria, while Washington’s chief envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Amb. James Dobbins, suggested to IPS last week that Iran could play a useful role in the transition in Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO troops withdraw their combat forces next year as it did at the Bonn Conference 10 years ago.

Both moves, but particularly its involvement in Syria peace talks, would offer Iran something it has long sought: de facto recognition of its importance in a revised regional security structure – a move to which U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel have long been opposed.

“Obama will face potent opposition from Israel, its supporters in the United States, and countries like Saudi Arabia,” wrote Harvard international relations professor Stephen Walt on his foreignpolicy.com blog Friday. “These actors would rather keep Washington and Tehran at odds forever, and it’s a safe bet that they will do everything they can to run out the clock and thwart this latest attempt to turn a corner in the troubled U.S. relationship with Iran.”

Nonetheless, “(t)he opportunity for a breakthrough with Iran after 34 years of isolation is tantalizing for Obama and his foreign-policy team,” wrote David Ignatius, a columnist with excellent access to senior administration officials and whose views often represent those of the senior foreign-policy elite, in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month. Credit: UN Photo/Kate Schafer

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Sep 17 2013 (IPS)

In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.

“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to overcome their differences regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, if there begins to be some progress in that regard, then I do see opportunities for dialogue and cooperation on a broader range of issues, including my issues, which is to say Afghanistan,” Ambassador James F. Dobbins, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS at a press briefing here Monday.

This summer’s election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric with centrist and reformist backing as well as close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been followed by signals that Iran may be positioning itself to agree to a deal over its controversial nuclear programme.

Rouhani’s appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to oversee Iran’s nuclear dossier has been received positively here by leading foreign policy elites who consider Zarif a worthy negotiating partner.

The Western-educated former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, which could lead to a resumption of diplomatic ties that were halted following a 2011 storming of the British embassy in Tehran by a group of protestors.

Dobbins, who worked closely with Zarif in 2001 after being appointed by the George W. Bush administration to aid the establishment of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, told IPS that “Iran was quite helpful” with the task.

“I think it’s unfortunate that our cooperation, which was, I think, genuine and important back in 2001, wasn’t able to be sustained,” added Dobbins.

The U.S. halted official moves toward further cooperation with Iran following a 2002 speech by Bush that categorised Iran as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea.

While President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009 indicated a move away from Bush-era rhetoric on the Middle East, the U.S.’s Iran policy has remained sanctions-centric – a main point of contention for Iran during last year’s nuclear talks.

Positive signs from both sides

But a recent string of events, which continued even as the U.S. seemed to be positioning itself to strike Iranian ally Syria, have led to speculation that the long-time adversaries may be edging toward direct talks, though the White House denied speculation that this could take place at the U.N. General Assembly.

President Obama confirmed Sunday reports of a letter exchange with Rouhani.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham also verified the exchange but denied speculation that Syria was a subject.

“Obama’s letter was received, but it was not about Syria and it was a congratulation letter (to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani) whose response was sent,” Afkham told reporters in Tehran in comments posted on the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

That both leaders have publicly acknowledged such rare contact is an important development in and of itself, according to Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration.

“This is an effort as much as anything to test the waters in domestic American politics regarding direct talks, regarding the possibility of seeing whether something more productive can be done than in the past. And except out of Israel, I haven’t seen a lot of powerful protest,” Hunter told IPS.

“The Iranians have already backed off on the stuff about the Holocaust by saying it was that ‘other guy’. Now, and this is a reach, but keep in mind that as the slogan goes, the road between Tehran and Washington runs through Jerusalem,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-98).

“A serious improvement of U.S.-Iran relations also requires Iran to do things in regard to Israel that will reduce Israel’s anxiety about Iranian intentions on the nuclear front, and on Hezbollah,” he said.

Hunter added that “compatible interests” between the two countries, including security and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom of shipping in the vital oil transport route, the Strait of Hormuz, could also pave the way to improved relations.

A shift in Iran

Khamenei, who has always been deeply suspicious of U.S. policy toward Iran, has given permission for Rouhani to enter into direct talks with the U.S., according to an op-ed published by Project Syndicate and written by former Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian.

During a meeting Monday with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei also said he was “not opposed to correct diplomacy” and believes in “heroic flexibility”, according to an Al-Monitor translation.

Adding to the eyebrow-raising remarks was Khamenei’s echoing of earlier comments by Rouhani that the IRGC does not need to have a direct hand in politics.

“It is not necessary for it to act as a guard in the political scene, but it should know the political scene,” said Khamenei, who has nurtured years of close relations with the powerful branch of Iran’s military.

Iran sends out feelers

On Sept. 12, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 20 percent low enriched uranium by converting it into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).

This was described as “misleading” by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) based on how little LEU Iran had reportedly converted to fuel.

“As such, this action cannot be seen as a significant confidence building measure,” argued ISIS in a press release.

But Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (2000 to 2005), called this “an example of all-too-prevalent reductionism that seeks to fold political and psychological questions into technical ones.”

“Confidence-building measures can mean many things, but in general they have at least as much to do with perceptions and intentions as they do with gauging physical steps against some technical yardstick,” Pillar told IPS.

“Confidence-building measures…are gestures of goodwill and intent. They are not walls against a possible future ‘break-out’. If they were, they would not be confidence-building measures; they would be a solving of the whole problem,” he said.

As if the Iran nuclear issue was not already difficult enough, it became even more complicated when Bashar al-Assad unleashed his chemical weapons across Damascus suburbs last month. Suddenly, the Syria issue is overshadowing all other factors concerning Iran.

The Barack Obama administration is increasingly justifying its decision to respond militarily to Assad’s chemical weapons use in terms of the likely impact on Iran. Certainly, punishing Assad for crossing Obama’s red line on chemical weapons will make it less likely that Iran will cross Obama’s red line on production of nuclear weapons.

U.S. deterrence against weapons of mass destruction will be strengthened worldwide. North Korea, for example, which has even more chemical weapons than Syria, will be on notice not to even think about using them in any provocation against South Korea or in any conflict that might erupt as a result of a provocation.

Retaliatory strikes against Assad will also reinforce allies’ confidence that the U.S. has their back. In deciding last year not to order a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was persuaded that Obama would not let Iran become nuclear-armed. Netanyahu’s faith in that assurance will be stronger if Obama demonstrates he is both willing and able to employ military power against Syria.

It’s not so much Obama’s personal credibility as the United States’ strategic credibility that is at stake. Letting Assad go unpunished could be the straw that breaks Netanyahu’s faith in the U.S. and leads to a premature and counterproductive Israeli attack on Iran that then brings the U.S. into an unwanted war.

On the other hand, U.S.-led airstrikes against Syria could set back prospects for peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue. A real solution to the problem is probably impossible, given the depth of differences between the protagonists: Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and its adversaries don’t want Iran to have it.

Short-term confidence-building measures may be possible now that Hassan Rouhani is in the presidency but even such interim steps will require Iran to accept limits, such as shutting down operations at the Fordow enrichment plant, that so far have been out of the question in Tehran. Rouhani would be hard-pressed in the best of circumstances to persuade hardliners to accept such compromises. If their Syrian comrades-in-arms are attacked by the U.S., the hardliners will be smarting for revenge, not reconciliation.

The hardliners’ mood will be especially dark if Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ‘advisors’ suffer losses in the bombing. Given the extensive military support that Iran has been providing Assad, some Qods forces are likely to get caught in the crosshairs. This could trigger an asymmetric response.

Already there is a report that the IRGC has instructed militia proxies in Iraq to attack U.S. interests there in reprisal for any U.S. strikes on Syria. Iran won’t want to get dragged into a war with the U.S. because of Syria, but unintended escalation could ensue anyway.

As much as Rouhani will oppose action that could lead to conflict with the U.S., he does not control the IRGC. At the very least, they will redouble their supply of armaments to Assad’s forces, using Iraqi airspace and highways as transit routes.

Gaming out the potential impact on the Iranian nuclear programme is one reason to limit U.S. airstrikes, which should in any case be proportionate to Assad’s crime. Rouhani likely will have heard from former U.S. diplomat Jeff Feltman, now U.N. Under-Secretary for Political Affairs, who visited Tehran last week, that the limited U.S. strikes are not directed against Iran’s interests.

That message should be repeated and honoured. The Iran angle is not a justifiable reason for refraining from punishing Assad, but it is among the reasons for avoiding mission creep.

Meanwhile, it is Iran rather than the U.S. that stands to lose most from the Syrian conflict. Tehran’s backing of Assad’s brutality casts it in a villain role on the Arab street throughout the Sunni world. Iran’s pretentions that its own 1979 Islamic revolution was a precursor to the Arab Spring have been shown to be manifestly hypocritical.

And now Assad’s chemical weapons slaughter of women and children has exacerbated divisions in Iran itself, with former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accusing the Syrian government. The Iranian people know that the armaments and financial props that Iran provides Assad soak up revenues that are more precious with each new sanctions measure Iran faces. In many ways, Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam: a quagmire from which it has no apparent escape.

Iran’s Syria predicament gives the United States newfound leverage. The best option for Iran is to lend its weight to a negotiated settlement on Syria. Seeing itself as the major power in the region, Iran has always wanted to be part of any Syria peace talks. Now, more than ever, it desperately wants to join Geneva-II as a way out of its predicament.

Whether or not Obama can bring the fractious Syrian opposition into peace talks, he does have the power to say yes or no to Iranian participation. To date, the arguments for not inviting Iran have won out: it has been part of the problem. But the Iranians can also be part of the solution, not least because of their leverage over Assad.

Iran’s desire to be at Geneva-II is why U.S. air strikes against Syria need not set back nuclear negotiations for very long. Obama should play the Syria card to get Iran to engage meaningfully on the issues of most importance for each.

Mark Fitzpatrick is director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes (London: IISS, 2008) and editor, inter alia, of Iran’s Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Capabilities (London: IISS, 2001). An archive of his recent writings can be accessed here.

Even with potential U.S. strikes against Iranian ally Syria looming, Washington and Tehran appear to be preparing for the resumption of nuclear talks.

U.S. foreign policy analysts have been bustling since the Aug. 4 inauguration of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who may have ushered in a new era of Iranian diplomacy and international relations. “Syria has become Iran's Vietnam, and [Bashar al-] Assad's extensive use of chemical weapons, in equal parts amoral and stupid, had magnified Tehran's quandary.” -- Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies

“As the architect of the sole nuclear agreement between Iran and the West  – a not inconsiderable achievement given the depth of mistrust –  Rouhani presents a real chance for making progress in nuclear talks,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

“Under [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, although the two sides were sitting at the same table, one side played chess, the other checkers. Under Rouhani, they are more likely to play the same game, albeit according to different rules,” he said.

“To succeed, the two sides need to do what they never truly did during the past few years: bargain,” added Vaez.

Iran’s announcement on Thursday that its nuclear negotiating file would be moved from its Supreme National Security Council to its Foreign Ministry, which is headed by Mohammad Javad Zarif, has also received a cautious nod from the White House.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Thursday that the United States was aware of the reports.

“The inauguration of President Rouhani presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to resolve the international community’s deep concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme,” she added.

The implication that the Western-educated Zarif will be overseeing Iran’s nuclear dossier may boost an apparent growing conviction here that Rouhani, who in August appointed Zarif to the FM, is someone whom Washington can work with.

Zarif made powerful acquaintances, including with then-senators Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel, during his tenure as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations (2002-2007), although his contacts with U.S. diplomats date back all the way to the 1980s when he helped negotiate the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

“Zarif…is one of the smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met in professional life…and I don’t think he believes it’s in Iran’s best interest to have a nuclear weapon personally,” said nuclear policy expert George Perkovich, at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace briefing Thursday.

But Perkovich cautioned that Zarif is also a “formidable” negotiator who “unlike some of their predecessors” is neither “dumb” nor “ideological”.

“And so…we’re going to have to be sharp and on our game because if you’re trying to do stuff that’s just patently unfair and unbalanced, they’re just going to be able to slap us around the head rhetorically,” he added.

While no official date has been set, negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group could resume as early as this month, though it remains to be seen how U.S. military action against Syria might affect them.

For Vaez, “A limited U.S. strike on Syria is more likely to delay than derail nuclear talks with Iran.”

He also told IPS that that Rouhani has put aiding Iran’s ailing economy and ending its isolation at the top of his agenda and will not let Syria “spoil” his plan.

“Losing both Syria and an opportunity for sanctions relief will constitute a double blow to Iran’s strategic interests and its new president’s agenda,” said Vaez.

While Rouhani has not personally, unlike hardliners in Iran, cast blame on Syria’s rebels for the alleged chemical attack, he has stated that the issue should be handled by the U.N. and warned against foreign military action.

“Iran, as it has stated before, considers any action against Syria not only harmful to the region but also to U.S. allies and believes that such a measure will not benefit anyone,” said Rouhani at the 14th Summit of the Assembly of Experts on Wednesday.

The careful line that Iran is walking on Syria, considered a long-time partner in Iran’s resistance bloc toward Israel, could result in an Iranian shift away from its ally as it pursues its greater interests.

“Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam, and [Bashar al-] Assad’s extensive use of chemical weapons, in equal parts amoral and stupid, had magnified Tehran’s quandary,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told IPS.

“With the leadership divided over how to respond, the hardliners are doubling down on their unqualified support for Assad, while Rouhani and other pragmatists are distancing themselves. Those divisions mean Iran will not respond militarily to a limited U.S.-led attack, though the flow of Iranian military arms may intensify, if enough Syrian airfields survive the tomahawk strikes,” he said.

“However difficult the mess Obama has on his hands over Syria, it’s nothing compared to the trouble Rouhani has been presented by his ‘ally’ in Damascus,” said Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick added that while it’s not clear how such a move would play out, “Any real solution to the Syrian mess will have to involve the key outside players, including Iran.”

For now, Rouhani and Zarif at least appear to be holding true to what Rouhani said would be Iran’s policy of “constructive interaction with the world” during his first presidential press conference.

Rouhani’s eyebrow-raising Rosh Hashanah greeting on Twitter Wednesday was followed by a similar one by Zarif (his second official Tweet) who proceeded to tell U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter that she shouldn’t confuse his government with that of his predecessor.

“Iran never denied [the Holocaust],” Tweeted Zarif in response to a request by Christine Pelosi to “end Iran’s Holocaust denial”.

“The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone. Happy New Year,” replied Zarif.

But the potential of additional sanctions on Iran pushed through by Congress during this critical time and the persistent negative effects of decades of mutual mistrust between Iran and the U.S. will temper hopes for a quick resolution to the nuclear issue regardless of what happens in Syria.

U.S. and Israeli fears that Iran could achieve the capability to dash toward a nuclear weapon by as early as 2014 according to worst-case assessments also increases urgency here.

To date, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran has not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons.

“The issue then is not whether Iran will make the decision in 2014 to dash for nuclear weapons. We don’t know whether they will or whether they want to and probably the probability is that they won’t, but they might,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top Middle East advisor during Obama’s first term, told IPS at the Carnegie briefing.

“The issue is more, from a U.S. perspective, that this becomes the last moment that the intelligence community can come to the president and say, boss, we’ll know when they move to nuclear weapons,” he said.

“If we lose the ability to detect [Iran’s dash toward a weapon], the ability to prevent nuclear weapons goes down dramatically and the military option then slips off the table… if I’m right…whatever your assessment is, and say that’s the amount of time we have for a diplomatic deal, that means you have 12-18 months. So let’s get on with it,” Kahl told IPS.

In a historic letter to President Barack Obama, 52 Iranian political prisoners describe the effect of the crippling sanctions regime on the Iranian people and plead for a new approach to the nuclear issue. They write:

“Mr. President! We believe it is time to replace sanctions with an effort to achieve a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear issue. To achieve such an end and given the chronic nature of the deep-rooted conflict, all sides concerned should strive for a dignified solution in which no party will be considered the loser.

“Such a solution should be based on genuinely addressing international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program by the Iranian government on the one hand and acknowledging the legitimate rights of Iran to peaceful nuclear energy, in compliance with international legal standards, by the US and the West on the other.”

For the last four years, Iran’s political prisoners have operated as a visible and influential actor in a severely repressed political atmosphere. They are now becoming an important voice in Iranian foreign policy by sending messages to politicians in Tehran and Washington.

The letter’s co-signers are politicians, journalists and democracy activists who were imprisoned during and after the government’s crackdown on the 2009 uprising against the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The heavy-handed response suddenly increased the number of political prisoners in Iran to hundreds — at times even thousands. Many of them included prominent figures in Iran’s political and civil society.

In Iran, imprisonment operates as a conventional method of silencing political dissidents, but many of these prisoners continued their oppositional activities from the beginning of their sentences.

What made this new round of prison activism more effective was the Iranian opposition movement’s strong Internet presence. When the Green Movement emerged in Iran, many analysts pointed to the activists’ innovative use of digital technology in initially organising the electoral campaign and then publicising information about protest events and regime atrocities.

The government’s crackdown attempted to stifle the public presence of Iran’s democracy movement, but the activists turned the Internet into an oppositional space. This included sharing updates about political prisoners’ situation and actions and spreading open letters smuggled from the prisons.

Sociologists refer to “abeyance structures” as spaces and communities through which social movements continue to exist in periods of repression and public inactivity. Ironically, prisons were a major abeyance structure for Iran’s Green Movement after the 2009 crackdown.

During the years of the Green’s decline, Iranian prisoners sustained activity both through direct actions, such as hunger strikes, as well as adopting positions on issues through individual and collective open letters.

In addition to individual strikes against the abuse of prisoners’ rights, hunger strikes were also organised in solidarity with other prisoners and against regime atrocities conducted outside prison walls.

In the most stunning example, 12 political prisoners went on hunger strike in 2011 after fellow prisoner Hoda Saber died after prison guards beat him while he was hunger striking against the tragic death of another activist outside the prison, Haleh Sahabi.

This collective action led to a burst of solidarity among Iranian dissidents inside Iran and among those in exile.

Prisoners also engaged in radical political positions in a country where political activists fear hosting meetings in their homes. In one of the boldest examples, political prisoner Abulfazl Ghadiani publicly accused Iran’s Leader Ali Khamenei of despotism and compared him to Iran’s pre-revolutionary autocratic monarchs.

In other open letters, prisoners reflected on Iran’s political landscape and offered strategic analyses of Iranian politics and proposed courses of action.

In discussions about boycotting or participating in the recent presidential election, Zia Nabavi, an exiled student sentenced to 10 years in prison, argued that Iran’s civil society needs active citizenry who won’t be easily discouraged by destructive authoritarian actions and will act with hope and rationality.

He endorsed Hassan Rouhani in that letter and encouraged all democracy supporters to actively participate in the election. As with other letters by political prisoners, that letter became part of the pragmatic wave that resulted in Rouhani’s electoral victory.

During his campaign, Rouhani suggested his election could result in the releasing of political prisoners. That was one of the major demands that Rouhani’s supporters made during his electoral campaign and in celebrations of his victory. This will be one of the major tasks of the new president’s first term.

All these factors have provided political prisoners with a unique place in Iran’s political landscape. They are, after all, the people who have paid the highest price in fighting for freedom and equality for the Iranian people. A year before the election, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a prominent reformist sociologist, stated that political prisoners are even more important than reformist organisations.

For all these reasons, the prisoners’ recent letter to President Obama contains significant ramifications for politicians in Washington as well as in Tehran.

The message to Washington is clear. Regardless of whether the goal of sanctions or calls for military action is to empower the Iranian people, an element of the most legitimate and suffering voices of Iran’s democracy movement is stating that sanctions have been disempowering and should end.

Iran’s political prisoners are also teaching all of us an important lesson: one should not sacrifice the people’s wellbeing and interests for personal revenge. These prisoners had many reasons to ask for more sanctions on a government that has illegally imprisoned them for unjustifiable reasons, deprived them of their most basic rights and tortured them and their families.

But they prioritised the Iranian peoples’ interests and asked both Iran and the U.S. to engage in constructive diplomacy rather than blind hostility.

Let us hope that Iran’s leaders, especially Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, learn this lesson and facilitate the release of these prisoners while starting a new era in Iran’s foreign policy.

Mohammad Ali Kadivar is a sociology PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies global democratisation and popular mobilisation and writes about Iranian politics in Farsi and English.

Hassan Rouhani’s election as Iran’s new president has garnered much international attention. In particular, Rouhani’s ascendance has raised hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough on the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Reformist leader Mir Hussein Mousavi has been under house arrest since February 2011. Credit: Hamed Saber/cc by 2.0

It would not be surprising for Rouhani to try and find a way out of Iran’s crisis: the enormous damage to the Iranian economy through sanctions is an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.

But often forgotten in the West is the Iranian regime’s other major source of instability: the deep splits caused by the 2009 presidential election and subsequent arrest of three influential reformist leaders, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hussein Mousavi, and his wife Zahra Rahnavard.

Rouhani’s campaign focused not only on improving Iran’s economic condition, but also on lessening the “securitised” atmosphere in Iran, and gaining the release of Karroubi, Mousavi, and Rahnavard. Tehran has been swirling with rumours of their imminent release.

From Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s perspective, the conditional release of Mousavi and Karroubi could begin to heal the regime’s self-inflicted wounds. However, freeing a group labeled as the “sedition” by the regime could also be very risky; it could be viewed as an admission of error by Khamenei and intensify the factional battles within the system.

Iran’s warring political elite have the capability and willingness to sink nuclear negotiations. The resolution of the nuclear crisis does not only depend on U.S.-Iranian relations, but also on other factors including the fate of three Iranian prisoners.

During his campaign, Rouhani appealed to three different constituencies: the ruling conservatives, the reformists, and ordinary Iranian people. A calculating and clever politician, Rouhani managed to win the election without upsetting the delicate political balance in Iran.

Rouhani is a conservative regime supporter, although of a different cut than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He believes in Iran’s system of religious rule, but does not believe in “exporting” the revolution. For him, the Islamic Republic should strengthen itself at home before engaging in foreign adventures.

Javad Zarif, Rouhani’s reported pick for the post of foreign minister, is quite telling in this regard. Zarif, a polished diplomat, helped the United States establish Afghanistan’s post-Taliban government in 2002. He would likely attempt to repair Iran’s relations with the outside world, perhaps including the United States.

Rouhani’s dedication to the reforms espoused by Mousavi, Karroub, and Rahnavard is uncertain. Yes, he would like to decrease repression in Iran and make the people more “prosperous”. But this does not translate into a belief in fundamental reforms.

Most likely, Rouhani would like to see a re-emergence of pre-2009 Iran, in which the left and conservative wings of the Islamic Republic co-existed and worked together in maintaining the revolutionary theocracy.

Nevertheless, the ultra-conservatives within Iran’s political establishment fear his intentions. While labeling him a “principled” revolutionary, they have nevertheless warned him not to include “seditious” figures within his government. These may include officials associated with former President Mohammad Khatami, the bête noir of the ultra-conservatives.

The influential daily newspaper Kayhan, long viewed as the mouthpiece of Iran’s conservative establishment, has been particularly vociferous in its denunciation of the reformists, and not so subtle in its warnings to Rouhani. Other conservatives, such as Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani, have also warned of reformist “cobras raising their heads again”.

It appears that Rouhani’s cabinet will mostly include technocratic and moderate conservatives. Influential reformists such as Khatami will likely play a behind the scenes role in advising Rouhani. But what of Mousavi, Rahnavard, and Karroubi?

The husband and wife remain under arrest in their own residence. Reports from Iran indicate that their harsh imprisonment (almost no contact with the outside world) has resulted in serious health issues for them.

Mehdi Karroubi, who is reported to be under arrest at a Ministry of Intelligence safe house, is also reported to be suffering from various ailments. The death of any of them could be a serious blow to the political balance in Iran and Rouhani’s reputation. He has promised to gain their release. Will his government act accordingly?

Rouhani does not command the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; it is likely that the Guards and their chief Khamanei will play the most important role in determining the fates of Mousavi, Karroubi, and Rahnavard. Thus far, the trio has been held in detention without going to trial.

Interestingly, the Guards-linked website Basirat has declared that “If the law is followed, a competent court must look into the crimes of these individuals.” This is one of the few times that the regime has spoken so openly of trying the reformist trio; it fears a trial would give them an opportunity to publicly challenge Khamenei.

However, the establishment has also indicated that it would forgive the reformists if they repented for their “sins”. Could the regime be considering trying the three opposition leaders? This in itself would not be an admission of defeat, but could pave the way for a compromise between the left and the right. As Khamenei has repeatedly stated, national unity is essential for dealing with Iran’s external enemies. And as Khatami has said, the Iranian “people” could forgive the regime if it forgives the 2009 protestors, and by implication the reformists.

Rouhani, Iran’s bridge-maker, could theoretically lay the groundwork for national unity as he attempts to negotiate the nuclear programme. But the bridge he stands on is shaky. It will take much effort by him and his supporters to guide the regime toward stability.

Progress on nuclear negotiations and the lifting of sanctions could help. The most recent U.S. Congressional sanctions against Iran will make Rouhani’s job only harder, and empower the ultra-conservatives. And any domestic and foreign moves viewed as threatening by ultra-conservatives could imperil Rouhani’s presidency. This would not only result in renewed regime infighting, but the collapse of nuclear negotiations.

Regarding negotiations, it is often said that it takes two to tango — the United States and Iran. But in reality, Rouhani’s dance will have many participants, some of whom are more self-interested and treacherous than others. Rouhani’s cabinet selection will be a major indicator of his intentions.

The fate of the long-suffering Karroubi, Mousavi, and Rahnavard could be the most important indicator of all.

Alireza Nader is a senior international policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

Newly published recollections by the former French ambassador to Iran suggest that Iran was not running a covert nuclear weapons programme that it then decided to halt in late 2003, as concluded by U.S. intelligence in 2007.

Ambassador Francois Nicoullaud recounted conversations with high-ranking Iranian officials indicating that Tehran’s then nuclear policy chief – and now president-elect – Hassan Rouhani did not know what research projects relating to nuclear weapons had been carried out over the years.“I guess that most people, [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei included, were surprised by the extent of the activities." -- former French ambassador to Iran Francois Nicoullaud

The conversations described by Nicoullaud in a Jul. 26 New York Times op-ed also portray Rouhani as having difficulty getting individual researchers to comply with an order to halt all research related to nuclear weapons.

The picture of Iranian nuclear policy in 2003 drawn by Nicoullaud is different from the one in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had halted “its nuclear weapons program”. That conclusion implied that Iranian government leadership had organised a programme of research and development aimed at producing a nuclear weapon.

Nicoullaud recalled that a high-ranking Iranian official confided to him in late October 2003 that Rouhani had just “issued a general circular asking all Iranian departments and agencies, civilian and military, to report in detail about their past and ongoing nuclear activities.”

The conversation came immediately after Rouhani had concluded an agreement with the foreign ministers of the UK, France and Germany on Oct. 21, 2003, Nicoullaud recalled.

The same official explained that “the main difficulty Rouhani and his team were encountering was learning exactly what was happening in a system as secretive as Iran’s,” wrote Nicoullaud.

A few weeks after, the French ambassador learned from a second official, whom he described as “a close friend of Rouhani”, that Rouhani’s nuclear policy team had issued instructions to halt projects relating to nuclear weapons.

The Iranian official said the team was “having a hard time”, because, “[p]eople resist their instructions,” according to Nicoullaud. The official remarked that it was difficult to “convince researchers to abruptly terminate projects they had been conducting for years”.

In an e-mail to IPS, Nicoullaud said he did not believe the Iranian government had ever approved a nuclear weapons programme. “The first challenge for Rouhani when he took hold of the nuclear,” said Nicoullaud, “must have been to get a clear picture of what was going on in Iran in the nuclear field.”

Rouhani had been the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) since 1989 and would not only have known about but would have been involved in any government decision to establish a nuclear weapons programme.

“I guess that most people, [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei included, were surprised by the extent of the activities,” Nicoullaud told IPS.

Nicoullaud’s recollections are consistent with published evidence that nuclear weapons-related research projects had begun without any government authorisation.

Despite an Iranian policy that ruled out nuclear weapons, many Iranian officials believed that a nuclear weapons “capability” would confer benefits on Iran without actually having nuclear weapons.

But the meaning of such a capability was the subject of ongoing debate. Nasser Hadian, a well-connected Tehran University political scientist, wrote in late 2003 about two schools of thought on the option of having a “nuclear weapons capability” but not the weapons themselves. One definition of that option was that Iran should have only the capability to produce fuel for nuclear reactors, Hadian explained, while the other called for Iran to have “all the necessary elements and capabilities for producing weapons”.

That debate had evidently not been officially resolved by a government decision before Rouhani’s appointment. And in the absence of a clear statement of policy, figures associated with research centres with military and defence ministry ties began in the latter of the 1990s to create their own nuclear weapons-related research projects without the knowledge of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

Such projects were apparently begun during a period when the Supreme National Security Council was not exercising tight control over the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), the Ministry of Defence or the military industrial complex controlled by Defence Industries Organisation related to nuclear weapons.

By the mid-1990s, AEOI was already taking advantage of the lax supervision of its operations to take actions that had significant policy implications without authorisation from the SNSC.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, then the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, recalls in his memoirs that in January 2004, Rouhani revealed to him that AEOI had not informed the SNSC about a policy-relevant matter as important as the purchase of the P2 centrifuge designs from the A. Q. Khan network in 1995. AEOI officials had misled him, Rohani said, by claiming that “they had found some information about P2 centrifuges on the Internet and are studying it!”

When Rouhani was named to take over as nuclear policy coordinator in early October 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was demanding a full accounting by Iran of all of its nuclear activities. Rouhani’s circular to all civilian and military offices about nuclear work came soon after he had promised the IAEA that Iran would change its policy to one of full cooperation with the IAEA.

At the same time, Rouhani moved to tighten up the policy loophole that had allowed various entities to start weapons-related nuclear research.

Rouhani anticipated resistance from the bureaucratic entities that had nuclear weapons-related research projects from the beginning. He recalled in a later interview that he had told President Mohammad Khatami that he expected that there would be problems in carrying out the new nuclear policy, including “sabotage”.

The sequence of events surrounding Rouhani’s new nuclear policy indicates that he used Khamenei’s public posture that nuclear weapons were forbidden according to Islamic law to ensure compliance with the ban on such research projects.

Around the same time that Rouhani ordered the bureaucracy to report on its nuclear-related activities and to stop any research on military applications of nuclear power in late October, Khamenei gave a speech in which he said, “In contrast to the propaganda of our enemies, fundamentally we are against any production of weapons of mass destruction in any form.”

Three days later, Rouhani told students at Shahrud Industrial University that Khamenei considered nuclear weapons as religiously illegal.

That same week, in an interview with San Francisco Chronicle correspondent Robert Collier, Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the conservative newspaper Kayhan and an adviser to Khamenei, alluded to tensions between the Rouhani team and those researchers who were not responding to or resisting the Rouhani circular.

Khamenei was forcing those working on such projects to “admit that it is forbidden under Islam”, Shariatmadari said. He also suggested that the researchers resisting the ban had been working “clandestinely”.

After the U.S. intelligence community concluded in November 2007 estimate that Iran had halted a “nuclear weapons program”, a U.S. intelligence official said key pieces of evidence were intercepted communications from at least one senior military officer and others expressing dismay in 2007 that nuclear weapons-related work had been shut down in 2003.

But U.S. intelligence officials said nothing about what kind of work was being shut down, and revealed no further evidence that it was a “nuclear weapons program” under the control of the government.

Nicoullaud’s recollections suggest that the 2007 estimate glossed over a crucial distinction between an Iranian “nuclear weapons program” and research projects that had not been authorised or coordinated by the Iranian regime.

Nicoullaud told IPS he believes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which controls Iran’s ballistic missile programme, was also carrying out a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. The IRGC’s own ministry had been merged, however, with the old Ministry of Defence to form a new ministry in 1989, which implies that any such clandestine programme would have necessarily involved a wider military conspiracy.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Official portrait, rouhani.ir

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 23 2013 (IPS)

The successful campaign of Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani may have been built on the persistence of hope among Iranian voters for a better future.

It remains to be seen how effectively the moderate cleric will manage expectations among Iran’s key political factions while fulfilling his campaign promises."Rouhani has an opening, but actual changes in Iranian policy historically have required consensus among several segments of the political elite." -- Kevan Harris of Princeton University

It’s the economy

Rouhani’s main domestic challenges are related to the economy, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a Virginia Tech professor, told IPS.

“More specifically, first, to bring down inflation and restore macroeconomic stability given the commitments made by the [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad administration in the current budget,” he said.

“Second, to make progress on the sanctions front to encourage investment to create jobs, and third, to spread the benefits of economic growth evenly, among the poor who voted for him at least as strongly as the middle class,” said the Brookings non-resident senior fellow who was in Iran this June.

“Rouhani’s challenge is to bring tangible improvements in the next year or two, before the patience of those who voted for him runs out, so he can demonstrate that a moderate government who is willing to engage with the outside world can better deliver on prosperity than the populist isolationists,” Salehi-Isfahani said.

A successful overhaul of Iran’s economy will rely heavily on negotiations with key world powers over its controversial nuclear programme.

“With Dr. Rouhani there is real opportunity for gaining some positive momentum for at least trying to deescalate the nuclear crisis,” said Ali Vaez, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, at a Wilson Center event here on Jul. 22.

Vaez was less optimistic about prospects for Iran achieving the substantial sanctions relief it needs to battle its economic troubles.

“The sanctions currently in place on the regime are an intricately woven spiderweb… [that is] extremely difficult to untangle,” he said.

Shifting alliances

Rouhani’s unexpected victory would not have been possible without pivotal backing by reformist and centrist leaders.

“The implosion of the conservatives in the June election will likely lead to a reshuffling of elite alliances in Iran,” Kevan Harris, a Princeton sociologist, told IPS.

“If Rouhani’s win results in a new coalition of centre-right and centre-left politicians and their social bases, then we could see shifts in both foreign and domestic policy,” said Harris, who was in Iran during its election.

Nicknamed the “diplomatic sheik” during his service as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003-2005, Rouhani has promised to reroute the country from the path it was put on during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Our main policy will be to have constructive interaction with the world,” said Rouhani during his first press conference as president-elect on Jun. 17.

While Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that the U.S. is “not honest in their dealings” and he was “not optimistic” about bilateral talks with Washington, he did not rule them out.

“We’ve always believed and continue to believe in interaction with the world but the important point is to understand the other party and determine its goals and tactics, because we will be tripped up if we don’t understand them correctly,” Khamenei said in comments posted on his website late Sunday.

Washington experts are meanwhile urging a cautious approach toward Iran’s new administration.

“This distrust of Iranian moderates has very deep roots [in Washington]…It won’t be overcome easily and it’s not inherently contradictory for an administration that does in fact seek to use diplomacy to have a certain degree of scepticism,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, at Monday’s Wilson Center event.

“Those who are expecting this sort of big sanctions relief are creating expectations, particularly among the Iranian people, who are only going to be disappointed when and if we don’t see them on Aug. 4 [Rouhani’s inauguration] as some dramatic gesture from Washington,” said the former State Department policy advisor.

What lies ahead

While Washington’s response to Rouhani’s election victory was lukewarm at best, advocates of engagement with Iran received a boost last week.

That was reflected by the fact that 131 members of the hawkish Republican-led House of Representatives – including a majority of House Democrats – signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to “reinvigorat(e) U.S. efforts to secure a negotiated nuclear agreement”.

Rouhani tweeted his approval: “131 Congressmen have signed a letter calling on President #Obama to give peace a chance with Iran’s new president #Rouhani.”

Twenty-nine former government officials and national security experts also sent a letter last week to President Obama urging him to “seize the moment to pursue new multilateral and bilateral negotiations with Iran”.

If nothing else, Rouhani’s surprise election, which resulted from clever maneuvering by his prominent endorsers, proved that Iranian politics are unpredictable.

“As the third televised debate for the Iranian election revealed, nuclear policy over the past 10 years has not been based in a consistent and broad elite strategy in the Islamic Republic,” Harris told IPS.

“If it was all up to Leader Khamenei, then the embarrassments which spilled out between [Saeed] Jalili, [Ali Akbar] Velayati, and Rouhani on live television – and seen by about two-thirds of the country – would never have happened.

“I take that to mean Rouhani has an opening, but actual changes in Iranian policy historically have required consensus among several segments of the political elite, not radical attacks from the right or left,” he said.

“If Rouhani appoints a few conservatives in his negotiation team or his cabinet, this may be misconstrued in Washington as a sign of intransigence, when in reality this may actually be Rouhani’s way of keeping everyone on board so they cannot later veto his policy initiatives,” he said.

Harris told IPS that Obama also faces political challenges at home.

“Obama needs a foreign policy win after the messes in Syria and Egypt which took place under his watch, which showed how the U.S. is not the dominant actor in the region though it’s still an important one,” he said.

“If Obama’s advisors can make the point that Iranian influence is not the driving factor of every Middle East crisis that the U.S. suffers from, which is a true but not popular sentiment in Washington, then it would be easier to sell some sort of deal with Iran along with a reduction in sanctions to a domestic audience,” Harris said.

“But a cold shoulder by the U.S. in the guise of playing hardball is the path of least domestic resistance,” he added.

The transition team of Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani was busy last week lowering expectations for a quick economic recovery, saying that things are far worse than they had thought.

At the same time, the outgoing economy minister was briefing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with a rosy picture.

Politics aside, it is hard to exaggerate the difficulty Rouhani faces in turning Iran’s economy around, especially without some relief from the international sanctions.

The numbers

The Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration stopped publishing national income data in 2008 as part of the annual balance sheet of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), placing in doubt the most important indicator – the rate of economic growth. 

Its reporting on inflation and unemployment has been more regular but lacked credibility because the reports were often cryptic and framed in the most positive light.

Last week, the CBI announced a rate of inflation of 35.9 percent for the Iranian month that ended on Jun. 21, averaging the increase in the consumer price index over two 12-month periods.

In reality, the index had increased by 50 percent during the last 12 months.

Government reports have shown unemployment to be rather steady in the 11-12 percent range. This provided an image of a stable jobs situation while the government’s own survey data indicated rising unemployment.

Iran’s last two censuses of 2006 and 2011 show a substantial increase in the unemployment rate of prime-age (20-54) workers from 11.5 to 15.4 percent.  For obvious reasons, these figures were not part of the economy minister’s report to the Supreme Leader.

Challenges and opportunities 

Perhaps the biggest surprise for Rouhani’s team came from the government budget, which they will inherit in two weeks. Rouhani’s senior advisor and head of his transition team, Akbar Torkan, said that he was not able to find reliable sources of revenue for 38 percent of government expenditures.

This presents the incoming government with its most immediate challenge – how to control inflation with public finances in such a dire state.

While he inherits an economy in deep crisis, there are a few things that Rouhani can be thankful for from his predecessor.

The first is Iran’s subsidy reform.  Three years ago, Iran was the least efficient user of energy because it had the lowest energy prices in the world. Roughly four million barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day (twice what it exported) were distributed to domestic consumers with huge subsidies, mostly benefiting the rich.

In January 2011, President Ahmadinejad embarked on a bold reform that sharply reduced energy subsidies and distributed the savings as equal cash transfers.

Despite the fact that prices have been frozen since 2011, the programme has curbed energy consumption and saved Iranians from queuing for gasoline despite international sanctions that prohibit such imports.

More importantly, the cash transfers, which cover 97 percent of the population, have been an important supplement to the country’s leaky safety net, softening the blow from the sanctions to the poor.

Rouhani can do well to remove the programme’s deficit and better target its transfers, but its bitter pill has been already swallowed.

Another painful adjustment came last September when the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, collapsed following the tightening of sanctions against Iranian oil exports. Just two weeks ago, the rial was officially devalued by more than 100 percent, making it easy for Rouhani to start his tenure with a more realistic exchange rate.

Before devaluation, cheap foreign currencies hurt Iranian production, which caused Iran’s dismal job growth.

Iranian producers are now in a better position to compete, but their limited access to the global economy, caused by sanctions, is a huge obstacle.

Rouhani’s promise to reduce sanctions will therefore be essential for Iran’s economic revival.

Relief for insolvent banks

Last year, the Ahmadinejad government quietly reversed itself on interest rates, letting banks charge rates above the earlier strict limits set by his own administration of 12-14 percent.

The low interest rates on deposits compared to inflation is the main reason why depositors have flocked to foreign currencies, gold and real estate to protect their savings.

As deposit rates increase, Iran’s liquidity-starved banks will attract more money and can begin to lend to liquidity-starved businesses.

Rouhani has promised a government of “experience and hope”, one that has “the keys to unlock closed doors”. There is reason to expect improvements in Iran’s economy during his first 100 days as president, but beyond that all bets are off.

Rouhani’s moderate posture has already paid off in terms of lower expectations of inflation, which has stabilised the foreign exchange markets and is gradually returning private savings to the banks, thus alleviating the liquidity crisis that has immobilised Iran’s businesses.

Unlocking hope

Rouhani’s economic team, to be announced in the next week or two, is expected to include experienced economists, which will further boost confidence among Iran’s economic actors.

But to restore hope, Rouhani needs to do more; he must create jobs.

Jobs can only come if Iran’s producers can export or invest in the production of goods that substitute for imports. However, their ability to do so is seriously hampered, if not made impossible, by international sanctions that have closed the gates to the global economy for Iranian producers.

The keys to these locks are, unfortunately, not in Rouhani’s hands.

They are with Western leaders and the Supreme Leader, who will decide if and when the nuclear agreement is resolved and sanctions can be removed.

Rouhani has a short window of less than two years to prove to the Iranian people that Iran’s moderates, who are willing to engage with the outside world, can run a better ship than the radical isolationists.  He has a historic opportunity to deliver a lesson that is not just important for Iran but for the entire Middle East.

Pushing for stricter sanctions against Iran, as some in the West are doing, risks harming this historic opportunity.

*Djavad Salehi-Isfahani is a Professor of Economics at Virginia Tech and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Find more of his IPS work here.

Do you expect a miracle from Rouhani? You are heading down the wrong road. Please take it easy!

This was the initial sentiment among Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani’s supporters in social networks, blogs, the media, virtual or actual forum discussions and post-election gatherings days after his victory in Iran’s eleventh presidential election.

Iranians were excited by an unexpected win in the unpredictable elections of Jun. 14.

They also wisely understood that now is the time for balanced expectations as Rouhani takes the first steps into his new government.

Ending the domestic economic crisis and improving rocky international relations are on top of Rouhani’s “to do” list.

Most of his supporters recognise that he faces a long and hard path ahead in rectifying a country with 42 percent inflation, 12.3 percent unemployment and a 143-billion-dollar money supply, according to the latest data coming out of Tehran.

Despite acquiring 539 billion dollars from oil revenue in 2012, Iran’s economic crisis worsened due to mismanagement by the country’s outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran’s domestic political and social situations are similarly chaotic, while the human rights situation is in crisis.

Rouhani campaigned on a platform of freeing Iran’s political prisoners.

He said he would open up breathing space for newspapers and journalists, prepare a “civil rights charter”, repair the economy and restore Iranian relations with the West and other countries through a “government of wisdom and moderation”.

Rouhani won Iran’s presidency through the concerted efforts of a young generation of activists committed to reform.

They maintained that a moderate approach spearheaded by inside actors – while, at the same time, opposing any external intervention from foreign countries – could effectively change Iran.

Rouhani’s campaign activists from inside and outside the country united in calls for the release of all imprisoned youth, students, journalists, human rights lawyers, political figures and activists from the 2009 election, which saw the rise of the Green Movement.

His supporters also established a campaign to demand the release of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the Greens’ two leading figures.

But this demand, made in the first days following his victory, was premature.

Can Rouhani free prisoners without a mandate from the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)?

Can he fulfill his promises to the people and run his government without a “reconciliation” of the two other main branches of the state – the judiciary system and Parliament?

Both are controlled by conservatives – clear opponents of Rouhani’s camp. Article 110 of the Iranian Constitution indicates that the power and authority of the Supreme Leader surpasses the president’s. The complex structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran doesn’t allow the president alone to push through domestic and international reform.

That said, three weeks after the election, Khamenei met judiciary officials and mandated them to assist Rouhani.

This mandate will give the new president a strong boost in fulfilling his campaign promises.

Rouhani’s victory has been described as an alliance between Iran’s moderates and reformists.

The reformists are defined as those political leaders who sought significant change in the political system.

The moderates are defined as those who focused more on the economic strength of the country than on radical political change.

The two political leaders, former moderate president of Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989 – 1997) and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), heeded the message of the populace in building a coalition of moderation-reform to support Rouhani.

So far, the wisdom of this alliance has been effective in shaping Rouhani’s victory.

He is wisely forming a spectrum made up of both reformists (from Khatami’s cabinet) and moderates (from Rafsanjani’s team) for his administration.

The failure of reformists and moderates in the 2005 election taught both political camps to revise their approach and ponder their weaknesses during the past eight years.

Rouhani learned from the reformists that he must avoid radicalism which might alienate too many constituencies. He also learned how the moderates lost their popularity by forgetting ordinary people and middle-class families.

Maintaining the moderation-reform method in leading his government will enable Rouhani to rectify the domestic and international crises that have engulfed Iran, while also addressing civil and human rights demands as an important second priority.

Washington needs to rethink its approach in this new Iranian era.

Western sanctions have unified Iran’s opposition and its youth behind the state, whether they truly support it or not. Washington has to accept this and revise its policy toward Iran.

It needs to listen to the message and approach of the opposition, whose goal is reforming the country moderately while defending and recognising its national interests.

In a recent letter to President Obama, a group of former U.S. government officials, diplomats, military officers and national security experts referred to Rouhani’s election as a “major potential opportunity”. They urged Obama to engage in bilateral negotiations with Iran and engage it beyond the nuclear issue.

Increasing negative pressure and deepening sanctions, instead of achieving a negotiated agreement on the nuclear issue, will benefit neither the United States nor Iran.

Iran’s people have created a new era of moderation-reform to rebuild their country.

The world must listen to their message.

*Sahar Namazikhah is an Iranian journalist based in Washington, D.C. She was previously editor of several daily newspapers in Tehran. She is currently director of Iran Programmes at George Mason University’s Center for Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed his threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, 29 former senior U.S. experts and foreign diplomats urged President Barack Obama to show greater flexibility in anticipated negotiations following the inauguration of President-elect Hassan Rouhani.

President Obama talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Mar. 20, 2013. Netanyahu has complained about what he said was the lack of a sense of urgency in Washington about Iran’s nuclear programme. Credit: White House/Pete Souza

“While it will take time to secure an agreement to resolve all concerns, diplomacy will only succeed if we are prepared to leverage existing sanctions and other incentives in exchange for reciprocal Iranian concessions,” according to the letter.

It was signed by, among others, former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs Thomas Pickering and Bruno Pelleau, the former deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Further, in the lead-up to Rouhani’s inauguration, it is critical that all parties abstain from provocative actions that could imperil this diplomatic opportunity,” said the letter, which was also signed by Peter Jenkins, the former British ambassador to the IAEA, and Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“For the U.S., no further sanctions should be imposed or considered at this time as they could empower hardliners opposed to nuclear concessions at the expense of those seeking to shift policy in a more moderate direction,” according to the letter.

It was released on the eve of a meeting Tuesday of senior officials of the so-called P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany), which has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme since 2006.

Both Netanyahu’s comments, which during a widely viewed Sunday CBS News programme, and the letter come as the Obama administration grapples with the aftermath of last week’s military coup d’etat in Egypt, the ongoing civil war in Syria that appears to be going badly for the U.S.-backed opposition, and new uncertainties about the pace and timing of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as increasingly bleak prospects for peace talks with the Taliban.

Netanyahu downplayed the relative significance of these other crises and complained about what he said was the lack of a sense of urgency in Washington about Iran’s nuclear programme.

“(A)ll the problems that we have, however important, will be dwarfed by this messianic, apocalyptic, extreme regime that would have atomic bombs,” warned the Israeli leader, reverting to the kind of rhetoric he has generally avoided for much of the past year.

He also renewed his past threats to take unilateral military action, insisting, “I won’t wait until it’s too late.”

He called for the P5+1 to demand that Iran halt all enrichment of nuclear material, shut down an underground enrichment facility near Qom, and remove and remove its existing stockpile of enriched uranium from its territory.

Those demands, he said, “should be backed up with ratcheted sanctions…(a)nd, if sanctions don’t work, …they have to know that you’ll be prepared to take military action; that’s the only thing that will get their attention.”

Netanyahu also characterised Rouhani, whose election last month was greeted among experts here with both surprise and cautious optimism given his explicit appeal to moderate and reformist sectors in the Iranian electorate, as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

“Smile and build a bomb,” he said of Rouhani’s diplomatic skills and alleged strategic aim.

Netanyahu’s remarks were not well-received by some administration officials. “We did not regard the interview as helpful,” said one who asked not to be further identified.

Indeed, the administration, which just imposed a new set of economic sanctions against Iran Jul. 1, has quietly made clear since Rouhani’s election that it opposes any additional sanctions before the next round of P5+1 negotiations, which are expected to take place in September, at least one month after Rouhani’s inauguration Aug. 4.

Briefing reporters late last week, senior officials said Washington is not prepared to offer new concessions until it and its P5+1 partners receive a formal response to an offer they tabled at the last round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in April.

In exchange for Iran’s suspending its 20-percent enrichment of uranium and transferring its existing 20-percent stockpile out of the country, the Western powers in the group offered to ease sanctions on the gold and precious-metal trade and some Iranian petrochemical exports as a confidence-building measure (CBM).

Officials told reporters that the offer should not be seen as a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposal and that, if Tehran wanted a more comprehensive deal, the P5+1 would be prepared to discuss it.

“If Iran says, yes, we are interested in the CBM but let’s talk about something larger, alright,” one official was quoted as saying. “If they say they are interested in all three measures on 20 percent [enriched uranium], but are looking for more sanctions relief, [then our response will be], ‘What are you looking for? Here’s what we want in return.’ This is a negotiation.”

The officials also stressed that the administration has called for direct bilateral talks with Iran within the framework of the P5+1 but that Tehran has so far ignored the proposal.

“We think they would be valuable,” one official was reported as saying. “We will reinforce that in any appropriate way we can.”

During his electoral campaign, Rouhani criticised Iran’s current negotiating team headed by one of his rivals, Saeed Jalili, for its inflexibility. In his first post-election press conference, Rouhani said relations with Washington are “an old wound that needs to be healed,” although he did not commit himself to bilateral talks.

Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is believed to have the ultimate authority with regard to both Tehran’s nuclear programme and ties with the U.S., has often expressed scepticism about the value of direct talks with Washington but has not ruled them out either.

Netanyahu’s hawkish words have been echoed in recent weeks in Congress where the Israel lobby exercises considerable influence.

Earlier this month, all but one of the 46 members of the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Obama calling on him to increase pressure on Iran by closing loopholes in existing sanctions and adding new ones despite Rouhani’s victory. The letter anticipates an effort to pass a new round of sanctions in the house before Rouhani’s inauguration.

At the same time, however, a bipartisan letter to Obama co-authored by Rep. Charles Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Rep. David Price, warned that “it would be a mistake not to test whether Dr. Rouhani’s election represents a real opportunity for progress toward a verifiable, enforceable agreement on Iran’s nuclear program…”

It said Washington should avoid “engaging in actions that …weaken his standing relative to hardliners within the regime who oppose his professed ‘policy of reconciliation and peace’”.

That letter has so far gathered a not-insignificant 61 signatories in the 435-member House.

Despite that effort, administration officials said the House may indeed approve new sanctions before the next round of P5+1 talks but that the Senate was unlikely to quickly follow suit.

In the letter released Monday, the 29 experts and former government officials very much echoed the message of the Dent-Price letter, stressing that the “major opportunity” represented by Rouhani’s presidency should not be squandered.

“It remains to be seen whether this opportunity will yield real results. But the United States, Iran, and the rest of the international community cannot afford to miss or dismiss the potential opportunity before us,” according to the letter, which was released by the National Iranian American Council.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 15 2013 (IPS)

The Jun. 14 election of Hassan Rouhani, nicknamed the “diplomatic sheik” during his service as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003-2005, to Iran’s presidency was met with hopeful celebrations within the country but much cooler reactions from key world leaders.

Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesperson for Iran’s nuclear negotiators. Photo courtesy of Mr. Mousavian.

While a Jul. 13 Wall Street Journal report claimed that the Obama administration would seek direct talks with its long-time adversary, it remains to be seen how far the United States will go to bring about a mutually acceptable agreement and whether or not Iran would accept it.

Israel’s prime minister, who has been warning for more than two decades that Iran is getting dangerously close to building a nuclear weapon, wants the United States to increase pressure on Iran while ramping up the military threat.

“What is important is to convey to them, especially after the election, that that policy will not change. And that it’ll it be backed up by increasingly forceful sanctions and military action,” Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation”.

But Washington has reportedly already assured the Netanyahu government that it will not decrease pressure on Iran following Rouhani’s win.

“We have told the Israelis we intend to judge the Iranians according to their actions and not according to their words,” an American official told the Israeli daily, Haaretz, on Jul. 14.

According to Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesperson for Iran’s nuclear negotiators who worked closely with Rouhani, without substantial modifications in Washington’s negotiating posture, little will change on the Iranian side. "The first and most favourable option for Iran is to continue seeking a peaceful resolution to the standoff."
-- Hossein Mousavian

IPS spoke with Mousavian, currently a research scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, about prospects for change in the Iranian nuclear issue.

Excerpts from the interview follow. Read the complete interview on IPS’s foreign policy blog.

Q: Your article for the “Cairo Review”, which was written more than a month before Rouhani’s election, has generated a lot of discussion over the suggestion that one of Iran’s options is to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Is Iran seriously considering doing so?

A: As I reiterated in the article published by the Cairo Review, the first and most favourable option for Iran is to continue seeking a peaceful resolution to the standoff. I explained the five major demands the P5+1 (United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) made in recent nuclear talks to prevent Iran’s breakout capability and to ensure a maximum level of transparency.

Iran, in return, had two major demands: lifting sanctions and recognising Iran’s rights under the NPT. I have also proposed that the world powers and Iran place their demands within a package, to be implemented in a step-by-step manner with proportionate reciprocation. 

Withdrawing from the NPT has never been Iran’s intention. The United States and Israel have initiated “all options on the table”, leaving open the possibility of a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. This policy goes against the United Nations (U.N.) charter, the NPT, and non-proliferation, where nuclear-armed states – the United States and Israel – are threatening to attack Iran, a non-nuclear weapons state.

Therefore as long as the U.S. policy of “all options on the table” remains valid, Iran as a sovereign state is forced to also have “all options on the table”.

Q: The Obama administration claims that Iran has not responded formally to the confidence-building offer made in Almaty, Kazakhstan in February. In your opinion, why hasn’t Iran responded, and do you expect a formal reply after Rouhani’s inauguration?

A: The P5+1 proposal in Almaty sought maximum demands and provided the minimum in return. Rouhani’s administration would be ready for a fair and balanced deal, comprising all the major demands of both parties based on the NPT, placed within a package and implemented in a step-by-step plan with proportionate reciprocation.

Q: Is recognising Iran’s right to enrich uranium a precondition to a negotiated solution?

A: It would be part of the package deal explained above.

Q: Some in Congress would like to impose more sanctions on Iran before Rouhani is inaugurated. What effect could such a move have on prospects for negotiations?

A: Iran would never take calls for direct talks and engagement seriously as long as the United States continues its sanction and pressure policy. If Washington is genuinely seeking rapprochement, it needs to demonstrate that – through an act of goodwill instead of through increased hostilities and animosity. Iranians place importance in U.S. actions, not just words.

Q: What is the balance of forces in Iran with respect to those who want to take a hard line on the nuclear issue and those who favour more flexibility, and what is the effect of sanctions on this internal debate?

A: There are two schools of thought in Iran with respect to the nuclear approach, but there is no dispute on Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment. The P5+1 and Western approach toward Iran’s nuclear dossier does, however, play an important role in the balance of these two schools of thought.

During the nuclear talks from 2003 to 2005 with the three European powers (the United Kingdom, France and Germany), when I was a member of the negotiating team, Iran demonstrated far-reaching overtures to resolve the nuclear dispute.

Iran implemented the maximum level of transparency a member state of the NPT can commit to by accepting the Additional Protocol and Subsidiary Arrangement. We also demonstrated Iran’s readiness to commit to all confidence building measures, assuring the peaceful nature of the nuclear programme – forever.

Regrettably, Iran and its European counterparts failed to reach a final agreement because the United States continued to deny Iran its legitimate rights under the NPT. The United States’ inflexibility and position altered the balance of forces in Iran toward those in favour of radicalism. Therefore, if the West seeks cooperation and flexibility from Iran, it has to respond proportionally and appropriately.

The sanctions policy is only good for a lose-lose game. The Iranian nation has suffered from the sanctions, while the West has suffered from the dramatic increase of Iran’s enrichment capacity and level. Once sanctions were implemented, Iran increased the number of centrifuges from 3,000 to 12,000 and the level of enrichment from 3.5 percent to 20 percent. The stockpile of enriched uranium increased approximately 800 percent.

Q: In his first press conference as president-elect, Rouhani referred to Israel as Israel, rather than by any other name. Do you think this portends a new approach by Rouhani? What could it look like?

A: Rouhani is not a man of radical rhetoric. He is courteous and logical and respects international norms and regulations. The key to resolving the dispute with Iran depends on whether the traditional Western policies of pressure, sanctions, threats and humiliating Iran will change to those based on respect, mutual interests and cooperation with Rouhani’s administration.

Excerpt:

The victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran’s Jun. 14 election marked a significant shift in Iranian politics, occasioned by the forceful return of the two most important political factions of the Islamic Republic – traditional conservatives and reformists.

Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Mojtaba Salimi/cc by 3.0

These two factions had been sidelined in the past decade. In fact, many had assumed that they had permanently lost their significance, giving way to either a more radical version of conservatism or the personal dictatorship of Leader Ali Khamenei.

But the alliance that was created in support of Rouhani’s candidacy by three key figures of the Islamic Republic – former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as former speaker of the Parliament and presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri – set the stage for the return of both traditional conservatism and reformism to Iranian politics.

These two factions were effectively the founding pillars of the Islamic Republic. In the 1980s, they were identified as the right and left wings of the Islamic Republic because of their disagreements over the economic direction of the country.

But, by the late 1990s, they became known as the principlist and reformist wings due to their political differences over whether the republican or Islamic sides of the Islamic Republic should be given greater emphasis.

In the 1980s, prime minister Mir Hossein Mussavi, now under house arrest, was considered a leftist, focusing on economic justice and state control of the economy, while then-president Khamenei was deemed close to the Islamic Republic’s right wing which defended the importance of private property and the private sector.

Even the membership of the Guardian Council – which, along with the vetting of candidates for the executive and legislative branches, is tasked with assessing legislation for their constitutionality, as well as their Islamic content – included individuals from both factions.

Control of Iran’s Parliament shifted from one faction to another and from one election to another over the years. President Rafsanjani (1989-97), who has long tried to straddle both wings as a self-identified centrist and moderate, had to deal with both leftist- and rightist-controlled parliaments. Similarly, reformist President Khatami (1997-2005) had to negotiate with both reformist and principlist-controlled parliaments.

But this political arrangement began to fall apart with the 2004 parliamentary election and then the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. He came to power with Principlist support and immediately began the process of purging the leftist/ reformist wing of the Islamic Republic.

Initially, the purge created a temporary alliance between Ahmadinejad and traditional conservatives who were happy to see their ideological opponents pushed out of the political process.

But positioning himself as a younger-generation populist, Ahmadinejad soon began to turn against the other political pillar of the Islamic Republic: traditional conservatism. While traditional conservatives maintained their presence in the judiciary and the parliament, Khamenei’s support permitted Ahmadinejad to effectively prevent any kind of legal challenge to his imperial governing style in the executive branch.

After the 2009 contested election in which Ahmadinejad was re-elected, it was Khamenei’s continued backing that led to parliament’s approval of his cabinet ministers, the prevention of various efforts to impeach him, and halting the many judicial cases against Ahmadinejad’s illegal conduct, including his repeated refusal to implement legislation passed by the Parliament.

It was within this context that Iran’s traditional conservatives began to realise that they could meet the same fate as the reformists if they did not step up and help revive some of the old political pillars of the Islamic Republic.

Instead of competing against their old their old nemeses, the reformists, they forged an alliance behind the candidacy of Rouhani, who, while belonging to the Islamic Republic’s right wing, successfully wooed the reformist vote through his criticism of the increasingly securitised political environment of Iran and the purge of key reformist politicians in the past decade.

To understand the extent of the change this alliance represented in Iran’s recent history, suffice to say that the two main candidates who ran against each other in 1997 – reformist Khatami and conservative Nateq Nouri – joined hands to rally their supporters behind Rouhani’s candidacy.

The intent of the alliance was to forestall the encroaching dictatorship of the office of the Leader and prevent the radicals with little respect for the electoral process from consolidating their control of that office.

In many ways, the formation of this alliance was an unprecedented act in the history of modern Iran and, according to many observers inside the country, reflective of the “maturity” of the political players.

In the words of reformist journalist Abbas Abdi, writing for Etemaad Daily, “This election was deeper than other elections in Iran in terms of its political meaning, and at this time we can be hopeful that it will be the beginning of a new trend in the Iranian society.”

A historian of contemporary Iran who did not want to be identified went further. He told IPS that in Iran’s recent history there were many moments when political players could have paved the way for further change and democratisation had they been able to co-operate with each other and form alliances. However, their inability to do so led to the eventual purge of all of them and the re-establishment of personal dictatorship.

The most noted example in recent memory was the collapse of the democratic coalition built by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq with the help of cleric Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani in the early 1950s. Ultimately Mossadeq’s fall from power was assured through a CIA-sponsored military coup that brought the Shah back to power. But the coup was made easy because the coalition built by Mossadeq had by then fallen apart.

According to this historian, “the principlist-reformist alliance is such an important event that it can be said to have catapulted Iran into a new stage of its history.”

This historian also notes that at no time in Iran’s modern history has there been such “an urge in both society, as well as government circles for unity and cooperation, in the face of external threats,” including both the U.S.-led economic sanctions and threats of war by Israel and the United States.