Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran - Softcover

Pollack, Kenneth M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815703414 ISBN 13: 9780815703419

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 2009

Synopsis

Crafting a new policy toward Iran is a complicated, uncertain, and perilous challenge. Since it is an extremely complex society, with an opaque political system, it is no wonder that the United States has not yet figured out the puzzle that is Iran. With the clock ticking on Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities, solving this puzzle is more urgent than ever.
In Which Path to Persia? a group of experts with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings lays out the courses of action available to the United States. What are the benefits and drawbacks of airstrikes? Can engagement be successful? Is regime change possible? In answering such questions, the authors do not argue for one approach over another. Instead, they present the details of the policies so that readers can understand the complexity of the challenge and decide for themselves which course the United States should take.

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth M. Pollack is director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. His books include A Path out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Random House). Daniel L. Byman is a senior fellow at the Saban Center, director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, and author of The Five Front War: The Better Way to Fight Global Jihad (Wiley). Martin Indyk is director of the Saban Center, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and the author of Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (Simon & Schuster). Suzanne Maloney is a senior fellow at the Saban Center. She has worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff where she provided analysis of Middle East issues. Michael E. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at Brookings and author of Budgeting for Hard Power (Brookings).Saban Center Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel served as chairman of President Obama's Strategic Review of U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan and is the author of The Search for al Qaeda (Brookings).

Reviews

Pollack (A Path Out of the Desert), research director for the Saban Center, collaborates with five colleagues for this timely and cogent analysis of U.S.-Iranian relations. Dismissing past U.S. policy as not particularly impressive, the authors point to an emerging consensus... that the Obama administration will have to adopt a new policy toward Iran. To that end, they identify nine approaches ranging from diplomacy to military action and containment (the default U.S. policy toward Iran since the Islamic Revolution) and lay out the objectives, costs, pros and cons for each. Avoiding advocacy, the authors lament that all the alternatives are unpalatable and no course is unambiguously better than the others. They further acknowledge that Iran's nuclear ambitions represent an existential threat to Israel and that Israel remains a wild card in any consideration of Iranian policy. U.S.-Iranian relations have long been a minefield, and Pollack and his collaborators carefully identify the potential missteps facing policymakers in this valuable—if wonky—primer. (Sept.)
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Which Path to Persia?

Options for a New American Strategy toward IranBy Kenneth M. Pollack Daniel L. Byman Martin Indyk Suzanne Maloney Michael E. O'Hanlon Bruce Riedel

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Copyright © 2009 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8157-0341-9

Contents

Preface..........................................................................................viiIntroduction: The Trouble with Tehran: U.S. Policy Options toward Iran...........................1Part I. Dissuading Tehran: The Diplomatic Options................................................291 An Offer Iran Shouldn't Refuse: Persuasion.....................................................312 Tempting Tehran: The Engagement Option.........................................................57Part II. Disarming Tehran: The Military Options..................................................833 Going All the Way: Invasion....................................................................874 The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes..................................................................1035 Leave It to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike...........................125Part III. Toppling Tehran: Regime Change.........................................................1416 The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising...........................................1437 Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority and Opposition Groups.....................1578 The Coup: Supporting a Military Move against the Regime........................................170Part IV. Deterring Tehran: Containment...........................................................1799 Accepting the Unacceptable: Containment........................................................183Conclusion: Crafting an Integrated Iran Policy: Connecting the Options...........................201Notes............................................................................................217Authors..........................................................................................227Index............................................................................................231

Chapter One

An Offer Iran Shouldn't Refuse

Persuasion

To convince Iran to give up its nuclear program, the George W. Bush administration in 2005 adopted a diplomatic approach that employed a combination of positive inducements and the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions if Tehran refused to comply. By the time Bush left office, the policy had not yet succeeded, although it had accomplished more than many of its critics had predicted. Many Americans believe that this approach could be revived, revised, and made to succeed under a new administration.

Immediately after his election, President Obama himself indicated that this would be the starting point of his administration's approach to Iran. Since then, the administration has finished its policy review and has adopted a multifaceted version of this option.

Like all Iran policy options, this approach faces considerable hurdles. For this option, the first hurdle is overcoming the legacy of the Bush administration's efforts and demonstrating that they failed not because of inherent flaws in the strategy, but because of poor implementation. Those who favor Persuasion (sometimes infelicitously referred to as a policy of "carrots and sticks") believe that the Bush administration hamstrung the process by combining it with elements of other policy options—particularly regime change—that ran at cross-purposes. It also eschewed key diplomatic bargains that might have secured greater international support and refused to put up meaningful positive incentives that could have had a greater impact on the actions of both Tehran and the rest of the international community.

Persuasion also requires building a broad international commitment to a set of powerful sanctions on Iran to punish it for noncompliance at a time when many countries do not see the threat from Iran as a priority, and some have reason to oppose such treatment. Moreover, in the final analysis, this option (and the Engagement option as well) rests on the willingness and ability of the leaders of Iran to sort out their politics in such a way that they agree to comply with the international community. Iran's habitual pugnacity toward external pressure and the Byzantine internal politics of the clerical regime mean that any such effort inevitably begins with a hard row to hoe.

Goal

This policy is intended to convince the government of Iran to change its behavior on issues of critical importance to the United States. It is not intended to try to change the government of Iran. Shortly after taking office, President Obama attempted to underline this point in his Nowruz (Iranian New Year) message to the people of Iran on March 19, 2009, in which he assured Iranians that "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations." (Emphasis added.) In other words, the president was signaling that he was ready to accept the current Iranian regime, not merely the Iranian people, back into the international community if the regime were willing to work constructively with the United States and the rest of the international community.

A key question that the new U.S. administration will have to address regarding the goals of the Persuasion approach toward Iran is whether to focus only on convincing Iran to cease its nuclear program or also to insist that Iran cease its support for terrorism and other anti-status-quo activities (particularly its efforts to hinder Arab-Israeli peacemaking).

Although there are risks in Iran's mere possession of a nuclear weapons-making capability, the most likely threat is that once Iran is believed to have such a capability, it will pursue its regional anti-status-quo agenda more aggressively than in the past. Specifically, it may provide greater support to terrorist groups and Palestinian rejectionists, it may again attempt to subvert conservative Arab regimes, it may provide arms to countries and non-state actors fighting the United States and its allies, and it may pursue a range of other actions all intended to undermine the American position, topple or "Finlandize" unfriendly governments, and otherwise reorder the region more to its own liking. Even with a nuclear capability, Tehran may still not achieve these aims, but a greater willingness to try will nevertheless result in more violence, mayhem, radicalism, and crises in a region that does not need any more.

In other words, a critical threat behind Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability is that it will intensify Iran's anti-status-quo activities, which many Americans would argue should necessitate an effort not merely to convince Tehran to halt its nuclear program but also its support for violent extremist groups and other anti-status-quo activities. Indeed, American sanctions on Iran (at least prior to 2001) were always explicitly intended to convince the Iranians to give up all of these problematic behaviors, not merely their nuclear program. As such, this policy would mirror the goals of the successful American policy toward Qadhafi's Libya, which is often seen as a model for how a similar approach should be applied to Iran.

The American Dilemma

There is a critical complication in expanding the policy goals to encompass Iranian behavior beyond its nuclear program: it could undermine the international support that is the sine qua non of the option. There is broad agreement, at least in principle, among most of the international community, and certainly all of the great powers, on the need to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. This often breaks down in practice, but it still provides an important foundation that the United States can build upon to pursue this part of its policy. However, far fewer states are troubled by Iran's destabilizing activities in the region or even its support for terrorist groups. Certainly few believe these actions troublesome enough to merit the kind of harsh sanctions that may be needed to pressure Tehran to abandon them.

Consequently, focusing purely on the nuclear program would be the surest path toward building a wide and strong international consensus against Iran, but this might not be sufficient from the American perspective to secure U.S. needs regarding Iranian behavior. Moreover, many Americans may conclude that if the United States is going to provide Iran with the kind of major benefits that the Iranians will no doubt demand to halt their nuclear program, Washington ought to get more from Tehran in return. On the other hand, if Washington insists on including Iranian misbehavior beyond its nuclear program, it will be more difficult to secure the kind of broad international commitment to impose harsh penalties on Iran for failure to comply that probably will be necessary for the policy to succeed.

Time Frame

The Persuasion approach holds out the potential to achieve its goals relatively quickly—conceivably in a matter of months—although a time frame of several years seems more likely. At least in theory, the United States and its allies might agree very quickly on a package of benefits to offer Tehran, as well as a series of new penalties to impose on Iran if it refused the deal. Likewise, Iran might quickly decide that the deal is a good one and accept it, and then things would move forward relatively quickly. The reality, however, is that both processes are likely to involve very complicated internal political and external diplomatic negotiations, even if they are successful. Consequently, it seems unrealistic to expect this approach to produce actual success in less than a few years. However, if there are early indications of progress on both sides, the expectation of success may produce many positive ripples long before a deal is signed. For instance, should the Iranians conclude that they want to accept whatever the international community is offering, they may decide to unilaterally shift assets away from their nuclear program so as not to waste high-value resources on a program that is soon to be shut down.

One critical challenge to a Persuasion approach that relies on positive and negative incentives to redirect Iran on key issues is that it will be extremely difficult to know when the policy has failed. The Iranian regime, as a collective entity, is unlikely to declare that it will never agree to any offer from the international community or negotiate with the United States (although some individual Iranian leaders may claim as much). Tehran seems to understand that flat-out refusals, like those preferred by President Ahmadinejad, win Tehran nothing and so antagonize other nations that they build support for further sanctions. Consequently, even if the regime does decide to reject any new offer from the international community, it probably will feign interest and simply try to prolong the negotiations. Indeed, a number of Iranian leaders have already signaled a willingness to sit down with the United States and discuss the differences between us, but so far this appears to reflect a tactical decision to talk to Washington, not a strategic decision to compromise. Moreover, many Iranians will likely calculate that German, Russian, Chinese, and other foreign officials will use any hint of Iranian flexibility to argue against the imposition of further sanctions, and so even if Tehran has no intention of agreeing to compromise, it will keep tossing out hints that it will to buttress the arguments of those desperate to avoid additional sanctions.

Because it may be impossible for the international community to recognize when this policy has failed, it will be critical to place clear time restrictions on the negotiations and require Iran to take positive, discernible steps to demonstrate that it is not merely attempting to prolong these negotiations to ward off further sanctions. (We return to this matter later in this chapter to sketch out what such mechanisms might entail.)

Overview of the Policy

The core concept of the Persuasion approach remains the idea of simultaneously offering Iran a series of compelling rewards for giving up its nuclear program (and possibly ceasing its other deleterious behavior as well) and threatening to impose harsh penalties on Iran for refusing to do so. In essence, it means offering Iran a "deal," but one that also contains an implicit ultimatum: change your ways and you will be rewarded; don't and you will be punished.

Because, after three decades of sanctions, the United States has virtually no ties to Iran it could threaten to cut, the pressure on Iran must come principally from other members of the international community—particularly Iran's leading trade partners in Europe, Russia, China, India, and elsewhere. This makes the Persuasion option wholly dependent on international cooperation to make it work. It is simply not possible for the United States to pursue this policy unilaterally. For this reason, the UN Security Council is the ideal mechanism through which to pursue the policy, and the Bush administration did enjoy some important successes there. It is less feasible but still possible to pursue the strategy outside the United Nations, and the Bush administration was able to secure some modest cooperation from the European Union and America's Asian trade partners outside of the UN framework.

Because the Bush administration did eventually adopt a version of this policy, the key question that supporters of a Persuasion approach—including the Obama administration now that it has opted for this strategy—must answer is what can be done differently so that a new version can succeed where the last one failed? The heart of the critique of the Bush administration's efforts is that it was never willing to offer Iran meaningful positive inducements, both because many administration hard-liners rejected on principle the idea of any "concessions," and because the administration concurrently pursued a limited policy of regime change, which militated against taking any steps that could alleviate Iranian problems.

This failure to address the inherent contradictions in the Bush administration's approach to Persuasion undermined its incentives-based approach in two ways. First, it meant that Iranians themselves did not believe that they were getting that much for giving up their nuclear program (let alone reversing their foreign policy more generally). Certainly, any potential benefits were not ammunition enough for those Iranians interested in their economic fortunes to win the policy fight with hard-liners determined to preserve the nuclear program.

Second, the meager benefits the Bush administration was willing to offer failed to impress European and East Asian publics. American allies in Europe and East Asia are critical to an approach that relies heavily on sanctions both because they have typically had extensive trade relationships with Iran and because they can furnish exactly the kinds of capital, technology, and markets that Tehran needs to address its economic problems. Moreover, if the United States is unable to secure the cooperation of its closest allies, it is hard to imagine that it could win over Russia, China, India, and other countries with different agendas. If the Europeans and Japanese are on board with the United States, these other countries must take notice; if the United States stands alone, they can ignore us.

The populations of many U.S. allies were suspicious of the Bush administration, believing (not incorrectly) that it remained committed to regime change and was simply attempting to give an offer to Tehran that it would never accept so that Washington could then use an Iranian rejection as justification for either implementing crippling sanctions or moving to war. In addition, it was generally the case that the publics of the European and East Asian democracies were only willing to sanction Iran for refusing to comply if they believed that Tehran had been offered a deal that was so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons would refuse. Because the Bush administration's incentives were never big enough to satisfy the European and East Asian concerns, few of these governments were willing to consider more than modest punishments against Tehran for refusing the offer.

At this point, Iran remains very much on the wrong track, pushing hard to acquire an enrichment capability, heedless of the international consensus against it. Within the scope of the Persuasion approach, there is no question that what is most needed are new, much harsher sanctions to convince Iran to stop, reconsider, and hopefully change course. Paradoxically, however, the only way that the United States is likely to secure international support for new sanctions is if it offers up much greater rewards to Iran for doing the right thing.

Upping the Ante

The incentives offered to Iran will need to be determined through a process of negotiation with both Iran and America's allies and partners in the wider international community. In many cases, these incentives are likely to be highly complex. Consequently, only the broad contours can be sketched out. In all probability, these benefits will fall into four broad categories: nuclear energy and technology, economic inducements, security guarantees, and political incentives.

Nuclear Energy And Technology. On the nuclear front, the previous offers to Iran have included attractive terms to allow Iran to build light-water reactors to generate power and arrangements for Iran to participate in an international program to master the technology of enrichment. Light-water reactors can be more easily monitored, are harder to convert quickly to military purposes, and would be under arrangements whereby spent fuel would be returned to the providing country so that it could not be employed for bomb making. These terms would have to remain as part of a new offer: since Iran has repeatedly claimed that it wants only technology and energy from its nuclear program, Tehran would have to be provided with the opportunity to meet these needs regardless of whether these motives are genuine.

The much thornier question is whether the international community should be willing to allow Iranians a limited enrichment capability within their own country. If this is allowed, it will leave the Iranians a fairly rapid "breakout capability"—meaning that Tehran could switch over to a military program and begin manufacturing fissile material for nuclear weapons fairly quickly. For these reasons, a number of European countries have stated categorically that they will never agree to any deal with Tehran that allows it to retain such a capacity. On the other hand, the Iranian regime has steadfastly rejected any demand to halt its program short of acquiring a complete enrichment capability and has repeatedly told its people that acquiring this capability is absolutely vital to their future prosperity. Consequently, it may not be possible to reach a deal with Iran that does not allow it to claim that it retained an enrichment capability of some kind.

When the United States and its international partners meet to discuss this particular issue, a key consideration should be the extent, conditions, and intrusiveness of any inspections and monitoring regime that Iran would have to accept as part of the deal. Simply put, the more intrusive and comprehensive the inspections regime, the more willing the international community ought to be to compromise on this issue. Nevertheless, because the potential for a breakout capability is so worrisome, the international community should insist on an Iraq-style inspections regime with a dedicated organization (perhaps within the IAEA, but definitely with a separate, much larger staff and budget) to ensure that the monitoring of an Iranian enrichment program remains active and vigilant.

Economic Inducements. Especially given the fragile state of Iran's economy, economic inducements are likely to be both the most straightforward and most important element of a new international overture to Iran. Under the Bush administration, Tehran was offered membership in the World Trade Organization, the lifting of international sanctions (most of which exert only modest pressure on the Iranian economy), and the resumption of its presanctions trade with Europe and Japan. These were not enough to convince Iran to take the deal.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Which Path to Persia?by Kenneth M. Pollack Daniel L. Byman Martin Indyk Suzanne Maloney Michael E. O'Hanlon Bruce Riedel Copyright © 2009 by THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION. Excerpted by permission of BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815703414
• ISBN 13: 9780815703419
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 253