Iran: Engagement the only option

Published in The Daily Star, July 11, 2009

JOHN Bolton, President Bush's Ambassador to UN in New York, did not particularly endear himself to the Muslim world for his views and actions while in office. In fact, he enraged the entire Muslim world by his neo-con views and defended President Bush's “you are with us or against us” view with passion and conviction till the Senate denied him congressional approval in 2006 for a new term.

It was, therefore, hardly a surprise that in his recent post-editorial “Time for an Israeli attack” that appeared in the Washington Post's July 2nd edition, Bolton wrote that “Israel's decision on whether to use military force against Iran's nuclear weapons programme is more urgent than ever.” While trashing President Obama's overtures towards Iran, he urged Israel to go ahead and take out Iran's assumed nuclear capabilities. He argued that the recent events in Iran proved that the clerics were again firmly back in power and there is no way that there would be a peaceful regime change in Iran and that it is the right time now for a military strike against it. Bolton went on to suggest that Iran has been working for the last twenty years to acquire nuclear weapons and only “the most theologically committed to negotiations still believe that Iran will renounce its nuclear programme”, a comment aimed at ridiculing President Obama.

One would have thought that with the end of the Bush era and emergence of Obama, people like Bolton would be history; it does not seem to be so. The events in Iran have acted as a catalyst to bring these individuals and forces back. The election in Iran may not have been to the satisfaction of the west. But then, for a president who has not led his country very badly in the first term re-election should have been a normal event and hardly one to take the west by the extent of surprise it has.

As the demonstrations turned violent leading to few deaths, “breaking stories” by the western media suggested widespread opposition in Iran against the ruling clergy and that their stranglehold on Iran was under serious threat. The media hype encouraged and influenced most of the western countries to believe that President Mahmoud Ahmedejine had not won the election fairly although the disturbances were mostly in Tehran. Even after a partial recount was ordered by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that made no difference to the results, western leaders kept up issuing statements against the election.

Britain led the charge: Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned that Iran must answer satisfactorily serious questions of election irregularity. Obama, who on election day in Iran, said “we are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran” later expressed critical views of the election as the western media reported the spread of violence. Surprisingly, the concerns and criticisms came only from the western countries while others either congratulated Ahmedejine's re-election or remained silent.

The western countries overlooked a few crucial facts and jumped to too many conclusions. For example, they failed to see that Moussavi's past is hardly one to convince anyone that if elected he would end the clergy in Iran. As Prime Minister, from 1980-89, he has been responsible for many of the allegations of human rights violation for which the west has been targeting Iran ever since the Iranian Revolution in1979. The western media has also failed to tell the world that on the nuclear option there is little to choose between Ahmedejine and Moussavi, as there is between the generations in Iran. They have also failed to mention that Iran is surrounded by nuclear weapons states on all sides, with the one most critical of her for her alleged nuclear pretensions, namely Israel, which is also the most dangerously armed with nuclear weapons. John Bolton and people like him forget that in the present day, people are capable of forming their independent opinion, thanks to the information revolution and the internet. Iranians, old and young, know about Israel and its nuclear capabilities and when the focus is on Israel, Iranians, both old and young, have no reason to fight or differ.

The views of Bolton and others like him notwithstanding, the elections have brought to surface genuine democratic aspirations within Iran. Majority of Iranians today are citizens who have grown up in a world that did not see the regime of the Shah and the struggle of the people of Iran to overthrow that regime. They have grown up without the hatred for the US and increasingly with a feeling that Iran must interact with the west for its own future. For the clergy, these developments have come as a wake-up call that Iran must change to take care of the aspirations of a new generation of Iranians who have grown up with full knowledge of the world outside and very appreciative of what is happening in that world.

The post election developments have revealed divisions within the clergy that could also eventually change Iran from within, in its own time and pace. Former President Rafsanjani, a very powerful cleric, has openly confronted Ahmedejine. His daughter was arrested and released as a supporter of Moussavi. The Supreme Leader and the Grand Council have taken decisions that have been conciliatory towards the supporters of Moussavi. We have nevertheless also seen that despite their inner differences, the Iranian clergy is united in their stand against the West's interference in the politics of their country and that once conviction was backed with the authority of the state, the demonstrations died down as Iran's situation returned back to normal. Even Bolton acknowledges this with the opening sentence of his op-ed where he writes: “Iran's hard-line Mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards are unmistakably back in control...” These developments in Iran as a consequence of the election will certainly place Ahmedejine under pressure from within to accept President Obama's offer of engagement. In fact, the controversy surrounding the election will now create pressure upon Ahmedejine to be flexible to accommodate the views of Moussavi supporters in negotiations with the US. President Obama can ensure this by following up on his offer towards Iran made before the election by ignoring views of people like Bolton and the media hype following the election.

The recent events in Iran bring back to memory the Tiananmen massacre of June 4th 1989 in China. The West expected then that with their encouragement, Chinese communist leadership would fall making China a western style democracy! Articles portraying Ziang Zemin as worthless, who would be blown away if the struggle continued, appeared in western newspapers for years after the Tiananmen Massacre till China proved convincingly its capability of dealing with its development efforts, both political and economic. Today, China unequivocally speaks for itself with its success.

With Iran, the west should not make the same mistake as it did with China following Tiananmen in assessing reality. The foundations of the Iranian clergy have deep roots in the society, the current demonstrations notwithstanding. One must not forget that the candidature of Moussavi was approved by the Clergy together with that of Ahmedejine. Moussavi, if elected, would have represented the clergy as devotedly as Ahmedejine on all issues including the nuclear issue. If the west is seriously concerned about Iran turning into a nuclear weapons state, the best way to deal with it is to engage with it because, despite the post-election disturbances, there is no reason to believe that those who supported Moussavi would also support the west in their effort to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, if the leadership there should so decide.

Iran is not Iraq. Despite the recent disturbances, Iran is united against external interference in its internal affairs. Hence Bolton's recommendation to take on Iran militarily can be taken seriously only in a fit of madness. Obama should set the disturbances aside and continue to follow the path of engagement with Iran that he set for his administration with his Cairo speech in June. He may be pleasantly surprised to find Ahmedejine more accommodating as a consequence of the post-election developments in Iran.

US foreign policy under President Bush: A critical view

IN an interesting interview given to the New York Times recently, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given the administration of President George Bush high marks in the area of foreign policy. Secretary Rice has been a National Security Adviser in the first Bush Administration and then replaced General Colin Powell in 2005 to become the Secretary of State in President Bush's second administration.

Secretary Rice said US foreign policy has served the cause of democracy worldwide successfully, working under President Bush's belief that democracy is not just for a few. She cited Iraq's move to a multi-ethnic democracy and voting rights of women in Kuwait as evidence. She also said that because of US' role, the European parliament has not been afraid to award Andrei Sakharov prize to Chinese dissident Hu Jia despite the blowback from Beijing. She said Egypt will change and that Egyptians will demand a different presidential election next time.

On Middle-East, Secretary Rice said there have been substantial gains but cited that the real change has been in conversation all over the region where every country is now seeking some form of popular legitimacy. In the context of Palestine-Israel relations, she said that “the Palestinian leadership is avowedly in favour of negotiations, renounces violence, and recognizes the right of Israel to exist. There is a robust negotiating process, and they have made a lot of progress on how to get to a two-state solution”. She said Hamas takeover of Gaza has been a problem but that the Egyptians have helped in containing conflict. The US effort there has been to strengthen the hands of Mahmoud Abbas to take an agreement to the Palestinians by demonstrating that Hamas has no solution to the Palestinian problem.

On Iran, Secretary Rice said the objectives have been to change the behaviour of the regime but not the regime itself and help indigenous forces there with democracy. On Darfur, Secretary Rice expressed regret that the principle “the responsibility to protect” that the UN adopted in 2006 in the end meant nothing but empty words with no one wanting consequences, leaving the US using sanctions unilaterally to no useful purpose.

On Europe, Secretary Rice dismissed the perception that US has poor relations with that continent as “myth” though she admitted some disagreement without any serious problems in US-Europe relations. On Russia, she said that the country is in an “infrastructural nightmare” where an aging population is being replaced by a “sickly population”, concluding that US could remain “calm” about Russia.

About President Bush's legacy in foreign affairs, Secretary Rice said the most important one has been in spreading the message of freedom just not from tyranny but also poverty, disease and linking these to US's security needs. She said the world is at a historical transformation and US foreign policy goals set to motion by President Bush will tie democracy, defense and development in one single process. She also said that Bush's foreign policy has successfully handled foreign assistance, doubling it in Latin America; quadrupling in Africa and tripling worldwide, adding 300 new AID officers and 1100 Foreign Service officers to the State Department.

Secretary Rice's interview is, to say the least, very interesting given the fact that upon analysis it is very thin on substance against the claims she has made. Egypt elected Hosne Mubarak in 2005 for fifth consecutive six-year term by 88% and her prediction for a more credible election next time rests only on the hope that Mubarak will be too old to participate in it. The situation in Iraq is far from what has been claimed and she has not talked about the human costs, with so many thousands of innocent lives lost, not to speak of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent that has caused the greatest meltdown in US history that is now threatening to take down the world economy with it down the same path in which it now lies.

The claim on change in ME is also suspect given the fact after eight years of Bush's tenure, the region remains as far removed from democracy as it was at the end of the Clinton term. Ironically, it is in Palestine that a truly democratic parliamentary election was held in 2006 in which the Palestinians freely and fairly elected the Hamas that the US rejected because of Hamas' links to terrorism. In June 2007 US, in collusion with Israel, unsuccessfully tried to put a faction of Hamas led by Mohhmad Dahlan whom President Bush called “our guy” to overthrow the Hamas led Government. In fact the foundations that are the basis of democracy that the US preaches like universal franchise: elections for political offices, a freely elected parliament, are present only in Iran and Palestine. Elsewhere, monarchs are as powerful as ever and as a result of US foreign policy in the region, these monarchs have received extra hundreds of billions of dollars by windfall as a consequence of increase in price of oil three fold due to the invasion of Iraq. They have spent these extra billions partly to distribute further economic prosperity to their people so that they have less need to think or worry for democratic governments. Thus, at least on surface, there are no significant moves for democracy in the ME, except in Egypt where US economic and military aid has kept and continues to keep General Mubarak in power.

Iran has been identified by the US as an “axis of evil” and in these last eight years, there has been speculations on and off that US would invade that country to bring down its alleged nuclear installations urged by its strongest ally in the region, Israel, that has a major nuclear arsenal of its own and had in the past attacked Iraq in the 1980s to bring down that country's nuclear installation. Iran's only fault, seen by the US, is that its President has said Iran will wipe Israel out of existence. That statement, unacceptable as it is, has never been put in its proper perspective from the Iranian point of view. Iran is in the middle of a region surrounded on all sides by nuclear weapons states: Israel on the west, Russia on the north and Pakistan on the east. With all three, the US has excellent relations. In case of Pakistan, US endeared her at a time when General Musharraf had come to power after overthrowing a democratically elected government and under the cloud for selling nuclear technology in the open market. Iran needs to be assured of its own security that cannot be enhanced with Israel urging the US to attack Iran and USA calling Iran an “axis of evil”. Furthermore, Iran, with its view on Israel notwithstanding, cannot be denied access to civil nuclear technology, now less so after the US has signed the civil-nuclear deal with India which is a nuclear weapons state.

The failure to focus on the Palestinian issue as the most important problem in the ME has been a major failure in US foreign policy under President Bush. It took his Secretary of State Colin Powell eight months to pay his first visit to ME and on that visit he said that Iraq and not the Palestinian issue was more important in US foreign policy, thereby striking all the good work done for resolution of the Palestinian problem in the Clinton era; a problem that is the single most important factor that has rendered maximum wind to the sail of Islamic terrorism. The hastily declared war on terror following 9/11 that took the US to Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and then leaving Afghanistan with the work unfinished to invade Iraq on falsehood and deceit placed the US foreign policy into conflict with the rest of the world, the consequences of which have devastated the world.

The postscript on the assessment on US foreign policy under President Bush has been written in the way the world rejoiced at the victory of Senator Obama. Never in history has a world leader been hailed the way as Senator Obama has been hailed; nor ever will a US President leave office with such an abysmal infamy record as President Bush. The world's rejoicing at Senator Obama's victory has been due almost totally to the failure of US foreign policy in the past eight years. The doctrine of pre-emptive strike and “you are either with us or against us” that have been at the basis of US foreign policy during this period have made the United States very unpopular with the rest of the world. The new US President, Secretary Rice's tall claims in her NYT interview notwithstanding, will have a very challenging task ahead to win back the trust that the world has lost in the US by recasting the foreign policy of the neo-con that has been based on the belief that US can and has the power to impose its will on the rest of the world.

US foreign policy under President Bush has sent democracy, defense and development on three different directions. It will now be President-elect Obama's task to bring these in line for sake of the United States and the world.

Published in The Daily Star, November 21, 2008