Brookings: Experts - Suzanne Maloney

What To Read On Iran This Week

Suzanne Maloney — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:50:00 -0400

In case you haven't had enough Iran from the media coverage of the election vetting process, here are a few items to add to your weekend reading list.

Let's start with pieces by two Brookings colleagues. Virginia Tech Professor Djavad Salehi Isfahani (who also serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow in our Global Economy and Development Program) answers the question "Who Are Iran's Voters?", examining the demographic breakdown of the Iranian electorate and the issues that most concern different constituencies. And Bruce Riedel, a colleague in the Saban Center as well as the director of the new Brookings Intelligence Project, dissects an important and previously little-understood episode in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Iran. "Lessons from America's First War with Iran" is just hitting the newsstands in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.

Over at the Council on Foreign Relations, Steven Cook offers a much-needed perspective of drivers behind cooperation between Tehran and Cairo in "Egypt: From Tehran With Love"

For all those Washington types who are suffering Powerpoint withdrawal over the long weekend, take a look at this fascinating set of charts on Iran and the Greater Middle East by 2020 (scroll to the bottom of the page linked to access the PDF). Produced by Regina Joseph of the Clingendael Institute on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of the Netherlands, the charts detail several alternative scenarios for Iran's future evolution and the implications for the broader Middle East.

Don't miss New York Times columnist Roger Cohen's critique of a new book, Going to Tehran, in the New York Review of Books, which can now be read in its entirety on the NYRB site as linked. The review, entitled "Ruthless Iran: Can A Deal Be Made?" offers a biting assessment of the tome by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, as well as analysis on U.S. policy and the dilemmas of dealing with Iran.

Amidst all the talk this week of numbers— 686 aspiring candidates in Iran's presidential election, 8 approved to run, 2 prominent disqualifications— it's worth spending a few moments pondering another number: 870. That is the number of individual Iranian prisoners of conscience identified as part of a project by Tehran Bureau, many of them arrested after the election upheaval in 2009. Learn more details of their cases in this moving interactive feature here.

And finally, here is a piece that is not about Iran directly, but what Iran might have become. 'This Place Should Have Been Iran': Iranian Imaginings In/Of Dubai, written by Behzad Sarmadi and posted on the Ajam Media Collective, evokes the connections between Iranians and Dubai.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Iran @ Saban Friday Wrap-Up

Suzanne Maloney — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:20:00 -0400

We've got mail! Michael Miner of Harvard University was kind enough to send his thoughts on Iran @ Saban’s commentary on the vetting process for the upcoming Iranian presidential election. Interestingly, Miner proffered an alternative explanation for the disqualification of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Miner made this argument originally here, with an analysis of Rafsanjani’s rationale for getting into the race in the first place. Among other possibilities, Miner theorizes that the Rafsanjani bid might have been a deliberate ploy intended to balance Mashaei’s inevitable disqualification and provide a diversion from any uproar over Mashaei’s exclusion.

While I’m skeptical about the Mashaei aspect here for reasons that I’ll get into in a longer post on Mashaei next week, I think Miner raises an important uncertainty about Rafsanjani’s motivations that, at this early stage at least, seems impossible to resolve with any degree of confidence. Most of the reporting has accepted the narrative put forward by the former president’s camp on both his late-game decision to jump into the 2013 race, and his shock at his disqualification. However, as Iran analyst extraordinaire Farideh Farhi observed recently, politics in Iran resembles "a three-dimensional chess game," and on that basis it’s reasonable to wonder, at least, whether Rafsanjani’s registration might have been a gambit of some kind by a politician renowned for his cunning.

Was Rafsanjani’s registration a wholly straightforward bid at contesting the presidential election? Or was it part of a more complicated political maneuver with an ulterior motive? I’ve read or heard several such interpretations, in addition to the one suggested by Miner above: that Rafsanjani anticipated his disqualification, and registered precisely with the intent of exposing the regime’s duplicity; or that, with similar logic, Rafsanjani put himself forward with the intention of using his eventual rejection as a means of mobilizing much more vigorous popular support around his long-time ally and fellow pragmatist, Hassan Rouhani.

These kinds of convoluted explanations appeal to my own cynical mind; the theatrics associated with Rafsanjani’s eleventh-hour decision to run sounded suspiciously embroidered given the protracted decision-making period that preceded it. For that reason alone, it seems to me that we have yet to fully comprehend the calculations that shaped the way that Hashemi played this hand. Of course, it’s all too easy to over-interpret when it comes to Iran. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, even in the Islamic Republic, and Hashemi Rafsanjani may just be another ambitious, aging politician who miscalculated his prospects in a system that had turned against him. The early reaction in the Iranian press would seem to support this explanation. Still, this is one of the many unknowns of this election season in Iran. Weigh in with your views on the Rafsanjani saga at IranAtSaban@brookings.edu.

Iran @ Saban may slow down a bit over what is a long weekend in Washington, but we’ll be keeping tabs on the candidates in Iran as electioneering there begins to move into full swing. (The official campaign is a mere eight days in June, but the fun has alread begun.) We’ll be back in full swing ourselves next week; watch for Iran @ Saban to go graphic, at least in the sense of incorporating photos. And stay tuned for more substance— including an equally keenly-argued response to my colleague Michael Doran's much-discussed piece on U.S. diplomacy toward Iran on Syria, more contributions on Iran’s role in the region, and of course much more analysis of the election dynamics. As always, send your comments, questions, analytical contributions to IranAtSaban@brookings.edu.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

The Legacy of Reform in Iran, Sixteen Years Later

Suzanne Maloney — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The date of May 23 on the Western calendar corresponds to the second of the month of Khordad on the Iranian calendar. It is a date of some political significance and poignancy for Iranians. Sixteen years ago on May 23, 1997, reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami surprised the country and the world with a massive upset victory in the election to succeed then-president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The date itself, Dovvom-e Khordad or the Second of Khordad, became a mantra for change and the shorthand for a new political movement, one that was focused on gradual reform within the confines of the existing framework of the Islamic Republic.

The significance of Khatami’s victory continues to reverberate, even in today’s Iran. While politics in the Islamic Republic had always featured a strong element of competition among the array of factions that comprised the revolutionary coalition, the Second of Khordad was the first time since the revolution that an Iranian presidential election proved genuinely competitive. The invocation of the date as a rallying cry was short-lived, however. Iran’s conservatives responded to this vigorous new political force with a backlash that paralyzed Khatami’s presidency and targeted many of the reform movement’s leading partisans and intellectuals with violence, repression and forced exile.

The agenda of the reform movement centered around the concepts of moderation, tolerance, accountability and rule of (man-made) law. These were revolutionary ideas in the Islamic Republic circa 1997; however, Khatami was determined both as a matter of strategy and as a function of his cautious nature to avoid revolutionary action. Popular support represented the reform movement’s most powerful instrument of leverage— at least at the outset, before the stratospheric expectations attached to it were inevitably dashed—but it was one that the reformists were almost invariably unwilling to use. This made the movement viable within the paranoid parameters of the revolutionary theocracy, but it ultimately left its agenda vulnerable to the willingness of their hard-line opponents to use any means necessary.

Ultimately, however, it was not simply repression that undermined the reformists. Rather, it was the evidence, borne of the eight-year Khatami experiment and the bald-faced manipulations of the system by his successor, that the Islamic Republic cannot be durably moderated by a movement that sidesteps its central idiosyncrasy— the divine mandate of the office of the Supreme Leader, which in the Islamic Republic transcends such trivialities as the rule of law. Despite the real tactical genius they displayed in seizing the presidency and sustaining their movement in its early years, the reformists never managed to navigate beyond this impasse, either intellectually or strategically. And the events of 2009 further eroded the viability— and thus, the popular appeal— of the reformist approach of gradualism, incrementalism and change from within.

Although the reform movement was stymied and largely forced to the sidelines of Iranian decision-making, it managed to have a meaningful, positive impact on the lives of Iranians through specific policy advances as well as the general reinvigoration of civil society and the media. Some of its achievements endure, such as the establishment of elected city and village councils for the first time in Iranian history. Still, in the eight years since Khatami left office, his two most important contributions— the unleashing of Iranians’ sense of political entitlement and the rehabilitation of Iran’s role in the world— have been forcefully reversed. Judging from the orchestration of the current presidential campaign and, more broadly, Tehran's embrace of autocracy in recent years, it is hard to envision an outcome to the June 14 election that restores either in the short term.

Today, the reformist movement is scattered and dispirited. It retains a small faction in parliament that, to its credit, has managed to navigate its minority party status with some adroitness. It asserts enough of a stake in the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic that its most prominent candidate for the presidency, Mohammad Reza Aref, managed to survive the electoral vetting process. But it is a quest that seems purely symbolic given the fate of the last election’s reformist candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi— who have been held, mostly incommunicado, under house arrest for more than two years.

On its sixteenth anniversary, the Second of Khordad was all but ignored within Iran. Rather, Tehran hopes that the presidential campaign just getting underway will end the cycle of electoral unpredictability and republican aspirations that 1997 Khatami victory incited. And instead of marking the milestone of the reformist upset at the ballot, the current power brokers prefer to commemorate another anniversary which happens to fall on the subsequent day. The third of Khordad, or May 24, marks 31 years since the liberation of the city of Khorramshahr, which had been occupied and heavily devastated by the September 1980 Iraqi invasion. Unfortunately, these themes of heroic resistance against a more powerful adversary are more resonant with the Iranian leadership today than the mantra of accountability, respect and rule of law invoked by Khatami and the Second of Khordad.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:29:00 -0400

On August 28-29, 2012, the Saban Center at Brookings and the United States Central Command brought together analysts, officers, and policymakers to discuss the new and enduring challenges facing the United States in the Middle East.

The conference, Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East, explored security developments in key countries of the region, focusing on those issues where the risks and opportunities for the United States are the greatest.

General James N. Mattis, then CENTCOM’s commander, delivered opening remarks, and the Honorable Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, deliver a keynote address. The conference also featured experts from the Middle East as well as senior American analysts and officials. Together, the speakers and conference participants offered insights that went well beyond conventional Washington wisdom and provided valuable lessons and ideas for the U.S. military and policy community.

The proceedings from this conference include summaries of the sessions and the full text of Dr. Flournoy’s keynote address.

Downloads

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Authors

The Outside-In Campaign Strategy of Iran's Nuclear Negotiator

Suzanne Maloney — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:26:00 -0400

Saeed Jalili has been getting a lot of press lately – not for his day job, as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, or even for the responsibilities that come with it, as the lead negotiator on the nuclear issue with the United States and its international partners. Rather, this forty-something bureaucrat has emerged as the front-runner in the contest to succeed the notorious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next president of the Islamic Republic.

Conventional wisdom on Iran has a decidedly mixed track record, but it’s easy to appreciate why Jalili is seen as leading the pack that has gotten the nod from Iran’s Guardians’ Council. Here’s a hint: it’s not a reflection of charismatic campaign skills or a strong track record on the issues, like the economy, that really matter to Iranians. Rather, Jalili is seen the most likely contender because he appears to optimally fulfill the requirements of the only voter who really matters: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He fought in one of the most brutal battles of the long war with Iraq, losing part of his right leg in the process, and later completed his doctorate in political science at a hard-line Iranian university, where his dissertation focused on the diplomacy of the prophet Mohammad. This was a subject he would later propound upon in his first meeting with Western nuclear negotiators.

He has worked directly for Khamenei, as director-general of the supreme leader’s influential office. He was plucked from relative obscurity six years ago to coordinate Iran’s national security strategies and lead the nuclear negotiations with the West. Along the way, Jalili earned a reputation for piety, honesty, and absolute fidelity to the authority of the Supreme Leader. His continuing role as the chief nuclear negotiator makes it unlikely, in my opinion at least, that the leadership would condone a disappointing showing in the polls. For all these reasons, he has been considered for many months a possible successor to Ahmadinejad, and a number of Iranian conservative politicians either withdrew in his favor or indicated that they would consider doing so.

In a sense, Jalili is Ahmadinejad 2.0, a younger-generation hardliner who boasts total commitment to the ideals of the revolution, a limited national profile and no serious power base within the establishment, making him perfectly subservient to Khamenei. Ahmadinejad proved to be a disastrous pick on almost every basis— beyond his chaotic economic policies and proclivity for alienating the international community, the president’s devout beliefs proved a little too messianic for the traditionalist clergy and he overreached in asserting his own ambitions. The sequel is softer-spoken, more carefully vetted, and more reliable. Still, Khamenei’s willingness to take a chance on another young acolyte after such a divisive experience underscores the extent to which the aging revolutionary recognizes the need for generational change within the leadership if the Islamic Republic is to endure.

Although he promises to be more docile than Ahmadinejad, Jalili may yet prove capable of innovation. The most interesting dimension of his candidacy to date is his apparent strategy, which is relying not simply on the top-down influence of Khamenei, but also on an appeal to the international media, presumably as a means of bolstering his stature at home. The man who has reportedly brought turgid discourse to new heights in his diplomatic exchanges with American and international negotiators is suddenly turning on the charm for the foreign press. Over the past week, he has conducted interviews with the Financial Times and the Christian Science Monitor, and he (or someone on his staff) has become a prolific tweeter in both Persian and English. (The English-language tweets, whose odd cadence suggests an overfamiliarity with auto-translate programs, are almost poetic in their inanity.) He has an official campaign website, a Facebook page, a Google Plus site and an Instagram account, as well as a host of friendly aggregator sites. If the world uncovers an authorized Jalili Tumblr blog, it won't come as much of a surprise.

This frantic deployment of social media— most of the sites and tweets appear to be about two weeks old— and international journalists would be comical if it weren’t being undertaken on behalf of a government that has waged a lengthy and often successful campaign to harass bloggers and inhibit its citizens’ access to the internet and a free press. Setting that gaping hypocrisy aside, it says something about Iran's complicated relationship with the world that even the scion of a state that inveighs against the prevailing order still craves international legitimation as a statesmen. Ultimately, the sophistication of Jalili’s campaign is indicative of a significant investment of time and energy, and it reflects, presumably, a real determination to win the presidency. Iranians and the world must surely hope that Jalili’s embrace of modernity in service of his presidential ambitions will extend to a more prudent approach to governing Iran if and when he actually assumes the office.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Iran's Guardians Versus The 'Grey Eminence'

Suzanne Maloney — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:06:00 -0400

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has found his field of dreams, with Tuesday's announcement of the list of eight candidates who secured approval to run in Iran’s upcoming presidential election. The most remarkable aspect about the list was the two names that were missing: those of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a two-term former president and one of the founders of the revolutionary state, and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose infamy within Iran almost eclipses that of his primary patron, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The decision probably paves the way for an anodyne campaign that displays— with one key exception— mindless deference to the ideological strictures of Khamenei’s rule.

The announcement came near nightfall in Tehran, where rainy weather as well as the preemptive deployment of riot police and an internet slowdown helped ensure that the news was digested quietly. While it is improbable that the candidate list itself could spark street riots, today’s Islamic Republic takes no chances. The security measures reflected the overabundance of caution that has characterized Iran’s political environment since the post-election unrest of 2009, when an unexpectedly exuberant reaction to a regime stalwart persuaded the Supreme Leader to effectively dispense with the pretense of a credible vote-count and declare victory for his then-favored son, Ahmadinejad.

Ever the pragmatist, Rafsanjani navigated that crisis warily, and only ever advocated a truce with the opposition Green Movement that emerged briefly in its wake. Still, the prospective candidacy of a politician whom a dissident once dubbed the 'Grey Eminence' for his Machiavellian tendencies buoyed the hopes of the vestiges of the Green Movement and of the reformists who had preceded them. That development surely helped seal his fate for this ballot. Rafsanjani’s rejection provoked some surprise and plenty of cynicism, as the figment of the regime’s adherence to procedural correctness was abandoned for a wholesale embrace of the primacy of absolute obedience.

However absurd the Islamic Republic’s vetting process has been in the past – and more than two dozen elections over the course of 34 years have provided plenty of fodder – the suggestion that a man who has been at the apex of power in the Islamic Republic since its inception no longer meets its constitutional standards for the presidency carries the farce to a new level. Rafsanjani sits on the Assembly of Experts, which appoints Iran’s supreme leader, and leads its Expediency Council, which adjudicates challenges to proposed legislation. The determination that he is unfit for the presidency inevitably calls into question the credibility of these other institutions. The other rationale on offer— the aspersions on Rafsanjani’s advanced age (78) that were invoked by a number of conservative power brokers— is similarly insupportable. The Islamic Republic is, after all, a clerical gerontocracy. Rafsanjani may be closing in on 80, but he cuts a relatively spry figure among the Iranian political establishment, including by comparison with its late founder who seized power as a septuagenarian.

Rafsanjani's rejection suggests that the Supreme Leader— along with his key constituencies in the traditional clergy and the Revolutionary Guard— saw Rafsanjani’s electoral exclusion as a lesser threat than his inclusion. Apparently they calculated that his prospects for animate a challenge to the system as a candidate outweighed the possibility that his rejection would alienate the establishment or provoke popular unrest. For a regime that is increasingly incapable of tolerating mass political engagement, it was probably a judicious call.

Iranians are watching Rafsanjani’s next step closely. The Iranian press and social media are abuzz with reports: one of his sons asserts that he would not challenge disqualification, while his daughter notes that he rejected pressure to withdraw his candidacy quietly. The former president has apparently retreated to Qom, a move that may invoke powerful symbolism from Iranian history, when protestors against an unjust monarch took sanctuary in Qom. However, it remains unclear whether Rafsanjani’s retreat is intended to bolster his case with support from the country’s powerful seminaries, or intended to lick his wounds and spare his dignity.

The Rafsanjani saga is spellbinding, but it is possible to make too much of his rejection. Over the past 10 days, I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the emerging Rafsanjani-as-Iranian-savior meme for a couple of reasons. First, it’s simply impossible to know what if any popular mandate Rafsanjani could command. After all, his last successful bid for elective office took place 20 years ago, a time that it is at most a hazy memory for the majority of Iran’s disproportionately young population. Since that time, he lost two subsequent attempts at the ballot box, a 2000 parliamentary campaign and the 2005 run against Ahmadinejad for the presidency.

His losses reflected his profoundly mixed reputation among ordinary Iranians, if my own anecdotal experience is any guide. The image of the former president as an infallible architect of economic reform is in fact greatly exaggerated. He did spearhead the post-war reconstruction program against considerable domestic opposition, but his policies also instigated a destabilizing debt crisis and spiraling inflation. Rafsanjani’s reputation for personal enrichment, the ascendance of his sons and daughters and nephew, and the culture of crony capitalism that emerged during his tenure left deep resentments among ordinary Iranians whose share of the post-war spoils typically did not expand.

And for all the outrage over his exclusion, it’s worth recalling that Rafsanjani knows a thing or two about rigging elections. In his first election to the presidency in 1989, he ran virtually uncontested; the Council of Guardians rejected all but one of the other 80 prospective candidates who applied. His opponent, a former agriculture minister and parliamentarian, was perceived at the time as merely “a name to fill out the ballot sheet,” who chivalrously articulated no opposing views in helping Rafsanjani cruise to a margin of 94 percent of the vote. His 1993 reelection was only mildly more competitive with three rivals approved out of 128 aspirants. In the interim, Rafsanjani helped engineer the culling of leftist candidates from the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that they opposed his economic reforms.

In Iran, what goes around tends to come around, and the curtains probably closed on Rafsanjani’s opportunity to lead the Islamic Republic out of its ideological wilderness years or even decades ago. He will remain a force to be reckoned with in the arena, most notably through his longstanding ally Hassan Rouhani, whose bid to run managed to pass the Guardians’ Council scrutiny. Rouhani has nowhere near the name recognition of Rafsanjani, but he is a political figure of some stature and reputed intellect, who was one of the earliest and most vocal establishment critics of Ahmadinejad. He negotiated Iran’s short-lived suspension of uranium enrichment with the Europeans in 2004, and even in his incipient presidential campaign he has had the audacity to highlight the plight of Iran's political prisoners. A Rouhani win seems beyond improbable at this stage, but his approval offers a silver lining for Iran’s dispirited reformists mourning the loss of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

While the Rafsanjani furor is likely to deflate over the course of the campaign, the rejection of Ahmadinejad’s protégé, Mashaei, may well escalate before it is over. The news of Mashaei’s rejection seemed entirely foreordained; no one other than President Ahmadinejad himself anticipated that the Guardians' Council would allow the man dubbed the leader of a 'deviant current,' intent on subverting the revolutionary system and prone to blasphemy, to run for the country's second highest office. Ahmadinejad’s other allies had already withdrawn from the campaign, ostensibly to augment Mashaei’s chances, and now the mercurial president has literally no horse in the race and arguably no stake in keeping faith with the political establishment intent on eliminating him.

The president and his protégé are not without recourse; they have a claim on some residual popular base and a burgeoning political machinery. And most importantly, Ahmadinejad has already proven he is unencumbered by a sense of fidelity to the established rules of the Islamic Republic; among his other leverage, he has already threatened to reveal damaging information about the scope of his contested victory in 2009 in order to undermine the system. As a result, the most compelling dimension of Iran’s 2013 presidential elections may not be which candidate wins the office, but rather how the incumbent leaves the office.

Over the course of upcoming days, check back with Iran @ Saban for more on Mashaei, Rafsanjani and the ongoing fallout from the latest news. We’ll weigh in on the candidates who were approved, most notably nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili who has emerged as the analytical community’s pick for early front-runner. And we want to encourage you to join the conversation; email your thoughts on the candidate list and all the other Iran news of the day to IranAtSaban@brookings.edu, and we’ll post comments, questions and comebacks as they trickle in.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Welcome to Iran @ Saban

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:30:00 -0400

Welcome and khosh amadid!

Welcome to Iran @ Saban, a new blog featuring commentary and analysis on the array of issues related to Iran by scholars at the Brookings Institution. It takes only a quick scan of the headlines each day to appreciate the significance of Iran to American national interests and international security, and the variety and complexity of the issues and actors at stake. Through an intense focus on all things Iran, we hope to advance a better understanding of the internal dynamics of the Islamic Republic and promote effective international strategies for dealing with the challenges its policies pose.

We’ve timed our kick-off to coincide with the upcoming Iranian presidential election, in hopes of enriching the discussion that has already emerged around the ballot. As current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to leave office, Iran's internal power struggles will enter a new phase. From now through the vote on June 14^th and presumably well beyond, we’ll closely follow the twists and turns of Iran’s frequently unexpected electoral dynamics and consider what the future may bring for Iran. This discussion will delve into the major issues confronting Tehran today, especially the economic crisis and the impact of sanctions.

Although the electoral interplay will consume a great deal of attention in the next few weeks, the focus of the blog will extend well beyond the events of the election and Iran's domestic dramas. We will be tackling Iran’s approach to the region and the world, its relationship with established and emerging powers, and the strategies and tactics of various players, including the United States, toward Tehran. Inevitably, we’ll spend a lot of time examining the nuclear issue, starting with the prospects for revitalizing the stalled negotiations between Tehran and the international community and discussions around alternative approaches if dialogue fails to produce a diplomatic resolution of Iran's nuclear ambitions. However, the sense of urgency surrounding the nuclear issue has narrowed the American debate on Iran in recent years, problematically in my opinion. For that reason, watch the space for a robust discussion of the range of issues and threats related to Iran, including terrorism, human rights, the peace process and the Syrian civil war, the rise of new regional and global powers, and the impact of technology and changes in energy markets on Iranian politics and the policy options of the international community.

Let me also say a few words about what this blog won’t be: this won’t be a vehicle for lobbying for or against any particular point of view. This blog will be infused with opinions – various and variegated – but in keeping with the Brookings’ mission, our discussions here on the blog will remain grounded in the ideals of intellectual objectivity, rigorous policy-relevant analysis, and civil debate. In that respect, we hope to integrate some of our longer form scholarship into the blog, by featuring previews of forthcoming publications related to Iran and initating conversations surrounding our ongoing research projects.

I also want to underscore that this will not be a solo venture. At the outset, my name may recur disproportionately, as the person charged with wrangling the blog’s content and as one of the few scholars who has the luxury of obsessing almost exclusively about Iran. However, Iran invokes a diverse and thorny set of foreign policy issues and concerns, and many of my Brookings scholars are at the forefront of research and writing on areas relevant to the Iranian challenge. We’ll try to draw in experts on a range of different regions, including China, Europe, and India as well as the scholars in our Doha office, and functional areas of expertise, such as energy, intelligence, and nonproliferation, and the site will feature the work of a fantastic team of Brookings staff providing with research and media support. As visitors to this site will soon appreciate, the whole of Brookings' work on Iran is much greater than the sum of its parts.

I want to close this opening with an overture: we want to extend the debate on Iran beyond the walls of Brookings, and we encourage you to join the conversation via email to IranAtSaban@brookings.edu We’ll also be on Twitter (via, among others, @maloneysuzanne) and engaging through a variety of other media.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Why Iran's Presidential Election Matters

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:26:00 -0400

In conversations with policymakers, journalists and analysts about the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, one question looms: does it even matter? Iran is, after all, an Islamic theocracy, a state in which the supreme leader is the ultimate decision-maker and elections are heavily stage-managed from start to finish. The president’s powers are explicitly limited, and whatever sense of electoral unpredictability that may have characterized Iran in the past— for example, in 1997, when a reformist cleric upset the heavily-favored front-runner— appeared to have ended with the contested 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Millions of Iranians outraged by the unusual speed and dubious margin of Ahmadinejad’s ostensible victory took to the streets chanting “where is my vote?” This violence that greeted this appeal, and the show trials and other Stalinist tactics that followed in its wake, seemed to suggest that Iran's quirky system had devolved to a more banal authoritarianism, where polls serve as mere pageants and institutions are unabashedly manipulated.

It would be tempting, then, to dismiss the election scheduled for June 14 as mere window-dressing or to disregard the brewing antagonisms within Iran’s political establishment as irrelevant. This would be a mistake, however, and yet another misreading of Iran’s complicated domestic dynamics. Don’t get me wrong— I don’t mean to suggest that the election will bear any resemblance to a truly democratic enterprise; even in the best of times, the Islamic Republic fell far short of meeting international standards for free and fair elections. However, while the outcome will be engineered, the element of improvisation is real, and the outcome of this latest twist in the thirty-four year power struggle within Iran will have significant implications for the future of the country and its role in the world.

If the past eight years of Ahmadinejad’s antics have taught us nothing else, they have demonstrated over and over again that Iran’s presidency matters. Despite its electoral illegitimacy, its institutional constraints, and the assiduous efforts of a system built around a divine mandate, the office of the presidency has emerged as one with real power to shape the context for domestic and foreign policy. The post exerts considerable authority over the Iranian budget, the framework for internal political activities, the social and cultural atmosphere, and even the most sensitive aspects of Iran’s security policies. Whoever assumes the office in August of this year will find himself near the apex of power, at a time of unprecedented external pressure and at the cusp of generational change within the Iranian regime. For this reason, the election and its outcome will have enormous sway over the future course of the Islamic Republic.

To appreciate the significance of the much-maligned Iranian presidency, simply consider the track records of its most recent occupants. During his two terms in office (1997-2005), reformist president Mohammad Khatami managed to curb some of the worst abuses of Iran’s own citizens and establish new avenues for political participation and speech. His tenure attracted foreign investment to Iran, unified its exchange rate, and established an oil stabilization fund to promote responsible economic stewardship. He repaired Iran’s relationships with much of the world, and even helped push through a multi-year suspension of the most worrisome aspects of its nuclear program.

It was not an unadulterated success by any stretch of the imagination; Khatami’s ambitions for change were inherently limited by his steadfast loyalty to the theocratic system and many of its most problematic policies, and even his mild reforms were thwarted at every turn by hardliners’ opposition. Still, compare those years to the two terms of his successor, who oversaw a crackdown against technocrats and the media, squandered an epic boom in oil revenues, and indulged in hate speech that helped alienate the world and isolate his country. It’s clear that Iranians as well as the international community were better served by Khatami’s halting moderation than by Ahmadinejad’s impetuous antagonisms.

It’s almost certain that the June election won’t produce a shocking upset or a reformist victory, and that whoever manages to secure the presidency this time around will offer continuity on the issues that matter most to Washington, particularly the nuclear issue. However, elections— even ones that are heavily rigged— represent critical junctures in the lifecycle of political systems, and in Iran they have repeatedly sent the revolutionary system careening in new directions. At times, these changes in course were deliberate, as in 1989 when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ran virtually unopposed in order to spearhead the country’s post-war reconstruction. At other times, the shifts have been wholly unanticipated, such as the advent of the reform movement or even Ahmadinejad himself, whose mid-term transformation from the Supreme Leader’s acolyte to his whipping boy has given the Iranian political establishment whiplash.

Iran’s revolution was the product of a deeply divided coalition that agreed on little beyond their opposition to the Shah, and throughout its history, the Islamic Republic has experienced a intense, evolving competition for influence. That contest remains as dynamic as ever, and the election will offer an opportunity for external observers to gauge the state of play. For those within the system, the campaign provides endless openings for ambitious contenders and rival factions to position themselves for future influence and reframe Iran’s political climate, just as Khatami and Ahmadinejad did. The election will help determine what becomes of a regime stalwart, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the future prospects of the quixotic and enterpreneurial Ahmadinejad; and the rise or fall of a curious array of aspiring Iranian leaders.

And because the legacy of the revolution and Iran’s century-old struggle for representative rule has made popular participation incumbent even upon its theocracy, the election will mobilize millions of Iranians in ways that often prove difficult to control, even with a well-orchestrated repression. Over the course of the forthcoming weeks, we’ll be watching all these factors closely and seeking to interpret what the campaign and its outcome mean for Iran’s domestic evolution and its ongoing conflicts with the international community.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

America and Iran: Wrestling with Ghosts

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:56:00 -0400

One of the very few feel-good stories in the recent history of U.S.-Iranian relations came to an unexpectedly abrupt end last week, when Iranian authorities cut short a series of wrestling exhibition matches in the United States. The first round, held in New York last Wednesday, drew large, boisterous crowds and buoyant media coverage, helping to animate a three-nation campaign (with Russia) to sustain wrestling as an Olympic sport and raise funds for youth wrestling programs. No sooner had the applause in New York died down, however, than Tehran opted to ditch a planned Los Angeles stop on the tour, and the Iranian wrestlers quickly returned to Tehran on Saturday.

So far, the rationale for the decision seems vague, and there are discrepancies between the statement of the exhibition’s American sponsor, USA Wrestling, and the official Iranian press agency's rendition. News reports referenced Iranian concerns about security provisions, and rumors circulated of anticipated protests by members of the large Iranian diaspora living in Southern California. Whatever the explanation, the hasty truncation of the American-Iranian wrestling tour is unfortunate but not entirely unexpected. For all sunny sentiments associated with cultural diplomacy, managing the political and logistical complexities of people-to-people exchanges between such longstanding adversaries can be fraught with potential minefields.

I should know; as a graduate student in the late 1990s, I participated in several of the first academic exchange programs between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I experienced first-hand the excitement as well as the issues that go along with such efforts. Thanks to funding from both governments and the coordination and contacts of the American Institute for Iranian Studies, I was able to study Persian at the Dehkhoda Institute in Tehran, travel widely throughout the country, and conduct research for my doctoral dissertation on Iran's Foundation for the Oppressed and other parastatal organizations. Fumbling my way around a country that I had studied extensively but never visited was an amazing experience. Iranians treated me and my fellow American interlopers with the hospitality for which the country rightly used to be legendary and the curiosity that inevitably accompanies three decades of official estrangement.

However, I also came to appreciate how precarious these enterprises can be. The problem with people-to-people diplomacy is, well, the people. Amateur ambassadors can be mighty difficult to manage, particularly with the limited oversight of what are ultimately low-priority programs. Inserting a gaggle of grad students, or wrestlers or any of the other professional groups that have sought to overcome official estrangement through bilateral exchanges, creates endless opportunities for normal human interactions to explode into diplomatic incidents. I'll never forget the combination of exhaustion and anxiety on the face of the one of the many Iranian handlers when a few Americans unexpectedly found ourselves in the midst of a gun battle between police and drug runners in the southeastern city of Kerman. We had arrived in Iran just as the regime unleashed its repression of the July 1999 student protests, and now this real-time brush with the country's low-intensity drug war was just the kind of mess that could cost our minder his job and his future. "I am having a nervous breakdown," he confessed as he alternated between tea and chain smoking.

I suspect that there are a number of program officers within the State Department who can sympathize. During the Bush Administration's second term, then-Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns spurred a good-faith effort to expand educational and cultural exchanges with Iran. Artists, doctors, athletes and scientists from Iran crisscrossed America, sharing expertise and experience in subjects as diverse as earthquake science and engineering and AIDS treatment and education. Publicly, the programs often appeared to be blazingly successful in their stated goal of enhancing mutual understanding between Americans and Iranians. Behind the scenes, however, the story was often more complicated, thanks to Tehran’s paranoid conviction that these innocuous opportunities were the leading edge of a Washington-sponsored ‘soft revolution.’ A number of Iranians who participated in these exchanges found their passports seized or their professional advancement threatened; some feared returning home, and several were ultimately imprisoned after permitting their stories to be featured prominently in a major American newspaper.

I believe deeply in the mission and purpose of people-to-people exchanges. What little I understand about contemporary Iranian politics is grounded in the months I spent there over the course of 1998 and 1999, as well as the skills, contacts, and subsequent opportunities to visit Iran that I acquired as a direct result of that early immersion. Surely, the benefits for my fellow American participants— as well as the hundreds of Iranians who have been able to interact with their professional counterparts in the United States— have been at least as meaningful.

Still, people-to-people diplomacy is no substitute for official diplomacy, and it frequently offers as much complication as illumination. Back in 1999, my fretful Iranian minder won an early reprieve when our exchange program was unexpectedly curtailed upon the order of the State Department. A call from the Swiss ambassador, whose embassy serves as the protecting power of Americans in the absence of official relations, initiated a flurry of bureaucratic maneuvers to hasten our departure, and a few days later we were gone. I subsequently heard a range of rumors explaining the episode, including one focused around the efforts of the Clinton administration to establish back-channel cooperation with then-President Mohammad Khatami on counterterrorism efforts. Whatever the truth, nothing ever came of that initiative, and fourteen years later, the wrestlers' unfortunately early exit underscores the steep obstacles that remain in bridging the American-Iranian divide.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

And They’re Off: The Campaign for a New Iranian President Has Begun

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:26:00 -0400

The race to replace Iran’s deeply polarizing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, officially opened last week with the registration of prospective candidates, and already the campaign promises an utterly fascinating ride through the unpredictable politics of the Islamic Republic. The shock and awe surrounding the last-minute decision by Iran’s iconic former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to throw his hat into yet another race has only been topped for drama by the latest antics of the current incumbent aimed apparently at elevating a controversial protégé to succeed him. At least at the outset, these sensational developments have overshadowed the emerging shape of the real race among an array of regime functionaries, most notably nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

With 686 would-be candidates and an array of insidious regime mechanisms for influencing the outcome, it is literally impossible to predict today who the ultimate contenders will be, much less who will win the race. However, what is clear is that Iran’s presidential election represents the opening salvo in another historic turning point in the volatile evolution of the revolutionary theocracy.

The application period is a deliberately chaotic process, designed to justify the pretense behind the clerical vetting process and bolster the credibility of the nominees who are ultimately tapped by Iran’s Guardians’ Council, a 12-member unelected clerical oversight body. There is also a keen dimension of political theater, as the prospective candidates seek to gauge their relative prospects and the leadership endeavors to maintain an uneasy balance between galvanizing popular interest in the campaign and inciting the kind of electoral exuberance that has generated instability in the past. Over the course of the next 10 days, the field will be narrowed from several hundred to a mere handful who are assessed to meet the constitutional standards for the office.

This time around, the chaos has been intensified by the lingering memories of the upheaval that ensued in 2009, when an implausibly rapid vote-count and wide margin in favor of Ahmadinejad’s reelection instigated the largest and most sustained protests in Iran’s post-revolutionary history. The ensuing crackdown left Iran’s burgeoning reform movement estranged, imprisoned or scurrying into exile. Predictably, however, no sooner had the conservative wing of the Iranian political spectrum achieved uncontested dominance than deep fissures emerged within them. For the past two years, frictions among Iranian hard-liners have been directed, full bore, at Ahmadinejad himself, which greatly heightens the significance of the current contest to succeed him.

Cue Ahmadinejad’s first electoral adversary, Rafsanjani, whose entrance has sparked an intense debate about his motivations as well as about the competition to come. In a prospective field comprised mostly of second-tier Iranian political figures, mostly former ministers and parliamentarians, he is vastly better known and boasts a political machinery that spans factions and decades. For many within Iran’s dispirited reformist and opposition ranks, the former president offers their best hope of political redemption and national salvation, a hint of their own marginalization given their past differences with him. Rafsanjani’s reputation for pragmatism is well-earned; he was tasked by Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolution’s founder, with ending the futile war with Iraq and later endeavored against stiff opposition to rehabilitate the country and reform its economy. He has carefully navigated fidelity to the system while critiquing both Ahmadinejad and the 2009 election, and his return to the presidency would likely revive now-dormant diplomatic fantasies in Europe and perhaps even Washington.

However, the former president faces powerful impediments that had persuaded many observers that his recent hints about the race were just a tease. Mostly notable is his age – almost 79 – which raises questions of capacity but also may undermine his appeal in a country with a disproportionately young population. More problematic is the unfortunate reality that he appears to have a more effusive constituency in the Western media than in Iran. Among the Iranian establishment, Rafsanjani is widely perceived as wildly corrupt and ideologically untrustworthy, and the population at large rejected his bid for a parliamentary seat in 2000 and favored Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential run-off. Now his unexpected entrance has incited a firestorm among the most doctrinaire of the hardliners, who have accused him of conspiring to delegitimize the system by daring the clerical supervisors to reject his candidacy.

Whatever happens, though, the calculations of the politician nicknamed “The Shark” (a reference to his lack of facial hair as well as his wily political skills) have already upended a race expected to rely on a motley array of second-tier Iranian political figures. His close ally, former nuclear negotiator Hassan Ruhani, had previously pledged to quit if Rafsanjani ran; Ruhani is a sharp-elbowed politician who has been an early and consistent critic of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear diplomacy and economic policy. So far that withdrawal has not come, despite much Twitter speculation to the contrary, and other similar pacts among conservative contenders also appear to be fraying under the weight of a suddenly reconfigured competition.

The Rafsanjani wild card is only one novelty in a race replete with interest. The other aspirant whose registration on Saturday has electrified Iranian poll watchers is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. Mashaei, a close advisor to Ahmadinejad, has long been the focus of fierce clerical ire as a result of his eclectic religious and political views. He was forced out of a vice presidential slot in 2009 and is routinely scorned as the mastermind of a ‘deviant current’ that has infiltrated the Islamic Republic in an effort to undermine it. Mashaei’s ambitions have been telegraphed over many months through increasingly unsubtle efforts of Ahmadinejad to stack the deck in his favor, culminating in the tandem appearance at Mashaei’s registration. That move prompted a legal complaint against the president – either a quaint nod at legalism in a patently manipulated electoral framework or the first step in a process of silencing the unpredictable Ahmadinejad via intimidation or imprisonment.

The calculations of Rafsanjani, Mashaei and Ahmadinejad are compelling in their own right, and they will no doubt influence Iran’s future. However, the drama associated with them has diverted attention from the likely electoral landscape, which features a less thrilling but still significant roster of contenders. For several months, some speculation has centered on former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, a pediatrician by original training whose entire 32-year political career is the product of patronage by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Others have long fixated on Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqr Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards commander who has assiduously restyled himself as a moderate, modernist problem-solver. Another dark horse to watch closely Gholamali Haddad Adel, a parliamentary leader and literature professor whose daughter is married to Khamenei’s powerful son Mojtaba.

The real heavyweight in the pack, however, is Jalili, who was virtually unknown beyond a small circle of the Iranian leadership until his appointment as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in 2009. In leading the contentious negotiations with the international community over Iran’s nuclear program, he has personified Iran’s quixotic mix of defiance with occasional bursts of pragmatism. One of his early forays in the high-stakes talks featured a discursive lecture on the Prophet Mohammad’s diplomacy, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. But Jalili was also responsible for signing onto a Western confidence-building step in 2009 that was quickly disavowed by Tehran. He survived the ensuing outcry among conservatives unscathed, a testament to his primary patron, Khamenei, whose office he directed for four years. Of all the would-be aspirants for the presidency in this round, Jalili appears to benefit from an air of ordination, and already talk has emerged among other conservatives of withdrawing in order to bolster his competitiveness.

Setting aside the personality politics, the most astonishing, and important, dimension of the campaign is simply that we care at all. Four years ago, many observers – including myself – argued the blatant orchestration of Ahmadinejad’s reelection had all but extinguished the relevance of the electoral dimension of Iran’s convoluted governing system. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and many academics forecast that Iran was descending into a military dictatorship. So many of these predictions now appear off the mark, as external analysts and politicians all too often find when interpreting Iran.

Let’s be clear – the 2013 ballot will be rigged to a greater or lesser extent depending on how the campaign evolves, and the winner will undoubtedly benefit from unabashed assistance from the institutions, including the Guard. However, as the initial maneuvers of the 2013 presidential race underscores, politics in Iran remain competitive, unpredictable, and captivating. So stay tuned, and watch this space. One week from today, Brookings will be launching Iran @ Saban, a new blog that will focus on political and economic developments within Iran as well as the threats posed by its current policies and the strategic responses of the international community. The blog will showcase the deep bench of Brookings scholarship on the Middle East and issues such as proliferation, terrorism and, of course, electoral politics and the future of Iran.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Image Source: © Stringer Iran / Reuters

Around the Halls: Israel's Airstrikes in Syria

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:22:00 -0400

Following news of Israel’s weekend airstrikes in Syria, Brookings experts examine the implications of Israel’s actions, analyze Syria and Hezbollah’s possible responses, and offer foreign policy recommendations for the United States. Daniel Byman, Michael Doran, Suzanne Maloney, Kenneth M. Pollack, Natan Sachs, Salman Shaikh, and Tamara Cofman Wittes weigh in on the latest developments.

Natan Sachs
Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The Israeli airstrikes in Syria over the past few days were an instance of a standing Israeli policy: preventing, by all means necessary, the transfer of “game changing” weapons to either Asad’s ally, Hezbollah, or—of increasing Israeli concern—to extremist groups among the Syrian opposition. Such weapons include not only chemical weapons from Syria’s large stockpile but also advanced conventional weapons such as Russian anti-aircraft missiles or the Iranian Fateh 110 surface to surface missiles Israel reportedly targeted this weekend (missiles with significantly larger payload, better accuracy and longer range than most existing Hezbollah weaponry, such that Israelis cities would be under considerably more threat from Hezbollah than in the past).

The Israelis are betting that their actions do not backfire, either by provoking a larger conflict with Hezbollah or the Asad regime or by influencing the Syrian civil war in unpredictable ways (see this piece Dan and I wrote in Foreign Policy). Israel, in its view, has no horse in the race in Syria. It has no love for the Asad regime but is deeply wary of the potential for chaos or for an extremist takeover of parts of Syria. The Israeli stance has been, therefore, to take action on tangible, operational intelligence as it emerges but to refrain from involvement in the civil war itself; to protect its vital interests while remaining largely outside the fray.

But acting on the tactical and operational level without influencing the situation at large can be a difficult balancing act. Israel would provide the perfect foil for the Syrian regime or for Hezbollah, both of whom are mired in a bloody civil war where they on the wrong side, in popular Arab eyes. A diversionary conflict with Israel would offer them an out from the ire of the Arab publics, as the renewed anti-Israeli rhetoric of the Syrian regime in the past few days has demonstrated. Indeed, Israel was on alert in its north, deploying Iron Dome batteries, temporarily closing off the northern civilian airspace and ramping down a planned military exercise, for fear of stoking the flames. But Israel remains relatively confident that the situation will remain under control—Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu departed the country for a state visit to China—with both the Asad regime and Hezbollah wary of opening a front with the vastly more powerful Israel, and especially its airpower, while they struggle to hold their positions on the ground in Syria.

Kenneth Pollack
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

First, I'd like to just note that three Israeli strikes with non-stealthy aircraft cast some doubt on the Administration's alarmism about Syria's vaunted air defenses. Indeed, I wonder if that isn't also in the back of Bibi's head—demonstrating just how poor Syrian air defenses actually are.

Second, I would like to resurrect some of my comments from my blog post from last week: namely that whether the regime retaliates against Israel will be driven by its assessment of the fight with the opposition. As long as the regime feels it has a prospect of beating the rebels, it won't retaliate for fear of an escalatory spiral with Israel. They are very wary of taking on the IDF while they are fighting for their lives against the Sunnis--as long as they think they can win that fight. However, once they become concerned that they cannot win that fight, then the regime's incentive structure flips and it becomes more likely that they will retaliate against Israel, since the possibility of transforming the contest into an Arab-Israeli war outweighs whatever damage the Israelis could do once they conclude that they are doomed anyway. Right now, I do not believe the regime has reached that level of desperation, so I doubt they retaliate.

Salman Shaikh
Director, Brookings Doha Center, Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

First, Israel seems intent on defending its "red lines" and has already acted to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah; responded directly to fire from Syrian army units in the Golan Heights; and sounded the alarm on the use of chemical weapons.

With regard to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, it has shown that it is willing to change the 'rules of engagement' with the Assad regime and hit these weapons inside Syria. In doing so, it is seeking to establish a new level of deterrence with respect to such activities. Certainly, the latest strikes against weapons depots and reportedly the headquarters of the 104th Brigade of the Republican Guard as well as the 4th Division commanded by Bashar's brother, Maher Assad are punitive and painful. The psychological effects that such strikes could have on the senior officer core, particularly the Alawite officers, who form the backbone of the army and its security forces will be worth watching. In a short period of time, the certainty of the previous 40 years of "cold peace" has been replaced by the realisation that Israel will strike again and harder if Asad continues to supply Hezbollah.

The likely response from the Assad regime, as has already been the case since the strikes over the weekend, is to exploit the propaganda value of Israel's "aggression" and attempt to link it with efforts to aid the opposition's rebel forces. The Free Syrian Army has condemned the "Israeli aggression" but denied any connection to it. The Syrian National Coalition has responded by engaging in “verbal acrobatics” by condemning the attacks but also blaming Assad for weakening the country.

What will matter is the effect that this will have on the large number of people, particularly in the cities, who have not openly sided with either the regime or the opposition. If the situation escalates, the regime could gain ground by hammering the message that Israel has sided with rebels and extremists and that only the regime can protect the unity of Syria in this difficult period.

Key states in the Arab world, at least rhetorically, seem to be following suit. In addition to the predictable condemnations from the Syrian regime's supporters in Lebanon and Iraq, statements from President Morsi of Egypt and the Saudi government have condemned Israel's "violation of international law" and pointed to its dangerous consequences for the region. Meanwhile, the Arab League Secretary-General called it "a blatant aggression and a serious violation of an Arab country's sovereignty." He has also called for the UN to take action (never mind the League's silence over the recent massacres in Baniyas and the alleged use of chemical weapons).

Whether these statements reflect the views of Arab publics is debatable. For now at least, the focus will likely remain on the Assad regime's brutal use of force against its own people. The majority of Arabs, particularly Sunni Arabs are angry with Assad and resentful of the support that Hezbollah and the Iranians have provided to him. However, the suspicions that many in the region have towards Israel's actions will likely grow if the attacks continue and if these are perceived as only furthering Israel's interests.

Daniel Byman
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

For U.S. policy, my concern is that several important U.S. allies—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and now Israel— are involved in significant ways. And other neighbors, notably Lebanon and Iraq, are suffering increasing instability from the Syrian conflict. Meanwhile, the instability from Syria is steadily spreading beyond its borders. Even beyond the human cost, the United States has long had its own interests, including counterterrorism, in playing a more decisive role. Now the problem is metastasizing, and U.S. allies might work at cross purposes, and their actions may end up harming each other in the end.

Michael Doran
Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

I agree wholeheartedly with Dan. The issue for me is the abdication of American leadership. I cannot remember another time when the United States was so noticeably absent from a major issue— the major issue— in Middle Eastern international politics. It's important to make a distinction between leadership and direct intervention. Often when people call for a more robust American policy, they are shut down with a pointed question: "What do you want, another Iraq war?" But there is much that the United States could do, short of military intervention, to coordinate the activities of its allies. Leadership requires, before anything else, a clear vision of the future— a picture of an end state that is both desirable and achievable. The United States has no vision whatsoever of the outcome that it would like to see in Syria. It does not even have a clear definition of its major interests in the conflict. The only interest that the Obama administration has clearly articulated is its desire to remain aloof.

Tamara Wittes
Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program

Syrian activists on the ground and in exile are at least ambivalent about the Israeli strikes, and some are downright celebratory. But the Egyptian government and the Arab League were quick to issue statements denouncing Israeli interference. Given the involvement of Arab League members and the League itself in Syria’s internal crisis, the latter condemnation in particular was thick with irony. But just as the speedy criticisms from Cairo reflect the ongoing nationalist sensitivity there, the controversy in the rest of the Arab world over how to respond to the Israeli strikes likewise underscores the ways in which the Arab Awakening— and the Syrian conflict most pointedly— has upended once-comfortable principles regarding sovereignty, Arab nationalism, and non-intervention in internal affairs.

Suzanne Maloney
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Program, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

The Israeli air strikes have been interpreted by many as a message to Tehran, hardly surprising given Iran’s central role in providing materiel support to Bashar Al Asad and its reliance on Damascus as both a bulwark against regional isolation and a conduit to its proxies in the Levant. What is interesting is Tehran’s response – not simply the predictable fulminations from senior officials and clerics, but the stepped-up pace of Iran’s diplomatic outreach on Syria. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi arrived in Amman today for talks, just in time to announce a visit to Tehran next week by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.

This is the latest indication of Iran’s underlying objective with respect to the conflict in Syria – ensuring that the Islamic Republic retains influence in Damascus irrespective of the outcome of the civil war. This imperative has shaped a hedging strategy from the outset of the unrest: Iran hopes to preserve at least a vestige of its ally Bashar, but has also sought a seat at the table in shaping post-Asad Syria in any formal regional dialogue. Tehran’s hedging here goes beyond protecting its equities and bolstering regime security; there is a genuine national interest in precluding the expansion of Sunni extremism, which Iran has rightly viewed as a threat since the emergence of the Taliban more than two decades ago.

The concept of Iranian engagement on Syria is anathema to Washington, for good reason. And yet it should not be reflexively blocked by an Obama Administration that is under fire for its absurd public dithering on Syria. Iranian diplomatic engagement on Syria will not preclude troublemaking by Tehran; however, excluding Iran from the contentious regional politics surrounding the conflict is a recipe for inflaming the situation even further. Any long-term stable outcome in Syria will require neutralizing Iran’s incentives for sabotage as well as stemming the sectarian violence brewing amidst the conflict.

Authors

Publication: The New York Times

Image Source: © Khaled Al Hariri / Reuters

Noruz and the Unofficial Start of the Iranian Presidential Election

Suzanne Maloney — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:17:00 -0400

Happy Noruz to all.

For many Iranians, this holiday marks not simply the start of spring (and an extended vacation and shopping period!) but also the unofficial launch of the 2013 presidential election. Although formal campaigning will not begin for months, and the application and vetting process is also a ways away, the alienation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from much of the establishment has intensified the early discussions around the question of who will succeed him. Several individuals have already tipped their hands, others are simply presumptive candidates based on past experience. There are a few other names out there in addition to these (former Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki), and of course it's entirely possible that someone will be pressed into service who is not currently considered in contention. Khatami is the most often referenced name in such a scenario, but there are no doubt others as well whose candidacy might become appealing as the time grows closer. Note: for the first time, Rafsanjani is out of the running for sure since (among other reasons) the parliament passed an age limit (70) for the post.

To the best of my ability, I've identified the array of candidates in this graphic published earlier this week in Baztab (the website run by Mohsen Rezai), starting from the top running left to right. There can be no favorite at this stage, or even likely matchups- it's all far too fluid for any serious predictions other than to say it will be interesting. It's worth noting that all 3 of the former and current nuclear negotiators are on the list of prospective candidates; if any or all actually run, we could be looking at an open referendum on the standoff with the West. (Note: I think that outcome is highly unlikely; it's not even clear to me that Rouhani would necessarily receive Guardians' Council approval.)

I also find it interesting that until/unless Khatami is dragged into the action, all the prospective reformist candidates are really centrist technocrats. This might be reassuring from the point of view of Iran's economic crisis but has not served the reformists well in the past as an electoral strategy. On the other hand, the principalists are themselves bitterly divided along multiple lines, and while they have demonstrated that they can coalesce successfully around slates of parliamentary candidates, it's hard to imagine any of prospective candidates on this list bridging the factions and offering a strong coherent leadership for a country in crisis. Then again, Iranian elections are all about surprises, so stay tuned.

Government Officials
Transportation Minister Ali Nikzad
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi
Government spokesman Gholam-hossain Elham
Presidential advisor and former chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei

Traditional Conservatives
Former Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi
Parliamentary speaker and former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani
MP and deputy speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar
Head of the Chamber of Commerce Yahya Al-e Eshaq
Former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian

Hard-line Principalists
Former health minister Kamran Bagheri-Lankarani
Ayatollah Mohammad Bokiri Kherrozi, head of Iranian Hezbollah and little known outside revanchist provocations
Former parliamentary speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel
Nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili

Moderate Principalists
Former Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari
Tehran mayor and former head of the national policy Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf
Expediency Council Chairman Mohsen Rezai
Former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati
Former Housing minister Mohammad Saeedikia (has held cabinet portfolios under every IRI president)

Reformists
Former MP Mostafa Kavakebian
Former minister of mines and industries Eshaq Jahangiri
Former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rouhani
Former first VP Mohammadreza Aref

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Image Source: © Caren Firouz / Reuters

Noruz and the Unofficial Start of the Iranian Presidential Election

Suzanne Maloney — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:17:00 -0400

Happy Noruz to all.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Image Source: © Caren Firouz / Reuters

Is there a Widening Sunni-Shia Schism?

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

February 22, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event
An upswing in sectarian violence in Pakistan, Bahrain and elsewhere in recent months highlights the historic tensions, and contemporary political importance of schisms between Sunni and Shia communities across the Muslim world. On February 22, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings hosted a discussion to explore the factors behind the worsening conflict between Sunni and Shia communities. Panelists included Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, and Geneive Abdo, fellow at the Middle East Program at the Stimson Center and author of a forthcoming paper examining sectarianism in the context of the Arab Awakening, to be published by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Durriya Badani, deputy director of the project, offered welcoming remarks. Brookings Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney moderated the discussion.

Riedel discussed the changing and complex Sunni-Shia relationship in Pakistan, a relationship that has been highlighted due to the rising number of sectarian attacks in 2011 and 2012. Riedel explained that in Pakistan, sectarian violence is not deeply rooted in the country’s history but instead was spurred in 1996 by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the group that launched the first suicide bombing in Pakistan against a Protestant church. Since 2011, Malik Mohammed’s release from prison (the senior official in the Defense Pakistan Council, a group that holds massive demonstrations criticizing the United States, India, Israel, and the Shia communities) has instigated the fresh series of attacks that especially target the vulnerable Afghani refugees in Baluchistan. Riedel did point out that although it is good news that for the first time in Pakistan's history an elected civilian government is going to complete its full term in office, upcoming elections will likely produce a new government that will tolerate additional Shia-targeted violence.

Genieve Abdo focused her comments on the sectarian dynamic in the Arab world, namely Bahrain and Lebanon, and the impact this has had on neighboring countries, including Syria. In Lebanon and Bahrain, Shias represent a significant, if not a majority, of the population. For this reason, movements for democratic reform have been viewed as part of a subversive Shia agenda. Sunni authoritarian rulers in the Gulf have come to view the Shia drive for democracy as a threat rather than a step toward modernity. In addition, the rise of Sunni Islamist governments in Egypt and Tunisia has alarmed Shias in the region. The Shia in Lebanon feel that the downfall of Bashar al-Asad and the rise of Sunni Islamists could cause sectarianism to take on a transnational nature, even in countries with little history of Sunni-Shia conflict.

Abdo went on to discuss the “proxy” war between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah on one side and Saudi Arabia, the United States and Turkey on the other and how that has impacted perceptions of the United State abroad. Riedel discussed that foregoing the U.S. Fifth Fleet might be worth it in order to avoid exacerbating sectarian tensions in Bahrain, for example. Moreover, even though some Shia elements might be historically affiliated with Iran, they have their own agenda (particularly Hezbollah in Iran and Asad in Syria) and are not puppets of any one foreign regime. Without a doubt, to simplify this as a Saudi-Iranian conflict is inaccurate and will lead policy experts to miss key issues that can potentially minimize sectarian violence going forward. That being said, Abdo did emphasize that the Iran-Saudi conflict will continue if for no other reason than the fact that this kind of conflict advances some of Iran's ambitions in the region as they are losing power in Iraq, Syria, and potentially Lebanon.

Engagement with Iran: The Sequel

Suzanne Maloney — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: This article was originally published by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.

Sometime early in 2013, President Barack Obama is expected to launch a new diplomatic initiative in a bid to resolve the standoff between Iran and the international community over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If this sounds familiar, it is—Obama opened his first term in 2009 with much the same game plan for Iran. That effort represented the culmination of a surprisingly forward-leaning campaign promise to engage with America’s most determined adversaries, and entailed public appeals, back-channel communications, and forays at negotiations. However, Obama’s early overtures made little headway. Washington was caught off-guard in June 2009 by an unexpected explosion of political unrest in Iran. Finding little early evidence of Iranian receptivity to diplomacy, Washington chose to pivot quickly toward a pressure-oriented approach. This approach capitalized upon unprecedented international support for implementing an array of punishing new economic sanctions against Iran.

Yet, here we are again talking about negotiations and a big new gamble aimed at reaching a historic deal with the Iranian regime. This time, however, diplomacy is invigorated not by hope, but by fear: not by a presumption that a more amicable American approach to Tehran could resolve the longstanding estrangement, but by an even more profound sense of urgency surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities and the timetable for avoiding deciding between bombing Iran and an Iranian bomb. The revival of Washington’s diplomatic ambitions toward Tehran is also underpinned by a newfound American sense of advantage. The United States has exited one costly war in Iraq and is beginning to wind down another in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iran’s economy is reeling under the strain of the most far-reaching sanctions in history, implemented by the broadest ever global coalition. Tehran has already lost tens of billions of dollars, and the strain of the sanctions—spiraling inflation, product shortages, and the collapse of the currency—has been felt at every level of Iranian society. On this basis, many U.S. policymakers argue that the Obama administration has, for the first time, achieved the required leverage to force Tehran to rethink its approach to the nuclear issue.

For engagement version 2.0, the stakes are inordinately higher. Since Obama first came to office four years ago, Iran has succeeded in significantly advancing its nuclear capabilities, adding thousands of centrifuges, and inaugurating a heavily fortified underground facility that may be invulnerable to military strikes.1 Its stockpile of low-enriched uranium has grown more than seven-fold, including new capabilities to enrich up to nearly twenty percent, and a steady trickle of revelations appears to suggest that Iran’s research into weaponization—which the intelligence community deemed to be on hiatus—may have resumed. Israeli demands for an explicit American commitment to use force have persuaded Obama to toughen his own stance over the past year, and in the course of the presidential campaign he appeared to go further than ever to signal his readiness to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability.

As a result, many in Washington see 2013 as a make-or-break year for the long-running debate over how to handle the threats posed by Iran. According to this logic, the only alternatives for forestalling Iran’s steady progress toward a nuclear bomb require either that the world negotiates durable constraints to preclude the revolutionary state from acquiring a nuclear weapon, or prepare itself for a third American-led war in the Middle East in the matter of a decade. It is reasonable to question whether this presumption of urgency is valid or realistic; after all, there is an embarrassing tendency of both pundits and policymakers, in Washington and in Israel, to predict that the Iranian nuclear crisis will reach a “point of no return” on an almost annual basis. And yet the conviction with which this view is held in Washington makes such a debate largely moot.

However, such analytical brinkmanship has animated a newfound sense of readiness to revisit American diplomacy on Iran. In fact, with noisy talk from Tehran over the span of many months surrounding possible concessions on its enrichment, both sides appear prepared to get back to the table in a more serious fashion. Obviously, mere readiness for dialogue is hardly a guarantee of success. If the world is to avoid yet another round of escalatory rhetoric or worse, the United States and its allies will have to launch the upcoming round of talks with a more astute strategy for reaching a meaningful agreement than Washington has demonstrated in the past. The following recommendations outline an approach that offers a credible prospect of success.

Download » (PDF)

Downloads

Download the article

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Publication: The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs

Thinking the Unthinkable: The Gulf States and The Prospect of A Nuclear Iran

Suzanne Maloney — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Introduction

The issue of Iran has become a central preoccupation for the international community in recent months, thanks to the intersection of the historic changes in the region, an American presidential election, sharpening rhetoric from Israel, and Tehran’s relentless determination to advance its nuclear capabilities. The focus of policymakers in Washington and around the world remains fixed on the options for forestalling Iran’s determined march toward a nuclear weapons capability. This is the appropriate objective; the best possible outcome for maintaining peace and security in the Gulf and avoiding a deeply destabilizing nuclear arms race remains a credible, durable solution that curtails Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And while achieving such an outcome remains profoundly problematic, largely as a result of Tehran’s intransigence, preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold—either through persuasion, coercion, or some combination of the two—remains fully and unambiguously within the capabilities of the international community.

The shadow cast by Tehran has created a particularly intense sense of existential anxiety for the smaller Gulf states, including Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. After all, these are the same states whose civil orders were repeatedly disrupted by Iranian subversion and sponsorship of terrorism during the first decade after Iran’s Islamic revolution, and whose thriving economies rely on unimpeded access to the global commons. The events of the past decade have only exacerbated the smaller Gulf states’ endemic sense of insecurity. Iran has achieved a synergistic, sometimes even parasitic, relationship with the leadership of post-Saddam Iraq that, together with Tehran’s longstanding relationships with Syria and Lebanese Hizballah, greatly enables its bid for predominance in the heart of the Middle East. Today, the uncertainties surrounding the implications of regional flux have left Tehran simultaneously weakened and emboldened—a particularly dangerous combination for this particular array of Iranian leaders.

With Iran’s nuclear program advancing by the month and its efforts to tilt the regional balance in its favor growing more forceful, the small states of the Persian Gulf must face the distinct dilemma of preparing for the possible worst-case scenario of the nuclearization of their neighborhood, while participating ever more robustly in the international efforts to preclude that very possibility. In some respects, the Gulf states’ situation is unique. Unlike Israel, another small state that perceives an existential threat from Iran, the Gulf states cannot fall back upon either a presumptive nuclear deterrent or a primordial bond to the body politic of the world’s only remaining superpower. And in contrast to Iran’s other neighbors, the vast resources and history of ideological and territorial disputes between the Gulf states and Tehran significantly intensify the stakes. Even before the Gulf became the vital transportation corridor for global energy, the fault line in the regional balance of power had always run between the northern states and their southern rivals. The mere possibility that the north may gain a nuclear advantage is reshaping the security environment for Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf.

Because the threat of Iran looms large, the exigency of considering the widest possible array of alternative prospects for the evolution of this protracted crisis is important. This paper tackles the scenarios that successive American presidents have deemed unacceptable—an Iranian development or acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability or of nuclear weapons themselves—and the implications that such scenarios would have for the global nonproliferation regime and regional security, with a particular focus on the special challenges faced by Iran’s southern neighbors. To protect against threats along their borders, the Gulf states have traditionally hedged their bets by seeking balanced relations with their more powerful neighbors while cultivating extra-regional allies. That formula is already changing, as evidenced by a new assertiveness in Gulf states’ postures toward Tehran and a new creativity in deploying strategies for deterring and mitigating Iran’s efforts to extend its influence and/or destabilize its neighbors. The Gulf states must transform this tactical innovation into a full-fledged new hedging policy: one that deploys every possible tool to prevent a nuclear Iran while taking every possible step to prepare for such an eventuality.

Download » (PDF)

Downloads

Thinking the Unthinkable: The Gulf States and a Nuclear Iran

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Big Bets and Black Swans: An Overview

Experts from Foreign Policy at Brookings — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:36:00 -0500

President Obama begins his second term in office facing a world in turmoil and a number of critical challenges to global security and stability.

Download Media

Big Bets and Black Swans: An Overview

In response to these and a host of other international crises, the president can choose to place some “Big Bets” that could define his foreign policy over the next four years. However, a number of “Black Swans” –low probability, but high-impact events –may derail President Obama’s second term foreign policy agenda. Brookings’s Foreign Policy experts have released a set of 20 memos to the president—Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book—offering innovative policy recommendations that the administration might pursue.

Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy; Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy; and Tamara Wittes, Senior Fellow and Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy discuss some of these Big Bets and Black Swans, including turning Tehran away from nuclear weapons and a potential collapse of the Camp David Treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Video

Big Bets and Black Swans: An Overview

Authors

Experts from Foreign Policy at Brookings

Turning Tehran

Suzanne Maloney — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Iran — arguably the world’s most dangerous state — presents the Obama administration with an epic threat and a historic opportunity to resolve the nuclear crisis. Suzanne Maloney drafted this memorandum to President Obama as part of Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book.

How do current conditions give U.S. diplomacy an opportunity to achieve agreement?
What kind of sanctions relief will Congress need to offer in exchange for concessions?

Download Memorandum (pdf) | Download the Presidential Briefing Book (pdf)

TO: President Obama

FROM: Suzanne Maloney

The persistent and intractable challenge of Iran presents your second term with an epic threat and a historic opportunity. Despite the significant achievements of U.S. policy toward Tehran in the past four years, Iran’s revolutionary regime remains the world’s most dangerous state. Iran continues its efforts to extend its negative influence, inflame sectarian tensions and undermine prospects for peace in a region already beset by instability and upheaval; its support for Bashar al-Assad has enabled the Syrian dictator to brutalize his own people; and its growing stockpile of low-enriched uranium and vast nuclear infrastructure alarms the world. An initiative aimed at resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis offers the biggest potential payoff in a game-changing foreign policy agenda. A meaningful deal with Iran would represent a crowning achievement for your presidency since non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are central pillars of the global order you are attempting to shape. The spin-off effects of a resolution to the nuclear crisis would significantly advance broader U.S. national security interests in a particularly vital region.

Recommendation:

The following recommendations are proposed as a starting point for a new diplomatic initiative:

• Quickly pursue a stop-and-swap deal to end Iran’s 20 percent enrichment;

• With support from U.S. allies, develop a comprehensive proposal of sequenced Iranian nuclear concessions and sanctions reform;

• Press for an intensified schedule of negotiations with Iran, comprised of an interlinked process of multilateral and bilateral dialogues.

Background:

A binding agreement that firmly constrains Iran’s nuclear ambitions would safeguard the world from the devastating implications of an Iranian nuclear capability, as well as the catastrophic costs of a military strike against the program. It would reassure America’s friends and allies in the region, and enable them to address the profound security challenges that confront them closer to home, such as the domestic pressures for reform in the Arab monarchies and the frozen peace process. It would end the cyclical proclivity for brinksmanship on all sides that inevitably spooks the oil markets and threatens the global economic recovery. And a credible nuclear bargain with Iran would bolster the tattered non-proliferation regime by bringing a would-be rogue back from the brink of weapons status.

For these reasons, you should return to where you began on Iran with a major diplomatic initiative. The conditions are riper today than at any time since the 1979 revolution for making meaningful headway against the most dangerous dimension of Iran’s foreign policy. At a minimum, you approach the challenge of Iran with four distinct advantages over the situation four years ago:

• Thanks to the rigorous sanctions, Iran is experiencing the most severe economic pressure of its post-revolutionary history. Tehran has already lost tens of billions of dollars, and the impact of the restrictions – product shortages, rising unemployment, spiraling inflation, and the collapse of the currency – has been felt at every level of Iranian society. The mounting financial toll, as well as the tangible erosion of Iran’s international stature, has prompted the first real debate in years among Iranian power brokers on the parameters of Iran’s nuclear policy. It remains unclear whether Iran’s supreme leader can countenance a comprehensive shift in the nation’s nuclear course, but the historical record confirms that intense economic pressure induces policy moderation in Iran, albeit only gradually and fitfully.

• The sanctions have been facilitated by unprecedented international cooperation on Iran, especially among the world’s major powers, so that a constructive and durable partnership on Iran now exists with robust consensus on the current approach. After decades of reluctance, Europe is more than willing to get tough on Tehran, and Moscow and Beijing have stepped up to the plate as well. The embrace of punitive measures by some of Iran’s traditional trading partners has helped to bring around the rest of the world, including many states that have historically hedged, such as the Gulf sheikhdoms.

• Today, the longstanding, often brutal Iranian power struggle is effectively irrelevant to the prospects of a deal with Washington. There is no longer any doubt that the ultimate authority lies with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The internal unrest sparked by the improbable 2009 landslide reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has resulted in the further consolidation of control by Iran’s hardliners under Khamenei’s leadership. This development is catastrophic for the democratic aspirations of Iran’s citizenry, but leadership coherence probably creates a more conducive environment for a policy reversal within Iran.

• Similarly, American domestic politics present fewer constraints to a bold initiative on Iran than four years ago. The United States has exited one costly war in Iraq and is beginning to wind down another in Afghanistan, and there is no appetite among the American public for another military venture in the Middle East. The failure of the Republican critique on Iran to gain any significant public traction in the 2012 presidential campaign demonstrated that Americans are more interested in economic recovery than new international commitments. As a result, you can assert greater latitude in pursuing a viable deal and pushing back on partisan pressures.

While the odds for engaging Iran on the nuclear issue may be better this time around, the stakes are also exponentially higher. Iran’s nuclear program continues to advance and many observers are convinced that 2013 will mark the point of no return for Iran’s efforts to achieve a nuclear capability. This imparts added urgency to any renewed diplomacy. In the absence of a breakthrough via negotiations, the credibility of your March 2012 commitment to use force if necessary to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon will be on the line.

As a result, this time around, there is neither time nor utility for a charm offensive: public diplomacy only reinforces the affinity of ordinary Iranians for American culture while exacerbating the paranoia of its leadership. And while Tehran has been signaling for many months that it may be open to a limited bargain addressing a narrow scope of its nuclear activities – i.e. higher-level enrichment intended only to fuel a research reactor that produces isotopes for medical treatments – such incremental confidence building rightly prompts skepticism. Given that the regime’s legitimacy is grounded in its antagonism toward Washington, this approach has been thoroughly discredited by three decades of failed undertakings.

However, the research reactor is the right place to start, if only because of the persistence of its presence in Iran’s own diplomatic gambits since at least 2010 and the need to do something quickly about Iran’s stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. A successful start can put more time on the clock for negotiations and provide the grounds for more ambitious understandings. There is broad consensus among many in Washington and in Tehran surrounding the contours of a deal that satisfies both sides’ minimum requirements. Such an agreement would permit Iran to retain modest enrichment capabilities – several thousand centrifuges, operating at less than 5 percent. In exchange, Tehran would have to accept stringent inspections and verification to provide for greater transparency about the entire scope of the program and greater confidence in the ability of the international community to foresee an Iranian breakout. This should include provisions to restrict activities at Fordow, Iran’s underground enrichment facility opened last year near the city of Qom, which the United States has insisted must be mothballed.

To achieve this, you will have to put your credibility on the line, and elevate and intensify the diplomatic dialogue. You will also have to proffer sanctions relief in order to obtain any meaningful concessions on the part of Tehran, despite the strategic and moral disinclination for rewarding Iran’s nuclear transgressions. The sole consistency in Iran’s nuclear diplomacy over the course of the past 11 years has been its transactional approach, and the regime’s insistence on compensation for any concessions has only been strengthened by the escalation in the price that it has paid for its aversion to compromise. Working with our partners in Europe, Russia and China, an interagency effort should develop a persuasive package of specific sanctions relief that is sequenced to clear actions and credible commitments on the Iranian side. The incentives must be more persuasive than the paltry offers the United States has made to date, and at least as inventive as the sanctions themselves have proven, but any incentives must also be provisional or rapidly reversible to mitigate against Iranian ploys and deter dissembling. In addition, you should seek to establish financial mechanisms to facilitate transactions involving humanitarian activities, food and medicine. All of this will require early investments on the part of administration officials in ensuring Congressional support.

Conclusion:

There are, of course, no guarantees. Iran’s Islamic Republic is a persistently unpredictable state, and the animosity and distrust toward Washington runs deep among its relevant decision-makers. The sanctions have weakened Iran’s economy, but consistent with 34 years of Iranian responses to economic pressure, they have stiffened its leadership’s spine, at least for the short term, and increased its paranoia about American interest in regime change. Moreover, the spiraling civil war in Syria and the determination of Iran’s hard-liners to push back against a wideranging campaign of economic pressure and covert warfare may overtake any new diplomatic initiative, and may yet provoke a confrontation that neither side desires. Still, the alternatives to a negotiated deal remain profoundly less attractive than the risks involved in pursuing one, and the prospective payoff – a world released from the perennial nightmare of an Iranian nuclear bomb – is more than sufficient to justify the investment of your time and energy on this issue. And if Tehran is unwilling to engage in a serious fashion, you will have demonstrated American commitment to diplomacy ahead of the other options.

Downloads

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

President Barack Obama’s Second Term: Big Bets and Black Swans

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Event Information

January 17, 2013
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

President Barack Obama begins his second term at a critical moment in world affairs, facing the many challenges that an unstable world—much of it in turmoil—presents. In response to these many challenges, Brookings Foreign Policy scholars have prepared a Presidential Briefing Book with memos to President Obama that detail the “Big Bets” that he should place in foreign policy, and the “Black Swans”—low probability, high impact events— that could unexpectedly dominate President Obama’s second term. The “Big Bets” include: a nuclear deal with Iran; a new approach to China; securing free trade agreements with Asia and Europe; outlining an Obama doctrine for the use and deployment of drones and cyberweapons; and establishing the United States as a leading energy exporter. The “Black Swans” include: a U.S.-China confrontation over Korea; revolution and war in China; the collapse of the House of Saud; the unraveling of the eurozone; the unraveling of the Palestinian Authority; and the impact of rising seas and climate change-related migration.

On January 17, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted the launch of “Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book.” The first panel focused on the transformational policies that could shape a new global order. The second panel focused on the low probability, high impact events that might derail the president’s second term agenda. Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy, provided introductory remarks. David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, moderated both panel discussions.

Visit the Big Bets & Black Swans interactive map »

Video

Audio

President Barack Obama’s Second Term: Big Bets and Black Swans

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

The Big Bet: Turning Tehran away from Nuclear Weapons

Suzanne Maloney — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Foreign Policy experts have come together to create a series of policy memos addressing the “big bets”—opportunities to strengthen President Obama’s second term—and “black swans,” the low probability, high-impact events that could derail the administration’s priorities. These were released at a public event on Thursday, January 17. Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney discusses how one “big bet”—bridling Iran’s nuclear ambitions—will be a defining factor in the Obama administration’s second term.

Video

The Big Bet: Turning Tehran away from Nuclear Weapons

Authors

Suzanne Maloney