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The (Sort Of) Conclusion to the Elephant in the Room

by Dan Darling on November 30, 2004 08:07 AM

I apologize for my prolongued absence, as I have been removed from Internet access for pretty much the entirety of Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately, I come back to the most wonderful time in any college student's existence - term papers and finals! But I do want to address a number of points that were brought up during my absence and try to wrap things up with respect to where we stand on Iran. I apologize for rather shortened form that this analysis is going to be and hope to go back and expand on it in the future.
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Iran vs. Pakistan: Why I don't think the example holds up
Basically here's (in brief form) what I intended to say:

Both Iran and Pakistan are both unique problems and should not be conflated (I think one of the reasons that they so often are is not because certain quarters are more hawkish towards Pakistan than they are Iran but rather because they wish to put an end to any change in the status quo with respect to US-Iranian relations), but I tend to view Pakistan as being pretty much a sub-set of the problem of Saudi Arabia (as do Perle and Frum, at least from my own reading of An End To Evil). You eliminate the Saudi funding, and our issues with Pakistan can be over in a generation or two. Winds of Change did a pretty good break-down of the internal Pakistani situation and I think that even the most stringent Pakistan hawk will have to admit that because of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-faceted Pakistani political system we have options with respect to Pakistan that simply do not exist with respect to Iran.

After the most recent Iranian elections (and I am given to understand that the actual turnout was far lower than the official regime figure of 51%), I don't think that you can make a compelling argument that the bad guys aren't in control there. But there is no Pakistani equivalent to something like the Abadgaran movement - the closest that comes to mind is the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) which, as Patrick Belton noted in his primer on the group:

Despite concerns, the MMA have been unable as yet to alter Islamabad’s foreign or economic policies.

That's kind of a key point in determining where a totalitarian movement (which I think the MMA unquestionably qualifies as) fits on the threat level. If you want to argue that the MMA and its allies in the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment and al-Qaeda's Pakistani satellites are a threat, I'm more than happy to agree with you. The US government, I think, recognizes this a lot more than people are willing to credit it, given such events as Mufti Shamzai's untimely departure from the gene pool less than a year ago. The issue is who is the greater threat here, and I think Iran fits that bill hands down.

Recent events in Waziristan notwithstanding, the Pakistani government is more or less the US's fair weather ally in the war against al-Qaeda. Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers (mostly Punjabis and the like, the Pashtuns are almost always released or allowed to go free by the IMU jihadis and their tribal allies) have died fighting al-Qaeda in Waziristan at great political cost to the Musharraf regime, which I think has at least begun to recognize that the likes of Tahir Yuldashev, late Amjad Farooqi, et al. are now actively seeking to subvert the Pakistani state, even they're still trying to distinguish between "good" jihadis who kill Indians in Kashmir and "bad" jihadis who move against the military. That is far from an ideal situation, but it is sure as hell a lot better than Iran, and here's a conundrum for all those who still cling to the belief that Iran is just as dedicated as the United States to fighting al-Qaeda: Iran, by its own claims and those of European diplomats (since we all know how icky neocons are), has had bin Laden's family and most of the surviving leadership "in custody" for quite some time now, yet not one piece of intelligence passed on from Iran to its erstwhile European allies has resulted in a thwarted al-Qaeda terrorist attack against European interests. Believe me, if there were any intelligence to this effect the EU would be holding it up like the Ten Commandments come down from Mount Sinai as a sign of the mullahs' good will in the war on terrorism. There isn't, however, which is part of the problem.

AQ Khan's nuclear proliferation efforts are likely to be the bane of the next decade or so (and I think the IAEA's utter failure to detect said activities throw the purpose of the organization into serious question), but I find it very hard to imagine that what he was doing was pursuing Pakistani policy given that his activities seem to span through any number of civilian and military governments. As appears to be so often the case in Pakistan, AQ Khan's activities were basically something that all of the people in "the know" turned a blind eye to and that the rest of the government was ignorant of.

Near as I can tell, hostility towards the US is not something that the current Pakistani regime purports to derive domestic legitimacy from (India is another matter altogether), given just how far they've bent over backwards to please us. Iran, to the degree that the regime does possess any kind of domestic legitimacy, derives it from its hostility to the US, at least among the people who matter towards the maintenance of the regime. To put it in purely cynical terms, Iran is by far more likely to lob a nuke our way (or Israel's) than is Pakistan. Moreover, the apparent decision by the IRGC to actively harbor the surviving al-Qaeda leadership and allow the network's ruling council to reconstitute from their soil poses an unacceptable threat to US national security for the immediate future. Anyone who considers the status quo with respect to Iran acceptable is more or less endorsing a more PR-savvy version of the Taliban with nukes, period.

Ultimately, the US has more options with respect to Pakistan than it does with respect to Iran because Pakistan is basically a feudal state in which there is entirely too much Great Gaming going on with too little of it being controlled or directed by any kind of central apparatus or command and control that I can discern. That opens up substantially different options with respect to Pakistan then we have when it comes to Iran, where the bad guys are (and always have been) in control. Regarding Rafsanjani as the voice of reason in the Iranian hierarchy would be like expecting Hamid Gul to serve the same role with regard to Pakistan. Anybody ready to trust either man with nukes? If not, who is more likely to be in control of them in the next year or two?

Contra Kenneth Pollack (among others)
This is an extremely rough summary of Pollack's views with respect to Iran and why I don't think that the solutions he proposes hold up under scrutiny. In large part, this seems to be mainly an epistemological difference between the two of us with respect to a number of issues, such as the role of Iran in the Iraqi insurgency as well as the activities of senior al-Qaeda figures who are known to currently reside inside Iran as I type this up. And for those who charge that such things are merely the product of neoconservative spin-doctoring, the former is supported by a vast body of evidence including the reporting of Seymour Hersh and an affirmation of the latter can be found in Richard Clarke's book - anybody want to characterize these two as neocons?

Pollack is quite correct that if left to their own devices, the mullahs will get ahold of the bomb before their own population can muster up the necessary will and desire to overthrow them. Instead of planning for this eventuality, however, I think that it might be best to consider everything we can do to prevent that eventuality rather than simply succumbing to the inevitable and waiting for the next "Islamic bomb."

With respect to the idea of offering Iran a Libya-style "grand bargain," I don't think that the regime can possibly afford to accept such a bargain for the reasons of domestic legitimacy that I outlined above with respect to the nature of the regime. More to the point, Libya accepted the Anglo-American "grand bargain" from a position of relative weakness after over a decade of sanctions (and yes, I do think that the image of Saddam Hussein in chains made the good colonel consider his own possible fate), whereas the mullahs in Iran now perceive themselves to be in a position of relative strength, both domestically and internationally. Moreover, my own belief is that the Iranian clerical and military-intelligence hierarchy decided damn well which side it was on in this war the day they sent their special envoy to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in October 2001. The rise of the Abadgaran movement in particular appears to support this belief, as the Young Turks in the Iranian Majlis are even more radical than their predecessors and still hold to the Khomeinist dream of driving the US out of the Middle East.

I think that Michael Ledeen pretty well laid out the European position with respect to Iran. They're still trying to more or less appease Iran, worried but not too terribly concerned about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. The sad fact is that most European nations don't have the force projection power to militarily stop Iran from going nuclear even if they wanted to and that most of the fears of the smarter heads in the European intelligence community are easily brushed aside by their leaders in return for a chance to establish current and future economic ties with the Islamic Republic. If Europe implemented real sanctions with teeth in them, they could easily force an end to the issue of the Iranian nuclear program in short order, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be in the cards just yet. After all, the Europeans don't see themselves as the Iranians' intended targets in the event of a nuclear exchange ...

The belief that Iran has assisted or sought to assist the West with respect to al-Qaeda does not, in my view, stand up under any kind of close or prolonged scrutiny. Let's just ignore everything they've done over the past several years, can anyone favoring this perspective explain to me why it is that 9/11 and 3/11 planner Mustafa Setmariam Nasar is currently living under the protection of the Qods Force of the IRGC - according to French intelligence of all things?

Citing the Americans refusing to turn the MEK over to the mullahs as sufficient rationale for the Iranians to harbor al-Qaeda is bizarre argument, in my view, especially given that Qods Force was protecting al-Qaeda long before the US ever set foot in Iraq. But might I also point out that the French have arrested the majority of the MEK's Paris-based politburo and sought to strike similar deals with the mullahs, yet Saif al-Adel, Saad bin Laden, and Mustafa Setmariam Nasar have not been forthcoming. You can make all the grand offers to the mullahs you want, but you still need them to return your call.

Claims that US and Iranian interests inside Iraq are one and the same border on delusional given Iranian backing of Muqtada Sadr. Iraqi elections are going to give the Shi'ites a majority in the new Iraqi parliament, of that I think everyone is more or less in agreement. But I very much doubt that all the pundits talking quite accurately about how much the Iranians want Shi'ite dominance in Iraq have taken much time to think of just how much an independent Shi'ite society inside Iraq would pose in terms of a threat to the very underpinnings of the Iranian regime. Or to put it another way, everyone agrees that the Shi'ites are going to win a majority in the new Iraqi parliament, the issue is simply whether that parliament is going to be run from Baghdad or from Tehran (or Qom, if one prefers).

A lot of Pollack's assumptions seem to predicate on the assumption that Iran isn't trying to stir up trouble in Iraq or allied with al-Qaeda, which is why I say that there's an epistemological difference between him and I. If Iran isn't doing either (and here again I'll cite Hersh and Clarke to support these assertions, let alone what other people tell me) then obviously the situation changes a great deal and a lot of Pollack's claims and recommendations become far more reasonable. Unfortunately, if even one of those two scenarios is occurring (and I think the evidence is extremely convincing on both counts), then obviously his recommendations need to be revised accordingly. I don't think that this is all that much of an unreasonable view to take.

Long-term economic plans by the Iranian leadership doesn't mean that the regime isn't going to engage in foolish or suicidal behavior, but rather that the leadership is sufficiently ambitious or deluded to believe that they can win.

What I Think Should Be Done
Keep in mind I'm working off my own epistemology here, not Pollack's. Keep in mind that a lot of this is being written hastily and I will try to expound much more on this as time goes on.

Pass the Iran Freedom Support Act.

The entirety of US (as well as Iraqi) strategy with respect to Iran must be predicated around the notion that Iran is backing the insurgents, including Sunnis like Zarqawi. We need to also begin making contingency plans to deal with how to respond to an Iranian escalation of the Iraqi insurgency, including retaliatory strikes in Iranian Kordestan and other known insurgent hubs inside Iran if necessary.

The sponsorship of anti-Iranian regime (as opposed to anti-Shi'ite) as well as anti-Khomeinist and anti-Sadrist propaganda in southern Iraq and the strengthening of the An Najaf school of Shi'ism as a counter-balance to Qom as quickly as possible. Shi'ite sermons sponsoring anti-Khomeinist interpretations of Shi'ism and the like should be translated into Farsi and broadcast into Iran.

Unofficial sponsorship and patronage of non-Marxist (i.e. not the MEK) Iranian dissident organizations, student groups, and exile organizations should be accelerated. Should some form of non-MEK armed or popular resistance break out against the Iranian regime (and there are already tentative signs in which this has occurred), the US must be prepared to support it both diplomatically and covertly if necessary. Comparisons to the CIA's role with the Shah here are I think unwarranted, as in this case I think a far better model would be covert US backing to Georgian dissident groups.

A military invasion of Iran must remain a final option, but if the US is attacked by al-Qaeda in the next several years it will unfortunately be the only one we have left. I hope to God that it doesn't come to that, but if they hit us first then we won't have any other option save a military retaliation.

Claims that undertaking one or all of these actions would only serve to further provoke the mullahs are ultimately unpersuasive, given the scope and nature of their activities to date. We may not view this as being a war, but they do, abeit in a somewhat limited capacity. Granting that the people who matter in the Iranian hierarchy regard themselves as being at war with us, the question is not whether or not responding to their actions will further provoke them but rather whether we want to fight (in a cold or hot manner) on their terms and at a place and time of their choosing or on ours. I choose ours.
« ok, I'm done now