Iran
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One ... Conservatives believe that war is a “last option” that should only be initiated when there is a direct and imminent threat to the United States. Iran does not currently pose such a threat.
The process whereby the neoconservatives were able to hijack the Republican Party's foreign policy has been dissected and analyzed frequently over the past two years. Perhaps more disturbing in the long term, however, is their success at hijacking the label "conservative." When broadcast journalists Brian Williams and Katie Couric describe someone as a conservative Republican, they are frequently actually referring to a neoconservative. When a Sunday morning talk show has a "conservative" on a panel to provide "balance," he is more often than not a neoconservative. This access to the media as the purported standard-bearers of conservatism has proven useful, as it enables the neocons to continue to have a major voice on policy in spite of being wrong on every major issue. It also empowers them to constantly spin and refine their story, exonerating themselves while fear-mongering that there are new dangers that have to be dealt with, more dragons to slay.
Most Republicans, like most voters, prefer not to think very much about what the "conservative" label means. Conservatism means supporting traditional ways of doing things domestically, i.e., not embracing radical change, and a strong defense policy overseas. Apart from that, there is not a great deal of refinement in the public's view of conservatism. For many, a desirable defense and security policy is precisely what the neocons have created, a vengeful lashing out at the rest of the brown-skinned, non-Christian, ostensibly terrorism-fostering world using the maximum military force to complete the job. In line with that simplistic worldview, many self-described conservatives continue to defend President George W. Bush and his neocon foreign policy only because they believe it important to support a Republican president come hell or high water, not because they have considered the issues or the ups and downs of the policies that are being pursued. They take it on faith that Iran is bad and will have to be dealt with firmly, because, after all, that is what they are constantly seeing and hearing on television and reading in the newspapers, mostly coming from the same neocons who brought us Iraq.
But there is no free ride, politically speaking, and bad policies eventually result in a price paid at the voting box. As the Iraq war is now disapproved of by more than two-thirds of Americans and further involvement in Iran is equally unpopular, Republicans and conservatives will have to rethink American their foreign policy if they ever hope to regain majority party status. In so doing, they should return to the conservative principles that were delineated by the Founding Fathers, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan prior to the hijacking of the conservative label under George W. Bush.
The first principle for conservatives is that war is a "last option" to be employed when all else fails and there is a direct and imminent danger to the United States. U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen are a precious commodity not be wasted in pointless wars, and our armed services are not an appropriate instrument for rebuilding or reforming other nations. Iran's form of government is none of our business, and Tehran does not currently pose a level of threat to the American people that would justify military action. Ronald Reagan put it best: "The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: the United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor." Barry Goldwater recommended that U.S. foreign policy "make it clear to all nations of this world that we have no desire to expand our territory or to impose our type of government or our way of life on any other people." Prior to George Bush, Republicans and conservatives have traditionally been reluctant warriors. In the last century, the First World War, Second World War, Korea, and the escalation in Vietnam all took place under Democratic administrations with considerable dissent from Republicans.
In line with a reluctance to go to war, conservatives have always believed that the first line of defense is diplomacy. Diplomacy supports the national interest without unleashing the unintended consequences that arise from warfare. As Russell Kirk put it, "A sound conservative foreign policy in the age which is dawning should be neither 'interventionist' nor 'isolationist'; it should be prudent." Diplomacy between the United States and Iran has not really been tried but is being dismissed by both the Bush administration and presidential candidate John McCain as naïve. It is time to do the proper and prudent conservative thing, which means sitting down and talking to Iran, with no preconditions and with all issues on the table.
Conservatives also recognize that while the first victim in war is certainly truth in the media, the second victim is invariably civil liberties and the Constitution. War means armies, police, taxes, big government, and restriction of personal freedoms. It erodes fundamental rights and nearly always means intrusion into the private lives of citizens through laws that remain in place even after the foreign threat has disappeared. As James Madison wrote, ""If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. … Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796 put it even more starkly, calling on Americans to avoid "the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." If Iraq, Afghanistan, and the largely fictional global war on terrorism produced the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, the loss of FISA court controls, and the unitary executive concept, it is useful to consider what a more serious war with Iran might bring. The United States does not need to dismantle more of the Constitution to fight yet another war of choice, because doing so will not make us any safer, only less free.
Fiscal responsibility, a strong dollar, and maintaining the economic well-being of the citizens are also traditional conservative agendas. The war with Iraq has been an economic catastrophe, coupled with a sinking dollar, spiraling debt, and surging oil prices. Much of the U.S. public debt is now in the hands of an adversary, China. A war against Iran will bring a terrible "energy shock" and will only make things worse for the average American. It could sink the U.S. dollar forever as the world flees from its use as a reserve currency. As Ron Paul put it, "The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people."
Finally, conservatives traditionally understand that foreign and defense policy should ultimately benefit the United States and its people. The government should be empowered to protect American citizens against foreign threats and terrorism, not to create new terrorists through ill-advised interventions overseas. Our nation, which has always been respected for its fair dealing and its liberties, is now looked down upon by most of the world due to its bullying and intransigence. John Quincy Adams said that "America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Attacking Iran would unleash a new wave of international terrorism and would convince much of the world that Washington is intent on changing governments willy-nilly and exterminating Muslims. America does not need another 9/11. Referring to the terrorism problem, Pat Buchanan has written, "We need to remove the motivation for it by extricating the United States from ethnic, religious, and historical quarrels that are not ours and which we cannot resolve with any finality." George Washington put it another way in his Farewell Address, that the United States should "Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it. It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." George Washington's advice, once revered by all true conservatives, was good in 1796, and it is still good today.
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates called on Wednesday for more unofficial contacts with Iran, saying this might eventually open a pathway to more substantive dialogue between the governments.
WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
There are a lot of bad things that one might say about Iran. The rule of the mullahs would be an unpleasant experience for most people, so much so that few outside of Hezbollah apparently want to emulate it. Opinion polls that attempt to assess favorable versus unfavorable impressions among the world's nations invariably place Iran at the bottom of the rankings, along with the United States and Israel, its most bitter enemies.
The top U.S. Navy official in the Persian Gulf warned in an interview with ABC News that war with Iran would be "pretty disastrous," with "echoes and aftershocks" reverberating throughout the region. "Nobody I've spoken to suggests that going to war with Iran is a good thing," Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff told ABC News. "The preferred path by far is the diplomatic path, keep working with the international community to bring the right sort of pressure to bear on the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Treacherous Alliances: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
Trita Parsi
Yale University Press, 2007
HB; 361 pages; $28.00
Peter B. Gemma
Any book which receives plaudits ranging from the Arab Washingtonian 1 (“one of its kind in providing in-depth understanding and information”) to the Jewish Chronicle 2 (“a valuable and perhaps long overdue reassessment of the Israeli-Iranian nexus”), must have something unique to say. Indeed, Trita Parsi’s Treacherous Alliances: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States breaks new ground in its analysis of the intriguing intersection between Tehran, Tel Aviv, and Washington.It’s also a must read for cynics and critics of the neo-conservative-driven Bush foreign policy.
The author, an Iranian native who grew up in Sweden, holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and is frequently featured in media reports involving Middle East affairs. Parsi conducted some 130 interviews with key Israeli, Iranian, and American diplomatic, political, and policy experts to present his assessments. The result is a reader-friendly and revealing account of the connections and conflicts between the three nations.
Parsi gives a behind-the-scenes look at diplomacy as it really works or, more accurately, how it does not work. For example, the author writes about a May, 2003 Iranian proposal sent to the White House via a Swiss intermediary. Tehran actually offered to open its nuclear program to inspections, halt its support for Hamas
operations in Palestine, help disarm the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, and enter into negotiations concerning the recognition of Israel. In return, Iran asked for an end to economic sanctions and for Washington to acknowledge Tehran as a legitimate regime in international diplomatic and commercial dealings.
The Bush Administration chose to simply neglect and forget the initiative: “ I honestly don’t remember seeing it,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Congressional hearing in February 2007. The complete text of the Iranian proposal can be found in Treacherous Alliance.
Trita Parsi unravels the strategic and tactical lines that pull Iran, Israel, and the U.S. into seemingly competing partnerships. The author illustrates this ongoingjuxtaposition by recounting a situation from the early 1980s: “Only months after the eruption of the hostage crisis, Ahmed Kashani, the youngest son of Grand Ayatollah Abol Qassem Kashani, who had played a key role in the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951, visited Israel — most likely the first Iranian to do so after the revolution — to discuss arms sales and military cooperation against Iraq’s nuclear program at Osirak.”
At that time, Israel snubbed U.S. policy and sold Iran military hardware including tires for Phantom jet fighters. In turn, Tehran allowed Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel. Meanwhile, on stage for public viewing, Iran was trying to have Israel expelled from the United Nations. To discern the dynamics between Tel Aviv and Tehran, Parsi warns not to be“blinded by the condemnatory rhetoric.” He states that, “most observers have failed to notice a critical common interest shared by these two non-Arab powerhouses in the Middle East,” that being “the need to portray their fundamentally strategic conflict as an ideological clash.” The ideological rhetoric does not necessarily reflect the demographic, economic, and political needs of Iran, Israel, and the U.S.
Parsi opines about Iran’s recent history when he writes: “The more the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy was presented as different from that of the shah [whoabdicated in 1980], the more it resembled it at its core ... the ideology had shifted astonishingly. But the end goal remained remarkably similar.” Parsi suggests MiddleEast policy contortions and contradictions between Israel and Iran “have all coincided with geopolitical rather than ideological shifts,” adjusting to meet the exigencies of a particular point in time. He asserts that “no force in Iran’s foreign policy is as dominant as geopolitical considerations.”
Iran, Israel, and the U.S. have intermittently played one side against the other, switching tactics and rhetoric as self interests change. Parsi observes that “theIsraeli-U.S.-Iranian triangle [has] shifted remarkably in just a few years. In the 1980s, Israel was the unlikely defender of and apologist for Iran in Washington, taking great risks to pressure the Reagan administration to open up channels of communication with Iran.” Now Tel Aviv does the opposite because Israel wants “the United States to put Iran under economic and political siege.”
President George Bush’s current strategy is an attempt to segregate and alienate Iran as part of an “evil axis.” That course, says Parsi, challenges Iran’s historic role inthe Gulf region and Middle East — earned by way of its location, population, resources, and military strength. “Washington has sought to establish an order that
contradicts the natural balance by seeking to contain and isolate Iran,” Parsi argues.
In a February 27, 2008 op/ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer 3 Parsi is blunt in thisassessment: “The Bush administration’s apparent disregard for the expressed wishes of Iranian human-rights defenders has made a bad situation worse. When it comes to human rights in the Middle East, the Bush administration has claimed to walk the walk. But that walk clearly has a limp.”
Trita Parsi believes it is in the best interest of the U.S., and ultimately Israel, to reconcile with Iran and engage them in diplomatic, economic, and cultural exchanges — what he describes as “regional integration and collective security.”
Parsi’s premise is backed-up by such newspaper headlines as “Iraq Credits Iran for Helping to Curb Attacks by Militias” and “Iran, Iraq to Cooperate in Development of Joint Oilfields.” 4 David Ignatius, in a March 30, 2008 Washington Post op/ed (“Mideast Openings”), supports this perspective: “We tend to think about conflict as an either/or proposition. Either we negotiate peace, or we destroy the enemy militarily. But in the Middle East, as Gen. John Abizaid, the retired chief of CentralCommand, liked to observe, it’s often a matter of fighting and talking. Right now, we do too much of the former and not enough of the latter.”
In Parsi’s view, the Iranian regime is neither maniacal nor malevolent. He reasons that, “when one scratches the surface, even Iran’s President Ahmadinejad’s venomous outbursts against Israel turn out to have strategic motivations.” Theauthor quotes from a wide variety of credible sources — including former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami — to back-up his assessments. Ben-Ami categorically contends: “Iran is not driven by an obsession to destroy Israel, but by its determination to preserve its regime ... The answer to the Iranian threat is a policy of detente, which would change the Iranian elite’s pattern of conduct.”
According to Treacherous Alliances, Tehran is not necessarily motivated byopposition to Israeli or even religious ideology, but its actions and reactions are chiefly based on national self-interest. President Ahmadinejad and his nation’s ruling mullahs regularly seize on opportunities to enhance and assert Iran’s power and influence in the Gulf region — their opposition to Israel is due more to geopolitics than ideology. Parsi maintains,
Thus, despite Tel Aviv’s latest machinations to demonize Iran internationally,Washington could still broker a balance of powers in the Middle East based on strategic trade-offs. “It is the geopolitical imbalance in the region that renders that conflict all the more unsolvable,” Parsi insists, “unless the underlying conflicts in the region are addressed, any process seeking to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute will be subject to geopolitical rivalries.”
The realpolitik addressed in Treacherous Alliances: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States has received praise ranging from such journals as Mother Jones on the left (11/12/07) and American Conservative on the right (10/22/07). Longstanding Middle East issues are freshly framed by Trita Parsi; his book should be a welcome addition to any library shelf — especially those of Capitol Hill staff, Administration policy wonks, and political campaign operatives ... if those people buy books.
1. (www.arabwashingtonian.org/english/article.php issue=19&articleID=537)
2.(www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s39&SecId=39&Aid=57262&AtypeId=1)
3. “Bush Administration has fueled the Human-Rights abuses in Iran”
4. New York Times, November 18, 2007; Tehran Times, February 18, 2008
______________
Peter B. Gemma has written for a variety of publications including USA Today, the
Washington Examiner, and Military History magazine.
There has been a noticeable shift in the rhetoric emanating from the proponents of war with Iran, almost certainly due to the perception that armed conflict with Tehran will not be as easy a sell as was Iraq
The White House denies plans to attack Iran, but the signs all point in that direction.
4/30/07
We are writing to urge you to support including the following language in the FY ’08 Defense Authorization bill intended to help avert a military conflict with Iran:
“Notwithstanding any provision of law and as of the date of enactment, no funds may be authorized for military operations in or related to Iran unless specifically authorized by the Congress.”
We urge all members of House Armed Services Committee and Congress to support this language.
3/21/07
Dear Member of Congress :
The undersigned organizations have joined together because we believe that military action against Iran would not be in the national interest of the United States nor its allies in the region nor Europe and Asia. We urge you to call immediate congressional hearings on administration plans to attack Iran and support diplomacy between the United States and Iran without preconditions.
Among the reasons we oppose apparent Bush Administration plan to widen the war by attacking Iran are:
- It could provoke Iran to retaliate by halting or threatening the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. This would have a devastating effect on the world economy. If Iran was even partly successful, it could raise gasoline prices to $5 per gallon for Americans, according to many economists. A prolonged shortage of oil would very much constrict the entire world economy and put an end to our great era of economic growth. Such an event would cause commodity prices to collapse and a big drop in Chinese purchase of U.S. bonds, with a resultant severe rise in domestic interest rates.
- It will put U.S. soldiers and American interests in the region at far greater risk, not just in Iraq but in surrounding countries. At the very least we could expect many more attacks upon our supply lines between Kuwait and Baghdad, with many more American casualties.
- It will further overextend U.S. forces, already under a great deal of stress, and greatly restrict the ability of the U.S. to respond to other threats which may arise.
- Another lawless attack by America would further undermine legitimate efforts to prevent acts of terror directed against the U.S. by accelerating a cycle of violence and by creating even more terrorists targeting the U.S.
and U.S. interests abroad for many years to come.
It will create a devastating and unnecessary humanitarian disaster where hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians might be killed.
- Americans of Iranian descent overwhelmingly support a negotiated settlement with Iran, even though they oppose the government there. In addition, attacking Iran would reinforce the current dictatorship and unite all Iranians against America.
- It will threaten U.S. allies in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, with retaliation. Iran has already warned the small Gulf States their oil facilities would be at risk in retaliation for any U.S. attack on Iran. The Saudi oil facilities are totally open to aerial missile attack. Increases in insurance rates could, all by itself, result in the suspension of oil shipments. We don't know that the U.S. can protect such targets from every missile or ground threat.
- Even a temporary shut down of the Straits of Hormuz would further weaken Europe and make it even more dependent upon Russian energy supplies.
- Another unilateral American attack on another Muslim nation would make us even more isolated in the world, with even more enemies.
- As was the case with Iraq, military action against Iran is being justified on false premises and without conclusive intelligence that Iran poses an imminent threat to the United States. There is little credible intelligence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Some U.S. and other intelligence agencies have estimated that Iran is still up to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon. Even the most cautious estimates by Israeli intelligence conclude that Iran is at least two or three years away from the nuclear weapons threshold. Time may be running out for George W. Bush, but it is not running out for America.
- Claims that Iran is directly assisting insurgents in Iraq remain unsubstantiated and implausible since the majority of identified insurgents are Sunnis (including al-Qaeda), while the Iranians are Shia linked to parties within the current Iraqi government.
- Given 26 years of US refusal to start a dialogue with Iran and recent setbacks in the United Nations Security Council, mounting pressure and preconditions are not sufficient to prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear program. Per the recommendations of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, a US-Iran diplomatic strategy can help stabilize Iraqi sectarian violence and provide a foundation for broadening discussions to include the nuclear program and other grievances.
In the absence of talks, President Bush's escalation of inflammatory rhetoric against Iran, his administration's refusal to rule out military action, the recent deployment of military assets, changes in the rules of engagement in Iraq regarding Iranians, all indicate that a military attack is likely.
We see a disturbing pattern emerging in comments by President Bush and other administration officials, provocative deployments of U.S. military assets, changes in rules of engagement vis-à-vis Iranians in Iraq, and press reports that seem to indicate preparations for U.S. military action against Iran are underway.
For these reasons, we urge you to use all the powers available to you as a Member of Congress to prevent another disaster for America by ruling out the use of any appropriations for the purpose of funding covert action in Iran or for the use of military force against Iran such as proposed by Rep. Jones in H.J. RES. 14. We also urge you to vigorously scrutinize all intelligence presented on Iran and call for a serious diplomatic strategy to engage Iran in dialog such as proposed by Rep. Paul in H .J. RES 43.
Sincerely,
Undersigned
Ivan Eland, Ph.D. Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty The Independent Institute
Jim Babka, President DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
Ivan Eland, Ph.D. Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty The Independent Institute
John Whitehead, President, Rutherford Institute
Marcus Epstein, Executive Director, American Cause
Jon Utley Associate PublisherThe American Conservative
Phil Giraldi contributing editor The American Conservative
Doug Bandow, former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan
Michael D. Ostrolenk, ,National Director, American Conservative Defense Alliance
Trita Parsi, President, National Iranian American Council
