The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (22 page)

Lifting these crippling sanctions—and preventing more being added onto them—now became Iran’s goal. To get rid of sanctions, Khamenei calculated that it would be necessary to act tough in front of the West—to meet threat with threat and pressure with pressure—and to attain nuclear capability faster (because then Iran would have more leverage to negotiate sanction removal). Iran knew from Iraq’s experience that once sanctions are imposed, they tend to stay in place. Even if Iran conceded on the nuclear issue, the U.S. Congress would ask for concessions on terrorism,
and then on other issues before sanctions were ever lifted. This is what worried Khamenei—“that the U.S. would not be satisfied until Iran gives up its religious beliefs, values, identity, independence.”
⁶⁶
The Europeans would not reverse their oil embargo either, not unless every European country voted to do so, which would be unlikely. And the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to bolster their defenses against Iran would not vanish from those countries’ arsenals if and when Iran gave up its nuclear program.

By this reasoning Iran would get nothing for cooperating on the nuclear issue and would have a stronger bargaining position if it got past the point of no return. In yet another ironic twist, rather than halt Iran’s nuclear program, the new sanctions actually gave Iran ample incentive to forge ahead with it.

Iranian leaders also understood that giving up on the program at a time when sanctions were weakening the state and robbing it of the means to buy political support at home would doom the regime. Look at Libya, they would say. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program, and then when his people rose up he had no way to keep the United States and NATO from intervening to topple him. Back in 2004 when Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in exchange for normalizing relations with the West, Khamenei had told his National Security Council that the Libyan leader was “an idiot” and that this was the end of him. With memories of the 2009 Green Movement still fresh, Iran’s rulers felt they could expect a Libya scenario only if they relinquished their nuclear program and then their unhappy and hungry masses rose up in protest.

The Iranian state relies on an extensive patronage system to rule. The sanctions have raised doubts about the viability of patronage politics—there is not enough money to dole out to buy off the population. If support for the regime softens and dissident factions peel off, the door could open not only to compromise on the nuclear issue but to a transition to a more open regime. That would be a best-case scenario for the West.

The downside was steeper. Countries that have built nuclear weapons have all had to make a decision to do so. Iran has so far decided to gain nuclear capability, but by most intelligence accounts has not made the decision to build a bomb. Could pressure, meant to keep it from such a decision, instead backfire and end up driving it to that very end?

Obama still hoped that there was life in the dual-track policy. He hoped that punishing economic pressure would persuade Iran’s leaders that to survive they had to stop and not take that last fatal step across the red line that would trip a war with America. To give the status quo a chance, he moved the red line back to Iran attaining a nuclear
weapon
. Since 2009, Washington had indicated that it was willing to tolerate some enrichment activity in Iran, but it had never formally rolled back its red line from enrichment to weaponization—Obama did just that.
⁶⁷
But in doing so he also painted American foreign policy into a corner. If you draw a clear red line then you have to defend it or risk looking weak.

That provided an opening for the American Right, backed by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, to force Obama’s back to the wall on Iran. The policy was a failure, Iran was closer to a bomb, and short of war there was no other way to stop it. That compelled Obama to put Iran policy at the forefront of his foreign policy agenda and to further increase pressure on Iran.

Publicly the president pushed back against war. He told a gathering of the pro-Israel group AIPAC that he would not countenance containment of a nuclear Iran—containment was not an option—and if it became clear that Iran was about to build nuclear weapons America would go to war to prevent that. But for now, the president was confident that pressure (and he was adding much more of it with his policy under criticism at home) combined with talks (which he now aggressively pursued with Iran) would work.

Khamenei welcomed Obama’s pushback against war, and it was then that he reissued his 1995 fatwa—in effect saying that Iran will not build a bomb, so Obama does not have to go to war. Khamenei also agreed to return to talks. This looked like a victory for dual-track—although the pressure was on the United States this time. Israeli goading and the American Right were opening the door for diplomacy.

But once again Obama was not willing to walk through the door. In Istanbul America suggested that if Iran suspended 20 percent enrichment of uranium and agreed to send out of the country its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, and if it proved that Khamenei’s fatwa would hold, then America would discuss sanctions relief and include recognition of Iran’s right to enrichment (the key Iranian demand) in
the discussion. Talks resumed in Baghdad and Moscow. In the Russian capital Iran offered to make the fatwa a UN document, but now the United States backed away from its Istanbul offer. Recognizing the right to enrichment and talk of sanctions relief were off the table. The United States was prepared to offer only aircraft spare parts (the Iranian aviation industry is in desperate need of parts for its aging aircraft) and a promise not to pursue further UN sanctions if Iran agreed to what was asked of it—that is, we would not consider relaxing or even temporarily suspending any international sanctions, nor consider a moratorium on unilateral U.S. financial sanctions. In a lower-level meeting of technical experts after the Moscow talks, Iran offered to set aside its demand for recognition of its right to enrichment (its key demand all along) and asked what it could expect in sanction relief (and Iran wanted substantial relief) if it complied with U.S. demands that it cap enrichment at 5 percent and give up its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. The answer, again, was aircraft spare parts. The sum total of three major rounds of diplomatic negotiations was that America would give some bits and bobs of old aircraft in exchange for Iran’s nuclear program.

Ironically, economic sanctions had done what they were supposed to do—bring Iran to the table. But now it took a deal to end the crisis, and the White House wavered. A deal would be difficult to sell at home or to Israel, whereas sanctions played well domestically. As one senior State Department official put it to me, “any deal that is acceptable to Iran is unacceptable to Israel, and any deal acceptable to Israel is unacceptable to Iran. It is hopeless, no point in trying.”

For the second time (the first was the Turkey-Brazil deal) the administration came to the edge of a diplomatic breakthrough and then walked away. Obama hoped that the status quo would hold until a new regime took over in Tehran. In effect, the United States now sought to resolve the nuclear issue not by taking away Iran’s nuclear program, but, as a number of administration officials told me, by changing the regime that would oversee it. It was something like the peaceful coexistence we had with the Soviet Union; we lived with them until they were gone. Iran would go nuclear, but hopefully it would not matter to the United States and Israel when it did.

This long view is based on the assumption that sanctions have made Iran weak and vulnerable. By fall of 2012 there was plenty of evidence to support that impression. The Iranian economy was contracting, and dissent was on the rise. It took baton-wielding riot police and plenty of tear gas to break up street demonstrations when the rial collapsed in early October to a mere fifth of its value in 2011. That narrative certainly suits the administration—they can claim their strategy has been a success. Sanctions
have
weakened Iran, but that does not mean that Iran sees itself as weak or America’s hand as particularly strong. Washington may believe that Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to do with Iran, but Iran sees the unraveling of American military efforts there—not to mention growing instability across the Middle East—as a vulnerability for America and a boon for itself. It makes our military threat hollow and exposes us to many strategic vulnerabilities.

Washington also concluded that Iran was the big loser in the Arab Spring. America saw the crisis in Syria for the most part as a strategic loss for Iran (which it was). But that closed the door to talking to Iran on Syria, which could have led to an early resolution of the crisis. Failing to do so put regional stability at risk.

And, again, the view from Tehran is very different. Democracy in the Arab world proved fleeting, and at any rate it was not a bug likely to infect Iran—Iran’s spring had already come and gone in 2009. What came out of the Arab Spring would hurt America more than Iran: Islamic fundamentalism and, even worse, Salafism were on the rise, threatening regional stability and pro-Western regimes that have protected it. The Arab Spring was a cauldron of instability, and that would affect American interests more than Iranian ones—even Syria, Iran thought, could prove more calamitous to America’s allies in the region than to Iran. The value of the Arab Spring to Iran is that it will ensnare America in conflicts and distractions; Iran is not as weak as America thinks, because America is not as strong as it thinks. As one astute Middle East observer put it to me, “America is standing with its back to a tsunami. It does not see what is coming at it.”

In the short run, Iranians may see benefit in such a status quo. Khamenei’s ruling that nuclear weapons are a “great sin” still stands, and keeps Iran on the safe side of the new U.S. red line. But if the sanctions are going to lead to regime change, will Iran’s rulers abide them over the long term? Surely getting to “one turn of the screw short” on a bomb—or many bombs—will give the Islamic Republic more leverage as it strives to push back against sanctions and win itself more breathing space?

Iran’s strategy could be to build up its centrifuge cascades and its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium while perfecting its missile technology.
⁶⁸
Then it could be as little as two to four months away from a whole arsenal of nuclear weapons. That could make Iran far more dangerous and formidable than racing to build a single bomb today.

The Obama administration claims that it put aside Bush’s dream of regime change in Iran. But the unspoken goal, if not the immediate consequence, of America’s stepped-up sanctions remains regime change. Some in the Obama administration thought hard-hitting sanctions would keep Iran from building a bomb long enough for a new regime to take over. Others argued for regime change as a policy goal and the only way out of the impasse with Iran.
⁶⁹
But regime change remains more a pious hope than a real prospect.

Regime change is also a strategy fraught with risk. It may have seemed realistic for the brief moment when the Green Movement had the Islamic Republic back on its heels, but as of 2011 that rebellion had been eviscerated. I remember a conversation that I had with senior White House officials on the eve of the March 2012 parliamentary elections in Iran. They were hearing intelligence assessments of potential street riots, paralysis, and a Persian Spring. None of it happened. There is plenty of dissent in Iran, but no organized opposition tied to the hopeful Green Movement.

Growing sanctions confused Iranians. Sanctions made their lives hard, but few saw them as justified. Sanctions were not put in place to punish the regime for its human rights violations or to support the cause of democracy. Instead, they were there to turn the Islamic Republic away from what is actually a fairly popular goal. The Iranian public is not opposed to its country’s nuclear program—indeed, by most accounts
the public (much like Pakistanis or Indians) is more assertive than the government and would like Iran to actually have the bomb.

Isolation and sanctions are more likely to cause regime collapse than regime change. As mentioned earlier, the aggressive sanctions regime is undoing the patronage system that sustains the Iranian state. Without the money to keep the wheels greased, clerical rule could fall apart—more and more Iranians could take to the streets, with dangerous fissures opening up in the ruling ranks as elites struggle to respond. And the result may not be a halcyon transition to a friendlier regime, but a messy transition to something worse.

The collapse of the patronage system will wean Iranians from reliance on government, but as more and more are forced to fend for themselves, Iranian society could go the way of 1990s Iraq—a place where poor and radical conurbations such as Sadr City and Basra took the place of Iraq’s once-urbane city culture. Economic pressure could cause social disarray, gradually turning parts of Iran into lawless bastions of crime and terror.