[Mb-civic] Carrots, Sticks, or Strikes? Iran

[Michael Butler]

Carrots, Sticks, or Strikes?
The best approach to the Persian puzzle may require compromises from several
parties. An interview with Kenneth Pollack.

 By  Matthew Yglesias
 Web Exclusive: 12.10.04

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 Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow in foreign-policy studies at the Brookings
Institution, served as an Iran-Iraq military analyst at the CIA from
1988-95. He was also director for Near East and South Asian Affairs, and
director for Persian Gulf Affairs ,at the National Security Council during
the late 1990s. He wrote the influential book The Threatening Storm: The
Case for Invading Iraq, and, more recently, The Persian Puzzle, a history of
U.S.-Iranian relations and an analysis of contemporary policy options.
Earlier this week he sat down with TAP staff writer Matthew Yglesias to
discuss attempts to deal with Iran at the bargaining table or on the
battlefield.

 To start out with, what should we make of the latest deal the Iranians have
struck with the Europeans?

I think that the European deal has a lot of problems with it, but that said,
I think that it is a perfectly good starting point. The biggest things that
are left out are: one, a firm commitment from Iran that it will cease and
desist all uranium and plutonium separation activities; two, a comprehensive
inspections program that can actually assure us that the Iranian are
complying; and three, the threat of real sanctions in case the Iranians
renege. I think we've got to have all three of those things, because Iran's
history is not a good one. They have cheated, they have lied. It's really
clear now they've had this program going for a long time, and we need to be
much more certain. That said, one of the lessons I take away from Iraq is
that it turns out that a really good inspections regime, backed up by very
severe sanctions, can actually work. Before the invasion, the bulk of
opinion -- and I certainly fell into this camp -- was that the inspections
were not going to force Saddam [Hussein] to give up his programs. Well, they
did. It was a temporary thing, but that was all we needed. And I think the
European deal sets us on a course where we can eventually get there.

 Is the United States going to need to sweeten the pot somewhat to try to
get the Europeans to brandish more sticks?

Absolutely. There's no question that the United States is going to need to
be willing to show the Europeans that if the Iranians do the right thing,
we're going to be willing to reward that behavior. And I think we've got to
be willing to reward that behavior because the Iranians are not going to go
along with this if it's nothing but sticks. If it's nothing but sticks, the
Iranians are going to say, "Screw you and the horse you rode in on."

 What is it that we (and, increasingly, the Europeans) fear about a nuclear
Iran? 

Well, obviously everyone fears something different. You do have some
Americans who fear -- as the president likes to put it -- "the worst weapons
in the hands of the worst people." It's a generic "Iran supports terrorism;
Iran has nuclear weapons; Iran will give nuclear weapons to terrorists." And
that's definitely out there, and there are lots of smart, sensible people
who do fear that. But that's not my concern. The Iranians have had [weapons
of mass destruction] for at least 15 years, they've supported terrorism for
at least 25, they've never put the two of them together, and I don't see
them having the desire to do so with nuclear weapons.

 So it's more a question of the balance of power in the region.

Right. Iran is an aggressive, anti-American country. That is how this regime
defines its foreign policy. They've backed off in recent years out of fear
of an American conventional military operation, and my fear is that once
they've got nuclear weapons, they may convince themselves that they're
immune, which would allow them to go back to the kind of aggressive
anti-American foreign policy we saw in the 1990s with their efforts to
destabilize [Persian] Gulf governments, the Khobar Towers, the attacks on
Israel, and all that really nasty stuff that made the Middle East a very
unstable place.

 If we give diplomacy, sanctions, etc. our best shot and they fail, where
does that leave us? Air strikes?

Let me start by saying that I think that if we get the Europeans on board,
the carrot-and-stick approach has a good chance of working. I think the
Iranians are much more sensitive to unilateral sanctions than they want to
let on. That said, it isn't a sure thing that we'll be able to get the
Europeans to go along. Under those circumstances, I think the United States
will have two choices. One is to go pure containment -- make it as hard as
possible for the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, continue to make them pay
a price, try to get the Europeans to sanction them once they do cross the
nuclear threshold to try and dampen proliferation beyond Iran. I think that
there is the prospect of that. We've seen a degree of prudence from the
Iranians that suggests that living with a nuclear Iran might be unpleasant,
but it's probably not impossible.

 The alternative is to see if we can do some kind of a counter-proliferation
[i.e., targeted military strikes] option. That's going to be very difficult,
but I wouldn't rule it out. Right now we've got a pretty crappy
counter-proliferation option, and I think the United States ought to be
trying to improve the option -- with intelligence gathering [to locate
weapons facilities], with covert action if necessary, position forces in the
region, laying down red lines in the region, whatever we can so that the
president of the United States has more than one choice.

 To what extent does the deployment in Iraq leave us overexposed to
countermeasures? 

It creates a vulnerability, and this is one of the big problems with the
counter-proliferation option. It's one of the reasons why I'm not terribly
enthusiastic about it. Right now the cost-benefit is very hard to make work.
On the benefit side, we don't know a lot about Iran's nuclear program, and
we're very worried that there's stuff we don't know about. So what the
benefit of the strikes would be is just unclear. On the cost side, the
Iranians have a wonderful terrorist capability; they'll strike back with
that. Beyond that, as you point out, Iraq is a real Achilles heel at the
moment. Iran has a very extensive intelligence network inside of Iraq; they
could turn that network into basically an insurgency or something to wage
clandestine war on us in very short order. That could make Iraq considerably
worse than it already is.

 The other thing that seems to be on the table is the idea put forward by
Michael Ledeen and others that there are things we could do that would
destabilize the Iranian government in the near term.

There are multiple different versions of this theme. I'm skeptical that we
could destabilize the Iranian government in the short order because I don't
think the CIA has the capability inside Iran today. I'm also skeptical that
that would actually help us. It would make the regime more fearful; I'm not
convinced it would actually cause the regime to collapse.

 Then there's this "popular revolution" possibility. Again, I don't see the
evidence that the United States standing up and saying, "We want to see a
different government in Iran," would actually cause a popular revolution.
[Iranian President] Mohammed Khatami came as close in 1998 and 1999, but
even then the people weren't ready to take to the streets for him.

 It seems to me that people on the right are much more interested in
pursuing counter-proliferation or regime-change options rather than the sort
of deal we talked about earlier. To what extent do you think that reflects
the thinking inside the administration?

My guess -- and obviously I don't know this for a fact -- is that this is my
strong sense of what's going on inside the administration. The
administration believes that regime change is the only appropriate policy
for Iran, especially in keeping with President Bush's weltanschauung. And I
think that they're caught in a loop. Because I think they are realistic
enough to recognize that our ability to effect regime change in Iran is
extremely limited. So on the one hand, regime change in Iran is the only
appropriate policy. But they can't do it -- but they're not willing to go
beyond it. Someone else might say, "Well, this is our preferred policy, but
it's not possible, so let's move on to things that we can do." But their
feeling is that it's better to stand on principle than to make any kind of
compromises to get a policy that I don't think they would even regard as
second-best.

 Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

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