[Mb-civic] IMPORTANT: U.S. Campaign Is Aimed at Iran's Leaders - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

U.S. Campaign Is Aimed at Iran's Leaders
Uneasy About Tehran's Nuclear Plans, Bush Administration Tries to Build 
Opposition to Theocracy

By Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 13, 2006; A01

As the dispute over its nuclear program arrives at the U.N. Security 
Council today, Iran has vaulted to the front of the U.S. national 
security agenda amid Bush administration plans for a sustained campaign 
against the ayatollahs of Tehran.

President Bush and his team have been huddling in closed-door meetings 
on Iran, summoning scholars for advice, investing in opposition 
activities, creating an Iran office in Washington and opening listening 
posts abroad dedicated to the efforts against Tehran.

The internal administration debate that raged in the first term between 
those who advocated more engagement with Iran and those who preferred 
more confrontation appears in the second term to be largely settled in 
favor of the latter. Although administration officials do not use the 
term "regime change" in public, that in effect is the goal they outline 
as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Senate testimony last week. 
"We do not have a problem with the Iranian people. We want the Iranian 
people to be free. Our problem is with the Iranian regime."

In private meetings, Bush and his advisers have been more explicit. 
Members of the Hoover Institution's board of overseers who met with 
Bush, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. 
Hadley two weeks ago emerged with the impression that the administration 
has shifted to a more robust policy aimed at the Iranian government.

"The message that we received is that they are in favor of separating 
the Iranian people from the regime," said Esmail Amid-Hozour, an Iranian 
American businessman who serves on the Hoover board.

"The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than 
those who are advocating more diplomacy," said Richard N. Haass, who as 
State Department policy planning director in Bush's first term was among 
those pushing for engagement.

But as the administration gears up, the struggle with Iran remains 
shadowed by Iraq. The botched intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons 
has left a credibility challenge in convincing the public and the world 
that the administration is right this time about Iran. After alienating 
European allies in the rush to war in Iraq, the administration is 
following a slower, multilateral approach. And with U.S. forces 
stretched, analysts wonder how feasible a military option would be if it 
came to that.

The focus on Iran inside the administration lately has been striking. 
Bush, according to aides, has been spending more time on the issue, and 
advisers have invited 30 to 40 specialists for consultations in recent 
months.

In the past week, the State Department created an Iran desk. Last year, 
only two people in the department worked full time on Iran; now there 
will be 10. The department is launching more training in the Farsi 
language and is planning an Iranian career track, which has been 
difficult without an embassy there.

Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview that the 
department will also add staff in Dubai, which is part of the United 
Arab Emirates, as well as at other embassies in the vicinity of Iran, 
all assigned to watch Tehran. He called the new Dubai outpost the "21st 
century equivalent" of the Riga station in Latvia that monitored the 
Soviet Union in the 1930s when the United States had no embassy in Moscow.

The administration also has launched a $75 million program to advance 
democracy in Iran by expanding broadcasting into the country, funding 
nongovernmental organizations and promoting cultural exchanges. Voice of 
America broadcasts one hour a day into Iran; by April, that will grow to 
four hours a day, and the administration plans to go to 24 hours a day. 
But the administration suffered a setback last week when lawmakers 
slashed $19 million, mainly from broadcast operations.

The administration got to this point after a year of deliberately 
staying on the sidelines. After the United States took the lead on Iraq, 
the British told Bush administration officials that Washington should 
let the Europeans go first on dealing with Iran's alleged nuclear 
weapons program.

During her first trip to Europe as secretary of state, in February 2005, 
Rice was surprised that most questions from European officials concerned 
Iran, not Iraq, and was sobered by the realization that they viewed 
Washington as the problem, not Tehran.

When Bush went to Europe a few weeks later, French President Jacques 
Chirac and then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany pushed him to 
support a British-French-German diplomatic effort dubbed the EU-3. Bush 
agreed, and Rice announced the decision a year ago last weekend. With 
the Europeans in the lead, it became easier to persuade Russia and China 
as well to take a tougher line with Iran.

"We have taken the position from the get-go that we believed it was 
important to work with as many countries as possible," Burns said. "We 
wanted to have the entire international community on our side in order 
to pressure Iran."

The biggest help bringing the international community together, though, 
came from Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proved so incendiary -- in 
dismissing the Holocaust and talking about wiping Israel off the map -- 
that the prospect of a negotiated solution faded. The statements 
underscored the danger posed by Tehran and, according to Burns, led Rice 
"to say we need to fire on all pistons on Iran." Ultimately, the 
Europeans, Russia and China agreed to send Iran to the Security Council.

Bush decided to push more overtly for a democratic Iran. "Tonight," he 
said in his State of the Union address on Jan. 31, "let me speak 
directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect 
your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win 
your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of 
friends with a free and democratic Iran."

Now that the nuclear issue is at the Security Council, the U.S. strategy 
is to escalate gradually rather than force an immediate climax. The 
first step would be a statement by the council president declaring Iran 
in violation of nuclear treaty obligations and demanding it suspend 
uranium enrichment. If that fails, the council could be asked to impose 
economic sanctions or pass a resolution allowing military force to 
enforce compliance. Russia and China, which have veto power, seem 
unlikely to support either move.

"There's a clear desire to have a broad coalition," a senior U.S. 
official said. "The question is, how do you get any action out of it?"

Some analysts believe this year will lead to a decision point for Bush 
whether to use a military option. For now, Bush and his aides say all 
options are on the table, but as a practical matter no armed strike is 
likely until diplomacy has been exhausted.

Many military specialists doubt a strike would be effective because 
Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered in dozens of locations, and 
would require hundreds of sorties first to disrupt Iranian air defenses. 
Such an attack, they say, could inflame the Muslim world and alienate 
reformers within Iran.

Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said 
Washington should instead try direct negotiations with Tehran: "The 
United States ought to make a major diplomatic push in part because it 
might succeed, in part because none of the other options are attractive 
and in part because if you're going to escalate you want to demonstrate 
that you tried." The current policy, he said, "looks to me more like a 
hope than a strategy."

Some Republicans, though, say a military attack may be required if only 
to set back Iran's nuclear program a few years.

"Every year that we wait, the risk increases," said former House speaker 
Newt Gingrich, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. "I would 
hope that the administration would decide to do something decisive. . . 
. We have the military power in the region if we need it. It's a 
question of whether we have the will."

Such a decision could prompt deep skepticism after the Iraq intelligence 
failure. "As far as Congress, they're certainly going to do their 
homework more this time and demand more from the intelligence community 
before they go along with this," said a Senate Republican leadership 
aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The way things are going now, the aide said, "It's hard to see this 
getting resolved under the Bush administration."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201016.html?referrer=email
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