[Mb-civic] FW: America's Iran Crucible: Beyond Yapping Dogs and Superpowers Made of Straw

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 13:47:12 -0500
Subject: America's Iran Crucible: Beyond Yapping Dogs and Superpowers Made
of Straw  

> America's Iran Crucible: Beyond Yapping Dogs and Superpowers Made of Straw
> 
> March 15, 2006 
> Center for Security Policy
> Alex Alexiev
> 
> link to original article
> <http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/Americas_Iran_crucible.pdf>
> 
> President Ahmadinejad¹s recent calls for the annihilation of Israel have
> provided much needed clarity to a reality the West, rhetoric apart, has often
> refused to acknowledge let alone do something about. While his genocidal
> threats against a fellow-member of the United Nations should serve as a wake
> up call to people of good will anywhere, other less well-known tirades may
> tell us more about why the fanatics in Tehran feel they can spew hatred with
> impunity and why the terrorist regime in Iran has become a clear and present
> danger that could no longer be ignored by civilized nations.
> 
> ³Europeans are like yapping dogs, kick them once and they run away,²
> Ahmadinejad recently opined, while simultaneously dismissing the United States
> as a ³superpower made of straw.² Such rants are seldom paid much attention in
> the Western media, which tends to treat them as unfortunate noise that is best
> ignored. The ³yapping dogs² remark, for instance, was not made public in
> Europe until four months after it was actually made. This is unfortunate,
> because such ravings can tell us more than the reams of sober Western punditry
> generated on the subject of late. They should also make us think through the
> implications of such views both in terms of the threat this regime poses and
> what policies could best counter it.
> 
> It may be useful to begin with the simple proposition that, looked at from the
> vantage point of Iran¹s Islamist regime, Ahmadinejad¹s outbursts may in fact
> be a rational assessment of actual European and U.S. policies as opposed to
> their rhetoric vis a vis Tehran.
> 
> To start with neither Iran¹s quest for nuclear weapons nor Ahmadinejad¹s
> threat to wipe out Israel are either new or unprecedented.Iran has been
> pursuing nuclear capabilities for many years and extremely bellicose tirades
> against Jews and the West have been a regular staple of the mullahs¹ rhetoric
> since Khomeini. Just a few months after 9/11, for instance, Ayatollah
> Rafsanjani, the number two in the Iranian regime then and now, and a man often
> approvingly characterized as ³pragmatic² in the Western media, urged the
> Muslim world to annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons, assuring them that
> they will only suffer ³some damages² as a result of a nuclear exchange.
> 
> Despite such vitriol, Europe has, by and large, chosen to ignore the fact that
> Iran is a designated terrorist state and a key sponsor of terrorism. To this
> day, the Tehran controlled Lebanese Hezbollah, for instance, is not to be
> found on the EU list of terrorist organizations, ostensibly because it also
> provides ³social services.² Instead, the Europeans have focused on business
> better than usual and today hundreds of EU companies do some $15 billion of
> export business with Iran that is growing at 25% per annum.Germany alone
> exported $5 billion worth of goods to Iran in 2005, a 30% increase from 2004.
> And these EU exports, which represent 44% of Iran¹s total, are mostly in the
> strategic oil and gas, petrochemical and telecommunications sectors and cannot
> be easily replaced by Russian or Chinese goods. Fully 75% of the machinery and
> technology that keeps Iran¹s economy - and oil and gas exports - going is of
> EU provenance. This has made business with Europe an absolutely indispensable
> economic prop for the regime. Moreover, much of it is done with the direct
> support and encouragement of European governments in the form of export credit
> guarantees and bilateral agreements in direct contravention of U.S. declared
> policy on dealing with terrorist states. It would not be an exaggeration to
> say that, wittingly or not, European governments are helping keep the mullah
> regime in power. 
> 
> Which brings us to the ³superpower made of straw.² Unlike the Europeans, the
> United States has taken the Iranian terrorist regime seriously and President
> Bush declared the country one of the axis of evil. Even before that, in 1996,
> the U.S. Congress unanimously passed tough legislation known as the Iran-Libya
> Sanctions Act (ILSA) authorizing sanctions against companies and individuals
> doing business with the Iranian regime, especially in the oil and gas sector.
> Yet, despite the fact that ILSA was extended for another five years in 2001
> and the countless violations of its provisions in the meantime, Washington has
> never imposed sanctions on any company doing business in Iran, except a few
> Chinese arms dealers.
> 
> Thus, at least in the regime¹s view, U.S. implicit threats to Iran have to
> date proven to be little more than empty rhetoric. There is no reason to
> expect that theyŒll be taken any more seriously in the future than they have
> been in the past unless Washington finally decides to up the ante. And unless
> it does, the United States will soon face an unpredictable terrorist regime
> armed with nuclear weapons and a Middle East profoundly destabilized and on
> the verge of nuclear war.
> 
> Perhaps, as many hope, with the referral of Iran to the UN Security Council,
> the Europeans will finally prove Ahmadinejad wrong and show some bite along
> with the ³yapping.² Unfortunately, given past experience and the large
> European economic interests involved, the odds of that happening are not very
> good. Nor is it likely that Russia and China will suddenly decide to abandon
> their long-standing efforts to obstruct American policy and strike their own
> lucrative deals with Tehran. Indeed, just days after Russia¹s voted to refer
> Iran to the UN Security Council, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated
> publicly Moscow¹s strong opposition to ³any possible sanctions² against Iran.1
> 
> Washington¹s current hopes to prevent Iran from going nuclear with the help of
> the UN will yet again prove illusory. This does not mean that America must
> face this daunting task alone, for in facing the warmongers in Tehran we have
> the most powerful of potential allies ­ the Iranian people. The first and most
> important step though is to realize that the status quo is simply no longer
> acceptable and it will not really get better until there is a regime change in
> Tehran. 
> 
> Before getting into a discussion of how regime change could best be
> accomplished, however, it is important to briefly discuss the evolution of the
> regime in Iran into a ticking time bomb and an imminent threat to world peace.
> 
> From Totalitarian Theocracy to Messianic Islamofascism
> 
> From its very beginning, Khomeini¹s revolution was based on the essentially
> totalitarian concept of vilayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent), which
> simply meant absolute political power for a ³supreme leader² and a small
> clique of top clerics. Though claiming to derive its legitimacy from Islam and
> having a version of Islamic fanaticism as its ideological banner, this system
> had much more in common with the Nazi Fuehrer prinzip and the Bolshevik
> ³vanguard party² concept than with anything found in the Quran or the Twelver
> Shia doctrine. Indeed, it followed the organizational and operational modus
> operandi of its totalitarian confreres to the letter, complete with a ³cult of
> personality² of the leader and brutal suppression of the rule of law, dissent,
> freedom of speech and basic human rights by means of a typical totalitarian
> security services network and extrajudicial violence. It also followed closely
> the totalitarian economic model in its socialist version, with 70% of the
> economy controlled by the state, central planning, five-year plans etc.
> 
> Overtime, the system became progressively ossified and corrupt and failed to
> perform economically. Timid half-baked reform experiments under President
> Khatami predictably came to nothing, yet, despite being tightly controlled,
> threatened the absolute power and economic privilege of the clerics. The
> ruling oligarchy responded by putting an end to even the pretense of reform
> and toleration of reformists and opted out for a new wave of wholesale
> repression, euphemistically dubbed the ³Second Islamic Revolution.² All the
> while, the regime continued to blame the Great Satan and evil Zionists for its
> own failures with the time-tested ³externalization of evil² propaganda tactic
> of totalitarians.
> 
> The result has been the near complete stifling of dissent in Iran. Reformists
> have been prevented from contesting elections, most reformists publications
> have been banned and many hundreds of journalists, bloggers and
> non-conformists have been jailed on trumped up charges and often tortured.
> Since the arrival of Ahmadinejad on the scene, this process has been
> accelerated and led to the thorough purge of suspected reformists from all
> levels of government and their replacement with hard-line zealots.
> 
> The growing tendency of the regime to seek greater ideological conformity and
> use repression as a first resort in its efforts to deal with the palpable
> discontent of Iranian society, has dramatically enhanced the political clout
> of the most reactionary parts of the regime¹s support structures in the
> security, intelligence and paramilitary vigilante baseej forces and their
> hardline Islamist mentors. It is these circles that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
> emerged from and represents.
> 
> While this group of extremists is a zealous defender of the Islamist regime,
> their views are even more radical than those of most regime clerics in
> virtually all aspects and they see themselves as the true representatives and
> guardians of Ayatollah Khomeini¹s legacy. In this respect, they implicitly and
> sometimes quite explicitly, criticize the clerical establishment for not being
> radical enough in pursuing the goals of the Islamic revolution as they see
> them. 
> 
> Two areas of particular relevance for our discussion here are their attitudes
> toward the West and the messianic nature of their beliefs. Guided by the
> teachings of their ideological godfather ­ the ultra-hardline Ayatollah
> Mesbah-e Yazdi and the ³Westoxication² conspiracy theories of Ahmad Fardid, a
> third-rate Persian follower of Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, these
> zealots exhibit a pathological hatred of the West and its civilization and a
> firm belief in the inevitability of an apocalyptic struggle between Islam and
> the West that will usher in the final triumph of Islam worldwide. By itself,
> this fervent fantasy is hardly new, but its current interpretation by
> Ahmadinejad and the extremists now in power in Tehran is novel and highly
> disturbing. For they have combined it with the messianic Shiite belief in the
> reappearance of the Hidden Imam and appear to believe that the final violent
> confrontation with the enemies of Islam is not only close at hand, but that it
> could be speeded up and that it is the religious obligation of the Iranian
> people to do that through the ³art of martyrdom.² And martyrdom in
> Ahmadinejad¹s fantasy world is no longer just about individuals but about the
> whole nation. ³A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity,² he exalts and
> warns that those who undermine this ³principle Š undermine the foundation of
> our eternity.² The way to avoid this great misfortune is simple in his view
> and he urges the Iranians to follow those who are ³doing their best to pave
> the way for the urgent reappearance of the Hidden Imam.² How long that will
> take is also no secret and Ahmadinejad is on record saying that he expects the
> Imam to appear in two short years. What exactly ³paving the way² for the
> Messiah¹s appearance involves is not clear from the ravings of these lunatics,
> but for the civilized world to assume that these fantasies are totally
> unrelated to Tehran¹s quest for nuclear weapons would be folly. Recently, a
> religious scholar and disciple of Ahmadinejad¹s mentor Ayatollah Mesbah-e
> Yazdi, better known to Iranians as ³Professor Crocodile,² publicly justified
> the use of nuclear weapons against the enemies of Islam in what regime
> opponents saw as a new effort by the hardliners to ³prepare the religious
> grounds for the use of these weapons.²2
> 
> There are many in the West that are already dismissing these ominous threats
> as empty bluster and yet again urging dialog and calling for more tolerance of
> the intolerant. For them, it may be instructive to see how some prominent
> Iranians who are far from being friends of the West or enemies of the Islamic
> republic perceive these trends. Abdul- Karim Soroush, the most prominent
> Iranian philosopher still living in the country, for instance, sees a ³hidden
> fascism² on the march and believes that the current Tehran rulers are going
> ³even further than the Taliban,² while, in the words of former president
> Khatami, they aspire ³to imitate Bin Laden² and ³compete with the Taliban in
> calling for violence and in carrying out extremist crimes.²
> 
> Toward a Strategy for Regime Change
> 
> If the analysis above has any merit, the West is now facing an imminent and
> acute threat from a terrorist regime armed with a culture of death and a
> messianic belief in the virtue of apocalyptic violence. And soon to be armed
> with nuclear weapons. While there is some benefit in getting international and
> United Nations acknowledgment of this reality, to wait for a highly unlikely
> solution of the problem by them would be tantamount to a dereliction of duty.
> It will either not happen or will be dragged out to the point of becoming
> meaningless. What needs to be done immediately is for the United States to
> formulate and begin executing a comprehensive strategy that aims to prevent or
> delay as long as possible the acquisition of a nuclear capability by Iran as
> the first step and effect regime change in Tehran as the ultimate objective.
> 
> As any sound integrated strategy it should consist of a military contingency
> plan and coordinated but independent plans for economic and political warfare
> against the Tehran regime.
> 
> The Military Option - A discussion of the military dimension of such a
> strategy is beyond the scope of this essay and the competence of its author,
> except for pointing out that regardless of the technical feasibility of a
> strictly military solution, it should not be taken off the table as an option
> and a political lever. It is also imperative for any military option to
> include plans to surgically decapitate the regime and its key supporters with
> as little collateral damage as possible. At the very least, targets should
> include the top leadership and the regime¹s key support structures and
> instruments of political oppression such as Republican Guard, Baseej and
> intelligence headquarters and essential installations. The Economic Option-
> The economic dimension of such a strategy is essential and clear cut. Iran is
> a terrorist state and anybody that contributes to its economic and therefore
> political well-being ought to be subject to sanctions under existing American
> law. An effective sanctions regime that will bring an end to European
> strategic exports may by itself critically undermine the regime¹s economic
> viability and seriously affect its political stability as well. An effective
> economic strategy to undermine the regime need not be just a government
> affair. Many if not most of the large European companies that currently prop
> Tehran economically, both do a large amount of business in the United States
> and have billions of dollars invested in their stock by American funds and
> individuals. This is especially true of the 100 largest U.S. pension funds to
> say nothing of the hundreds of American mutual funds and a grass roots
> campaign to divest from these companies will in short order force them to
> choose between the American market and doing business with terrorists. 3 It
> will not be a difficult choice to make. In fact, such a campaign already
> exists but it needs much greater public support to be effective.
> 
> The Political Warfare Option
> 
> The greatest promise for regime change in a democratic direction lies in a
> well-designed campaign of political warfare toward that end. The nearly
> complete absence of willingness on the part of the U.S. administration to
> engage in a systematic political warfare effort is our greatest policy failure
> to date in Iran and, indeed, in the war on terror as a whole. In fact, the
> very term political warfare has disappeared from our lexicon, except when used
> to describe campaigns against domestic political opponents. Yet, political
> warfare is and has always been an indispensable instrument of national power
> in times of serious international conflict and theUnited States has
> traditionally engaged in it, more often than not with considerable success, as
> in the Cold War. It is of particular relevance in conflicts of ideological
> nature like the current one that cannot be won by military means alone.
> Instead, what we claim to be doing or are at least interested in doing is
> something called ³public diplomacy² an ill-conceived and futile exercise in
> political correctness unlikely to provide any meaningful contributions to U.S.
> foreignpolitical desiderata.4
> 
> Unlike public diplomacy, which seems to pursue the objective of convincing our
> enemies that we are decent and well-meaning people or provide answers to
> questions such as ³why they hate us,² political warfare is about identifying
> an enemy¹s internal weaknesses, analyzing them carefully and developing an
> integrated strategy to exploit them through the various instruments at the
> nation¹s disposal. It is a strategy that holds especial promise in dealing
> with opponents that run politically oppressive and economically failing
> regimes that lack legitimacy and the support of large parts of the population.
> In Iran¹s case, the regime¹s vulnerabilities are numerous and glaring. It is a
> country where a significant segment of society has no illusion as to the
> reactionary nature of the regime and would support the democratization of the
> country. It is also a country with a large, well-educated and, for the most
> part, democratically-oriented diaspora in the West which could serve as the
> catalyst in a democratization effort.
> 
> Given these existing conditions, in order to be effective, a political warfare
> campaign would have to be in sync with the quintessential interests and
> aspirations of the Iranians themselves and help them understand that while the
> mullah regime presents a problem for the West it presents an existential
> threat to the socio-economic future and the physical security of its people. A
> sophisticated political warfare campaign would necessitate a detailed study of
> the regime vulnerabilities and formulating a set of key messages to be
> delivered with the appropriate instruments. This is clearly beyond the scope
> of this essay, but the few examples below should provide a sample of what
> possibilities exist.
> 
> The nature of the conflict ­ It is of the utmost importance for the U.S.
> working with democratic opposition groups in and outside ofIran to explain to
> the Iranian people the nature of the current conflict with the Tehran regime.
> First and foremost, it must be made abundantly clear that neither Washington
> nor anybody else in the West has any objections against the peaceful use of
> nuclear energy by Iran. This is a key point because the regime has had some
> success in convincing public opinion in Iran that the opposite is true.
> Secondly, it needs to be constantly reiterated that the regime¹s nuclear
> weapons ambitions coupled with its messianic warmongering present a real
> danger of nuclear conflagration of which the Iranian people will be the real
> victim. Finally, a clear message, should also be relayed that in any potential
> conflict it is the reactionary mullah regime and the regime alone that is the
> enemy and main target.
> 
> Islam or Islamist ideology ­ Iran is an Islamic republic with a government
> ostensibly based on shari¹a and Twelver Shia precepts as a source of its
> ideological legitimacy. While this is the theory, the reality is a theocratic,
> totalitarian regime based on the absolute supremacy of the clerics under
> Khomeini¹s invention of the vilayat-e faqih, or the dictatorship of a supreme
> Islamic leader and a small mafia around him made up of corrupt clerics and a
> pervasive secret service and paramilitary vigilante groups. It is every bit as
> totalitarian as the Nazi and Soviet models except that it uses religion rather
> than secular ideology as a source of legitimacy. But it is at great odds with
> the Shia religion and that is a significant vulnerability that should be
> exploited for the purposes of delegitimizing the regime.
> 
> It is a historical fact that in Twelver Shia Islam direct involvement in
> politics by the Islamic establishment has historically been frowned upon. Thus
> the vilayat-e faqih model and its various nostrums directly contradict age-old
> Shia traditions. Many Iranian theologians and ayatollahs, such as Ayatollah
> Montazeri, have openly spoken about this and publicly urged the separation of
> religion and state, as have other prominent Shia clerics like grand ayatollahs
> Ali Sistani and Al-Fayad in Iraq. This key fault-line needs to be analyzed and
> a campaign to exploit it organized with the help of prominent Shia scholars.
> 
> The economics of poverty ­ Iran is currently enjoying windfall profits from
> its oil exports campaign already exists and has scored some success but much
> greater public support could and should be mobilized in order to make it truly
> effective.5 because of exorbitant prices, but take away the oil (which
> accounts for 90% of exports) and you have a failed state economically that
> compares very unfavorably in terms of economic development to Shah¹s period.
> Even with the oil windfall, there has been no reduction in poverty, which
> afflicts 40% of the population and unemployment among the young averages 35%.
> Things are especially dire under shari¹a for young women who are easily the
> best educated in the Middle East, yet are openly discriminated against and
> have an unemployment rate of 50%. The prospects of the massive youth cohort
> are anything but bright - a reality the 70% of the population under 30 know
> only too well. Moreover, with half a million youths, many of them college
> educated, joining the ranks of the unemployed each year, things are set to get
> worse. 
> 
> Iran is also stymied by the continued practice of ossified Marxist economic
> dogmas in the form of central planning and five-year plans that a recent study
> called a ³costly exercise in futility.² And like in the Soviet economy of
> yesteryear, the large number (over 40%) of state-owned firms that operate in
> the red year in year out drag the whole economy down and suffocate the private
> sector. Overall, it would not be very difficult to make the case that, like
> everywhere else it has been imposed, the Islamist regime has already proven an
> economic failure with all this implies for the socio-economic prospects of the
> Iranian people. While official statistics are far from reliable, a recent
> parliamentary research report indicated the percentage of people living under
> the poverty line at 50% of the rural population and 20% among city dwellers.
> As in other states that have succumbed to extremism and despite its huge oil
> wealth, poverty seems to be the only certain product of Islamism in Iran. This
> is a particularly pertinent message for the large number of poor people in the
> country that have placed their faith for a better life in Ahmedinajad.
> 
> Regime Corruption ­ Pervasive systemic corruption at all levels of government
> may be the single greatest vulnerability of the clerical regime today. This is
> so because not only is the wide-spread corruption a much discussed public
> knowledge, but because it is associated with the ruling clerical establishment
> in the mind of the public. This explains, at least partly, the victory of
> Ahmadinejad, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform against Rafsanjani,
> who was widely seen as a poster child of high clerical corruption.
> 
> The problem, in short, is that after 26 years in power, the ruling Islamist
> establishment has built a vast system of economic spoils designed to benefit
> them directly. It is a parasitic system that functions in ways remarkably
> similar to the Soviet nomenklatura and like it is immune to reform because
> reform would threaten the collapse of the regime that underpins it. This is
> one reason, why nothing will change under Ahmadinejab, despite his promises.
> 
> Just two examples would suffice to indicate the magnitude of the problem.
> Following the overthrow of the Shah, the royal family¹s vast holdings were
> incorporated into semigovernment foundations designed ostensibly to promote
> public welfare and philanthropy. With 30% to 40% of the entire economy¹s
> assets under their control, these ³bonyads² have been transformed into huge
> holding companies that dominate most of the manufacturing and trade sectors
> and operate by rules of their own to avoid taxation, competition and
> regulations to which private companies are subjected. Not surprisingly,
> virtually all of the bonyads are indirectly owned by the top clerical
> nomenklatura. This explains why despite hundreds of court cases of flagrant
> embezzlement and corruption, few have resulted in any convictions since
> invariably the defendants turn out to be related to the high and mighty.
> 
> A similar corrupt scheme is at work in the lucrative oil and gas sector where
> hundreds of nominally private companies owned by the clerics have positioned
> themselves as the compulsory partners of foreign investors in the sector and
> the beneficiaries of huge commissions, a practice identical to the one
> perfected by the royal family in Saudi Arabia.
> 
> There are also numerous other real and potential fault-lines and specific
> target audiences that could and should be addressed in an integrated political
> warfare campaign. These include ethnic issues, women, students and youth,
> private business, the poor etc. To take just the first of these, it has become
> increasingly evident that the regime¹s brutal treatment and discrimination of
> sizable ethnic and religious minorities such as the Iranian Kurds, the Arabs
> in oil-rich Khuzestan, Baluchis, Turkmen and others has given rise to the kind
> of ethno-religious alienation that could easily lead to the breakup of the
> multiethnic country in which the dominant Farsi make up only half of the
> population. It should be made clear to the Iranian people, that only the
> replacement of the current dictatorship by a democratic regime acceptable to
> all could prevent these dangerous centrifugal tendencies.
> 
> To effectively reach the intended audience, a campaign of this kind would need
> to develop appropriate communication instruments and strategies but this
> should not be difficult. Open societies enjoy an unbeatable advantage over
> closed, dictatorial ones in this respect as the Cold War struggle proved
> conclusively. It is also the case that technological progress in the form of
> the Internet and satellite television and radio have made communications
> virtually impervious to jamming and totalitarians that are trying to keep
> information out are fighting a losing battle. In just one example, it is now
> believed that there are over 100,000 active blogs in Iranwith the vast
> majority of them antiregime, prompting an irate ayatollah to call blogging ³a
> Trojan horse with enemy soldiers in its belly.²
> 
> To sum up, Iran and its warmongering Islamofascist regime present a clear and
> present danger to the West and to its own people. It is a danger that must and
> could be dealt effectively with an integrated military, economic and political
> warfare strategy by the USand allies that is long overdue. A successful
> outcome would dramatically improve the prospects of the democratic project in
> theMiddle East and beyond; the failure to do that will likely bring us to the
> threshold of nuclear conflagration and signal a seminal defeat for the Free
> World in the war on terror.
> 
> 
> 1 Interfax News Agency, Moscow, Feb. 15, 2005
> 
> 
> 2 Roozonline.com, Feb. 16, 2006 as translated in Memri Special Dispatch #1096,
> Feb. 17, 2006,www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD109606
> <http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD109606>  
> 
> 3 A recent study has found out that the top 87 US pension funds have invested
> a staggering $188 billion in foreign companies that do business in terrorist
> states. See Christopher Holton, Stop Investing in Terror, in
> Frank Gaffney, War Footing, Naval Institute Press, 2005,pp.59-74.
> 
> 4 For details on the failures of ³public diplomacy² see Michael Waller et al.,
> Chapter 8, ³Wage Political Warfare² in Frank Gaffney, War Footing, Naval
> Institute Press, 2005
> 
> 5 See www.divestterror.org <http://www.divestterror.org/>  



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