Iran Election

Last weekend's kerfluffle over Vice President Joe Biden's supposed "green light" for an Israeli attack on Iran was perplexing on several grounds.  Appearing on ABC's This Week, Biden told interviewer George Stephanopoulos the United States could not "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination ... that they're existentially threatened." Some observers saw this as a typical Biden-esque gaffe, while others interpreted his statement as a subtle way to up the pressure on Tehran and as a sign that the administration's position was hardening in the aftermath of the disputed Iranian election. A third view saw Biden's statement as a veiled warning that if Israel chose to act, they would face the consequences on their own.

All this speculation missed the more important features of the situation.  First, Biden was in one sense merely stating a truism: Israel is a sovereign nation, and it is inconceivable that United States would physically prevent it from attacking Iran even if we believed (correctly) that it was a stupid move. In the end, international politics is a "self-help" system, and Biden was simply acknowledging that in an anarchic order, all states ultimately depend on their own resources and strategies.  

Second, it doesn't really matter if the United States gives Israel a "green light" or not. If Israel were to attack Iran, the United States would be implicated in the attack even if we had told them not to do it. The United States is Israel's main ally and the source of the advanced weapons it would be using to carry out the attack. Despite his current difficulties with the Netanyahu government, President Obama has repeatedly emphasized the special nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship -- just as his predecessors did -- and he referred to America's bond with Israel as "unbreakable" in his recent Cairo speech. In the eyes of most of the world -- including Iran -- the United States and Israel are joined at the hip.  

As a result, the U.S. image suffers whenever Israel does something that others find objectionable -- like building settlements, bombing Lebanon or blockading Gaza -- even in those rare cases where the United States does oppose the actions in question. If we do oppose the use of force against Iran, therefore, top U.S. officials have to say so clearly and repeatedly, and not just whenever the Veep gets careless.

Unfortunately, right now an Israeli attack would appear to many to have tacit U.S. support. Prominent pundits and former officials have been pushing for stronger measures for some time, and at least one hardliner -- former special envoy to Iran Dennis Ross -- is now working in the White House.  Washington will be blamed for an attack even if it wasn't our idea, because it is so closely tied to Tel Aviv and has made an issue of Iran’s nuclear program in the past.

As I've said before, the only way to convince Iran not to seek a nuclear weapons capability is to take the threat of force off the table and see if Iran's leaders will agree to forego weaponization under strict international safeguards. That approach may well fail, which would force Israel and the United States to fall back on a strategy of deterrence. But the post-election crackdown in Iran doesn’t mean that its leaders are either irrational or suicidal; if anything, it shows that they are just garden-variety authoritarians desperate to cling to their power and prerogatives.  Deterrence will work, even if it is not our first preference.

In short, we are more-or-less where we were before. Preventive war could delay but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear problem, and an attack would only reinforce Iran's desire for a bomb of their own. Trying to foment regime change is more likely to strengthen the hardliners than to weaken their grip. The only realistic option is diplomacy, and Biden's loose talk didn't alter that reality either. But it is one of those issues where clarity is preferable to ambiguity, and where the administration needs to speak with one voice.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Like many of you, I'm sure, I remain preoccupied with the events in Iran. It's impossible to know exactly how events will evolve or what the medium-term significance will be, but the turmoil is as gripping as it was unexpected. In terms of Iran's people having a government that is more responsive to their wishes -- and in particular, one that is open to the sort of relaxation of tensions that the Obama administration has sought -- my hopes are with the anti-Ahmadinejad forces.   

But we shouldn't succumb to the illusion that Ahmadinejad's defeat and Mousavi's triumph (or more broadly, the triumph of the anti-government demonstrators) would produce a dramatic shift in Iran’s foreign policy, and especially its nuclear energy program (and any nuclear weapons ambitions it may have).  

For one thing, Moussavi himself has been a supporter of the nuclear program for many years, and the Times reported today that it was he who authorized the purchase of Iran's first centrifuges back in the 1980s. For another, public opinion surveys in Iran have shown that the vast majority of Iranians support the nuclear program. This means that a lot of the people wearing green and marching in the streets are not going to subsequently demand that Iran abandon its efforts to master the full fuel cycle.

Even if Iran were to become a full-fledged liberal democracy, it would not necessarily abandon its nuclear ambitions, including the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. Right now, five of the world's nine nuclear weapons states are democracies (the United States, France, Great Britain, India and Israel), so being democratic hardly precludes wanting a nuclear arsenal.   

The good news is that the history of the nuclear age demonstrates that nuclear weapons do not enable their possessors to conquer or threaten others with impunity, and thus don't provide much in the way of an offensive or coercive capability. Having tens of thousands of nukes didn't permit the United States or Soviet Union to blackmail other countries during the Cold War, having a handful of nukes hasn't enabled Kim Jong Il to dictate to anybody, and having a sizeable nuclear arsenal doesn't allow Israel to tell Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, or its various other adversaries what to do.  

In fact, nuclear weapons are good for only one or two things: 1) protecting your own territory (and maybe the territory of especially close allies) against conquest and occupation, and 2) making it hard for others to coerce you. As IAEA head Mohammed El-Baradei said of Iran yesterday, "They want to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world, 'Don't mess with us,'" adding that "it is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about regime change."

So while I continue to hope that the reformist forces triumph, we shouldn’t be under any illusions about the short-to-medium term impact of the "revolution" on the major issues that currently divide us.

Getty Images

The big Iran news today is that the Guardian Council, the clerical body that oversees elections and is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has agreed to recount certain ballots disputed by Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign.

This is, of course, a ruse -- a delaying tactic meant to divide the opposition by peeling off its most moderate members. Mousavi wants a complete annulment of Friday's official results.

Also of note: Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani -- who has congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his "victory" -- blamed the interior ministry for the recent attacks on students at Tehran University.

Hossein Ali Montazeri -- Iran's most prominent "dissident ayatollah" -- is now telling the protesters to use peaceful means to express their grievances. I'm not sure how influential Montazeri, once thought to be Khomenei's heir, really is today, but his opinion surely carries some weight. There's still no word from Rafsanjani. [UPDATE: Translation of Montazeri's statement.]

Finally, I'm sad to learn that reformist cleric Mohammad Ali Abtahi has reportedly been arrested. I've been reading his blog sporadically for years, but it seems to be offline now. Abtahi, a former Khatami deputy who backed Karroubi in these elections, was frequently quoted in the Western press.

It will be interesting to see what happens during today's dueling demonstrations, and whether Mousavi's call for a general strike is being observed. State media has called on Iranians to protest against "outlaws," and Mousavi is reportedly telling his supporters not to demonstrate today. Still, that's what he said yesterday -- and people came out in droves anyway. It's not clear to what extent he controls this movement.

One ominous sign that Ahmadinejad thinks he has this situation under control? He went ahead with a planned trip to Russia despite the unrest back home. I see that he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Perhaps the two of them compared notes on how to steal an election?

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

By Christian Brose

I have been out of the country the past several days and regret that this is my first post on the absolutely stunning events unfolding in Iran. I was up way past my bedtime last night reading and otherwise catching up on the mountain news, pictures, videos, and Twitter feeds that I had missed (a task made far easier by the inspired and Stakhanovite blogging of Andrew Sullivan). Taking this all in at once was an overwhelming experience. I'm not sure what the word is for a feeling of exhilaration laced with horror, but that is what I felt, and still feel, watching hundreds of thousands of Iranians try to lift the boot off their faces, while also seeing the bloody price that many are paying for it.

At this point, the validity of the election results seems so shrouded in "serious, substantive, detailed charges of voter fraud" -- to quote Steve Hayes -- as to make a stolen election a sound assumption until credible, better evidence emerges to the contrary - evidence that is not offered in either of the op-eds by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty or Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett. I mean, would any serious person point to a poll taken in early October as evidence of how a U.S. election would turn out, especially when a majority of respondents said they were "undecided"? Of course not. So let's not treat Iran any different. The real question, it seems to me (and here I agree with Bill Kristol), is less whether the election was falsified than what to do about it?

Hopefully President Obama will finally begin addressing this question when he speaks at 5 PM Eastern today. I understand his reasons for silence thus far (gather information, hedge bets, preserve options, etc.), but the Obama administration's failure to utter anything more than, in essence, "we're monitoring the situation, and it's not all pleasant" is woefully inadequate and quite embarrassing. A better alternative would start with demonstrating that Obama is willing to spend his immense soft power capital, not just accrue it.

Some have suggested that U.S. statements of support for Iran's peaceful dissidents would be perceived as meddling and thus counterproductive. Well, not if you write it correctly. Obama should make clear that neither he nor the U.S. government wish to pick winners in Iran's election. That's up to the Iranian people, and we support their right to cast their ballots for whomever they wish -- and to have those votes counted. No one should be excluded. Just as importantly, Obama should make clear that Iranians are the rightfully proud stewards of a great civilization -- one that has deep traditions of democracy and popular sovereignty -- and this makes it all the more sad and troubling for the world to watch as members of Iran's government inflict violence upon fellow Iranians and fellow Muslims for peacefully expressing their desire to have their voices heard. That is not justice.

Obama should wrap his own message in as broad a multilateral package as possible. He should lean heavily on countries to withdraw recognitions of an Ahmadinejad victory and instead push them to issue statements expressing deep concerns about the street violence and reports of voter fraud. He should exert some diplomatic muscle to keep other governments from prematurely jumping off of this line as well. He should instruct Secretary Clinton to coordinate a joint statement, perhaps under the auspices of the G-7, to begin shaping this line into a new international consensus while more information is gathered. The administration should also make a run at getting a U.N. Security Council statement to this effect. Though it's unlikely that Russia and China will agree to such a statement, Obama should force them to scuttle it publicly. The international principle for action right now should be "do no harm."

Most importantly, Obama needs to make it clear that a continuation or escalation of the violence by the Iranian regime against the Iranian people will diminish the chances of improving relations with the United States. This will give the courageous men and women now in the streets of Iran significant cover to stay there if they think that is the right course of action. It will also send the right signals to other autocratic governments in the Middle East and beyond, all of which are watching to see how willing Obama is to put his money where his mouth was in Cairo -- or whether his desire to engage the Iranian government trumps any concern for how it treats its people. No one should believe that other heavy-handed governments aren't watching our actions intently, and if they sense indifference on Obama's part to the plight of Iran's dissidents, no one should expect that things won't get a whole lot uglier for decent people with audacious hopes of their own in places like Egypt or Syria or Russia.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, and Obama should have done it already. But this evening is better late than never. As for what actions are warranted beyond that, we'll just have to see how things develop.