Iran and the Next U.S. President: Charting A New Policy
Fox News, October 29, 2008
Alireza Jafarzadeh (Foreign Affairs Analyst)
On November 4, Americans
will go to the polls to chart a new course, regardless of
who wins the White House. Change is on horizon, as are a
multitude of foreign policy challenges, perhaps chief among
them how to deal with the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran.
The next administration will confront Tehran’s quest for
nuclear weapons, subversion and terrorism in Iraq, and
regional reach. The immediacy of these foreign policy
challenges suggests the current administration should also
be dealing with them in a responsible manner, even in its
waning days.
Although the ongoing economic crisis has overshadowed the
U.S. political landscape in recent weeks, heated discussion
about an effective Iran policy has inevitably incorporated
itself into the presidential debate. The global consequences
of a nuclear-armed, theocratic regime with an extremist,
expansionist ideology are lost on no one, and both
candidates have publicly stated that they will not tolerate
a nuclear-armed regime in Iran. This realization is the most
fundamental to charting a new Iran policy.
Other pillars of a new Iran policy must be built based on
the hard-learned lessons of the past. After nearly three
decades of dealing with the terror-prone regime in Iran, it
is patently obvious that the ruling system (meaning all
factions thereof) is bent on expansion of the velayat-e
faqih rule beyond its borders. The means to this end are
WMDs and terrorism.
It is also self-evident that Iran’s Velayat-e-faqih regime
is intrinsically and politically incapable of the kind of
behavioral changes the free world demands. The ayatollahs’
strategic red lines are drawn based on a unique perspective
on their own self preservation. They know, even if the West
does not, that they cannot thrive by acting as a normal
state; their survival depends on being in a state of
perpetual crisis.
In practical terms, this translates into a multi-faceted
apparatus of domestic suppression, an unyielding pursuit of
nuclear weapons, and an unrelenting endeavor to establish a
client state in Iraq. These strategic interests are
fundamentally at odds with international and regional
interests. Nevertheless, any compromise by Tehran is
tantamount to capitulation; these are red lines that cannot
be crossed.
And so we reach the crux of the question: Is the free world
to capitulate to the whims of an increasingly isolated
theocratic regime at war with its own people and the outside
world? Or, if it is the other way around, how can the
ayatollahs’ regime be compelled to cross its red lines?
Negotiation, while clearly the most desirable means of
resolving international conflict, has time and again proven
futile in the case of Tehran. Successive American
administrations and their European allies have been down
that road, each time only to reach a dead-end. A glance over
the history of US-Iran relations since 1979 reveals
multiple, presumably well-intentioned attempts at
negotiation –- direct, indirect, unilateral, multilateral,
private, public, conditional, and unconditional. They all
failed, and the theocratic regime grew bolder in its
behavior and demands. Perhaps more importantly, each attempt
reinforced the ayatollahs’ view that in the final analysis,
Washington and its allies would be back, with more
incentives and renewed eagerness to negotiate.
On October 9, 2008, Voice of America quoted U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, saying that since 1979, every U.S.
administration had reached out to Iran’s leaders, in one way
or another, and every one of them had failed. Mr. Gates
noted that “The reality is that the Iranian leadership has
been consistently unyielding over a very long period of time
in response to repeated overtures from the United States
about having a different and better kind of relationship.”
The futility of these negotiations was compounded in 1997
with the blacklisting of Iran’s main and most organized
opposition, the People’s Mojahedin (PMOI/MEK) as an
incentive to the ayatollahs. According to many Middle East
experts, this is the only opposition which the mullahs see
as a threat to their survival.
Only when the Iranian people get the opportunity to form a
democratic, secular, and non-nuclear government, Iran will
return to a “normal” state. The Iranian people have a
history of rising against despots of various stripes. They
also have a nationwide resistance movement –- albeit
blacklisted and shackled by the United States and European
Union — at the center of a rising popular desire for
democratic change.
On October 23, 2008, the Luxembourg-based Court of First
Instance of the European Communities annulled the EU’s
blacklisting of the MEK. The ruling is the latest in a
series of favorable court verdicts, and coincides with the
ongoing review of the group’s status by the U.S. State
Department, due to be completed before mid-January 2009.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the ruling adds “fuel
to accusations that the bloc has used its terrorist list to
appease the Iranian government,” because “Iran has made the
PMOI’s international terrorist designation a diplomatic
priority.” The New York Times added that “The group is
regarded as potentially the most important force in the
Iranian resistance.”
Now that several high courts have ruled, many members of
Congress have stated that there is no legal basis for the
continued blacklisting of Iran’s main opposition. In the
meantime, Tehran has stepped up its quest to acquire nuclear
weapons, violent intervention in Iraq, and domestic
suppression of its population.
Therefore, it is a strategic and moral imperative for the
current U.S. administration not to punt the Iranian problem
to the next administration. The Bush administration should
step up pressure at the UN Security Council with new
sanctions targeting the regime’s terror, nuclear, and
financial structure, curb Tehran’s influence in Iraq, and
reach out to the Iranian people by removing their main
opposition group from its blacklist. As for the next
administration, whoever it may be, it must build on this
much overdue policy correction and look to Iran’s people and
its democratic opposition as a partner in seeking stability
and tranquility in the region, as Iranians seek democratic
change in their country.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
