President Barack Obama's unprecedented video message to the Iranian people yesterday is a strong indication that Iran will continue to be a high priority for the new administration. Engagement through new diplomatic avenues, like the video, is worthwhile, but we must not lose sight of the challenge Iran still poses.
As if we needed a reminder, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's recent trip to the Middle East made clear that Iran plays a central role in the thoughts and fears of most countries, whether Arab or Jewish. While Israel might justifiably be most vocal about the threat that a nuclear-armed Iran poses for its people's future, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, moderate Lebanese and others are also clearly on edge.
Indeed, in a recent interview on CNN with Gamal Mubarak, the heir apparent to his father in Egypt, this articulate young man made it clear that his country, too, had serious differences of opinion with Tehran about the future of the region.
On issue after issue, from a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to curbing radical Islamic fundamentalism, Iran remains a major stumbling block.
It is also worth noting that just in the last few years, as Iran's nuclear development has proceeded in earnest, a number of other regional states including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria have all signaled their intention to develop their own nuclear programs. A future nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which had never been an issue in all the decades since Israel ostensibly became a nuclear weapons state, is now a very real possibility due to Iranian proliferation.
While the Obama administration is still formulating its policy on Iran, the public debate for quite some time - both here in the U.S. and in Israel - has focused too much on extremes: on the one hand, conservative hard-line proponents of the military option against Iran's nuclear installations; on the other, those liberal champions of dialogue and negotiation with Iran which, so the thinking goes, are ready to cut a deal which might not even achieve disarmament.
While this debate plays out, the Iranian nuclear issue only grows as a problem, with no resolution in sight.
What is needed, it seems to me, is a policy that understands both the clear limitations of either "just bombing," or "just talking." Rather, real sanctions that take into account present economic realities could provide us in the West and the Middle East with the best opportunity to attenuate Iran's behavior and goals.
First, we have to acknowledge that at no point since we began to take Iran's nuclear ambitions seriously a few years ago has the global price of oil been so weak. For all the very real damage that the global financial crisis has inflicted, it has arguably hit energy producers like Iran even harder. Export revenues have cratered, government budgets have been slashed, and the very real structural difficulties Iran had before - like high unemployment and inflation - have been exacerbated.
More importantly, because it lacks an adequate domestic refining capacity, Iran still needs to import about 40 percent of the gasoline its people use. Herein lies the opportunity. Recently, a bipartisan group of congressional members called on the U.S. government to sever its business ties with a Swiss firm responsible for supplying Iran with about 25 percent of its gasoline imports. While commendable, these initiatives need to be publicly embraced by the administration and implemented quickly. The responsible thing to do would be to pursue such corporations, and offer them a simple but ethical choice: Washington or Tehran.
Such sanctions and divestment strategies, combined with a firm but expansive diplomatic outreach, will provide the West with the strongest point of departure from which to engage Iran.
However, and this is the second point, we should be preparing a secondary plan. American contingency planning and the credible threat of further economic hardship have to be taken into account by Iran. When American and Israeli politicians say publicly that "all options are on the table," they should really mean it - and not just use such language as an unrealistic threat for a massive military campaign.
Other options should include physically targeting Iranian gasoline imports and shutting down, by any available means, Iran's primary oil refinery. While clearly risky, such options would entail far less damage than air strikes against Iran's underground nuclear facilities, and could have surprising and positive consequences.
In effect, what we need is a graduated scale of diplomacy and coercion for engaging Iran, in order to achieve the best possible outcome for the U.S. and its regional allies. As a liberal and progressive, I abhor the notion of conflict and bloodshed and very much want to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue.
During my many years in international business and public life, I have had the good fortune of sitting down for lunch with people with whom I completely disagreed, in practice and principle: Soviet communists, heads of state from various unsavory regimes, benighted religious figures, corrupt business leaders. The dialogue between us, while always helpful in reducing tensions and intellectually stimulating didn't obscure the main lesson: idealism without realism, and negotiations without leverage, simply don't work in this world.
Oh, and concerning the two-state solutions. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 05. If Hamas hadn't transformed the strip into a missile launch site, it would be very hard today to argue for the occupation of the West Bank. So, Israel leaves Lebanon and Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border. Israel leaves Gaza and 10,000 rockets fall on southern Israel. I can't find a clearer pattern. Qassams were the ones that put the right in power.
Israel has gone radically right.
Iran's "political leaders" are also over there in that rightwingnut crowd.
Neither is willing to listen.
I say, cut them BOTH off monetarily, make them 'sit in the corner together' until they work it out.
I assume there are still some mature adults on both sides not wedded to this "faith-based" fiasco.
It's the SAME GOD they both bow to, correct?
Geesh.
That isn't true at all! There is violence and guilt on both sides. But to write what you did is to ignore reality. You can claim we started this whole mess with Operation Ajax in '53 and be accurate.
Please note that the latest NIE said that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. And yet this fact is perpetually ignored by the anti-Iranian scaremongers.
How about this? All countries in the middle east promise to eschew the possession of nuclear weapons. True, Israel would have to destroy its caches of WMD, but then at least they and their supporters would be less hypocritical on one issue at least.
Do as we say not as we and Israel do! No wonder the USA has lost it's respect and therefore influence in the world. Next we will get absolute proof that Iran has WMD and there we go again.
"Other options should include physically targeting Iranian gasoline imports and shutting down, by any available means, Iran's primary oil refinery."
By any means? To this I say, enough sanctions, enough threats. Leave Iran alone to work out it's own problems. Stop talking down to them. Stop throwing carrots, sticks, coercion, leverage, or any other word you want to use for MANIPULATION. Stop it.
1. In 1953 Iran interfered in our political affairs and set up a coup and changed our democratic elected government of Dr. Mosadegh. Iran repeated similar action in many other countries. Just recently has allocated a large fund to create instability.
2. When Iraq attacked us, Iran fully supported this war and provided Iraq with military, political and WMDs. Our 1000+ WMD victims are still in their hospital beds for the world to see.
3. In July 1998, Iranian Navy shot down our commercial plane with almost 300 passengers and crewmembers while flying legally over OUR Persian Gulf using two cruise missiles. Only 100 bodies were recovered from water. The captain who executed this mission received an presidential honor medal.
4. Iran has been involved in many covert missions in our country targeting some ethnic groups for uprising. They also have been involved in some sabotage and mercenary activities, explosions in mosques and military bases.
See part-2
5. Iran has attacked and occupied our two neighboring countries and spread their large navy including carriers and nuclear submarines on our shores.
6. Iran has been threatening us by initiating and supporting numerous economical sanctions and constantly repeating the phrase “all options are on the table”.
7. Iran with 6000+ nuclear warheads had made threats aiming many countries that have no nuclear arsenals.
8. Iran has installed and supported many dictatorial regimes around the world.
9. In 1988 when four Iranian diplomats were kidnapped and still held in captivity by Israelis, they immediately attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
10. In 1998, when Taliban beheaded 11 Iranian diplomats sent to Afghanistan by Iranian government to initiate diplomacy, Iran immediately attacked Afghanistan with nuclear weapons.
But we are very RATIONAL nation. We do not take similar uncivilized actions that are mainly done by irrational RAGUE nations.
Um, that wouldn't be the same guy who 'forgot' that the yellowcake claim was false and made sure that it was in Bush's SOTU address? Why he's the same guy that disclosed that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent to Bob Woodward. By some incredible coincidence this same guy worked for Wolfowitz and Perle, and he's the very same guy who "inserted what was described as "a far-reaching sentence" into a letter sent to the United Nations Security Council threatening possible action against Iraq and other nations that Wolfowitz, Perle and their allies are alleging to be sponsors of terrorism"