After Ahmadinejad’s Last UN Speech: Rhetoric, Reality and the Road Ahead
The debate about Iran and its controversial nuclear program has dominated much of the news coming out of the United Nations General Assembly this week. Alarmist rhetoric dominates the headlines, but as Rand Corp. Iran expert Alireza Nader writes in Foreign Policy, “The U.S.-led sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic, along with deft U.S. handling of the Arab uprisings, has put Iran’s leaders into a corner.” The objective of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon can only be achieved through approaches that keep the international community together, and combine diplomatic, economic and regional security pressure with the prospect of an off-ramp for Iran. Experts also agree that a military strike would likely serve to reverse these gains, the opposite of America’s objectives.
The U.S.-led strategy is having serious effects on the Iranian regime, most effective path for marshaling international pressure on the regime:
International Isolation: Alireza Nader of the RAND Corp. summarizes, “The administration has managed to build a wide and deep international coalition against Iran: The European Union has ceased imports of Iranian oil, while major Asian economies such as Japan, India, and South Korea, have substantially reduced their purchases. Iran is now largely shut out of the global financial system. Even Russia and China have moved away from their longtime partner: Russia has cancelled important weapons contracts, and China has backed out of major oil and gas projects with Iran. These developments had had a major impact on both Iran’s economy, and potentially its nuclear decision-making.” [Alireza Nader, 9/25/12]
Effective Sanctions: A recent Israeli government report finds the effects of sanctions on Iran devastating. AP reports, “Iran’s oil exports declined by over 50 percent in the past year — from 2.4 million barrels a day to 1 million — and oil revenues dropped by $40 billion since the beginning of the year… The report also claims that sanctions on Iran’s central bank have made it difficult for the regime to access its foreign currency reserves, causing a 100 percent gap between the country’s official exchange rate and where the rial is trading on the black market.” [AP, 9/17/12]
Internal Pressure: Perhaps most critical is the internal pressure that the regime is under, as it faces presidential elections next year. As Nader explains, “Public dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime is at an all-time high…political divisions within the regime highlighted by the 2009 uprising have intensified, apparently due to U.S. policies. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has warned the regime not to ignore sanctions, and emphasized the U.S. ability to inflict still greater pressure on the Islamic Republic. Abdullah Nouri, a former government minister, prominent reformist, and potential presidential candidate, has said that sanctions are a ‘trap’ Iran has fallen into and called for a national referendum on the nuclear program — directly contradicting Khamenei’s call for ‘national unity’ on the issue.” [Alireza Nader, 9/25/12]
Looking for a Way Out: Behind the rhetoric, there are signs of renewed Iranian efforts to find an exit ramp. This includes recent reports that the regime is eager to resume negotiations: “European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton held a ‘useful and constructive’ four hour dinner meeting with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul [last] Tuesday, at which he stressed Iran’s interest in continuing negotiations,” reports Laura Rozen. [al Monitor, 9/19/12]
Military experts say airstrikes would reverse these gains . A recent study from America’s top national security experts examines the likely outcomes of a military strike on Iran and what that would mean for U.S. goals towards the country. The study includes former national security advisors Brent Scowcroft, Samuel Berger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as well as former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-IN), Amb. Nicholas Burns, Leslie Gelb, Richard L. Armitage , Admiral William J. Fallon, General Anthony Zinni, and finds that a strike would likely:
Break down international pressure on Iran: The report states that a strike would likely result in “A potential breakdown of hard-won global solidarity against Iran’s nuclear program. We believe that if Iran’s nuclear program is attacked by the U.S. or Israel in the absence of an international mandate or a multinational coalition, support for maintaining sanctions against Iran could be substantially weakened. Weapons sales to Iran that are now prohibited by sanctions could resume, as might the sale of materials that could be used for making a nuclear weapon.”
Increase rather than decrease likelihood of Iran obtaining the bomb. Another likely outcome that the group warns against is an “Increased likelihood of Iran becoming a nuclear state. While it is not impossible that aerial attacks could drive Iran to the negotiating table, we believe that military action probably would reduce the possibility of reaching a more permanent political resolution of concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, we believe that a U.S. attack on Iran would increase Iran’s motivation to build a bomb, because 1) the Iranian leadership would become more convinced than ever that regime change is the goal of U.S. policy, and 2) building a bomb would be seen as a way to inhibit future attacks and redress the humiliation of being attacked. Iran could also with-draw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and end all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), leaving the international community with greatly reduced knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program.”
Increase popular support for the regime: “On the contested issue of whether military action would weaken or strengthen Iranian public support for the current regime, we conclude that U.S. and/or Israeli strikes are more likely to unify the population behind the government than to generate resistance.”
[Iran Project, 9/12]
What We’re Reading
The UN Refugee Agency now predicts as many 700,000 people could flee Syria by the end of the year, as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday was the bloodiest day of the conflict, with more than 305 people killed.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a new world order without the “hegemony of arrogance,” but failed to mention Iran’s nuclear program.
In his first speech at the UN, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi played to his domestic audiences and rejected President Obama’s call for broad free speech rights, saying insults to religion would not be tolerated.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe wants to hold elections in March 2013 and a referendum on a new constitution this November, with the main opposition party calling this timetable “unrealistic.”
The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan signed agreements for resumption of vital oil exports and creating a demilitarized zone along their contested border, even as violence in the region continued.
Analysts predict that the Foxconn factory riot in China is unlikely to be the last if conditions don’t improve.
Secretary of State Clinton announced that the U.S. will ease its import ban on goods from Burma.
One of Mexico’s most wanted drug traffickers and commander of the violent criminal network the Zetas, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, was arrested.
A new poll shows that Americans think President Obama is better suited to deal with a crisis in the Middle East than Mitt Romney.
After a period of relative calm, European markets were jolted in the wake of a new wave of protests in Greece and Spain.
German prosecutors filed espionage charges against two Russians accused of spying for information on the European Union and NATO strategy.
Commentary of the Day
Libyan Prime Minister Mustafa A.G. Abushagur asks the United States “not to lose faith in Libya.”
Helen Gao discusses the interest in the American presidential race by Chinese web users.
Fred Kaplan compares the recent foreign policy speeches of President Obama and Mitt Romney.
