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Iran’s US Policy in a Nutshell

My (Scott) octogenarian mentor and friend, Ruhi Ramazani, took a stab last week at reducing a lifetime of observations about Iranian foreign policy into a 20 minute presentation for an Iran forum convened at our local Mennonite church. Sitting next to him on the platform, I had to contain a wide grin in hearing how he well did it – with many themes we’ve featured previously here at justworldnews.
The Professor one-upped himself in condensing those remarks further into a tight oped for our local newspaper. It deserves wider circulation.
In a nutshell, the “Dean of Iran Foreign Policy Studies” presents two core paradoxes that are fundamental guidelines to understanding Iran’s policies towards the United States.

1. Iranians of all political stripes are proud of their history and culture while being simultaneously and acutely aware of a repeated “victimization” of their lands by foreign powers.
2. Iranian experiences with America are also marked by both hope and despair. Just as Americans once played a prominent early role in helping Iranian efforts to modernize and free themselves from European exploitation, that trust was betrayed by American orchestrated restoration of the Shah to his throne in 1953 – and the overthrow of yet another indigenous democratic experiment in Iran.

Were a future US Administration to grasp these two legacies, to draw more creatively upon an historic reservoir of Iranian hopes for America, while eschewing interference in Iran’s internal political evolution, then the chances for successful dealings, even cooperation with Iran, will increase exponentially.
President George H. W. Bush — the 1st one — had it rhetorically about right. Speaking to Iran in his first inaugural address in 1989, the President observed that “goodwill begets goodwill.” That wisdom still awaits actual implementation.
(Full text of Ramazani’s oped in the extension.)

Continue reading “Iran’s US Policy in a Nutshell”

Charlottesville forum: US, Iran, & Hope?

For those near Charlottesville, Virginia Sunday evening, consider joining a forum on US-Iran Relations that convenes at 6:00 p.m. at the Charlottesville Mennonite Church. (corner of Monticello Ave. and Avon Streets)
Hosted by Rev. Roy Hange, (who lived in Iran with his family earlier this decade) the forum features a panel of three Iran observers, Carah Ong, myself (Scott Harrop), and our venerable neighbor R.K. Ramazani.
Long time readers of Just World News will recall we have featured Professor Ramazani’s essays several times. Drawing from his 55 years (and counting) of scholarship and observations on US-Iran relations, I anticipate he will be focusing on the paradox of what divides and yet pulls together Iran and the United States, nearly 3 decades after the Iranian revolution.
Carah Ong is currently the Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. See her solid Iran focused blog, especially her coverage of Iran nuclear issues, Congress, and interesting reports of her recent journey to Iran.
Our prepared comments will consider our working question — what “reasons for hope” can we discern for improving ties between the US and Iran?
As a hook to the evening, see the Thursday night University of Georgia panel of five former American Secretaries of State, Powell, Albright, Kissinger, Baker, and even Christopher, and how they agreed on two points — that Gitmo needs to be shut down and that the US should be talking to Iran.
Fancy that. For the past seven years, the Bush Administration has been trapped by its own novel idea, at least towards Iran, that a state doesn’t talk to other states of which it disapproves, lest it somehow grant them “legitimacy” in the talking. Our current Secretary of State now claims she wishes to talk to Iran, even as she retains conditions widely known to short-circuit the process.
That five former Secretary of States appear to have repudiated that approach, at least to me, provides a significant ray of hope. That said, even If we at least can see the need to talk to Iran, questions remain not just about what to talk about, yet also how we should talk to Iran with any hope of a positive result
Learning “how to talk to Iran” will be the focus of my remarks. Stay tuned. (or better yet, join us live.)
Note: Charlottesville Mennonite Church is located just to the south east of the downtown mall. Here’s conventional directions on how to get to it: 701 Monticello Avenue.

Kissinger: “Talk to Iran”

Late Thursday night, Henry Kissinger gave an interview with Bloomberg TV, and the 13+ minute segment can be viewed via this link. Kissinger is reputed to be among US Presidential candidate John McCain’s advisers, and he remains an icon among “realist” analytical circles.
I’ll leave it to Helena Cobban or other sharp jwn readers to comment on the rest of his remarks. Kissinger, for example, sticks to the stale, if safe line that Israel cannot negotiate with Hamas until Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist. Helena has well articulated a different view here repeatedly.
I am more struck by Kissinger’s apparent “off the reservation” observations and counsel regarding US-Iran relations. His Iran remarks roughly come between minutes 3:30 and 7:30 of the recording. Here’s a quick summary of his points, with my comments:
1. Kissinger sets out his working question, about whether Iran is a “nation” or a “cause.” Presumably, we can deal with the former, but not so well with the latter. Kissinger (HAK) presumably finds Iran today to be more of a “nation,” one with which we can be fellow “realists.”

This is more than mere academic jargon. Neoconservative godfathers, from Bernard Lewis to Norman Podhoretz have been advancing the fallacious argument that Iran remains an irrational “cause.” To Podhoretz (and his source Amir Taheri), never mind what the Islamic Republic says or offers, Iran will be an incorrigible “existential” threat to Israel, even unto “martyrdom.” Kissinger, to his credit, sees other possibilities.
Funny thing, I first wrote about revolutionary Iran adapting to “reasons of state” back in early 1984 — in a grad. school seminar. So glad the Secretary is catching up.
By the way, what is America under Bush – a nation, or a cause?

2. Kissinger supports “direct negotiations” with Iran. Yet he also supports what Secretary Rice thus far has offered, “to meet with Iranians anywhere, anytime.” Kissinger claims that the problem hasn’t been the willingness to talk, but the content, the agenda about which we might talk.

What’s a neoconservative to make of this? On the one hand, Israel is not to talk to Hamas because it doesn’t formally recognize Israel’s right to exist. Yet the US can talk to Iran, never mind the incendiary remarks, shall we say, of its current President about Israel’s legitimacy. Ah, but in Kissingerian realpolitik logic, it “works:” states must talk to each other, but not, apparently, to each others’ internal rebel movements. George III, then and now, logic.
As for Secretary Rice’s offer to “talk,” this is a bit disingenuous, as Rice’s offers thus far come with the precondition that Iran give up uranium enrichment. In that sense, sure, there is a problem about the agenda, whether Iran’s uranium enrichment is to be part of the talks, or something Iran is being expected to give up, as a precondition.

3. In response to question about what person the US should send to talk to Iran, Kissinger remarkably says it’s “generally not a good idea” to start such talks at a high level.

Really? One wonders then just how the Nixon Administration’s famous opening to China was achieved? Was that some low level contact that pulled that off? Perhaps Kissinger is merely recognizing that neither Bush nor Rice are the least bit likely to meet with the Iranians this year, and granting them a (transparent) fig leaf.
Speaking of low level, underneath the radar activity, the US representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a Sada Cumber, is being quoted in Iranian sources saying that “the US is prepared to work with Iran…”

4. Other notable HAK quotes: “Regime change cannot be an objective of our foreign policy.” — at least not if we wish to solve regional problems… In contemplating “if” Iran would be willing to address our concerns, Kissinger suggests the US would have an “obligation” to respond.

This hints headlines to come. Never mind Rice’s lame claims to the contrary, Kissinger apparently is aware of the various “grand-bargain” offers from Iran.
As for eschewing “regime change,” did candidate McCain get the memo?

5. Intriguingly, Kissinger suggests that he has been part of “totally private” talks with unspecified Iranians. He claims that “approaches” have been put before these Iranians “which with a little flexibility on their part” would “surely” lead to negotiations.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Might Kissinger be part of the ongoing discrete “private” efforts with the Iranians? I doubt it, but who knows? One wonders too of a rat in the works here, as once could speculate that such a disclosure, that Kissinger himself is involved in private talks with Iran, might be a sure way to wreck them.

Iran’s Parliament Elections & Red Cards

Iran’s Parliamentary elections take place today, amid widespread criticisms of the process, especially from within. Iran’s vetting Council of Guardians has been especially zealous in blocking thousands of prominent reformists from running for election to Iran’s 290 seat Parliament. (Majlis)
Such vetting provoked loud condemnation, with one reformer, Ali Akbar Motashamipur, publicly proclaiming that, “If anyone’s qualifications should be rejected, it is the 12 members of the Council of Guardians.” He boldly characterized the Council’s rejections as “falsifying, fraudulent, slanderous, and seditious” and called on “all the people to resist any government which applies such tactics.”
While nearly 900 candidate rejections were eventually reversed, Iranians appear split over whether the elections provide significant choices, whether they constitute a referendum on the policies of President Ahmadinejad, or whether choosing not to vote constitutes a “vote against the system” or a “vote for arrogance.” (that is, for American and external intervention)
Here’s a useful round-up of diverse western reporting on the elections thus far. I also suggest attention to Scott Peterson’s recent reporting. Last week, he touched on the unprecedented battles over who owns the revolution, the role of the military in politics, and the legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Among the sensations afoot, Iran’s new Revolutionary Guards commander stirred a hornet’s nest when he declared that, “To follow the path of the Islamic revolution, support for the principlists is necessary, inevitable, and a divine duty of all revolutionary groups…”
That “brought stinging rebuke from across the political spectrum, even from fellow hard-liners such as the editor of the hard-line newspaper Kayhan, who called it a “faulty declaration” that is “against the clear guidelines.” Hassan Khomeini, the reformist grandson of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, proclaimed that, “If a soldier wants to enter into politics, he needs to forget the military and the presence of a gun in politics means the end of all dialogue.” (What a concept…)
On Monday, Mehdi Karrubi, the former Majles speaker, invoked a sports analogy (sorry Helena) to lament the prospects for fellow reformists: “we are like a football team; many of our players have been given a red card.”
Hard-line outlets fiercely reject such criticisms. On Wednesday, the newspaper Resalat editorialized that many “extremist” reformists “deserved a red card,” and, in any case, the refomists should be thankful to the Guardian Council. If they hadn’t been disqualified, the lame logic goes, there would have been too many candidates, and the reformists would have negated each other’s strength, with up to seven competing for each vacancy.
Resalat conveniently doesn’t mention the many obstacles in the way of political party formation in Iran. Nor does it mention that reformists apparently are still blocked from running in over half of the contests. I’ve seen independent reports, including this one, suggesting reformist candidates are being allowed to compete for only 110 out of 290 seats.
Many Iranians will deem the present Iranian Majlis elections as too crabbed to be even worth getting their “fingers stamped,” as Peterson’s dispatch today suggests. The Guardian headline today opines, “Iran’s reformists” are facing a challenge to fight off irrelevance in an election they cannot win. Yet as the paper’s Julian Borger notes, “For all its limitations, political leaders of every hue still believe there is something worth fighting for in the Majlis election.”
Perhaps because I subscribe to a more nuanced view of Iran’s ever shifting factional struggles, I will be watching for content, even if it appears that the remaining reformist candidates do not fare well. Among the presumed “conservatives,” there are widely differing viewpoints and tendencies. For example, it remains quite unclear how many “moderate conservatives” critical of Ahmadinejad remained in the race. Hope may be in the details.

Farzaneh Milani on “Hostage Narratives”

Our University of Virginia friend, Professor Farzeneh Milani, has just published a brilliant review essay in the current issue of Middle East Report, “On Women’s Captivity in the Islamic World.”
Drawing from her own forthcoming book, long in the works, Milani analyzes how the Muslim woman is commonly reduced in American “non-fiction” bestselling pulp to being a “virtual prisoner…. the victim of an immobilizing faith, locked up inside her mandatory veil—a mobile prison shrunk to the size of her body.”
Here’s a splendid thematic excerpt:

“The recent spate of memoirs and autobiographies involving Muslim captors and their native or non-Muslim victims, a mutant category I call “hostage narratives,” puts a new and fascinating twist on the familiar theme of women’s captivity in the Islamic world. It is no longer mainly Western men who recount the tales of confinement, but women who recount them firsthand…. It is women’s own longing to escape, their own urgent plea to be liberated. The hostage narrative relies on the authority of personal experience, shares an insider’s perspective and commands more trust and legitimacy. Written in English, addressing Americans directly and concerned with national and international security for good measure, this category of literature fetishizes the veil.”

In formulaic works, from Mahmoody’s Not without My Daughter to Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran to Ali’s The Caged Virgin, women languish within a gulag, crying out for “liberation” from without. For this review essay, Milani avoids questions about the motives, agendas, or even veracity of the writers or publishers. Instead, Milani wants to know what makes us in the west so readily receptive to such stark presentations.
The analysis is laced with political implications, and Milani locates the genesis of the modern “hostage narratives” to a political event: the US-Iran hostage crisis.

An indelible sense of anguish etched itself into the collective memory of a justifiably outraged nation. “America in Captivity” was the headline that summed up the mood of a country in psychic pain. Like harrowing flashbacks of a trauma, hostage taking became a recurrent theme in books and films and news clips about Iran and, by extension, the Islamic world.

Wittingly or otherwise, American publishers have kept Americans largely hostage to sterile memories, now nearly 3 decades old.
Milani is not entertaining “illusions” and concedes that “repression, autocracy, political and religious purges, censorship, and gender inequity” within Islamic realms are realities that should be, and are, widely studied. Yet as I too have written, Iran in particular is “a land of paradoxes, a society in transition.”

“[N]o one can accuse the Islamic Republic of intolerance toward its own contradictions, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women. Indeed, two competing narratives of womanhood exist side by side in Iran today. Iranian women can vote and run for some of the highest offices in the country, but must observe an obligatory dress code. They can drive personal vehicles, even taxis and trucks and fire engines, but cannot ride bicycles. (an irony I explored here at jwn last July – scott) They are seated away from men in the back of buses, but can be squashed in between perfect male strangers in overcrowded jitney taxis. They have entered the world stage as Nobel Peace Laureates, human rights activists, best-selling authors, prize-winning film directors and Oscar nominees, but cannot enter government offices through the same door as men. “

More accurately then, life for Iranian women reflects a “complex mixture of protest and accommodation, of resistance and acquiescence.” The Monitor’s Scott Peterson recently captured this “ebb and flow” experienced by Iranian women; the problems grab the headlines, the push-back less so.
Milani’s review essay deserves close consideration, particularly her plea to fellow Americans to stop “suspending our critical judgment” and to seek out the competing narrative of the undiscovered Muslim woman. In her, Milani suggests we shall find

“a moderating, modernizing force, a seasoned negotiator of confined spaces, a veteran trespasser of boundaries, walls, fences, cages, blind windows, closed doors and iron gates.”

Why Kosovo’s independence bid is (Not) unique

CS Monitor today includes an interesting story about pending recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The article is built around the theme that Kosovo’s bid is somehow unique, that Kosovo has emerged without the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council.
News flash to the Monitor: the UN Security Council is hardly the sole arbiter of international legitimacy in the world today. International “law” is not equivalent to Security Council “votes.”
Kosovo’s appearance as a new state owes to a long struggle for recognition from as much of the world as it could obtain. Yet Kosovo lies at a fault-line of great power tensions. Russia, not surprisingly, vehemently opposes the further partition of the former Yugoslavia, along with other (but not all) Slavic populated states. With Russia holding a veto at the UN Security Council, it’s of course not surprising that the Security Council could not bestow its institutional approbation on Kosovo.
To legalists who narrowly view the UNSC as the sole “guarantor of legality among nations,” Kosovo’s emergence will be “illegal.” Russia condemnation of Kosovo’s “independence” as “illegal” is something other than “candid,” when it alone is the reason for the technical basis of that claim.
To be sure, the UN Security Council, when it can agree, remains an important indicator of international norms and rules. But when consensus fails, the battle for international legitimacy goes on at other levels.
Kosovo’s case for international recognition outside the UNSC was won in the broader battles for international opinion, what Thomas Jefferson, when reflecting in 1825 upon America’s own revolutionary struggle, referred to as “the tribunal of the world.” Serbia’s claims to retain “sovereignty” over Kosovo were weakened by its own flagrant lack of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” It now reaps the fruits of that disregard for the opinions of a “candid world.” Huffing about “international law” won’t change that.

Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)

There’s much to mull over concerning Iran’s pending parliamentary elections – the vetting process yet again. Yet for the moment, we have the American political circus to comprehend, and our own “vetting processes” are less than perfect. For our Presidential primary here in Virginia tomorrow, we are pleasantly surprised to contemplate that our votes might still mean something. Alas, (and this is Scott writing) my early favorites (Chuck Hagel, Bill Richardson, or Ron Paul) either chickened out, gave up early, or have been quite marginalized. But there is still a race on; in both parties, it’s not yet certain who will win.
What’s an independent thinker to do? I’m tired of being “embarrassed” every time our current President speaks, smirks, or slurs.
By contrast, Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson Day speech here in Virginia by Barack Obama gives me hope that we might yet have a President by this time next year who won’t cause me to cringe:

[W]hile Washington is consumed with the same drama and division and distraction, another family puts up a For Sale sign in the front yard. Another factory shuts its doors forever. Another mother declares bankruptcy because she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.
And another soldier waves goodbye as he leaves on another tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. It goes on and on and on, year after year after year.
But in this election – at this moment – Americans are standing up all across the country to say, not this time. Not this year. The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result.

Many of these themes echo recent Obama stump lines. I especially like this passage:

If I am the nominee of this party, John McCain will not be able to say that I agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; agreed with him on giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; and agree with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like. Because that doesn’t make us look strong, it makes us look arrogant. John F. Kennedy said that you should never negotiate out of fear, but you should never fear to negotiate. And that’s what I will do as President. I don’t just want to end this war in Iraq, I want to end the mindset that got us into war. It is time to turn the page. (emphasis added)

Yes, this primary is personal for me. My son the Army reserves Lieutenant was just activated into the full-time Army, with his unit slotted for “deployment” later this year. So the ole’ “pro-life” card has, shall we say, a different meaning for me.
McCain, Huckabee & Kenneth Copeland!?
As much as I once liked him, voting for McCain, Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran, or Mr. “stay in Iraq for a 100 years,” would, for me, be the antithesis of “supporting the troops.”
I do realize that many “independent” friends think McCain is one of them — and that may indeed explain much of his success thus far. But for me, McCain gave up the “Maverick” mantle when he went with the imperialists of old, backing the surge and now loose chatter advocating staying in Iraq without end.
Huckabee for a few moments intrigued me. To be sure, he’s the ultimate un-foreign policy candidate, and he’s tried to turn it into a joke. (He’s been staying at a lot of Holiday Inn’s lately). When he wasn’t “boasting” of consulting with John Bolton, his campaign did float some curiously “independent” ideas, such as the notion of serious talking to Iran (what a concept!) in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He also notably criticized the Bush Administration for its “counterproductive… bunker mentality” towards the world.
I anticipate Huckabee might do better than expected here in Virginia, though more on social issues, as conservative religious “folk” here remember John McCain’s blasts at them eight years ago. It was no accident that Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guliani – after courting Romney) Huckabee yesterday was “speaking” before Falwell’s mega-church in Lynchburg.
But Virginia’s “conservative Christians” are hardly a monolith; the formulas that worked before are in tatters. Jerry Falwell is gone; Pat Robertson is on the way out, and his once intimidating “Christian Coalition” barely even exists – even what it stands for anymore is a mystery. (A friend yesterday even hinted that the current CC leader is quietly supporting Clinton)

Continue reading “Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)”

Two to Tango, or what did Khamenehi really say?

Among the spin-off benefits of a US-Iran hotline, as suggested by R.K. Ramazani in the previous entry, is the possibility that it “could help restore Iran-U.S. diplomatic relations….” As he explained,

“Contrary to widely held myths, Iran has never closed its door to diplomatic relations with the United States. Khomeini left the door ajar “if America behaves itself,” that is, if the United States refrains from imposing its will on Iran. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, subscribes to the Khomeini line, saying that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely.”

Yet just this past week, the hawkishly neoconservative “Committee on the Present Danger” (CPD) repeats the myth. In an essay proclaiming that “It takes two to tango,” to have a diplomatic relations, to have a “grand bargain,” the Iranians are portrayed as not being willing to dance. To the contrary, CPD invokes segments from a recent speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi:

“Cutting ties with the United States is one of our basic policies,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, told students in the central city of Yazd just days ago. And while “[w]e have never said that they will be cut for ever,” Khamenei explained, “[t]he conditions of the U.S. government are such now that it is harmful for us to resume relations… Despite some talkative people’s claims, it has no benefit for the Iranian nation.”

CPD concludes that this “pours more than a little cold water on the suggestion that Washington should push for an immediate rapprochement with Tehran… (as) the ruling ayatollahs don’t seem interested in mending fences.”
This is selective and disingenuous cherry picking for a negative spin. Here’s the full passage of the January 3rd speech in question, without ellipses, as made available via BBC World Service.** (see note below) This is from a translation of a long report provided by Tehran Radio (Voice of the Islamic Republic). Emphasis added and my comments follow:

The leader of the Islamic revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i] referred to relations with America and said: The cutting of relations with the US is one of our principle policies. However, we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely. On the contrary, the US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment. So we should not pursue such relations.
The leader outlined the harm of establishing relations with the US and reiterated: First, the establishment of such relations will not lessen the danger posed by the US because that country had political relations with Iraq when it attacked it. Secondly, the establishment of these relations will prepare the ground for the growth of Americans’ influence in the country and the travel of their intelligence officers and spies to and from Iran. As a result, this is why contrary to the claims made by some talkative people [inside the country] these relations have no benefit for the Iranian nation. Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.
The leader added: Some accuse us of promoting enmity with America. However, that country’s enmity towards the Iranian nation is not based on the [Iranian] president and other people’s harsh interpretations. On the contrary, they are against the principles of the Iranian nation and such a thing has existed since the beginning of the Islamic revolution.

I have been reading Khamenehi speeches and Friday Prayer Sermons for 24 years, dating to when he became President amid the Iran-Iraq War. Khamenehi has long been more adaptable in his “open door foreign policy” pronouncements than commonly understood in the west. (I may prepare a full article just on this narrow, yet critical question about Iran’s “dance” with the question of if and under what circumstances it can renew ties to America.)
Yet to be brief on just this speech, consider:
1. Quite in line with Professor Ramazani’s analysis, Khamenehi yet again emphasizes that there’s no automatic bar to improving ties to the US. Characteristically, he cites the revolutionary hallmark, the cutting of the old ties to America, what became the signature “neither East nor West” revolutionary dictum, so that Iran might be independent and “self-confident,” that it might be free from the relations between “the lion and the lamb.” All that not forgotten, “we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely.”
2. The standard objections and grievances to current US policy are noted. Talks and relations in themselves can bring dangers to Iran, despite the hopes of “talkative people” (e.g., Iranian reformists and pragmatists in Iran).
3. Khamenehi also delivers a back-handed lame defense of Iran’s lightning-rod President when he notes that America’s enmity towards Iran predated Ahmadinejad’s “harsh interpretations.” The fact that Khamenehi is even referencing Iranian criticisms of Ahmadinejad for “promoting enmity with America” startled many observers, and was interpreted as quite a slap.
4. Totally left out of the CPD report is the not so subtle message to America: “The US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment.” Hint, hint America: it doesn’t have to be this way. The US government might change, and it logically then follows that better relations might not be to Iran’s detriment.
5. As a friend suggested in a closed forum, it may also be that Khamenehi is signaling Iranian contenders in the pending Parliamentary and Presidential elections that they may campaign more creatively on foreign policy, to shield them from ideological “heat.”
6. Shamelessly omitted from the CPD essay is Khamenehi’s kicker: “Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.”
That day may be sooner that the CPD and neocon naysayers think – say, if somebody reminds Bush Jr. of Bush Sr.’s inaugural Address (the one about “goodwill begetting goodwill”) or, by this time next year, when two new Presidents are in the wings.
(**Footnote: Curiously, the US government’s parallel translation service – the Open Source Center (formerly FBIS) data base available to the public via World News Connection – does not include the report on this speech. I’ve seen this happen before — somebody at OSC and WNC owes us an explanation)

How to Prevent War at the Strait of Hormuz

R.K. Ramazani weighs in with an essay on how to prevent military incidents at the Strait of Hormuz from catalyzing war between Iran and the United States. Ramazani, known widely as “the Dean of Iran Foreign Policy Studies,” quite literally “wrote the book” on this subject, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. What he wrote on the eve of the Iranian revolution remains a compelling read.
In his current essay, Ramazani, an Emeritus University of Virginia Professor of Government & Foreign Affairs, sets out the stakes and his key argument.:

“The recent naval encounter between the US and Iran extended their cold war for the first time to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Such incidents could escalate into armed conflict, with catastrophic consequences for the world economy, especially the price of oil. To prevent such escalation, Washington and Tehran should establish a “hot line” and an Incident-at-Sea agreement as Washington and Moscow did during the Cold War.”

The need for such a de-conflict mechanism (a regular theme here at jwn) was amply demonstrated by Bush Administration rhetoric:

“… instead of calming down the situation and seeking a creative way of preventing such encounters from escalating into confrontation in the future, the Bush administration increased tensions by exaggerating the episode as if it were a real crisis.
President Bush depicted the maneuver of the Iranian speed boats as “a provocative act,” linked it to America’s dispute with Iran over the nuclear issue, and declared that Iran was, is and continues to be a threat if it is “allowed to learn how to enrich uranium.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates categorically dismissed the view that the Iranian sailors had behaved in a fully proper manner, and the State Department formally protested the actions of the Iranian patrol boats. “

The Republican Presidential candidates, Ron Paul notably excepted, were besides themselves with fevered war talk. While evidence is emerging that the Administration consciously “embellished,” if not blatantly fabricated key aspects of the incident, Ramazani focuses on the strategic context and the need for caution:

“Such hyperbolic charges reveal a dismal lack of understanding of Iran’s unmatched geo-strategic position at the Strait, and of the conception held by the Iranian leaders about the Strait’s security in times of peace and war. Recognizing Iran’s vital interest in the Strait is a crucial first step to establishing a hot line between Washington and Tehran.
Geo-strategically, the narrow and shallow Strait of Hormuz constitutes, as I coined it in 1979, the world’s “global chokepoint.” Oil tankers carrying Gulf oil exports must pass through the Strait before traversing the Bab al-Mandab and Suez Canal waterways to the Eastern Mediterranean or the sea lanes of the Strait of Malacca in the Pacific Ocean.
As the dominant Persian Gulf power at this “chokepoint,” Iran stands as the “global gatekeeper” for world oil markets. Iran’s territorial water abuts the entire eastern shore of the Strait, and numerous Iranian islands dot the sea lanes of the Strait. “

Some financial analysts last summer lamely tried to downplay the significance of the Strait of Hormuz today, claiming that the US could withstand oil shocks were a hot war in the Gulf break out. One remembers the argument that invading Iraq would be a “self-funding” war.
Such “optimism” avoids a sober look at just how much oil transits the Strait of Hormuz. Consider figures from the US Government’s Energy Information Agency. According to the EIA, “oil flows through the Straits of Hormuz account for roughly two-fifths of all global crude oil and petroleum product tanker shipments.”
That is, 40% of the world’s oil traffic by sea must first pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Various alternate pipelines across Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula, even if they could accommodate extra traffic and be kept open in time of conflict, cannot possibly take up the 17 million barrels per day presently exiting via the Hormuz Strait. Never mind the analysts, the oil traders know better: the very talk of military clashes in Hormuz sent oil futures spirally up another 10%.
Yet in this regard, Iran and the world community have a shared set of interests. The world needs the oil; Iran needs to export it. Any Iranian leader, of any political stripe, would agree — with one caveat:

“Iran considers the safe passage of all ships through the international waters of the Strait as inseparable from its vital interest in the security of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s oil, the backbone of its economy, needs to be exported through the Strait. Ideologically Iranian policy makers view the Strait as a “divine blessing” and strategically they see it as Iran’s “key asset” in any “defensive war.”
Tehran is committed to the right of transit passage for all ships through the Strait. Yet any prolonged obstruction of Iran’s oil exports by perceived enemies such as the United States could prompt Iran to retaliate by blocking the Strait. This guiding principle was set by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iraq-Iran war. He warned that if Iran’s oil exports through the Strait were interrupted by hostile acts, Iran would prevent “the passage of a single drop of petroleum from there” to world markets.
Hojatolislam Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament during the Iraq-Iran war, considered “such an eventuality unlikely.” But he warned those Americans who doubted Iran’s capability that Iran could effectively close the Strait by creating “a wall of fire” over it, firing its guns from Qeshm and Lark islands near the Strait, and launching air-to-sea missiles from planes, and from underground depots.”

In other words, if Iran can’t export its oil, it would retaliate by attempting to prevent all exports from passing through its front yard. In short, as Iran sees it, oil exports through the Strait should be safe for all, or safe for none.

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Ever On, Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)

(Note – this is Scott writing.)
Independent thinkers, activists, and peacemakers have lost a friend in the passing yesterday of Dan Fogelberg. Just 56, Dan “the artist” Fogelberg succumbed to a long battle with prostate cancer.
To be sure, Dan Fobelberg is most famous for his soft-rock hits: tales of loves (Longer, Since you’ve asked); loves lost (The Long Way, Tell me to my face); and greed gone bad (Sutter’s Mill). Dan will also likely be “immortal” for tributes to New Years (Same Old Lang Syne); to the Kentucky Derby horses (Run for the Roses); to Geogia O’Keefe (Bones in the Sky); to under-appreciated fathers everywhere (The Leader of the Band); to abandoned seniors (Windows & Walls) and to the renewing power of nature (To the Morning).
Fogelberg’s range across 20 albums was extraordinary; he could do sappy (Wysteria), driving rock (As the Raven Flies), classical (Netherlands), jazz (Holy Road), or blue grass (High Country Snow).
I encountered his music long before he became a pop icon, via a progressive free-spirit who prized his early albums.

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