Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I’m Eric Felten. The United States will participate in a security conference organized by Iraq, a conference that will include Iran and Syria. The talks come at a time when the U-S has been trying to isolate Iran over its nuclear program. A new United Nations Security Council resolution is being drafted after the International Atomic Energy Agency, or I-A-E-A, found that Iran failed to comply with the U-N’s demand that Tehran stop all uranium-enrichment activity.

The head of the I-A-E-A reported that Iran not only continued to enrich uranium but increased the effort.

Mohamed ElBaradei: "We both share the concern of the international community that Iran has not responded positively to the demand of the Security Council. We believe still that the door is still open, there is a window of opportunity for both Iran and the international community to go back to the negotiating table."

Host: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there is no stopping Iran’s nuclear program, likening it to a runaway train. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the U-S is willing to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program but only after Iran has stopped making enriched uranium, which can be used in a nuclear bomb.

Secretary Rice: "They need to stop enriching and reprocessing, and then we can sit down and talk about whatever is on Iran’s mind. But the international community has been steadfast. We have a Chapter Seven resolution that demonstrates that Iran is isolating itself. It’s time for Iran to take a different course, and we hope they will."

Host: What direction is U-S diplomacy with Iran going to take -- talks or confrontation at the United Nations? I’ll ask my guests: Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Michael Hirsh, a senior editor at Newsweek magazine; and S. Rob Sobhani, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger and President of Caspian Energy Consulting. Welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

So, Rob Sobhani, is the U-S going to be engaged directly in negotiations with Iran in Iraq?

Sobhani: I think it’s going to be a combination of diplomacy and confrontation -- diplomacy to try to see if they can stabilize Iraq with the help of Iran, confrontation because of Iran’s outstanding issues concerning nuclear enrichment -- you know, uranium enrichment. So I think it’ll be a combination.

Host: Michael Hirsh, is the U-S, in these talks in Iraq, likely to be engaged directly with Iran in negotiations?

Hirsh: Well, I think, certainly, on the outskirts of this conference, at the least, there will be high-level contacts, but specifically on Iraq, whether they do any freelancing on the broader issues is another question. The Bush administration has obviously said, very firmly, as Condoleezza Rice just said in your outtake there, that they will not talk until Iran begins suspension. At the same time, I will say that there’s been more flexibility than we’ve seen in the past six years, and maybe, particularly, look at what the Bush administration did with North Korea, another member of the axis of evil, where they basically reversed their previous stand against so-called nuclear blackmail and decided to cut a deal. You see evidence that they can change their views quite dramatically.

Host: Well, Reggie Dale, on changing views, in January, Secretary of State Rice said, “The only reason to talk to us,” -- the only reason that Iran would talk to the U-S -- “would be to extract a price, and that’s not diplomacy; that’s extortion.” So, has Condoleezza Rice changed her view on what is likely to come out of talks?

Dale: She has changed her view to a certain extent, but what we’ve been talking about so far is talks about Iraq. And this has been carefully constructed so that Iraq, who’s hosting the talks, now the Americans say -- But this is in Iraqi initiative. I’m quite sure that they wouldn’t have done it without U-S approval. But the whole construct is there with Iraq hosting these talks. The Americans are going to bring in all sorts of other countries, as well, to sort of dilute the whole thing and make it look less like a direct talk with Iran. But what will happen, I think, is there will be, obviously, contacts in the margins. The question is how far those contacts move from talking about Iraq to talking about the Iranian nuclear problem, and that’s where you may get a blockage, because Iran says they won’t talk -- they won’t accept an end to enriching uranium, as a precondition, because that should be the object of the end of the talks, which I think is a somewhat fair point, although, of course, the international community says they’re wrong about that. And, therefore, the Americans are not going to stop their action in the United Nations, either, in order to have talks with Iran. So, this is a gradual process. It’s at official level. It won’t move higher till later. There may be some probing, but I would think that it will mostly be about Iraq.

Host: Well, let’s talk a little bit about what these talks might be with regard to Iraq. President Bush, just February 14th, said, “There are weapons in Iraq that are harming U-S troops because of the Quds Force. As you know, I hope that the Quds Force is part of the Iranian government.” And he said that he had asked our commanders to do something about it and we’re going to protect our troops. How big an issue is this going to be -- this issue that the U-S government has been bringing up of Iranian influence in Iraq and perhaps the arming of militia groups and perhaps the giving of technology that has been used for improvised explosive devices? Rob Sobhani.

Sobhani: I think the broad Iranian goal in Iraq is frozen instability to the extent that there is instability but frozen -- doesn’t go beyond Iraq. It’s in Iran’s interest. It’s also in Iran’s interest to weaken America’s position in Iraq and the broader Middle East to the extent that the Quds Forces can contribute to this overarching policy. They’re going to continue doing it. I think the purpose of this meeting that Condoleezza Rice hopes to go to and sit down with her Iranian counterpart is to present this evidence that “you, the Quds Force, you, the Iranian government are harming our troops, and what are you going to do about it?”

Host: Michael Hirsh, what do you think that conversation is likely to be like?

Hirsh: Well, the Bush administration has already lost a lot of credibility on this issue. In his January 10th speech announcing the Iraq surge, the President quite plainly said Iran is providing material support. There was an intelligence briefing a couple weeks later, which was delayed after a lot of infighting because apparently the evidence wasn’t quite up to snuff, where it was said that the Iranian government was behind the Quds Force. Then they walk that back after Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said, no, he didn’t know if the evidence was there to finger -- to point fingers at the Iranian government. So they’ve been all over the map on this. And, of course, it reminds everybody of what happened in the run-up to Iraq. So, you know, the Bush administration is pretty much on its own. The Iranian government, of course, denies that it has any direct links to any of these -- any of this material support for attacks against U-S troops. There’s considerable circumstantial evidence that Iran is doing something, but no one quite knows what. So, I think you -- to answer your question -- I think you’ll have a long period of mutual finger-pointing and not much result.

Host: Reggie Dale, does the U-S directly confront Iran over this in these talks about Iraq?

Dale: Yeah, I’m sure they will, and I’m sure the Iranians will say, “What, us? No. I mean, maybe there are some Iranian weapons in there, but we didn’t put them there.” Now, it’s quite clear that there are Iranian weapons. I mean, they’ve been discovered, and it’s quite clear they’re being used with devastating effect against U-S forces. The question is, “How can you tie that directly to the Iranian government and the Iranians protesting that they didn’t, they’re not behind it?” However, I would have thought it was fairly clear that if the Iranian government wanted to stop it, they could do so, because it is still in Iran’s interest, as our colleague pointed out here, to have this kind of instability and the anti-American campaign going on in Iraq and the constant progress of the Shiite cause, which is what is happening in Iran today.

Host: Well, Rob Sobhani, if Iran, as you suggest, is interested in maintaining sort of “frozen instability,” as you put it, what are they looking to do to get out of talks? Say they’re confronted over these issues. Is there any incentive for them to change what they’re doing at this point?

Sobhani: The answer to the question goes back to the revolution of 1979. The government of Iran consistently has wanted legitimacy on the world arena -- in the world arena, primarily from the United States. Ahmadinejad will go to this meeting, or his Minister of Foreign Affairs will go to this meeting, to accomplish one thing, and that is legitimacy, because, to the extent that they can point out to the Iranian people, “Look, we sat down with the U-S, and we came away without harming ourself or our national interests” -- from their perspective, it’s a brownie point, vis-a-vis, the people of Iran. Keep in mind, there is a divide between the people of Iran and government of Iran. A diplomatic conference of this magnitude raises the legitimacy of the government, and that’s precisely what the Iranian government hopes to achieve from these talks.

Host: Michael Hirsh, your sense.

Hirsh: Yeah, and the opposite consideration there is that this is one reason why the Bush administration has refused to negotiate with the Iranian government behind the scenes. It’s a fear that, by talking with them, you legitimize them; by cutting a deal with them, you only help to shore them up in power. I don’t think that the Bush administration, starting with the President, has ever completely given up its lingering hopes for a regime change of the Islamist government in Iran, and that’s one reason why you see them sort of dragging their feet into talks of any kind, even one -- even talks as sort of modestly structured as these.

Host: Reggie Dale, does the U-S, in talking with Iran, get anything in exchange for what may be a benefit to the Iranian government? Dale: Maybe not immediately, but as you will have observed -- I think you observed at the beginning -- the United States is doing a whole lot of other things, as well, to put pressure on Iran: sailing air battle groups, battle groups into the Gulf, acting in the United Nations, putting a severe financial squeeze on Iran, trying to round up the European allies to put more sanctions on, trying to get Russia to put more sanctions on. I mean, there’s a huge squeeze going on with Iran at the moment, which is beginning, possibly, to have some sort of effect. I mean, the whole aim of the U-S government, in my view, should be to avoid ending up in a situation in two or three years’ time where there are only two options left: one is that Iran emerges with nuclear weapons, and the other is that somebody, i.e. the U-S, has to attack them to knock out those nuclear weapons. So, the aim has got to be to achieve something between now and then so as not to be forced with that choice, in which the lesser of two evils might, according to some people in Washington, be to launch an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

Host: Rob Sobhani, what’s your sense of how diplomacy proceeds at this point to avoid getting to that dichotomy of two bad options?

Sobhani: I think, at this point, even if diplomacy with the United States succeeds and even if the rhetoric is toned down and it leads to some modicum of normalization, the fact remains that the Islamic government of Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and Israel is an ally of the United States. There could be a lot of talks on a lot of issues that may bear fruit, but when it comes to Israel, our ally, the Iranian government is steadfast. They want to wipe Israel off the map, and no amount of diplomacy is going to solve that particular issue. So diplomacy may be successful on the periphery, as it concerns certain issues, but Israel, our ally, will still be in danger, and that’s going to be the wild card.

Host: Michael Hirsh?

Hirsh: Well, I would just slightly demure in that, clearly, if you look at the radical -- the heirs to the sort of revolution, so to speak, like Ahmadinejad, the president and others who are revolutionary guards -- I think that that’s true. But there’s a lot of dissent inside Tehran now, from what we’ve seen. The sort of permanent government elites are rebelling, are aware that he’s gone way over the top and really put them in the doghouse. And even though I think if you probably polled many Iranians, they wouldn’t want to see Israel continuing to exist. If you look in practice at what the diplomacy and the foreign policy of the Iranian government since the ‘79 revolution, it’s very often been very pragmatic and restrained. And, obviously, the concept of deterrence -- even if Iran does get a nuclear weapon, the concept of deterrence is still operable when it comes to the relationship between the States.

Host: To what extent does the president of Iran denying the Holocaust and talking about a desire -- explicit desire -- to wipe Israel off the map, together with Iran’s historic support for organizations that the U-S designates as terrorist organizations, supplying arms to terrorist organizations -- how does that affect the calculation the U-S makes about how far you can get with deterrents?

Hirsh: Well, first of all, purely on deterrence, one thing with the Israelis that certainly has scared the heck out of the Israelis, I mean, for Israel, these kinds of -- this kind of rhetoric and these kinds of intentions are an existential threat in the way they’re not to the U-S And so to a certain degree, the U-S administration has been driven by its concern over how Israel might react. But, you know, I think that it’s -- you have to sort of look at what they’re doing as much as what they’re saying, and while the rhetorical support is there -- the support for Hezbollah is certainly there, in a material way -- there have been many signals from other parts of the Iranian government that they would be willing to deal right up until the present day. I mean, there are indications -- there have been indications over the last couple years that various concepts, like an international consortium overseeing the nuclear program, might be considered. So, I wouldn’t eliminate the possibility that negotiations could make some headway despite the obvious radicalism of the president himself.

Host: Well, Reggie Dale, is the nuclear program in Iran -- does Iran see it as a bargaining chip, or do they see it as something that is going to go forward one way or another the way they keep saying?

Dale: Well, at the moment, they don’t see it as a bargaining chip. And if you ask many Iranians, they would be in favor of the nuclear program, even though Ahmadinejad has become less popular recently. I mean, the economy’s in bad shape. People feel he hasn’t followed through on a lot of his election promises to give them a better life. But I think the Israeli factor is extremely important. It’s one of the reasons why the United States says that it’s just not acceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and why most of the world agrees. Iranian leaders have actually said it would take one atomic bomb to destroy Israel, and the Israeli deterrent could destroy millions of Muslims, but it still wouldn’t -- the Muslim nation would survive. It’s a totally unbalanced equation, which is not what you had in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. So, there are two questions: “How determined are the Iranians to get a nuclear bomb, regardless?” and “What do they want it for?” Now, those are questions I’m not sure that we have clear answers to, but I believe, for the moment, they are more determined to get it than the world community is determined to stop them.

Host: Let me ask Rob Sobhani what you think the answer is to Reggie Dale’s questions are.

Sobhani: There’s no doubt that the government of Iran will pursue the nuclear option. This is not something new. It happened under the supposed moderate president Rafsanjani, supposed moderate pragmatist president Khatami. This is an issue that Iran started after the Iraq war as a security issue, but then it fast became a legitimacy issue, to the extent that they can prove to the Iranian people, “Look, we are also now nuclear.” That debate now, thanks to the medium of the Voice of America, has now changed in Iran. The people in Iran are now asking themselves this question: Why do we need a nuclear weapon when we don’t have money to pay the salaries of civil servants, when our women are going increasingly towards prostitution, when our young people are getting addicted to heroin? No, thanks. We don’t need the nuclear option. Let’s try to use Iran’s existing oil-and-gas industry to provide the economic prosperity that the nation needs.

Host: Michael Hirsh, we only have a minute or so left. Are there any new strategies for the U-S to pursue in negotiations and/or confrontation with Iran?

Hirsh: No. I would just add to what Reggie was saying, particularly the financial -- not the sanctions so much as the financial pressure on international lending institutions, major banks, has been enormously effective. Very powerful tool. It’s kind of asphyxiating the Iranian economy in a very real way, and that’s begun to hurt and perhaps contributed to some of this dissent. So, one can conceive of a policy of coercive diplomacy that involves continuing these sanctions, forcing the Iranians to the table, trying to play to the moderates that you were just discussing, and then coming up with some kind of a mutually face-saving solution because you’re going to need to do that.

Host: Reggie Dale, we have 30 seconds left. What are the prospects for that kind of coercive economic sanctions to be in place?

Dale: Well, I think the prospects are growing. The sanctions have a long history of failure. They never have ever worked unless they’ve been multilateral sanctions. The U-S unilateral sanctions have never worked. So you need to bring others in. It’s encouraging that the Europeans are just beginning to get the idea that Iran is a threat, which is why they’ve changed their view about missile defense and are beginning to see that they might want some U-S missile defense. The Russians are the key possible troublemaker in all this. But I think that we are gradually moving in the right direction.

Host: That’s all the time we have for today, but I’d like to thank my guests: Rob Sobhani of the Committee on the Present Danger; Reginald Dale of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Michael Hirsh of Newsweek magazine. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On The Line,” I’m Eric Felten.