Transcript

Host: Iran released 15 British sailors and marines who had been held captive by the clerical regime for nearly two weeks. The British personnel had been abducted by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, just one day ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote to impose new sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions were specifically aimed at the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard, the organization behind Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and the country's support for terrorism in the Middle East. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says that the U-S recognizes that the problem is with regime in Tehran:

McCormack: "The British people, the American people, citizens of the region bear no ill will towards the Iranian people and that we are prepared to work through any difficulties that might arise because of the decision-making of the Iranian government."

Host: Will the now-resolved hostage situation affect countries' willingness to confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions? Is that what Iran wanted all along? I'll ask my guests: Reginald Dale, a senior fellow the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and joining us by phone: Ali Reza Nourizadeh, director of the Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Reggie Dale, what did Iran want to achieve by grabbing up these British sailors and marines?

Dale: Well, I’m not sure what it wanted to achieve because I’m not sure how high up the command structure this actual order to capture the British sailors and marines was decided. It may not have come from the absolute top, but [could have] been more of a local initiative. But, I do think that what they have achieved is an enormous propaganda success. They’ve humiliated the British Navy. They’ve tweaked Britain’s nose, the old imperial power in the region. They’ve shown that the British, who are powerless to get these people back until President Ahmadinejad magnanimously offered them back for free, as it were, before the thing got out of control. So, I think he’s, of course throughout the Arab world they believe the Iranian version of events rather than the British. So, I think he’s done pretty well in showing himself in a sort of strong light and then magnanimous.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what do you think? A propaganda coup for Iran?

O’Hanlon: Well, Reggie could be right but I don’t agree, I don’t think. We’re all guessing at this point, we’ll have to see. The proof’s in the pudding. In a few weeks we’ll have seen how this plays in regard to various issues like the nuclear question that you mentioned. I think that even though Ahmadinejad had a good day and admittedly did appear level-headed. I think what he really showed, what I think most people will interpret, is that he realized this crisis, which was created and fabricated by Iran, and resulted in an action that was disproportionate to any reported offense on the part of Britain was something that he finally realized was not serving his own country’s interests and therefore he was in a hole and he stopped digging. He decided to stop making the problem worse. We’re all breathing a sigh of relief and we’re relieved to know this is even possible to resolve this sort of a crisis. So, today Ahmadinejad looks okay but when you take broader stock of the picture it was the Iranians who took hostages and that is not a great feather in their cap. My guess is overall it certainly won’t help the Iranians, it probably won’t hurt them to much either. On balance it will be seen as a relatively minor episode compared with the other broader questions, like Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability, it’s support for Hezbollah and it’s support for certain militias inside Iraq, which are the more fundamental issues. And for the Arabs, by the way, last point, I don’t think the Arabs are going to be too impressed by this because most of the Arabs I’ve been speaking with in recent months and years are very concerned about the nature of this Iranian regime and they’re worried, of course, about Iran’s relative rise in the region.

Host: Ali Reza Nourizadeh, what do you think on this?

Nourizadah: I totally agree with him. I think, first of all, the Iranian New Year holiday deprived the regime from, you may call it, media coup or just to show this incident as a victory against the British and trying to bring to them, to the Iranians, the past and whatever happened in the past, the role of Britain. They tried over Iranian T-V, but mainly they were concerned about the Arab masses. That’s why in Al-Alam, the Iranian Arabic channel, played a very major role in this crisis: whether by showing the picture of the British Sailors or broadcasting the comments made by the Iranian officials. But, as a matter of fact, I think that the Iranian people, they were upset to see a British sailor, a woman appearing on television so upset and she’s talking about her child and this sort of thing. You know the Iranians are very emotional people and it brought back some memories and they remembered the American hostages and the consequences of that mistake and they are still paying a dear price for it. Therefore as a whole the whole scenario from the beginning, I think was a wrong one, and especially the timing was terrible. Two of the Revolutionary Guard’s officers, which their name is mentioned in the resolution [Vice] Admiral [Ali Akbar] Ahmadian and [Rear] Admiral [Morteza] Safari, who is commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s navy. They both were involved in this hostage taking operation and therefore I think the decision was made by the commander of the Revolutionary Guards and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also approved it because prior to this incident, two days before that, in his Norouz or New Year message to the Iranians. He said, “If the enemy crosses the legal boundaries we are going to cross it.” So, that was some sort of code to the revolutionary guards to go on, I am with you. They did it and they were mistaken.

Host: Well, Reggie Dale, we saw that the U-N was putting together a resolution that as Ali Reza Nourizadeh mentions, specifically names and poses sanctions on Revolutionary Guard commanders and in the same time from as that happens we have the Revolutionary Guard navy going out and doing the seizing of the British personnel. So, are these things related?

Dale: Well, I think the fact is the Revolutionary Guard is acquiring more and more power to act as it likes in Iran and outside it. I’m not an expert in the power structure in Tehran and I think we’re in the area here of Tehranology, just like we used to have Kremlinology in interpreting the Soviet Union. I think it’s quite possible that the revolutionary guard could have acted by itself. What I’m saying is not trying to -- it’s saying that that was a minor propaganda coup, which I think it probably was in the Arab street for Ahmadenijad. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of the incident it’s very serious to capture other people’s sailors, as you know very well in the United States because you actually declared war on Britain in 1812 after we, quite legitimately, took some of your sailors off a ship, this can be serious business. And I think, actually, it could have been treated much more seriously by the Iranians than it did. They never accused the sailors of more than trespass there was no question of spying, they played it down a lot from the start. I don’t think that this will be remembered as a major incident, but I do think it shows that Iran thinks it’s free to act without much restraint against the coalition forces.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what does this tell us about the power at this point within Iran of the Revolutionary Guard?

O’Hanlon: It’s a good question. It did take Ahmadenijad almost two weeks to overrule them and that suggests that they have a substantial amount of power, but it’s also striking that apparently he did overrule them. Now, maybe the Revolutionary Guard did not really know what their endgame was and in that sense all Ahmadinejad did was to write the final chapter in a book that they can all agree on the contents of. But, it is also possible that the preference here of the more radical elements that took these hostages in the first place was to trade them for Iranians who had been seized inside of Iraq or to try to somehow use them as leverage in a broader negotiation over Iran’s nuclear program, in which case, it appears that Ahmadinejad may have overruled them, in fact. So, again we are in the realm of Iranology, but I think the good news is, and there is at least one kernel of good news in this. I would concede, and I’m glad for it, Ahmadinejad is at least capable of recognizing a mistake. I don’t think we’ve learned a lot more than that and I do think that it was a big mistake on the part of Iran. But, at least, Ahmadinejad at some point was capable of recognizing it. Whether he was overruling anybody explicitly and really subsuming them to his control or not, I don’t know. But, at least he himself reached the right decision in the end.

Host: Ali Reza Nourizadeh, did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad realize he made a mistake and what does it say about the power of the Revolutionary Guard at this point?

Nourizadeh: I’m sorry, let me just correct my friend. Ahmadenijad had nothing to do with the whole case. It was Dr. [Ali] Larijani who did the negotiation. It was him with the support of Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei and very close relations with the Revolutionary Guards, managed to convince the Revolutionary Guards that it’s time to release the hostages. What they did, they gave the credit to Ahmadenijad at the end of the day since he is president. We should not forget that Ahmadenijad brought eight of the Revolutionary Guards to his cabinet. Eight of them are ministers now. Eleven out of twenty-eight governors are from the Revolutionary Guards and we have thirty-four ambassadors from the Revolutionary Guards and they are running the country. This time, the Revolutionary Guards, they demanded the recognition and they were recognized, not by the Iranian high-ranking officials, but also by the British. It was Britain, which sent at the end of the day, a military delegation to Iran. This military delegation talked to the Revolutionary Guard’s commanders and to Dr. Larijani. I think the only person who came out of this crisis with some kind of gaining was Dr. Larijani.

Host: Reggie Dale, we see then the Revolutionary Guard which seized the sailors in the first place, a perhaps reckless act, and yet they are the ones who are also in charge of the nuclear program, are also the ones who are training Hezbollah, also the ones acting with the Al-Quds force, part of the Revolutionary Guard in Iraq. What does this tell us about how concerned one should be about what the Revolutionary Guard would be willing to do once it gets nuclear weapons?

Dale: Well, I think obviously one should be exceedingly concerned. The whole question of nuclear weapons, how dangerous they are is not their existence themselves, but whose finger is on the trigger. That’s why we’re not overly concerned, people in the United States are not overly concerned about Britain having nuclear weapons or France or even India, which is a democracy. I think the problem with Iran having nuclear weapons is that the leadership is unpredictable. We don’t know quite who, or at least, it’s often not clear who is actually in power. The Revolutionary Guards are particularly dangerous and if Iran were miraculously to become a democracy over night, a sustainable democracy, then I think there would be less concern about them getting a nuclear weapon.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what is your sense of what the Revolutionary Guard’s actions outside of the nuclear sphere tell us about how much concern there should be about the nuclear program?

O’Hanlon: Well first I want to thank Ali for that good explanation a moment ago of the internal Iranian politics, which sounds quite compelling to me and so, I appreciate his clarification of my earlier comments, which were not nearly as well-informed about the internal Iranian regime. As to the nature therefore of what would happen with a nuclear weapon, it again becomes a question largely of internal politics and who calls the shots in any big decision-making. I think any country that has a government that functions and runs a place with seventy-five million people, probably has a number of individuals in charge who are not likely to go out and commit suicide the first day they have a nuclear weapon by attacking somebody else with that bomb. So I think it’s relatively unlikely that Iran would get into a near-term crisis with Israel or anyone else just because it had a nuclear weapon. On the other hand, when you have a regime that is demonstrably willing to take risks; that has a stated policy of wanting to eliminate Israel; that has supported terrorist groups over the years: you have to worry that the possession of that bomb might make Iran feel like it was protected against possible Israeli retaliation. And therefore perhaps Iran would be willing to take even more risks with its support for terror and with its conventional forces. Not that it’s going to go out and strike somebody with its nuclear bombs in all likelihood, but that it would feel the nuclear weapon gives it a response capability that makes it impossible for Israel to escalate in retaliation or for the United States to escalate in retaliation. So, I would be worried about Hezbollah being even more unleashed and becoming even more dangerous than its been up until now.

Host: Ali Reza Nourizadeh, we’ve also learned a lot about the Revolutionary Guard and their business operations. The commanders are running businesses within Iran and those businesses are selling weapons among them. Is there need to be concerned about technologies: nuclear technologies and ballistic missile technologies in the Revolutionary Guard, whether that might be proliferated not only as part of Iranian policy, but perhaps also to enrich the members of the Revolutionary Guard?

Nourizadeh: Absolutely. There was a very bloody accident [that] happened in Southern Iraq where four British soldiers as well as their translator, they were killed by a so-called “wise bomb”. And these bombs, they are made in the Shahid Hemmat [Industrial] Complex in Iran. Therefore, I think the Revolutionary Guards, they are very powerful now. They have people who studies in the West, graduated from the best universities in Canada and the United Kingdom, France, other places. So, we are not talking about a bunch of uneducated people. They are educated and among themselves they have some sort of organization. They are running the economy at the moment and they have hundreds and hundreds of companies and factories run by them. The are in Dubai and they have more than four-thousand companies registered to their name in Dubai. Therefore, as I said, they are involved in arms deals. They are selling weapons to other countries. They are exporting weapons to Syria. They are about to build a complex in Syria to produce chemical weapons. Therefore, they are a force [that] should be recognized, dealt with. I mean, the United States, for instance, supporting General Pervez Musharraf -- there are some Revolutionary Guards in Iran, very well-educated, up to date, and they [would] love to open negotiations with the United States, talk to them, and they are even willing to do something to change the situation in Iran. But first of all, you have to recognize them.

Host: Reggie Dale, if you’re a policy-maker in the U-S or in Europe, who do you deal with in Iran? Who is running the show and not only who is officially running the show, but are the Revolutionary Guard in a position to scuttle diplomacy they’re not on-board with?

Dale: Well, maybe they aren’t. Maybe this case of the British hostages shows that they aren’t yet, although their power continues to grow, I believe. Obviously you’ve got to talk, have an interlocutor who can implement whatever is agreed. Now, that may have an element of Revolutionary Guards, it may involve Ahmadenijad and it may involve the Supreme Leader [Khamenei]. And I think that that’s an assessment that has to be made by the United States if it’s going to sit down at the table with Iran, but it has not decided to do that yet. And it’s not going to for the foreseeable future, having said that it will not do so until Iran stops enriching uranium. Now another approach would be to say, “We will sit down with you if you can prove that you’re not enriching this uranium for military purposes.” And that would be another way of approaching the issue. But we haven’t gotten to that point yet.

Host: Michael O’Hanlon, what’s your sense of how policy-makers in the West should think about approaching Iran for discussions, or with whom does one negotiate in Iran?

O’Hanlon: Well, Ali may be better at that. I’m going wait and see what he might say, but I would submit that as we take stock of this crisis that has just been resolved, we also may want to feel like our collective strategy in the West is actually not so bad. Because what we are seeing is the Bush Administration working with allies to gradually tighten the noose around Iran over its nuclear ambitions and its other behaviors to the point that the strategy is working so well that Iran in the end realized in this hostage crisis that it couldn’t really benefit by trying to divide one part of the world against another part, or trying to manufacture a crisis and blame somebody else for it. And ultimately I think Iran may have relented because they realized they have so many other things working against them in the climate of international opinion and that the sanction regime at the U-N is gradually tightening and that they didn’t want to give any unnecessary reason for the Russias and Chinas of the world to clamp down even more. So, I think the overall strategy here, which is: cause Iran some economic pain for actions that are not defensible, and hope that the Iranian people themselves get tired of the nature of this back-and-forth and therefore ultimately replace Ahmadenijad with a more moderate leader next time around, that strategy may be working. And, I tend to want to play the long game here and feel that in the end the best thing for us to do is keep putting the pressure on the nuclear issue but be patient and recognize that we’ve got a hand here that isn’t so bad.

Host: Ali Reza Nourizadeh, we’ve got about one minute left, and I’ll give you the last word on this. Do you think the strategy from the West at this point is working?

Nourizadeh: Yes it is. And as it did work, what Mr. Blair said, and he sent some messages to Tehran which the Iranians took seriously. I think what President Bush is doing: isolating Iran, is working. And what the King of Saudi Arabia told Ahmadenijad shows that everybody in the area is concerned and they want more pressure on Iran to change it’s policy.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. We’re out of time, but I'd like to thank our guests: Reginald Dale of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and joining us by phone: Ali Reza Nourizadeh of the Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our Web site at w-w-w-dot-v-o-a-news.com