IRAN'S DUPLICITY - - - THE WEST'S NAIVETE

The U.S. vs. Iran
One side is playing for real, the other only for time.
BY MICHAEL RUBIN

The Iranian government continues to enrich uranium despite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generous package of incentives--and in defiance of the U.N.'s Aug. 31 deadline. Still, European officials hold out hope for the success of diplomacy. On Sept. 15, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said, "We are really making progress. Never before have we had a level of engagement . . . as we have now."

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On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 hostages for 444 days.

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But Iranian officials endorsed the seizure. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini praised the students. His successor as supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, showed support with a visit to the embassy soon after its seizure.

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the embassy seizure might be long forgotten had Tehran's disdain for diplomatic norms been the exception rather than the rule. In 1986, former U.S. national security advisor Robert McFarlane's traveled to Tehran. While the Iran-Contra Affair is remembered today for the Reagan administration's attempts to circumvent Congressional prohibition of funding of the Nicaraguan resistance, it also illustrates the inadvisability of trusting Tehran. President Reagan sought to win the release of American hostages in Lebanon but, as soon as Washington compensated Tehran for its bad behavior, its militias accelerated hostage seizure. Diplomatic enticement--bribery by another name--backfired. But diplomacy is not just about incentives; it is also about trust. What could have been just a failed initiative turned to scandal when, on the seventh anniversary of the embassy seizure, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, today the chairman of the Expediency Council, broke a pledge of secrecy and revealed the meetings to the international press.

Iranian authorities showed diplomatic duplicity once again after Khomeini issued a declaration calling for author Salman Rushdie's death. Four months before Khomeini's death, then-president Khamenei demanded that Mr. Rushdie apologize in exchange for cancellation of a religious edict ordering his murder. Mr. Rushdie apologized, but the Iranian government nevertheless kept the bounty in place. President Khamenei was insincere, his diplomacy was a tactic. By winning an apology, he confirmed Mr. Rushdie's guilt.

Iranian lying should not surprise; what should is how often Western governments fall prey to it. The British government demanded that Tehran lift the bounty on Mr. Rushdie's head as a precondition to re-establish relations. On Sept. 24, 1998, the Iranian government said it would do nothing to harm Mr. Rushdie. No sooner had London and Tehran exchanged ambassadors, than Iranian authorities once again reversed themselves.

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While Iranian diplomats pledged not to destabilize Afghanistan and, indeed, cooperate in its reconstruction, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps sent in operatives disguised as school teachers to further instability. As Afghan President Hamid Karzai struggled to wrest control away from warlords, Afghan commanders intercepted a dozen Iranian agents and proxies organizing armed resistance.

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Prior to the Iraq war, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif, pledged Iranian noninterference to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Zalmay Khalilzad, then President George W. Bush's envoy to the free Iraqis. But, Iranian journalists now describe how, days after Saddam's fall, the Iranian leadership dispatched 2,000 Revolutionary Guards replete with radio transmitters, money, and supplies. On Nov. 18, 2003, Mr. Kharrazi again pledged good behavior. He lied outright; his promise coincided with a new deployment of Iranian intelligence across Iraq. The Revolutionary Guard stepped up its training of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. Hasan Kazemi Qomi, previously Iran's liaison to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, became Tehran's top diplomat in Baghdad. Mr. Qomi assured diplomats that "Iran will not accept anything that destabilizes Iraq." Four months later, Iraqi forces captured 30 Iranians fighting alongside Sadr's militia.

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Iran's nuclear program raises the stakes of its deceit to U.S. national security. There is little doubt that Tehran's nuclear program is not peaceful. On Feb. 14, 2005, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, secretary-general of Iranian Hezbollah, promised, "We are able to produce atomic bombs and we will do that." In February 2006, Mohsen Gharavian, a Qom theologian well-connected to the Islamic Republic's staunchest ideologues, called Iran's possession of nuclear weapons "natural."

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Between 2000 and 2005, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled.

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In February 2003, the Iranian authorities opened the secret plants to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Their subsequent report was damning: Not only had the Iranian government designed the Natanz facility to house at least 50,000 centrifuges, but Tehran had the import of almost a ton of uranium from China, and could not account for missing processed uranium.

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Finally, on Sept. 24, 2004, the IAEA Board of Governors, after recalling a litany of Iranian mistruths, found Iran in breach of its Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement.

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The Iranian leadership will say anything and do anything to buy the time necessary to acquire nuclear capability. That Foggy Bottom still advises against any strategy that might undercut the possibility of some illusionary breakthrough signals triumph not of realism but of negligence. Diplomacy cannot succeed if one side is playing for real and the other only for time.


And yet, we are going to have further negotions (Links #2) and James Baker has been cleared to speak to a high ranking member of the "Tehran government" (Link #3)...

Pertinent Links:

1) The U.S. vs. Iran

2) Allies lead a wary US into new negotiations with Iran

3) Door to Iranian dialogue creaks open