The First Image Problem and Understanding Iran

W hile following developments in U.S.-Iran relations in recent months, I have been struck by the contrasting depictions of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the impact of his personality and beliefs on Tehran’s policy towards the United States.

It seems every scholar, analyst, expert, and journalist offers a slightly different take on Khamenei’s personality, beliefs, and influence. 

It’s strange that such opposing assessments exist of the same individual (let alone someone as prominent as Khamenei). Moreover, I find it interesting why Khamenei’s personality and worldview—studied by outsiders by dissecting his mountain of writings and speeches—are rarely, if ever, compared to his actual political conduct and policies.

If indeed Khamenei is an idiosyncratic revolutionary hardliner, how can this image be reconciled with the evidence that suggests he is also a pragmatist? If Khamenei is believes that the United States and Israel are truly evil, why would he allow his government to strike a deal with the devil? How can Khamenei be an iron-fisted ruler who wields immutable authority, while it is known he has faced many domestic challengers to his position and influence? If Khamenei is Iran’s ultimate decision maker, why does he so rarely make decisions? If Khamenei’s word is law, why does he more often than not obfuscate his views to such an extent that even other Iranian leaders are puzzled as to where he stands?      

These competing images of Khamenei and the questions surrounding the impact of his beliefs on Tehran’s foreign policy are hardly unique. Rather, it raises broader questions about why political scientists still have so few answers when it comes to understanding the influence of individuals in international relations (which Kenneth Waltz referred to as the first image).

The U.S.-Iran Nuclear Deal—What Took So Long?

  I have been doing some reading on the history of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations this week and stumbled across an interesting piece by Dan Joyner.   

Joyner argues out that none of the concessions Iran made at Geneva in November were new or represented a major shift in Iranian policy. He notes, “…none of them, and not even their sum, is beyond what Iran had already offered in past negotiations, going back at least to 2005.” 

Indeed, the Arms Control Association has an excellent timeline of diplomatic efforts regarding Iran’s nuclear program and another listing all of the past proposals from the parties over the years that supports his point. It seems like the general parameters of an U.S.-Iran nuclear deal have been sitting on the table for nearly a decade, which begs the question of what exactly took so long for the sides to sign off on it?

Yousaf Butt, a scientist from the Federation of American Scientists, attributes the recent breakthrough to “improved atmospherics” which made the deal suddenly doable. I think what Butt really means by “improved atmospherics” is a change in the domestic politics in Washington and Tehran. 

From my perspective, the domestic political calendars in both Washington and Tehran have been unfortunately timed for many years (if not decades) which has made moving towards cooperation politically tedious at home for each nation’s leadership until very recently.

This has left me with a few additional questions, thoughts and observations worth considering:

(1)   While Iran’s nuclear policy was often fluctuating and opaque, U.S. policy towards Iran seems to have undergone clear shifts from “no nuclear weapons” to “zero enrichment” to “no nuclear weapons” again which align nicely with the U.S. election cycle. Iran, of course, has never been willing to accept a zero enrichment deal. This was partly because Iran does have the legal right to enrich uranium as part of a peaceful nuclear energy program under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and partly because enrichment became a hotly debated political issue between Tehran’s hawks and doves.

(2)  Did the latest U.S. and international economic sanctions have the affect everyone seems to think they did and brought Tehran to its knees and caused a major shift in Iran’s position? Or were sanctions domestic political cover for the Obama administration to please hawks in Congress while subtly shifting U.S. policy from “zero enrichment” to “no nuclear weapons” while claiming the sanctions worked?

(3)  Did Hassan Rouhani’s election really make the difference? Or was it Obama’s reelection and the quick onset of being second-term lame duck president with a hostile Congress that won’t move his domestic agenda forward an inch? (Or was it both?)

Domestic Wrangling Over Iran Deal Continues (Short Links)

C urrently 59 senators (43 Republicans and 16 Democrats) support a bill sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would impose extensive new sanctions on Tehran if no final nuclear accord is reached or if it violates the interim deal (Note: Lawmakers still have not been provided the specifics of the interim deal from the White House). (Washington Post)

According to The Hill, “Every Democrat considered vulnerable in his or her race for reelection next year is co-sponsoring this measure, a sign that they want to appear tough on foreign policy.” Furthermore, “The new Menendez-Kirk bill would also require that any final deal with Iran end its ability to enrich uranium. Secretary of State John Kerry has suggested that such a requirement was a nonstarter for Iran.” (Rebecca Shabad, The Hill)

The thirty Senate Democrats who have remained silent on the Iran sanctions bill are under pressure to stake out a position. (Greg Sargent, Washington Post)

AIPAC keeps a low profile on Iran bill. (Politico)

Obama threatens to veto additional Iran sanctions. (Anne Gearan, Washington Post)

Why Did a Hawkish Senator Block U.S. Arms Sales to Iraq?

It turns out that Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the more outspoken Democratic hawks in Congress (especially on Iran and Syria), has for many months blocked the sale and lease of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq against the wishes of the Obama administration.

According to the Times, Senator Menendez demanded, “assurances that Iraq would not use them to attack civilians and that the government in Baghdad would take steps to stop Iran from using Iraqi airspace to ship arms to Syria’s military.”

The criticism of Menendez blocking the arms sale from the White House and hawks in Congress is entwined in the recent domestic political skirmishing over Obama’s policy toward Iraq that began last week after al-Qaeda aligned militants seized control of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, the two largest cities in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. Obama has come under intense criticism from hawks such as Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) for his decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011. Hawks have been quick to point out that senior White House officials had justified Obama’s decision to withdrawal by claiming that Iraq was more stable than ever and al-Qaeda was essentially defeated (which may or may not have been true at the time depending on who you ask).

Nevertheless given the recent events in Iraq, the hawks suddenly look vindicated and the administration looks stupid. In response, the Obama administration quickly announced it was expediting arms shipments to Iraq and providing other forms of political and indirect military support to help Iraqi security forces regain control of the cities.

Menendez’s months-old objections to the Apache helicopter deal thus turned into an opportunity for the Obama administration to disrupt some of the hawks’ criticism that the recent developments in Iraq were its fault. The administration has countered that it had been trying to send attack helicopters to bolster the Iraqi military for months but that Menendez was responsible for holding it up.

For his part, Menendez was probably caught off-guard at the sudden political salience that U.S. policy towards Iraq gained over the last week. He did not adjust his policy position in time to avoid getting stung. In an ironic twist, he has found himself on the dovish side of the issue against the Obama administration. Menendez had originally blocked the Apache helicopter sale in an effort to push the Obama administration towards a more hawkish approach on Syria and Iran vis-à-vis Iraq. Now he appears to be backing down so he is not seen as a dove blocking the Obama administration from sending advanced military hardware to an ally fighting bad guys. Odd, I know.

On a final note, all of this politicking is beside the point that the Apache helicopters (or more U.S. weapons in general) would not have prevented the militants from taking Fallujah and Ramadi or really been of much practical military help to the Iraqi government. The Iraqi military lacks trained helicopter pilots and would probably prove quite deficient at effectively employing and maintaining such complex military hardware anyway.

Related Links:

The Daily Beast

Foreign Policy

Time (Michael Crowley)

The Hill

Politico

What exactly is the post-American Middle East? Part I

 A recent article in the New York Times about sectarian violence in the Middle East grabbed my attention for its use of an interesting foreign policy watchword gaining traction:

“But for all its echoes, the bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing: the emergence of a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds [emphasis added].”

I find it curious how effortlessly the idea of a post-American Middle East has been accepted (if not touted) by some policymakers and reputable foreign policy experts and how outwardly reasonable it sounds within the confines of the article. 

To be fair, the Times did not coin the phrase. I’ve read it recently in other major newspapers, editorials, in reports by the D.C. foreign policy think tank community, and seen the post-American label applied to other regions. Although it could just be a poor choice of words in an otherwise innocuous story about strife in a region long beset by strife, I feel the term hints at a larger political narrative advanced by certain corners of the U.S. foreign policy community that has developed over the past year or so that seeks to define contemporary U.S. policy in the Middle East as failed (I’ll expand on this more in a later post).

The post-American Middle East narrative is centered around the argument that the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 2011 and the aftermath Arab Spring in which several U.S.-backed regimes (and a few not so friendly) fell or were greatly weakened. This has resulted in a dangerous power vacuum that Islamist groups and states with sectarian agendas are ruthlessly exploiting. 

With the guiding hand of American power that supposedly ensured peace and stability among the regional players absent or otherwise constrained and weak, the Middle East is spiraling deeper into conflict and sectarian bloodletting. My chief problem with the post-American Middle East narrative (there are many) is how blatantly disconnected it is with reality and how bizarrely no one else seems to have noticed this given recent events.

Let’s just quickly review a few of the U.S. actions in the supposedly post-American Middle East over the last few months:

• In September, the United States struck a last minute deal with Russia and Syria that required the latter to forfeit its chemical weapons as an effort to avert a U.S. strike against the Assad regime in response to its large scale use of the weapons against rebel-held areas in late August. Apart from international inspections to ensure the Syrian military destroyed its own chemical weapons arsenal, the deal involves a joint military effort between the United States, Russia, China, and several Europe states to shepherd dangerous precursor chemicals out of Syria in order to destroy them at sea on a U.S. naval vessel (Strangely, the destruction at sea only became necessary after no country would allow the chemicals to be disposed of within their borders in an international case of Not In My Backyard).
•  In November, the United States struck a landmark interim deal with Iran in which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear weapons program in exchange for Washington agreeing to ease the international sanctions it imposed over the past few years which have hobbled the Iranian economy.
• In recent weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing forward Middle East peace talks between a reluctant Palestinian Authority and an even more reluctant Israeli government.
• Later this month, a peace conference will hopefully take place in Geneva between the Syrian rebels (although there are several major Islamist opposition groups refusing to attend) and the Assad regime which has been principally arranged by the United States.

Let’s also look at a few broader aspects of U.S. power in the post-American Middle East that are sometimes overlooked. (I’ll keep it to “hard power” for the sake of brevity):

• The United States has military bases in Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti.
• The United State is the key supplier of military hardware and training to the above countries’ armed forces in addition to Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
• The United States maintains a large naval and air presence in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea and without a doubt possesses military superiority over every other country in the region.
• Within the past year, the United States has taken direct covert military action (drone strikes and/or raids by Special Operations Forces) in Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
• The United States is pivotal in either directly supporting or assembling international support (in terms of financing the governments, arranging for peacekeepers, and providing military and police training and equipment) for the makeshift governments in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon and even the Palestinian Authority.
• Oh, and let us not forget the very close U.S.-Israeli military, political, and economic relationship.
• The United States is also the guarantor of Arab-Israeli peace and to this day maintains a small garrison of military observers in the Sinai.

So I’m curious how a post-American Middle East is emerging (or has emerged) while the United States clearly remains the most powerful and influential actor in the Middle East. The United States seems to be wielding its power everywhere in the region and on the diplomatic front the Obama administration seems to be getting its way left and right (whether you think these deals are good or bad is aside the point).

The idea that U.S. power in the Middle East has receded and left swirling chaos in its wake is a bit absurd. That is not to deny, however, the fact there is swirling chaos in several parts of the region. But the United States has never and will never be in control of events in the Middle East. The post-American Middle East narrative confuses power with control (or sometimes termed influence or authority) and therefore identifies weakness at nearly every turn.

Power is the relative distribution of capabilities among actors. The United States remains by far the most powerful actor and thus the most influential actor in the Middle East. But whether U.S. policies are effective or ineffective; or produce unintended outcomes or undesirable second-order effects is a different matter entirely.