The president has long been criticized for his lack of strategic vision. But what if a strategy, centered on Iran, has been in place from the start and consistently followed to this day? President Barack Obama makes a statement about Iran’s nuclear program in November 2013. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images.
Michael Doran
President Barack Obama wishes the Islamic Republic of Iran every success. Its leaders, he explained in a recent interview, stand at a crossroads. They can choose to press ahead with their nuclear program, thereby continuing to flout the will of the international community and further isolate their country; or they can accept limitations on their nuclear ambitions and enter an era of harmonious relations with the rest of the world. “They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” the president urged—because “if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication . . . inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power.”
How eager is the president to see Iran break through its isolation and become a very successful regional power? Very eager. A year ago, Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national-security adviser for strategic communication and a key member of the president’s inner circle, shared some good news with a friendly group of Democratic-party activists. The November 2013 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the “P5+1”—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—represented, he said, not only “the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian [nuclear] issue,” but “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” For the administration, Rhodes emphasized, “this is healthcare . . . , just to put it in context.” Unaware that he was being recorded, he then confided to his guests that Obama was planning to keep Congress in the dark and out of the picture: “We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away.”
Why the need to bypass Congress? Rhodes had little need to elaborate. As the president himself once noted balefully, “[T]here is hostility and suspicion toward Iran, not just among members of Congress but the American people”—and besides, “members of Congress are very attentive to what Israel says on its security issues.” And that “hostility and suspicion” still persist, prompting the president in his latest State of the Union address to repeat his oft-stated warning that he will veto “any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo [the] progress” made so far toward a “comprehensive agreement” with the Islamic Republic.
As far as the president is concerned, the less we know about his Iran plans, the better. Yet those plans, as Rhodes stressed, are not a minor or incidental component of his foreign policy. To the contrary, they are central to his administration’s strategic thinking about the role of the United States in the world, and especially in the Middle East.
Moreover, that has been true from the beginning. In the first year of Obama’s first term, a senior administration official would later tell David Sanger of the New York Times, “There were more [White House] meetings on Iran than there were on Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. It was the thing we spent the most time on and talked about the least in public [emphasis added].” All along, Obama has regarded his hoped-for “comprehensive agreement” with Iran as an urgent priority, and, with rare exceptions, has consistently wrapped his approach to that priority in exceptional layers of secrecy.
From time to time, critics and even friends of the president have complained vocally about the seeming disarray or fecklessness of the administration’s handling of foreign policy. Words like amateurish, immature, and incompetent are bandied about; what’s needed, we’re told, is less ad-hoc fumbling, more of a guiding strategic vision. Most recently, Leslie Gelb, a former government official and past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has charged that “the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national-security policy,” and has urged the president to replace the entire inner core of his advisers with “strong and strategic people of proven . . . experience.”
One sympathizes with Gelb’s sense of alarm, but his premises are mistaken. Inexperience is a problem in this administration, but there is no lack of strategic vision. Quite the contrary: a strategy has been in place from the start, and however clumsily it may on occasion have been implemented, and whatever resistance it has generated abroad or at home, Obama has doggedly adhered to the policies that have flowed from it.
In what follows, we’ll trace the course of the most important of those policies and their contribution to the president’s announced determination to encourage and augment Iran’s potential as a successful regional power and as a friend and partner to the United States.
Michael Doran
Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council. He is finishing a book on President Eisenhower and the Middle East. He tweets @doranimated.
Michael Doran: For the rest of the Story in detail go to MOSAIC MAGAZINE
Report: U.S. To Allow More Centrifuges in Exchange for Iran-Backed Stability in Middle East.
From thetower.org
The United States and Iran are moving closer to a deal that would allow Iran to keep as many as 6,500 centrifuges operating in return for Iran “guaranteeing regional stability,” according to a report today in The Jerusalem Post. The news, which cited European diplomats, was originally reported by Israel’s Army Radio.
“According to EU officials, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have discussed increasing the number of centrifuges which Iran would be permitted to keep. In exchange, the Iranians would undertake an obligation to bring their influence to bear in order to ensure quiet in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
European diplomats are quoted by Israeli officials as saying that the US in recent weeks has made significant concessions in its talks with Iran, so much so that it is willing to permit Tehran to operate 6,500 centrifuges while lifting sanctions that have hurt its economy this past decade.
The Europeans have told the Israelis that these concessions were offered in exchange for Iranian promises to maintain regional stability. According to Army Radio, the EU is opposed to the proposed linkage between the nuclear issue and other geopolitical matters. In fact, the Europeans suspect that Washington is operating behind Brussels’ back and that Kerry has not bothered to keep them in the loop in his talks with Zarif.”
The Post notes that the administration denied a similar report over the weekend.
Research by the Institute for Science and International Security concluded that for a nuclear deal with Iran to be effective, Iran would have to dismantle over 15,000 centrifuges to bring their total to no more than 4,000. Iranian officials have repeatedly insisted that they will not reduce their enrichment capacity.
A recent report in The Daily Beast suggested that the United States has given priority to Iranian military concerns in Iraq, leading to a strengthening of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and increased sectarian strife in that country.
In 2013 paper (.pdf), Olivier Meier of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg wrote that while Europe initially was pleased with the Obama administration’s participation in the nuclear talks with Iran, “some EU states feared that the USA might shift the goalposts for a diplomatic solution.”
In Replacement Theory: The Administration’s Crazy New Middle East Illusion, which was published in the December 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, David Daoud warned:
“Many interpret America’s softening stance toward Iran as an attempt to make Tehran more amenable to a deal on its nuclear program. But the Obama administration’s new approach to Iran doesn’t end with the nuclear issue, and assuming it does is to miss the true danger of it all. This White House views the nuclear deal currently being negotiated as only a first step toward a general détente and broader cooperation between the two countries. The perception permeating the Situation Room is that filling the power vacuum created by recent Middle Eastern upheavals with Iranian forces—especially its Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy Hezbollah—will help stabilize the ungovernable spaces of the region in Iraq, Syria and beyond. Getting the nuclear deal out of the way is therefore essential to progress on positioning Tehran as “a force for stability” in the region, as the President has described it.
For the Islamic revolutionaries and clerical dictators running the country, this new approach is a welcome change from decades of American efforts to sideline Iran. But Tehran is receptive to Washington’s changes for entirely different reasons. Seizing on what it sees as American weakness under this administration, Tehran believes it can break free of the diplomatic and economic sanctions that have crippled its economy, and freeze Western efforts to stall its regional ambitions. A nuclear deal in Iran’s favor may be with in its grasp, Tehran believes. And they may not even need to make such an agreement, if simply by negotiating with the West they can resurrect their economy and stall any U.S. action against their takeover of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, removing further obstacles to their regional hegemony.
And it is here, in Iran’s very different view of a possible rapprochement with the United States, that the real danger to regional and American interests lies. Contrary to the expectations of many U.S. policymakers, giving Iran free rein in the Middle East would not be a major diplomatic victory, but a strategic nightmare. Replacing the putative caliphate of the Islamic State with the brutal Imamate of the Islamic Republic, the IRGC, Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s regional proxies, would be a strategic and moral catastrophe.”
[Source: WochitGeneralNews / YouTube ]
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is said to have made significant concession over Iran’s nuclear program in talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Photo: Wikimedia [View full size]](https://i0.wp.com/israelseen.com/shows/Secretary_Kerry_Iranian_Foreign_Minister_Zarif_Sit_Down_For_Second_Day_of_Nuclear_Talks_in_Vienna.jpg?ssl=1)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is said to have made significant concession over Iran’s nuclear program in talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Photo: Wikimedia
EU Concerned Over Report of Major US Concessions to Iranians in Nuclear Negotiations:
The US and Iran are nearing a deal which would permit the Tehran regime to maintain as many as 6,500 centrifuges for its nuclear program in exchange for “guaranteeing regional stability,” Israel’s Army radio reported today.
The report cited Israeli officials who quoted European diplomats telling them that the US had agreed to significant concessions to the Iranians in recent negotiations. The report added that the EU is opposed to linking the nuclear issue to the maintenance of stability in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, where Iranian influence has been steadily growing.
The EU diplomats are said to be deeply concerned that the US has been working behind their backs to achieve such a deal, and that this was the main issue discussed at a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif two weeks ago.
Research by the highly-regarded Institute for Science and International Security concluded that for a nuclear deal with Iran to be effective, Iran would have to dismantle over 15,000 centrifuges to bring their total to no more than 4,000. Iranian officials have repeatedly insisted that they will not reduce their enrichment capacity, The Tower reported.
Israel fears that an agreement on these lines would leave Iran only a few months away from weaponizing its nuclear program – a nightmare situation that Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to thwart at all costs.
Despite the criticism he has received for inviting Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in early March on the Iranian nuclear issue, US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said he didn’t regret the decision.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has akso offered a ringing endorsement of Netanyahu’s right to speak frankly about the threat posed by Iran.
Speaking to an audience at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, Giuliani said that any meaningful deal over Iran’s nuclear program would mean that Tehran should have “virtually no possibility of maintaining any nuclear arsenal.”
“I therefore deeply admire Prime Minister Netanyahu for speaking out on this issue, but he honestly has no choice,” Giuliani declared. “If someone threatens to kill you, you simply don’t give them the gun to do it, unless there’s something wrong with you.”
