by Michael Rubin*

As Iran’s nuclear program has developed, the Bush administration appeared to draw a red line: a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic would be unacceptable. On August 8, 2004, for example, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC News that the United States “cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon” and that President George W. Bush would “look at all the tools that are available to him.”[1] In an October 27, 2006, Oval Office meeting with NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Bush remarked, “the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.”[2] A year later, Bush declared that “Iran will be dangerous if they have the know-how to make a nuclear weapon.”[3] If Bush’s statement was a red line then, today it appears to have been more a rhetorical flourish than a policy truth.

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by Michael Rubin*

In its waning days, the Bush administration is setting the stage for establishment of a U.S. Interests Section in Tehran manned by U.S. diplomats. The new administration should let this ill-thought and poorly-timed initiative drop.

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By Andrew Cochran*

This morning, the U.S. Treasury is announcing a new designation of the Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI) for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). The Iranian regime is allegedly using the EDBI as a financing mechanism as a substitute for Bank Sepah, whose international financing capabilities have been sharply curbed since the Treasury designated it in January 2007 and persuaded our allies to join in that freeze. Contributing Experts Jonathan Winer, Matthew Levitt, Victor Comras, Michael Jacobson and I have written extensively on the series of international sanctions against Sepah and other elements of the Iranian financing system. The Treasury statement alleges that “EDBI has facilitated the ongoing procurement activities of various front companies associated with MODAFL-subordinate entities.” The Treasury designated MODAFL and associated entities in October 2007 for activities to promote Iran’s ballistic missile program.

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by Michael Rubin*

As markets floundered amid the credit crunch, Iran’s leadership celebrated the West’s economic crisis. On Oct. 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, “The claim that the free market manages all things is a huge lie and benefits only thieves and criminals.” Two days later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that the West’s financial crisis was a sign of “the ineffectiveness of liberal democracy-based policies.”

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by Supna Zaidi*

Have you seen the little old lady who passes out Jehovah’s Witness literature in your neighborhood? Some people stop and show interest. Others roll their eyes, and keep walking. But, would you ever expect anyone to threaten her? Call her a racist, and try to get her arrested?

Islamists would. And that is exactly what happened to two English Christian ministers who had the nerve to proselytize on a street corner in a predominantly Muslim immigrant area in the UK in 2007.

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By Barry Rubin

In response to a casual question, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dropped a historical bombshell, an offhand remark telling more about how the Middle East works than 100 books. And a former Marine commander adds an equally big revelation about long-ago events quite relevant for today.

Almost thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter tried to show what a nice guy he was by pressing the Shah not to crush the revolutionaries. After the monarch fell, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met top officials of the new Islamist regime to pledge U.S. friendship to the government controlled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, I wrote that by approaching some of the milder radicals, the administration frightened the more militant ones. U.S.-Iran relations must be smashed, they concluded, lest Washington back their rivals. In fact, as we’ll see in a moment, the Carter administration offered to back Khomeini himself.

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by Arash Sigarchi*

Arash Sigarchi, former editor of Gilan-e Emrooz, was the subject of the Middle East Quarterly’s Dissident Watch in the fall 2005 issue. He recently received asylum in the United States. This article is adapted from a speech he gave at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2008. - The Editors.

I was a newspaper journalist in the Islamic Republic, but censorship forced me to blog. My blogging led to my arrest and eventual departure from my homeland. To comprehend how pervasive censorship is in Iran today and how difficult it is for Iranians to access a wide range of accurate information about everyday news, it is essential to understand how the Iranian government censors journalists. Iranian censorship is enforced by six major entities.

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by Michael Rubin*

On November 4, Americans will go to the polls to elect their next president. But even as rival candidates Barack Obama and John McCain spar over who can bring change at home and restore America’s image abroad, on the most immediate foreign policy challenge facing the next inhabitant of the Oval Office - Iranian nuclear development - there will be no change.

In their first debate, both candidates said their administrations would negotiate with the Islamic Republic, albeit not at the presidential level. Whether Obama or McCain authorises his secretary of state or some lesser official is irrelevant, however, as it takes two to tango. Too often, US politicians and commentators navel-gaze: they assume decisions in Washington shape world events and that a change in policy will be enough to alter the international milieu. Reality, though, is opposite. Washington more often reacts to international events rather than leads them. Not so Tehran. While American leaders play chequers, their Iranian counterparts play chess, planning strategy several moves in advance.

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by Michael Rubin*

There is a tendency in Western capitals to dismiss adversarial Iranian behavior as the work of rogue regime factions, which are not representative of Tehran’s true intentions. Following a Baghdad press conference providing evidence of Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq,[1] U.S. officials raised doubts about Iran’s actual culpability. The weapons shipments do “not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the next day.[2] On February 14, 2007, President George W. Bush said, “What we don’t know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Qods Force to do what they did.”[3] Likewise, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized fifteen British sailors patrolling a waterway between Iran and Iraq, commentators suggested that responsibility may rest more with freelancing commanders than the Iranian government.[4] Identifying the true decision-makers in the Islamic Republic is essential not only for accountability but also to ensure that any Western diplomatic outreach is targeted at those who have the power to affect regime behavior. Unfortunately, as U.S. officials again debate negotiations with the Islamic Republic, they simultaneously embrace Iranian reformists and dismiss pariah behavior as the actions of isolated rogue elements. Such an assessment is backwards, though. The IRGC represents the core of the Iranian state, and Iran’s reformists are those who, by acting on their own without either state support or any ability to deliver on promises are, in the Iranian context, the true rogue elements.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I know that Ahmadinejad entered the Grand Hyatt Hotel earlier tonight. What I don’t understand is why he has also exited it. Are there no Iranian dissidents or human rights activists prepared to arrest him on the spot and transport him to stand trial in The Hague? As the Israelis did for Herr Eichmann? … (Continue reading…)

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by Michael Rubin*

Containment helped define US foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Inspired by a view of the USSR as expansionist and intractably opposed to capitalist states, containment was viewed as the most cost-effective method to prevent Soviet extension without resorting to cataclysmic war.

The policy was perhaps best described by George Kennan in his 1947 ‘X’ article, in which he claimed “it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

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By Barry Rubin

The return of Russian power in the Middle East, next to Iran’s nuclear weapons’ campaign, is the region’s most important new issue. While far less threatening than the Soviet bloc’s Cold War backing for radical Arab states, this development poses some major problems for U.S. leaders, Israeli interests, and Middle East politics.

Between 1956 and 1990, the Soviet Union bestrode the regional stage like a colossus, the alternative model and sponsor that indirectly inspired, armed, and protected the domination of radical Arab nationalist regimes, groups, and ideas. Moscow’s goals were to win the competition with the United States, extend its influence, and gain access to strategic locations and resources.

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by Daniel Pipes*

After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators – ridiculed by Winston Churchill as feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last – appeared to be permanently discredited. Yet the policy has enjoyed some successes and remains a live temptation today in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Academics have long challenged the facile vilification of appeasement. Already in 1961, A.J.P. Taylor of Oxford justified Neville Chamberlain’s efforts, while Christopher Layne of Texas A&M currently argues that Chamberlain “did the best that he could with the cards he was dealt.” Daniel Treisman, a political scientist at UCLA, finds the common presumption against appeasement to be “far too strong,” while his University of Florida colleague Ralph B.A. Dimuccio calls it “simplistic.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

… So, let me tell you a story about one tragic incident that took place in that cursed country in the summer of 1986. Telling this story and listening to it is a way of mourning, and of bearing witness. Iranian expatriate journalist Freidoune Sahebjam resurrected the facts for us in his jewel of a book, The Stoning of Soraya M which is now also a film which stars the great Iranian expatriate actress, Shohreh Aghdashloo. Sahebjam writes that in contemporary Iran, “being born female is both a capital crime and a death sentence.” … (Continue reading…)

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by Mohebat Ahdiyyih*

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surprised not only many Westerners but also many Iranians when, during his first speech at the United Nations, he prayed for the hasty return of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, Shi‘i Islam’s messianic figure.[1] Demonstrating his priorities, he repeated the prayer in December 2007 when addressing Arab leaders at the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha[2] but did not object when they described the Persian Gulf as Arab, a diplomatic swipe at Iran’s place in the region. Ahmadinejad’s messianism is no ploy; it is very serious indeed.[3] Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Guardian Council, credits Ahmadinejad with “being inspired by God.”[4]

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