AIC Articles

AIC Articles tag:american-iranian.org,2007-06-12:/publications/articles//2 2009-03-31T19:14:49Z Movable Type Publishing Platform 4.0-beta7-20070717 A Fierce Urgency for Peace, by Roger Cohen (NYT: March 26, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.75 2009-03-31T19:10:42Z 2009-03-31T19:14:49Z

Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects. Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the president, these foreign policy mandarins have concluded a "Bipartisan Statement on U.S. Middle East Peacemaking" that should become an essential template. Deploring "seven years of absenteeism" under the Bush administration, they call for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state solution, "a more pragmatic approach toward Hamas," and eventual U.S. leadership of a multinational force to police transitional security between Israel and Palestine. The 10 signatories -- of both the four-page letter and the report -- include Volcker himself, former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Senator Chuck Hagel, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering. My understanding is their thinking coincides in significant degree with that of both George Mitchell, Obama's Middle East envoy, and Gen. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser who worked on security issues with Israelis and Palestinians in the last year of the Bush administration, an often frustrating experience. This overlap gives the report particular significance. Of Hamas, the target of Israel's futile pounding of Gaza, the eminent Group of 10 writes that, "Shutting out the movement and isolating Gaza has only made it stronger and Fatah weaker." They urge a fundamental change: "Shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might clarify the movement's view and test its behavior." Although this falls short of my own recommendation that the United States itself -- rather than European allies -- engage with moderate elements of Hamas, such a shift is critical. Without Hamas's involvement, there can be no Middle East peace. Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian Authority, is a beleaguered figure. The report goes further: "Cease discouraging Palestinian national reconciliation and make clear that a government that agrees to a cease-fire with Israel, accepts President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief negotiator and commits to abiding by the results of a national referendum on a future peace agreement would not be boycotted or sanctioned." In other words, stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel and watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of, and remains part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace deal with Israel, that's workable. Henry Siegman, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, whose chairman is Scowcroft and board includes all 10 signatories, told me that he met recently with Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas in Damascus. Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel. De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a constructive relationship, as Israel knows from the mutual benefits of its shah-era dealings with Iran. Israeli governments have negotiated a two-state solution although they included religious parties that do not recognize Palestinians' right to statehood. "But," Siegman said, "if moderates within Hamas are to prevail, a payoff is needed for their moderation. And until the U.S. provides one, there will be no Palestinian unity government." The need for that incentive is reflected in the four core proposals of what the authors call "a last chance for a two-state Israel-Palestine agreement." Taken together, they constitute the start of an essential rebalancing of America's Bush-era Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy. The first is clear U.S. endorsement of a two-state solution based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, agreed land swaps where necessary. That means removing all West Bank settlements except in some heavily populated areas abutting Jerusalem -- and, of course, halting the unacceptable ongoing construction of new ones. The second is establishing Jerusalem as home to the Israeli and Palestinian capitals. Jewish neighborhoods would be under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty, with special arrangements for the Old City providing unimpeded access to holy sites for all communities. The third is major financial compensation and resettlement assistance in a Palestinian state for refugees, coupled with some formal Israeli acknowledgment of responsibility for the problem, but no generalized right of return. The fourth is the creation of an American-led, U.N.-mandated multinational force for a transitional period of up to 15 years leading to full Palestinian control of their security. Obama has told Volcker that he would, in time, meet with the signatories of the letter. He should do so once an Israeli government is in place. And then he should incorporate their ideas in laying out the new realism of American commitment to Palestine and the new price of American commitment to Israel. AIC Nowruz/Symposium Speech, by Fatemeh Haghighatjoo (March 25, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.74 2009-03-31T17:29:39Z 2009-03-31T18:37:36Z

Official U.S.-Iran Contacts Post-9/11 Prior to the War in Iraq By Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Ph.D. I would like to thank the AIC for organizing this panel. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to President Obama for his Nowruz...

Official U.S.-Iran Contacts Post-9/11 Prior to the War in Iraq By Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Ph.D.

I would like to thank the AIC for organizing this panel. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to President Obama for his Nowruz address and I am hopeful that the talks with his leadership will based on mutual respect and interest. Let me tell you as an Iranian insider how I perceived Iran's Supreme Leader respond to the Nowruz Message of the President. Ayatolah Khamenei felt Obama's remarks were so significant that he should be the first person to respond. He said "we are not going to be emotional and we will calculate and if the US would change, we would change too". And finally he asks for tangible steps. Last year, he said that if I know that the US-Iran talk/relations is useful, I would be the first one to talk. Therefore, both sides should not miss this opportunity. ]]> I will like to hare the plan of the sixth Iranian Parliament and its actions in respond to the post-9/11 era. Before I get to that, it is necessary to explain the political context of the time. Iran has two elected offices sharing political power: the Majlis (Parliament), and the President. At the same time, it also has various appointed positions of political power under supervision of the Supreme Leader, including the Judiciary, and the Supreme Council on National Security (SCNS). The elected offices were, for the most part, in hands of Reformists who supported of the normalization of Iranian-U.S. relations. The rest of Iran's political power was in hands of anti-Reformist Conservatives who were against any negotiation with the U.S. as long as the Iranian Presidency and Cabinet was in the hands of Khatami and the Reformists. Thus, the role of the Majlis was to back the Reformist administration's efforts to initiate official talks with the United States. The strategy of the Majlis was to support the administration in its efforts to engage the U.S. and its allies over issues with Afghanistan, supporting its interim government due to Iran's national interest in peace and security on its eastern border. With Afghanistan as Iran's neighbor, with an almost 800-kilometer boundary, we would be directly affected by any positive or negative developments there, so of course Iran wanted to be engaged in enabling Afghanistan to have a peaceful and prosperous future. During the months following the events of 9/11, the Majlis had condemned the terrorist actions in the United States. At the same time, it was the analysis of some of its Members that the purpose behind the United States government's decision to invade Afghanistan was to transfer energy resources of the Central Asia countries through Afghanistan. The Majlis immediately voted to launch a "Special Commission of the Region's Transformation and Afghanistan" in order to be more effective in its decision-making processes, in transferring the ideas of the Majlis, providing advice, and overseeing the government apparatus on these issues. The Special Commission was made up of 15 MPs, and had daily sessions for months. This Commission was in addition to the National Security and Foreign Affairs Commission and the Speaker's membership in the Supreme Council of National Security (SCNS). The goal of the Islamic Republic of Iran was to defend Afghanistan's sovereignty. The Majlis directly supported official talks with the U.S. government. The multilateral negotiations were successfully performed between Iran and the U.S. and its allies by the Khatami administration. However, President Bush's State of the Union Address on the "Axis of Evil" damaged the Reformist administration's position on engaging in talks with the U.S. The new administration should appreciate and facilitate any constructive approach and cooperation of Iran in the region. The Majlis played a unique role in criticizing some of the positions that the Supreme Council of National Security took, such as its decision to be neutral in this engagement. We in the Majlis believed that we should proactively engage in a meaningful dialogue with the main players, namely the U.S. and its allies, rather than sit quietly next door and just let them all decide how things would turn out in Afghanistan. Domestic Iranian Politics Regarding U.S.-Iran relations, it seems that there is a sort of consensus among scholars, experts on foreign relations, political activists and most policy makers inside Iran that the US-Iran talks should be start from national security perspective. However, in terms of how to start these negotiations, timing, topics, conditions, third parties, and internal negotiators are still points of discussion and debate. For example, the Supreme Leader gave a speech in Mashhad in 2007 in which he said that if he knows it would benefit for Iran, he would start negotiations with the U.S. The fact that he gave such an answer in public shows the extent of the compromise among experts and the breakdown of the taboo against talking with the U.S. This statement also shows that he may actually allow that negotiation in the future. What has changed since the 6th Majlis is the unification of power under the supervision of the Supreme Leader. The current administration would like to start negotiations with the U.S. However, the conditions of the negotiations and the methods for starting them are important. One of member of Iranian parliament said that the first condition of negotiation is that the U.S. must demonstrate respect for the nature of Iran's Islamic Republic and avoid an adversarial plan. After 29 years, both countries show many signs of being ready to start these vital negotiations. Any negotiation should start with Iran's current government, and that means that they should take place before Iran's June 2009 presidential election. The reason for this is that the present administration has the ability to control hardliners who oppose any talks with the U.S. The Conservatives would gain credibility through this, which would lead other branches of the government to support the idea of negotiations. If President Ahmadinejad would not re-elected, and by chance a Reformist candidate such as former prim minister, Mr. Mosavi or former Speaker of Parliament, Medhi Karoubi would be to be elected, the chances of starting comprehensive negotiations would be slim. The opposition to the new president, including from some of those who are in the current administration, could ruin the negotiations. Many U.S. policy-makers are afraid that Ahmadinejad will be re-elected as a result of initiating these talks. Even if the talk were to begin now, it would not significantly increase Ahmadinejad's chances of re-election, due to internal and economic problems resulting from his mismanagement. Also, to reply to these concerns about the possible re-election of Ahmadinejad, I would say that it is appropriate to initiate direct official contact between Iran and the U.S. at the parliamentary level prior to the election. After the election, the official talks could continue at the Cabinet level according standard government protocol. My reasons are as follows: 1. The talks between the U.S. government and Iran's Parliament will not give any credit to Ahmadinejad. This is because many of its Members disagree with him, including the Speaker and because it is not at the cabinet level. 2. Any official contact should be pre-approved by the Supreme Leader. Thus, any official contact by the Majlis with the U.S. would require the support of the Leader. 3. They would control hardliners who disagree with initiating direct talk with the U.S. and this control would pave the way of the next President of Iran to continue ongoing project. 4. The Parliament has an important role to play in the ratification of the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Protocol was signed in 2003, and the Majlis should ratify it, so these talks would provide an opportunity for the ratification. 5. The Parliamentary talks would be powerful and unique due to the particular position of the current Speaker, who is a former head nuclear negotiator, a son of a Grand Ayatollah, a representative of Qom, and a Member of the SCNS, and because of his ability to handle internal negotiations with other institutions. 6. The MPs come from all over Iran and they have the ability to justify this decision to their constituents. 7. Talks at this level would neutralize the role of the U.S. in the coming election. I would support this neutralization because of the complexity and sensitivity of the political game involved in elections. 8. As a feminist, I would say that extending an invitation to Nancy Pelosi for a talk between the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Iranian Majlis would provide a model for the women's movement in Iran that would facilitate requests to improve the condition of women in Iran. This issue also would be one of the topics to be discussed by the two Speakers. Aside from all this, one crucial expectation of political and human rights activists for negotiations at any level is that all that the United States should not ignore human rights violations in Iran. I would say normalization relations between two countries, would reduce human rights violation and promote democracy in Iran. Because, many activists are arrested with accusation of "spying for the United States. Lastly, recently many analysts believe that the U.S. government should talk directly with the Supreme Leader of Iran. Although the Supreme Leader has ultimate power in Iran, one should not ignore the dynamic of power inside Iran. The significant question is whether the Leader makes decisions completely on his own or whether he is affected by others, and if so, who they are. One important example of different Iranian approaches to the nuclear talks would demonstrate the weight of other groups in the Iranian political structure: There have been two different Iranian approaches to the nuclear talks. During the Khatami presidency, the focus was on building trust and cooperation with the West, while the approach during the Ahmadinejad era was totally different in that it radiated hostility and projected an unwillingness to deal with the West. The question is how those who say that the U.S. should talk directly with the Supreme Leader justify these different approaches. Each political camp within the Iranian structure has power and influence, as do other stakeholders. Ignoring this dynamic of power would hurt the success of the negotiations. Therefore, these talks should consider this complexity and should engage all parties directly or indirectly. The United States should start talks by treating Iran as an equal partner in negotiations, without humiliating Iran or addressing it in a condescending manner. Response to President Obama's Nowruz Statement, Ali Khamenei tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.73 2009-03-23T14:47:05Z 2009-03-23T14:50:10Z

Regarding the foreign affairs of our country, I would like to mentions one point, and that is the issue between us and the United States. One of the main challenges for the Revolution, right from the beginning, was the same issue. Right from the first day of the Revolution's victory, a phase was opened for the Iranian nation, as a major test in its relations and interactions with the government of the United States of America. This major and important test continued for the past 30 years. The US Government faced this Revolution with an angry and frowning face, and opposed us from the beginning. Of course, they had the right to do so, considering their own calculations. Before the Revolution, Iran was in the hands of the United States, its vital resources were in the hands of the United States, its political decision-making centers were in the hands of the United States, decisions to appoint and depose its vital centers were in the hands of the United States, and it (Iran) was like a field for the United States, the US military, and others on which to graze. Well, this was taken away from them. They could have expressed their opposition in not such an aggressive manner. But from the beginning of the Revolution, both their Republican presidents, and the Democrats, did not behave well toward the Islamic Republic. Th! is is no t secret from anyone. Pay attention, the first measure taken by the United States was to provoke the scattered opposition groups of the Islamic Republic, and to support terrorism and disintegration in the country. They started this right from the beginning. In any parts of the country, where there were grounds for disintegration, the United States had a hand, we noticed their money, and at times their agents. This cost our people much. Unfortunately, this continues. The bandits in the Iran-Pakistan border areas, we know that some of them -- as we have their voices (as received) -- are in touch with Americans. They have wireless communications, and take orders from them. Bandits, terrorists, murderers, are in touch with US officers in a neighboring country. Unfortunately, this still goes on. This was the beginning of what they started. Then it was the confiscation of property and goods belonging to Iran. The former regime gave a large amount of money to the United States to buy airplanes, helicopters, and weapons from them. Some of them over there were prepared, and when the Revolution took place, they did not deliver them. They did not give back the money, which amounted to millions of dollars. And the strange point is that they kept these goods in a store, and considered storage charges for it, which they claimed from the Algeria Agreement. To take away some goods from a nation, confiscate them, and fail to deliver them, and then claim storage charges for it! This is the kind of behavior started then, which continues. Our possessions are still there. They belong to the Iranian nation. They are in the United States and also some European countries. We referred to them over the past years, and asked them to give us what belongs to us and what we paid for. They said that since they are under the license of the United States, the United States does not allow them to do so; they cannot return them to us, and they are still there. They showed Sadd! am (late Iraqi president) a green light. This was another plan by the US Government to attack Iran. If Saddam did not have the green light from the United States, he would have not attacked our borders. They imposed eight years of war on our country. About 300,000 of our young people, our people, were martyred in this eight-year war. In these eight years (Iran-Iraq war), particularly in the last few years of it, the United States constantly supported Saddam and helped him financially, with ammunition, and political advice. They provided him with satellite information. They had information facilities. They recorded the movements of our forces by satellite, and transferred this information the very same day to Saddam's HQ to use against our young people and forces. They (the United States) closed their eyes to Saddam's crimes. The Halabcheh (southern Iranian town bordering Iraq) incident took place, hitting various towns of our country with missiles. They destroyed houses, they used chemical bombs on the frontlines, they still closed their eyes. They did not object at all. They helped Saddam. This was another one of the acts of this government over the years toward our country and our nation. Then, please pay attention; there is a lot of time for chanting. Toward the end of the war, a US officer hit our airplane on the Persian Gulf with a missile from a warship. Some 290, about 300, passengers were in this plane, and they were all killed. And then, instead of punishing that officer, the US President of that time awarded that officer and gave him a medal. Now, should our nation forget this? Can it forget? They supported criminal terrorists who killed men, women, people, great scholars, even little children in our country. They (the United States) allowed them (terrorists) to be active in their country. They constantly released aggressive propaganda against our country. Constantly! In the past years, US Presidents, particularly during the eight years of the former preside! nt (refe rring to President George W. Bush), whenever he said something against the Iranian nation, against our country, against our officials, against the Islamic Republic system, he said something absurd and nonsensical. He did not respect the Iranian nation. It was always like this over the years. They disturbed the security and peace in our region, security in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They brought massive quantities of weapons to the regional countries, in order to stand against the Islamic Republic, in fact to fill the pockets of armaments factories. They unconditionally supported Israel, the cruel Zionist regime. You witnessed one example of its (Israel's) cruelty in Gaza in the past two, three months. What a disaster they created. How many children they killed, how many men and women they killed. In 22 days they killed 5,000 people in Gaza with bombardments, missiles, and direct shootings. In the meanwhile they supported it. The US Government supported it until the very last moment. Whenever the Security Council wanted to issue a resolution against the Zionist regime, the United States stepped forward and defended (Israel), and did not let it happen. It (the United States) threatened our country on any occasion. It constantly said that it will attack us. They said that they had a military plan ready on the desk, they will do this, and they will do that. They constantly talked against our country and threatened our nation. Of course, these threats did not affect our nation, but they showed their enmity by doing so. They insulted the Iranian nation, the Iranian government, and the Iranian president, over and over again. Some years ago, an American said that the Iranian nation must be eradicated. In the past few years, a US official said that a nice and moderate Iranian is one that was killed, who is dead. They insulted this great and honorable nation, the nation whose only fault is to defend its identity and independence in such ways. They imposed sanctions on our countr! y for 30 years. Of course, these sanctions were in our benefit. With this regard, we must thank the United States. If they had not imposed sanctions on us, we would have not reached this level of science and progress. Sanctions constantly made us aware, made us think about ourselves, and be innovative. But they did not mean to serve us like this. They wanted to be antagonist. This is how they treated the Iranian nation for 30 years, and now the new US Government says that they would like to negotiate with Iran, that we should forget the past. They say that they extended their arm towards Iran. What kind of a hand? If it is an iron hand covered with a velvet glove, then it will not make any good sense. They congratulate the Iranian nation on the occasion of the New Year (Iranian New Year started 20 March 2009), but in the same message call the Iranian nation supporters of terrorism, who seek nuclear weapons, and accuse it of such things. I would like to say that I do not know who makes decisions for the United States, the President, the Congress, elements behind the scenes? But I would like to say that we have logic. Since the beginning, the Iranian nation moved with logic. Regarding our vital issues, we are not sentimental. We do not make decisions based on emotion. We make decisions through calculation. They tell us to negotiate, to start relations. They have the slogan of change. Where is the change? What has changed? Clarify this to us. What changed? Has your enmity toward the Iranian nation changed? What signs are there to support this? Have you released the possessions of the Iranian nation? Have you removed the cruel sanctions? Have you stopped the insults, accusations, and negative propaganda against this great nation and its officials? Have you stopped your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? What has changed? They talk of change, but there are no changes in actions. We have not seen any changes. Even the literature has not changed. The new US President, from the very mome! nt of hi s official appointment as President, made a speech, and insulted Iran and the Islamic government. Why? If you tell the truth, and there are changes, where are these changes? Why can we see nothing? I would like to say this to everyone. US officials should also know that the Iranian nation cannot be fooled, or scared. First of all... Changes in words are not adequate; although we have not seen much of a change there either. Change must be real. I would like to say this to US officials, that this change that you talk about is a real necessity; you have no other choice, you must change. If you do not change, then divine traditions will change you, the world will change you. You must change, but this change cannot be in words only. It should not come with unhealthy intentions. You may say that you want to change policies, but not your aims, that you will change tactics. This is not change. This is deceit. There can be true change, which should be seen in action. I advise US officials, whoever is the decision-maker in the United States, whether the President, Congress, or others, that the US Government has not worked to the benefit of the American people. Today, you are hated in the world. You should know this, if you do not already. Nations set fire to your flag. Muslim nations across the world chant "Death to America." What is the reason behind this hatred? Have you ever studied this? Analyzed it? Have you learnt from it? The reason is, that you treat the world like a pupil, you talk snobbishly, you want to impose your own will on the world, you interfere in the affairs of other countries, and you implement double-sided criteria. When a young Palestinian is forced to perform some act of martyrdom, because of the pressure he is under, you bombard him with a mass of propaganda, and on the other hand you ignore the crimes of the Zionist regime, while it creates such a disaster in Gaza for 22 d! ays. You call that young man a terrorist, and you say that you are committed towards the security of such a terrorist regime. These are the reasons that they hate you around the world. This is advice to you. For your own benefit, for your own good, for the future of your country, restrain from your snobbish attitude, hegemony, and your lecturing attitude. Do not interfere in the affairs of other nations. Be happy with your own rights. Do not define benefits for yourself in various parts of the world. You will see that the United States will gradually lose its hated image in the world. These deed have made you hated. Listen to these words. This is my advice to US officials, the President, and others. Listen well to these words, and have them translated for you. Of course, do not give it to the Zionists to translate for you. Consult healthy people, and seek their opinions. If the US Government continues its same behavior, method, course, policies against us, as in the past 30 years, we are the same people, the same nation that we were for the past 30 years. Please pay attention. If you go on with the slogan of discussion and pressure, saying that you will negotiate with Iran, and at the same time impose pressure, threats, and changes, then our nation will not like such words. We do not have any experience with the new US President and Government. We shall see and judge. You change, and we shall change as well. If you do not change, our people became more and more experienced, stronger, and more patient in the past 30 years. From Tehran to Tel Aviv, by Roger Cohen (NYT, March 22, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.72 2009-03-23T14:29:58Z 2009-03-23T14:32:41Z

With his bold message to Iran's leaders, President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement. He abandoned regime change as an American goal. He shelved the so-called military option. He buried a carrot-and-sticks approach viewed with contempt by Iranians as fit only for donkeys. And he placed Iran's nuclear program within "the full range of issues before us." By doing so, Obama made it almost inevitable that one of the defining strategic issues of his presidency will be a painful but necessary redefinition of America's relations with Israel as differences over Iran sharpen. I will return to that below. The innovations in the president's Persian New Year, or Nowruz, overture to Tehran were remarkable. He referred twice to "the Islamic Republic of Iran," a formulation long shunned, and said that republic, no other, should "take its rightful place in the community of nations." Here was explicit American acceptance of Iran's 30-year-old clerical revolution. He said establishing constructive ties would "not be advanced by threats," a retreat from his own campaign position that the military option must always remain on the table. Instead he offered "mutual respect." I was in Iran in January and February. The visit convinced me that confrontational American high-handedness has been a disaster; that facile analogies between the Iranian regime and the Nazis dishonor six million victims of the Holocaust; that the regime's provocative rhetoric masks essential pragmatism; and that the best way to help a young, stability-favoring population toward the reform they seek is through engagement. Obama has now taken all the steps I called for then. The policy changes emerged from an interagency review of the failed Iranian policy of recent years. The shift demanded courage. One of the people involved in the review told me he had been bombarded by warnings from Israel and Sunni Arab states that engagement with Iran would lead nowhere. Of course they would say that; any Iran breakthrough will shake up current cozy U.S. relationships from Jerusalem to Riyadh. Obama's overture represented a victory not only over such lobbying but also over officials' favoring tightened sanctions or delaying any American initiative until after Iran's June presidential election. The hard part has just begun. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded to Obama with a scathing speech at the country's holiest shrine in Mashad, recalling every past U.S. misdeed, describing prerevolutionary Iran as "a field for the Americans to graze in," and demanding concrete steps -- like a lifting of sanctions -- rather than words. View all that as an opening gambit. Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual "Death to America" chant and he said this: "We're not emotional when it comes to our important matters. We make decisions by calculation." That's right: the mullahs are anything but mad. Calculation will demand that Iran take Obama seriously. The country's oil revenue has plunged, its economy is in a mess, its oil and gas installations are aging. It has deepening interests in a stable Iraq and an Afghanistan free of Taliban rule. Its nuclear program involves a measure of brinkmanship that must be carefully managed. Khamenei's essential role is conservative -- the preservation of the revolution. He can only be radical up to a point. Iran's apparent inclination to take up a U.S. invitation to attend a conference on Afghanistan later this month may be more significant than Khamenei's words. In any event, overcoming a 30-year impasse will take time and consistency. The clock is ticking -- and Obama's will not be the same as that of Israel's prime minister designate, Benjamin Netanyahu. Already divergent U.S. and Israeli approaches to Iran were evident in Israeli President Shimon Peres's coupling of his own Nowruz address to the Iranian people (not its leaders) with a statement predicting that they would rise up and topple "a handful of religious fanatics." A senior Israeli official told me Iran has 1,000 kilos of low-enriched uranium and will have 500 more within six months, enough to make a bomb. It could then opt for one of three courses. Rush for a bomb by shredding the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, adapting its centrifuges and producing enough highly enriched uranium within a year. Move the process to a secret site, in which case getting a bomb would take longer, perhaps two years. Or continue making low-enriched uranium so that "it would have enough for 10 bombs if it decides to rush at a later stage." And where, I asked, is Israel's red line? "Once they get to 1,500 kilos, nonproliferation is dead," he said. And so? "It's established that when a country that does not accept Israel's existence has such a program, we will intervene." I think there's some bluster in this. Israel does not want Obama to talk, talk, talk, so it's suggesting military action could happen in 2009, within nine months. Still, this much is clear to me: Obama's new Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It's about time. America's Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel's long-term security. President Bush's 2008 Nowruz Message tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.71 2009-03-21T11:27:07Z 2009-03-21T11:29:02Z

For the millions of people who trace their heritage to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Central Asia, Nowruz is a time to celebrate the new year with the arrival of spring. . . . Our country is proud to be a land where individuals from many different cultures can pass their traditions on to future generations. The diversity of America brings joy to our citizens and strengthens our nation during Nowruz and throughout the year. The people of the United States respects the people of Iran; that we respect the traditions of Iran, the great history of Iran. We have differences with the government, but we honor the people, and we want the people to live in a free society. We believe freedom is a right for all people and that the freer the world is, the more peaceful the world is. And so my message is, please don't be discouraged by the slogans that say America doesn't like you, because we do, and we respect you. . . . I'd say to the regime that they made decisions that have made it very difficult for the people of Iran. In other words, the Iranian leaders, in their desire to enrich uranium -- in spite of the fact that the international community has asked them not to -- has isolated a great country; and that there's a way forward. I mean, the Iranian leaders know there's a way forward, and that is verifiably suspend your enrichment and you can have new relationship with people in the U.N. Security Council, for example. It's just sad that the leadership is in many ways very stubborn, because the Iraqi -- the Iranian people are not realizing their true rights. And they're confusing people in Iraq, as well, about their desires. It's a tough period in history for the Iranian people, but it doesn't have to be that way. . . . The people of Iran must understand that the [poor economic] conditions exist in large part because of either management by the government or isolation because of the government's decisions on foreign policy matters -- such as announcing they want to destroy countries with a nuclear weapon. It is irresponsible remarks like that which cause great credibility loss with the Iranian government, the actions of which are affecting the country. President Obama Offers Hope of a New Day to Iran tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.70 2009-03-20T16:43:30Z 2009-03-20T16:48:22Z

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 20, 2009 THE PRESIDENT: Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world. This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with friends and family.]]> In particular, I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture. Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place. Here in the United States our own communities have been enhanced by the contributions of Iranian Americans. We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world. For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained. But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together. Indeed, you will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays -- by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope. Within these celebrations lies the promise of a new day, the promise of opportunity for our children, security for our families, progress for our communities, and peace between nations. Those are shared hopes, those are common dreams. So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect. You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create. So on the occasion of your New Year, I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek. It's a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce. It's a future where the old divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbors and the wider world can live in greater security and greater peace. I know that this won't be reached easily. There are those who insist that we be defined by our differences. But let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi, so many years ago: "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence." With the coming of a new season, we're reminded of this precious humanity that we all share. And we can once again call upon this spirit as we seek the promise of a new beginning. Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak. END Mideast Dream Team? Not Quite, by Roger Cohen (NYT, January 11, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.69 2009-03-17T04:03:52Z 2009-03-17T04:04:59Z

The Obama team is tight with information, but I've got the scoop on the senior advisers he's gathered to push a new Middle East policy as the Gaza war rages: Shibley Telhami, Vali Nasr, Fawaz Gerges, Fouad Moughrabi and James Zogby. This group of distinguished Arab-American and Iranian-American scholars, with wide regional experience, is intended to signal a U.S. willingness to think anew about the Middle East, with greater cultural sensitivity to both sides, and a keen eye on whether uncritical support for Israel has been helpful. O.K., forget the above, I've let my imagination run away with me. Barack Obama has no plans for this line-up on the Israeli-Palestinian problem and Iran. In fact, the people likely to play significant roles on the Middle East in the Obama Administration read rather differently. They include Dennis Ross (the veteran Clinton administration Mideast peace envoy who may now extend his brief to Iran); James Steinberg (as deputy secretary of state); Dan Kurtzer (the former U.S. ambassador to Israel); Dan Shapiro (a longtime aide to Obama); and Martin Indyk (another former ambassador to Israel who is close to the incoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.) Now, I have nothing against smart, driven, liberal, Jewish (or half-Jewish) males; I've looked in the mirror. I know or have talked to all these guys, except Shapiro. They're knowledgeable, broad-minded and determined. Still, on the diversity front they fall short. On the change-you-can-believe-in front, they also leave something to be desired. In an adulatory piece in Newsweek, Michael Hirsh wrote: "Ross's previous experience as the indefatigable point man during the failed Oslo process, as well as the main negotiator with Syria, make him uniquely suited for a major renewal of U.S. policy on nearly every front." Really? I wonder about the capacity for "major renewal" of someone who has failed for so long. "Do people in the region take note when Arab-Americans are not represented? Sure they do," said Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "A message gets sent." It's important for Obama to get his message right from day one. With the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya networks broadcasting 24-7 images of the carnage in Gaza, where there are more than 800 dead, mobilization in the Arab world is intense. Rage against Israel, and behind it America, bodes ill. Change is needed, and not just in the intensity of U.S. diplomatic involvement with Israel-Palestine. Some fundamental questions must be asked. Does regarding the Middle East almost exclusively through the prism of the war on terror make sense? Does turning a blind eye to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank that frustrate a two-state solution, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza that radicalizes its population, not undermine U.S. interest in bolstering moderate Palestinian sentiment? Should policy not be directed toward reconciling a Palestinian movement now split between Fatah and Hamas, without which no final-status peace will be possible? Beyond their terrorist wings, in their broad grass-roots political movements, what elements of Hamas and Hezbollah can be coaxed toward the mainstream? Do we understand the increasingly sophisticated Middle East of Al Jazeera where, as Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, put it to me, "People are not dumb and our credibility is at a historic near-zero?" Asking these questions does not alter America's commitment to Israel's security within its pre-1967 borders, which is and should be unwavering. It does not change the unacceptability of Hamas rockets or the fact the Hamas Charter is vile. But it would signal that the damaging Bush-era consensus that Israel can do no wrong is to be challenged. I don't feel encouraged -- not by the putative Ross-redux team, nor by the nonbinding resolutions passed last week in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The former offered "unwavering commitment" to Israel. The latter recognized "Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." Neither criticized Israel. It seems that among liberal democracies, it is only in the U.S .Congress that a defense against terror that results in the slaying of hundreds of Palestinian children is not cause for agonized soul-searching. In my view, such Israeli "defense" has crossed the line. "We are all opposed to terrorism," Telhami said. "But how does that enlighten you about how to move forward?" Enlightenment will require a fresher, broader Mideast team than Obama is contemplating. As noted in "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East," a fine evaluation of U.S. diplomacy by Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky, the lack of expertise on Islam and an Arab perspective was costly at Camp David. At one point, the State Department's top Arabic translator had to be drafted because "the lack of cross-cultural negotiating skills was so acute." Obama should take note, name an Arab-American and an Iranian-American to prominent roles, and beware of a team that takes him -- and the region -- back to the future. He said during the campaign that "an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel" can't be "the measure of our friendship with Israel." Those were words. Now, with Gaza blood flowing, come deeds. Iran is Job One, by Roger Cohen (NYT, October 22, 2008) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.68 2009-03-17T03:57:26Z 2009-03-17T03:58:23Z

Until he retired from the State Department earlier this year, Nicholas Burns was, as under secretary of state for political affairs, the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran. And how many times, during his three years in this role, did he meet with an Iranian? Not once. Burns wasn't allowed to. His presence was supposed to be the reward if the Iranians suspended uranium enrichment and sat down at the table. Burns, now 52, joined the State Department in 1980. He's among a generation of U.S. diplomats who have never set foot in Iran, the rising power of the Middle East, even with oil at $70 rather than double that. Let me put this bluntly: If we're serious about the Middle East, this has got to change. Wall Street has marginalized foreign policy in the U.S. election campaign, but it will return to center stage on Nov. 5. The in-box of the next president will include two intractable wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and a tight timetable, of perhaps two years, for preventing Iran from securing nuclear weapons capability. That's an Iran-dominated agenda. Apart from the nuclear issue, which has tended to override everything, long-term stability in both Iraq and Afghanistan is inconceivable without some Iranian cooperation, as is peace in Lebanon and a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Iran, Barack Obama and John McCain could scarcely be further apart. Obama has said of Iran that, "For us not to be in a conversation with them doesn't make sense." McCain has sung "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of a Beach Boys number -- a joke, no doubt, but one reflective of the confrontational tone of his foreign policy pronouncements. "Country first," the McCain campaign slogan, seems to mean "Rest of the world last." Certainly that's where Sarah Palin, his running mate with a taste for "pro-America" parts of the country, places it. Burns, like Obama, believes it's time to talk to Iran. "The U.S. needs to commit to a more ambitious diplomatic strategy," he told me. "We have a responsibility, after Iraq, before we consider the use of force, to demonstrate that every diplomatic avenue has been explored. If they come to the table and balk, we have more leverage over the Chinese and Russians to press for much tougher sanctions." It's time to drop the condition that Iran suspend enrichment before we talk. The condition serves little purpose -- Iran can always resume enrichment -- and has given the mullahs an alibi. It's also time -- next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution -- to rethink the whole U.S. approach to Iran. A good place to start would be getting inside the head of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme Iranian religious leader. The Iranian revolution was a religious uprising, but also a nationalist one against U.S. meddling in the country, including the C.I.A.-engineered 1953 coup and support for the shah. Khamenei knows that identification still underwrites his power, and that Iran's leadership of an anti-American front still counts on the Muslim street. He also knows how much Iranian power has grown in recent years, through the U.S. removal of its arch-enemy Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the ushering of fellow Shiites to power in Baghdad. He knows that Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas are now entrenched forces. He knows how stretched the U.S. is militarily. He knows how popular the nuclear program is domestically as a symbol of Iran's regional ambitions. And he knows that Israel has the bomb. These are realities. They may be unpalatable, but if there's a lesson to the Bush years, it's that dealing in illusions is unhelpful. The cost to Khamenei of a handshake with America is high. But Iran also has some shared interests with America -- in preventing a breakup of Iraq, in preventing the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, in avoiding a violent confrontation of the Sunni and Shia worlds. It wants security, more economic access and, eventually, restored diplomatic relations with the United States. All of this says to me: think big. Don't obsess about the nuclear issue, critical as it is. Get everything on the table. Be realistic, as in: We have interests. You have interests. Are there areas in which they coincide? Don't lecture. Don't moralize. Don't demand everything -- an end to the nuclear program and terrorism and Lebanese and Gazan interference -- without the means to back such demands. That's been the Bush failure. I can already hear the outrage. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president at least until elections next year, wants to wipe Israel off the map! He denies the Holocaust! Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia will race for their own bomb unless we take out the Iranian centrifuges! To which I say: Focus on today's reality, coldly. Iran does not have nuclear capacity yet. It's time to talk. And it's time to find the greatest Americans, irrespective of party, to get that talking going. As Obama has noted: "We negotiated with Stalin. We negotiated with Mao." A U.S.-Iranian Conversation, by Roger Cohen (NYT, December 11, 2008) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.67 2009-03-16T21:30:51Z 2009-03-17T03:54:38Z

The United States and Iran are talking to each other about the elimination of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. That is a good thing. On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, it shows there is nothing in the DNA of the two nations that precludes dialogue. The discussions - often bruising but never to the point of a breakup - are proceeding within the framework of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. That's an unwieldy name for something the world should cheer. The OPCW brings together 185 nations working in near total obscurity toward an April 29, 2012, deadline for the final elimination of the scourge that has brought death and agony from the fields of Flanders in World War I to the Tokyo subway in 1995. Countries representing 98 percent of the global population have adhered to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force 11 years ago. More than 40 percent of the world's 71,000 metric tons of declared chemical agents, most of them in the United States and Russia, have been destroyed. States including Albania and South Korea have already completed the destruction of their chemical weapons stockpiles. At American, Russian, Indian and other sites, work proceeds to ensure the likes of mustard gas, sarin gas and the lethal VX nerve agent are not only eliminated, but never again produced or used. "We work by consensus, and Iran and the United States are very much key figures in that," Rogelio Pfirter, the Argentine director-general of the organization told me. "Through engagement, and despite robust exchanges, we are able to move forward on a central disarmament and nonproliferation issue." The other day, at the OPCW's annual conference, I sat with Eric Javits, the widely respected U.S. ambassador, while Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini, an Iranian deputy foreign minister, spoke. Referring to Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, in attacks that left more than 100,000 Iranian casualties, Hosseini said: "As the last victim of chemical weapons, the Islamic Republic of Iran strongly believes that promoting international peace and security is subject to the realization of a world free from the threat and existence of weapons of mass destruction." Not so much as an eyebrow was raised by Javits, although Iranian centrifuges are widely believed to be spinning in the pursuit of fissionable material for a nuclear weapon. Nor did the ambassador's composure show cracks when Hosseini referred to the "chemical and nuclear weapons" of the "Zionist regime" as the "most dangerous threat to regional and international peace." Afterward, Javits described his approach to me. "I'm here to get everyone to feel like a partner," he said. Including the Iranians? "I am friendly with them, although negotiations are tough. They are committed to this organization because of what happened under Saddam." And what of Iran's Israel bashing? "Look, we've gotten results here through patient diplomacy. I don't bring up things outside the purview of this organization. An enormous lesson here is that other nations want to feel they're treated by the big guys on an equal basis. This is an example of effective multilateralism. We've neglected how to put the multilateral tool to successful use." Earlier this year, at the organization's second review conference, Javits played a decisive role in preventing a collapse. Tensions boiled over Iran's contention that the United States was trying to turn the OPCW into an antiterrorist organization focused more on chemical industry inspections aimed at ensuring nonproliferation than on destruction of existing weapons. At the 11th hour, a formula balancing the two objectives was found. "Javits is a patient listener and this is very much appreciated," Ali Reza Hajizadeh, a counselor at the Iranian embassy, told me. There are lessons here. The first is that listening is more productive than lecturing. Sure, chemical weapons are a far easier field for diplomacy than nuclear weapons because of their now limited military usefulness. But dialogue has reduced tensions and it can in the nuclear field, too. The second is that dialogue will be very tough. Iran's focus on Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons may cause discomfort in Washington, where the subject tends to be taboo, but it's impossible to understand the psychology of the Iranians without taking the Israeli bomb into account. Hearing their views directly is salutary. Obama's proposal to push for an Iranian dialogue is his single most important diplomatic proposal. The Middle East has been the one area where the OPCW has had limited success precisely because of mistrust over weapons of mass destruction. Israel, Egypt and Syria have not joined the treaty. "Israel says nothing is solved until everything is solved," Pfirter told me. "Egypt and Syria say they cannot join until the Middle East is free of weapons of mass destruction. But logic suggests that moving ahead with eliminating chemical weapons might advance peace overall and certainly benefit the people of the Middle East." Pfirter is right. To make progress on these issues, they need to be aired. As Javits put it to me, "Consensus sometimes means equal disappointment, but it's no less valuable for that." What Iran's Jews Say, by Roger Cohen (NYT, February 22, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.66 2009-03-16T18:10:28Z 2009-03-16T18:11:13Z

At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: "Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan." The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antiques dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a chandelier. I'd visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He'd sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. "The father buys, the son sells," he muttered, before inviting me to the service. Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of "Death to Israel" -- "Marg bar Esraeel" -- that punctuate life in Iran. "Let them say 'Death to Israel,' " he said. "I've been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I've visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian." The Middle East is an uncomfortable neighborhood for minorities, people whose very existence rebukes warring labels of religious and national identity. Yet perhaps 25,000 Jews live on in Iran, the largest such community, along with Turkey's, in the Muslim Middle East. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran; here in Esfahan a handful caters to about 1,200 Jews, descendants of an almost 3,000-year-old community. Over the decades since Israel's creation in 1948, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the number of Iranian Jews has dwindled from about 100,000. But the exodus has been far less complete than from Arab countries, where some 800,000 Jews resided when modern Israel came into being. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq -- countries where more than 485,000 Jews lived before 1948 -- fewer than 2,000 remain. The Arab Jew has perished. The Persian Jew has fared better. Of course, Israel's unfinished cycle of wars has been with Arabs, not Persians, a fact that explains some of the discrepancy. Still a mystery hovers over Iran's Jews. It's important to decide what's more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations -- or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity. Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran -- its sophistication and culture -- than all the inflammatory rhetoric. That may be because I'm a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it's because I'm convinced the "Mad Mullah" caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 -- a position popular in some American Jewish circles -- is misleading and dangerous. I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew. Among minorities, the Bahai -- seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel -- have suffered brutally harsh treatment. I asked Morris Motamed, once the Jewish member of the Majlis, if he felt he was used, an Iranian quisling. "I don't," he replied. "In fact I feel deep tolerance here toward Jews." He said "Death to Israel" chants bother him, but went on to criticize the "double standards" that allow Israel, Pakistan and India to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran. Double standards don't work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran's scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel's bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace -- and engagement with Tehran -- will have to take account of these points. Green Zoneism -- the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds -- has led nowhere. Realism about Iran should take account of Esfehan's ecumenical Palestine Square. At the synagogue, Benhur Shemian, 22, told me Gaza showed Israel's government was "criminal," but still he hoped for peace. At the Al-Aqsa mosque, Monteza Foroughi, 72, pointed to the synagogue and said: "They have their prophet; we have ours. And that's fine." Iran, the Jews and Germany, by Roger Cohen (NYT, March 1, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.65 2009-03-16T18:08:17Z 2009-03-16T18:09:27Z

So a Jerusalem Post article says that I'm "hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries." The Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg finds me "particularly credulous," taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that "are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies." (Thanks for that info, Jeffrey.) A conservative Web site called American Thinker, which tries to prove its name is an oxymoron, believes I would have been fooled by the Nazis' sham at the Theresienstadt camp. The indignation stems from my recent column on Iranian Jews, which said that the 25,000-strong community worships in relative tranquillity; that Persian Jews have fared better than Arab Jews; that hostility toward Jews in Iran has on occasion led to trumped-up charges against them; and that those enamored of the "Mad Mullah" caricature of Iran regard any compromise with it as a rerun of Munich 1938. This last point found confirmation in outraged correspondence from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. I was based in Berlin for three years; Germany's confrontation with the Holocaust inhabited me. Let's be clear: Iran's Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state. Munich allowed Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland. Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries. Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it's far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable. Most of Iran's population is under 30; it's an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC's new Farsi service is all the rage. Abdullah Momeni, a student opponent of the regime, told me, "The Internet is very important to us; in fact, it is of infinite importance." Iranians are not cut off, like Cubans or North Koreans. The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned the Majlis, or parliament, down. If you're thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran's new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open "soon." So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that's any comfort. For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life -- not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear -- but the vibrancy of a changing, highly educated society. This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country's Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense. One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran's Jews had brought "tears to my eyes" because "you are saying what many of us would like to hear." Far from the cradle of Middle Eastern Islamist zealotry, she suggested, "Iran -- the supposed enemy -- is the one society that has gone through its extremist fervor and is coming out the other end. It is relatively stable and socially dynamic. As my father, who continues to live there, says, 'It is the least undemocratic country in the region outside Israel.' " This notion of a "post-fervor" Iran is significant. The compromises being painfully fought out between Islam and democracy in Tehran are of seminal importance. They belie the notion of a fanatical power; they explain Jewish life. That does not mean fanaticism does not exist or that terrible crimes have not been committed, like the Iran-backed bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires 15 years ago. But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures. I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one -- the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results. It's worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not. Nor should racist demagoguery -- wherever -- prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it. Iran's China Option, by Roger Cohen (NYT, February 8, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.64 2009-03-16T18:04:49Z 2009-03-16T18:06:12Z

What Iran fears most is a Gorbachev figure, somebody from within the regime who in the name of compromise with the West ends up selling out the revolution and destroying its edifice. The jostling ahead of the June 12 presidential election -- the world's most important since America's -- must be viewed through this prism. The core debate is: can Iran manage a Chinese-style reform where its Islamic hierarchy endures through change, or does opening to America equal Soviet-style implosion? The "Death to America" chants at rallies, twinned with a punchy "Death to Israel," seem answer enough. The regime will stick to the game it knows. But Iran is rarely what it seems. It goes out of its way to mask its sophistication. Jahangir Amirhusseini, a veteran lawyer once imprisoned by the mullahs, told me, "To create trust, deception is necessary." He was serious. What he meant was politics is about artful gambits; the U.S. has favored the sledgehammer. This has proved a lousy instrument. Iranian ascendancy has coincided with American difficulty. Under President Obama, U.S. policy toward Iran should be rooted in convincing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, that the price of engagement is not extinction. Herein lies the key to the Persian theocracy over which Khamenei presides. But his rule is less than absolute. Khamenei is the largest minority shareholder (albeit one with God-given preferred stock) in a system where repression and hard-won freedoms vie, as do authoritarianism and democracy. Which brings us to the critical June election and former President Mohammad Khatami, the reformist once seen as Iran's Gorbachev-in-waiting. He wasn't. His 1997-2005 presidency left many Iranians disappointed. At the breach, he retreated. Student protests in 1999 and 2003 died before gaining traction. Still, liberalizing economic reform and dialogue were as much the Khatami hallmark as bombastic mismanagement has been that of his successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As tumbling oil compounds the cost of Ahmadinejad's crony-rewarding profligacy, and Iranians wonder where on earth (or beyond) the billions went, the announcement Sunday of Khatami's candidacy galvanized the race. Khatami laid to rest days of rumors by saying Iran's "historical demand for freedom, independence and justice" obliged him to run. It was significant that he placed freedom, an unfulfilled promise of the shah-toppling revolution, first. His chief opponent will be the incumbent, Ahmadinejad, who remains the favorite. The president's success in projecting Iran as the voice of the world's disinherited, his fast-forwarding of the nuclear program and his popular touch have impressed Khamenei. But the impetuosity that has made Ahmadinejad the Unidentified Flying Object of global politics has given the guardian of the revolution -- and many millions of voters -- pause. One theory holds that Ahmadinejad would favor Iranian glasnost in response to Obama because he believes it's not Iranian theocracy that would collapse, but America! He's been swayed by signs of capitalism following Communism onto history's trash heap. But I'm not convinced he'd ever shift from a hard line. The West's strong interest lies in stopping another Ahmadinejad term. Given that Ahmadinejad thrives on confrontation, this isn't what Obama should dish out. Vice President Joe Biden's recent patronizing tone -- "Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation" -- was dead wrong. Mostafa Tajzadeh, Khatami's former deputy interior minister, told me: "Bush did a lot of damage to the reform movement. We would welcome an immediate calming of the atmosphere from Obama, with the military option set aside." Kazem Jalali, the spokesman for the parliamentary national security committee, said America should "stop looking down from a domineering viewpoint." Before the election, Obama must declare that the U.S. does not seek regime change. He should also clarify that America wants an "honest broker" role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to supplant Bush's Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy. Such measures would help Khatami or perhaps a conservative pragmatist like Tehran's mayor, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, by undercutting Ahmadinejad's tirades. A moderate president wouldn't solve the nuclear issue (Khamenei leans toward intransigence) but would help. I wish Obama could visit the British ambassador's residence here to view the table-setting for the dinner on Nov. 30, 1943 (Churchill's 69th birthday) of the British leader, Roosevelt and Stalin. Not one Iranian was among the officials there reviewing the fate of a war-torn world. The Iranian Revolution, at 30, has independence at its core. The satellite launch, like the nuclear program, is about national pride. To open the system, without overthrowing it, which must be the U.S. aim, requires ingenious indulgence of that pride, not finger-wagging. The time for change young Iranians can believe in is well before June 12. The Magic Mountain, by Roger Cohen (NYT, February 15, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.63 2009-03-16T18:03:01Z 2009-03-16T18:03:44Z

The Alborz Mountains soar above the north side of the megalopolis that is the Iranian capital, their snowy peaks arousing dreams of evasion in people caught by the city's bottlenecks. One day I could resist them no longer. Near Evin prison, where thousands languish and executions are frequent, a trail begins. Following a rushing stream, it winds up past teahouses full of the fragrant smoke of hookahs and stalls offering fresh pomegranate juice, into the bracing wild. Iran's pursuit of liberty, unbowed since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, remains unfulfilled. The Islamic revolution has not birthed a totalitarian state; all sorts of opinions are heard. But it has created a society whose ultimate bond is fear. Disappearance into some unmarked room is always possible. So the freedom of the mountains is double in nature. For young Iranians, the Alborz trails are a physical escape from the city where jobs are elusive, but also a mental one -- from self-censorship, from monochrome dress, and from the morality police ever alert for a female neck revealed, hands fleetingly held, or hair cascading from a headscarf. Their youthful voices open up. They sing to the haunting sound of the kamancheh, a bowed fiddle. They bellow into the gullies. They recite the poetry of the great Hafez. They allow fingertips, and more, to touch. Their camaraderie is strong: bowling alone is not what repressive societies do. Iran's force -- a population younger than its 30-year-old revolution -- is palpable. At a teahouse around the 1,900-meter mark, I fell into conversation with a couple, Narges Azizi, 23, and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Behnam Moradi. Students of graphics and design, they hike once a week. She was wearing a loose-fitting blue sweat suit, a sufficient affront to Islamic dress code to have caused her detention back in the city. "They took my photo, face to the camera, both profiles," Azizi said. "My parents had to get me." I'd heard a similar story from a divorced woman in her mid-30s stopped for wearing another proscribed garment -- a skirt -- even though it reached to her ankles. She was still seething from the humiliation of the experience, parental rescue and all. "Our relationship is like stealing," Moradi said. "It's worse than stealing," Azizi said. Highly educated, lacking the means to marry or acquire their own apartment, dodging parental reproach and dour governmental strictures, dissatisfied but not to the point of rebellion, this young couple is typical enough of a nation in a halfway house of Islam and modernity. Iran's emblem should be a turbaned mullah on a motor scooter talking on a cell phone; or a young woman who has fashioned a hijab into an article of Parisian elegance. "Should we leave?" Moradi asked me. "Not if you're prepared to be patient." "Change could take two generations," he said. One is more likely if the United States shows restraint. I thought back to a senior cleric, Mohsen Gharavian, whom I'd met in the holy city of Qom. He'd seemed at ease expounding on the union of Islam, politics and freedom until the subject of women's attire came up. "Prostitution is a career for some people in some countries, but here we cannot bear that," Gharavian said. "So the reason this looseness in dressing is not admitted is that this concept may lead gradually to a negation of our values and bring the preconditions for the spread of prostitution." Right. Yet the revolution of which this cleric is a bastion has empowered women. In the end, it was only Ayatollah Khomeini who could tell traditional families they had to educate their daughters. Today, as my colleague Nazila Fathi recently noted, more than 60 percent of university students are women. Laws cannot forever lag the reality of an emancipated mindset. The irony of the Islamic Revolution is that it has created a very secular society within the framework of clerical rule. The shah enacted progressive laws for women unready for them. Now the opposite is true: progressive women face confining jurisprudence. At some point something must give. That is why I suggested Azizi and Moradi be patient. That is also why it is essential that the West engage with Iran and avoid the one thing that could set back the country's inexorable evolution: an act of war that would increase repression and embolden religious nationalism. It's not easy to be patient. Service in the Basiji, the pro-government volunteer militia, is often a surer path to a good job than a college degree. Still, up in the Alborz, Iranians' long-held dream of freedom seems within reach. At 2,100 meters, I saw two young women with their hair down. Afraid? They laughed. Higher still, I met Marjan Safiyar, 20, an electrical engineering student. She looked chic in a tight-fitting silvery jacket. Up here, she said, "I breathe." I asked her if she thought Iran would change. "No," she laughed, "Our men don't have the courage." But its women are another story. They are reason to see Iran as one of the most hopeful societies in the Middle East rather than one of the most threatening. The Unthinkable Opton, by Roger Cohen (NYT, February 4, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.62 2009-03-16T18:01:15Z 2009-03-16T18:01:55Z

When it comes to Iran, the choice of metaphor is limited. "I would never take a military option off the table," Barack Obama declared during the campaign, a position unchanged since he became president. "We are not taking any option off the table at all," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at her Senate confirmation hearing. As for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, he tweaked the mantra this way: "The military option must be kept on the table." All three have also talked up dialogue with Iran. But the question, more pressing since Iran fired its Islamic satellite into orbit this week, remains: what in reality is this threat of force and what purpose does it serve? I've read think-tank scenarios that have the United States bombing Iran's nuclear installations at Natanz, hitting Iranian military bases to limit the response, imposing a naval blockade and infiltrating special forces from Iraq or Afghanistan. After eight Bush-Cheney years, such plans exist at the Pentagon. To which my response is: Hang on a second. The United States' role in the 1953 coup here that deposed the Middle East's first democratically elected government lives in memory. Any U.S. attack would propel 56-year-old Iranian demons into overdrive and lock in an America-hating Islamic Republic for the next half-century. From Basra through Kabul to the Paris suburbs, Muslim rage would erupt. The Iranian Army is not the Israeli Army, but its stubborn effectiveness is in no doubt. Rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas, and newly tested Iranian long-range missiles, would hit Israel. Chaos would threaten Persian Gulf states, oil markets and the grinding U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. war front, in the first decade of the 21st century, at a time of national economic disaster, would stretch thousands of miles across the Muslim world, from western Iraq to eastern Afghanistan. It is doubtful that a bombing campaign would end Iran's nuclear ambitions, so all the above might be the price paid for putting off an Iranian bomb -- or mastery of the production of fissile material -- by a year or so. In short, the U.S. military option is not an option. It is unthinkable. This is the poisoned chalice handed Obama by Bush, who responded to Iranian help in Afghanistan in 2001 by consigning Iran to the axis of evil, rebuffed credible approaches by the former moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, and undermined European diplomacy. No, the real "Red Line" will be set by Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leading candidate to become prime minister after elections next week, has said "everything that is necessary" will be done to stop Iran going nuclear. I believe him. Never again is never again. There's no changing that Israeli lens, however distorting it may be in a changed world. That could mean an Israeli attack on Iran within a year. If the U.S. military option is unthinkable, equally unthinkable is the United States abandoning Israel. That is Obama's dilemma. Netanyahu is right about one thing. The Iranian nuclear program, which Iran implausibly says is for civilian purposes, is "the greatest challenge" now facing 21st-century leaders. If Obama fails, his "new era of peace" will become the bitterest phrase of his inaugural. I asked Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and secretary of one of its highest state organs, the Expediency Discernment Council, how he sees the U.S. threat. "America will not do anything military within the next 10 years," he said. "What the U.S. needs to do now is regroup, repair, reconstruct." And an Israeli attack? "Maybe, but it would be one of its stupidest decisions." There is little time to lose. Vice President Joseph Biden and senior Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani, the speaker of Parliament, will mingle at the Munich Security Conference this weekend. They should talk. But only Obama can overcome the gridlock. He must break with the Bush years in more than words. That requires a solemn declaration that the United States recognizes and no longer seeks to destabilize the Islamic Republic -- an implicit renunciation of force. A threat, in Iranian eyes, can only come from a domineering power, the very U.S. attitude this country cannot abide. I think the tightened sanctions being contemplated by Obama are a bad idea. The sanctions don't work; they enrich the regime cronies who circumvent them. Plunging oil prices are a cheaper weapon. They will concentrate Iranian minds as the economy nose-dives. Decisiveness is foreign to the many-faceted Iranian system. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader and ultimate arbiter, will not easily be swayed from a course that would shred the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, of which Iran is a signatory, among other disasters. But reason can still prevail. It was Rezai, back in the late 1980s, who wrote Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, telling him the course he had vowed never to alter -- prosecuting the war against Iraq until victory -- had to be abandoned or disaster would follow. Khomeini changed his mind. Peace came. Khamenei's ultimate duty is to preserve the revolution by being true to Khomeini's example. Obama might, obliquely, remind him of that. Iran's Inner America, by Roger Cohen (NYT, February 11, 2009) tag:american-iranian.org,2009:/publications/articles//2.61 2009-03-16T17:58:55Z 2009-03-16T17:59:44Z

The young Revolutionary Guardsman, in his light tan uniform, was all smiles. "I had longed to see a real American," he said, extending a hand. We were standing near the shrine to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the man who inspired the Islamic Revolution whose defense is the mission of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards. "And, what do you think?" "On the surface, great," Mohammad Piri, 21, said. "But your government has done things that make me pessimistic." Thirty years of noncommunication create a lot of mistrust. The mistaken U.S. shooting down in 1988 of an Iran Air Airbus, killing 290 people, is often cited. Conspiracy theories abound. That the radical Sunni Taliban was an American creation designed to discomfort Shiite Iran is a near universal conviction. Another Guardsman, Jaafar Dehghani, 22, stepped forward. "We can defend our soil with an M-1 rifle," he said. "We have God on our side." He pointed to the hundreds of thousands of graves of young soldiers killed defending Khomeini's Islamic Republic in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. "If I'd been alive then, I'd be lying here." Iran, on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, is full of defiance and suspicion of President Obama's motives in reaching out to Tehran. But it is equally full of longing. Most people are under 30. Like these soldiers, they thirst for contact with the outside world and, above all, an America that looms with all the power of myth. The Great Satan is great also in his power to exert fascination. "Death to America" has become background noise, as interesting as piped elevator music. The revolution freed Iranians from the brutality of the shah's secret police, Savak, and delivered a home-grown society modeled on the tenets of Islam in place of one pliant to America's whim. But like all revolutions, it has also disappointed. Freedom has ebbed and flowed since 1979. Of late, it has ebbed. Beneath the hijab, that is to say beneath the surface of things, frustrations multiply. Women sometimes raise their hands to their necks to express a feeling of suffocation. Hard-pressed men, working 12-hour days to make enough to get by, are prone to hysterical laughter with its hint of desperation. Competing pressures bear down on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and behind him the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They know that with unemployment at 14 percent (and rising), inflation at 26 percent, oil revenues expected to plunge by about two-thirds this year, and the country's oil and gas infrastructure in desperate need of modernization, opening to the West and its technology makes sense. They also know Iran is composed of two worlds: the surface and the subterranean. The former is placid; the latter is hungry for more of the freedom the revolution promised. This, too, speaks for an engagement that might over time end Iran's bipolar state. On the other hand, a revolutionary government that deprives itself of its great enemy is one that has lost the core of its galvanizing propaganda. Opening equals risk. This is the background to Ahmadinejad's offer to "hold talks based on mutual respect" with a United States he continued to criticize. It came in response to Obama's best statement on Iran to date -- one devoid of threats and one that spoke of the dangers, but not the unacceptability, of a nuclear Iran. Mutual respect, a phrase Obama also used, begins with that. As Iranians often note, carrots and sticks are for donkeys. The young soldiers pointed to how the United States backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, another act of American perfidy. "Everyone was with Saddam," Dehghani said. "Except Syria," I suggested, which prompted a guffaw. "The Arabs are chickens," he said. "Just look at what Egypt did about Gaza. Those big-bellied Arabs, you take up a stick and they run away." Scratch the surface and there's no love lost between Persians and Arabs, another reason to be careful in distinguishing Iranian rhetoric, which can seem monolithic, from Iran's many-shaded reality. Dehghani offered me a bowl of Ash, a soup of noodles, chickpeas and vegetables. "Why not try to do something about your own country rather than going around the world waging war?" he asked. I told him I thought Obama was trying to do just that. Then Dehghani told me that his father wanted him to stay in the Revolutionary Guards because there's money to be made -- Ahmadinejad has channeled funds and jobs their way -- but he was more interested in starting his own business. That's typical enough. Iranians are property-buying, car-mad, entrepreneurial consumers with a taste for the latest brands. Forget about nukes. Think Nikes. A few days after this meeting, I found myself on the Tehran subway. A bunch of youths started smiling and pointing. "This guy's an American!" they exclaimed. There was no menace, only curiosity. A young woman in a black hijab was standing near me. Abruptly, she looked me straight in the eye and said in English: "Where are you from?" "New York." "Oh." And she smiled. America, think again about Iran.