(Roger Cohen | New York Times OpEd | 5 November 2009) — In his last month as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei finds himself at the explosive crux of the world’s nuclear politics, ferrying messages between the Obama administration and Tehran. “They are talking through me,” he says.

Talking is something, even through a mediator, given all the poisonous U.S.-Iranian history, but time is short. President Obama’s Iran outreach is on the line in the days before ElBaradei departs on Nov. 30. It’s critical that Obama succeed or a futile confrontation-sanctions scenario will be locked in. Any vestigial hopes for a more peaceful Middle East will recede.

Protesters, Iran’s brave campaigners for a freer and more open country, are chanting, “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us.” That must hurt in the Oval Office. The window is narrowing for the president to show that outreach can normalize the psychotic U.S.-Iranian relationship where confrontation only comforts it. I still believe normalization is the last best hope for Iranian reform.

So Obama is right to persist, right to favor the head over the heart. But he needs an interlocutor. And right now he’s got a foreign-policy vacuum in Tehran.

Last month, it seemed there was a deal: Iran ships out most of its known low-enriched uranium — about 1,200 kilograms — and eventually gets fuel rods for a reactor producing medical isotopes. The agreement buys time. It slows the noisy, fast-ticking Israeli clocks by removing the stuff Iran could use to make a bomb.

But, as ElBaradei told me in an interview, “there’s total distrust on the part of Iran.” This has now expressed itself in a demand for “guarantees.” Iran has not balked by demanding that its uranium be sent out in phases — as some reports suggested — but by seeking cast-iron assurances that the fuel will come back.

“Whether it’s one shipment is not the issue,” ElBaradei said. “The issue is timing: whether the uranium goes out and then some time later they get the fuel, as was agreed in Geneva, or whether it only goes at the same time as the fuel is delivered.” He added: “If it is simultaneous it would not defuse the crisis, and the whole idea is to defuse the crisis.”

Compromise ideas are being explored. ElBaradei has talked to Obama, who is driving Iran policy, several times. He has talked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, weakened by the disputed June 12 election, has emerged as a proponent of what would be an immensely popular opening to America.

“There are a lot of ideas,” ElBaradei told me. “One is to send the material” — Iran’s uranium — “to a third country, which could be a friendly country to Iran, and it stays there. Park it in another state, then later bring in the fuel. The issue is to get it out, and so create the time and space to start building trust.”

It’s essential to secure “something like a year” between the uranium’s exit and the fuel’s arrival. This would open the way for “direct engagement between Iran and the U.S. There is no other way. Six-party talks can continue but the heavy lifting can only be done by the U.S.”

ElBaradei’s message to Tehran: “This is an opportunity I have not seen before and it will not happen again.” His message to Washington: “Be patient.”

The problem is the disarray in Tehran. It is payback time for Ahmadinejad. Everyone he’s slighted — like Ali Larijani, the powerful speaker of the Majlis — is gunning for him. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, went along with the outline of the Geneva deal but has begun to equivocate.

The Islamic Republic needs to move on. It has sullied and weakened itself in recent months. It needs to put an end to the paralyzing behind-the-scenes fight over who would claim credit for any rapprochement with America. It must recognize, as ElBaradei put it, that “Obama is really sticking his neck out.”

Diplomacy is most useful between enemies. There is no alternative. ElBaradei said: “Sanctions are an expression of frustration,” adding that “in the long run they will not resolve the issue.” That’s right.

A stick exists. It is the volatile state of post-June-12 Iranian society. Protest was not quashed but went underground. Every now and then it flares; that will not stop. Obama’s outreach has unsettled Iran, produced this new fluidity.

Now it’s overwhelmingly in Iran’s interest, and America’s, to do the deal. For Iran, it’s a way out of debilitating isolation; for Washington it’s a first step in Obama’s bold quest for a new Middle Eastern order.

“I hope Iran will not miss this opportunity and will take a very small risk for peace. Otherwise everybody will lose.” ElBaradei said.

He also said inspectors had found “nothing to be worried about” in the underground facility at Qum built in secret by Iran. “The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things. It’s a hole in a mountain.”

Bunkers or breakthrough? A Nobel laureate who has the trust of both sides will be gone in a few weeks. Use him or lose.

The Islamic Republic’s revolution may be at a crossroads. It’s a possible opening for the U.S.

(Robin Wright and Robert Litwak | Los Angeles Times | 13 September 2009) - Three decades of assumptions about Iran — including the premises behind Washington’s recent outreach to Tehran — have been transformed by its stunning uprising. It’s time for a policy rethink.

The Obama administration’s offer to engage was the right idea. But the theocracy’s brutal crackdown on the opposition since the June 12 presidential election, followed by the purge of senior politicians in show trials and an alarming increase in general executions, marks a turning point for Iran’s revolution. U.S. policy now needs a broader approach. Recent history offers relevant guidelines.

The three most important revolutions of the 20th century — for their political innovation and impact — happened in the Soviet Union, China and Iran. At the peak of revolutionary paranoia, the Soviet Union and China witnessed turmoil similar to what is happening today in Iran. Soon afterward, however, Moscow and Beijing altered course. Both began the move from defiant revolutionary regime to a normal state willing to work within the international order and mended relations with the United States.

The shift in both the Soviet Union and China was partly tied to the maturation of revolutions, as Crane Brinton outlined in “The Anatomy of Revolution,” which leads to the final stage of “convalescence” that plays out over years, even decades. The Islamic Republic is on the same trajectory. Its current uprising pits those trying to transform Iran into a normal state against unrelenting revolutionaries. The men and women now on trial have made the transition, in varying degrees, in their political thinking.

In their civil disobedience since June, millions of Iranians also have indicated that they’re ready for normalcy. The U.S. should now factor them into policy.

The pattern of revolutions suggests, however, that a catalyst is required to trigger the critical transition. The spark has traditionally been one of three factors: a geo-strategic challenge, economic necessity or political exigency. In other words, a revolution needing to convert an enemy into an ally to survive.

In the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin launched show trials of Communist Party officials from 1936 to 1938, when vast numbers were dispatched to gulags or executed. Yet pressure from the Nazi threat combined with the costs of war spawned a U.S.-Soviet alliance and Stalin’s meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Stalin was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who started de-Stalinization. The revolution’s later undoing began after Mikhail Gorbachev concluded that the Soviet system of political control was no longer viable in the information-based global economy and that basic changes were essential to survive.

In the 1960s, China had all the trappings of a rogue state. It defied the international order. It detonated an atomic bomb in 1964. And in 1966, it launched the Cultural Revolution, a period of chaotic political and social upheaval when Mao Tse-tung ruthlessly purged alleged “bourgeois liberals” in the Communist Party. Yet in 1969, the collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance followed by troop buildups along their mutual border led Mao to consider the realpolitik of normalizing relations with Washington. Henry Kissinger’s secret 1971 trip led to President Nixon’s historic visit in 1972.

Neither Stalin nor Mao became America’s friends. But those encounters — under conditions of strategic need — did pave the way for meaningful engagement.

Iran’s three most specific overtures to the U.S. fit the same pattern. In 1986, at a desperate juncture in its war with Iraq, Tehran was willing to deal secretly with both the United States and Israel to acquire weaponry, namely TOW anti-tank missiles. Even after this arms-for-hostages swap was revealed, the regime still sent a secret emissary to the White House to probe further potential.

In the early 1990s, Iran offered the most lucrative petroleum deal in its history to Conoco, to develop offshore oil and gas fields to help pay for postwar reconstruction and modernization demanded by a war-weary population.

In 2001, after the U.S. toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban, Iran cooperated with Washington in crafting a new government. After the U.S. invasion toppled Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003, Tehran put out feelers, prodded partly by the Swiss, about resolving differences with Washington. Flanked by U.S. troops on key borders, Tehran wanted to ensure it was not next.

Three U.S. administrations did not exploit opportunities when Iran needed to play and reached out. The challenge now is to create a confluence of factors that will make Tehran again feel that a real deal with Washington is in its interest. Then engagement has a real shot.

Under the current circumstances, it doesn’t.

Diplomacy centered primarily on Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely to work. The regime as well as many protesters view pressure to end uranium enrichment — a process to provide fuel for peaceful nuclear energy that can be subverted to develop a nuclear weapon — as a challenge to Iran’s sovereignty and a denial of its economic development. Under the current circumstances, the regime is more likely to engage in a process — largely to get the world off its back — that would not produce enduring substance or real resolution.

And if that diplomatic tactic doesn’t work, simply slapping on more international sanctions (given stonewalling by Russia and China on anything tough) also seems unlikely to alone squeeze Iran into cooperation.

Yet a military strike is also likely to backfire, instead rallying Persian nationalism around the regime, just as Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion mobilized support for the revolution at a time it was running out of steam.

The Obama administration would be well-advised to step back and recalculate what conditions would lead Iran to feel that the benefits of beginning the transition to a normal state outweigh the costs of sticking to the revolutionary zealotry increasingly rejected by its own people.

Robin Wright, author of “Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East,” has covered Iran since 1973. Robert Litwak is the former director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council. Both are at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

(Hossein Askari and Trita Parsi | New York Times Op-Ed | 14 August 2009) – In an effort to squeeze Iran into submission over its nuclear policy, Congress and the White House are edging toward a gasoline embargo. This would do nothing to force Iran into submission. In fact, it would be a blessing for the hard-line government to once again be able to point to a foreign threat to justify domestic repression and consolidate its base at a time when opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is increasing among conservatives. An effective gasoline embargo can only be implemented through a naval blockade. This would require U.N. Security Council approval — a tortuous process with no certain outcome. An embargo without U.N. approval is an act of war according to international law, and Iran has declared that it would be met with force.

But even if the Security Council were to miraculously unite, success would still be out of reach. The economics of a gasoline embargo simply doesn’t make sense. Iran imports roughly 40 percent of its domestic gasoline consumption at world prices and then sells it along with domestically refined gasoline at a government-subsidized price of about 40 cents per gallon. As a result, domestic gasoline consumption is high. It is also smuggled and sold to neighboring countries.

Over the past 10 years, this policy has cost Iran in the range of 10 to 20 percent of its G.D.P. annually, depending on world prices and the government-mandated pump price. Yes, a whopping 10 to 20 percent of G.D.P. In need of additional revenues, the regime has wanted to eliminate this subsidy, raise the price to world levels and reduce consumption, but has been paralyzed by the specter of a domestic backlash.

Even assuming that a gasoline embargo would be effective, what would be its result? Consumption would decline by 40 percent and government revenues would go up, because no payment would be needed for gasoline imports.

If Tehran allowed the reduced supply of gasoline to be sold at a price that would equate demand to supply, the price would increase to a level that would eliminate the subsidy, meaning no subsidy for imported gasoline and no subsidy for domestically refined gasoline. The government would have more revenue to spend elsewhere. The sanctions would have done what Tehran has wanted to do for years and the government would not be held responsible!

What about the political fallout? Proponents of the embargo believe that increased economic pressure would cause Iranians to revolt against their unpopular rulers. This is a fundamental misreading of the psychology of an embargoed people.

Iranians have suffered tremendous hardships under the Islamic Republic. And while the Iranian economy is in tatters today, Iranians have seen much worse times. During the Iran-Iraq War, they faced unprecedented economic hardships. This did not ignite a popular uprising.

What caused Iranians to rise up two months ago was not economic hardship, but anger over the fraudulent election.

If the back of the Iranian economy is broken, the first casualty will be hope. Economic misery will kill people’s faith in a better future. The result will be political apathy. And rather than blaming Mr. Ahmadinejad, Iranians are likely to blame the United States.

Moreover, Iran’s ruling hard-liners are in disarray. The politics of fear is their bread and butter; they have long benefited from invoking foreign plots and Washington’s discredited regime-change policy. But now — with President Obama’s new outreach to Iran — the hard-liners have lost their 9/11. President Obama has deprived them of their perennial boogeyman.

This has helped the opposition find the maneuverability to challenge Iran’s vote-robbers. The hard-liners have no credible threat to rally around. Their disgraceful show trials on Iranian TV reveal their desperation. This has not only allowed fissures between various factions in Iran to grow, but also increased tensions among the conservatives themselves.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is desperately in need of a threat to help consolidate his conservative base and lend credibility to accusations of conspiracy against his moderate opposition. Imposing a gasoline embargo could be his last, best hope. Congress and the White House should think long and hard before throwing a lifeline to Iran’s vote-robbers.

Hossein Askari is professor of international business and international affairs at the George Washington University. Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council and author of “Treacherous Alliance — The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.”