Tag: Nuclear weapons
Right move, wrong reasons
President Trump’s walking away from his summit with Kim Jong-un has won praise from many, including Democrats and me. Trump was unwilling to give Kim the sanctions relief he wanted for the limits Kim was willing to accept on North Korea’s nuclear program. All eminently reasonable. Certainly Kim was offering far less than what the Iranians agreed to, in a deal Trump condemned and from which he withdrew.
But there is a problem. Trump is still thinking he can get Kim to give up all his nuclear weapons, in exchange for economic benefits, especially foreign investment. Neither proposition is credible.
Nuclear weapons are Kim’s guarantee of regime survival. That’s why the US intelligence community has been doubting he would ever give them up. South Korea and the US need to be extra cautious in dealing with him so long as Kim has the capability of using them. Precisely what Kim was offering is unclear, but it definitely was not the surrender of all his nuclear capabilities. He hasn’t even provided the inventory of his nuclear infrastructure required to begin a serious conversation.
Just as important: Kim has no interest in opening the Hermit Kingdom to the kind of foreign investment Trump has been offering. He doesn’t want Trump-style hotels, American tourists, or sharply increased standards of living for the North Korean worker. His is a totalitarian regime that demands loyalty above all, not economic development or free media. His visit with the Vietnamese after the Hanoi summit signaled his real interest: maintaining his personal monopoly on politics while allowing limited private enterprise. It’s the Chinese model, more or less, of authoritarian capitalism, but without foreign direct investment.
The US needs to keep Kim’s goals in mind as it gets ready for another try at an agreement. He has his red lines. While Kim still holds absolute power in North Korea, we are not going to get the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization (CVID in the trade) we ultimately seek. At best we’ll get some limits on future production of nuclear weapons and missiles in exchange for limited sanctions relief, in the context of a process that has more far-reaching goals.
Even that may be more than we can hope for unless the sanctions regime is restored to its previous strength and tightened further. That would require Chinese and Russian cooperation that has been evaporating. Beijing isn’t going to get back on board until the tariff war is ended. Trump will soon be accepting much less than he hoped for on that front. Moscow is a tougher case: Putin will want a price for any enhanced cooperation on North Korea. Relief from sanctions on Russia will surely be on the table in that negotiation, but the Congress stands in the way of the loosening Trump would like to provide to Putin.
I doubt though that Trump will be looking any time soon for an agreement on the North Korean nuclear program. More likely he’ll hope that we forget Pyongyang has nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them to the US. He hyped that threat when he thought doing so could give him an easy win. Now that Kim is happy with the domestic and international legitimacy he achieved by meeting twice with the President of the United States, it will be much more difficult to achieve any agreement. Trump made the right move but for the wrong reasons. Kim outplayed him.
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Failure is what he does best
I agree with Susan Rice. President Trump did the right thing to walk away from his talks with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi:
The problem is Trump shouldn’t have been in Hanoi at all. Kim got what he needed, the photo-op that shows his people he can deal with he President of the United States on an equal basis:
Trump claims Kim has promised to continue his moratorium on nuclear and missile testing, but development efforts will certainly continue without international inspections or even an inventory of materials and equipment. The US will keep the sanctions in place, but they have been fraying. Neither Russia nor China is likely to be maximally cooperative on sanctions against North Korea given their parlous relations with the US.
But the problems with the deal Trump is trying to cut go deeper. Trump has been dangling economic development based on foreign investment as bait for Kim to give up his nuclear program. Kim knows that foreign investment would require far-reaching judicial and economic reforms impossible in a totalitarian state. He is doing far better on his own by allowing the gradual evolution of private economic activity while maintaining the repressive apparatus that keeps him in power. Even small moves like allowing private gardens have had a dramatically positive impact on food supply.
Kim also returned home from Hanoi with a presidential reprieve for the murder of a US citizen:
Did Trump press Kim on holding someone responsible for Warmbier’s death? Not at all.
Trump is once again reduced to distracting us from failure: he claimed before leaving Hanoi that the US had somehow intervened to cool escalating tensions between India and Pakistan and that Jared Kushner’s phantom Middle East peace plan would emerge soon, because the US has cut off aid for the Palestinians. Neither claim is credible.
Yesterday was a bad day for Trump not only in Hanoi but in Washington, where his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen made all to clear who and what the President is: racist, conman, and cheat. Republicans are busily attacking Cohen’s credibility, as he has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress previously. But they are not discussing the merits of Cohen’s charges, which would require a defense of Trump that would be difficult to mount.
Trump will now try to cut a trade deal with China. The tariff war he triggered is causing real pain in rural America, where part of Trump’s base lives. He also needs Beijing’s help with Pyongyang. He will cave on the tariffs and claim victory, then try to distract attention, maybe with an effort to begin to build his unneeded but much wanted wall on the southern border, triggering a raft of lawsuits and screams from whichever department of government he takes the money from. That effort too will fail, but Trump will move on to something else. Failure is what he does best.
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Good and bad news
The good news is that the UK Labour Party is signaling it will back a second Brexit referendum. The bad news is that Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, partly responsible for negotiating the nuclear deal, has resigned.
Brexit: It has been apparent for some time now that the United Kingdom will be far worse off after it leaves the European Union. In fact, it is unlikely even to remain the United Kingdom, as Scotland and Northern Ireland could have good reasons for breaking up Her Majesty’s realm. Factories and financial institutions are fleeing. It is inconceivable that London can get a better trade deal with the US–or anyone else–acting alone rather than as a part of a more than 500-million person free trade area. Britain’s geopolitical weight is also vastly magnified inside the European Union compared to what it would be outside.
The problem has been how to cancel Brexit without defying the 2016 advisory referendum that launched it. Prime Minister May has been promising to deliver what the vote asked for by a margin of about 3.5 percentage points. Polls now indicate that Brexit might well be defeated in another referendum, if only because of demographic changes in the last three years. But a lot also depends on wording and the (unpredictable) political and economic circumstances in which a second referendum takes place. Nor is it clear yet whether Labour has the support in parliament to call a new referendum, though the defection of members from both Labour and the Conservatives in recent days increases the odds.
Zarif: The Iranian Foreign Minister resigned the same day he failed to appear in a video of Bashar al Assad meeting with the Supreme Leader. Whether that caused the resignation, or he had already resigned, is not clear, but Zarif was the relatively outward-looking face of the Iranian regime. His resignation will raise doubts about whether Iran intends to continue to comply with the nuclear deal, despite the American withdrawal and the failure of Europe to deliver the economic benefits anticipated. With Zarif out, a move by Tehran to abrogate the deal entirely is a step closer.
Some Americans would welcome that, as it might enable Washington to get the Europeans back in line and squeeze Tehran harder with sanctions. But it also opens the possibility of an Iranian push to develop nuclear weapons, sooner rather than later. Certainly anyone watching how well President Trump treats nuclear-armed Kim Jong-un could argue that Iran would be better off with a nuclear deterrent. The problem with that notion is Israel, which not only has nuclear weapons but might be inclined to use them to prevent Iran from getting close to a deployable nuclear weapon. Yes, it is possible that a deterrence relationship might emerge, but in the meanwhile the world could become a very dangerous place.
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Insincerity and mendacity
President Trump’s State of the Union address, delivered last night, was the opening salvo in his re-election campaign, as Mara Liasson put it on NPR this morning:
Trying to appear calm and “presidential,” Trump appealed for unity while doubling down on some of the most divisive issues in American politics: his proposed extension of the wall on the Mexican border, his appeal to the Democrats not to investigate his campaign and administration, and his attempt at rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The calm delivery from the Teleprompter won’t last past his next tweet.
Some of what he said was downright scary: he suggested the US could have peace only if the investigations stop. The logic is all too clear: if the Democrats and Special Counsel pursue wrongdoing, the President might respond by taking the country to war. Is this what he intended? Impossible to tell, since he is anything but logical. But lots of leaders do go to war to distract from domestic difficulties, and Trump is a master of distraction. He also often says what others never vocalize. Was he threatening war as a response to domestic political challenges?
Trump doubled down on some other bad ideas: he vowed to stick with the tariff war against China, he pledged to outspend Russia in developing intermediate range nuclear forces, and he announced 3750 more troops will be sent to the southern border to meet a non-existent flood of illegal immigrants. The tariff war is clearly a violation of America’s World Trade Organization commitments, a nuclear arms race with Russia is not where America needs to go, and the use of the US Army to roll out barbed wire (it is prohibited from law enforcement functions) is one of the most expensive and useless ways to protect the border, apart from the border wall. There is no sign whatsoever that Trump has moderated his radical and unfounded approaches to trade, defense, and immigration.
Syria and Afghanistan, America’s two biggest wars at present, got short shrift. Trump reiterated his commitment to bringing the troops home from Syria without however any idea of what will happen after they leave. In Afghanistan, he referenced the negotiations with the Taliban but also gave little idea of the strategy for what happens after withdrawal. Trump is in effect declaring victory and getting out of both wars–the uproar such an approach would have caused were a Democratic president pursuing it would be deafening. The Senate has objected on a bipartisan basis to these announced withdrawals, but there is little indication Trump is listening.
The misstatements and abuses of facts were legion. The most egregious surround his claim of credit for the reasonably good state of the US economy. In fact, average monthly job growth has declined slightly from President Obama’s second term. Ditto his claim of credit for the increase in US oil and gas production, which started under Obama. He even boasted that there are more women in Congress than ever before but failed to note that they are mostly Democrats. The number of Republican women in Congress has actually declined.
For me, perhaps the iconic mendacity of this State of the Union is contained in this sentence:
If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.
There is of course no way of knowing how Hillary Clinton might have handled Pyongyang, but we do know that the only President who has loudly threatened war against North Korea is Donald Trump. And we also know that there is no sign whatsoever that Kim is giving up either his nuclear weapons or his intercontinental ballistic missiles, despite the blandishments Trump is offering. Trump failed to get anything substantial from Kim at, and since, their first meeting. So what is he doing? Scheduling another meeting late this month. Trump is a great flim flam salesman but a truly terrible negotiator.
Forty per cent of the American public is still fooled, even if the insincerity and mendacity are obvious.
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Peace Picks December 10 – 16
- Reflections on the Middle East in 2018 | Tuesday, December 11 | 12 pm – 1:30 pm | Middle East Institute and Arab American Institute | 1319 18th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Arab American Institute (AAI) are pleased to host James Zogby (Co-founder and President, AAI and Director, Zogby Research Services) to reflect on his latest poll of perspectives from across the Middle East and North Africa. The report includes the opinions of 8,628 adults from eight Arab countries as well as Turkey and Iran on the current landscape of employment opportunities, confidence in governmental institutions, and the future of Palestine. The poll also assessed regional attitudes towards the U.S.’s role in the region, the Iran Nuclear Deal, the region’s refugee crisis, and the fight against extremism.
Joining James Zogby to discuss these findings are Nadia Bilbassy(DC Bureau Chief, Al Arabiya News), Steven Cook (Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations), and Alex Vatanka (Senior Fellow, MEI).
The poll and resulting report were organized by the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The findings are available for use by the public on the website of Zogby Research Services.
2. The Open Society and its enemies in South Korea: from Right Authoritarianism – to Left? | Tuesday, December 11 | 3 pm – 5 pm | American Enterprise Institute | 1789 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
The North Korean nuclear crisis and the US–Republic of Korea (ROK) military alliance dominate international coverage of the Korean Peninsula, but what about South Korea itself? South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administration has reportedly clamped down on media outlets, restricted freedom of speech, and encouraged partisanship in the judiciary and civil service.
Is the ROK government on a path to limit freedoms in the South? Or is this all just politics as usual in a democracy with different rules from our own? Please join AEI for a discussion on the domestic politics of South Korea and their implications for the ROK, the US, and North Korea.
Agenda
2:45 PM
Registration
3:00 PM
Panel: Toward illiberal democracy? South Korea under the Moon administration
Panelists:
Jean Lee, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Tara O, Pacific Forum; Institute for Corean-America Studies
Joshua Stanton, One Free Korea
Moderator:
Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI
4:10 PM
Conversation: The open society and its enemies in Korea: Reckoning with the ironies of history
Participants:
Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI
Sung-Yoon Lee, Tufts University
5:00 PM
Adjournment
3. Resilience in Conflict: Lessons from a Youth Exchange with the Dalai Lama | Wednesday, December 12 | 10 am – 11 am | US Institute of Peace | 2301 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20037 | Register Here
The world’s most violent conflicts are being fought within its most youthful populations. In the five countries that suffered nearly 80 percent of recent deaths from violent extremism, half of all people were younger than 22. The youth in these countries are also some of their communities’ most effective peacebuilders and best hopes for breaking cycles of violence. What does it take for these young leaders to overcome crisis, conflict, and displacement? Please join the U.S. Institute of Peace on December 12 for a streamed forum with thought leader and youth leader participants from USIP’s Youth Leaders’ Exchange with His Holiness the Dalai Lama as they share their expertise, discuss what it takes to build inner resilience and, crucially, examine how to strategically apply it to peacebuilding.
In the third year of the Exchange, USIP’s Generation Change program brought 27 youth leaders from 12 countries to Dharamsala, India, where they enhanced their peacebuilding skills through trainings in conflict management, leadership, and prejudice awareness and reduction. They engaged His Holiness the Dalai Lama on issues ranging from cultivating inner peace, building bridges across social divides, human rights and the refugee crisis, and youth leadership. By the end of the program, the participants had learned from and inspired each other, and returned home ready to redouble their efforts to reduce violence in their communities.
Speakers
Wadi Ben-Hirki
Founder, Wadi Ben-Hriki Foundation (Nigeria)
Jimmie Briggs
Executive Director, Leave Out Violence-U.S., (U.S.)
Meron Kocho
Member of Council, MESPO-Iraq (Iraq)
Maya Soetoro-Ng
Advisor, Obama Foundation (U.S.)
Gregg Zoroya
Editorial Writer, USA Today (U.S)
4. How Should the Trans-Atlantic Alliance Counter Russian Aggression? | Wednesday, December 12 | 10 am – 11:30 am | Brookings Institution | 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
The West is searching for a response to Russia’s ongoing malfeasance, including its recent attack on Ukraine in the Black Sea and its just-revealed effort to “muck around” in U.S. 2018 midterm elections. These are the latest in a long sequence of transgressions on the part of the Kremlin, ranging from the invasion of Georgia, to the violation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, to interference in the democratic processes of NATO member states, perhaps most dramatically seen in Putin’s assault on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As a result, on both sides of the Atlantic, democratic values and institutions—and the trans-Atlantic alliance predicated upon them—are at risk.
On Dec. 12, Governance Studies and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings will jointly co-host an event with the bipartisan Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG), featuring an expert panel that will discuss the threats emanating from Russia and elsewhere to security, democracy, and the trans-Atlantic alliance—and what the alliance can and should do about it.
Panel Speakers
Mary Louise Kelly, Host, All Things Considered – NPR
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director, Transatlantic Security Program – Center for a New American Security
Bill Kristol, Editor at Large – The Weekly Standard
Alina Polyakova, David M Rubenstein Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, Distinguished Fellow – The Atlantic Council
5. Can International Organizations Promote Democracy? | Wednesday, December 12 | 10 am – 11:30 am | Stimson Center | 1211 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
Organizing Democracy, a new book by Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen, argues that new democracies are more likely to flourish when they receive support from international organizations to help them provide public goods to their populations. This event will present the findings of Organizing Democracy, analyze the relationships between new democracies and international organizations in the cases of Ukraine and Libya, and explore policy implications for democracy promotion by the U.S. government.
FEATURING:
PAUL POAST, Co-Author, Organizing Democracy, and Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago
STEPHEN LENNON, Director, Office of Transition Initiatives, USAID
STEVEN GRINER, Director, Department of Sustainable Democracy and Special Missions, Organization of American States
AMANDA KADLEC, Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation
ADITI GORUR, Director, Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program, Stimson Center (Moderator)
6. Discussion with Jerusalem Expert Daniel Seidemann | Wednesday, December 12 | 11 am – 12 pm | Foundation for Middle East Peace | 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 |
Please RSVP to Blair Scott by no later than Monday, December 10
The Trump Administration has implemented a wholesale shift in US policy in Jerusalem. From the moving of the US embassy and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to de-funding Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, to the decision to close down the US Consulate General, to removing the brakes on East Jerusalem settlement activity, the policies playing out today in Jerusalem have profound implications locally, regionally, and in the geopolitically. Please join FMEP and the Carnegie Endowment for a discussion with Jerusalem expert Danny Seidemann examining these and related issues.
Speakers:
Daniel Seidemann is a practicing attorney in Jerusalem who specializes in legal and public issues in East Jerusalem. He has participated in numerous Track II talks on Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians and served in an informal advisory capacity to the final status negotiations as a member of a committee of experts commissioned by Prime Minister Barak’s office to generate sustainable arrangements in Jerusalem. He is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli nonprofit that that works to identify and track developments in Jerusalem that could impact the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city, spark violence, or create humanitarian crises.
Michele Dunne is the director and a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries, particularly Egypt, as well as U.S. policy in the Middle East. She was the founding director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council from 2011 to 2013 and was a senior associate and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2006 to 2011. Dunne was a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Department of State from 1986 to 2003, where she served in assignments that included the National Security Council, the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She also served as a visiting professor of Arabic language and Arab studies at Georgetown from 2003 to 2006.
Zaha Hassan is a Middle East Fellow at New America. She is a human rights lawyer and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership (2010-2012). She is a member of Al Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and is a contributor to the Hill and Ha’aretz. Her political commentary and analysis has been published by the New York Times, CNN, Salon, the Oregonian, the Detroit News, and other outlets. She is the former cohost of the Portland, Ore.-based radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM.
7. Our Uncertain Nuclear Future: How Do We Proceed if Treaties are Trashed? | Wednesday, December 12 | 4 pm – 6 pm | Stimson Center | 1211 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
Donald Trump’s announcement of intent to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty constitutes another severe blow to a treaty-based system of nuclear arms and threat reduction. One last treaty governing formal, verifiable draw-downs of nuclear forces remains — the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Mr. Trump has vacillated wildly in his comments on the future of U.S. strategic forces, ranging from an expressed interest in deep cuts to significant arms build-ups. For now, he has declined Vladimir Putin’s offer of extending New START. Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, might be expected to seek withdrawal from New START, and he might well succeed, rather than to leave the decision of its extension and further reductions to the winner of the next presidential election.
Please join us for a discussion of our nuclear future with Nina Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Program at Brown University, Jon Wolfsthal, Director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and Senior Advisor to Global Zero, and Lynn Rusten, Vice President of the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Our speakers will address the following questions: What role will norms play in our nuclear future? What role will treaties play, with specific reference to New START? Will we be entering a future of “arms control without agreements”? If so, what might this look like? Stimson’s Co-founder, Michael Krepon, will moderate our discussion.
8. Targeted Sanctions on Human Rights Abusers and Kleptocracies: Lessons Learned and Opportunities from the Global Magnitsky Santions | Thursday, December 13 | 9 am – 10:30 am | Center for Strategic and International Studies | 1616 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
Please join the Human Rights Initiative for reflections from U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), the author of the Global Magnitsky Act. He will be followed by a panel examining the impact of the Global Magnitsky sanctions, opportunities to improve implementation, and how the sanctions fit within financial sector approaches to human rights and corruption. These sanctions enable targeted designations based on human rights abuse and corruption around the world, and have been imposed on officials and companies in a number of recent high profile situations, including Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nicaragua.
Keynote Speaker
U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Panel
Robert Berschinski
Senior Vice President Policy at Human Rights First
Robert Peri
Director of US Sanctions at Citibank
Joshua White
Director of Policy and Analysis at The Sentry
9. How Can U.S. Foreign Policymakers Do Better for the Middle Class? | Thursday, December 13 | 9:30 am – 10:45 am | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
Americans are increasingly skeptical that the U.S. role abroad benefits them economically at home. What will it take to bridge the divide between America’s foreign policy and domestic imperatives? Join Susan Glasser for a conversation with two former White House chiefs of staff on how to make U.S. foreign policy work better for America’s middle class.
This event will launch a new report, U.S. Foreign Policy for the Middle Class: Perspectives from Ohio — the first in a series of state-level case studies from Carnegie’s bipartisan task force on foreign policy for the middle class
William J. Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of state.
Joshua Bolten served as White House chief of staff under president George W. Bush, and is currently president and CEO of the Business Roundtable.
Denis McDonough is served as White House chief of staff for president Barack Obama’s second term, and is currently a visiting senior fellow in Carnegie’s Technology and Internatinal Affairs Program.
Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Trump’s Washington. She was a founding editor of Politicoand editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine.
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Iran’s offensive defense
The International Institute for Strategic Studies hosted a panel of experts on Iran’s Regional Posture October 11. The panel consisted of Dina Esfandiary, fellow at the Century Foundation, Ambassador Barbara A. Leaf, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, and Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director of the International Crisis Group.
Panelists revisited the nature and role of Iran today, dissecting Iran’s motivations, threats, and constraints, beyond traditional perspectives that privilege analyses based on American interests. With ethno-sectarian conflicts raging in Syria and Yemen as well as a tense political transition in Iraq, the Saudi-led Gulf states and Iran, the region’s major actors, have been embroiled in a competition of political and strategic influence.
But is it that simple? Esfandiary sought to move beyond polarity. She pointed out that Iran is not simply vying for power, but seeks to preserve its territorial integrity against Western and Gulf nations it views as aggressive. As a main center of Shi’a Islam, Iran sees itself as entitled to regional influence. Esfandiary elaborated that while religion was a foreign policy driver for the post-Revolution state’s early years, the Iranian government now leans towards nationalism as a better way to unify the nation’s people and frame its foreign policy endeavors. Elaborating on this point, Leaf said that Iran’s posture should be understood as an offensive defense, a response to the US presence and support of both the Israelis and the Saudis, which it sees as a threats to its territorial integrity and legitimate involvement in Arab affairs.
Iraq, Esfandiary said, is Iran’s highest regional priority. Tehran seeks a central government in Baghdad aligned with its interests. However, with the election of Barham Salih as Iraq’s new President, and his selection of Adel Abdul Mahdi as Prime Minister, many analysts have signaled a turn in Iraq away from the rigid ethno-sectarian politics that have dominated the post-invasion landscape. With many Iraqis disillusioned by dysfunctional governance resulting from proxy politics, Iran’s ability to sway the new government’s formation and the future of the nation’s politics are limited. Esfandiary further identified the Syrian civil conflict as Iran’s second priority, and the conflict in Yemen as its last priority, questioning whether Iran has a long-term strategic goal in Yemen at all. Leaf agreed, with Iraq as Iran’s greatest concern given the election year.
Invoking Iran’s Hezbollah model, Leaf listed the three major instruments in Iran’s toolbox:
- Creating and directing splintered proxy groups, preferably local actors, to shape civil conflicts as Tehran sees fit. In particular, supporting and directing Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq.
- Increasing its defense and intelligence architecture in Syria, part of its corridor to Israel and the Mediterranean.
- Exploiting disordered Arab states with sizeable Shi’a minorities.
Vaez added Iran’s nuclear program as another instrument of the state’s offensive defense strategy in the region: a deterrent to nuclear Israel and the aggressive Gulf states, all supported by the US.
Underscoring the constraints of current containment policies, Vaez underlined that Trump was misguided in withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. While the goal is to deprive Iran of resources through sanctions, Iran’s regional proxy operations are not strongly correlated to sanctions, citing 2011 as a year in which Iran was able to expand its proxy operations while under increased pressure from multilateral sanctions.
With another round of harsher sanctions going into effect on November 4, Vaez fears that in the unlikely scenario of effective sanctions, Iran’s political system and elite will welcome a crisis, whipping up nationalist sentiment and acting in a less risk-averse manner throughout the region. Leaf, who submitted testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcomittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Trade in support of sanctions, brought up this fear in encouraging the committee to avoid mistiming sanctions, lest they strengthen Iranian nationalism.
For Esfandiary, the Gulf Arab states’ insistence that Iran pull out as a precondition for negotiations is one of the biggest constraints in reducing conflicts in Yemen and Syria. She argued that Yemen could have been ideal for negotiations with Iran, which has made it clear it is willing to negotiate. Leaf echoed this sentiment, stating that while the fractured Gulf states have tried to bring the Houthis to the negotiating table via Oman, only Tehran can succeed. Iran has been reckless in supporting the Houthis, rapidly transferring military training and technology to them. But the Houthis are independent, often operating against Iranian wishes as in their capture of both Sa’ana and Aden. Their relationship to Iran is very different from that of Hezbollah or other proxies. Further recklessness on the part of the Houthis, such as attacks on commercial ships, could be problematic for Iran.
All three panelists agreed that Iran’s image in the international sphere has improved significantly, regardless of its proxy activities. Esfandiary
and Vaez both pointed to the European Union’s effort to bypass US sanctions as well as the ICJ ruling in favor of Iran as indicators of a recovering international image. Despite the negative domestic impact of the war in Syria and Iraqi resistance to Iranian meddling, Iran appears uninterested in negotiating with the US in any capacity. Tehran instead is emphasizing its relationships with the EU, China, and Russia. Beijing and Moscow are especially important and have a higher level of familiarity with the Iranian economy than their Western counterparts.
Ultimately, Vaez warned of the need for a more inclusive security and intelligence architecture in the Middle East. The region needs a long-term strategy to escape the asymmetry and escalating armament in the region.
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