MOVING BEYOND REGIME CHANGE IN AMERICA’S MIDDLE EAST POLICY

Posted on January 3rd, 2011 under featured and general with 141 replies.

In a recent comment, Arnold Evans posed the following question to us: 

“If you could choose between Egypt being ruled by Sadat/Mubarak—the first of which you both have spoken so approvingly of—or by a democratic leader who could well be as hostile to Israel as Ahmadinejad, which would you choose?  If you choose Sadat/Mubarak, then is your opposition to attempting regime change in Iran solely on the basis that such a regime change is implausible?  If Iran could be destabilized to the point that the US could impose a leader like Sadat or Mubarak is feasible, would you then support that?” 

This comment gets to the heart of what U.S. strategy in the Middle East should be.  To start with, we don’t think that regime change is a constructive policy tool for the United States.  We do not believe that the 1953 coup in Iran served U.S. interests in the long run—Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men, provides lots of good discussion on this point.  We certainly judge the 2003 invasion of Iraq (a war aimed at coercive regime change in Baghdad) to have been a disaster for America’s strategic position, in the Middle East and globally.  So, today, we are not inclined to endorse the idea of regime change in either Cairo or Tehran. 

And, in this regard, make no mistake—a scenario of genuinely democratic elections in Egypt, which could only be realized through massive external pressure, is a regime change scenario.  Egypt’s current political order is not, and never has been organized around the idea of “free and fair” elections.  Just as we are not big fans of regime change, we are also not big fans of democracy for democracy’s sake—especially when democracy is imposed on Middle Eastern countries by the West.  

The illegitimacy of the Shah’s regime in Iran, which the United States went to such lengths to restore and support, was manifest to the world—in the end, it was opposed by the overwhelming majority of Iranian society.  But the fact that the Mubarak government does not hold power on the basis of genuinely competitive elections does not mean that it is illegitimate.  If, by some chance, the Egyptian people decide that the Mubarak government is illegitimate, in the same way that Iranians clearly decided this about the Shah, then there will be regime change in Cairo, indigenously achieved.  But the United States, for its part, should deal with the political orders prevailing in the Middle East, including the current regime in Egypt—not try to replace them with governments we find ideologically comfortable and strategically accommodating. 

On this point, we do not believe that the United States needs regime change in Tehran to improve its relations with Iran.  To do that, the United States needs to pursue smart diplomacy with the Islamic Republic’s current political structure—diplomacy, that is, which treats the Islamic Republic as Iran’s legitimate government, seeking to defend and enhance Iran’s legitimate interests.  This is something that no U.S. President since 1979—not even Barack Hussein Obama—has tried to do. 

We do not think it is correct to say that we have spoken so approvingly of the late Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat.  We have pointed out that Sadat collaborated with Nazi Germany against Britain during World War II and actually launched a war against Israel in 1973 that killed thousands of Israelis—something neither President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nor any other Iranian leader has done.  It is ironic, to say the least, that Sadat has been granted hero-like status by many in the United States and Israel while Iran’s leaders are falsely vilified as posing an existential threat to Israel and being implacably hostile to the United States.  This is a critically important point that many Americans and Israelis need to hear and internalize.

We think that American encouragement of Egypt’s realignment of its relations with the United States during the 1970s—including the Camp David accords—was an example of relatively smart diplomacy.  It was, to be sure, incomplete—it needed to be accompanied by a comprehensively structured settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict and acceptance of the new political order brought about by the Islamic revolution in Iran.  Today, these remain the outstanding and profound political challenges that the United States must meet in the Middle East.  America’s failure to meet these challenges not only weakens its own strategic position, but also fundamentally undermines the security of its allies—including Egypt.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

141 Responses to “MOVING BEYOND REGIME CHANGE IN AMERICA’S MIDDLE EAST POLICY”

1. Leonard van Willenswaard says:

   January 10, 2011 at 9:58 am

   I must confess that I have not read all the comments, so I apologize if this is a duplication.
   Where you state that Arnold Evans’ comment goes to the heart of the matter I think your reply suffers from a certain superficiality. You say that the US should not try for regime change but deal with the political orders prevailing. At least part of the problem seems to be that the US in the Middle East ( and elsewhere) actively supports such political orders in obstructing indigenous regime change. Which is basically just as questionable as actively seeking regime change.
2. James Canning says:

   January 9, 2011 at 7:35 pm

   Fiorangela,

   It seems clear to me at least that fanatical Zionists hate Iran because Iran interferes with their ability to man-handle Syria and the Palestinians. They want to keep the Golan Heights, and much of the West Bank. Permanently. Iran interferes with this programme.
3. Goli says:

   January 7, 2011 at 9:07 pm

   Castellio, Eric, Liz, fyi, Firoangela, and Iranian@Iran,

   Thank you for your positive feedback.

   A few corrections to the text of my comment:

   Paragraph 3, line 12, should read “signing” not “singing”

   Paragraph 4 from the bottom, last sentence, should read, “Two days later, Hillary Clinton…”

   Next to the last paragraph should begin with “In February 2010,” not “In February 2009”

   Fiorangela,

   I agree with some of your initial analysis.

   But, what are we to do with your implied speculation that NIAC might not have been sleeping with the devil from the start, but was left with no choice but to sell its soul and as you put it, was “suckered into ‘giving away the IRANIAN store’ in a gambit to sit at the table with AIPAC, who controls the table?” Or, that “in order to maintain a seat at the table, NIAC has to uncover some patch of common ground?” “Maintain a seat at the table” to achieve what?

   Does the situation from your perspective necessitate a little extra help for AIPAC from NIAC? Is NIAC having a positive, neutral, or negative impact on improving the relations between Iran and the United States as is the objective of rational and sensible Iranians and Americans such as the Leveretts, and in the best interest of both countries?

   As for the question you raise for me, contrary to your assertion, I do not agree with Parsi that the conflict between Israel and Iran is purely geostrategic and I thought that was made clear in my post. I agree that Israel’s policies are directly tied to its ideology, and I also agree with RSH that these phenomena are often multidimensional and in the case of Israel, there is a strong nexus between ideological and geopolitical dimensions. That said, I am not sure how the dismal reality of the situation you eloquently depict excuses NIAC from appeasing Israel and its lobby.
4. Richard Steven Hack says:

   January 7, 2011 at 1:24 pm

   Fiorangela: I agree with your assessment that the ideology of Zionism is at the heart of the Israeli-Iran conflict. Of course, most ideologies also have a geopolitical aspect because power is at the heart of all ideologies. It’s primate behavior at its basic. So there is really not much of a contradiction between saying that Zionism is at fault in the Israel-Iran conflict and also that Israel seeks to use that conflict for other conflicts, either internally or externally. The ascendancy of each component at any given point in time and also between various factions of the Israeli political system is probably fluid.

   Not everything is “either-or”, we must always remember. Frequently it’s “both”.
5. Fiorangela says:

   January 7, 2011 at 12:00 pm

   In a previous thread, Goli posted an important, compelling, and fact-filled assessment of the posture of
   NIAC vis a vis AIPAC.

   I concede most of Goli’s points.
   In my defense, I draw attention to a distinction that may not make a difference: I did NOT say that Parsi/NIAC behaved with “patience, generosity, and ” but that Dr. Ramizani most likely would counsel Parsi/NIAC to behave in that way.

   A second passage in Goli’s argument is much more significant and remains muddled and troubling in my mind — however much I struggle for emotional and intellectual clarity on the issues involved. Addressing what Goli said was my confused equivalences between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, Goli wrote:

   “And in any event, this is not about anti-Zionism and certainly not about anti-Semitism; it is about the Apartheid state of Israel, its crimes against the Palestinians, and its itch to go to war with Iran. Parsi is perfectly capable of articulating the distinction between these issues and anti-Semitism.”

   1. A question to Goli: What is the motivating force behind the Israeli Apartheid state, its crimes against Palestinians, and its itch to go to war with Iran?

   When Parsi was promoting “Treacherous Alliance,” the first words out of his mouth in his stump speech were: “The conflict between Israel and Iran is NOT ideological, it is geostrategic.”
   You seem to agree with him, Goli.
   I do not.
   In order to understand the motive force behind Apartheid Israel, it is essential to plumb the depths of zionism. When you examine the basis and ideology of zionism, you cannot avoid the fact that zionism is rooted in a “peculiar” interpretation of Jewish history, writing/scripture, and mythos.

   2. The motive force underlying Israel’s “itch to go to war with Iran” is even more ideological and even more firmly entrenched in the foundational concepts of zionism. In his discussion of the psychological and ideological roots of Israel’s “Iranophobia,” Haggai Ram acknowledges Parsi’s attempt to relate Israel’s Iran-anxieties with political occurrences; namely, “the ascendancy of the Labor Party to power in 1992 and the ensuing Israeli-Palestinian Oslo peace process.” [p. 35]

   “[T]o convince a skeptical Israeli public to accept peace with the Palestinians, Parsi surmises, Israel started depicting Iran as a threat to the region and the world. . . .an unprecedented shift in Israel’s geopolitical . . .periphery doctrine.” [p. 36]

   Prof. Ram counters Parsi’s analysis by noting that the shift to demonize Iran as a sacrificial lamb or distraction from other geopolitical events was not unprecedented: Israel ramped up anti-Iran rhetoric as peace between Egypt and Israel was being negotiated. Thus, Ram concludes, “To the extent that Israel needs an existential threat– ‘it could be a country, like Iran; an ideology, like Islamic fundamentalism; or at other times it could be a tactic–terrorism’ . . .In short, in making peace with Egypt Israel instantaneously found in the 1979 revolution the opportunity to replace one existential threat (Arab) with another (Iranian).” [p 36]

   From which I conclude that the need for an existential threat is systemic in zionism, and that the source of that need is within the Hebrew mythos.

   To my mind, it is more possible to analyze World War II from a geostrategic/ geopolitical perspective, and avoid ideological considerations, than it is possible to assess “Apartheid Israel, its crimes against the Palestinians, and its itch to go to war with Iran.” And THAT is the bind in which Parsi and NIAC find themselves: it is absolutely off limits to critique zionism and its mythological underpinnings. In order to maintain a seat at the table, NIAC has to uncover some patch of common ground.

   I’m not defending NIAC; I’m attempting to understand. I think Parsi and NIAC, and especially Abadi, who writes many of NIAC’s position papers, are out of their depth. It’s also worth noting that NIAC has been suckered into ‘giving away the IRANIAN store’ in a gambit to sit at the table with AIPAC, who controls the table. AIPAC and zionism, on the other hand, never give away their own assets; no zionist or Israeli blood or treasure is ever at risk in an Israeli transaction — Israel spends American, Islamic, Palestinian, Iranian, Iraqi, Afghani, European blood and treasure, but never Israeli.
6. fyi says:

   January 7, 2011 at 10:07 am

   Goli says: January 6, 2011 at 10:36 pm

   Thank you for documenting the rather sordid track record of Dr. Parsi.

   He and others like him do not seem to either understand or accept that Iran is the state of the Shia, for the Shia, by the Shia.

   It is essential to accept that behind contemporary Iran is Imam Hussein and behind Imam Hussein stands Siyavash; that beside Prophet Muhammad stands Zarathustra.

   Once this is acceted, one can think through what is possible and what is not possible in Iran.

   AIPAC is, in my opinion, a great threat not to Iran but to the Jews everywhere since its extreme partisanship on behalf of the Garrison Judaism of the state of Israel harms the perceptions of others about Jews.

   Iran is not alone in being the Partisan of Palestinians; just about every Muslim state is. Even if Iran were not there, the religious war in Palestine would continue and sap US strength.
7. fyi says:

   January 7, 2011 at 9:56 am

   Castellio says: January 6, 2011 at 7:45 pm

   There is a war in Palestine between Judaism and Islam.

   This is what war entails in its very nature.
8. Liz says:

   January 7, 2011 at 7:26 am

   Goli,

   Thank you. I learned a lot from that post.
9. Eric A. Brill says:

   January 7, 2011 at 1:20 am

   Goli,

   I second Castellio’s praise for your long post. Illuminating.
10. Castellio says:

    January 7, 2011 at 12:48 am

    Goli, it’s great to have the detail and overview of your contribution. Many thanks.
11. Goli says:

    January 6, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    James Canning,

    Thank you for your response.

    Fiorangela,

    NIAC’s polling of its membership is a relatively new phenomenon (the last two years). It started after the brutal bombardment of Gaza by Israel in 2008-2009. At the time, various Islamic and Arab oriented organization—civil rights and otherwise, including the Arab American Anti-discrimination Committee—openly and some loudly protested the Israeli savagery, but NIAC was dreadfully silent. Toward the end of the war on Gaza, NIAC issued a communiqué implying that its membership wanted to stay out of that issue. Later, I believe after the June election, NIAC conducted another poll reporting that the results indicated its membership supported focusing on human rights issues in Iran.

    In reality NIAC, since its inception, had always been highlighting the human rights issues in Iran. In fact, when NIAC first started to appear on the scene, several of my secular Iranian friends, and I have many as I am Iranian, had indicated that they refuse to join NIAC because they find its emphasis on human rights issues in Iran out of place and unnecessary to fulfill its role as an organization that purports to advocate for Iranian-Americans in the US. In other words, NIAC’s highlighting of human rights in Iran appeared to them as utterly unproductive and contrary to its stated objectives, and therefore, my friends argued, they refuse to join NIAC. This means that NIAC’s later polls confirming that its membership wants it to emphasize human rights issues or keep a cordial relationship with the Israel Lobby no matter what, is a NIAC self-fulfilling prophecy.

    In your response, you seem to simultaneously differentiate and equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. If you agree that they are not the same, which I believe you do, why then do you, or for that matter Parsi or the Iranians living in the US he purports to represent should accept anyone trying to claim otherwise? And in any event, this is not about anti-Zionism and certainly not about anti-Semitism; it is about the Apartheid state of Israel, its crimes against the Palestinians, and its itch to go to war with Iran. Parsi is perfectly capable of articulating the distinction between these issues and anti-Semitism. And exactly how is that Parsi is not “divisive” when he continues to feed into anti-Iranian propaganda better that the machinery itself? Here, I provide you a few of examples that might be a little out of date as I stopped following this issue, but nonetheless. (And again, I know that he has had several meeting with the elements active in the Israel Lobby and in some occasions directly the Lobby itself.) Most recently that I am aware of, in July 2010, a NIAC Board member attended the singing of the Iran sanctions bill along with its Israel Lobby brothers and sisters and personally urged President Obama “to adopt a stronger condemnation of human rights violations is Iran”. Forgive me, but anyone who knows how things really work would fail to see any “patience,” “generosity,” or “positivity” in this.

    By way of background, one of the underlying premises of Parsi’s book, the Treacherous Alliance, is that Iran and Israel are natural allies. It has been a while since I read the book, but, for example, in it, Parsi notes the empathy between Israel and Iran due to their feeling of cultural superiority toward Arabs. In writing the book, Parsi spent a considerable amount of time in Israel researching and interviewing various officials. (A privilege he would have most likely not been granted had he been a Muslim.) He also argues that Iran’s relationship with the Palestinians is purely based on power politics and not ideology. While I believe that may be true to some extent, I do not believe it is entirely so. While for the Iranian government national interest and power politics are paramount in its policies vis-à-vis Palestine/Israel, I believe that since the revolution, Iranian policies on this have also been guided by certain overarching moral principles. I also believe that there have been and continue to be elements in the Iranian leadership for whom these moral principles have played a central role in their approach to Iran’s position on this issue. This of course, includes President Ahmadinejad.

    Immediately following the June elections, Parsi was widely quoted as saying that Mousavi could not have conceivably lost in his home province of East Azerbaijan. (A claim that has since been widely rebutted.) This unfounded assertion was instantly parroted by the Obama Administration. NIAC then went on to issue a statement that “the only plausible way to end the violence is for new elections to be held with independent monitors ensuring its fairness.”

    In July 2009, Parsi proposed a “tactical pause” in the already non-existent diplomacy toward Iran, writing, “Obama should not be married to artificial deadlines” and should hold off on talks and diplomacy with Iran on nuclear issues for a few months because the Iranian government is unstable and cannot negotiate. Today, NIAC is persistent in its stance that the US-Iran-IAEA negotiations should be linked to human rights concerns.

    In September 2009, on the occasion of Ahmadinegad attendance at the UN General Assembly meeting, Parsi wrote that he hopes the focus at the UN would be on Ahmadinejad’s human rights abuses.

    In November 2009, he wrote about the “Unforgivable Crimes in Iran: the underreporting of deaths” and how the world is looking the other way as the crimes of the Iranian government continues unabated. He then claimed that even the opposition figure of 100 dead is gross underestimations of the true number.

    In December 2009, he wrote again that Obama should end silence on human rights abuses in Iran and be more outspoken about these abuses.

    In February 2010, Mr. Parsi wrote, “the [green] coalition is held together not just by a rejection of the dubious election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but by the realization that Iran would take a giant leap toward becoming a military dictatorship if the hardliners win.” On February 15, Hillary Clinton commented in Qatar that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.

    Shortly after that , McCain and Lieberman introduced legislation (originally introduced in the House by misguided Keith Ellison) to “impose sanctions on individuals in Iran guilty of human rights abuses following the June elections.” The legislation would create a list of Iranian governmental officials “who were complicit in post-election abuses” and subject them to greater financial and diplomatic scrutiny. NIAC is fully supportive of this bill. I cannot imagine a scenario where the interest of McCain and Lieberman coincide with the interests of Iranians, in Iran or the United States. Yet, NIAC is actively promoting this bill and asking its members to call Congress in its support.

    In February 2009, Parsi testified at a hearing by the House Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, named after, most ironically, none other than the staunch and unrelenting Israeli loyalist. His lengthy testimony condemning human rights in Iran began as follows, “…I want to emphasize that no group of Americans has suffered more from the policies of the Iranian government than our community. Whether they were victims of political or religious persecution, or other forms of human rights abuses …”. The testimony continued to favor “targeted sanctions” against Iran asking the US to “speak forcefully and frequently about the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran.”

    AIPAC might as well have written the script for all this.
12. Richard Steven Hack says:

    January 6, 2011 at 9:23 pm

    Fyi: “I think you are attributing too much significance to the impact of this – if any”

    You may be correct. Now Iran is denying they’ve arrested anyone. Which makes the whole incident even more stupid. It’s also not clear whether the woman is American or Armenian – or exists at all.

    Either someone is trying to start an incident – either deliberately or stupidly by accident – or this is just another random event being spun by the media on a slow news day.

    We’ll have to wait for more news. Allegedly the US has asked the Swiss to check into it.
13. Richard Steven Hack says:

    January 6, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Humanist: “If x,y and z are undoable courses of action and you intend to criticize them you shouldn’t write “I recommend x,y and z”, instead , don’t you think you better explicitly state something like “x,y and z are defective policies, because …..”.”

    In a word, no. My foreign policy prescriptions are not “defective” just because the scum who run this country won’t implement them. It is the scum who are defective.

    Once again, just because you PRESUME that when I make a foreign policy prescription that I ASSUME it can or will be carried out does not make it so. That is a PRESUMPTION on YOUR part. I am not responsible for the varied interpretations people make of plain English.

    “Ever thought you can NEVER predict future events accurately?”

    I always reserve a minimum of two percent doubt about any proposition. Nonetheless, in my over sixty years I have observed that x follows y and brings about z in most instances. As they say in poker and medical school, “To play the odds you must know the odds.” The odds of what I say coming to pass are pretty good or I would not make such statements.

    If you can prove there are better odds, you need to state a REASON rather than the vague generality that events can be hard to predict. The reasons you supply – that an updated NIE may sabotage the war plans as Bush alleges it did in 2007 or that the Pentagon may revolt against an Iran war simply aren’t sufficient to roll back the overwhelming process that has been put in place to start a war.

    An updated NIE may delay a war only until some President or CIA head manages to get one produced by tame analysts to state what they want it to say. Or perhaps some President will simply ignore the NIE, Wikileaked or not, and go ahead anyway. An NIE is just paper. It doesn’t control the ruling elites of this country or stop them from doing what they want to do. I personally don’t believe Bush when he said he didn’t attack Iran for that reason. It obviously made it harder for him, but I suspect there were other reasons that he doesn’t want to disclose because it would reflect badly on him in some way. We can presume that anything he says in his book is CYA – in this case he wants to CYA from criticism from the right/neocons/Zionists that he didn’t prosecute the Iran war vigorously enough.

    As for a Pentagon “revolt”, frankly, I don’t believe it will ever happen – any “revolters” will be summarily discharged as has already happened in several cases (Admiral Fallon for one, who actually did “revolt”.)

    Certainly something COULD happen to derail the plans. A war with Pakistan might do it. A war with North Korea almost certainly would do it. Absent these less likely circumstances, however, and given the course laid out so far, there is nothing in the cards likely to derail the end result.

    Thus, I never speak with CERTAINTY – only with, as the NIE says, “high confidence”.
14. Richard Steven Hack says: