The US and Iran: What’s next? Regime change or nuclear containment?

PHK

While the U.S. finally appears quietly moving towards a negotiated agreement with North Korea, the Bush administration may be hell bent on instigating regime change in Iran. Laura Rozen details this in a May 19 special in the LA Times – and questions whether the administration’s ultimate goal is “to curb Iran’s nuclear program or change the regime.”

Yet none of the Middle East or defense experts I recently heard at a foreign affairs conference in Washington, DC thought that:

1) US military action against the Iranians made sense;

2) or that enforced regime change in Iran by a foreign power would be successful in the long run.

Many of those speakers represented the political right of center and I’m pretty sure that once upon a time not too long ago, a bevy supported the administration’s regime-change-by-force model in Iraq. But even those that did, now appear chastened by the Iraq quagmire and at odds with this administration’s latest Middle Eastern “slay-yet-another-dragon” by military force frenzy.

The most bellicose recommendation, I remember – and from only one panelist – was a proposed naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz if negotiations led nowhere. The reason: to block the Iranians from shipping their oil to world markets because this chokepoint is where pipelines meet refineries meet tankers. No one - if my memory serves me - advocated a “surgical strike” or multiple strikes against supposed Iranian nuclear facilities – for much the same reasons we at WhirledView stated in our April 14 post “Don’t Bomb Iran: It’s Counterproductive.”

But does the US have the intelligence capabilities to pinpoint the locations of Iran’s various underground nuclear production facilities accurately? I wonder. Please convince me, Mr. Bush, before you let loose those bombs.

If W’s minions think they can rely on the Iranian exile community for reliable information – or leadership for a democratic opposition to rally behind – they need to think again. As Connie Bruck points out in the March 6 New Yorker, the situation is far more complicated. Regardless, you would think the Bush administration should have learned the hard way from the Iraq invasion about relying on exiles with their own axes to grind and fortunes to make.

So where does the push for the administration’s muscular stance against Iran come from?
Not from career diplomats at State – at least not ones I know of.

I’ve been wondering for some time if US military action against the Iranians is the most likely of all the possible 23rd hour October surprises this administration might pull out of Uncle Sam’s hat to keep itself immune from prosecution by a Democratic Congress loaded for bear. Why? It would enable a beleaguered administration to play the fear factor card yet again in hopes of improving the electoral chances of the Republican Congress.

If so, it’s a wretched reason – and if it happens, I hope it blows up in all their faces. The blame for such a fiasco – because that is what it would be - should rest squarely on W, Pepper Cheney, Rumsfeld and the ever more run-amok staff in the Pentagon’s former Office of Strategic Plans now reinvented as the Pentagon’s Iran directorate. That reinvention or resurrection should be a wakeup call in and by itself.

Meanwhile, just what is going on at State?

As Alice in Wonderland once exclaimed: “Curiouser and curiouser!”

Who is David Denehy and what qualifies him to head State’s new Office of Iranian Affairs?

The new Office of Iranian Affairs at State is to be headed by David M. Denehy, who according to Rozen, was “a longtime democracy specialist at the International Republican Institute (IRI) and who will work under Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Liz Cheney.” Rozen’s information here is a little off. First, Cheney was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, not Assistant Secretary for the Near East and Denehy’s working for her is highly unlikely since, according to an AP report on May 19, she will soon leave State to produce her fifth child.

I searched Google for information on David Denehy himself – but turned up almost nothing - that is next to nothing before he appeared in a State Department telephone book as working for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in January 2001. It is my understanding that he joined INR as an analyst on the Middle East including Iran and Iraq where he was a presidential (management)intern after receiving an MA in International Affairs from Columbia.

In 2003, Denehy went to Iraq to work for Jerry Bremer as the deputy director of the CPA’s Office of Democracy and Governance. He then returned to INR as an analyst on Middle East projects until December 2004 when he joined the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He soon became an Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary. Denehy is now listed as Director of the Office of Strategic and External Affairs (whatever that means) in that same bureau with a 7th floor office but what looks like - on paper - a tiny staff.

At some point as he moved up State’s bureaucratic ladder, he also switched from being a career civil servant to a political appointee – but Denehy, now nearing 40, was not one of the Bush administration’s “twenties-something Pentagon-style whiz kids” who created far more havoc than they were worth in Iraq.

For the record: the Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs has been and currently is held by a career Foreign Service Officer not a political appointee. The present occupant is C. David Welsh and before him William Burns now Ambassador to Russia.

Maybe Denehy was “a longtime democracy specialist at IRI,” but you couldn’t prove it by Google except that at some point he apparently managed three democracy building projects in the former Soviet Union under a USAID contract. I understand, however, that his IRI experience – as the USAID report and Rozen suggested – also represented four years or so working on democracy building projects in or on the former Soviet Union. Whether four or five years in the field count as “longtime experience,” I leave that to you to decide.

Denehy’s latest appointment itself speaks volumes. On the surface it raises as many questions about the importance of State’s new Iran Office as it answers. Yes, he should know something about Iran as a result of his INR experience. As an analyst in INR on Iran and Iraq as well as someone who worked in Iraq during the early days of the occupation he should also certainly understand all too well “what went wrong.” Denehy, hopefully, therefore, will represent the political realists, not the wild eyed schemers or screamers as the administration and Ahmadinejad ratchet up the decibels in turn over the coming long hot summer.

But if Liz Cheney soon leaves State – who will be Denehy’s boss? Another political appointee brought in to collect a six figure salary to do what? Regardless, it’s doubtful that whoever he or she is will have Liz Cheney’s special connection to the real power behind the throne – the Vice President and his staff.

Hopefully, at least some of the rest of State’s new Iran Office staff are Iran specialists – but I’ll bet not many from the career service since very few U.S. Foreign Service Officers have been trained in Farsi or have covered Iranian affairs since the US Embassy takeover in 1979. Given the current political realities, Condi was right to expand the size of State's Iran office – but what about the expertise available to staff it?

But even if the new staff does know Iran and Iranian-US history and Denehy is the political realist I hope he is, will anyone listen? Or like the shelved "Future of Iraq" project that State painstakingly developed in summer 2002 – will they be rolled over by yet another Abrams tank with “shoot-em-up” Cheney in command?

Over at the Pentagon

Supposedly, the lead on Iran was handed to State because of the diplomatic nature of the relationship. But just watch the power slither back across the Potomac to the Pentagon’s new Iran directorate at an appropriate date in the electoral calendar. I’ll bet those folks are just sitting there like B’rer fox at the rabbit hole, rubbing their paws and smacking their chops while impatiently waiting for B’rer rabbit to emerge.

A new Iran directorate according to Rozen “has been set up inside the Pentagon's policy shop, which previously housed the (controversial and discredited) Office of Special Plans.” But it still counts among its staff OSP’s former director Abram Shulsky, DIA analyst John Trigilio, and Iran specialist Ladan Archin.

Iran is not Serbia: So what are the odds for nonviolent regime change?

In the short run, State requested $85 million this year as opposed to $3.5 million last year to attempt to bring about Iranian regime change nonviolently. $50 million is for broadcasting through the Voice of America and Radio Farda. Some of the rest will be used to hold Otpor (the Serbian opposition that overthrew Milosevic) type training sessions for the Iranian opposition. Yet the Iranian opposition is far from united – and just how long W’s heavy-weights will wait around for non-violent regime change to occur is an open question. Their fuses have burned all too quickly in the past – and I’m afraid they’ll lead the U.S. down the reckless “military-to-the-rescue” garden path yet again unless the realists have far more clout than I think.


Maps: 1. Iran – Perry Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas. 2. Strait of Hormuz – Perry Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas.

Comments

[pls]

Terrific research!

[Cutler]

Your analysis of Bush administration policy on Iran is outstanding. It seems to me that the final consideration--the "Otpor" option, for lack of a better phrase--is the one most frequently championed by Neocons. Like you, I think the Otpor option is the real question; all other signs point to a diplomatic track. See my recent post on the question,

http://profcutler.com/wordpress_blog/?p=68

Regarding military action: Sy Hersh found plenty of folks who feared and opposed a military strike on Iran, but not a ton of endorsements from the Neocon side.

My reading of David Wurmser's 1999 book "Tyranny's Ally" suggests that Neocons (or Right Zionists, as I call them in my ZNet article "Beyond Incompetence") have long hoped Sistani himself would help bring down the clerical regime in Iran. Do you have any thoughts on this? Would love to read some intelligent discussion of this scenario. My own post on this question can be found at:
http://profcutler.com/wordpress_blog/?p=52

Glad to learn of your blog! Best wishes.

[PHK]

Professor Cutler: Glad you found the above Iran analysis useful - and welcome to WhirledView and the blogosphere yourself. I did check out your post but really don't know enough about neocon hopes for Sistani to be able to comment - and I have not read Wurmser's book.

One thing I can say, however, is that the new American Interest magazine is an editorial board spin-off from Krauthammer's National Interest Magazine (just compare the mastheads last year and now.) Francis Fukuyama is the driving force behind the new magazine and he is clearly having second thoughts (or perhaps third thoughts) about the advisability of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Whether this is the reason for the split between the National Interest and the American Interest, I don't know - but frankly I found Krauthammer so off-the-wall that I stopped reading his column several years ago.

A question I think needs answering is who are the people/organizations pushing for a military "solution" - presumably targeting bombing - against the Iranians and what are their motives. The whole question of an Otpor type "solution" is something else again. Sometimes governments pursue several foreign policy tracks simultaneously - and this is apparently what is happening in US policy towards Iran now.