U.S. Twin Goals on Iran Draw Criticism

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is pursuing twin goals in Iran: stopping an alleged nuclear weapons program and changing the country’s clerical regime, a senior official said yesterday at a congressional hearing (see GSN, March 8).

Critics at the hearing suggested this approach might work to cross purposes and lead to war, by threatening the regime while at the same time trying to compel its cooperation in forgoing a potential security addition.

We “just seem to be trying to provoke and aggravate and [be] looking for a fight,” said Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas).

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns described the dual strategy yesterday before the House International Relations Committee. 

He said the United States over the past year has sought to muster multinational pressure through the International Atomic Energy Agency and potentially through the U.N. Security Council to compel Iran to give up nuclear activities Washington believes are intended for weapons.

In addition, the Bush administration has pursued policies designed to encourage the Iranian people to “change their own government and form a democratic government in the future.”

The United States has sought to “create a large and diverse international coalition of countries on each of these issues designed to deny Iran a nuclear weapon, and to roll back its support for terrorism, and to influence the people of Iran who we see as victims of the regime, and to assert a comprehensive and aggressive American foreign policy to counter Iran on all of these issues,” Burns said.

He noted the administration has requested $75 million in extra funding for fiscal 2006 to expand television and radio broadcasts through Voice of America and Radio Farda into Iran, and “to work with some of the private American radio and TV stations from the states of California and New Jersey and the Washington, D.C area to help them get the American message into Iran itself.”

The White House would use $10 million of the money to “work through nongovernmental organizations around the world and with some of the European NGOs to try to plant some roots of democracy, of independent journalism, of civil society into Iran,” he said, adding, “We can’t say everything that we’re intending to do, obviously.”

The State Department recently created a Iranian Affairs Office, through which the department plans to “reach out to the Iranian people to support their desire for freedom and democracy,” according to a leaked department cable recently posted on the Internet.

Burns said Tehran posed four particular “challenges” to U.S. interests, identifying a potentially nuclear-armed Iran at the top.

“The greatest immediate threat that we face is that Iran is clearly trying to create a nuclear weapons capability,” he said.

In addition, he said, “Iran is the leading director and chief ‘central banker’ of the major terrorist groups in the Middle East that have killed Americans and killed Israelis and Lebanese, and which stand in direct opposition to peace in the Middle East.”

Iran also has attempted “to exert a dominant role in the Middle East itself and to make Iran into the most powerful country in the Middle East,” he said.

Burns cited fourth “the repression of the people of Iran by this autocratic regime.”

“That in essence, in our judgment, represents the totality of the threat that Iran poses to American interests, as well as to those of our friends and allies around the world,” he said.

Several lawmakers at the hearing questioned the wisdom of the approach, Paul in particular.

“I know the interventions that most everybody advises are well intended, but interference in the internal affairs of other nations does not do much good for us. Playing the policeman of the world has not been beneficial,” he said.

Paul suggested that pursuit of regime change in Iraq backfired on the United States.

“I just think that all these options on the table to do to Iran what we’ve done to Iraq ought to make us sit back and say, what have we done these last three years; isn’t it time for a reassessment?” he said.

He said further the administration’s pursuit of a nuclear energy deal with India signed last week also seemed counterproductive to the effort to gain Iranian cooperation.

“Does India follow all the rules? They don’t even belong to the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty. And we reward them with technology and money. Same way with Pakistan,” he said. 

Burns defended the India deal, saying, “India is democratic and peaceful and a great friend of the United States. Iran is autocratic and adversarial and … one of the greatest threats facing our country today.”

He said the two countries are “going in opposite directions concerning their relationship with the IAEA,” noting nuclear-armed India as part of the deal agreed to place some of its nuclear facilities under international safeguards within eight years. That concession comes in exchange for potential U.S. nuclear material and technology exports and a U.S. effort to persuade the multilateral Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow India to receive such exports despite its nuclear weapons program.

Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) asked whether drawing distinctions might undermine efforts to muster international cooperation on pressuring Iran.

“The issue here appears to be how we compel a China or a Russia that has a different relationship with Iran to understand how it’s OK for us to draw these distinctions with India, but it’s not OK for them,” he said.

Burns said the administration has judged “our policy towards India and its new initiative will not have a negative impact on our ability to prosecute an effective international response to counter Iran.”

Representative Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) asked whether application of the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war against countries suspected of proliferation and ties to terrorism is a possibility.

“The president has made clear that there are no options off the table and that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable,” Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph said in his testimony before the committee.

“I know you didn’t come here to scare us, but I think you’ve frightened me a little bit,” Paul said. 

“Considering the results in Iraq, I would hope that our planning and our discussion now would concentrate on where we went wrong in Iraq, because we can’t find many successes there,” he said.

Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said the administration should consider attempting bilateral talks with Iran, “rather than seeking only to support negotiations of the EU or the efforts of Russia to control the reprocessing of nuclear materials to the satisfaction of the international community.”

“We will not be well served by another military venture into the Middle East, and neither will the cause of nonproliferation. So I think it’s about time we enhance and elevate our diplomatic efforts,” she said.

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