THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 195, August 7, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
BUSH'S DISASTROUS DIPLOMATIC FLIP FLOP
By Dr. Michael Rubin
U.S. DIPLOMACY & IRAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM: CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH DIPLOMACY CAN
UNDERMINE U.S. CREDIBILITY & ACCELERATE CONFLICT -- DIPLOMACY MINUS THE PRELIMINARY WORK NECESSARY FOR
ITS SUCCESS -- LACK OF ATTENTION TO TIMING OF DIPLOMATIC MOVES -- UNILATERAL ABANDONMENT OF ESTABLISHED
REDLINES & SET PRECONDITIONS FOR ENTERING INTO NEGOTIATIONS -- THE DAMAGE DONE BY PRESIDENT GEORGE W.
BUSH'S JULY, 2008, DECISION TO SEND A REPRESENTATIVE TO GENEVA TO JOIN A MEETING WITH IRAN'S NUCLEAR
NEGOTIATOR
FULL STORY:
Press and pundits applauded President George W. Bush's decision last month to send a representative to Geneva to join
a meeting with Iran's nuclear negotiator. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., the 2008 presumptive Democratic Party presidential
nominee, said, "Now that the United States is involved, it should stay involved with the full strength of our diplomacy."
Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nominee, said the decision might be "the most welcome flip
flop in diplomatic history".
To bring the Islamic Republic into compliance with its international commitments through peaceful means is a noble goal.
Nevertheless, the White House reversal was the wrong move at the wrong time. Just as constitutional democracy is
about more than elections, diplomacy is about more than just a willingness to talk. Absent the preliminary work necessary
for its success and attention to timing, diplomacy can accelerate conflict.
Washington's insistence that Tehran cease its nuclear enrichment makes sense. While proponents of diplomacy call this
a precondition, abandoning such a demand both unilaterally sets aside three UN Security Council resolutions and enables
Iranian officials to run down the clock as they near irreversible nuclear capability.
Even if the White House waffles back to its earlier position, the damage is done. By establishing -- and then voiding -- the
redline laid down by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the United States would not talk until the Islamic Republic
suspended its uranium enrichment, the Bush administration undercut the credibility of future redlines. Indeed, this is the
message that many Iranians have taken. On August 1, 2008, for example, Ali Reza Hosseini, an employee at the Strategic
Studies Institute at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, urged the Iranian leadership "not to take the Secretary of State's
ultimatums seriously."
This raises the probability that Iranian officials will misread the determination of Bush or his successor administration to
prevent the Islamic Republic from achieving a military nuclear capability. Where self-described realists and progressives
see flexibility, Iranian officials see weakness. "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten
and humiliated," stated Mohammad Ja'far Assadi, newly-appointed chief of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, on
July 16, 2008.
Diplomacy absent opponent sincerity does more harm than good. The West has already suffered for its efforts to
accommodate Tehran. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union engagement with Iran led to a near-tripling of trade.
Rather than use its hard currency windfall to build civilian infrastructure and improve the economy, the Iranian leadership
invested perhaps 70 percent of its hard currency and oil windfall into its military and nuclear programs.
Such an allocation is not the result of regime hardliners controlling appropriations, for the bulk of the work on Iran's
covert nuclear program coincided with a period of reformist resurgence and socalled dialogue of civilizations. On June 15,
2008, the semi-official Fars News Agency provided lengthy excerpts from a panel discussion with Abdollah
Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman. He lambasted not the content of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinezhad's nuclear policy, but, rather, its style, and urged a return to Khatami-style diplomacy. "We had an overt
policy that was one of negotiation and confidence-building," he explained, "and a covert policy that was continuation of
[our nuclear] activities." He recommended that the Iranian government should "prove to the entire world that we want
the power plants for electricity [but] afterwards we can continue with other activities."
Indeed, he signaled that Tehran may see the incentive package the White House signed on to in an entirely different
light than the Western diplomats who offered it. "As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our
negotiations, we could import technology," Ramezanzadeh explained. "We should have negotiated for so long, and
benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology we needed."
Iranian officials gloat. They welcomed U.S. concessions as affirmation that defiance succeeds. Meanwhile, with 6,000 P-1
centrifuges and a 4.8 percent enriched feed, Tehran can produce 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in just 16 days,
a period between International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
Iranians play chess, while Americans play checkers. That Tehran's nuclear program has progressed so far is a testament
to the Iranian strategy. In contrast, Bush's move has little to do with a well-thought out strategy and is more a flailing
attempt to change legacy. As Iranian centrifuges continue to spin, the price of Bush's flip-flop will be high: Iranian
overconfidence, erosion of future UN Security Council resolution effectiveness, and forfeiture of future redline credibility.
With its diplomatic card wasted, the next U.S. President will have a stark choice: allow the Islamic Republic to go nuclear
or accelerate the application of far more costly measures.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Military Weaponry & International Security:
Weapons of Mass Destruction & Arms Control
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in Bitterlemons International, August 7, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1967)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 7, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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