Iran's Deadly Ambition (24 page)

Moynihan’s admonition may have been directed at America’s criminal justice system, but it applies equally well to contemporary U.S. policy toward Iran. As the foregoing pages have shown, Iran’s rogue behavior spans a broad spectrum of subversive activities in virtually every corner of the world. Furthermore, the Iranian leadership, in stark contrast with the rest of the country, remains revolutionary in outlook and insurgent in its behavior. As a result, Iran’s regime continues to work diligently to improve its global position and export its uncompromising version of political Islam—albeit in a more subtle and sophisticated fashion than it did in the 1980s.

Yet, in its pursuit of a nuclear deal, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to both the Iranian regime’s internal deformities and its destructive behavior abroad. Worse still, the White House has become incentivized to not pay
any heed to, or call attention to, what the Iranian regime truly thinks, says, and does, lest it prejudice prospects for political alignment between Washington and Tehran. The end result is an Iran policy that is predicated more upon aspiration than reality and pins its hopes on the prospect of historic reconciliation with Iran at great strategic and moral cost.

Which brings us back to the core problem. The danger emanating from Iran today is not strictly a function of its nuclear ambitions. Rather, it is a product of the Iranian regime itself. More than thirty-five years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini swept to power in Tehran, the Islamic Republic he created remains a radical expansionist and revisionist state.

As a result, any agreement struck with Iran, now or in the future, will not eliminate the strategic threat that Iran poses to America, its allies, or its global interests. This is because that threat emanates not from Iran’s nuclear program, but from the Iranian regime itself. This is especially true if the deal ultimately struck between Washington and Tehran is a bad one that leaves Iran’s nuclear capability largely intact, thereby granting Iran’s ayatollahs the means to establish their country as a regional hegemon. Simply put, Washington will not wake up the day after a deal with Tehran to find that Iran’s regime has changed its political stripes, or its ideological ones. Rather, the opposite is likely to be true; a nuclear-armed Iran, or an Iran that is a threshold nuclear power, will be more empowered than ever to promote its radical vision of global Islamic revolution.

Iranian officials, at least, certainly believe it will. Back in 2012, even as their country weathered an unprecedented economic crisis, Iran’s officials were thinking big. The Islamic Republic “has broken the monopoly of the U.S. and a number of Western countries over the world management system,” General Yadollah Javani, the former head of the IRGC’s Politburo, told a gathering of naval forces in Bandar
Abbas that year. According to Javani, Iran “has turned into a strategic rival that can change the structure of the world’s command center and become a member of it.”
¹⁴
It is a view that has only strengthened of late, as America appears to undergo a process of strategic retreat in world affairs.

SENDING ALL THE WRONG SIGNALS

In December 2014, the Obama administration went public with a major change in policy toward Latin America. Speaking from the White House Cabinet Room, President Obama formally abandoned more than half a century of policy toward the Castro regime in Cuba, announcing plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Havana, sketching out plans for an embassy in the Cuban capital, and promising to formally revisit the country’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
¹⁵

The decision was nearly two years in the making. In the fall of 2013, in a major address before the Organization of the American States, Secretary of State John Kerry announced with great fanfare that the “era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”
¹⁶
That pronouncement—intended to reassure regional powers that America’s sometimes heavy-handed approach to the region was a thing of the past—touched off a year and a half of quiet diplomacy between Washington and Havana, culminating in the December 2014 opening.

Since then, more than a few Iran watchers have applauded the move, suggesting that a similar “reset” directed at Tehran would yield the same salutary results in our relationship with Iran.
¹⁷
Unfortunately, officials in Tehran appear to have drawn precisely the opposite conclusion.

As the Islamic Republic sees it, the change in U.S. policy reflects nothing less than a full-scale failure of Washington’s long-standing approach to Cuba. It is also an important confirmation that continued political intransigence and anti-Americanism
can pay important strategic dividends. Or, as one spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry put it, “[t]he resistance of the Cuban people and officials on their principles and the ideals of the revolution during the last 50 years showed that a policy of isolation and sanctions from domineering powers against the will and endurance of independent governments and people is ineffective and inefficient.”
¹⁸

In other words, as seen from Tehran, America’s about-face on Cuba was not an enlightened attempt at outreach, as President Obama stressed in his White House announcement. Rather, it was a sign of U.S. policy collapse—and an indication that intransigence of the type practiced in both Havana and Tehran can pay concrete dividends.
¹⁹

HARD CHOICES

Where does all this leave the United States and its allies? For much of the past decade, Western policy makers have tried to avoid making hard choices regarding Iran, preferring to defer the decisive action necessary to bring Iran’s nuclear ambitions and global activism to heel. Even today, the prevailing view in Washington and European capitals appears to be that a larger political normalization will inevitably follow coming to terms with Iran over its nuclear program.

This represents a dangerous misreading of the ideology that animates the Iranian regime and of the Islamic Republic’s enduring ambition for both regional hegemony and global influence. Yet those factors are more relevant than ever before. Today, perceptions of American strategic weakness, aversion to foreign entanglements, and declining appetite for global conflict have convinced Iran’s leaders that they are poised for greater opportunity on the world stage than ever before.

Proving them wrong will be one of the most important and vexing challenges confronting the next American administration, whatever its political stripe.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

  
1
.
   
Anne Gearan and Joby Warrick, “World Powers Reach Nuclear Deal with Iran to Freeze Its Nuclear Program,”
Washington Post
, November 24, 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kerry-in-geneva-raising-hopes-for-historic-nuclear-deal-with-iran/2013/11/23/53e7bfe6-5430-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html
.

  
2
.
   
“Transcript: Obama’s Speech at AIPAC,”
NPR.org
, June 4, 2008,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432
.

  
3
.
   
“Obama Reaches Out to Iran via Video,”
MSNBC.com
News Services, March 20, 2009,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29785710/ns/politics-white_house/t/obama-reaches-out-iran-video/#.VAvjDF4irwI
.

  
4
.
   
“Iranian Leaders Ignore Obama’s Outstretched Hand,”
FoxNews.com
, March 20, 2009,
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/20/iranian-leaders-ignore-obamas-outstretched-hand
.

  
5
.
   
Adam Kredo, “Reports: U.S. Unfreezes $8 Billion in Iranian Assets,”
Washington Free Beacon
, November 25, 2013,
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/reports-u-s-unfreezes-8-billion-in-iranian-assets/
.

  
6
.
   
“Iran to Access $15bn under Nuclear Deal,” Press TV (Tehran), November 30, 2013,
http://presstv.com/detail/2013/11/30/337513/iran-to-access-15bn-under-nuclear-deal/
.

  
7
.
   
Amos Harel, “Israeli Officials: U.S. Admits Iran Will Get $20b from Sanctions Relief,”
Haaretz.com
(Tel Aviv), December 11, 2013,
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.562824
.

  
8
.
   
See Paul Domjan, Mark Dubowitz, Jennifer Hsieh, and Rachel Ziemba, “Sanctions Relief: What Did Iran Get?” Foundation for Defense of Democracies/Roubini Global Economics, July 2014,
http://defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/general/RoubiniFDDReport.pdf
.

  
9
.
   
Benoît Faucon, “Iran Deal Opens Door for Businesses,”
Wall Street Journal
, December 1, 2013,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304579404579232131395661284?mod=WSJ_business_LeadStoryRotator
.

10
.
   
See Jeremy Kahn, “Iran Lures Investors Seeing Nuclear Deal Ending Sanctions,” Bloomberg News, August 18, 2014,
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-17/iran-lures-investors-seeing-nuclear-deal-ending-sanctions.html
.

11
.
   
As cited in Andrea Thomas, “German Business Looks to Renew Iran Contacts,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 3, 2014,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/german-businesses-warm-to-iran-1407099835#printMode
.

12
.
   
John Kerry, “Regarding Significant Reductions of Iranian Crude Oil Purchases,” U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, November 29, 2013,
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/11/218131.htm
.

13
.
   
Zachary Keck, “Asia’s Iran Oil Imports Increase 25%,”
The Diplomat
, August 1, 2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/asias-iran-oil-imports-increase-25/
.

14
.
   
Osamu Tsukimori, “Asian Imports of Iran Crude Rise above 1 Million BPD in November,” Reuters, December 26, 2014,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102295784
.

15
.
   
“Iran’s Inflation Rate Hits 17.2%, CBI Says,” Trend News Agency (Baku), December 27, 2014,
http://en.trend.az/iran/business/2348323.html
.

16
.
   
Statistics from “Iran Currency Tracker,” accessible at the United Against Nuclear Iran website:
http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/iran-currency-tracker
.

17
.
   
“Iran’s GDP Grows by 4%: Central Bank,”
Tehran Times
, December 26, 2014,
http://www.tehrantimes.com/economy-and-business/120448-irans-gdp-grows-by-4-central-bank
.

18
.
   
“IMF Predicts Economic Growth for Iran,” FARS News Agency (Tehran), April 9, 2014,
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930120000786
; “Iran Exits Recession with 4% Growth in Six Months, Rouhani Says,” Bloomberg News, December 25, 2014,
http://gulfbusiness.com/2014/12/iran-exits-recession-4-growth-six-months-rouhani-says/#.VKQPm4ep3dk
.

19
.
   
“Iran Exits Recession with 4% Growth in Six Months, Rouhani Says,” Bloomberg News.

20
.
   
“Persian Nuclear Carpet Ride,” Review and Outlook,
Wall Street Journal
, July 21, 2014,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/persian-nuclear-carpet-ride-1405893703
.

21
.
   
White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address,” January 28, 2014,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/28/president-barack-obamas-state-union-address
.

22
.
   
S.1881—Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, 113th Congress (2013–2014),
Congress.gov
,
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/1881
.

23
.
   
Peter Sullivan, “Graham: Senate Will Vote on Iran Sanctions Legislation in January,”
The Hill
, December 27, 2014,
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/228125-congress-set-to-take-up-iran-sanctions-bill-next-month-graham-says
.

24
.
   
Jason Rezaian, “Iran to Increase Gasoline Prices, Testing Patience of Public Awaiting Economic Recovery,”
Washington Post
, April 25, 2014,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2014/04/24/30a627f0-3c9c-47c1-ab68-6b6701954021_story.html
.

25
.
   
See Mahmood Khaghani, “From Resistance to Resilience,”
Tehran Times
, August 27, 2014,
http://www.tehrantimes.com/oped/117983-from-resistance-to-resilience-
.

26
.
   
“Iran Median Age,”
IndexMundi.com
, 2014,
http://www.indexmundi.com/iran/median_age.html
.

27
.
   
Oliver August, “The Revolution Is Over,”
The Economist
, November 1–7, 2014,
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21628597-after-decades-messianic-fervour-iran-becoming-more-mature-and-modern-country
.

28
.
   
Thomas L. Friedman, “An American in Paris,”
New York Times
, January 20, 2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/opinion/20friedman.html?hp
.