Unthinkable (25 page)

Because the sanctions seem to have had such a powerful impact on Iran, there is a strong temptation to just keep doubling down on them,
but the evidence suggests that would be a mistake. There comes a point when they do no more good, and can do great harm, both to the people of Iran and to the strategy they are meant to enforce. We are rapidly approaching that point with Iran, if we have not passed it already.

There is one last aspect of the revised carrot-and-stick policy that is worth mentioning: the name. Many Iranians bristle at the name “carrot-and-stick” because they say it is derived from the metaphor of how one leads a mule. They say that they find this humiliating and offensive.

An old Chinese saying observes that “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” Our Iran debate desperately wants for such wisdom. For now, in this context, when our nation needs to have an open and honest conversation about which strategy to pursue toward Iran, I think it important to call things by their right names rather than adding to the confusion with euphemisms. And as for Iranian sensibilities . . . well, what I find objectionable is thirty years of Iran killing Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. When the Iranian regime stops doing that I would not only be willing to change how we describe our policy, I would be willing to change the policy itself.

W
henever a fellow of the Brookings Institution publishes a book, the organization holds a public event where the author presents his or her principal conclusions and recommendations, and another speaker comments on it, often by providing a critical perspective. In 2004, when my book
The Persian Puzzle
was published, I asked Danielle Pletka, the vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, to share the podium with me. To many in Washington, this pairing seemed strange. Dany was the longtime foreign policy aide to Senator Jesse Helms, the late conservative lawmaker from North Carolina, and she and I had been on opposite sides of a variety of issues when we were both in government. The tension between us had gotten so bad that the NSC's office of Legislative Affairs forbade me from even speaking to her. Nevertheless, she and I shared a grudging respect for one another. After we both left government service, I discovered that she was not only bright, practical, and creative, but also willing to take unorthodox positions
on issues. I felt she was perfect to critique my ideas at the Brookings event for my book.

I started the program by making the case for a carrot-and-stick approach toward Iran. I laid out my arguments for developing positive incentives to convince Iran to compromise on its nuclear program and other problematic behavior—and for coupling these incentives with disincentives (such as economic sanctions) to be applied if Tehran refused to cooperate. At the time, this approach did not fit either the left's desire to engage Tehran unconditionally or the right's determination to invade. The assembled experts seemed intrigued, but subdued.

Then it was Dany's turn to speak. She started by commending me for a creative approach to a difficult problem and indicated that she thought it might be worth trying. But she was also convinced that it would fail. She believed that Iran's hardliners were too wedded to their nuclear program to give it up, and Iran's reformists were too weak to overrule them. For those reasons, she believed that the policy the United States should adopt toward Iran was one of “regime change”—although not military regime change. She recognized that after Iraq and Afghanistan there was no longer a popular appetite for that. Instead, she felt that the United States should take a principled stand that we would assist Iranians seeking to replace the Islamic Republic with a true democracy, however we could. She recognized that in 2004 (five years before the birth of the Green Movement), what she was advocating had little chance of success, certainly in the short term and possibly even in the long term. But her argument was that, eventually, the Islamic Republic would fall, and whenever that happened—perhaps not for decades—the only policy that would be justifiable to Iranians, to Americans, to history, would be one of principled opposition to an oppressive, authoritarian regime. She concluded by noting that since the United States had never tried to help the millions of Iranians agitating for democracy (and it was clear even in 2004 that many Iranians ardently desired greater democracy), we could not say for certain that there was nothing for us to do. We ought to at least try. At worst, we would fail, but we would fail doing the right thing. And at
best we might succeed. If we succeeded we would have done something remarkable for Iranians and Americans alike.

It was a thoughtful argument, and while I felt it was best to try my carrot-and-stick approach first, I never forgot her ideas. Today, they stay with me because with each passing day, I fear that Dany may have been right.

There are three rationales for the United States to try to help overturn the government in Tehran. The first is the argument articulated by Danielle Pletka above. By any standard, the Iranian regime is odious. It is oppressive. It is authoritarian. It has shed nearly all of its democratic pretensions and rules in an increasingly autocratic fashion. It employs extra-judicial killing and torture. It incarcerates those it believes pose the slightest threat to the regime—and incarcerates them for lengthy periods in deplorable conditions.
¹
It is hated by a great many Iranians (although certainly not by all). The world, the Middle East, and the Iranian people would all be better off if the current Iranian regime were gone. As Dany suggested, we could support regime change because it is what is right.

REGIME CHANGE TO SECURE AMERICA'S REGIONAL INTERESTS.
A second reason to support regime change in Iran, also an element of Dany's remarks, is that this Iranian regime may never be willing to have a nonconfrontational relationship with the United States. Forget about a rapprochement—most Americans and American policymakers would be glad just to ignore Iran and have Tehran leave us alone. (Indeed, that has been the overarching motive of most American administrations since Carter, contrary to the conspiracy theories of the Iranian regime.) Unfortunately, since the revolution, the Islamic Republic has never been willing to leave the United States alone. Instead, they have defined themselves as our enemy and sought to undermine and attack our interests and our allies as best they could. It may not be possible for the United States
to secure its interests in the Persian Gulf region as long as the current Iranian regime remains, and remains determined to oppose almost anything we do. If this regime refuses to do what would be necessary to meet America's minimal requirements for peaceful coexistence, we should seek its ouster.

This rationale, however, is a bit tougher to use to justify a policy of regime change. Not only do you have to believe that the United States could never find a way to live with this Iranian regime, which not every American does, but this theory requires a reasonable expectation that a successor regime would be more likely to give up Iran's nuclear program. There is no way to be certain, and the evidence is contradictory, but it seems more likely than not that a change of regime
would
produce a government that the United States could abide.

The evidence against this point is that a number of Iranian reformists—including the leaders of the Green Movement in 2009—have supported Iran's nuclear program, and there is limited public polling data that suggest a strong majority of Iranians are committed to the Iranian nuclear program.

All of that is true, but it is not necessarily dispositive. There is other evidence to suggest that a different regime would almost certainly be better inclined toward the United States. The Iranian regime has turned the nuclear program into a bellwether of Iranian patriotism. Anyone who does not support it gets tarred as an agent of the West—which can be lethal in the Islamic Republic, not just politically but literally. No Iranian leader can do any less than declare his or her support for the nuclear program, at least in public. Second, the regime has sold the nuclear program to its people as being about nuclear energy—not about nuclear weapons. They have long denied that there is any weapons component to the program. When Iranian leaders and ordinary citizens declare support for Iran's nuclear program, they are most often declaring it for a civilian energy program, not for a weapons program.
²

All polling of Iranians is suspect because the regime generally prevents direct public opinion sampling, forcing foreigners to conduct phone polls
from outside the country, a technique susceptible to false results. Such polls tend to show exaggerated agreement with the views of the regime as respondents often assume that the regime is listening and fear they will be harmed if they give answers that don't echo the views of the government. With these qualifications in mind, it is noteworthy that a 2010 RAND Corporation poll found that Iranians supported Iran's acquisition of nuclear energy by 87 percent in favor to just 3 percent opposed. In contrast, when asked if Iran should acquire nuclear weapons, the same respondents came out 46 percent opposed and 44 percent in favor. And again, to the extent that these numbers are inaccurate, they probably
overstate
the degree of support for nuclear weapons.
³
Indeed, the RAND pollsters found that that the more comfortable respondents were taking the survey, the more likely they were to
oppose
Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, whereas the more fearful they were about participating in the survey, the less likely they were to voice opposition to Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
⁴

In addition, a 2012 Gallup poll found that the number of Iranians who supported Iran's nuclear program for purely civilian purposes had fallen to just 57 percent, probably reflecting the impact of sanctions. The percentage of Iranians supporting Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons had fallen as well, down to just 40 percent, although, interestingly, the same poll found that the number of Iranians who outright opposed Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability had also declined to 35 percent—with a big jump in the number of people saying that they just did not know.
⁵
That seems like a reasonable response to the frustration of the sanctions.

To the extent that Westerners have been able to speak to Iranian reformist leaders privately, especially during Mohammad Khatami's time as president, the reformists have insisted that they understand Western concerns about their nuclear program and have been ready to accommodate our needs.
⁶
In 2006, Khatami's brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, told the Italian newspaper
La Repubblica,
“We have written numerous letters to Leader Khamenei to explain that insisting on uranium enrichment is not the country's interest; that in this way we lose all the benefits
gained over the past sixteen years; and that the only proper position is suspension of uranium-enriching activities and negotiations with the aim of fostering trust and having international oversight.”
⁷
Along similar lines, the reformists have also consistently indicated a willingness to accept a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians in a way that the hardliners haven't.
⁸
President Khatami himself said on several occasions that Iran would not be more Palestinian than the Palestinians, and “We will honor what the Palestinian people accept.”
⁹
His vice president, Massoumeh Ebtekar, went further, declaring herself a supporter of direct talks between Israel and Iran.
¹⁰

All of these admissions should give us confidence that the removal of the current Iranian regime and its replacement with one more reflective of Iranian public opinion would be a positive development for the United States. We can even say that almost any imaginable change of regime in Tehran would benefit the United States, if only because it is hard to imagine a regime
more
anti-American than the one in place today.

REGIME CHANGE AS ANOTHER STICK.
There is still one more rationale for pursuing regime change in Iran: doing so may be the best, or even the only, way to persuade the Iranian regime to make concessions on its nuclear program, end its support for terrorism, and stop adding to the chaos of the Middle East. This rationale for seeking regime change stems from the notion that the United States has failed to persuade Tehran to change its ways because we have not been able to hold at risk anything that the Iranian leadership values more than its nuclear program, its support for terrorism, and so on. The theory behind the sanctions on Iran was that the regime would value its economy more than its nuclear program, and would agree to compromise on the latter to have sanctions lifted on the former. Since that has not worked (at least, not yet), it raises the question of whether there is something else that the Iranian regime values more than the country's economic well-being.