In Iran, Like Iraq, the Objective Has Always Been Regime Change
John Glaser, October 23, 2012
If you trust the mainstream account, you’re likely someone who believes that President Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Iran about its nuclear program has provided Iranians with incentive to expand their program and head towards nuclear weapons, right under our noses. But according to two experienced academics and diplomats, the so-called diplomatic opening Obama brought was anything but: “for the past three years, the United States and Europe have stubbornly refused to seek a negotiated solution with Iran,” they write.
At Foreign Affairs, this country’s main establishment journal, Rolf Ekéus and Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer warn that Washington’s approach to Iran mirrors the approach it took to Iraq from 1990 on, reminding us that the goal all along was regime change:
- The Iraq War might seem a thing of the past. But nearly ten years
after combat began, the United States and its allies are using policies
to address the Iranian nuclear challenge that are eerily similar to those
it pursued in the run-up to Operation Enduring Freedom. Just as they did
with Saddam Hussein, concerned governments have implemented economic
sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and low-level violence to weaken the
Iranian regime and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, with the
long-term objective of regime change.
The authors (Ekéus was Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission on Iraq from 1991 to 1997 and Braut-Hegghammer is Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University) re-run the history of US policy toward Iraq following the first Gulf war in 1991. After the war, the US – with its new, post-Cold War sway at the UN Security Council – pushed through harsh economic sanctions that they said would be lifted as soon as Iraq disarmed and proved through a rigorous inspections regime that it’s nuclear program was peaceful.
Iraq largely cooperated, minus a few bumps in the road, they explain. And “by the first few months of 1997, Iraq had completed the disarmament phase of the cease-fire agreement and the United Nations had developed a monitoring system designed to detect Iraqi violations of the nonproliferation requirement.” Voila! Done deal, right?
No. The US refused to lift the sanctions, and threatened to veto proposals to do so at the UN. “In the spring of 1997,” the authors write, “former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a speech at Georgetown University in which she stated that even if the weapons provisions under the cease-fire resolution were completed, the United States would not agree to lifting sanctions unless Saddam had been removed from power.”
This, plus some US bombing campaigns, led Saddam to oust international inspectors, providing the Bush administration with enough blind-spots to justify war for regime change in 2003. And now, aggressive US postures towards Iran, just as they did with Iraq, “are making Iran less willing to cooperate.”
“With escalating pressure and open debate in Israel and the United States about an eventual attack, it is unlikely that Iran will be prepared to make unilateral concessions,” they write.
- …calling for war while intensifying pressure on Iran, without also
clearly defining steps Tehran could take to defuse the tension, removes
any incentives for Iran to change its behavior. In the short term, the
hostility of Western nations is likely to make it more difficult for
Iranian moderates to rein in the nuclear program. And in the longer term,
Tehran will increasingly question whether Iran ought to remain within the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in the face of economic sanctions,
violence, and isolation. Without eyes on the ground, moreover, it will
grow ever more difficult to assess Tehran’s actual progress toward the
nuclear weapons threshold. The world could miss the emergence of an
Iranian breakout capability, or else blunder into another unjustified
war.
http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/10/23/in-iran-like-iraq-the-objective-has-always-been-regime-change/ --
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