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Comment (0)Iran: Confrontation or Negotiation by John Mundy
Speech to the Middle East Study Group on April 30th, 2012, Canadian International Council, Ottawa
Thank you for the introduction. I am very grateful to Peter Larson and the Canadian International Council for giving me an opportunity to speak about Iran. We are poised between confrontation and negotiation with this country and I would like to explore with you the prospects for successful diplomacy. I would also comment on Canadian policy.
I am glad to have such an able respondent in the person of Shimon Fogel of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy. I hope that between us we can spark a debate about Iran.
Before I get started I would like to recognize Susanne Tamas of the Baha’i Community of Canada. Her group is leading an international campaign calling upon the Government of Iran to release Baha’i educators from arrest and I am pleased to support it. Finally, I would also like to recognize Mr. Reza Fahidi from the Iranian embassy. I am glad that he is here because I think dialogue is better than confrontation.
I retired a few years ago from a career as a diplomat. Its high point was my appointment in 2007 as the Canadian Ambassador to Iran. This was a difficult time in our bilateral relationship as the two countries struggled to agree on a reciprocal exchange of Ambassadors. When these efforts failed, Iran asked me to leave and I was expelled in December 2007. Shortly afterwards I retired.
At that time I did not expect to remain engaged on foreign policy issues but recent events have since changed my mind. I was disturbed by the steady drift towards military confrontation over the past year. Another factor was Prime Minister Harper’s twin TV interviews last January and February. No one would disagree with the Prime Minister when he said that he was deeply concerned about Iran, but I believe that he went too far when he said Iran’s leaders would have “no hesitation of using nuclear weapons”.
As I said in my opinion piece in the Globe, if this is your view then negotiations with Iran don’t make much sense. Despite his denials, I understood his comments to be preparing Canadian public opinion to support a preemptive Israeli strike – one that would not be covered by the legitimacy of the Security Council.
During the visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to Ottawa last month our PM did make statements hoping for a peaceful solution to the crisis but he did not take the next step and warn Israel against launching a strike. This was significant because clearly it would have been helpful to President Obama if he had. Prime Minister Cameron understood this when he visited the United States shortly afterwards and joined President Obama in making just such a warning. Why doesn’t Canada do the same?
Lets consider for a few moments the type of preemptive attack that Israel advocates.
Don’t believe those who say it would be a “surgical strike”. The phrase conjures up the reassuring image of something like day surgery. You’re in hospital in the morning – local anesthetic – a small incision – then a painless little snip and the problem is solved – you’re out of hospital in the afternoon.
A strike against Iran will not be painless. It is impossible to predict what type of war might result but war games assume an air war targeting many disbursed nuclear sites. Iran by the way is the size of Alaska. It would likely be preceded by an attack against Iran’s air force and air defense system. It might also include attacks against the forces Iran might use to retaliate: its missile bases and naval ports. Because you are also trying to bomb knowledge, the attack would likely also be designed to kill as many of the Iranian nuclear scientists and civilian technicians as possible. I won’t try to speculate on what military countermeasures Iran might take, except to say that it would defend itself to the best of its ability. This isn’t a surgical operation; it’s an air war. And here is the really strange thing. Even the strongest supporters of a strike concede that it would only delay Iran’s nuclear program not stop it. This means there would be calls to do it again in a few years time. Opponents of a strike on the other hand fear that it will not delay Iran’s program but make Iranian nuclear weapons more likely. These critics include many prominent Israeli’s, the retired head of Mossad, Meir Dagan is one and the retired head of Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin is another. These men do not underestimate Iran but they do oppose a policy that they think will fail.
I could fill a speech with the political and diplomatic consequences of a strike but I will mention just a few. Israel already carries the historical legacy of several wars against Arab states but it has never gone to war against Iran. In fact, at various times Israel has been surprisingly friendly towards Revolutionary Iran, despite the latter’s venomous rhetoric against it. The Iran Contra scandal showed that Israel was arming Revolutionary Iran during the 1980s.
An attack against Iran would add a new war to Israel’s historical record, this time against Persians instead of Arabs. In the future, probably far off, when it once again became sensible for Israel and Iran to cooperate, I think some Israeli leaders would regret their attack. They would certainly regret its impact on Iran’s ancient Jewish community.
An attack could also throw a political lifeline to Iranian hard liners. Iran’s leaders are trying to reconnect with their alienated urban middle class who demonstrated en masse against the fraudulent elections of 2009. While these Iranians might not wish to support their increasingly discredited leaders I think they would unite behind the idea that their country should not be attacked. That will be enough to keep the hard liners in control and provide them with the justification to crush all dissent.
As Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi said last year, the effect of an attack would be devastating for Iran’s indigenous human rights and democracy movement. And yet it is precisely this movement that holds the greatest promise for Iran to emerge from its isolation and rejoin the international community. Canada shouldn’t support policies that would undermine it. After all support for human rights has been a fundamental principle of Canadian policy towards Iran. We have led 9 UN votes condemning Iran’s human rights record. We draw attention to specific human rights cases such as the arrest of Baha’i educators. We should discourage an attack that might jeopardize this movement.
There is another factor. In present circumstances, the Security Council would authorize a preemptive strike and in any case Israel would not ask for such authority. It would be carried out, therefore, against UN norms of collective security. This would allow Iran to re-brand itself as a victim and undermine the international consensus that has put Iran under such great economic and diplomatic pressure.
In such circumstances, Canada will have a choice. We could remain faithful to the system of collective security under the United Nations Charter that we helped to create or we could support a preemptive war without full international legitimacy. We chose the first option in 2003, despite considerable risk to our relationship with the United States when our closest friend and ally invaded Iraq. Our government talks about a new and principled Canadian foreign policy but there is nothing new or principled about sneak attacks and preemptive wars. In fact they are very old tactics. Canada fought the Second World War to overturn them. Canada has been faithful to the principle of collective security for seven decades. We should not give it up now.
So there are four reasons why Canada should oppose an Israeli strike – it would initiate a war; it would re-legitimize Iran’s hardliners; it would cripple the human rights movement in Iran and it would overturn a founding principle of Canadian foreign policy.
Let me turn to the historical record of negotiation with Iran. I agree with our Government that it is critical that current diplomacy succeeds and I think there are some lessons to be learned from past efforts. First, it’s not going to be easy or quick. Thirty-three years after the Revolution, we are now well into a second generation of leaders and officials who have known nothing but dysfunction between Iran and the West. Even today, I don’t think Iran’s leaders realize how deeply the hostage crisis affected the United States. Because it was also an attack against the norms of diplomacy, it continues to undermine our diplomatic efforts today. I think it’s hard also to underestimate the impact upon Israel of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran’s support for terrorist tactics against Israel has made it virtually impossible for the two countries to communicate, let alone understand each other.
There is also the pernicious legacy of past wars in the region. I’ll flag just one, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. All war is hell but this one deserves a place deep down in Dante’s ninth circle. It destroyed southwestern Iran and caused a million casualties on both sides. Lets not forget that Iraq attacked Iran’s cities with ballistic missiles and Iran’s armies with chemical weapons. It taught Iran’s leaders a bitter lesson. International conventions against chemical warfare would not be enforced for them. I’ve walked through the enormous Behesht-e Zahra cemetery south of Tehran. Thousands of young men who died in these attacks are buried there and we should expect Iran’s leaders to keep faith with them. For this reason I don’t think Iran will agree to a nuclear settlement unless Iran’s legitimate security needs are recognized.
The last bit of history I want to flag is the failure of previous attempts to exclude Iran from new security structures in the Middle East. After the conclusion of the First Gulf War President George Bush senior convened a conference in Madrid in 1992 to make peace in the Middle East. Iran was the only major country excluded from it and it is from this date that its dalliance with Hezbollah and Hamas became an embrace. Their terrorist attacks on Israel helped to wreck the Oslo peace process.
In 2001 Iran cooperated with the United States when it invaded Afghanistan and this time Iran was invited to the subsequent peace conference. Iran was a constructive participant and helped to stabilize Afghanistan after the Taliban’s defeat. Almost immediately, this nascent cooperation went off the rails spectacularly in early in 2002, when the second President Bush included Iran in his Axis of Evil Speech. I met Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, who was the reformist Vice President of Iran at the time and he bitterly recounted to me how his government’s opening towards the United States had been discredited within Iran by that speech.
A year later, Iran made a final attempt to negotiate a grand bargain with the United States by making a comprehensive proposal to settle all outstanding differences. Iran offered verification of its nuclear program, disarming of Hezbollah and Hamas and support for a two state solution to the Palestinian conflict. Not only did the United States reject this proposal – it did not even discuss it with Iran. Indeed the United States went further and publicly rebuked the Swiss Ambassador that brought the proposal to Washington. From this point Iran began working actively against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq and we know how that turned out. We may have been outraged by what Iran did to undermine these occupations but we should not be surprised. Once again the US was unable to stabilize the region while also seeking to isolate Iran. I think this lesson still applies today. A settlement with Iran should therefore recognize its interests in the region and reintegrate it into a regional security structure. The obvious place to start is cooperation between the US and Iran where it makes the most sense, in Afghanistan.
Now we are on the cusp of a new cycle of diplomacy with Iran. President Barak Obama’s speech to the AIPAC Conference during the recent visit to Washington of Prime Minister Netanyahu articulated American policy. He stated that the US and Israel agree that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain one without the US being able to detect it with significant lead-time. So this is the first point. There is time for a peaceful resolution of the issue.
The President also framed Iran’s nuclear challenge as much broader problem than just a security issue for Israel alone. The whole international community has a stake in it.
Third he looked at Iran’s leaders dispassionately. He stated that they “ care about the regime’s survival. They’re sensitive to the opinions of the people and they are troubled by the isolation that they are experiencing”. Moreover by their own words, he noted that they have left an opening. Iran’s leaders have said repeatedly “ nuclear weapons are sinful and un-Islamic”.
To summarize there is time for a peaceful solution to the issue, the issue itself transcends Iran’s geopolitical competition with Israel and as much as we might not like the way Iran is being led, we are dealing with rational leaders.
I have left the most important part of the President’s speech to the last. He specifically rejected a policy of containing Iran if it became armed with nuclear weapons. His red line is weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program. If there is proof that Iran has decided to actually make a nuclear weapon then we can expect a showdown. All options are on the table and President Obama said, “ I don’t bluff.”
There are good reasons to reject a strategy of containment. Iran armed with its own rudimentary nuclear weapons would be disaster for everyone.
It would be a disaster for Israel and Iran. Their nuclear balance would be much more unstable than the balance during the Cold War. In a crisis both countries would face the logic of “use it or lose it and unlike the US and the old USSR, Iran and Israel have almost no way to communicate. They would be standing on a precipice.
It would also be a disaster for the United States because it would be drawn into a potential conflict.
It would be a disaster for the region because several other states would be tempted to acquire their own nuclear weapons, compounding the region’s instability in a deadly arms race.
Finally it would be a disaster for Canada and the rest of the world, which has a stake in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
So — the stakes are high and we are involved.
Let me turn to the diplomacy of President Obama and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. It is not easy to negotiate with the Supreme Leader. How do you gauge his intentions? To the best of my knowledge he has not set foot outside his country since he became Iran’s leader in 1988. His self-imposed isolation is a barrier to successful diplomacy.
President Obama began his presidency with a dual track strategy towards Iran. Diplomacy and sanctions were paired. The US signaled that it was prepared to enter into negotiations without preconditions. The President’s famous Nowruz address set out to demonstrate American sincerity in seeking a diplomatic solution to Iran-US conflict.
June 2009 was a significant month. The Iranian presidential election took place and wide spread electoral fraud provoked huge demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader. The world was transfixed by brutal images of repression on the streets of Tehran.
This same month Iran contacted the IAEA and requested fuel pads for the Tehran Research Reactor. It produces medical isotopes and needed refueling. The facility was originally provided by the United States and is subject to inspection. The Americans fashioned a proposal with Russian, French and IAEA help to swap most of Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium for fuel pads and also offered a safety upgrade. This was a significant confidence building initiative. The benefit to Iran was implicit recognition of its enrichment program. For the United States the benefit was a draw down of Iran’s stockpile of fuel to close to zero, well below the threshold for a weapon.
The initiative failed. The Fordow site was discovered in Qom. Despite Ahmadinejad’s initial support for the swap, his domestic political opponents denounced it as a sell out. Last minute mediation by Japan and Turkey failed. It appeared that the political paralysis in Tehran after the Presidential election made it impossible for the Supreme Leader to accept an offer that he himself had itself subtly invited.
By the end of 2009, a proposal that was supposed to build confidence had done the opposite and the diplomacy of outreach towards Iran came to a complete stop. In the words of Trita Parsi, an American-Iranian expert on the conflict, American diplomatic outreach to Iran was predicated on a single role of the dice. When it came up short the United States switched to their other track, intensified economic sanctions. Outreach towards Iran was replaced by American diplomatic outreach to Russia and China who had to be convinced to support new sanctions. On the eve of consensus emerging within the Security Council on a new round of sanctions, two emerging middle powers, Brazil and Turkey almost achieved a breakthrough. In May 2010, President Luiz Lula da Silva and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan flew to Tehran and negotiated a deal to move a significant portion of Iran’s enriched uranium off shore for reprocessing. They had a prior understanding with the United States on what might be acceptable and came very close to delivering.
During the few weeks that it took them to convince Tehran, the political room that President Obama had in Washington for deal making shifted. Now it was the Americans that turned away from a confidence-building agreement. Turkey and Brazil were so disappointed by the collapse of their initiative that they voted against Resolution 1929 in the Security Council but it passed with Russian and Chinese support and imposed the latest and most far-reaching sanctions against Iran.
What role did Canada play this search for a negotiated solution? It’s hard to know. Unlike Turkey and Brazil we are not on the Security Council. If we played a helpful and facilitating role behind the scenes, it is not described in the speeches and commentary that I have consulted. I hope we did. The leaders of Turkey, Brazil and Japan took political risks to engage in the type of public, middle power, diplomacy that Canada has practiced with skill and success in the past. What we do know is that Canada tilts towards Israel on this issue and Israel advocates confrontation not negotiation.
As the US and other countries engage again with Iran, we are back to a dual track process. Strong multilateral sanctions are paired with negotiations that focus on resolving only one part of the Iranian puzzle, its nuclear program. I hope they will succeed but if I have understood past history correctly, then I fear that the chances for success are poor. Sanctions are a blunt instrument and there is more than just the nuclear issue to discuss with Iran.
Lets look at sanctions first. Iran has been under some form of economic sanctions since 1980 and they have not yet changed Iran’s behaviour. The newest ones have the broadest reach and are endorsed by all of Iran’s trading partners. Perhaps this time they will work but to work properly they must be reversible. I hope President Obama has enough clout in Congress to roll back American sanctions in return for real Iranian concessions. This will be a major test of American policy should Iran come to the table in Baghdad ready to deal. Moreover, the more successful economic sanctions are, the more Iran’s middle class will be squeezed. This is the group of Iranians that form the backbone of the reform movement. We don’t want to wipe them out.
The other part of the strategy with Iran may also have weaknesses. Focusing uniquely on constraining Iran’s nuclear program without also addressing Iran’s own security concerns and recognizing its role in the region – has not worked well in the past.
In addition a strategy that does not also help to empower Iran’s reform movement reduces chances that the Iranian people themselves will find a way to reform their government and break out of their isolation.
As the parties sit down again to negotiate once again I hope they articulate an endgame that will be attractive to both sides. I think this is the key to successful diplomacy and it could be made up of the following elements:
. A civilian nuclear program that no longer poses a threat to security in the region,
. Recognition of both Iran’s own security interests and its role as a key country in the region,
. Reintegration of Iran into the world economy through the reduction and eventual reversal of sanctions
. Re-establishment of more normal relations, or at least regular dialogue, between Iran and the United States and if possible, Iran and Israel, and
. Sustained dialogue with the Iranian government on human rights.
We don’t need simultaneous progress on all of these issues for diplomacy to be successful but we do need diplomacy without false deadlines. The other alternative, increased isolation of Iran leading to confrontation will I fear lead to another generation of conflict in this part of the world.
What can Canada do to help?
. I think we should use our close friendship and support of Israel to try to influence it. We should join the United States and UK in warning Israel publicly that we would not support unilateral military action. Given our record of support for Israel this would be noticed by Israeli public opinion and give support to those within Israel who are arguing against such a strike.
. We should also encourage Israel to think in a longer timeframe about its geopolitical competition with Iran. I believe that confrontation between these two countries is not inevitable. Indeed there may very well be circumstances in the future that push them together once again.
. Finally I think Canada should remain the strongest voice for human rights for Iranians. We should advocate that part of the solution to a long-term settlement with Iran is engagement with it on human rights issues. We did this with the old Soviet Union. We can do it with Iran. We should not abandon Iran’s reformers through ill-judged support for military confrontation.
I would like to conclude with a few words about the time I spent in Iran. You cannot live there for eight months as I did, travel around the country meeting with Iranians from all walks of life and not be affected by the experience.
The more time I spent in Iran the more I became convinced that what Iranians want is dignity. They want to be treated with dignity by their own government and by the outside world.
I left Tehran believing that Iranians want to reduce their country’s isolation, re-join the international community and share the cultural achievements of their civilization with the rest of the world. You heard these aspirations in film director Asghar Farhadi’s wonderful acceptance speech at the Academy Awards. Iranians are tired of living in a pariah state.
Iranians also want to be treated with dignity by their own government. This explains why millions of Iranians demonstrated against their government after the election of 2009 and why the Reform movement led by Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karoubi is still potent after years of repression. Thank you
John Mundy is a retired Canadian Ambassador to Iran. He was expelled by Iran in 2007 after efforts to agree on a reciprocal exchange of ambassadors between the two countries failed. While in Iran Mr. Mundy traveled widely and met Iranians from all walks of life. He is writing a book about his experience. He is a Visiting Associate at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for International Policy studies and has written and spoken about Iran on CBC radio and television, the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail. He can be reached at merrickvillejl@yahoo.com or 613 269 3935.
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