BASIC Notes
OCCASIONAL PAPERS ON INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY POLICY
7 December 2007
Updated NIE Implies Constructive Pragmatism
in Tehran
By Shervin Boloorian
With the release of the unclassified US National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and news of its conclusion that
Iran likely abandoned its weapons program in 2003 circulating
on the news wires, speculation exists as to what factors may
have guided Iran's decision to close the door on their alleged
program.
Iraq Plays a Role
The principle regional shock that played an
almost certain role in any Iranian national security calculus
was the US military operation in Iraq. Precisely how the downfall
of Baghdad may have influenced Iran is uncertain. Some Middle
East scholars and former Bush administration staff say that
the March 16th invasion of Iraq initiated an unprecedented
diplomatic overture from Iran in the form of a "Grand
Bargain". The removal of Saddam may have been viewed
as an opening to warmer relations with the US, even if it
did instill fear among Iranian leaders. But the US rejected
that offer later in the spring of 2003 leaving Iran with a
diplomatic dead end, and, if anything, a justification for
accelerating any weapons program as a deterrent.
While it seems unlikely that the sudden defeat
of one US adversary would cause Iran to cease clandestine
development in the same year, the threat from Saddam's Iraq,
a bitter enemy of the Iranians, had been neutralized. Use
of Iraqi WMDs against Iran during the eight-year long Iran-Iraq
war was often reported as the principal driving force behind
Iran's consideration of nuclear weapons capability, according
to leaked national security documents from within Iran, and
this likely intensified after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. With
Iraq gone, and the US military ostensibly mired in a long
term Iraqi stabilization campaign, Iran may have felt secure
enough to cease weapons related work.
Normalization over Nuclear Weapons
Whatever Iran's reasoning about Iraq, other
factors existed, including knowledge that the game was up
after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors
investigated the undeclared sites that allegedly facilitated
the secret program. It could have been the case that Iran's
secret program had served its purpose, and, upon Iran declaring
previously undeclared facilities and opening them to inspection,
the government in Tehran realized that the IAEA inspection
regime had revealed significant internal weaknesses within
the national security infrastructure. With a growing slew
of outstanding questions from the IAEA forthcoming, and conflicting
statements that were landing the Iranians in political hot
water with the IAEA Board of Governors, Tehran may have considered
the promise of warmer relations with the West preferential
to a controversial weapons program. At the time, there were
clear prospects of receiving technology concessions and materials
from the EU-3 negotiating team, and it's no secret that the
Khatami administration was considering the EU-3 channel as
another means of eventually engaging the US and earning security
guarantees, which would ensure the survival of the regime.
A suspended weapons program already discovered and monitored
by the IAEA may have been considered the price of rapprochement,
especially if Iranian security goals were attainable without
an active weapons program.
Policy Considerations
While the Bush administration and hawks in Congress
spin the results of the NIE as validation of their hard-line
position and containment approach to Iran, their suggestion
that stepped up pressure was the means of producing optimal
results with respect to Iran is refutable. Assuming that the
NIE conclusions are accurate, Iran dropped its weapons program
at a time when diplomacy and limited pressure seemed to be
in effect.
If Iran had indeed abandoned its program in
2003, it was during a year in which no new sanctions were
imposed against Iran in Congress, and no United Nations Security
Council action taken. In contrast, the increased unilateral
and multilateral pressure in the form of 2006 and 2007 sanctions
have not yet had the intended effect of ending Iran's uranium
enrichment activities. In 2003, the IAEA Board of Governors
and the more closely US-allied EU-3, rejected US Ambassador
Briller's hard-line position on Iran, and refused to refer
the Iranian dossier to the UNSC. Rather than showing success
by eliciting a favorable response to hostility, the NIE's
version of the Iranian reaction in 2003 could demonstrate
a different kind of pragmatism in Tehran and a more favorable
response to carrots than sticks.
Finally the White House's presumption that heightened
pressure might keep Iran from pursuing a weapons objective
today or down the line may also be challenged by the NIE.
Page 7 of the document concludes, "We assess with moderate
confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo
the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult
given the linkage many within the leadership probably see
between nuclear weapons development and Iran's key national
security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran's considerable
effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such
weapons. In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision
to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep
Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons-and such a
decision is inherently reversible."
By reaffirming that the Iranian leadership is
today unlikely to be convinced of foregoing "the eventual
development of nuclear weapons," let alone civilian nuclear
power, the NIE implies that the current adversarial approach
to Iran has not made enough of an impact on Iran's decision-making
calculus for the Iranians to change their behavior. Remember,
the NIE comes in the wake of the most severe pressure exerted
on Iran by US policymakers and the international community
to date. Instead the NIE implies that an eventual weapons
program is still looming in Iran and possibly inevitable,
under the current approach.
Shervin Boloorian is the former legislative
director of the National Iranian American Council and is an
independent US-Iran policy analyst in Washington.
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