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Posted: 30 Oct 2018 03:26 PM PDT
Saudi Arabia, Shi’ism and the Illusion of Reform
by Robert G. Rabil – @robertgrabil October 30, 2019  The emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is inextricably associated with the Wahhabi school of Islam. The Saudi-Wahhabi pact goes back to the eighteenth century when Sheikh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the founder of the Wahhabi-Salafi school of Islam traveled to Diriya, the stronghold of the Saudi tribe, and struck a deal with its chief. The pact served the interest of both parties by expanding their respective political and religious influence throughout the regions of Najd and Hijaz.  Basing his ideas on the writings of classical Salafi scholar Ibn Taymiyyah , al-Wahhab rejected shirk (idolatry, polytheism) and bid‘ah (heretical religious innovation), which he believed permeated the holy land of Islam. He believed in the return to the authentic ways of the salaf al-salih (pious ancestors) and advocated tawhid (oneness/unity of God) and transcendence of God. He called for unity and the purification of Islam. His puritanical movement became known as the Muwahhidun. Significantly, he justified leveling the charge of takfir (unbelief) on those he considered engaged in shirk. For example, the failure of Muslims to observe all the pillars of Islam was tantamount to committing kufr (unbelief). His definition of tawhid centered on Muslims’s exclusive worship toward God alone. In other words, it was Kufr to associate any other being or thing in the Worship of God. This constituted for him the divide between Islam and kufr, and between tawhid and shirk. In this respect, the Shi’a, and their offshoot sects such as Alawis, Ismailis, and Zaydis, were considered as the worse of mushrikoun (polytheists) for they have associated worshipping God with venerating the infallible descendants of Prophet Muhammad. More so, Shi’a traditions, among other Islamic and non-Islamic traditions, such as tawassul (supplication), Shafa’a (intercession of prophets and Imams), tabarrruk (seeking of blessings) and ziyara (visiting the tombs of venerated religious figures) only deepened the Wahhabi identification of Shi’ism with polytheism and idolatry. The corollary of this identification made warfare against Shi’ism a Wahhabi religious duty. Between the years 1794-1802 the Saudi-Wahhabi movement destroyed many holy shrines in today’s Iraq, including the Prophet Grandson Imam Hussein’s shrine in Karbala in 1802. Imam Hussein’s martyrdom in 680 at the hands of Umayyad Caliph Yazid at Karbala was most formative for Shi’a ideology and tradition. This martyrdom became central to Shi’a identity, tradition, and theology because it epitomized Imam Hussein’s opposition to tyranny, oppression, and the struggle against the chronic injustices of the world. During the campaign (1902-1932) of Saudi chief Abd al-Aziz to conquer Najd and Hijaz thousands were killed and maimed, including many Shi’a. In 1927, Wahhabi scholars issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for the expulsion of Shi’a from al-Ahsa in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia unless they consented to the destruction of their mosques and their conversion to Wahhabism. This anti-Shi’a religious strand became the official view of the monarchy when King Abd al-Aziz proclaimed the establishment of his kingdom in 1932 and made Wahhabism its official religious establishment. Correspondingly, the Shi’a, as a minority in the kingdom comprising around fifteen per cent of the population and residing mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, have been religiously and institutionally discriminated against. Their religious customs, including Ashoura commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, were forbidden, the publication and distribution of their religious texts were outlawed, their call to prayer banned, and their centers of religious studies closed. No less significant, they were vilified in textbooks. The early expression of their grievances was manifested in their heavy participation in the 1950s in the labor riots of the oil fields managed by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco). The riots were brutally suppressed by the Saudi National Guard. Subsequently, apparently inspired by the success of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Shi’a demonstrated in the Eastern province. The government violently suppressed the demonstrations, arrested Shi’a leaders and forced a number of Shi’a activists into exile. It was at this time that a cleric Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, supported by the followers of religious scholar Mohammad al-Shirazi, established the opposition group the Organization of the Islamic Revolution (Munazzamat al-Thawra al-Islamiyya). Saudi harsh treatment of their Shi’a community began to change in the 1990s, following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the deployment of American troops to the Kingdom. This change apparently stemmed no less from American deeper involvement in the Middle East than from the failure of both Saudi policy of oppression and Shi’a policy of protestation. Sheikh al-Saffar changed the name of his organization to al-Haraka al-Islahiya (Reform Movement), and in 1993 a leader of the Shiite opposition in exile, Tawfiq al-Sayf, led a large delegation of Shia to meet with King Fahd. Meaningfully, King Fahd conceded to some Shi’a demands including permitting them to practice previously banned religious rites, some Shi’a to return from exile, and to guarantee the safety of those returned. Significantly, the King ordered the revision of a school text book that had referred to the Shi’a as a heterodox sect. The new edition added the Twelver Shiite School of Islam to the four Sunni schools of Islam.  This slow and circumspect yet important transformation in the relationship between the monarchy and its Shi’a community gained momentum following the American liberation of the Shi’a from the yoke of Saddam Hussein’s oppression in 2003. Many Shi’a activists signed a statement, titled “Partners in the Homeland,” and submitted to Crown Prince Abdullah. The statement emphasized the loyalty of the Shiites to the Kingdom and called for their integration into Saudi society by removing institutional and social discrimination against them. Moreover, when the Crown Prince became King in 2005, many Shiite leaders and clerics went to the capital to pledge their allegiance to him. Many Shi’a believed that the new King would turn a new page in his relationship with the Shi’a community at large. It’s noteworthy, however, that a minority of Shi’a, including the militant group Hizbollah al-Hijaz, opposed Shi’a engagement with Saudi authorities. The kingdom has designated Hizbollah al-Hijaz as a terrorist organization and blamed it for several terror acts, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. Conversely, many Wahhabi religious scholars maintained their disparaging views of the Shi’a and opposed any rapprochement with them. Even Saudi religious reformer Sheikh Safar al-Hawali disparaged the Shi’a and called the Shi’a Islamist party Hezbollah of Lebanon the party of the devil. King Abdullah had to walk a fine line between improving the conditions of the Shi’a, opposing what he saw as Iranian encroachment across the Middle East, and curbing the power of his religious establishment that stood as a hurdle to his reforms. He focused on bolstering the Kingdom’s defenses, enhancing scientific research, fighting al-Qaeda, and curbing the power of the Wahhabi religious establishment as a precondition to enunciate significant reforms. He removed a popular Wahhabi cleric, Sheikh Saad Bin Nasser al-Shathri, from the country’s High Council of Religious Scholars because he criticized the king’s decision to allow male and female researchers to work together in the newly established mixed gender King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Similarly, he sacked the head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, whose puritanical agents try to enforce the behavioral application of Islamic law. Significantly, he tried to break the monopoly of the power of Wahhabi clerics within the Council of Senior Scholars, who issue official religious rulings, by including in the 21-member Council representatives of all four schools of Sunni Islam (Shafi’I, Hanbali, Maliki and Hanafi schools of jurisprudence). Though he did not include in the Council any Shi’a cleric, he increased Shi’a representation in the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. 
Shi’a cleric Sheikh Nimr Nimr.
In the meantime, feeling threatened by the swift spread of Arab revolutions, the monarchy felt the need to be further legitimized by the religious establishment. On March 6, 2011 the Council of Senior Scholars issued a fatwa acclaiming the rule of Saudi royals and banning demonstrations. Excerpts of the fatwa read: The Council praises Allah Almighty for what He has bestowed upon the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with unity of words and action on the basis of the book of Allah and tradition of the messenger, under the wise leadership of legitimate allegiance… Since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on the Qur’an, Sunnah, the pledge of allegiance, and the necessity of unity and loyalty, then reform should not be by demonstrations and other means and methods that give rise to unrest and divide the community…The Council affirms prohibition of the demonstrations in this country…It is what practiced by the Prophet (peace be upon him) and followed by his companions and their followers. Since then, in order to maintain absolute power, the monarchy has renewed its firm commitment to its Faustian pact with the Wahhabi religious establishment. This resolve for maintaining absolute power has taken a critical dimension with the ascension to power in 2015 of King Salman and his son crown prince Muhammad bin Salman, who essentially managed to wield effective power in the kingdom. On January 2, 2016, Sheikh Nimr, along with 47 Saudis, was executed for being convicted of terrorism offences. Sheikh Nimr was a vocal critic of the monarchy. But he was not a terrorist. This is the background against which Prince Muhammad launched his so-called campaign of reforms, which have been no more than a window dressing to his attempt at modernizing and controlling the Kingdom. Fundamentally, Muhammad’s reforms have not introduced any systemic change to the Kingdom’s austere social structure and laws. Under the pretext of fighting corruption, he detained dozens of princes and wealthy Saudis so that he could clip their wings and take a hefty portion of their fortune. He arrested the women activists who campaigned for allowing women to drive. He kidnapped Lebanon’s Prime Minister for not being tough enough on Hezbollah. He has waged a brutal war in Yemen initially foregrounded in Wahhabi proselytizing among Zaydi Shi’a. He arrested dissenting scholars. And most recently, he most likely ordered the gruesome dismembering of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi for being critical of his policies. Clearly, Prince Muhammad does not tolerate any form of dissent. His absolute power rests on his ability to both check the power of his family members and to maintain the loyalty of the religious establishment. Washington cannot influence the Kingdom’s religious establishment, but it can prod the royal family to remove Prince Muhammad from power in the interest of the welfare and reputation of the Kingdom. In 1964, the royal family forced King Saud to abdicate in response to his blunders. At the same time, the Trump administration should use the inexcusable murder of Kashoggi to persuade the Kingdom to renew the path of slow but steady systemic reform that began under late King Abdullah. As such, Washington can better maintain its strategic relationship with Riyadh. Otherwise, the Trump administration, besides forsaking its moral compass, will definitely make United States complicit in Prince Muhammad’s present and future misfortunes and catastrophes involving Sunni-Shi’a sectarianism and a possible war with Iran instigated as much by Wahhabi theological views of Shi’ism as by geopolitical considerations. Robert G. Rabil is a professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author most recently of The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon : The Double Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities (2016); Salafism in Lebanon : From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism (2014); and White Heart (2018). He can be reached @robertgrabil . |
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
KSA, Shi'ism and the illusion of Reform
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
How Washington Is Abusing Its Financial Might
The Use and Misuse of Economic Statecraft
How Washington Is Abusing Its Financial Might
Jacob J. Lew and Richard Nephew
JACOB J. LEW is Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University and a Partner at Lindsay Goldberg. He served as U.S. Treasury Secretary from 2013 to 2017.
RICHARD NEPHEW is Senior Research Scholar at SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy and served as Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the U.S. State Department from 2013 to 2015.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has come to rely more and more on economic tools to advance its foreign policy goals. Some of these tools, such as sanctions, involve the direct application of economic pressure. Others, such as the promotion of free trade and open markets, work by changing other countries’ incentives. But all of them rest on a recognition that unrivaled economic power gives the United States a singular capacity to pursue its interests without resorting to force.
But economic power, like any tool, can have unfortunate results if wielded unwisely, producing unwanted short-term consequences and prompting the long-term decline of U.S. economic leadership. Today, Washington is increasingly using its economic power in aggressive and counterproductive ways, undermining its global position and thus its ability to act effectively in the future. Symptoms of the problem have been evident for years, but it has gotten markedly worse under the Trump administration [1], which has pursued reckless tariffs against both allies and rivals, reimposed sanctions on Iran without any pretense of international support, and acted in both cases with little evident regard for the negative consequences to U.S. interests.
Every policy presents a tradeoff. Yet U.S. officials seem to have adopted the belief that the United States is so large and powerful that the laws of economic and political gravity no longer apply to it. According to this line of thinking, the country can start trade wars [2] and no one will retaliate because, in the words of Peter Navarro, the director of the Trump administration’s National Trade Council, “we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world.” The United States can threaten sanctions against its closest partners and allies, and they will somehow still cooperate, now and in the future. And it can continue to make poor economic choices, and the primacy of the U.S. dollar will somehow remain unchallenged.
But in an increasingly multipolar world, the economic influence that the United States has enjoyed since the end of World War II can no longer be taken for granted. And an aggressive or unilateral approach to economic statecraft—a dynamic that was evident at times across multiple administrations but that has reached an extreme under the current one—threatens that very influence [3]. If the Trump administration continues down its current road, then it runs the risk not only of provoking global resistance that will thwart its immediate policy goals but also of reducing the United States’ long-term leverage on the global stage. That outcome would be both tragic and ironic: U.S. policymakers, blinded by a belief in their country’s unlimited power, will have accelerated its decline.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PRUDENT
Economic statecraft—the use of economics as a tool of foreign policy—can take many forms. The best example is sanctions, which directly impose economic penalties on foreign countries or individuals for noneconomic reasons, but other types of economic policy can also be used for strategic ends. Trade, for example, is often used to gain international influence or pursue diplomatic goals. And as with military power, the tools of economic statecraft don’t always have to be used to achieve their desired effect: sanctions sometimes work best when the mere threat of them prompts a concession.
Over the past three decades, globalization [4] has increased the importance of good economic statecraft. Greater interconnectedness means that countries are now benefiting from opportunities around the world; at the same time, they are more exposed than ever to risks that flow from decisions made on the other side of the planet. This interconnectedness gives policymakers, especially those in a country as economically powerful as the United States, an important source of leverage. Thanks to globalization, foreign banks and companies will often comply with U.S. sanctions not because their own governments require it but because they wish to retain access to the U.S. market, dollar, and financial system, greatly magnifying the power of those sanctions.
Yet this advantage is not a license for the United States to do whatever it wants. There are risks and costs to economic statecraft, and using it properly is a careful balancing act. Before imposing sanctions, for instance, U.S. policymakers should consider whether the measures might violate trade agreements or other international obligations and, if so, whether the benefits will still outweigh the costs. They should be doubly cautious in cases where their actions could undermine fundamental U.S. interests, whether in the promotion of free trade, the creation of markets for U.S. goods and services, or the protection of institutions that facilitate global business and development. In fact, prudence and restraint are often cardinal virtues in U.S. economic statecraft, since radical changes may threaten the United States’ current position of economic power.
KING OF THE HILL
Although sanctions and other forms of economic coercion had long been tools in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal, their use greatly expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left the United States with unprecedented economic and political power [5]. According to the economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, during the 1990s, Washington used some form of unilateral sanctions against 35 countries, up from 20 the previous decade. In some cases, including the U.S. sanctions against Iraq in 1990–91, Yugoslavia in 1991, and Rwanda in 1994, the United States worked with other countries in the UN Security Council to legitimize the measures. But if coordinated international pressure was unachievable or failed to convince a country to change its behavior, Washington did not hesitate to resort to more aggressive, unilateral measures.
The most important of these were what policymakers call “secondary sanctions.” Regular, or “primary,” sanctions bar U.S. citizens and firms from doing business with particular companies or individuals. Secondary sanctions, by contrast, prohibit Americans from doing business not only with sanctioned companies and people but also with any third parties dealing with them. If a bank in France made a loan to a company in Iran, for instance, Americans could be barred from dealing with that bank, even if the loan were legal under French law. The result would be to effectively shut the French bank out of the U.S. financial system. And because so many of the world’s major companies are involved in the American financial system or conduct business in U.S. dollars, secondary sanctions give U.S. policymakers a far longer reach than they would otherwise enjoy.
Other countries often bristle at secondary sanctions, viewing them as a particularly brazen example of American unilateralism and an illegal, extraterritorial application of U.S. law. In 1996, Congress authorized the U.S. government to sanction foreign companies for doing business with Cuba or for investing in the Iranian or Libyan oil sectors. The EU responded by accusing Washington of violating both European sovereignty and international law, initiating proceedings against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and passing legislation prohibiting European firms from complying with U.S. sanctions against those countries. Tensions were defused only when the Clinton administration agreed not to enforce secondary sanctions against European companies in exchange for greater U.S.-European policy harmonization on Cuba, Iran, and Libya.
After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush took a more aggressive line as part of the war on terrorism, regularly asserting that the United States could impose penalties against companies and people that had no physical presence in the country yet did business in dollars or through U.S. financial institutions. In 2006, for instance, U.S. officials invoked an executive order concerning the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (signed by Bush the year before) to warn foreign firms that they could be sanctioned for working with Iranian companies. And in 2010, in an effort to further punish Tehran for its nuclear program, Congress dramatically expanded secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions doing business with Iran while limiting the president’s authority to waive their enforcement.
European governments, among others, could have resisted these sanctions and complained about their enforcement, as they did in the 1990s. At the time, however, they were working closely with the United States to deal with the Iranian threat [6], including by tightening UN sanctions on Iran. The Europeans were therefore willing to cooperate with the United States in sanctions enforcement, leading many in Washington to believe that they had accepted secondary sanctions as a legitimate policy tool.
They had not. Although the Europeans agreed that Iran needed to be pressured, they continued to insist that the EU pass its own sanctions and that European companies follow European, not U.S., law. European officials continued to object, moreover, when Washington enforced its primary sanctions on European banks using the U.S. financial system to do business with sanctioned entities. In 2014, for example, the United States fined the French bank BNP Paribas nearly $9 billion for violating U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Iran, and Sudan, prompting accusations from Paris of “economic warfare” and an attempt by French President François Hollande to convince Washington to waive the fine. Europe’s frustrations sent a clear signal: aggressive use of U.S. economic power can produce blowback, even from close allies.
Yet even as U.S. policymakers became more willing to assert global sanctioning authority during the Bush and Obama administrations, they understood the limits of confrontation. Consider how the Obama administration dealt with getting China to join the sanctions against Iran. True, the administration compelled China to reduce its purchases of Iranian oil and used secondary sanctions to punish myriad Chinese entities for doing business with Iran. But the administration picked its battles. Although China reduced its purchases of Iranian oil by less than the 20 percent that other countries did, Washington accepted China’s contribution to the pressure campaign and declined to apply secondary sanctions against Chinese entities buying Iranian oil, since doing so could have undermined progress on other important bilateral issues or started a costly sanctions or trade war.
The Obama administration also chose to tread carefully when organizing sanctions against Russia [7] in response to its invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in early 2014. Unlike China, Russia is not a global economic power, but it does have a great deal of leverage in Europe, particularly in the energy sector. Even today, the country is the EU’s fourth-largest trading partner, and the Russian and European financial sectors are tightly linked, meaning that any damage done to financial institutions in Russia could easily spread to those in Europe, creating the risk of global contagion.
In deciding how to respond to Russian aggression, U.S. policymakers thus had to consider the interests of their European allies. When the United States and the EU finally agreed on sanctions, they carefully engineered them to concentrate pressure on the key decision-makers in Moscow while leaving Russia’s energy exports to Europe intact. The early sanctions, enacted in the initial months of 2014, targeted influential individuals around Russian President Vladimir Putin and their preferred financial institution, Bank Rossiya. As Russia moved deeper into Ukraine throughout 2014, the campaign intensified, with the United States, the EU, and other allies passing new sanctions limiting Russian access to international debt and equity financing. Although the results of these sanctions were mixed—Russia did not withdraw from Ukraine, but it did suffer real economic pain and eventually came to the negotiating table—Washington managed to preserve a cooperative relationship with its allies.
To be sure, excessive deference to international concerns is not always a virtue. For example, the Obama administration could have—and in retrospect perhaps should have—pushed China earlier and harder to join in the international sanctions against North Korea. Believing that Pyongyang was still years away from developing a deliverable nuclear warhead, the White House limited its short-term pressure on Beijing over this issue in order to secure its cooperation in other areas, such as the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and the Paris agreement on climate change. Only once it became clear in 2016 that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were advancing rapidly did the Obama administration increase pressure on China and win support in the UN Security Council for tougher international sanctions.
President Donald Trump, to his credit, has been more willing to squeeze China for concessions on North Korea. Through bellicose rhetoric and a tightened multilateral sanctions regime, he succeeded in convincing China to step up its enforcement of international sanctions on North Korea. It is doubtful whether the current U.S.–North Korean talks will go anywhere, but even so, Trump’s high-risk approach helped drive North Korea to the negotiating table [8]. A potential side effect, however, is that the Trump administration has learned the wrong lesson from its success: that the aggressive use of sanctions pressure always pays off.
PENNY WISE, DOLLAR FOOLISH
Although sanctions have been key instruments for the United States, they are not the only tools of U.S. economic statecraft. During the 1990s and the first decade of this century, the United States worked to remove trade barriers through both bilateral and multilateral agreements while strengthening institutions behind them, such as the WTO. In so doing, it expanded growth, encouraged developing countries to embrace free markets and open societies, and helped reduce global poverty.
Yet in its engagement with international institutions, as with sanctions, Washington’s perception of its own invulnerability has at times undermined its interests. Even as it promoted free trade [9], the United States was gradually becoming a less reliable partner in funding the institutions that held up the global economic order. It fell into arrears at the UN in 1985, and its commitments to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been in constant peril since the 1990s. Washington has historically been the main funder of the largest international financial institutions (IFIs)—the World Bank and the IMF—which has granted the United States powerful influence within them, including veto power over their major decisions. Although U.S. funding for those IFIs has remained sufficient to retain that veto power, it has been shrinking as a percentage of total new commitments.
Helping fund IFIs serves U.S. interests. By contributing to international financial stability, IFIs reduce the risk of crises that could damage the U.S. economy; by establishing common standards for financial behavior, they get emerging-market countries invested in the rules-based liberal order; and by distributing economic burdens, they allow the United States to pursue its interests at a reduced cost to itself, as was the case with the U.S.-led IMF campaign to stabilize Ukraine’s economy in the face of Russian aggression. But when Washington does not pay its bills or prevents the institutions from giving greater voice to emerging-market countries, it limits its own ability to project power.
The IMF is a case in point. Since the 1990s, its funding has been a source of fractious debates in Congress. In 1998, a bill to appropriate money for the fund passed thanks mainly to the bipartisan efforts of senators representing agricultural states, who saw the IMF as a means to maintain U.S. export markets abroad. And when the IMF attempted to enact reforms in 2008 and 2010 to replenish its capital after the global financial crisis, proposing a doubling of total member contributions and a greater vote share for developing countries, it took Congress until 2015 to approve the reforms. Frustrated by the long delay and their lack of influence within the organization, emerging-market countries responded by creating new multilateral institutions, such as the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
U.S. leadership at the World Bank and IMF grants Washington enormous leverage. But although it has veto power in these institutions, it cannot automatically win support for its priorities within them. Doing so requires international consensus, which becomes harder to achieve the more that other countries think the United States is shirking its responsibilities. Washington supported IMF loans to Europe after the 2007–8 economic crisis [10], which reduced U.S. exposure to financial contagion, and to Iraq in 2004 and 2016, which helped the U.S. war effort by stabilizing the Iraqi economy. In both cases, IFIs bore much of the financial burden for policies important to the United States. Washington was able to win support for these efforts, but the longer its commitment to IFIs withers, the harder such support will be to obtain.
TRUMP’S WRONG TURN
Although international concerns about Washington’s aggressive use of economic tools have been growing for decades, they have become even more acute under Trump. His administration is behaving as if the United States is immune to consequences, whether in the form of adversaries exerting economic pressure or allies rejecting the legitimacy of U.S. policy. This hubris is particularly evident in two areas: the administration’s protectionist trade policy and its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
On trade, Trump got off to bad start by pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade agreement, during his first week in office. Matters have only gotten worse in 2018, as the United States has imposed tariffs on a wide range of imports, including aluminum, solar panels, steel, and washing machines. These have applied not only to rival states, such as China, but also to close allies, such as Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Although the United States can point to legitimate concerns, such as China’s exporting of aluminum and steel at artificially low prices, Trump’s policies are doing more harm than good. Other countries have responded with retaliatory tariffs against U.S. goods, from soybeans to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, but even more concerning than the economic costs is the damage that has been done to relations with allies. Moreover, Trump’s tariffs, coming at the same time as his shift on Iran, have antagonized Washington’s European allies, in particular, with leaders across the continent now calling for greater EU independence from the United States.
On Iran, Trump has also managed to undermine U.S. interests through bellicose, unilateral action. When Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran deal in May, he did so against the wishes of every other party to the agreement and despite all available evidence suggesting that Iran was complying with it. The administration then began reimposing U.S. sanctions and threatening to aggressively enforce secondary sanctions against companies whose governments have remained in the deal, including those of the United States’ Asian and European allies.
Trump’s decision has begun to seriously affect Iran’s already shaky economy [11]. Iranian oil exports have been dropping since April, and analysis by BMI Research estimates that the country’s GDP will shrink by 4.3 percent in 2019. This should come as no surprise. Officials in the Obama administration often stated that U.S. sanctions, if reimposed, could damage the Iranian economy, notwithstanding the relief it had enjoyed under the Iran deal. But the point of sanctions is not simply to impose pain; it is to use this pain as part of a negotiating process, with the aim of getting policy concessions from the other side. Sanctions work only if other countries believe that they can obtain relief by changing their behavior. If a country bows to U.S. demands only for Washington to reimpose sanctions, as Trump has done with Iran, there is little incentive for compliance in the future.
By going it alone and pulling out of the Iran deal, the United States has potentially failed in terms of both exerting pain and prompting concessions. Washington’s closest European allies, such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, are now working directly with the Iranian government to find ways of diverting business away from the dollar-based financial system in order to avoid U.S. sanctions and keep the existing deal in place. In July, the remaining participants in the nuclear deal released a joint statement that included a lengthy list of efforts to block the enforcement of U.S. sanctions, such as maintaining financial channels with Iran, promoting trade and export credits, and encouraging European investment in the country. Even if these efforts fail in the short term, they could eventually lead to the development of new strategies for working around U.S. policy.
LOSING THE RACE
The outlook for U.S. economic statecraft, if it continues on its present trajectory, is bleak. When it comes to sanctions, other countries will likely soon begin challenging or ignoring measures that have been imposed by Washington without international support. The more that other countries are willing to cheat on sanctions or simply look the other way, the more the United States alone will have to shoulder the burden for monitoring and enforcing them. As more nations find means of avoiding enforcement, such as business structures that separate companies transacting with the United States from those transacting with sanctioned entities, U.S. sanctions will begin to lose their effectiveness. And if other countries band together to reject U.S. sanctions, Washington could find itself having to choose between enforcing against everyone and giving up on the sanctions.
Things will get even worse as the United States loses its dominant position in the global economy. Today, the country largely gets its way because there is no alternative to the dollar and no export market as attractive as the United States. But if Washington continues to force other nations to go along with policies that they consider both illegal and unwise, over the next 20 to 30 years, they are likely to shift away from the United States’ economy and financial system. On a long enough timeline, the formation of alternative centers of economic power may be inevitable, but it would be foolish to accelerate this process and worse to make the United States toxic while doing so.
On trade, too, the United States faces a future of more, and possibly more unfair, competition. The current international economic system does not operate perfectly, but it does have rules against unfair trading practices and the means of enforcing them. Moreover, the system incentivizes all nations to obey the rules. China and Russia did not join the WTO simply for prestige; they also wanted to obtain the benefits that flow from membership, such as preferential tariff rates and a legal remedy against protectionism. If the United States abandons its role as the guarantor of this system, other countries may rewrite the rules of trade. They are unlikely to do so with U.S. interests in mind.
GETTING BACK ON TRACK
If Washington wants to maintain its economic leverage in the future, U.S. policymakers will have to temper the unilateral approach to economic statecraft that they have increasingly adopted since the end of the Cold War. To begin with, they must be honest with themselves about the limits of U.S. power and the tradeoffs that accompany any policy. The United States must protect its right to act unilaterally, and in some cases, it will make sense to pursue an aggressive line or act against the wishes of U.S. allies. But policymakers should do so in full knowledge of the potential consequences and only when truly necessary—indeed, unilateral actions will be easier to justify if they are seen as exceptions rather than the rule.
There are three immediate policy changes that would help get U.S. economic statecraft back on track. First, the Trump administration should stop its destructive and divisive trade war, especially with U.S. allies. Given its economic strength, the United States may not lose a trade war with Canada or the EU, but it will not win one, either. Regardless of which side suffers more, a sustained trade war will not just damage the U.S. economy by disrupting long-standing patterns of trade and incentivizing companies to avoid doing business in the United States. It will also limit U.S. power and influence.
Second, the United States should restrict its use of secondary sanctions, deploying them only in pursuit of the most important national security objectives and only after trying and failing to persuade other nations to join in multilateral sanctions. Secondary sanctions are a tempting policy tool, since using them is far easier than working through international institutions or diplomacy. But they should be used sparingly and in coordination with partners. If Washington continues to rely on them without developing a broad consensus in favor of its policy goals, efforts on the part of other countries to reduce their dependence on the United States will only accelerate.
Finally, the United States should seek to coordinate internationally when possible. The Trump administration has sung the praises of independent action, which allows Washington to avoid the compromises that come with multilateral approaches. But although getting buy-in can be time consuming and frustrating, the resulting measures are more likely to succeed and persist. Multilateralism also strengthens international institutions, which distribute responsibility and make it less likely that the United States will have to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden.
At present, it seems unlikely that Trump will arrest the trend toward more aggressive unilateralism in U.S. economic statecraft; indeed, he may accelerate it. If he does, it will fall to Congress to both control its own impulses toward unilateral action and exercise oversight over executive-branch decisions on sanctions and trade policy, ensuring that these are prudent and in keeping with U.S. interests. It is not too late for the United States to mitigate some of the risks it currently faces and to set the stage for a more effective use of economic statecraft in the future. Doing so, however, will require something more than threats and bluster—it will require an honest reckoning on the part of U.S. policymakers with the limits of American power.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Michael R.Pompeo's article : Confronting Iran
Confronting Iran
The Trump Administration’s Strategy
Michael R. Pompeo
MICHAEL R. POMPEO is U.S. Secretary of State.
The end of the Cold War forced new thinking among policymakers and analysts about the greatest challenges to U.S. national security. The emergence of al Qaeda, cybercriminals [1], and other dangerous entities affirmed the threat of nonstate actors. But equally daunting has been the resurgence of outlaw regimes—rogue states that defy international norms, fail to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and act against the security of the American people, U.S. allies and partners, and the rest of the world.
Chief among these outlaw regimes are North Korea and Iran. Their transgressions against international peace are many, but both nations are most notorious for having spent decades pursuing nuclear weapons programs in violation of international prohibitions. Despite Washington’s best efforts at diplomacy, Pyongyang hoodwinked U.S. policymakers with a string of broken arms control agreements going back to the George H. W. Bush administration. North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs continued apace, to the point where after Donald Trump was elected, President Barack Obama told him that this would be his greatest national security challenge. With Iran, likewise, the deal that the Obama administration struck in 2015—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA—failed to end the country’s nuclear ambitions. In fact, because Iran knew that the Obama administration would prioritize preserving the deal over everything else, the JCPOA created a sense of impunity on the part of the regime, allowing it to increase its support for malign activity. The deal has also given Tehran piles of money, which the supreme leader has used to sponsor all types of terrorism throughout the Middle East (with few consequences in response) and which have boosted the economic fortunes of a regime that remains bent on exporting its revolution abroad and imposing it at home.
That the threats from North Korea and Iran grew in the post–Iraq war era has further complicated the question of how best to counteract them; Americans are rightly skeptical of the costs of a protracted military commitment in the name of protection from weapons of mass destruction. With the difficulties of Iraq fresh in mind, and with previous agreements to restrain the threats from North Korea and Iran having proved impotent, stopping these recalcitrant regimes from doing harm demands new diplomatic paradigms.
Enter President Trump. For all of the Washington establishment’s fretting over his style of international engagement, his diplomacy is anchored in a deliberate approach [2] that gives the United States an advantage in confronting outlaw regimes.
THE TRUMP DOCTRINE
Both on the campaign trail and in office, President Trump has been clear about the need for bold American leadership to put the United States’ security interests first. This commonsense principle reverses the Obama administration’s preferred posture of “leading from behind,” an accommodationist strategy that incorrectly signaled diminished American power and influence. Leading from behind made North Korea a greater threat today than ever before. Leading from behind at best only delayed Iran’s pursuit of becoming a nuclear power, while allowing the Islamic Republic’s malign influence and terror threat to grow.
Today, both North Korea and Iran have been put on notice that the United States will not allow their destabilizing activities to go unchecked. The aggressive multinational pressure campaign that the United States has led against North Korea, combined with the president’s clear and unequivocal statements that the United States will defend its vital interests with force if necessary, created the conditions for the talks that culminated in President Trump’s summit with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore this past June. It was there that Chairman Kim committed to the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea. North Korea has made similar commitments in the past, but unlike those, this was the first time there was a personal, leader-to-leader commitment on denuclearization. That may or may not signal a major strategic shift on the part of Chairman Kim, and we have much work to do to gauge his intentions and make sure his commitment is implemented. But President Trump’s approach has created an opportunity to peacefully resolve an issue of vital national security that has long vexed policymakers. The president, our special representative for North Korea (Stephen Biegun), and I will continue to work with clear eyes to seize this opportunity.
With Iran, similarly, the Trump administration is pursuing a “maximum pressure” campaign designed to choke off revenues [3] that the regime—and particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), part of Iran’s military that is directly beholden to the supreme leader—uses to fund violence through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq, and its own agents covertly plotting around the world.
Yet President Trump does not want another long-term U.S. military engagement in the Middle East—or in any other region, for that matter. He has spoken openly about the dreadful consequences of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011 intervention in Libya. Pundits may gin up fear over the idea that this administration will get the United States into a war, but it is clear that Americans have a president who, while not afraid to use military power (just ask the Islamic State, the Taliban, or the Assad regime), is not eager to use it, either. Overwhelming military force will always be a backstop for protecting the American people, but it should not be the first option.
Another important aspect of the president’s diplomacy is his willingness to talk to the United States’ staunchest adversaries. As he said in July [4], “Diplomacy and engagement is preferable to conflict and hostility.” Consider his approach to North Korea: his diplomacy with Chairman Kim diffused tensions that were escalating by the day.
Complementing the president’s willingness to engage is his instinctual aversion to bad deals. His understanding of the importance of leverage in any negotiation eliminates the potential for deeply counterproductive agreements like the JCPOA. He is willing to forge agreements with U.S. rivals, but he is also comfortable walking away from negotiations if they don’t end up furthering U.S. interests. This is in stark contrast to the Obama administration’s approach to the JCPOA [5], in which the deal itself became an objective to be obtained at all costs.
When considering a future North Korea deal that is superior to the JCPOA, we have described our objective [6] as “the final, fully verified denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, as agreed to by Chairman Kim Jong Un.” “Final” means that there will be no possibility that North Korea will ever restart its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs—something the JCPOA did not provide for with Iran. “Fully verified” means that there will be stronger verification standards than were required under the JCPOA, which, among other weaknesses, did not require inspections at key Iranian military facilities. The exact contours of a North Korea agreement remain to be negotiated, but “final” and “fully verified” are centerpieces on which we will not compromise.
THE IRANIAN THREAT
President Trump’s commitment to the American people’s security, combined with his aversion to the unnecessary use of military force and his willingness to talk to adversaries, has provided a new framework for confronting outlaw regimes. And today, no regime has more of an outlaw character than that of Iran. That has been the case since 1979, when a relatively small cadre of Islamic revolutionaries seized power. The regime’s revolutionary mindset has motivated its actions ever since—in fact, soon after its founding, the IRGC created the Quds Force, its elite special forces unit, and tasked it with exporting the revolution abroad. Ever since, regime officials have subordinated all other domestic and international responsibilities, including their obligations to the Iranian people [7], to fulfilling the revolution.
As a result, over the past four decades, the regime has sown a great deal of destruction and instability, bad behavior that did not end with the JCPOA. The deal did not permanently prevent Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon—indeed, the statement in April by Iran’s top nuclear official that the country could restart its nuclear program in days suggests that it may not have delayed that program very much at all. Nor did the deal curtail Iran’s violent and destabilizing activity in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria [8], Yemen, and Gaza. Iran still supplies the Houthis with missiles that are fired at Saudi Arabia, supports Hamas’ attacks on Israel, and recruits impressionable Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani youth to fight and die in Syria. Thanks to Iranian subsidies, the average Lebanese Hezbollah fighter earns two or three times per month what a fireman in Tehran brings home.
In May 2018, President Trump withdrew [9] from the nuclear deal because it was clearly not protecting the national security interests of the United States or our allies and partners, nor was it making Iran behave like a normal country. In July, an Iranian diplomat [10] based in Vienna was arrested for supplying explosives to terrorists seeking to bomb a political rally in France. It is telling that while Iran’s leaders try to convince Europe to stay in the nuclear deal, they are covertly plotting terrorist attacks in the heart of the continent. Taken together, Iran’s actions have made the country a pariah, much to the despair of its own people.
THE PRESSURE CAMPAIGN
In place of the Iran nuclear deal, President Trump has initiated a multi-pronged pressure campaign. Its first component is economic sanctions. The president recognizes the power of sanctions to squeeze the regime while incurring a low opportunity cost for the United States. Under the Trump administration, the United States has imposed 17 rounds of Iran-related sanctions, targeting 147 Iran-related individuals and entities.
The goal of these aggressive sanctions is to force the Iranian regime to make a choice: whether to cease or persist in the policies that triggered the measures in the first place. Iran’s decision to continue its destructive activity has already had grave economic consequences, which have been exacerbated by officials’ gross mismanagement in pursuit of their own self-interests. Extensive meddling in the economy by the IRGC, under the guise of privatization, makes doing business in Iran a losing proposition, and foreign investors never know whether they are facilitating commerce or terrorism. Instead of using what wealth the JCPOA has generated to boost the material well-being of the Iranian people, the regime has parasitically consumed it and shelled out billions in subsidies for dictators, terrorists, and rogue militias. Iranians are understandably frustrated. The rial’s value has collapsed in the past year. A third of Iranian youth are unemployed. Unpaid wages are leading to rampant strikes. Fuel and water shortages are common.
This malaise is a problem of the regime’s own making. Iran’s elite resembles a Mafia in its racketeering and corruption. Two years ago, Iranians rightfully erupted in anger when leaked pay stubs showed massive amounts of money inexplicably flowing into the bank accounts of senior government officials. For years, clerics and officials have wrapped themselves in the cloak of religion while robbing the Iranian people blind. Today, protesters chant to the regime, “You have plundered us in the name of religion.” According to the London-based newspaper Kayhan, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, who the United States sanctioned this year for human rights abuses, is worth at least $300 million, thanks to the embezzlement of public funds. Nasser Makarem Shirazi, a grand ayatollah, is also worth many millions of dollars. He became known as “the Sultan of Sugar” for having pressured the Iranian government to lower subsidies to domestic sugar producers while flooding the market with his own, more expensive imported sugar. This type of activity puts ordinary Iranians out of work. Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, one of the leaders of Friday prayers in Tehran for the last 30 years, had the government transfer several lucrative mines to his personal foundation. He, too, is now worth millions. The corruption goes all the way to the top. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has his own personal, off-the-books hedge fund called the Setad, which is worth $95 billion. That untaxed and ill-gotten wealth, often earned by expropriating the assets of political and religious minorities, is used as a slush fund for the IRGC. In other words, Iran’s leading holy man captains the kind of plundering characteristic of Third World strongmen.
The regime’s greed has created a chasm between the people of Iran and their leaders, making it difficult for officials to credibly persuade young Iranians to be the vanguard of the next generation of the revolution. The theocratic ayatollahs can preach “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” day and night, but they cannot mask their rank hypocrisy. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has degrees from San Francisco State University and the University of Denver, and Ali Akbar Velayati, the supreme leader’s top adviser, studied at Johns Hopkins University. Khamenei himself is chauffeured around in a BMW, even as he calls for the Iranian people to buy goods made in Iran. This phenomenon is similar to what occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, when the spirit of 1917 began to ring hollow on account of the hypocrisy of its champions. The Politburo could no longer with a straight face tell Soviet citizens to embrace communism when Soviet officials were themselves secretly peddling smuggled blue jeans and Beatles records.
Iran’s leaders—especially those at the top of the IRGC, such as Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force—must be made to feel the painful consequences of their violence and corruption. Given that the regime is controlled by a desire for self-enrichment and a revolutionary ideology from which it will not easily depart, sanctions must be severe if they are to change entrenched habits. That’s why the Trump administration is reimposing U.S. sanctions that were lifted or waived as part of the nuclear deal; the first of these went back into effect on August 7, with the remainder coming back on November 5. We intend to get global imports of Iranian crude oil as close to zero as possible by November 4. As part of our campaign to crush the Iranian regime’s terrorist financing, we have also worked with the United Arab Emirates to disrupt a currency exchange network that was transferring millions of dollars to the Quds Force. The United States is asking every nation that is sick and tired of the Islamic Republic’s destructive behavior to stand up for the Iranian people and join our pressure campaign. Our efforts will be ably led by our new special representative for Iran, Brian Hook.
Economic pressure is one part of the U.S. campaign. Deterrence is another. President Trump believes in clear measures to discourage Iran from restarting its nuclear program or continuing its other malign activities. With Iran and other countries, he has made it clear that he will not tolerate attempts to bully the United States; he will punch back hard if U.S. security is threatened. Chairman Kim has felt this pressure, and he would never have come to the table in Singapore without it. The president’s own public communications themselves function as a deterrence mechanism. The all-caps tweet he directed at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in July, in which he instructed Iran to stop threatening the United States, was informed by a strategic calculation: the Iranian regime understands and fears the United States’ military might. In September, militias in Iraq launched life-threatening rocket attacks against the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad and the U.S. consulate in Basra. Iran did not stop these attacks, which were carried out by proxies it has supported with funding, training, and weapons. The United States will hold the regime in Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to our personnel or damage to our facilities. America will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of American lives.
We do not seek war. But we must make painfully clear that escalation is a losing proposition for Iran; the Islamic Republic cannot match the United States’ military prowess, and we are not afraid to let Iran’s leaders know it.
IRAN EXPOSED
Another critical component of the U.S. pressure campaign against Iran is a commitment to exposing the regime’s brutality. Outlaw authoritarian regimes fear nothing more than having the lid blown off their true workings. The Trump administration will continue to reveal the regime’s illicit revenue streams, malign activities, crooked self-dealing, and savage oppression. The Iranian people themselves deserve to know the grotesque level of self-interest that fuels the regime’s actions. Khamenei and his ilk would not be able to tolerate the domestic and international outrage that would ensue if everything they were up to came to light. Beginning last year, protesters have taken to the street saying, “Leave Syria, think about us!” and “The people are paupers while the mullahs live like gods!” The United States stands with the Iranian people.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan understood the power of exposure when he cast the Soviet Union as “an evil empire.” By throwing a spotlight on the regime’s abuses, he was pledging solidarity with a people who had long suffered under communism. It is likewise for the sake of the Iranian people that the Trump administration has not been afraid to expose the regime’s merciless domestic repression. The regime is so wedded to certain ideological principles—including the export of the Islamic Revolution through proxy warfare and the subversion of fellow Muslim-majority countries, implacable opposition to Israel and the United States, and stringent social controls that restrict the rights of women—that it cannot endure any competing ideas. Hence, it has for decades denied its own people human rights, dignity, and fundamental freedoms. That is why in May, for example, Iranian police arrested Maedeh Hojabri, a teenage gymnast, for posting an Instagram video of herself dancing.
The regime’s views on women are particularly retrograde. Since the revolution, women have been required to wear the hijab, and as enforcement, government morality police beat women in the streets and arrest those who refuse to comply. Recent protests against this policy on female dress show that it has failed, and Khamenei surely must know it. Yet in July, an activist was sentenced to 20 years in prison for removing her hijab.
The regime also regularly arrests religious or ethnic minorities, including Bahais, Christians, and Gonabadi dervishes, when they speak out in support of their rights. Untold numbers of Iranians are tortured and die in Evin Prison—a place no kinder than the basement of the Lubyanka, the dreaded headquarters of the kgb. Those imprisoned include several innocent Americans detained on spurious charges, victims of the regime’s use of hostage taking as a tool of foreign policy.
Beginning last December, demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan, Arak, and many other cities to peacefully call for a better life. In response, the regime welcomed in the new year in January by arbitrarily arresting up to 5,000 of them. Hundreds reportedly remain behind bars, and more than a dozen are dead at the hands of their own government. The leaders cynically call these deaths suicide.
It is in keeping with the character of the United States that we expose these abuses. As President Reagan said in a speech at Moscow State University in 1988, “Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government, has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.” In May, the Trump administration enumerated 12 areas in which Iran must make progress if there is to be any change in our relationship, including fully halting its uranium enrichment, providing a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, ending its proliferation of ballistic missiles and provocative missile launches, releasing imprisoned U.S. citizens, ending its support for terrorism, and more.
President Trump has made clear that the pressure will only increase if Iran does not live up to the standards the United States and its partners and allies—and the Iranian people themselves—want to see. That is why Washington is also demanding that Tehran make substantial improvements on human rights. As the president has consistently said, he remains open to talks. But as is the case with North Korea, the United States will continue its pressure campaign until Iran demonstrates tangible and sustained shifts in its policies. If Iran makes those shifts, the possibility of a new comprehensive agreement will greatly increase. We think a deal with the regime is possible. In the absence of one, Iran will face increasing costs for all its reckless and violent activity around the world.
President Trump prefers not to conduct this campaign alone; he wants U.S. allies and partners on board. Indeed, other countries already share a common understanding of the threat Iran poses beyond its nuclear aspirations. French President Emmanuel Macron has said, “It is important to remain firm with Iran over its regional activities and its ballistic program”; British Prime Minister Theresa May has said that she is “clear-eyed [11] about the threat that Iran poses to the Gulf and the wider Middle East.” This widespread agreement about the Iranian threat leaves no room for countries to remain ambivalent about whether to join the global effort to change Iran’s behavior, an effort that is big and getting bigger.
THE POWER OF MORAL CLARITY
President Trump inherited a world in some ways as dangerous as the one faced by the United States on the eve of World War I, the one right before World War II, or that during the height of the Cold War. But his disruptive boldness, first on North Korea and now on Iran, has shown how much progress can be made by marrying clarity of conviction with an emphasis on nuclear nonproliferation and strong alliances. President Trump’s actions in confronting outlaw regimes stem from the belief that moral confrontation leads to diplomatic conciliation.
This was the blueprint for one of the great foreign policy triumphs of the last century: the American victory in the Cold War. In the first week of his presidency, President Reagan described Soviet leaders, saying, “The only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.” Foreign policy analysts derided his comments, believing their candor would hinder progress toward peace. But the president had also emphasized a commitment to negotiate with the Soviets, a fact that went largely ignored. President Reagan’s combination of moral clarity and diplomatic acuity laid the groundwork for the 1986 talks in Reykjavik and, later, the downfall of Soviet communism itself.
Those who still bow to the same totemic conviction that candor impedes negotiations must recognize the effect that targeted rhetorical and practical pressure have had—and are having—on outlaw regimes. At the rate that the Iranian economy is declining [12] and protests [13] are intensifying, it should be clear to the Iranian leadership that negotiations are the best way forward.
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