I do not read or speak Farsi. I have no idea what Iranian papers might be online, nor do I even know the frequency for Iranian shortwave broadcasting (is there in fact a Radio Tehran?). And yet, in all the discussion since the story of the new NIE on Iran broke all of the discussion seems to be about this country, what Bush and Cheney might do next, whether or not it means they lied, manipulated intelligence (duh), now have their hands tied.
But there is another player in all of this, that we seem to be ignoring. How has this news played in Iran, and what impact might it be having their, on their politics, on how their government might now act?
I have now read a piece that might help fill in that gaps.
This morning's Boston Globe has an op-ed entitled The view from Iran, I will offer some selections from this piece, and a wee bit of my own musings.
The piece was written by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, who teaches international relations at Bentley College and is the coauthor of a forthcoming book on Iran's foreign policy since 9-11, and Kayhan Barzegar, a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who teaches political science at Tehran's Azad University. And they begin their piece as follows:
A NEW National Intelligence Estimate indicating that Iran currently has no nuclear weapons program has been widely interpreted as reducing the possibility of conflict between that country and the United States. Even so, the reaction within Iran itself has been mixed, and it is not yet clear how the intelligence report will affect the political temperature in the country.
Perhaps understanding how that political temperature might be affected is as crucial a piece of intelligence as final accepting that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. I wonder if our agencies are as blind on this as we seem to have been on the weapons side, and remember that our blindness there was in part self-inflicted (Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings, anyone?).
The authors quote the foreign minister as welcoming the report, while other officials call the idea that Iran had a weapons program a "baseless premise." The general sentiment in the Majlis (the parliament) is that the new report
is a positive development that should pave the way to the de-escalation of the nuclear crisis, which has been hurting Iran's economy as a result of the United Nations and US sanctions
although some worry and warn about a possible trap, because the report accuse Iran of past nuclear activities (with the clear worry that this would still be used as justification for action by the Bush administration, a worry that might not be baseless, given the President's remarks in the press conference yesterday).
One key sentence from the op ed:
What's clear is that supporters of Iran's fiery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have interpreted the US report as a vindication of his defiant nuclear and foreign policy stance.
Iran faces new parliamentary elections in less than 4 months, and
the new US report has the potential to benefit Ahmadinejad and the hard-line factions dominating the parliament - particularly if it paves the way to a "diplomatic surge" intended to defuse the nuclear standoff. There is already an Iranian consensus that this report has taken the wind out of the sails of new UN sanctions against Iran.
The Iranian government is trying to get the brief for oversight of their nuclear facilities totally removed from the Security Council and returned to the IAEA and Mohammad ElBaradei.
The report makes reference to an attempt by Iran in 203 to begin a rapport with the US, an effort our administration rejected (and here I note a similar rejection of some attempts to forestall the invasion made in late 2002 and early 2003 by Saddam Hussein - apparently when Dick Cheney decides to invade nothing can dissuade him). Credit for that outreach properly belongs to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
The authors view the releasing of the report as validating Ahmadinejad with the Iranian people:
Despite his harsh rhetoric, he has broken the longstanding taboo against direct dialogue with the United States, and has repeatedly stated his desire to remove the "tall wall of distrust" between the United States and Iran.
Of course, what the US does next might be the critical piece to the still possibly explosive situation on the Eastern side of the Gulf. Let me quote the end of the piece for how the authors see the positive possibilities:
The intelligence report gives the United States the opportunity to set US-Iran relations on a more constructive track, and US leaders should avoid steps that would close that window.
With the United States and Iran poised for a fourth round of dialogue on Iraq's security, and the latest IAEA report confirming Iran's steady cooperation and increasing nuclear transparency, the stage is now set for a thaw in the hitherto hostile US-Iran relations.
Both sides should heed the call by the head of IAEA, Mohammad ElBaradei, to use the intelligence report as the basis for a comprehensive dialogue geared toward normalization.
As a total non-expert, the recommendation in the final paragraph seems about right. And I think it is very possible that the current Iranian government, even thought it is headed by Ahmadinejad, is willing to take the steps necessary to move in that direction. What I fear is that the U.S. will remain unwilling or perhaps unable either to initiate such a comprehensive dialog or to respond to initiatives whether from Tehran, EBaradei, or the the international community. We have spent so much time demonizing Ahmadinejad that the administration has given itself little wiggle room. One danger of painting the leader of another nation as like Hitler is that such is a hard position from which to retreat: it would require the administration and its key figures to acknowledge that they were wrong, that their rhetoric was at least excessive if not downright dishonest, and as we saw yesterday, Bush is either unwilling or unable to accept such responsibility.
There is an opportunity to move the world in a positive direction, defusing of tensions. If we do not do so, then in most of the Muslim world the release of the report will serve only to further inflame attitudes about our intentions: the U. S. will continue to be seen as at war with Islam, with conflating Islam and terrorism. That might have very tragic consequences. As a teacher I know how often students fulfill the expectations we adults impose upon them, whether of success or of failure, and the importance of offering hope. An attitude of "I'm always right so you must bend to my will" is not conducive to making progress, whether in the classroom or in the arena of international relations.
In reading the op ed, I felt as if I was seeing a window opened, through which we might begin to see and to discuss. But that is insufficient, if we will not both (US and Iran) walk out the door and begin to negotiate seriously, to attempt to resolve our misunderstandings, to look for common ground in a desire to avoid disaster instead of each seeking to "prove" - what, its national manhood, that its leader is the toughest, most rehotrically inflammatory person on the world stage?
I fear that in its weakness this administration will do something monumentally stupid. And that fear makes me worry that we might be closer to disaster than we were before the report, far more likely to wind up in a constitutional crisis. That is why I think it is important to try to understand where the Iranians are, and how we might be able to avoid that disaster. That is why I welcome a piece like this, and hope that our major news organizations will themselves do a better job of explaining the reaction in Iran, and perhaps thereby helping initiate a process of dialog rather than of confrontation.
We have a window. But windows can be slammed shut. We must hope that tis one is not.
Peace.