Hassan
Rouhani, Iran’s new president, may sometimes talk like a “moderate”,
but he clearly knows how to maximize power in the international arena.
Rouhani’s record as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator reflects his inner Clausewitz — behind the winks and nods, the opening and closing of “windows of opportunity”, diplomacy is simply warfare by other means.
So
while the leaders of the international community and accompanying choir
of pundits sing Rouhani’s praises, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
strikes a different note:
“Fifteen years ago, the election of another
president, also considered a moderate by the West, led to no change in
these aggressive policies. Over the last twenty years, the only thing
that has led to a temporary freeze in the Iranian nuclear program was
Iran’s concern over aggressive policy against it in 2003.”
As Yehuda Yaakov, an Israeli Foreign Ministry
senior specialist in political-military affairs, has documented in
detail, Rouhani successfully shepherded Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons
program through its greatest crisis in 2003-2004. Yaakov’s research was
presented in his MA thesis for the IsraeliNationalDefenseCollege, and the English text was published in
June. (Full disclosure — I served as his academic adviser.) The
analysis is based on extensive interviews with key Western diplomats, as
well as documents from this period and public records, including a revealing speech by Rouhani in 2004 and the 2012 memoir of his aide Houssein Mousavian.
The case made by this evidence is compelling.
A thorough analysis of Rouhani’s conduct and
statements while chief negotiator reveals the cardinal goals he sought
to achieve through diplomatic engagement with the “international
community” to advance the nuclear program; to deflect the use of force
and sanctions; to bolster Iran’s regional status in strategic terms; and
to orient the country’s inter-agency dynamic to confronting an
international crisis waged against it. In conceiving and implementing
this strategy, Clausewitz would have given him high marks.
In 2003, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic
Republic in Teheran had good reason to worry that their slow but steady
progress towards becoming a nuclear weapons state, in blatant violation
of their legal obligations, was about to be halted, and worse. US
President Bush had recently overthrown Saddam Hussein in neighboring
Iraq, citing the nuclear ambitions of this regime. As Rouhani admitted,
throughout 2003 the Iranians greatly feared the possibility of an
American military strike – and Rouhani job was to prevent this, while
protecting their nuclear assets. As Yaakov’s analysis demonstrates, the
chief negotiator did his job very well. Through carefully packaged
diplomatic feints, he kept his country off of the Security Council’s
agenda and away from America’s target list.
Rouhani acknowledged that his model was
Pakistan, whose leaders had managed to walk the tightrope of building
nuclear weapons while avoiding becoming the target for a military
strike. In his 2004 speech, he also discussed the North Korean
experience of negotiating while producing weapons, and Brazil, which
used diplomatic engagement for two decades to quietly progress towards a
threshold nuclear weapons capability.
With Washington busy attempting to create
democracy in Iraq, the European Union claimed Iran as its chance to play
a leading international role. But the Europeans, led by Britain,
Germany and France, talked softly and instead of sticks, carried carrots
designed to buy Iran’s cooperation. Rouhani saw his opportunity to gain
from European naïveté, and played along, encouraging the facade of
progress through agreements that were never implemented. In parallel,
Iran provided deceptive evidence by hiding and slowing the visible
production of weapons grade material.
Rouhani’s strategy also took in the Bush Administration. A US National Intelligence Council Estimate in 2007
concluded: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program.” As consistently documented by IAEA
reports, this slowdown was a temporary, tactical move; as soon as the
immediate threat had passed, Iran made up the lost ground, and far more.
Throughout this period, Rouhani navigated to
maximize gains while minimizing the price Iran paid for keeping its
nuclear ambitions alive during the period of greatest threat. The
agreements that he negotiated, declared by European interlocutors as
major diplomatic triumphs, were disposable political band-aids without
substance. Iran’s commitments evaporated as soon as the immediate need
had passed.
Indeed, Rouhani himself repeatedly emphasized
throughout the campaign that his greatest achievement as chief
nuclear negotiator between 2003-2005 was advancing the nuclear program
while preventing both force and sanctions.
Clausewitz would have been proud. Using
diplomatic skill, under Rouhani’s guiding hand, Iran not only preserved
its power, but expanded it, particularly in progressing towards nuclear
weapons. The only costs were economic, and the leadership was immune.
For his service, Rouhani was rewarded, and
after winning the Iranian version of a presidential election (closely
supervised by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni), he declared that his
“future government will protect Iran’s fundamental rights [code for
nuclear weapons], while seeking to gradually remove sanctions." His
previous experience suggests that this is not empty rhetoric, and
his reported appointments to key positions suggest a rerun of the
successful policies from the earlier decade.
But much has changed since 2003, and Rouhani
will find that the political environment that encouraged long
negotiations towards meaningless agreements has changed. His European
interlocutors have learned some lessons, hardened by years of Tehran's
cat-and-mouse game at their expense. Despite the severe economic crisis,
today’s European leaders are willing to pay the cost of increased
sanctions to increase pressure on the regime. And Obama, although a very
reluctant warrior, has shown that he is capable of ordering effective
military strikes to protect vital US interests including international
stability.
At the same time, since Rouhani's term as
chief negotiator, Tehran has made significant progress and is now on the
verge of having a first-generation weapons capability. As Iran sprints
towards the nuclear finish line, Rouhani faces an Israeli leadership
that also understands Clausewitz. In some cases, diplomacy can serve as
war by other means, but Netanyahu also knows that in the current Middle
Eastern reality, credible military threats are necessary to ensure that
international obligations are actually honored.
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