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The White House intervened to stop the publication of an op-ed in the New York Times by Flynt Leverett.
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Q & A
Kamal Nazer Yasin: 11/16/06A EurasiaNet Q&A with Flynt Leverett
In trying to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Bush administration has suffered from internal divisions that have left it “dysfunctional in some unique ways,” according to Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. Leverett is in position to offer unique insight on the Bush administration’s dealings with Iran. From March 2002 to March 2003, he served as the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council. Prior to serving on the NSC, he was a counterterrorism expert on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and before that he served as a CIA senior analyst for eight years. Since leaving government service, Leverett served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy before becoming the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The text of Leverett’s comments on US policy toward Iran and Afghanistan, as well as on Washington’s anti-terror policies, follows: EurasiaNet: What is your assessment of the last six years of US foreign policy? What is the Bush administration's balance sheet? Leverett: Let's start with the Middle East after the September 11 attacks. I think America’s standing in that part of the world has been seriously damaged. By standing I don't just mean popularity -- although popularity is not unimportant -- but rather that the United States' ability to achieve its goals in that region, to protect what it says are its most important interests there has been seriously damaged in the five years since September 11.
We see that on virtually every front. In Afghanistan, for example, yes, the Taliban have been overthrown, al Qaeda has lost its sanctuaries in Afghanistan, but we didn't finish the job there. Afghanistan is falling back into a period of dangerous instability. The threat of al Qaeda and violent Sunni extremism coming back there is getting worse.
I think the argument that, ‘well, we haven't been hit and somehow US policy should be credited for that’ is superficial. We haven't been hit because the Jihadists themselves have decided that, at this point in their strategy, they don't think it is advantageous for them to strike at the United States. They would rather focus on going after our allies in the region and in Europe, and then they would come back at us. I think we are not really doing well in the war on terror.
EurasiaNet: What you just said about Jihadist strategy, is it speculation, or is your opinion based on hard intelligence? Leverett: No, this is the internet age. All kinds of documents… are available on the internet and other places. This is a major theme of the Jihadist discourse -- that they don't want to go after the United States right now.
Let's continue looking at the region. The Iraq war has been a disaster for America’s standing. This administration has bungled post-conflict stabilization there. We have pursued the occupation in a way that has empowered radical forces in the region and made the situation of moderate forces harder. America’s most important strategic partnerships in the Arab world, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been increasingly strained. In the Arab-Israeli arena, the way that American policy has handled the Palestinian issue -- or not handled it -- has cost us tremendously. And one would be hard put to say that Israel’s security and standing in the region is better [today] than it was five years ago.
EurasiaNet: In 2003, Iran sent a letter to the White House via the Swiss ambassador in Tehran. [Click here for the text]. It seems like it was a strategic opening by the Iranians for comprehensive dialogue. The Bush administration rejected it. Were you in the White House then? Leverett: When the message came I was within days of leaving the government. I did see the document. It was substantively a very promising start; a serious effort to lay out an agenda for resolving our outstanding issues. It addressed our concerns about their WMD program, their support for organizations we consider terrorist, and their attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. They also wanted re-examination of our attitude to their regime, for ending efforts to change their government and other issues. I think what was so foolish about our response was that we didn't even try to find out if it was serious.
EurasiaNet: At that time, there was an extraordinary amount of cooperation on Afghanistan. The Axis-of-Evil reference, made in President George W. Bush’s State-of-the-Union address in January 2002, must have come as a shock to the Iranians. Leverett: Yes. The level of cooperation between our diplomats was quite high. They would meet on a monthly basis under the rubric of the United Nations’ 6+2 framework. There were also indications that the Iranians were interested in broadening this to include other bilateral issues. Between September 11 and the Axis-of-Evil speech, there was the case of a ship named Karin-A which was intercepted and found to be carrying arms for the Palestinians. Israeli intelligence made a case that elements within the Revolutionary Guards were behind the move.
EurasiaNet: David Frum, a former Bush Administration speechwriter, is the one who coined the Axis-of-Evil moniker, and he has indicated that he was somewhat surprised when the president personally liked and adopted it. Leverett: It seems it was a personal decision by the president. Many people at the White House were surprised by it.
EurasiaNet: How much does US intelligence know about the status of Iran’s nuclear program? Leverett: The best source of information we have on Iran’s Nuclear Program is the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors. It’s worth remembering that the IAEA got it right on Iraq and US intelligence didn't.
EurasiaNet: Does the administration have a coherent policy on Iran? Leverett: On the one side you have had the State Department and, to some extent, the intelligence community, which has believed that it was necessary to engage Iran. On the other side there have been the Office of the Vice President and the Office of Secretary of Defense [i.e. Donald Rumsfeld] who thought it was a bad idea to engage Iran. You had a president in the middle. He would never come down on one side or the other. But I think his own point of view has been not to engage too much. This president would, in the end, be very reluctant to have a deal with Iran that would require him to legitimate the Islamic Republic. He thinks it is a fundamentally illegitimate regime. I think that puts a real limit on how far US policy could go toward engaging Iran.
EurasiaNet: Bob Woodword paints a picture of the White House that is riven by philosophical differences and rivalries. What was your experience in the higher echelons of the government? Leverett: In that regard, I think this administration is dysfunctional in some unique ways. There can be splits in any administration; it certainly isn't unique to this one. But the level of division within this administration is more profound, and what's more, there isn’t any real inclination to resolve the divisions to produce coherent policy.
My own sense is that [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice has performed rather poorly as national security adviser. One of the responsibilities of the national security adviser, when it isn’t possible to get consensus among the principals, is to tee up options for the president to decide. This wasn’t done on many important issues.
EurasiaNet: To her credit, in the second term, she has brought a measure of cohesiveness to the foreign policy establishment. Leverett: I wouldn't overstate that. She has, in her role as the nation's chief diplomat, been able to expand the scope for diplomatic activities. But, to the extent that there has been a shift in policy, it is a tactical shift, not a strategic shift. On Iran, for example, Rice herself has said that this is not about a “grand bargain” with Iran [involving the nuclear issue]; this is not about normalization of relations. Those are her words. There has been a tactical shift in the policy so that, under certain circumstances, we might be able to talk directly with Iran, but, at the strategic level, it is still the same policy. Indeed, our UN ambassador can say that the ultimate goal of the policy remains regime change and no one corrects him.
EurasiaNet: Speaking of a grand bargain, I think by now, experts know that without air-tight security guarantees, perhaps in the form of a non-aggression pact, the Iranians would not sign on to a deal [concerning its nuclear program]. If anything, it seems that this reluctance to accept the legitimacy of their government strengthens hard-liners, and encourages them to speed up their program. Leverett: I am also pessimistic about a deal… We must offer them a guarantee on their security and territorial integrity. If you compare the incentives package that the Europeans offered to Iran in August 2005 with the one offered earlier this year by the 5+1, you see that a key difference is the lack of any real security guarantees in the 5+1 package. European diplomats told me they had to make that change from the August 2005 package to make it acceptable to the Bush administration.
EurasiaNet: Some experts, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, have argued that the world may be able to live with a nuclear Iran. What is your take on it? [For additional information click here]. Leverett: I understand the argument by people like Brzezinski, and also there is Barry Posen at MIT. There is a logic to these arguments. The thing is we don't really know what would happen if Iran goes nuclear. It may be the case that the consequences would be manageable. But at a minimum, it would complicate strategic calculations in that part of the world enormously -- for everyone. Life would become much more complicated. And that's why I go back to the argument of the grand bargain. I think the grand bargain is the only way to forestall Iran’s nuclearization. Given the potential consequences of Iranian nuclearization, why should the United States not do that? It is so manifestly in our interest to do it that not doing it is the strategic equivalent of medical malpractice. It is a real failure of leadership by the United States.
EurasiaNet: I think the argument of people opposed to a [nuclear] deal is that the regime-change clock is running faster than the nuclear clock. Leverett: That is absolute nonsense. The best that the Neo-Cons could say is that it isn't really clear which clock is running faster. If it isn't clear which clock is running faster, you can't use regime change as the basis for your Iran policy because you can't have the requisite confidence that regime change would play out in time to deal meaningfully with the nuclear issue.
EurasiaNet: What kinds of sanctions could we see coming out of the United Nations Security Council? Leverett: Any kind of sanctions that stand a chance of getting past the Security Council would be very minimal. There would perhaps be restrictions on the travel of the people that are directly associated with the nuclear and missile programs. I would be surprised if such a measure included restrictions on the travel of any senior Iranian official. We might get some very targeted financial sanctions against entities that are directly linked with the nuclear program. I would be very surprised if the Security Council agreed to broad-based economic or financial sanctions.
EurasiaNet: What is the timeframe on it? Leverett: I am looking at say the next six to 12 months.
EurasiaNet: Many experts believe that a military strike against Iran would be a bad idea, particularly with the situation in Iraq being the way it is. Does this mean we can safely assume it is not a tactical possibility? Leverett: I agree that a military strike by the United States is a bad idea. But at some point, probably in the next 12 months, the president's current efforts in the Security Council will have played out. What we would get out of UN is certainly not going to be enough to leverage the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. At that point, this president would face a very stark, binary choice. He could either stand by and let Iran continue to cross significant thresholds in the development of its nuclear capability, or he could order military strikes to try to delay that development. I think that, with this president, when he is faced with that choice, the chances that he might take the military option are not trivial. It is a real risk. It is not going to happen tomorrow, or next week. We would be still working on the diplomatic route. But a year or so from now when the diplomacy has failed, the risks of a military strike are not trivial.
Editor’s Note: Kamal Nazer Yasin is a pseudonym for a freelance journalist specializing in Iranian affairs.
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