Note from Flynt Leverett: Most Important Parts of Bush Speech About Iran -- Not Iraq

January 12, 2007

(New America Foundation Senior Fellow and Geopolitics of Energy Initiative Director Flynt Leverett: photo credit: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer)

I asked former CIA and Bush administration National Security Council senior official Flynt Leverett for a quick summary of his thoughts on President Bush's Address to the Nation.

Here is Flynt Leverett's response to The Washington Note:

The most important things that President Bush said last night dealt with Iran, not Iraq:

According to the President, the Iranians are providing "material support" to attacks on U.S. forces. That is a casus belli. It fits in with the administration's escalating campaign -- encompassing rhetoric and detentions of Iranian officials in Iraq -- to blame Iran for a strategically significant part of the ongoing instability and violence in Iraq.

In the context of describing the deployment of additional U.S. forces to Iraq, the President also noted the importance of securing Iraq's borders. I suspect that at least some of the additional U.S. soldiers going to Iraq will end up on the border with Iran.

Moreover, the President strongly implied that the U.S. military would start going after targets in countries neighboring Iraq to disrupt supply networks for insurgents and militias.

The deployment of a second carrier strike group to the theater -- confirmed in the speech -- is clearly directed against Iran. Since, in contrast to previous U.S. air campaigns in the Gulf, military planners developing contingencies for striking target sets in Iran must assume that the United States would not be able to use land-based air assets in theater (because of political opposition in the region), they are surely positing a force posture of at least two, and possible three carrier strike groups to provide the necessary numbers and variety of tactical aircraft.

Similarly, the President's announcement that additional Patriot batteries would go to the Gulf is clearly directed against Iran. We have previously deployed Patriot batteries to the region to deal with the Iraqi SCUD threat. Today, the only missile threat in the region for the Patriot to address is posed, at least theoretically, by Iran's Shihab-3.

In sum, the administration is laying the rhetorical and operational foundations for implementing a presidential decision to initiate military operations against Iran. No wonder the White House wants Hillary* and me to shut up.

(*Hillary is Hillary Mann Leverett, a former State Department official who also served on President George W. Bush's National Security Council staff. She is married to Flynt Leverett)

Leverett's views are consistent with many others I have spoken to over the last day. He has also been in a battle with National Security Council staff who have insinuated themselves in the "secrets clearing process" managed by the CIA Publications Review Board.

Here is Flynt Leverett's and HIllary Mann Leverett's recent op-ed in the New York Times that was published with the CIA's "blacked out"/redacted lines.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Eason Jordan has a useful graph by graph analysis of the Bush speech up at IraqSlogger. He is on same page as TWN on "hints" of attacks against Iran and Syria.

Also, Senator Hagel's exchange with Condi Rice yesterday is getting a lot of play -- but here is his formal statement reacting to President Bush's speech. Worth reading a few times.

-- Steve Clemons

06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Ex-Officials: Article Wrongly Classifed

Friday December 22, 2006 6:01 PM

By KATHERINE SHRADER

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House demanded the excision of material for an article on Iranian-American relations for political - not security - reasons, two former government officials allege.

The debate centers on an opinion piece that former National Security Council official Flynt Leverett and former Foreign Service officer Hillary Mann sought to publish in The New York Times. Following long-standing rules for former CIA employees like Leverett, they submitted the article to the CIA's Publication Review Board to ensure it did not contain classified information.

Five of the article's 16 paragraphs came back with deletions, some of which were extensive. In a piece that ran above the redacted article in Friday's New York Times, Leverett and Mann said the information that was withheld - at the White House's request - has already appeared in a dozen news articles and official government press briefings.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said submissions by former employees are coordinated with other U.S. government offices that may have concerns about classification. That includes the White House.

``For former employees, the sole yardstick for prepublication review has been and remains the simple requirement that their writings contain no classified information,'' Mansfield said.

An intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about publication rules, said that material can appear in the press and still remain classified.

Yet Leverett and Mann believe their article, which argues for seeking a ``grand bargain'' with Iran, was the victim of politics. The White House has resisted even narrow engagement with the regime.

``In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles,'' Leverett and Mann wrote in Friday's piece, entitled ``What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran.''

They said they will continue to work toward the release of the material.

A message left for the White House's National Security Council seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Current and former CIA officials who want to publish articles or make speeches must clear their material with the CIA's Publication Review Board. That includes everyone from former CIA Director George Tenet, who is working on a book, to the most junior analyst or operative.

Exactly what material can appear is often a matter of discussion, but many officials know how to write articles in a way that won't trigger the CIA reviewers to black out the information. Leverett noted that he has submitted more than 20 articles for approval, without a single word changed.

Flynt Leverett's censored Iran op-ed revealed

The redacted Iran op-ed revealed

12/22/2006 @ 10:11 am

Filed by Ron Brynaert

The New York Times has taken the unusual step of publishing an op-ed in which parts of the contents have been "redacted" or blacked out by government censors, who believe that its contents would reveal "sensitive" information that the White House wants to withold. Below is RAW STORY's best guess at what might hide behind some of the redactions.

o connect the previously published materials to the redacted paragraphs in the op-ed. What the information reveals is a series of events in which US-Iran dialog broke down. In the aftermath of 9/11, the cooperative spirit around the world sparked by America's victimhood encouraged Iran to collaborate with the United States in its effort to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the goodwill that might have been sustained by those early negotiations was undermined by a series of disputes between the US and Iran.

The matters that particularly undermined US-Iran dialog involved the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq(MEK) – an anti-Tehran militia that had been given safe harbor by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and had surrendered to the US – as well as US allegations that Iran was giving safe haven to al Qaeda terrorists who had fled Afghanistan.

As the disputes over these issues deepened, and worries about Iran's nuclear ambitions spread, the conflict between the two states became more intractable. Leverett and Mann warn in their op-ed that negotiations between the two states on improving Iraq's stability will suffer as a consequence of this history of tumult. They write that "issue-specific engagement with Iran is bound to fail," because "resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and Iran inevitably requires resolving all of them."

The explanation will proceed redaction by redaction and include materials from the sources provided by the authors of the op-ed which RAW STORY believes might shed light on the removed portions of the article.

#

Leverett and Mann write:

But Tehran was profoundly disappointed with the United States response. After the 9/11 attacks, xxx xxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xx set the stage for a November 2001 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors and Russia. xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx Iran went along, working with the United States to eliminate the Taliban and establish a post-Taliban political order in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Powell in a press briefing en route to Moscow, December 9, 2001:

On Iran, setting aside pipelines. I am open to explore opportunities. We have been in discussions with the Iranians on a variety of levels and in some new ways since September 11. Jim Dobbins spoke with Iranians in Bonn as we put together the new interim administration in Afghanistan, and I had a brief handshake and discussion with the Iranian Prime Minister in the UN."

Flynt Leverett in an earlier New York Times op-ed on January 24, 2006:

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Tehran offered to help Washington overthrow the Taliban and establish a new political order in Afghanistan.

James Dobbins in a May 6, 2004 Washington Post editorial:

Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, all the major elements of the Afghan opposition came together at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn. The objective was to create a broadly based successor government to the Taliban. As the U.S. representative at that gathering, I worked both with the Afghan delegations and with the other national representatives who had the greatest influence among them, which is to say the Iranian, Russian and Indian envoys. All these delegations proved helpful. None was more so than the Iranians. On two occasions Iranian representatives made particularly memorable contributions. The original version of the Bonn agreement, drafted by the United Nations and amended by the Afghans who were present, neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.

Next, Leverett and Mann write:

In December 2001, xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x Tehran to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal pro-Al Qaeda warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance there. xxxxx xxxxxxx so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for harboring terrorists. But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the “axis of evil.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech. xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists.

From a February 2002 Time Magazine article by Tony Karon and Azadeh Moaeveni:

Not surprisingly, the U.S. wants Iran to end Hekmatyar's activities. And Iran's reformist elected government appears inclined to comply. They shut down his offices two weeks ago and the country's top foreign policy body, the Supreme National Security Council, voted last week to expel Hekmatyar from Iran. But Iranian media reports suggested the delay in implementing that decision resulted from urgent appeals from Washington and Kabul to hold off on expelling him. The Iranian daily Qods recently quoted an official source saying that "Karzai has asked Tehran to keep Hekmatyar in Iran so that Kabul is always informed about his whereabouts and activities." One possible reason for requesting the delay: Following the closure of his offices, Hekmatyar warned that he would return to Afghanistan if forced to leave Iran. According to a spokesperson, the State Department hasn't sent any direct messages to Tehran about Hekmatyar. But Washington's preference is clear: "We're not looking for him to go back to Afghanistan," says the spokesperson. Iran would have liked him gone sooner, but according to Foreign Minister Kharrazi: "The reason Hekmatyar is still in Iran is because our friends and those outside the region have requested it, but he is free to leave the country."

Leverett and Mann write:

xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxx xxx xx xxxxxxx This demonstrated to Afghan warlords that they could not play America and Iran off one another and prompted Tehran to deport hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had fled Afghanistan.

From the Washington Post on October 29, 2003 by Glenn Kessler:

The Bush administration has urged Iran to turn over al Qaeda members. Armitage in his testimony linked Iran's cooperation on al Qaeda to better relations with the United States, saying "resolution of this issue would be an important step in U.S.-Iranian relations." But he told reporters that it is not a prerequisite to restarting the talks. Iran has privately suggested to the administration that it will turn over al Qaeda members in exchange for captured members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that had operated out of Iraq. Armitage ruled out such a deal yesterday, "because we can't be sure of the way they'd be treated," referring to the MEK members. He said officials were questioning MEK members to determine who had terrorist connections. "In my understanding, a certain number of those do," he said, adding that they will face charges. Under questioning, Armitage said it was a mistake for the U.S. military to have arranged a cease-fire agreement with the MEK during the war, a decision that alarmed Iran. "We shouldn't have been signing a cease-fire with a foreign terrorist organization," he said.

From Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post on May 25, 2003:

Until the Saudi bombings, some officials said, Iran had been relatively cooperative on al Qaeda. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Iran has turned over al Qaeda officials to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. In talks, U.S. officials had repeatedly warned Iranian officials that if any al Qaeda operatives in Iran are implicated in attacks against Americans, it would have serious consequences for relations between the two countries. Those talks, however, were held with representatives of Iran's foreign ministry. Other parts of the Iranian government are controlled not by elected reformers, but by conservative mullahs. A senior administration official who is skeptical of the Pentagon's arguments said most of the al Qaeda members -- fewer than a dozen -- appear to be located in an isolated area of northeastern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan. He described the area as a drug-smuggling terrorist haven that is tolerated by key members of the Revolutionary Guards in part because they skim money off some of the activities there. It is not clear how much control the central Iranian government has over this area, he said. "I don't think the elected government knows much about it," he said. "Why should you punish the rest of Iran," he asked, just because the government cannot act in this area? [...] The MEK soon became caught up in the policy struggle between the State Department and the Pentagon. After the camps were bombed, the U.S. military arranged a cease-fire with the group, infuriating the Iranians. Some Pentagon officials, impressed by the military discipline and equipment of the thousands of MEK troops, began to envision them as a potential military force for use against Tehran, much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. But the MEK is also listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Under pressure from State, the White House earlier this month ordered the Pentagon to disarm the MEK troops -- a decision that was secretly conveyed by U.S. officials to Iranian representatives at a meeting in Geneva on May 3. Nine days later, the suicide bombers struck in Saudi Arabia.

From Flynt Leverett in a paper he wrote for The Century Foundation:

In the course of the U.S.-Iranian dialogue over Afghanistan, U.S. officials exhorted their Iranian counterparts to take steps to prevent al Qaeda and Taliban operatives from seeking sanctuary in Iran. In response, Iran deployed additional security forces to its border with Afghanistan and took several hundred fugitives into custody; the identities of these individuals were documented to the United Nations. In 2002, a number of these individuals, of Afghan origin, were repatriated to the new, post-Taliban Afghan government; others, of Saudi origin, were repatriated to Saudi Arabia. In the same year, a group of senior al Qaeda figures managed to find their way from Afghanistan into Iran, most likely via longstanding smuggling and human trafficking routes into Iran’s Baluchistan province. In response to U.S. concerns, Tehran eventually took these individuals into custody and, in the spring of 2003, offered to exchange them for a small group of senior commanders among the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) cadres in Iraq. Even though the MEK has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, the administration refused to consider any such exchange.

Leverett and Mann write:

xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx x xx x x xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xx

Barbara Slavin in USA Today on May 11, 2003:

Iran's Islamic government is debating re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States for the first time in 23 years and is holding secret talks with U.S. diplomats in Geneva on a range of issues, including the shape of a new government in Iraq, U.S. and Iranian diplomats say.

Barbara Slavin in USA Today on May 21, 2003:

A fledgling dialogue between Iran and the United States has broken down over mutual accusations of support for terrorism, U.S. and Iranian officials said Wednesday. White House officials confirmed a report in the Los Angeles Times that the United States had canceled a meeting scheduled in Geneva on Wednesday because of U.S. assertions that Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders implicated in suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia last week that killed 34 people, including eight Americans. A senior Iranian diplomat denied the charges, however, and said the cancellation was mutual. He said Iran was angry over the U.S. failure to disarm an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, that is on a U.S. State Department list of terrorist groups. "Our information is that you have not disarmed the Mujahedin, and it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to be criticizing Iran, which has captured more al-Qaeda than any other country," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A State Department official, who also asked not to be named, said the opposition group was being forced to give up its weapons, although it was unclear what would happen to the group's 3,500 members. "We want the Iranians to fulfill their obligations concerning terrorism just as we do," he said.

An op-ed from Flynt Leverett in the New York Times on January 24, 2006:

In the spring of 2003, shortly before I left government, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent Washington a detailed proposal for comprehensive negotiations to resolve bilateral differences. The document acknowledged that Iran would have to address concerns about its weapons programs and support for anti-Israeli terrorist organizations. It was presented as having support from all major players in Iran's power structure, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A conversation I had shortly after leaving the government with a senior conservative Iranian official strongly suggested that this was the case. Unfortunately, the administration's response was to complain that the Swiss diplomats who passed the document from Tehran to Washington were out of line. Finally, in October 2003, the Europeans got Iran to agree to suspend enrichment in order to pursue talks that might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategic deal. But the Bush administration refused to join the European initiative, ensuring that the talks failed.

Last, RAW STORY believes that this passage from Flynt Leverett's Century Foundation paper bears relevance to the matters covered in the op-ed that was blocked by the White House:

To be sure, for a year and a half after September 11, the administration pursued a limited tactical engagement with Iran with regard to Afghanistan. Well before President Bush took office in January 2001, the United States had joined the United Nations’ “6+2” framework for Afghanistan.21 In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration used the cover of the “6+2” process to stand up what was effectively a freestanding bilateral channel with Iran, with regular (for the most part, monthly) meetings between U.S. and Iranian diplomats. U.S. engagement with Tehran over Afghanistan provided significant and tangible benefits for the American position during the early stages of the war on terror. At a minimum, U.S. engagement with Tehran helped to neutralize the threat of Iranian actions on the ground, either by Afghan proxies or by Iranian intelligence and paramilitary assets, which could have made prosecution of Operation Enduring Freedom and subsequent post-conflict stabilization more difficult. More positively, engagement elicited crucial diplomatic cooperation from Iran, both during the war and afterwards. Over years, Iran had cultivated extensive relationships with key players on the Afghan political scene, including important warlords in northern and western Afghanistan. Iranian influence was critical for arming and managing these players during the U.S.-led coalition’s military operations. After the war, Iranian influence induced these players to support the political settlement enshrined at the Bonn Conference in December 2001, when the Afghan Interim Authority under Hamid Karzai was established. Tehran appeared to have a variety of motives for cooperating with Bush administration on Afghanistan. At a minimum, Iranian policymakers—well aware of the State Department’s longstanding description of the Islamic Republic as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—wanted to avoid getting caught on the downside of the administration’s self-declared “global war on terror.” But Iran also seemed to sense a potential strategic opportunity. Iranian diplomats involved in the bilateral channel on Afghanistan indicated to their U.S. counterparts that the discussions were being closely followed at the highest levels of the Iranian power structure and that there was considerable interest in Tehran in the possibility of a wider diplomatic opening. Certainly, from an Iranian perspective, the platform had been created for exploring such an opening. However, in his January 2002 State of the Union address (just six weeks after the Bonn Conference), President Bush placed the Islamic Republic in the “axis of evil,” along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.22 Iranian representatives missed the next monthly meeting with U.S. diplomats in protest, but—in a telling indication of Tehran’s seriousness about exploring a diplomatic opening to the United States—resumed participation in the discussions the following month. The bilateral channel on Afghanistan continued for another year, until the eve of the Iraq war, but it became clear the Bush administration was not interested in a broader, strategic dialogue with Iran. Indeed, the administration terminated the channel in May 2003, on the basis of unproven and never pursued allegations of the involvement of Iran-based al Qaeda figures in the May 12, 2003, bomb attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.23 On the nuclear issue, the administration refused to consider direct negotiations with Tehran for nearly four years after the revelations of Iran’s efforts to develop a uranium enrichment capability. In the spring of 2003, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent, via Swiss diplomatic channels, a proposal for negotiations aimed at resolving all outstanding bilateral differences between Tehran and Washington, including the nuclear issue. The proposal was described as having been endorsed by all the major power centers in Iran, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The administration’s response was to complain to the Swiss Foreign Ministry that the Swiss ambassador in Tehran had exceeded his brief by passing such a paper. It is worth noting that the Iranian message came to Washington shortly after the conclusion of major combat operations in Iraq and well before the emergence of the insurgency there—in other words, the Iranian offer was extended at a time when U.S. standing in the region appeared to be at its height. It is also worth recalling that, when the Iranian offer was made, the Islamic Republic was not spinning centrifuges or enriching uranium and the reformist Mohammad Khatami was still president.

Iran Expert Flynt Leverett's WH Censored Op-Ed Makes it to Print in the NYT -- Black Lines and All

Tomorrow and Today: Flynt Leverett & Saudi Palace Politics

December 21, 2006Tomorrow and Today: Flynt Leverett & Saudi Palace Politics
For those up at 3 am when the morning newspapers are uploaded to the web, rush to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Unless lawyers or other news get in the way, two very important pieces will be up.
The first in the New York Times will be Flynt Leverett's and Hillary Mann's CIA-censored op-ed based on his new paper, "Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Policy Options Towards Iran." But, op-ed page editor David Shipley will add some "graphic flair" by posting the original op-ed that the CIA reviewed after White House National Security Council staff insinuated themselves into this normally intrigue-free process. The op-ed will run with the blacked out, redacted lines "blacked out." Very cool.

Then front page Washington Post. Robin Wright will have an important article that digs deeply into the tension between the recently resigned Saudi Ambassador to the United State Prince Turki al-Faisal and the Saudi National Security Advisor Prince Bandar bin Sultan. (Update: This important article by Robin Wright has been delayed by at least one day and perhaps until Sunday.)

According to sources, Wright gets pretty far into the royal family drama and looks at how rival "clusters" of royal brothers have used policy differences over Saudi Arabia's relations with the US, concern over Iran, and strategic direction in the Middle East as ways to wage combat that is at the same time both about genuine policy debates as well as about future royal succession and advancement to influential government positions.

Robin Wright's article may also get into the intricacies of Vice President Cheney's relationship with Prince Bandar -- and will delve into which of them is gaming the other. I had been writing that Bandar and his staff, particularly his close aide Rihab Massoud, continued to get status and power in Saudi power circles because of the former Ambassador's extremely close relationship with the Vice President.

However, others I have spoken to since suggest that I have the situation backward -- and that it is Cheney, and others like Colin Powell and George Bush who are pawns in Bandar's world. A source has intimated that Robin Wright's big piece tomorrow may touch on this subject.

TODAY (though I think it made the news yesterday), Representative Louise Slaughter has written to the President to ask why specifically Flynt Leverett's oped for the New York Times was censored.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons


« SCOOP: Pragmatic Non-Royal to be Next Saudi Ambassador to the United States

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December 22, 2006

Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann: Redacted Op-Ed Makes it to Print -- Black Lines and All

December 22, 2006Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann: Redacted Op-Ed Makes it to Print -- Black Lines and All

Check this out in the New York Times. This oped was creatively, graphically presented in the paper today and attests to a new and disturbing kind of White House politicization of intelligence.
Here is an admirable kicker to the important Leverett/Mann piece:

National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles. It is for this reason that we will continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted.
Congrats to Flynt Leverett, his wife Hillary Mann who co-wrote the piece, and Op-Ed editor David Shipley who put this together.

Robin Wright's important article on Saudi Arabia originally scheduled to appear as a front page item in the Washington Post today reportedly needs another day of vetting and will either run in tomorrow's Post or on Sunday.

-- Steve Clemons
Posted by steve at December 22, 2006 03:27 AM

Video: Ex-Bush official says Iran sought dialogue in '03

Flynt Leverett -- former CIA analyst, NSC member and established foreign policy expert -- has written an op-ed for the NYT bashing the Bush admin. for it's failed policies towards Iran. The WH, in typical ruthless and authoritarian form, has pressured the CIA to heavily redact his draft on the grounds that it would reveal national security secrets -- something the CIA disagrees with -- and have even threatened him with criminal prosecution. Leverett, visibly distraught at his press conference today, has countered that this claim is a "fraudulent" and deliberate attempt to silence a respected critic by politicizing the CIA review process.

VIDEO

BUSH ADMINISTRATION GUILTY OF STRATEGIC "MALPRACTICE" ON IRAN - EXPERT

Related

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.