Unless something major changes on the ground in Iran, Israeli military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities appear very likely. This could lead to disastrous results and every effort should be made to prevent it. President Obama’s attempts at outreach have been interpreted as American weakness by Iran’s leadership.
Instead of accepting Obama’s invitation to direct and unconditional negotiations, Iran’s leaders have been creating obstacles. For example, President Obama’s message on March 20, delivered on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, was rebuffed. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei immediately demanded American concessions such as releasing Iran’s assets (frozen during the hostage crisis), ending sanctions, stopping unconditional support for Israel, and stopping "negative propaganda," before he would regard Obama’s invitation as genuine. The Iranian government then arrested Ms. Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American freelance journalist. She was initially charged with buying a bottle of wine, then for reporting news with an expired permission, and finally convicted for spying (almost all observers believe to be utterly false and trumped up charge). Iran continues to refuse to let Esha Momeni, an Iranian-American to leave Iran. Momeni a graduate student and a feminist was arrested in October when she was engaged in research for her master’s thesis on women movement in Iran. President Ahmadinejad was the only head of government that went to UN anti-racism on Geneva and attacked Israel, although at the last moment took out the phrase casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust, which he has done on numerous occasions. Ahmadinejad knew full-well that attacking Israel would make it much harder for the Obama administration to sit on a table across him and reach agreements.
Israeli leaders have explicitly stated that they will not accept the ruling regime in Iran to develop nuclear weapons. It is immaterial whether Iran actually has a clandestine nuclear weapons program or whether deterrence would work with the present leadership of Iran if they did in fact develop nuclear weapons. Perceptions of reality, and not the reality itself, determine behavior. Israeli decision makers believe that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, that the Islamic fundamentalist leaders of Iran will use them against Israel, and that deterrence would not work with this leadership. It is impossible to prevent Israeli leaders from doing what they perceive to be in their ultimate national interest: the survival of their people.
Israeli perceptions of Iranian leadership and Iranian leadership perception of the Obama administration would more likely than not result in Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran. Obama’s forthcoming letter to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is one opportunity to disabuse Iran’s leader from his misperception and miscalculation, if in fact the Obama administration does not intend to give in to Khamenei’s demands.
The letter should state that the U.S. could persuade Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if Khamenei agrees to: (1) end all uranium enrichment and related activities; (2) provide a full accounting of all clandestine nuclear sites and activities to the U.S.; (3) dismantle all nuclear-related materials and transfer them to the International Atomic Energy Agency; and (4) announce suspension of all related nuclear activities for a reasonable period of time.
The letter should make a distinction between those activities that give Iran the capability to produce nuclear weapons and those activities that merely enable it to produce energy. The letter should explicitly state that Iran could keep its nuclear power plant in Bushehr under Russian monitoring as well as its research reactor at Tehran University. In addition, Iran could purchase as many nuclear power plants as it wishes from the international community under extremely favorable financial terms. Iran would retain the right to an unfettered civilian nuclear program, which could be exercised after a reasonable period of time (e.g., 20 years).
The primary purpose is to find out whether Khamenei is willing to forego his nuclear weapons capability in exchange with American and global incentives. If Khamenei is not willing to give up activities which provide him with the capability to produce nuclear weapons and if the Obama administration is not willing to accept this government possessing such capability, then the door to further diplomacy is closed. However, if Khamenei is willing to accept these terms, he should immediately provide the U.S. with his list of demands. If Khamenei is willing to end Iran’s problematic nuclear activities, then an American team would meet the Iranian team to reach an agreement on Khamenei’s demands.
The American team should not raise the issue of the Iranian government’s support for extremist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas, its atrocious human rights record, or its opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The purpose of this letter and the negotiation should not be the resolution of all issues of contention, but rather what is absolutely necessary to avoid Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. If Khamenei is not willing to give up his nuclear program in exchange for any package of incentives, it would logically follow that he would not be willing to give up his nuclear program in addition to agreeing to address other issues of concern.
If Khamenei refuses to accept the demands in this letter, then the Obama administration should confidentially share the Obama offer and Iran’s rejection of it with the P5 + 1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council, U.S., Russian, Britain, China, and France, plus Germany). The Obama administration should provide them with a stark choice: either an immediate resolution prohibiting purchase of crude oil and natural gas from and sale of refined petroleum to Iran, or Israel will feel free to bomb Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities. The U.S. has other options such as a naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf. However, considering the likelihood that this option may lead to war and the war weariness of the American public, the Obama administration may not be willing to contemplate this option at this time. Unlike the United States, which may be vulnerable to Iranian retaliatory measures, Israel is immune from serious Iranian retaliation.
At best, the UN Security Council sanctions may cause an economic collapse and substantially undermine the regime’s control of the population. This might enable and empower the Iranian people themselves to change the regime. At a minimum, such sanctions would deprive the ruling regime from the billions of dollars it gets from the sale of oil and natural gas, which fund its nuclear program, its various proxies, and its coercive apparatuses. This will buy precious time and would prevent the Israelis from using their military option for many months.
President Obama’s diplomatic skill in gaining the cooperation of other great powers is the best way to prevent or postpone the Israeli strikes.
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