Center for International Policy

Remarks by Selig S. Harrison, Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Director, Asia Program, Center for International Policy, on the topic “Iran, Iraq and the United States: The View from Teheran,” at a seminar sponsored by the Middle East Program of the Wilson Center, May 14, 2008.

I want to say at the outset that my two trips to Iran have had a limited objective: to explore the terms for a modus vivendi in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf. I’ve been there six times before, but that was before the Revolution, and I am not a Farsi speaker. So, I’m not competent to make judgments about the internal situation and will not do so. So far I have not been able to see Ahmadinejad or Khamenei or their closest advisors but I have had good conversations with key people who advise the National Security Council. The Foreign Ministry arranged a three-hour seminar with 15 Iraq specialists from different agencies at my request. And of course, I have met a broad spectrum of editors, scholars and diplomats who welcome the opportunity to talk with Americans.

In Washington, the focus of most discussions on Iran is the nuclear issue, but in Teheran what they want to talk about is Iraq. One comment on Iraq makes a good starting point today. I talked with Mahmoud Vaezi, a former Deputy Foreign Minister who now heads Rafsanjani’s think tank, the Center for Strategic Research. He said, “you know, we’ve been waiting for this moment since 1639.” 1639 was the year the treaty of Qasr-i- Shirin was signed. That was the treaty that defined the boundary between Safavid Persia and the advancing Ottoman Turks who pushed Persia out of what was to become the modern state of Iraq.

Before 1639, Persia had extensive influence in Mesopotamia through local Shiite principalities. The Shia religious universe embraced parts of both Persia and Mesopotamia and Shia clerics commuted back and forth between religious centers on both sides as they do today. After 1639, the Turks and then the British installed Sunni puppet regimes in Iraq. Then came Saddam’s Sunni dictatorship and his invasion of Iran in 1980 with US help and encouragement. What Vaezi meant was that for five centuries, Iran has been hoping the day would come when Sunni minority rule would end in Baghdad and Teheran would get back some of its old influence.

So when George W. Bush destroyed the Saddam regime in the name of democracy, Iran’s reaction was ambivalent. It didn’t like the idea of a U.S. occupation force and U.S. bases on its borders. But it did hope that the Shiite majority of 62 percent would come into its own and that Iraq would tilt toward Iran after the American occupation ended.

Some of you may have wondered, as I have wondered, whether President Bush and his advisors recognized that destroying a dictatorship controlled by the Sunni minority would lead to the domination of a democratic Iraq by its Shiite majority, thus giving Shiite Iran unprecedented influence in Baghdad.

The President, for his part, clearly did not have Iran and the Shiite connection on his mind. On January 10, 2003, just two months before the invasion, author Kanan Makiya and two other Iraqi exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein met with Bush to discuss scenarios for a post-invasion Iraq. They were astonished to find that he had never heard of the Sunni-Shia divide in Islam and spent most of their meeting giving him a history lesson.

Bush’s Pentagon advisors were better informed, but they too, were not worried about empowering Iran. I talked at length about this with Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Feith said he believed in 2003 that invading Iraq might speed up the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Here’s what he said: “We were conscious of the fact that Shiite political power in Iraq would help Iran, but it was unclear how it would all net out and it’s still unclear. After all, Ayatollah Sistani believes in the separation of church and state. The ayatollahs in Teheran believe they have a divine right to rule. So Sistani is enormously threatening to them. The net result of the invasion could well be the unraveling of the regime in Teheran, with Iranians inspired by the example of the Iraqi Revolution.” Feith calls what’s happening in Iraq the Iraqi Revolution. In his new memoir, War and Decision, he argues that both North Korea and Iran were on the verge of collapse in 2003, so it wasn’t necessary to take preemptive action, in contrast to Iraq, where they thought there was no prospect of getting rid of Saddam without an invasion.

Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's Number Two, hasn’t written his memoirs yet, but his argument in the internal debates was different and more realistic. Wolfowitz emphasized that the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs who don’t like being patronized by Persians, so he argued that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would never be a puppet of Iran. He was right about that, in my view, but what about an Iraq that is closer to Iran than to other external powers, which is where the situation is moving?

Wolfowitz did recognize that the US had to have a Shiite front man and that was one of the reasons he pushed Ahmad Chalabi. The US was slow to learn that the Shiite politicians who count in Baghdad are Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who had strong military ties with Iran dating back to the Iran-Iraq War, and Moqtada Al-Sadr, who emerged on the scene more recently and also has close ties to Teheran. The center of Al Sadr’s support is the urban underclass and Hakim is close to the mercantile interests.

It’s significant that Iran has carefully avoided playing favorites between the two, unlike the US, which is now positioned against Al-Sadr. This is dangerous militarily because Sadr’s Baghdad following of more than two million is concentrated in the slum areas known as Sadr City that are located within missile range of the Green Zone. This would make it very risky for the Administration to carry out its threats to retaliate for Iranian aid to Shiite militias or to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Sadr’s forces have already fired small rockets into the Green Zone and if they fired bigger ones the US military position in Iraq would become increasingly untenable. That is why the US forces are trying to build a wall that pushes Sadr’s missile emplacements back as far as possible from the Green Zone. That is why Apache helicopters are attacking Sadr’s forces, which has led to missile attacks by the Mahdi Army on the helicopters in a significant escalation of hostilities.

The U.S. decision to step up military action against the Mahdi Army was a major departure in U.S. policy and might have been one of the factors contributing to the timing of the Hezbollah offensive in Lebanon. Some of you may have explanations for the timing in local factors. I would like to hear them but if there are not explanations for the timing in the local environment then it makes sense to me that Iranian anger over the U.S. role in Sadr City might well help to explain this tragic development. I heard plenty of that anger in Teheran even before the recent escalation in Sadr City and two weeks ago the Iranian Ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Qumi, made the first formal statement he ever made to the press there pleading for the U.S. to back off. Here’s what he said : “The American insistence on coming and having a siege on a couple of million people in one area and striking them with warplanes and shelling them randomly – many innocent people will be killed through this operation.”

The magnitude of Iran’s influence in Iraq was dramatically demonstrated by Ahmadinejad’s triumphal February visit to Baghdad and by the continuing Iranian role in keeping the peace between the warring Shiite factions. It’s now clearly established that the March truce after the fighting in Basra was brokered by a Revolutionary Guard general and that the truce negotiations were held in Qom. The truce last week between the Sadr and Hakim militias was negotiated in Teheran. So we have to give serious attention to Iran’s view of what should come next in Iraq.

I was told repeatedly that Iran has been restraining Sadr so far and is ready to cooperate in stabilizing Iraq, but only if Washington sets a timetable for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat forces within, say, two years, and accepts Iran’s right to be a major player in postwar Baghdad, along with the United States and eventually Saudi Arabia.

At the Foreign Ministry seminar, one of the Iranians exclaimed, “How can you accuse us of ‘interfering’ in Iraq? You have come from 6,000 miles away with 160,000 soldiers. We are an immediate neighbor with a 1,000-mile border and intimate historical, religious and economic ties going back centuries. You helped Saddam against us in a war that cost us more than 300,000 lives, so naturally we want to be sure that Iraq is in friendly hands.”

By a “friendly” Iraq, Iran means one dominated by the Shiite majority. Teheran, as I’ve said, has carefully avoided taking sides in the internal Shiite power struggle now going on and wants Washington to do the same. In the bargain envisaged by the Iranian officials I met, Washington would end its current military offensive against Sadr. Iran would pledge not to give him missiles capable of hitting the Green Zone. It would end aid to all non-government militias in Iraq when U.S. combat forces are withdrawn. It would help with intelligence in eliminating Al Qaeda in Iraq. It would contribute to economic reconstruction and would coordinate this contribution with what the U.S. and multilateral agencies do.

Two Iranian demands would be particularly difficult to get through the U.S. policy process. One is that Iran wants the U.S. to end its use of the Mujahidin Khalq as an arm of U.S. intelligence in Iran. It wants the U.S. to put the 3,700 MEK fighters now at Camp Ashraf in Iraq through a Red Cross screening process so that those ready to do so can leave MEK and return to Iran. Another demand of particular importance to Iran is that the United States should stop building up Sunni militias under U.S. control that now number more than 91,000 fighters, each paid $300 a month.

The Iranian perception is that the U.S. wanted provincial elections moved up in the hope of increasing Sunni strength in the councils. They blame this for stepping up the power struggle among Shiite factions. It would not be easy to roll back the “Sunni Awakening” and to take 91,000 men off the U.S. payroll. Steven Simon points out in an excellent Foreign Affairs article that $150 million has been budgeted for the program this year and that the Sunni tribal sheikhs “take as much as 20 percent of every payment to a former insurgent—which means that commanding 200 fighters can be worth well over a hundred thousand dollars a year for a tribal chief.” So we’ve started something that will be difficult to stop but from Iran’s point of view ending the “Sunni Awakening” must go with cooperation in stabilizing Iraq. In Iranian eyes, it is part of a “divide and rule” U.S. strategy designed to offset Shiite power in Iraq and make it a U.S. protectorate with an indefinite U.S. combat force presence and permanent U.S. bases.

The Iranian attitude on the future of U.S. bases is not yet well defined but my impression is that they don’t expect the U.S. to shut down all of them and will focus on security guarantees ruling out the use of Iraq for attacks against Iran.
What would happen to the Sunnis if the U.S. withdraws and if Iraq tilts to Teheran?

In my view, they would have to accept rule by the Shiite majority, just as Shiites have accepted Sunni domination for the past five centuries under the Sunni puppet regimes installed by the Turks, by the British and most recently, by Saddam. George Bush consigned the Sunnis to this status when he overthrew Saddam. But the United States does have a moral obligation to join with Saudi Arabia to prevent their persecution. For this reason, a US-Iran bargain should be accompanied by broader regional arrangements in which Riyadh and others join with Teheran and Washington in stabilizing Iraq. Iran is ready for a regional approach. The American media has given little attention to the Iranian proposal made in Istanbul last November for a regional peacekeeping force. It ignored Ahmadinejad’s summit meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in March, 2007, and his conciliatory overtures at the December Doha summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The United States and Iran have a common interest in maintaining some form of unified Iraqi state. Teheran does not want a breakup along ethnic lines that would strengthen the movement for an independent Kurdistan embracing its own restive Kurdish areas. Thus, in return for facilitating a graceful, gradual U.S. withdrawal, Iran would expect an end to the covert U.S. aid now being given to Iraq-based Kurdish separatists in Iran, the Pejak, and to other covert operations designed to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

Now I’ll comment briefly on Afghanistan, the Gulf and the nuclear issue.

One of my best on the record conversations on Afghanistan was with Alaeddin Boroujerdy, the chairman of the Majlis Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. Like everyone you talk to in Teheran, he recited at length the many ways in which Iran had helped the United States to defeat the Taliban and set up the Hamid Karzai government, including battlefield military intelligence through advisors attached to the Northern Alliance and political help at the Bonn Conference. “Our reward,” he said, “was membership in the Axis of Evil.” Iran has spent $625 million on economic aid to Kabul since 2002, plans to spend much more and is ready to work closely with the United States to combat narcotics production and trafficking. Boroujerdy emphasized narcotics, calling this “an area in which serious cooperation could make all the difference.” If a peacekeeping force of Islamic countries is proposed to supplement or replace the U.S. and NATO forces, he added, “we can propose to our Supreme Leader that Iran participate in such a force.” Both Boroujerdi and key Foreign Ministry officials dismissed allegations of Iranian help to the Taliban as “disinformation from a country or countries that are themselves guilty. We are completely with the United States in opposing them.”

I don’t have definitive information on whether Iranian weapons have or have not gone to the Taliban and if so, how, but it’s important that U.S. accusations about this have died down. Iran is actively involved on the propaganda front in Afghanistan in pushing Shia religious and cultural themes with three TV channels that have a wide audience, especially in Herat.

Regarding the Gulf, I have found a very pragmatic attitude in Teheran. Despite the propaganda, no one really expects the United States to withdraw militarily. Of course Iran regards the US carriers sent to the Gulf as a serious provocation, especially since US carriers in most parts of the world carry tactical nuclear weapons. If we ever do get into talks about a modus vivendi in the Gulf I’m sure removal of the carriers would be their first demand. Iran does not expect to have a dominant security role in the Gulf but neither is it ready to accept US dominance. What I can see as a realistic basis for a modus vivendi is a reduction of the US military presence along the lines proposed by Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center in Foreign Affairs. The US Air Force would keep its base in Qatar and the Navy would remain in Bahrain but in Pollack’s words—“fewer American warships would ply the waters of the Gulf.” He speaks of an over-the-horizon capability with equipment prepositioned in Kuwait and Qatar and container ships stationed in Diego Garcia. I tried this out on a number of my interlocutors in Teheran and found considerable receptivity. The problem comes in defining a level of expansion of Iranian naval and air capabilities that would result in what Pollack calls a “security condominium” on compatible terms.

Much of what is written in the United States depicts Iran as playing a troublemaking role in the Gulf in which it is arrayed against Saudi Arabia. But in reality, the most striking fact about the Gulf in recent years has been the change in the Saudi posture toward Iran since King Abdullah replaced King Fahd and the responsive Iranian posture, starting with Rafsanjani’s Haj pilgrimage in April, 1997, continuing with the two meetings that Khatami had with Abdullah and culminating with the March, 2007, Ahmadinejad-Abdullah Summit. At that Summit, you will recall, Abdullah, standing next to Ahmadinejad, said that “we will never allow any force from outside the region to draw the future of the region.” This was dismissed in the U.S. as nothing more than rhetoric, but I found many in Teheran who hope that it marked the beginning of the evolution of a bipolar balance in the Gulf based on an Iran-Saudi accommodation. Of course, military stability would not end political competition in which Iran continues to support its Shiite Arab proxies and the Saudis continue their effort to wean them off their dependence on Teheran. The angry statement by King Fahd yesterday about Lebanon reminds us that Saudi-Iranian political tensions will be serious but that does not mean that Saudis will join in a military arrangement against Iran.

In conclusion, a word about the nuclear issue. I have discussed this at length in the Fall 2006, World Policy Journal, and regrettably nothing has changed. The U.S. is not serious about a negotiated settlement or it would not be insisting on the suspension of enrichment as a precondition for negotiations. We conned the Iranians once by getting them to suspend at the outset of negotiations in November, 2004, and they all say they will certainly not be conned again.

The nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union in 2004 and 2005 were based on a bargain that the EU failed to honor. Iran did suspend its enrichment efforts. This was linked to the outcome of discussions on a permanent enrichment ban. The EU promised to put forward proposals for security guarantees as well as economic incentives in return for a permanent ban, but subsequently refused to discuss security issues.

The language of the joint declaration that launched the negotiations on November 14, 2004, was unambiguous. “A mutually acceptable agreement,” it said, would not only provide “objective guarantees” that Iran’s nuclear program is “exclusively for peaceful purposes” but would “equally provide firm commitments on security issues.” Working groups on political and security issues were to report back in three months. But the U.S. proved to be unwilling to co-operate with the EU in formulating concessions to Tehran relating to its security concerns.

So they were indeed conned, and all factions in Iran agree that they should not be conned again. Would a nuclear settlement be possible if we agreed to negotiate without preconditions? Given a settlement in Iraq, I think it would be possible to get a freeze on weapons-grade enrichment under IAEA inspections--- if the U.S. is prepared to make a formal commitment not to use U.S. nuclear weapons in the Gulf, perhaps as part of a multilateral nuclear-free zone agreement involving other powers. When I made this proposal in the Post in October, 2007, I emphasized that no one in Teheran talked about a security commitment extending beyond the Gulf into the Middle East. In other words, the U.S. could rule out using nuclear weapons in the Gulf without ruling out their use in the defense of Israel. I emphasize this in closing because it illustrates the pragmatic world view one finds in Teheran, notwithstanding Ahmadinejad’s deplorable rhetoric.