Tag: Iran

Iranian Jews refuse to meet Rohani, citing his non-denial denial of the Holocaust: http://t.co/dArCYWXtZe

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) September 25, 2013

What the Iranian president said in his interview with Amanpour:

“I have said before that I am not a historian, and that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect on it … But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed towards the Jews, as well as non-Jewish people, was reprehensible and condemnable as far as we are concerned.”

Fisher analyzes:

For some in the West, Rouhani’s condemnation of the Holocaust was a remarkable step forward from 10 years of Ahmadinejad, and a significant gesture from a president who still has to answer to the hard-line supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, no friend of Israel and ultimately Rouhani’s boss. For others, though, his apparent deferral to Holocaust revisionists was a sad reminder of the degree of hostility toward not just Israel but Jews entrenched in the Iranian political system – and a sign that Rouhani is still of that system.

Marc Tracy accuses Rouhani of perpetuating Holocaust denial:

Imagine that a company or some other kind of organization with a history of believing that the world is flat appoints a new CEO who is more open to alternative beliefs about the shape of the world. “The world is not flat,” he says. But he doesn’t then say: “In fact, the world is a globe with a circumference of 24,901 miles.” He says: “I don’t know whether it is a globe. Maybe it is. Or maybe it is curved. Maybe it is jagged, like one of its many mountain ranges. Maybe it dips, like a crater. Maybe it is a series of steps hurtling through the cosmos. I am not qualified to judge.” Would you say that this person has come to hold the mainstream view on the shape of the world?

But again, obviously the remark is embedded in the difficult task Rouhani has in both getting a deal with the West, while not provoking insurrection from his more reactionary, hateful colleagues in the Iranian political system. Moynihan’s view:

It’s important to remember that the skilled Holocaust denier parses, dissects, and molests language, quibbling with the word “denial”—they typically acknowledge that many Jews died, but were victims of various typhus epidemics—and wondering why shadowy forces are hamstringing dissenting historians.

Jonathan Tobin piles on:

That these stands are calculated to convince Western elites that Rouhani is a decent person while still giving him cover at home is a tribute to the cleverness of the Iranian tactic. After all, contrary to some other statements uttered during the charm offensive, there is more to Iranian anti-Semitism than just Ahmadinejad’s personal obsessions. Iranian TV often broadcasts material that merges the two topics by claiming that Jews have exaggerated the extent of the Holocaust in order to “steal” Palestine from the Arabs and hoodwink the United States out of money. Rouhani’s mention of the doubts about how many Jews died is a signal to Iranians and other Islamists that he is very much on the same page as Ahmadinejad but knows how to talk to Westerners.

How do we know that it isn’t the opposite: a signal to the West that he is very much on the same page as indisputable, mainstream history, but knows how to handle Iranian domestic factions? It seems to me that this is a more plausible explanation.

All this debate on these principles is well and good, but it’s important to remember that the test, right now, is not whether Iran’s theocracy will suddenly become like the West, but whether we can do business with them on their nuclear ambitions – and whether Rouhani can effectively deliver his far right the way Obama will have to deliver the AIPAC-influenced Congress.

Trita Parsi explains how Rouhani’s recent Rosh Hashanah outreach was definitely a tweet in the right direction:

In his UN speech yesterday, the new Iranian president continued to differentiate himself from Ahmadinejad:

Intriguingly, Rouhani did not mention, even once, the word that so infamously was associated with his predecessor: Israel (or, as Iranian leaders prefer, “the Zionist regime”). At the end of his speech, he recited a verse from the Qu’ran that talked about the Jewish holy book, the Torah. Those two choices should have pleased the sole Iranian Jewish MP accompanying Rouhani in his UN visit to New York.

Then during an interview last night with Christiane Amanpour, Rouhani had this to say about the Holocaust:

“I have said before that I am not a historian, and that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect on it,” Rouhani told Amanpour. “But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed towards the Jews, as well as non-Jewish people, was reprehensible and condemnable as far as we are concerned.”

A reader quotes from my reaction to Rouhani’s UN speech:

The US is exerting force to insist on Syria’s destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, even as we send military aid to Israel, which has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. We have threatened force to prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb, but we give military aid to Israel, which currently has a break-out capacity of up to 300 nuclear warheads. Is it not reasonable for humankind to look at this double standard and say collectively: WTF?

Well, no, it’s not reasonable.  Syria is being asked to destroy its chemical weapons in the aftermath of a chemical attack which more than likely originated with the Syrian stockpile.  Iran has admitted to sponsoring terrorism and given the nature of terrorists, they are far more likely to use such weapons than even Iran would be.  Given Iran’s rhetoric towards Israel, it’s pretty reasonable to not want them to have those weapons.

If you can think of a comparable situation where Israel has 1) used chemical weapons or 2) put nukes in the hands of people who would use them, then it would be a double standard.  Here, the standard applied by the US isn’t hypocritical at all.

I’m not persuaded that Iran, given its history in foreign policy, would ever hand off nuclear weapons to terrorist proxies, especially given the devastating consequences that would ensue. Mercifully, not even the Pakistanis have done that, and Pakistan is a far more troubling nuclear power than Iran would be.

My point is about non-proliferation. If we are as intent on it in the Middle East as we seem to be under Obama (I’m more of a believer in deterrence than non-proliferation, for what it’s worth), then leaving the one nuclear and chemical power out of it – and never even mentioning it – does seem like a whopping double standard to most people around the globe. I’m unaware, either, of Iran assassinating Israel’s nuclear technicians. And yet we accept the reverse with nary a quibble. At some point, the US has to deal with this glaring discrepancy in the eyes of the world. Another reader:

I’m confused. According to your logic, Obama was right to threaten force in Syria because that was the only way the world would get serious about Assad’s chemical weapons. But AIPAC/neocons are wrong to push Obama to threaten force in Iran because that would … scuttle the possibility of a deal and give them the war you allege they’ve been gunning for?

Putting aside your caricature-ish portrayal of what the “Greater Israel Lobby” “wants” (by the way, do you really think anyone who cares seriously about Israel wants a war with Iran, which is almost certain to bring reprisals against Israeli citizens and interests and embolden the mullahs – or do you concede that at some point Israel might calculate a strike to be its least worst option?), let’s inject some discipline into the argument.  Essentially you admitted Obama’s threat of force in Syria compelled Russia to act, producing an outcome on Assad’s CW stockpile that was at least minimally acceptable to us.  If this is the case, why wouldn’t the continued pressure of sanctions and an on-the-table military option serve a similar goal in helping us get the best deal – for us, Israel, and the Gulf states – with Iran?  Chuck Schumer has called for just this approach: openness to talks while keeping Iran’s feet to the fire.  In short, the best diplomacy is armed diplomacy, and the surest means of avoiding a strike, either by us or the Israelis.

Yes, but there is always a moment at which that constant threat of force makes diplomacy very difficult, for a simple reason. Countries have pride. No country, and certainly not one with as ancient a civilization as Iran, wants to be seen to be cowed into submission. There comes a point at which a strategy of force-backed diplomacy has to open itself up to simple diplomacy. Reagan did it. Obama can too. To get a deal, we need to find a way for Iran to save face. With Syria, that meant giving Putin a big feather in his cap, allowing Assad to claim the decision as his own, and argue that the chemical attacks were the work of others (preposterous, I know, but necessary for him to save face). With Iran, at some point it means taking the threat of force slowly off the table – especially since they claim they want the same thing we do.

I’d argue, in any case, that the threat of military force has been less integral to Iran’s recalculation of its interests than crippling sanctions. The Iranians know that we cannot truly destroy their nuclear technology from the sky. And that technology cannot be unlearned, even if Israel assassinates mere scientists. And after such a potential attack on nuclear facilities, any regime would regard it as a point of honor to reconstitute its nuclear program as soon as possible thereafter. It’s not really a solution, as the sanest Israelis understand. But the sanctions that are wrecking the economy in a country whose regime rules by brute force and whose legitimacy, certainly in the major cities, is close to non-existent? In this case, these economic sanctions have been our major tool – and they have been critically backed by Europe as well.

In other words, the threat of force is not as effective with Iran as economic isolation has been. Using such force would cost us a great deal too. Sanctions, in contrast, cost us relatively little. It will require real statesmanship to detect the right moment to make the leap toward true engagement, to take force off the table for a while – but that’s what we elected Obama for. It’s also, it seems to me, what the Iranian people elected Rouhani for. And these opportunities do not occur very often.

Carpe diem.

Walt sighs:

Refusing to talk to people or countries with whom we differ is really just a childish form of spite and one the United States indulges in mostly because we can get away with it. But it also makes it more difficult to resolve differences in ways that would advance U.S. interests. In short, it’s dumb.

Did it really help U.S. diplomacy when we refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1934? Were U.S. interests really furthered by our refusal to recognize the People’s Republic of China for more than two decades after Mao’s forces gained control there? Has keeping Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the deep freeze since 1961– that’s nearly 53 years, folks — brought his regime crashing down, helped the lives of Cubans, or even advanced the political goals of Cuban-American exiles? Has our refusal to conduct direct talks with Iran slowed the development of its nuclear research program and helped us explore possible solutions to the problems in Afghanistan, Syria, or the Persian Gulf itself?

Obviously not. But because the United States is so powerful and so secure, it can usually afford to snub people or governments it doesn’t like.

Larison adds:

It is remarkable how much importance has been attached to the mere possibility that Obama and Rouhani might briefly meet this week. If we were talking about bilateral relations between almost any other pair of governments, such meetings would be commonplace. The question wouldn’t be whether such a meeting would take place, but rather how productive it would prove to be. The U.S. and Iran can’t even begin to find out what kind of deal is possible so long as holding meetings between top officials is itself treated as making a concession to the other side. All of this should remind us how abnormal and counterproductive it is to have no formal diplomatic ties with Iran. There are hardly any other states where the U.S. has gone this far out of its way for so long to avoid high-level contacts with a foreign government, and it severely limits our government’s ability to conduct effective diplomacy.

There are several points (pdf) at which I spluttered. To wit:

The human tragedy in Syria represents a painful example of catastrophic spread of violence and extremism in our region. From the very outset of the crisis and when some regional and international actors helped to militarize the situation through infusion of arms and intelligence into the country and active support of extremist groups, we emphasized that there was no military solution to the Syrian crisis.

One of those regional actors was clearly Iran, protecting its Shiite ally, the murderous Bashir al-Assad. Was Rouhani criticizing some factions in his own country – or bullshitting? I’d say bullshitting. On Syria, he said:

I should underline that illegitimate and ineffective threat to use or the actual use of force will only lead to further exacerbation of violence and crisis in the region.

But of course it was only the threat of US force that prompted the world to get serious about Assad’s chemical weapons.

There were other weirdnesses – “Shia-phobia”? But nonetheless, it seems to me, Rouhani’s critique of the US as a hegemonic power is onto something – not because it is the worst such hegemon in world history. Au contraire. But all hegemonies lead to abuse, and in the case of the US since the end of the Cold War, American unipolar hegemony has led us close to a self-defeat and bankruptcy. Increasingly isolated, engaged in pre-emptive war, America’s wars of invasion and occupation have been morally corrosive failures – and incredibly costly ones at that. The neoconservative vision simply foundered in a world that simply resents the nosy bully – as you could see in the Brazilian president’s speech earlier today. That doesn’t help the US. It doesn’t help our interests. You don’t have to adopt Rouhani’s worldview to see that. We have to live in a more multi-polar world.

And in foreign relations, Rouhani has a point about Iran’s relative moderation. Yes, it exports terror via Hezbollah and Hamas. But it has not launched wars; it has cooperated even with the Bush administration with respect to the Taliban. Gone are the despicable Holocaust denials of Ahmadinejad. And he’s right about double standards. The US is exerting force to insist on Syria’s destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, even as we send military aid to Israel, which has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. We have threatened force to prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb, but we give military aid to Israel, which currently has a break-out capacity of up to 300 nuclear warheads. Is it not reasonable for humankind to look at this double standard and say collectively: WTF?

And is he not within his rights to complain about Israel’s assassinations of scientists?

For what crimes have they been assassinated? The United Nations and the Security Council should answer the question: have the perpetrators been condemned?

The key point of the speech, though, was roughly Ken Pollack’s point. Iran is an advanced society, despite crippling sanctions, and has every right to pursue nuclear power. There is no way to stop this. Indeed, telling a country it cannot develop its scientific and energy expertise this way is abhorrent. The question is whether this is about nuclear weapons. And Rouhani says no – emphatically:

Iran’s nuclear program – and for that matter, that of all other countries – must pursue exclusively peaceful purposes. I declare here, openly and unambiguously, that, notwithstanding the positions of others, this has been, and will always be, the objective of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions. Our national interests make it imperative that we remove any and all reasonable concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
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The second objective, that is, acceptance of and respect for the implementation of the right to enrichment inside Iran and enjoyment of other related nuclear rights, provides the only path towards achieving the first objective. Nuclear knowledge in Iran has been domesticated now and the nuclear technology, inclusive of enrichment, has already reached industrial scale. It is, therefore, an illusion, and extremely unrealistic, to presume that the peaceful nature of the nuclear program of Iran could be ensured through impeding the program via illegitimate pressures.

It’s interesting he puts the end of any ambiguity about Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of national interest. Presumably he doesn’t just mean his rather corny call to join a “WAVE” against violence and extremism. He means the sanctions. And surely there must be an overlap of interests here. Iran is not denying its nuclear capacity, like Syria did or Saddam once did; it’s broadcasting it. And it is simultaneously insisting it is not for military purposes.

That latter point can surely be tested, verified, examined. And given the awful consequences of military conflict over this, we have a moral obligation to try.

(Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the U.N. General Assembly on September 24, 2013 in New York City. By Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images.)

Judis calls Obama’s UN speech today “his most significant foreign policy statement since becoming president.” The reason why:

If Obama does achieve a rapprochement between the United States and Iran, it could have repercussions throughout the Middle East. It could make a political settlement in Syria possible. It could ease negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Israel’s hardliners would no longer have an excuse for ignoring the West Bank occupation, and Hamas would no longer have international support in refusing to back a two-state solution. And, finally, of course, a rapprochement could give the United States a strong ally in reducing the threat of terrorist movements in the Middle East and South Asia.

Max Fisher thought Obama’s UN speech was harder on Iran than his recent remarks:

That Obama would harden his stance toward Iran, at precisely the moment when Tehran seems most receptive to his entreaties, may seem surprising on the surface. But U.S.-Iran engagement is shifting from theoretical to actual this week. And that means the United States is a little less worried about enticing Tehran to the negotiating table, and a little more preoccupied with keeping their Iranian counterparts honest.

But the toughening stance on Iran, like the decision to privilege the nuclear issue far above detente, seemed to nod to growing concerns from Israel. … Israel does not have veto power over U.S.-Iran engagement, exactly, but it does have significant influence – and sympathetic-minded legislators in Congress could have the power to block Obama from any deals with Tehran.