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Gates' Definition Suggests Further Confrontation with Iran

By Robert Naiman

Before saying anything critical of our new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, let me state the obvious: I, too, am grateful that Mr. Gates has replaced Donald Rumsfeld. But if you were hoping that the replacement of Rumsfeld by Gates meant a fundamentally different US policy regarding the current confrontation with Iran, I'm afraid a little cold water is in order.

Defense Secretary Gates says the US is open to a "deeper" dialogue with Iran, the Washington Post reports. That's welcome news. But his further remarks suggested his notion of a "deeper" dialogue is rather limited. Gates recalled how he and Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Iranian leaders in November 1979 with an offer of diplomatic recognition - "only to be met with Iranian demands that they hand over the Shah."

Gates seems to be suggesting that the fact that Iranian leaders demanded that the US turn over the deposed Iranian dictator shows how unreasonable the Iranian leaders were.

But the demand for the return of the Shah was completely reasonable: the Shah was accused of major human rights abuses in Iran and the theft of significant Iranian public assets (and some Iranians feared the US would re-impose the Shah by force, as it had in 1953). "The Shah's regime was becoming increasingly and egregiously corrupt," wrote William Daugherty, assigned to the US embassy in Tehran at the time. "To counter rising discontent, the Shah gave his security forces carte blanche to ferret out and halt the dissidents; serious human rights issues ensued..." Daugherty wrote that the embassy staff were "utterly astonished" at the decision by the Carter Administration to admit the deposed Shah to the US, since they had warned Washington of the dangers associated with such a decision, and had been told by "Washington seniors" the consequences of the Shah's admission to the US were so obvious no one would be "dumb enough" to allow it.

"The American search for elusive Iranian 'moderates' is a recurring - and mostly fruitless - theme since the revolution in 1979," Gates continued in his remarks.

This suggests that Gates' apparent definition of an "Iranian moderate" - someone uninterested in pressing fundamental Iranian interests - would not be shared by most people in the world.

No wonder the search has been "mostly fruitless." It's hard to become a leader of a country if you don't work - or at least make some effort to appear to work - to protect the country's fundamental interests, unless your rule is imposed by a foreign power. I hope that's not what Mr. Gates has in mind.

Some recent press commentary has suggested that the threat of a US attack on Iran has significantly receded. This is almost certainly true if we are talking about the very short term.

But the danger we need to be concerned about is not the possibility that the United States is going to attack Iran this week. The danger we need to mobilize against is that the United States will attack Iran before George Bush leaves office. If we are to head off that danger, we need to mobilize now.

The recent flare-up over the Iranian detention of the 15 British Marines - which, for all we know at present, may well have been in waters claimed by Iran - the area in question has never been subject to an international treaty - indicates the dangers of the current policy of confrontation. Action provokes reaction. The United States seized 5 Iranian diplomats in Iraq, and now Iran has seized 15 British sailors. The Iranian government says its action was not in retaliation, but no outside observer says the two events are unrelated.

Moreover, the policy of confrontation with Iran keeps us from getting out of Iraq. Even Henry Kissinger says a US military victory in Iraq is "no longer possible." Kissinger said the best way forward was to reconcile the differences between Iraq's warring sects with help from other countries, including Iran. But this contradicts the present US policy, because US threats against Iran undermine the possibility of cooperation on Iraq. Iran, for example, warned that it might not attend a regional conference on security in Iraq with the United States if the Iranian diplomats are not released.

Activism has started to shift US policy in Iraq. But to get out of Iraq, we have to shift US policy on Iran. The first step is to get the "option" of a US military attack off of the so-called table.