Iran, Sanctions, and War: The Obama Administration Spins Out of Control

The alarm bells over Thursday's New York Times article, "Obama Set to Offer Stricter Nuclear Deal to Iran", started ringing in the first paragraph.

David Sanger's article claimed, "The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing a new offer for negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, senior administration officials say, but the conditions on Tehran would be even more onerous than a deal that the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected last year."

As with most of Sanger's articles on Iran, his apparent revelation carries the whiff of propaganda. The reporter gives the impression that the new policy has been agreed by everyone in the Administration, including the President. However, the "senior administration sources" are not named, and we never know how many there are: 3? 2? Maybe just 1 whom Sanger disguises with the use of the plural?

No, by the second paragraph, this feels more like a particular advisor fighting within the Executive Branch to get his particular approach confirmed as "the" Obama policy: 

Many officials suspect that this latest initiative [for talks on uranium enrichment] is likely to fail. But they say that it fulfills President Obama’s promise to keep negotiating even while the pressure of sanctions increases.

“This will be a first sounding about whether the Iranians still think they can tough it out or are ready to negotiate,” one senior American official said this week, declining to be identified because Washington and its European allies are debating the final details of the package they will present to Iran. “We have to convince them that life will get worse, not better, if they don’t begin to move.”

Anyone with a bit of experience watching the Obama White House and Iran will  recognise this blueprint: negotiate not with the hope of an agreement but in the expectation that Tehran will collapse the terms. When it does, then there is further justification for tougher economic and political measures, isolating and weakening the regime more and more.

It's not hard to find the leading proponent of that approach. Mr Dennis Ross, initially of the Obama State Department, now with the National Security Council, is putting out his message again.

Heck, for all Sanger's posturing over his sources, Ross is not even subtle about his campaign. A few days before the article, Ross was telling the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "Should Iran continue its defiance, despite its growing isolation and the damage to its economy, its leaders should listen carefully to President Obama who has said many times, 'we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons'."

Of course Ross --- who has also been busy telling privileged reporters that he is now the vital back-channel to West Jerusalem on the Israel-Palestine direct talks, implicitly pushing aside special envoy George Mitchell and the State Department --- has his allies in the Administration. How many there are and how far they have gotten the agreement of the President and key advisors to this "Negotiate So We Can Punish" strategy is unclear.

What is clear is the risk that this propaganda will spin out of control. Within hours, leading analyst Marc Lynch was taking on Ross's rhetoric and exaggerating further about "putting war talk on the table".

That's an exaggeration because Sanger's source(s) not only do not refer to war but indicate that their preferred steps are tightening the economic screws. Bolster the consensus with other countries that links with Iran should be broken, and Tehran will wither from the internal pressure as well as the international isolation. Not only will Iran face the mounting costs of pursuing its nuclear programme; it will be less able to wield influence in areas such as the Middle East.

That's not war, but Lynch's misreading makes an important contribution: many may perceive the message in Sanger's article --- again, even though there is no evidence that the "senior Administration official" is presenting an agreed point of view --- as one advocating military action.

That's pretty stupid, given that others in the Administration --- like the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen --- have been trying to talk down the idea of military intervention and have been reminding the Israelis that the US Government is opposed to an airstrike on Iran.

It's not even a sensible political manoeuvre. Presuming that someone in the Administration might actually want an agreement with Iran on uranium enrichment, this undermines the effort. It does so because President Ahmadinejad was blocked by conservative opponents in Tehran from reaching an agreement with the US last autumn (notice Sanger's reference from his source to a Supreme Leader veto on a deal). And presuming that Ahmadinejad is again pressing his line that Tehran should talk to the US and its allies, he will be hindered by ham-fisted US threats. Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian conservatives are less likely to accept discussions if they feel they are being bludgeoned into them.

Nor is that propaganda likely to achieve the alternative goal of bringing Tehran to its knees domestically. The regime is likely to seize upon this as proof of America's hypocrisy --- they talk negotiations, but they mean conflict --- and unrelenting hostility towards the Iranian people. Rather than fold to the mounting economic pressure that the Administration official envisages, the Government and the Supreme Leader will use this further sign of the "enemy" to try and rally support to offset the economic difficulties.

So waiting for the propaganda fallout and exploitation in Tehran as well as Washington, I turn to my own named source, my grandmother Bobbie Lou. I know she may not be an eminent person to match Mr Sanger or Mr Ross, but I find her words pertinent: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

That's not just courtesy, that's sound diplomatic tactics.