This recognition by the obama administration is important because Persuasion is the option most
85 in her april 22, 2009 appearance before the house committee on Foreign affairs, secretary clinton said, “We actually believe that by
following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and crippling as we would want it to be. so i think the short answer is, it is our expectation that we will be able to put together such a comprehensive sanctions regime in the event we need it.” hearing of the house committee on Foreign affairs,
New Beginnings: Foreign Policy Priorities In The Obama Administration, 111th cong,. 1st sess., april 22, 2009.
86 Following his april 21, 2009 meeting with King abdullah ii of Jordan, President obama spoke about his administration’s policy toward iran,
saying that “tough, direct diplomacy has to be pursued without taking a whole host of other options off the table.” The White house, “remarks by President obama and King abdullah of Jordan in Joint Press availability,” april 21, 2009, available at <http://www.whitehouse. gov/the_press_office/remarks-by-President-obama-and-King-abdullah-of-Jordan-in-joint-press-availability/>.
counterproductive. airstrikes would likely rally the iranian people around the worst elements in the regime, at least initially. This, in turn, would make it more likely iran would retaliate, withdraw from the NPt, and recommit to acquiring nuclear weapons, and/or end any ongoing negotiations with the United states, the United Nations, or other members of the international community. Nevertheless, if it becomes clear that iran is not negotiating seriously with the United states but is merely playing for time—or refuses to negotiate altogether—then all three of the military options would take on significantly greater relevance as fallback options for the Persuasion option. if ne- gotiating a deal is simply no longer feasible, the obama administration will be left with an unpal- atable choice between taking military action it- self, letting israel do it, or moving to contain iran and deter its use of nuclear weapons. if Washing- ton concludes that it does not believe a nuclear iran can effectively be deterred, or the adminis- tration simply does not want to take that risk, the United states might opt for the airstrikes option or even the invasion option. The israelis will have to make a similar decision, itself contingent upon what the United states decides. and while an is- raeli airstrike has many potential drawbacks for the United states, in a situation in which iran has made it clear that it is unwilling to make any com- promises, Washington might simply decide that it is not worth expending the political capital to
prevent israel from launching a strike if Jerusalem
opts to do so.
Furthermore, all of these scenarios could also be raised simply as implicit threats, and those threats might serve as a useful form of pressure on iran as part of the Persuasion approach in ways that their ethnic insurgencies in iran.87 of course, this strat-
egy had not worked before Bush left office, but its proponents could plausibly argue that it did not have enough time to have any impact. it is certain- ly imaginable that putting the Bush strategy back in place and adding one or more of the regime change options could put much greater pressure on tehran, and that might increase the likelihood that the regime would agree to compromise. however, many experts on iran argue the exact opposite: that the sine qua non of striking a deal with tehran is convincing the clerical regime that the United states is not seeking its overthrow, and only under those circumstances will tehran feel secure enough to make compromises. They con- tend that if iran feels threatened by the United states, it will be far more inclined to dig in its heels and fight back, thereby undermining the basic premise of Persuasion. There is some evi- dence to support this contention. For instance, in 1994-1996, when tehran believed that Washing- ton was ratcheting up its covert action program against the islamic regime, the iranians did not signal any greater willingness to compromise but instead lashed out at the United states in whatever manner they could. tehran was probably behind the Khobar towers attack that killed 19 ameri- can military personnel and conducted aggressive surveillance of american diplomatic and military personnel and installations all across the Middle east, instigated attacks by the Palestinian islamic Jihad and hizballah against israel to subvert the peace process, and attempted to overthrow the government of Bahrain.
in theory, airstrikes also could be employed to exert pressure on tehran if it refuses an initial deal, although in practice, they could easily prove
87 seymour M. hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield,” New Yorker, July 7, 2008; Joby Warrick, “U.s. is said to expand covert operations in iran:
Plan allows up to $400 Million for activities aimed at Destabilizing Government,” Washington Post, June 30, 2008; robin Wright, “stuart Levey’s War,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, october 31, 2008.
defensive, and could conceivably produce a new government in tehran that would at least amelio- rate some of the issues between the United states and iran. While all of the regime change options also have considerable problems to overcome, these loom largest when the diplomatic options appear viable. if at some point the diplomatic op- tions are clearly no longer feasible, then regime change will likely seem more compelling. The last contingency plan for Persuasion (and ev- ery other option) is inevitably the containment option. as we noted, containment is the policy the United states traditionally adopts toward a problematic state only when all other approaches have failed (or seem destined to fail). if iran re- fuses to compromise and the administration de- cides not to pursue either regime change or the military option, containment would be the logi- cal fallback.
other aspects of containment might be helpful in pursuing the Persuasion option. in particular, it might also be necessary for the United states to provide the kind of formal nuclear guarantees to israel and america’s arab allies envisioned as part of containment to create the necessary time and diplomatic “space” for Persuasion to work. in previous administrations such guarantess were shunned for fear that it would signal a lack of U.s. resolve to curb iran’s nuclear program. however, as iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium grows, its neighbors are naturally becoming more anxious about its intentions. This anxiety is causing them to begin looking seriously at their own options: in israel’s case, a preventive strike; in the arabs’ case, the acquisition of their own nuclear weap- ons. in other words, the possible unintended consequences of pursuing the Persuasion option is that it could trigger a regional conflagration or a regional nuclear arms race. to forestall such untoward developments, extending deterrence to america’s regional allies may actually be an es- sential and urgent complement to the Persuasion implementation might not. in other words, the
United states could let it be known that if iran is unwilling to negotiate an end to its problematic be- havior, then the United states would have to look hard at all of the other options, and under those circumstances, the military options would look far more attractive than they do at present. The clear implication would be that if tehran is unwilling to compromise, it may find itself in a war it does not want. such threats have the merit of being accu- rate representations of where the U.s. policy debate will likely move if iran refuses to compromise, and the obama administration is already signaling as much, including by the president’s refusal to take the military options off the table.
another way that the United states might em- ploy the threat of the military options in support of Persuasion, would be to use them to try con- vince iran not to break off negotiations or clan- destinely cross the nuclear threshold in the midst of them. in this variant, the United states—and possibly israel as well—might warn tehran that if it moved to build and field a nuclear arsenal be- hind the cover of negotiations, the United states would immediately launch preventive airstrikes. Washington might even hint that an invasion was not unimaginable either in these circumstances. in this manner, the threat of the military options would serve as deterrents intended to keep iran at the bargaining table and prevent the failure of Persuasion despite further iranian progress in its nuclear program.
Likewise, all of the regime change approaches also will become more attractive if the iranians re- fuse to make the compromises offered under the Persuasion approach. certainly, regime change would be less likely to provoke a diplomatic back- lash from regional and european states against the United states in the same way that a military attack on iran would, making it potentially more palatable. The regime change options might also be employed to keep iran off balance and on the
one of the potential problems with the Persua- sion option is that the various clocks are not syn- chronized. The iranian clock ticks much more slowly because tehran has every interest in play- ing for time while it completes all the necessary elements of its nuclear program. The israeli and arab clocks tick much more quickly because they cannot abide iran achieving a nuclear threshold capability and grow ever more anxious as iran gets closer to that point. Meanwhile, the ameri- can clock for the Persuasion option is ticking at a pace somewhere between these two poles since there is a recognition that time is needed to play out the option but that a dragged out negotia- tion will become unsustainable. The challenge for american policymakers will be to synchronize these clocks by making the iranians feels a greater sense of urgency while enabling the israelis and arabs to relax a little more. This is where the ele- ments of the containment option could become useful complements to Persuasion.