Iraq and Afghanistan

A recent 60 Minutes on Sistani led me to look him up on the internet where he has a web site in several languages (www.sistani.org). Although originally from an Iranian family with a long history of religious study, Sistani has spent most of his life in Najaf. There he studied, rose through the ranks, became an assistant of the leading Ayatollah of the day (al Khoei). On his death, Sistani took his place in Najaf. In 1994, Saddam forbid him to continue his activity in this role. The result was he diversified, beginning to support through his foundation many scholarships in Qom, Iran. These have been continued after he resumed his activities in Najaf. In addition to the support of many students in Iraq and Iran, his foundation also does charitable work (for example, in support of destitute Afghans in Iran). He and al-Khoei have been identified with a quietist approach to Iran, and thus always looked askance at the activist approach associated with Khomeni and now adopted by the Iranian theocracy. This does not mean that Sistani does not think Islam should play a critical role in the life of an Islamic people, it merely means that religious leaders should not have direct political roles in society. It also does not mean this is a particularly "enlightened" Islam. If the reader goes to the Sistani web site, he will see that the thousands of people who are said to visit it daily are looking for practical advice on the minutiae of living as a Shiite Muslim. For example, the exact ways in which one should ritually bathe in different situations are described. He does seem, however, to be relatively easy-going on the question of shaking hands with non-Muslims, something the strict are always doubtful apart because of the impurities of non-Muslims.

Many feel that Sistani is seen as a threat by the present Iranian regime. He has more widely accepted credentials than any of the leading clerics in Tehran. From the above discussion it would appear that he is pushing his cause in Iran, hoping perhaps to solidify his position as the spiritual leader of all Ithna Ashariya Shiites. What this means politically we do not know. We also do not know what he sees as his actual political role in Iraq. He plays a quietist role, but how quiet in future political life in Iraq, and even Iran, we do not know.

The continued presence of nuclear weapons and the ever-present threat that they will spread to other states, and even to terrorist groups, presents a clear, long-term danger to all peoples. It is true that more traditional, conventional weapons, as well as biological and chemical weapons, can be extremely destructive. But the potential destructiveness of nuclear weapons is of quite a different magnitude than conventional weapons. The use of one small nuclear weapon might have relatively little impact. Yet it would break the convention against using these weapons in war that has held since 1945. And a single use would open up possibilities of escalating use and counter use that might easily lead to a world that few of us would want our children to live in.

There are two primary reasons that a nation uses to justify the maintenance or acquisition of nuclear weapons. The first is to deter the use of nuclear weapons against the nation or one of its allies. The second is to deter any attack by a stronger state. In the hands of advocates of nuclear weapons, this argument was extended by an earlier generation to argue that nuclear weapons were the key to universal peace. However, the amount of war and destruction that has nevertheless occurred under this "nuclear umbrella" in the last fifty years has weakened the case for "peace through the bomb". A third, generally unspoken, reason for acquiring or maintaining nuclears is to enhance or preserve a nation's prestige and "weight" in the world. This is certainly a major reason that France developed its forces. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a much weakened Russia, Russia's maintenance of a substantial nuclear force has stood out as one of the few ways in which it can still see itself as a major power in the world. When Iran considers developing nuclear weapons, we should remember that the present regime, just as the shah's regime that preceded it, has long searched for a way to emerge as the key regional power in southwest Asia. When it sees India and Pakistan to the east developing nuclear weapons and notes the presence of nuclear weapons in Russia to the north and Israel to the west, Iranian leaders might well feel that without nuclear weapons Iran cannot attain its goal of being taken seriously as a regional power.

The case for the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of preventing an otherwise stronger state from attacking, with or without the use of nuclear weapons, is weak when the attacking state also has nuclear weapons. If nuclear use by the attacker is deterred, all are in luck. If it is not, then the defender has to decide quickly whether or not to carry out its explicit or implicit threat to respond with a nuclear counterattack. While there are many clever scenarios that show how a defender might use nuclear weapons in a "tit-for-tat" manner that would not lead to mutual suicide for the warring states, the danger that such an exchange would get out of hand would be likely to tie the hands of the defending state, even if it were losing on the battlefield.

A deep contradiction exists between the reliance of the United States on a massive nuclear force as a means to deter nuclear (or major WMD) attacks on the United States and its allies, and the commitment of the United States to stopping growth in the number of states with usable nuclear weapons. For we are telling states without nuclear weapons that they are not to be allowed to have them because their possession would be dangerous while we are allowed to have nuclear weapons because in our hands they are not dangerous. We are also saying that these aspiring states will not be allowed the weapons even though this means that they must remain "second class" states for the foreseeable future. The argument that nuclear weapons are not dangerous in the hands of the present nuclear powers is particularly weak if we consider the problems Russia has had in maintaining and securing its weapons, and the certitude that as long as we maintain our nuclear forces, Russia will continue to maintain theirs.

The only long-run means for the world to find its way through the maze of nuclear weapon possession and hope for possession is for the leading nuclear power, the United States, to work effectively toward the goal of a nuclear-weapon free world. It should do this in two steps. First, it must reopen the argument that another use of a nuclear weapon in wartime would be a crime against humanity. Secondly, it must work with the other nuclear powers and quasi-powers to reduce over a period of years the number of nuclear weapons in their inventories to zero. Only when this process is undertaken and is sufficiently advanced that it becomes believable to all will we attain the high ground from which we can effectively tell other states that they are not to be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

The initial problem with this approach is that the major nuclear powers have taught themselves over the last fifty years that they need nuclear weapons to deter possible nuclear use or threat of use by possible enemies. The question then becomes how these powers, and particularly the United States, can unlearn this teaching. Progress in the United States will not be made by preaching to our leaders that deterrence is unnecessary. It will only be made when they begin to have confidence that we can produce and maintain highly trained and effective conventional forces that can achieve, and appear before the fact as though they can achieve, our deterrence objectives. We have developed a wide array of strategic and tactical systems for the gathering and real-time dissemination of battlefield intelligence. We have developed a catalog full of small units that can be inserted and resupplied behind enemy lines. We have shown in our last few battlefields that we can achieve remarkable results through the air with ever more accurately targeted and more effectively constructed conventional weaponry. If we were to harden this capability and increase the number and effectiveness of this weaponry, then we could hope to respond, and appear as though we could respond, to the use of nuclear weapons against us with massive but relatively surgical attacks that would not on our side break nuclear conventions.

We have a long way to go to before we can build an adequate basis for a switch to nonnuclear deterrence. Along the way, and in combination with phased nuclear weapon reductions that involve all powers, we should reach out to allies and even potential enemies with offers of assistance in the transition to reliance on nonnuclear deterrence forces. What is proposed here will be a hard sell both at home and abroad. But as the only "superpower" in the world, it is incumbent upon us to lead the world down this road.

Pollock's account of the repeated problems in the tortuous relations of the United States and Iran is softened somewhat by reference to the cooperation of Iran with the United States during its recent Middle Eastern adventures. Tehran both hated and feared the Taliban and were glad to see it brought down. They hated with an even greater intensity Saddam Hussein for the disastrous war he had waged against them. Even before our attack in Afghanistan, Iran had urged more help for the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords that they themselves helped considerably before and during the conflict. They provided logistical support for our efforts, even basing for our planes early on. In Iraq they have made a major effort to control their friends in Iraq to prevent their fighting the Americans. What they apparently want in Iraq is a state free of Hussein and under Shi'ah control. They do not expect a theocracy such as they have, but do expect a much more friendly and less threatening state, a state that will once again allow the easy movement of Shi'a in and out of the country.

Given this general picture, Pollock also points to some problems. The main problem stems from the fact that Iran evidently has a large and effective clandestine service operating in both countries. During the Afghan campaign, their units began to take an active role in many parts of the country. The United States had to sit down with the Iranians and make an agreement that they would stay in their own sphere of interest in the western part of Afghanistan. They then pretty much lived up to that. This service has also been very active in Iraq. Their activity has been mostly one of organization rather than direct action. One exception was an attack on an Iraqi police unit in Falluja that had captured some of their agents. The Iranians attacked from four sides with fifty men, making a diversionary attack at the same time. American officers were astounded, rating this the best organized attack they had witnessed. Pollock uses this as an example of what the Iranian could be doing in the country but have opted not to. (Makes one think.) Pollock also recounts the history of Iran and al-Qaida and Afghanistan. First they intercepted and imprisoned several al-Qaida escaping across the border. (They hate al-Qaida as much as we do, but for their anti-Shiism.) Later, however, they allowed some al-Qaida to remain in the country and even to mount actions in Saudi Arabia. The game being played here is unclear to Pollock.

In "the Persian Puzzle", mentioned here before, Pollock concludes that the most serious crisis facing the United States in its Iran Policy is the danger that Iran will become a nuclear power soon unless we act expeditiously. He rates the likelihood of the Iranians becoming a nuclear power in the near future very high. After going over the history of efforts to control the Iranian program, and outside efforts of influence the political process in Iran for this and other reasons, Pollock comes to several conclusions. First, the Europeans and the rest of the world are unlikely to step up to the plate with effective action through the IAEA, Security Council etc. They have shown by past behavior that they are more interested in trade than anything else. Second, the only really good way to end the standoff would be for a new government to come to power in Tehran. But as a policy solution this has two subproblems. First, we do not know how we could effectively cause governmental change. The Persians have such a pervasive suspicion of the United States that anything we might try would be likely to have more negative than positive consequences. Any attempt to support antigovernment or "liberal" forces in Iran would undermine their position, tarnishing their reputation, and perhaps causing their execution. The second subproblem, related to this one, is that a new, non-theocratic Iran might be as interested in nuclear weapons as the theocratic — as the example of the shah suggests. Third, invasion would be too dangerous, and we lack the capability to undertake such an effort in the near future. Attacks directly on the nuclear facilities, either by the United States or Israel, would be more feasible. But we would find ourselves quite alone, we would make the enmity of the Iranians even greater than it is now, we would cause the Iranians to enter into a no holds barred terror campaign against us, and we might fail to destroy enough of their program to accomplish our objectives. These considerations lead him to suggest a complex policy containing both carrots and sticks, attempts to change of regime without direct intervention, and so on. He does not have much faith in this complex policy, one essentially woven from the pieces of the other alternatives.

After this rather dark discussion, Pollock concludes with a discussion of how we might live with a nuclear Iran. He points out that we have learned to live with the other nuclear states. Iran claims that it wants the bomb for deterrence, primarily deterrence of the United States, and there is little reason to doubt this at this point. Once they had the weapon there objectives could change, but his judgment is that for the foreseeable future we would be able to deter any Iranian ambitions to aggressively use their deterrent. I find this cold comfort, particularly since proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran.

To my thinking the best way to stop Iran would be to stop North Korea. States can give up nuclear programs, even weapons. We have seen this for South Africa, Libya, and several of the former republics of the Soviet Union. If we forcibly brought North Korea's program to an end, Iran might well see that it was in its interest to follow the same path. As Pollock suggests, while the world would condemn an invasion, or preemptive strike, on Iran, it would be much more willing to accept such actions against North Korea, just as it went along with our destruction of the Taliban. North Korea has a truly terrible regime that has been responsible for the death, torture, and starvation of hundreds of thousands of its own people. Its leaders are unpredictable and dangerous. To consider such action we must unfortunately wait until things have settled down in the Middle East, thus freeing up our military resources. We must also gain the confidence and cooperation of South Korea, a country whose people have a strange love-hate relationship with the north. Their opposition is also based on the fact that Seoul and a large percentage of South Korea's population is within range of North Korean guns, even without nuclear weapons. Before any attack, we might need to evacuate a large area of the South. Yet if we are serious about stopping proliferation, and this is the greatest short-term danger the world faces, we need to take effective action somewhere, preferable against a state that for other reasons should be brought down.

We have tried diplomacy with North Korea with even less success than Iran. But instead of a massive attack against North Korea's forces or nuclear facilities, we might combine threats with a campaign of subversion, an approach that Pollock rightly thinks would be counterproductive for Iran. Subversion would not be counterproductive against the DPRK because there is no reason to think that we would be weakening antigovernment elements in the regime or society. As far as the outside world knows, there are no groups allowed to exist in the North that are in any way antigovernment. We would have little to lose if a policy of regime change failed. Many North Koreans seem to know in spite of the news blackout that their government is unusually repressive. The number of people willing to take the risks associated with escape to China across the river remains high no matter how ferociously the government tries to block their escape. Last April's train explosion near the Chinese border was probably a serious attempt to kill the Kim Jong-il. This suggests that a campaign of this sort could just start something that we could fan into a change of regime that would obviate the need for a major attack.

As readers of this blog know, I have often pointed to the reality and even desirability of a Kurdish state emerging from today's Iraq. There are many problems with this scenario, including the opposition of the United States, the opposition of neighboring states, and the likelihood that a Kurdish attempt to create a new state might plunge Iraq into a possibly interminable war.

Now along comes James Glanz of the New York Times with a long piece on Basra and the new south in the "News in Review" section of this Sunday's edition. One does not know whether to take Glanz seriously or not. It is worrisome that the New Yorker piece mentioned in the last posting on the situation in Basra has almost no overlap with the Glanz discussion. Let's remember this, but leave it for now.

Glanz paints a picture of a newly emerging sense of community consciousness in Basra, and beyond that of the south. Many of the people here, he writes, want to have their own place in the world and forget Baghdad. He says that the new southerners imagine three different versions of a separate south. The first, the one most appealing to the powers that be in Basra (or what he sees as the powers that be, largely rich merchants I believe), is essentially a city state based on Basra and its surroundings. Their model would be Singapore with a little bit of Las Vegas thrown in (apparently some years back Basra was the casino playground for the rich of the Gulf). The largest southern state that he maps out would include Karbala and Najaf, essentially all the overwhelmingly Shi'a parts of Iraq. Another version would be a compromise between these two.

The economic base for such a new configuration appears promising. Some of the larger international companies, such as Kellogg, Brown, and Root are moving their operations to Basra. They find the atmosphere more accommodating, and appreciate the less anti-foreign and more open attitude. Basra also sees itself as a part of the Gulf. One interesting aspect is that the head of the Shaykhi Shiites is resident in Basra, making another tie with the Gulf countries that also have many Shaykhi communities.

(It should be noted that the Shaykhis are another interesting component of the patchwork that is Iraq. Like most Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, they are ithna ashariya or twelvers, but unlike the others they believe in attaining spiritual knowledge through intuition rather than rationalization from texts. It was the Shaykhis that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the Bab in the nineteenth century, and the Bab was the forerunner of Bahaiullah, the founder of Bahaism that has its world headquarters in Israel. For most Muslims, Bahais are heretics and persecuted as such. Turning to another aspect of the patchwork, the tribes of Iraq overlap everything else. They are composed of sections with different religious allegiances, and even overlap with the Kurds. Tribal leaders are the ones who can guarantee your personal safety if you are in trouble, not the religious leaders. I have also seen little discussion of the Yezidis in the news. Their religious beliefs have Islamic, Zoroastrian, and pagan aspects. Several thousand Kurds are Yezidis. Apparently some modern secular Kurdish leaders looking for another basis for differentiation see Yezidiism as the true Kurdish religion. We could go on and on. There are many different Christian groups, an array of Sufi orders within the Muslim community etc.)

What is exciting to me about the idea of a Shiite state in the south is that this would take the pressure off the Kurds. It would mean that a peaceful reformation of the country might be possible with a Sunni-Shi'a, largely secular state centered on Baghdad, a secular Kurdish state in the north, and a Shi'a, but not necessarily theocratic, state in the South. All would get what they really want, and no major group would feel it was being unfairly dominated by another. The biggest sticking point might be the division of the oil resources, for these are not uniformly distributed. If the Kurds do get the Kirkuk area in the end, then I believe the new Iraq centered on Baghdad would be the state with the least oil.

All this offers a new vision. Whether there is any reality in it remains to be seen.

Reading in Kenneth Pollock's excellent account of Iranian-American relations, The Persian Puzzle, and considering the account of the situation in Basra in a recent piece by George Packer in the The New Yorker I have come to realize there is another picture of American-Iranian relations than that I have expressed previously here. This one is painted in much darker colors, and has as its ground the fact that even Iran under the Pahlevis imagined itself to be a temporarily poor state that deserved to be a great power.

Long before al-Qaida declared war on America, identifying it as the enemy of Islam, Tehran had declared its own war against us. Their thinking derived from many sources, including a common Iranian misapprehension of America's attempts to influence events in Iran after World War II, an Iranian sense of thwarted greatness, and a bitter Islamic hatred of everything non-Islamic. This stance was perpetuated after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the person who had most deeply held these views and who had used these views as a key basis for his own power. In the jihadist mythology, America and Israel were identified, and both were labeled crusaders much as Bin Ladin was to do later. They saw America as attempting with the help of Israel to conquer all the Middle East; they saw Iran as the only country that could stand in their way. This line was perpetuated by people around Khomenei, the religious successor to Khomeini as the great leader or Faqih. Only by hewing carefully to the popular "Imam's line" could they establish their credentials to rule, because they did not have adequate religious credentials on their own.

Conceiving themselves to be in a state of war since the hostage crisis in Tehran, Iran has made a persistent effort to export its revolution throughout the area. It supported terrorism in Lebanon and Israel, and across the world even in Buenos Aires where Iranian agents made two major attacks on the Jewish community. Tehran has been the major supporter of the Hizbollah based in Lebanon, as well as a major supporter of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It was evidently behind the killing of Israeli leaders that scuttled the peace process in the 1990s, because Iran saw the peace process as aggression against Islam. In some aspects of this effort Iran and Syria have been allies, in other aspects, not. Tehran had a hand in the attacks on Marines in Lebanon that led us to remove our forces in the 1980s, and was responsible for the explosion at the Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed many Americans.

Iran understood the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s to be engineered by the United States with the hope of crushing the Islamic Revolution in Iran. They believed that America's accidental shooting down of a civilian airliner in the Gulf toward the end of that war (during a brief period when Tehran was throwing away its navy in a hopeless attempt to drive us from the Gulf) as a deliberate act. They saw America's abandonment of the Shiites at the end of the Gulf War as another attempt to deny Shi'as the chance to extend their revolution to Iraq. Recent Iranian actions in Iraq have not seemed particularly aggressive. However, it must be remembered that the Iranians have believed since the hostage crisis that the United States was looking for any excuse it might find to invade and punish Iran. Realizing the disparity in military force, it has talked tough when it felt it could, but calmed down when military forces seemed to be getting too close. As long as we are in Iraq, it is likely to adopt a moderate stance to the political process there. But this could change if the opportunity presents itself. It is reasonable to understand their efforts in Iraq as another chapter in what they view as their long-term struggle against the United States.

Packer's piece in the New Yorker, combined with other accounts. suggests that Iran's hands-off policy may change at any time. According to Packer, the British have allowed the Iranians and their money to flow freely across the border, setting up political and quasi-military units throughout the area. They have begun to enforce more stringent social behavior on the civilian population in the manner of the Taliban (although with much less stringent rules). Many of these Iranian efforts have not been well received by the locals. But yet the Shiite combined ticket won overwhelmingly in Basra. Even though it was put together by the quietist Sistani (originally from Iran himself), the leaders of the two major parties and even their armed militias spent the last years of the Saddam regime in Iran. Muqtada's Mahdi Army may or may not be pro-Iranian, but we know that another element on this combined ticket was put together by Chalabi, the one-time American favorite who was later accused by the Americans of passing information to the Iranians. He recently bought a house outside Tehran.

Iranians and the current Shi'a leaders of Iran have a deep sense of history. What is now Iraq was a central part of the Iranian Sassanian dynasty. The Shi'as are a "new" part of Iranian history. They forcibly converted Iran in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gradually, with Iranian help, the Shi'a increased in Iraq until by the time it came under the British control, they formed a majority. The centers of Shi'ism are in Iraq, but the heart of Shi'ism is in Iran. The Iranians may well feel they are entitled to play a major, if not an occupying role in the country, and the Sunni Arabs may be the only ones who can stop them. Stay tuned.