11/8/2009 Ray Takeyh - Iran 's nuclear program p...
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Iran's nuclear diversion Ac er11semeni
By Ray Takeyh
Thursday, November 5, 2009
As the Obama administration grapples with the critical issue facing
conundrum of Iran, it must balance its proliferation 9 ove n i me n t today?
concerns with its moral responsibilities. Irar s post-
election tremors have hardly subsided; in fact, the
regime is systematically eviscerating its democratic C) Health Care
opposition Amid their merciless efforts to consolidate C) National Security
power President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his
Economy
allies see discussion of the nuclear program as a
means to silence the criticism that their domestic Q Environ ment
behavior merits. In the contg months, Iran will no
doubt seek to prolong negotiations by accepting and
then rejecting agreed-upon compacts and offering countless counterproposals. The United States and its allies
must decide how to approach an Iranian diplomatic stratagem born out of cynical desire to clamp down on
peacethi dissent with relative impunity.
International scrutiny remains trained on Iran's nuclear program, but outside that glare, the structure and
orientation of the Revolutionary Guards are changing dramatically. The regime in Tehran is establishing the
infrastructure for repression The leadership of the Guards and the paramilitary Basjj force have been integrated
and are much more focused on vanquishing imaginary plots by a (nonexistent) fifth column. Indeed, the
commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, warned in a speech last month that the structural
changes were intended to “take on cultural divisions and the opposition to the soft war.” To oversee the new
campaign of repression, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, formerly deputy director of the Quds Brigades intelligence
apparatus, has been appointed head of the Basij. Hossein Taeb, the notorious former commander of the Basjj,
has assumed leadership of the Guards intelligence bureau. Both have a history of involvement in torture and
assassination campaigns at home and abroad, and they have imprisoned journalists and reformist politicians on
trumped-up charges.
A peculiar trait among Iran's younger generation of conservatives is the extent to which they idealize the early
1 980s. Most objective observers of Iran see those years as a time of foreign invasion, ethnic separatism and
social division But the leaders of Iran's security forces and many politicians today, including Ahmadinejad, see a
time when the Islamic Republic salvaged its mandate from heaven through devotion and steadfastness. To fend
off the forces of secularism and liberalism, their thinking goes, the Republic of Virtue unleashed its reign of tenor
and, with violence and a cultural revolution, managed to cleanse the nation
Similar measures are being contemplated. Consider that in recent months, former presidential candidates Mehdi
Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi have been threatened with arrest; universities targeted by “purification”
campaigns; civil society activists given harsh prison sentences after contrived judicial proceedings. The callow
followers of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, are mobilizing the machinery of state for a ruthless purge of the
system.
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11/8/2009 Ray Takeyh - Iran 's nuclear program p...
Yet as the regime seeks to restore its grip on power, the Islamic Republic is once again moving in contradictory
directions. On the one hand, the clerical state is busily impugning its critics as agents of the West while
simultaneously expressing a desire to engage those foreign powers. The masters of the theocracy have learned
from the protests that followed the June presidential election; they appreciate that in the era of social networks
and other electronic communications, their unsavory practices are vulnerable to international exposure. Images of
protesters being beaten and university dormitories stormed can trigger international calls for sanctions and further
ostracize an already isolated theocracy. To mitigate such calls, Tehran will sporadically offer to discuss the
nuclear issue to whet the appetite of Western powers - - before moving against its remaining domestic detractors.
The powers that be in Iran hope that a prolonged and inconclusive negotiating process will cause the West to
recoil from criticism, much less impose sanctions over Irafts human rights abuses.
Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the
West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit
nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate
nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal
domestic repression Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions
are the only source of disagreement. Iran's hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-
advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only
through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “Guardians of the
Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs.”
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