[Peace-discuss] Regime Change Redux? Reading Tom Friedman in Sao Paulo

[Robert Naiman]

Regime Change Redux? Reading Tom Friedman in Sao
Paulo<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/regime-change-redux-readi_b_590677.html>


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/regime-change-redux-readi_b_590677.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/26/15344/2944
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/591


Sao Paulo - *New York Times* columnist Thomas Friedman is on the
warpath<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/opinion/26friedman.html>.
Not only against his "Great Satan" of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
but also against Brazil's President Lula and Turkey's Prime Minister
Erdogan, because they had the temerity to succeed in negotiating an
agreement with Iran to try to de-escalate the confrontation between the
United States and Iran over Iran's nuclear program without the subsequent
approval of Washington. [Apparently Brazil and Turkey had White House
approval to try - a week before the
effort<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-media-censors-us-suppo_b_588470.html>,
but it seems that they did not have White House approval to succeed.]

Friedman claims that a May 17 picture of Iran's president joining Lula and
Erdogan "with raised arms" after their signing of a "putative deal" to
defuse the crisis over Iran's "nuclear weapons program" [does the *New York
Times* do fact-checking on Friedman?] was "about as ugly as it gets."

If it's literally true that that picture was "as ugly as it gets," then
presumably that would imply that it was at least as ugly - if not more ugly
- than, for example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion which
was clearly illegal under the U.N. Charter, as former U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan affirmed in
2004<http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200409/s1200210.htm>,
an invasion which likely resulted in the deaths of more than a million
Iraqis <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/156> - and an invasion which
Tom Friedman supported, as he explained to Charlie Rose in May
2003<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/29/friedman/index.html>
:

I think it was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking
back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about . . . .
What we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I'm afraid, and
burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very
big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble. . . .

And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to
house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this
sentence do you understand? You don't think we care about our open society?
. . . . Well, Suck. On. This. That, Charlie, was what this war was about.

We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit
Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth.

 And the comparison of that "ugly" picture to Tom Friedman's "ugly" support
of the "ugly" U.S. invasion of Iraq is highly germane in considering Tom
Friedman's piece, because if Tom Friedman's rant on Iran were to have a
significant influence on the opinions of U.S. policymakers and the U.S.
public - sadly, a far from unlikely scenario - the practical consequence
would be to significantly increase the likelihood of a future U.S. military
confrontation with Iran, as I explain below.

The first 400 words of Friedman's 850 word piece are devoted to erasing the
story of the successful effort by Brazil and Turkey to reach an agreement on
Iran's nuclear program - an agreement "nearly identical" to that proposed by
the Obama Administration, *AP* noted in an initial
account<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-media-censors-us-suppo_b_588470.html>
the
day it was announced - by replacing it with a story in which Brazil and
Turkey "coddled" a "dictator," thereby "selling out" Iranian "democrats."

But the question on the table, as Friedman surely knows perfectly well, is
whether 1) the agreement reached by Brazil and Turkey is a basis for further
Western diplomatic engagement with Iran on concerns about its nuclear
program, or 2) whether the agreement, despite being similar to that proposed
a few months ago by the Obama Administration, is useless and should be
ignored, and instead the U.S. should push for further sanctions against Iran
in the UN Security Council and elsewhere, a path which - if recent
experience is any guide - could very likely lead to war.

Was it "coddling dictators" when the Obama Administration proposed and
supported the fuel swap deal with Iran in October? Is it "coddling
dictators" when the U.S. engages in diplomacy with China, Burma, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, or Israel? Why would it be "coddling dictators" only to
engage in diplomacy with Iran, and only when someone does it successfully
without U.S. approval of the result?

Was it "ugly" when the CIA overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953, punishing
Iran for nationalizing its oil wealth? If Tom Friedman has any opinion on
this question - highly relevant, surely, to U.S. efforts to promote "regime
change" in Iran 50 years later - I have been unable so far to locate it.

Indeed, after his opening 400 word rant on "democracy" and "dictatorship,"
Friedman concedes that if the U.S. got everything it could want on the
nuclear file, the question of "democracy" would have been irrelevant:

"Sure, had Brazil and Turkey actually persuaded the Iranians to verifiably
end their whole suspected nuclear weapons program, America would have
endorsed it. But that is not what happened."

So, since Friedman finally concedes that "democracy" is not the issue after
all, let's consider his subsequent attack on whether the deal is what it
claims to be: a credible effort to de-escalate the conflict over Iran's
nuclear program.

To begin with, note his "straw" rhetorical standard: if Brazil and Turkey
had persuaded Iran to "to verifiably end their whole suspected nuclear
weapons program," that would be sufficient. But since no-one claims that the
"nearly identical" deal proposed by the Obama Administration in October
would have compelled Iran to "to verifiably end their whole suspected
nuclear weapons program," that's an absurd and dishonest standard. If the
new deal would be similar to the old deal - indeed, if the U.S. endorsed the
provisions of the deal, a week before it was achieved - then to dismiss it
is rank hypocrisy and dishonesty.

As *Reuters* - but not the *New York Times* -
reported<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-media-censors-us-suppo_b_588470.html>,
before President Lula's recent trip to Iran, President Obama sent President
Lula a letter.

In a letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva two weeks ago,
U.S. president Barack Obama said an Iranian uranium shipment abroad would
generate confidence.

"From our point of view, a decision by Iran to send 1,200 kilograms of
low-enriched uranium abroad, would generate confidence and reduce regional
tensions by cutting Iran's stockpile," Obama said, according to excerpts
from the letter translated into Portuguese and seen by Reuters.

 Now Friedman writes:

Under the May 17 deal, it has supposedly agreed to send some 2,640 pounds
from its stockpile to Turkey for conversion into the type of nuclear fuel
needed to power Tehran's medical reactor - a fuel that cannot be used for a
bomb. But that would still leave Iran with a roughly 2,200-pound uranium
stockpile, which it still refuses to put under international inspection and
is free to augment and continue to reprocess to the higher levels needed for
a bomb. Experts say it would only take months for Iran to again amass
sufficient quantity for a nuclear weapon.

 2,640 pounds is 1,200 kilograms (to use the units that everyone else is
using.) So, in attacking this provision of the deal (that is, the amount of
LEU transferred), Friedman is attacking a provision that was explicitly
endorsed by President Obama a week before the deal was signed - although, to
be fair, you wouldn't know that if you were relying on the *New York Times* for
your information.

Friedman claims that Iran refuses to put its (low-enriched) uranium
stockpile under IAEA inspection, but this assertion is verifiably false -
and the *New York Times* *should publish a correction*.

>From the International Atomic Energy Agency's February 18, 2010
report<http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2010/gov2010-10.pdf>
:

The nuclear material at FEP [i.e. the Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz]
(including the feed, product and tails), as well as all installed cascades
and the feed and withdrawal stations, are subject to Agency containment and
surveillance.

 Indeed, as *International Herald Tribune*/*New York Times* columnist Roger
Cohen recently wrote<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen.html>,
in a column supporting the fuel swap and criticizing the Obama
Administration for summarily dismissing it:

Speaking of facts, I must get a little technical here. Iran has been
producing, under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, LEU
(enriched to about 5 percent)."

Since the process is under IAEA inspection, it's fundamentally untrue to
claim that Iran is "free to augment and continue to reprocess to the higher
levels needed for a bomb." Since this material is under supervision, either
1) the IAEA would know that Iran was doing this, and therefore the world
would know, or 2) Iran would have to remove the material from IAEA
supervision in order to do this, and the world would know that it had done
so.

Finally, it is profoundly misleading to claim that "experts say it would
only take months for Iran to again amass sufficient quantity for a nuclear
weapon." Plausibly, in months of enriching, Iran could amass enough
low-enriched uranium so that this quanity of uranium - *if the uranium were
enriched further to weapons-grade* - would be sufficient for a nuclear
weapon. But *if it is not enriched further*, then *no amount* of
low-enriched uranium can produce a nuclear weapon. The misleading suggestion
of Friedman's sentence is that within months Iran would have enough enriched
uranium to be in a position to produce a nuclear weapon, but so long as that
LEU is under international inspection, it is *useless* for a nuclear weapon,
and how long it might take Iran to produce a weapon if it were to remove the
LEU from IAEA inspection - a flagrant defiance that would clearly unite the
world against it - is another question entirely.

Friedman then claims that "what this deal really does" is "weaken the global
coalition to pressure Iran to open its nuclear facilities to U.N.
inspectors." Again, this is a profoundly misleading claim, because Iran's
facilities are *already* open to UN inspectors - not as completely open as
those inspectors would like, but sufficiently open for them to make
statements like:

The nuclear material at FEP [the Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz](including
the feed, product and tails), as well as all installed cascades and the feed
and withdrawal stations, are subject to Agency containment and surveillance.

 Friedman erases this important fact completely with his assertion.

Finally - and crucially - Friedman argues that the only solution to the
problem of Iran's nuclear program is regime change. If Iran had a government
we liked, we wouldn't have to worry about its nuclear program; and so long
as Iran has a government we don't like, we'll always have to worry.

Here, Friedman is in effect supporting a U.S. or Israeli or U.S./Israeli war
with Iran (any distinction between these three events is euphemism; in the
eyes of the world, it's all the same.) And anyone who supports Friedman's
argument, in the current political context, is a de facto supporter of war.

And the reason is this. Anyone who is following this issue knows that the
Israeli government and the U.S. Congress (at the risk of appearing
redundant) have sought to establish a short timetable for dealing with the
dispute over Iran's nuclear program - a timetable on the order of magnitude
of Friedman's alarmism about Iran's nuclear capacity - a timetable more like
"months" than "years." There is not much realistic prospect that Iran will
have a government that Tom Friedman likes - short of an extremely unlikely
massive external intervention - in that short timetable.

If you concede the short timetable - which Friedman does not contest, and
appears to endorse - then the choices are diplomacy *with the present
government* or war (a blockade regime of "crippling sanctions," if it could
be achieved, would be tantamount to war, both because a blockade is
literally an act of war and because Iran would be virtually certain to
respond to a blockade - or anything tantamount to a blockade - with
similarly aggressive acts that would be very likely to escalate.)

The fact that diplomacy with Iran means *diplomacy with the present
government of Iran*, is an essential point which should be obvious, but
isn't, apparently. Many people would like us to believe that the so-called
"Green Movement" in Iran has, in some sense divorced from the practical
realities of international relations, a stronger claim to represent Iran
than the present Iranian government. This is mainly wishful thinking; little
evidence that would be accepted by a disinterested observer has been
presented to support this claim, and plenty of evidence supports the
opposite claim.

But whatever one thinks about these claims and counter-claims is immaterial
to the issue at hand, because the "Green Movement" does not control the
Iranian government, there is no realistic prospect that it will control the
Iranian government in the forseeable future, and the United States of
America has neither the moral right nor the physical capacity to dictate who
shall govern Iran. If the United States has a problem with Iran, it has to
deal with the present Iranian government, just as when the U.S. has a
problem with China, it has to deal with the present Chinese government, not
some self-selected group of Chinese dissidents. President Obama articulated
this basic reality eloquently
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5G12Fr9zz4> during
his election campaign; it's a shame that his Administration is now
apparently largely reverting to the policy of the Bush Administration which
Obama the candidate so eloquently criticized.

If you don't want war, but you don't want to deal with the present Iranian
government, then the only realistic alternative is "long-term-containment."
But if that's really your choice, as opposed to a dishonest support of
military confrontation, then you have to oppose the claim that the house is
on fire. You have to concede that the situation months from now, if there is
no deal, will be an objectively unremarkable extrapolation of the status quo
which dishonest people with tremendous media access and powerful friends
will claim to be a disaster requiring a dangerous escalation of
confrontation: more sanctions, more Iranian enrichment, and a bigger Iranian
stockpile of low-enriched uranium than exists today.

It's far from obvious why a bigger Iranian stockpile of low-enriched uranium
than exists today is a clear and present danger to humanity, but those that
claim that it is have a responsibility to explain to the rest of us why they
are so adamant in dismissing the only realistic option on the table for
doing something about it.

-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from
Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern

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