The Dispute-Behavior Question
Does Iran have a pattern of dispute behavior that suggests how it may act in the event it acquires a nuclear arsenal? There is a clear pattern, though perhaps not the one so often described in the popular press. Far from being hothead provocateurs, Iran’s leaders—including both Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad—often play a shrewd, long game. The Council on Foreign Relations’s Takeyh nicely outlined the Iranian modus operandi: Iran instigates a series of problems, each of which falls short of a full-blown crisis; Tehran then waits for accommodation and moves on. While there are multiple examples outside the nuclear arena, the nuclear program is a case in point. Each escalation—conversion, enrichment, installation of advanced centrifuges, higher enrichment—has been dribbled out. Iranian leaders have rarely been willing to provoke a crisis merely to shift the ground inexorably toward a particular goal.70 Nor is this an aberration. Historically, the Islamic Republic has handled trouble well, and it has often emerged with its goals achieved at the end of each crisis.
The Hostage Crisis. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran. Images of the revolutionary youth holding US diplomats hostage seared into the American consciousness an image of the Islamic Republic that remains even after three decades. From the point of view of the hostage takers, however, the crisis was an unquestioned success, so much so that its perpetrators, many of whom subsequently assumed senior positions in government, express no regret. While they embraced animosity toward the United States, their true motivation had as much—if not more—to do with internal Iranian politics. Too often, President Carter’s outreach and strategy backfired because he focused too much on contrived Iranian grievances and too little on the impact of Iranian rivalries and of the plausible deniability of responsibility such rivalries might provide.
Amidst the revolutionary turmoil in which ministers might remain in position for only a few weeks or months, Carter’s aides approached a series of possible Iranian interlocutors. Rather than resolve disputes, each added new demands to prove revolutionary mettle to Khomeini. Though Khomeini was the ultimate authority, he refused to meet with any US interlocutors, forcing US officials to deal instead with lesser officials who would have no authority to negotiate an agreement. US officials rotated through a series of interlocutors—German, UN, Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Algerian—until Iran’s revolutionary leaders finally decided to release the hostages. From Khomeini’s point of view, the crisis was of great benefit. It helped create a revolutionary crisis that Khomeini and his supporters used to purge more moderate forces from power. The protracted crisis humiliated the United States, ultimately bringing down the Carter presidency, and in the process bolstered Khomeini’s image amongst the Iranian public. The Iranians’ radical mediators gained legitimacy and cash, and with US acquiescence to the Algiers Accords, they also gained a number of political concessions. In the wake of the hostages’ release, many former Carter administration officials explained how patience and dedication to diplomacy ultimately prevailed. The late Peter Rodman, however, suggested that it was not any particular diplomatic initiative that convinced the Iranians to release their hostages but the fact that Iraq’s invasion of Iran had raised the cost of isolation to such a degree that Iran needed to end one crisis to better address another.71
Iran-Iraq War. The Iran-Iraq War included perhaps the bloodiest land battles of the post–World War II era. The brutal conflict, which combined the trench warfare and mustard gas attacks of World War I with modern weaponry and missile barrages, killed perhaps 1 million people. While Iraq started the conflict and Iran—beset by military purges and revolutionary turmoil—was on the defensive for the first two years, recently released Iranian documents suggest that Khomeini considered suing for peace in 1982 but was blocked by the IRGC, which wanted to continue the fight for ideological reasons. While many international mediators sought to negotiate a ceasefire, it was not until Khomeini determined the cost of continued warfare was too great for Iran to bear that he acquiesced.
In the interim, the struggle between pragmatists and ideologues within the Islamic Republic continued to impact Iranian negotiating behavior. As the war dragged on and Iranian pragmatists sought to break their diplomatic isolation with approaches to Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Mehdi Hashemi, the leader of the Office of Liberation Movements (the predecessor to the Qods Force), sought to undermine an Iranian outreach by seeking to sabotage Saudi Arabia’s Hajj festivities and, separately, by kidnapping the Syrian chargé d’affaires in Tehran. Ultimately, the pragmatists came out on top, and Mehdi Hashemi was executed. But the lesson remains: any party in negotiation with Iran cannot expect the regime to abide by its agreements as long as its power centers remain fractious.
Indeed, the same pattern also undercut US attempts at rapprochement during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The roots of the Iran-Contra or Arms-for-Hostages scandal lay in national security adviser Robert McFarlane’s quest to develop leverage amongst Iran’s myriad power centers. Given Iran’s isolation amidst the continuing war with Iraq, McFarlane speculated that provision of spare parts might enable US officials to develop relations with pragmatists amongst Iran’s power centers that, in the short term, might be leveraged to win freedom for Americans seized by Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon and that, in the long term, might enable Americans to reconcile with Iran after the aging Khomeini’s death. It did not work. Not only did hardliners seize upon the secret negotiations with the Americans in order to embarrass pragmatists and bolster hardliners, but the provision of incentives also backfired. While Iranian hostage takers did release some hostages in exchange for military spare parts, they then seized new hostages to continue the flow of arms.
Suppression of the Green Movement. The Iranian government has used a number of methods to suppress the Green Movement and other recent domestic dissent. In September 2007, the Supreme Leader promoted Mohammad Ali Jafari, then director of the IRGC’s Strategic Studies Center, to head the IRGC. While at the IRGC’s think tank, Jafari had promoted the so-called Mosaic Doctrine, which postulated that the chief threats to Iran’s revolutionary ideology would come not from outside forces but from discord within the country. Upon assuming command of the IRGC, Jafari reorganized the guard into separate units for each province (and two units for Tehran). It was this reorganization and the guard’s new internal focus that enabled the regime to contain the protests that erupted after the June 2009 disputed elections.
Iran also uses other methods to suppress the Green Movement and other oppositionists. Whereas in the 1999 student protests the Iranian government used vigilantes to “crack heads” in the street, over the past decade the Iranian government has improved its surveillance and facial recognition capabilities. Troublemakers are arrested when they are alone or in the middle of the night when crowds are less likely to gather. Iranian authorities will arrest and, as in the case of the Kahrizak detention center, torture and kill detainees, but security officials will also furlough dissidents so their suffering might serve as a deterrent to others.
The regime often holds a Damocles sword over the heads of more prominent oppositionists—such as former presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami—by arresting key supporters and family members and threatening to prosecute them. Open-ended investigations discourage any politicians from stepping out of line.
The Surge in Iraq and After. Juxtaposing Iran’s perceived situation in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein—encircled, with US forces dominating both Afghanistan and Iraq72—against its perceptions three years later, we find a stunning change. The United States had lost the upper hand in Iraq, and Iran appeared to be the greatest beneficiary of the US invasion. President George W. Bush’s decision to surge troops into Iraq in response to a spiraling loss of control was objectionable to Tehran, and it responded accordingly:
Iran’s influence runs from Kurdistan to Basra, and Coalition sources report that by August 2007, Irani
an-backed insurgents accounted for roughly half the attacks on Coalition forces. This marked a dramatic change from previous periods that had seen the overwhelming majority of attacks coming from the Sunni Arab insurgency and al Qaeda.73
Understanding that it could carve out an operating environment in Iraq without fear of substantial US retaliation, Iran proceeded to do so. Between 2003 and 2006, Tehran devoted substantial resources to financing, arming, and training proxies; infiltrating its own IRGC and Qods Force agents into Iraq; and building the Mahdi Army of Shia leader Muqtada al Sadr. The Iranian government diversified its support, using its own military, Hezbollahis from Lebanon, Iraqi proxies, and even Sunni proxies from al Qaeda in Iraq. Maintaining its signature arm’s length distance from its agents, Iran maintained deniability about its activities—implausible but sufficient to ensure the US government could never persuade itself to initiate direct retaliatory action against Iran.
The Iranian-sponsored 2008 assault on Baghdad’s Green Zone—home to US and foreign diplomatic and military facilities—underscored Iran’s willingness to test the United States.74 The brazen attack, which intelligence and markings on weapons clearly traced back to Iran, typifies the Iranian envelope-pushing modus operandi.
Since the success of the surge, Iranian handling of the Sadrists and protégé Muqtada al Sadr exemplify Tehran’s willingness to play a long game. Sadr was pulled from Iraq for study, returning only in early 2011 to rally his supporters as the United States appeared to be a receding power.75 Shrewd timing, and, for the moment, a hand well played.
Afghanistan. Iran has pursued a pragmatic, cautious policy to exert influence in Afghanistan over the past three decades of conflict, often playing both sides. During the anti-Soviet struggle in the 1980s, Tehran not only sheltered and funded seven Shia Afghan insurgent groups but also maintained ties to Kabul and Moscow. In the late 1990s, Iran’s relations with Afghanistan under the Taliban reached its lowest point as Tehran threatened the Taliban with war when the group massacred Afghan Shias and nine Iranians in northern Afghanistan in 1998. But Iranian leaders ultimately chose diplomacy over an all-out war.
Since the fall of the Taliban a decade ago, Iran has been using a combination of soft power and hard power tools to leverage its influence in Afghanistan at the expense of US interests. Immediately after the invasion, Iran set the stage for an offensive in Afghanistan by dispatching Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Qods Force commander and liaison to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to be Iran’s consul-general in Herat and to coordinate Iranian assistance to Afghanistan.76
And as the United States and its allies have now begun drawing down troops and transitioning security responsibilities to the Afghan security forces, Iran has stepped up efforts to fill the vacuum and speed up the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Once again, Iran is engaging both sides of the conflict. US and NATO officials have said that Iran has escalated its material support for the Taliban insurgency and proxy war against US forces in the country in the past year.77 The IRGC Qods Force’s Ansar Corps has overseen Iran’s financial and material support to insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan.78 Tehran has also begun engaging the Taliban diplomatically in an effort to maximize influence in Afghanistan’s endgame once foreign troops leave the country. At the Islamic Awakening Conference held in Tehran in September 2011, Iran invited a senior Taliban delegation for talks. Sayyed Tayyeb Agha, a Taliban representative who held talks with US and NATO officials in Germany and Qatar earlier this year and then went missing after his name was leaked to the media, was reportedly present at the conference.79
While US military and intelligence focus on Iranian hard power, they seldom discuss Iranian soft power efforts in Afghanistan, which are designed to combat US influence and win over the minds of the people. The Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, an influential Iranian state-charity organization, ostensibly provides relief assistance to the poor in Afghanistan.80 With 35,000 Afghans on its payroll, its real aim is to advance Tehran’s ideological and political ends in Afghanistan, promote Shia Islam, and incite anti-American sentiment. Each year, the committee organizes Qods [Jerusalem] Day rallies in Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, and Herat to express solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to Israel, usually through temporary organizations like the Qods Day Celebration Committee, the Cultural Shura of Qods, or the Cultural Council of Supporters of Sacred Qods.81 It also provides relief aid to populations in areas affected by NATO airstrikes.82
Iran exerts leverage over the Kabul government by initially creating a crisis or conflict and then offering to help resolve it. For example, whenever Afghanistan’s policies displease Tehran, the Iranian government threatens to expel all Afghans living in Iran. It deports waves of refugees into lawless areas in Afghanistan without prior coordination with the Afghan government, which causes humanitarian crises and security problems and shields the movement of foreign terrorists into Afghanistan.83 Tehran then seeks concessions from the Afghan government in return for a halt to the expulsion. With the security situation in Afghanistan at its nadir since the fall of the Taliban and among faltering economic-development and job-creation efforts, Iranian leaders correctly calculate that a fragile Afghanistan cannot absorb the over 2 million Afghans living in Iran.
Iran’s increasing economic efforts also allow it to engage directly with the Afghan people, developing channels to provide educational resources to Afghans and to develop close ties with religious and ethnic minorities. Iran has complemented its economic interests in Afghanistan with efforts aimed at expanding Iran’s educational, religious, and cultural influence in the country in recent months. It has also fostered ties with Shia minorities and sought to further its presence in Afghanistan’s developing educational institutions. Iranian development projects in the Afghan capital of Kabul include a $100 million-dollar university.84