[NYTr] LeMondeDip: The US meddles aggressively in Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Le Monde diplomatique   --  October 2007
http://MondeDiplo.com/2007/10/02iran


COVERT ACTION, ECONOMIC PRESSURE AND DESTABILISATION

The US meddles aggressively in Iran

by Selig S Harrison

Despite the disaster of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush 
administration wants not just to deter Iran's nuclear ambitions but
maybe even to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It has already authorised 
`non-lethal' action within Iran and helped separatist groups. But
instead of supporting the country's democratic opposition, US meddling
has encouraged its hardliners to reinforce their positions

The battle lines are familiar and clearly drawn in the unresolved
policy struggle over Iran within the Bush administration.
Vice-President Richard Cheney and his allies in the Pentagon and
Congress, prodded by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
(Aipac), not only want the US to bomb the Natanz uranium enrichment
facility but are also calling for air strikes on Iranian military
installations near the Iraq border.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to test diplomacy first by 
broadening the US-Iran negotiations on stabilising Iraq that began in 
Baghdad in May. But, as the price for postponement of a decision on 
military action, she has agreed to a self-defeating compromise that has 
directly undermined the Baghdad negotiations: increased covert action
to destabilise the Islamic Republic, formalised by a presidential
"finding" in April.

Covert action to undermine the Tehran regime has already been under way 
intermittently for the past decade. Until now, however, the CIA has 
operated without a finding (authorisation for covert action) by using 
proxies. Pakistan and Israel, for example, provide weapons and money to 
insurgent groups in southeast and northwest Iran, where the Baluch and 
Kurdish ethnic minorities, both Sunni Muslim, have long fought against
the repression of Shia-dominated Persian regimes.

The presidential finding was necessary to permit accelerated non-lethal 
activities by US agencies. Besides expanded propaganda broadcasts, a
media disinformation campaign and the use of US and European-based
Iranian exiles to promote political dissent, the programme focuses on
economic warfare, especially currency rate manipulation and the
disruption of Iran's international banking and trade.

Although the finding was nominally secret, it did not stay secret for
long after it was reported to the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees, as required by law.

On a recent visit to Tehran, everyone was talking about it and both 
conservatives and reformers agreed that it came at an unusually
damaging moment of genuine opportunity for cooperation with the US in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials in the foreign ministry, the
National Security Council, the office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and pro-government think tanks all said that stability in Iraq and
Afghanistan is in Iran's interest. Cooperation with the US is possible,
they said, but only in return for a gradual accommodation between
Washington and Tehran, starting with a complete cessation of covert and
overt regime change policies.

"The United States is like a fox caught in a trap in Iraq," said Amir 
Mohiebian, editor of the conservative daily Reselaat. "Why should we
free the fox so he can eat us? Of course, if the US changes its policy,
there is scope for cooperation."

At the other end of the journalistic spectrum, Mohammed Adrianfar,
editor of Hammihan, identified with the moderate former president,
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said: "The atmosphere here is for starting
negotiations and relations. People want stability. The slogan `Death to
America' doesn't work, and our leaders know it. It's an irony that two
governments which are now enemies have many of the same interests in
Iraq and Afghanistan."

While officials would not discuss whether Iran is aiding Shia militias
in Iraq and, if so, which ones, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the
Majlis (parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, criticised US "coddling"
of Baathist and Sunni elements and made it clear that Iran expects Shia 
domination as the prerequisite for stability in Baghdad and for
US-Iranian cooperation there as part of an overall accommodation.

"The US occupying authorities are not truly pursuing de-Baathification
of the security forces," he said, "and should give the Iraqi government 
greater freedom to do so. That is the key to cooperation between our 
countries in Iraq."

US-BACKED MILITIA

The best way for the US to start rolling back its regime change policy, 
both editors and several officials said, would be to dismantle a
US-backed militia of Iranian exiles based in Iraq, known as the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). The MEK supported Saddam Hussein in the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and subsequently its 3,600 fighters, many of them
women, stayed on in Iraq.

According to US sources, since the invasion of Iraq US intelligence 
agencies have disarmed the fighters but have kept the MEK camps near
the Iranian border intact, using MEK operatives for espionage and
sabotagein Iran and to interrogate Iranians accused of aiding Shia
militias in Iraq.

Until recently, MEK radio and TV stations broadcasting to Iran were
based in Iraq, but Iranian pressure on the Baghdad government forced
their relocation to London. When the moderate Mohammad Khatami was
elected president of Iran in 1997, the State Department made a
conciliatory gesture by listing the MEK as a terrorist organisation
guilty of human rights violations, and it is still on the list.

Dismantling the MEK paramilitary forces would be an effective way to 
signal US readiness to accommodate Tehran, suggested Abbas Maleki, an 
adviser to the National Security Council, since it is the only
militarised exile group seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic and
is the darling of the Washington lobby for regime change in Iran.
Alireza Jaffarzadeh, chairman of the MEK's front group, the National
Council of Resistance of Iran, appears regularly on the conservative TV
channel Fox News as its Iran expert, rather like the pro-US Iraqi
politician Ahmad Chalabi before the Iraq invasion, rallying
Congressional and media support for military action against Iran.

As its terrorist listing of the MEK showed, the Clinton administration 
hoped for a diplomatic opening to Iran. When the Republican House
speaker, Newt Gingrich, pushed through an $18m appropriation for
non-lethal covert action to force the replacement of the current regime
in Iran, the White House restrained the CIA. But the Bush
administration was quick to change course. Cheney shared Gingrich's
goal of regime change and he persuaded doubters that pressure on Tehran
would strengthen the US in negotiations to end the uranium enrichment
programme. First, the administration revived and expanded the dormant
plans for direct US non-lethal covert action. Then, in February 2006,
it obtained a $75m appropriation from Congress for an overt State
Department programme "to promote openness and freedom for the Iranian
people". Finally, it cast about for covert ways to harass the regime
militarily without the need for a formal presidential finding.

The most readily available means of doing this was to get Pakistan and 
Israel to arm and finance already-existing insurgent groups in the
Baluch and Kurdish areas through well-established US ties with
Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and the Israeli
intelligence agency Mossad.

The ISI channelled weapons and money to an already established Iranian 
Baluch dissident group, Jundullah (Soldiers of God), which inflicted
heavy casualties in raids on Iranian Revolutionary Guard units in
Zahedan and southeast Iran in 2006 and 2007. The US made no effort to
hide its support for Jundullah. On 2 April 2007 the Voice of America
interviewed its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, introducing him as "the leader
of the popular resistance movement of Iran". Several of my Baluch
contacts recently provided detailed proof of Rigi's ISI ties.

MOSSAD CONTACTS

Mossad has built up contacts in the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq
since it used bases in Iran during the days of the Shah to destabilise
the Kurdish areas of Iraq. Against this background, Seymour Hersh's
report that Mossad is giving equipment and training to the Iranian
Kurdish group Pejak is credible (1). Jon Lee Anderson interviewed a
senior Kurdish official in Iraq who said that Pejak is operating out of
bases in Iraqi Kurdistan to conduct raids in Iran and has "received
covert US support" (2). In retaliation, Iran bombarded these bases for
two weeks in late August, prompting Iraqi protests.

The most dangerous latent separatist threat facing Tehran is in the 
south-western province of Khuzestan, which produces 80% of its crude
oil revenue. The Arab Shia of Khuzestan share a common ethnic and
religious identity with the Arab Shia across the Shatt-al-Arab waterway
in Iraq. Ahwaz, the capital of Khuzestan, is only 150km east of Basra,
where British forces in Iraq have been headquartered.

Not surprisingly,in the light of history, Tehran accuses Britain of
using Basra as an intelligence base for stirring discontent in
Khuzestan.

Backed by British forces and British oil interests, the Arab princes of 
Khuzestan seceded from Persia in 1897 and established a
British-controlled protectorate, Arabistan, which Persia did not
recapture until 1925. Although most of Iran's oil wealth is produced in
Khuzestan, separatist groups charge that Tehran denies the province a
fair share of economic development funds. So far, the scattered
separatist factions have not created a unified military force like the
Jundullah and no evidence of foreign help has surfaced. But they
periodically raid government security installations and bomb oil
production facilities.

Several broadcast propaganda in Arabic from foreign locations that are
not clearly identified. The National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz,
which advocates independence, operates Ahwaz TV, a satellite channel
with an on-screen caption giving a fax number with a California area
code. Another satellite channel, Al-Ahwaz TV, broadcast by Iranian
exiles in California, is linked to the British-Ahwaz Friendship
Society, which advocates regional autonomy for the province in a
federal Iran. Nearly half ($36m) of the $75m 2006 US appropriation goes
to support for the US-operated Voice of America and Radio Farda and to
anti-regime broadcasting outlets run by Iranian exiles in the US,
Canada and Britain.

Another $20m goes to NGO human rights activists in Iran and the US. 
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns has revealed that "we are
working with Arab and European organisations to support democratic
groups within Iran", since getting direct US funding into Iran "is a
very difficult thing for us to do" given "the harsh Iranian government
response against the Iranian individuals" (3).

One Iranian participant in a US-sponsored workshop in Dubai last year
told the Iranian-American journalist Negar Azimi that "it was like a
James Bond camp for revolutionaries" (4). Four Iranian participants
were later arrested.

COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE ATTEMPTS

My clear impression in Tehran was that covert and overt efforts to 
destabilise the Islamic Republic andpressure it economically to abandon 
its nuclear programme have been counter-productive. They have given 
hardliners an excuse to harass Iranians working internally to
liberalise the regime and visiting Iranian-American dual citizens such
as Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, who was imprisoned for three months on vague espionage
charges.

By aiding ethnic minority insurgencies, the US has enabled Ahmadinejad
to cast himself as the champion of the Persian majority. The minorities 
constitute at most 44% of the population. The largest, the Azeris (24%) 
have been mostly assimilated, and the rebellious Baluch, Kurds and 
Khuzestani Arabs are bitterly divided between advocates of secession
and of a restructured federal Iran. Ahmadinejad can also blame external 
economic pressures for economic problems that are mainly the result of
his own mismanagement.

Negotiated compromises on stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan are
possible, but only if destabilisation stops and not if President Bush
takes the military steps implied in his 28 August threat "to confront
Tehran's murderous activities" in Iraq. Even if the pressure is
relaxed, a definitive nuclear compromise is unlikely in the absence of
changes in the US Persian Gulf security posture, though a suspension of
the Natanz facility might be possible if Israel would agree to a
parallel freeze of the Dimona reactor. "How can we negotiate
denuclearisation while you send aircraft carriers to the Gulf that, for
all we know, are equipped with tactical nuclear weapons?" asked Alireza
Akbari, deputy defence minister in the moderate Khatami government.
"How can you expect us to negotiate when you won't talk about Dimona?"

The covert and overt pressures so far applied to Iran are just
sufficient to infuriate Iranians of all political persuasions,
strengthening the hardliners, but are not nearly enough to undermine
the regime. The economic pressures are more effective than the covert
insurgency aid. Out of 40 European and Asian banks doing business with
Iran, though, only seven have cut ties with Iran in response to US
sanctions. In any case, Iran is routing its international business
though 400 Dubai-based financial institutions, mostly Arab. With trade
between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai, nearing
$11bn this year, US Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey's
threat of reprisals against firms dealing with Iran, in a speech in
Dubai on 7 March, were pointless. The administration is now pushing
more sharply-targeted measures against enterprises linked to the
Revolutionary Guards and the conglomerates run by clerical interests,
but their impact has been limited.

Likening the US-Iran tussle to a bull fight, a respected European 
ambassador long resident in Tehran asked: "What's the point of all
this? What good does it do to keep waving the red flag? It just makes
the bull more and more angry. It doesn't kill."

(1) "The Next Act", The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.

(2) "Mr Big", The New Yorker, 5 February 2007.

(3) Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 11 October 2006.

(4) "The Hard Realities of Soft Power", New York Times Magazine, 24
June 2007.

[Selig S Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for 
International Policy, senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars (both in Washington), and author of
In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations
(Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1980)]