The Iraq Study Group Report has been hailed as a triumph of the “realist,” fact-based approach of Report co-chair James Baker over the utopian, ideology-driven approach of George W. and his aides. The Report’s first half, a grim assessment of the current situation in Iraq, is indeed that: a much-needed cold splash of water on the face of a Bush Administration that continues to claim progress is being made in achieving U.S. goals in Iraq. But many of the recommendations in the Report’s second half, entitled “The Way Forward – A New Approach” are, unfortunately, far from realistic.
The Report is at its most unrealistic in its suggestions for how to turn Iran and Syria from underminers to supporters of stability in Iraq. Reading like a proposal to re-employ Baker as a globe-trotting diplomat, the report calls for a “New Diplomatic Offensive” and “Iraq International Support Group” focused on “dealing with Iran and Syria.” In doing so, the Report largely ignores the first principle of realistic diplomacy: you need incentives and disincentives, not just a smooth talker like James Baker, to get countries to change their ways. With rogue regimes such as Iran’s and Syria’s, that rule their people through fear and violently flout international law, the emphasis needs to be on the language they speak: disincentives. As former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross recently put it, “you have to concentrate their minds with what they will lose by not cooperating before you can get them to change their behavior.”
Iran and Syria are clearly part of the problem in Iraq. Iran is aggressively backing its fellow Shiite revolutionaries in Iraq with funds, training and help building the roadside bombs that have proven so deadly to U.S. troops. Meanwhile, Syrian-hosted Iraqi Baathist leaders continue to fund and direct pro-Saddam insurgents inside Iraq. This Iranian and Syrian support for terrorism in Iraq violates international law, including their Iraq-specific obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1618 and the requirement of Security Council Resolution 1373 that all countries refrain from supporting or hosting terrorists.
Can we get Iran and Syria to be a part of the solution? If so, how? The Iraq Study Group Report suggests that a stable Iraq is actually in the current interests of Iran and Syria, and that each can therefore be “encouraged” to play a more positive role. The prospect of any U.S. diplomat convincing Iran’s brutal President Ahmadinejad and Syrian dictator Assad that they have misread their current interests is highly unrealistic. The only way the US could conceivably get Iran and Syria to stop undercutting Iraq’s stability is to change Iranian and Syrian interests.
To the minimal degree the Report discusses what incentives and disincentives might be employed with respect to Iran and Syria, it emphasizes incentives, stating the U.S. should “consider incentives to try to engage them constructively, much as it did successfully with Libya.” But relying on incentives to reorient Iran and Syria misreads the Libyan example, risks incentivizing violations of international law, and has already proven ineffective with Iran.
In 2003, Libya ceased its support for terrorism, provided compensation for the bombing of Pan Am 103, and let U.S. and British experts in to dismantle its WMD program. But it was sticks not carrots that turned Libya around. The United Nations had responded to Libyan support for terrorism with global economic sanctions, which were lifted in exchange for the Libyan concessions. In addition, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi was afraid he was next on the U.S. hit list after Saddam Hussein. As Gadhafi told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: “I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”
Iran and Syria are defying international law in Iraq and elsewhere because their experience thus far shows they have no reason to be afraid of either U.S. military might or global economic sanctions. For example, Iran has been violating its nuclear nonproliferation obligations with impunity for the last two decades. Iran and Syria have paid no price for arming terrorist Hezbollah in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1373 and 1701. Syria’s illegal assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri has also yet to be punished.
The Report calls on the U.S. to “actively engage Iran and Syria” in “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions.” We already have a preview of what generous incentives would achieve with Iran. The West has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program for the last four years. Iran has rejected generous incentives to verifiably cease its nuclear weapons program. These fruitless negotiations demonstrate that Iran will not be distracted from its revolutionary goals by carrots and that Iran is a master of using negotiations to avoid consequences for breaking international law. Iranian officials have publicly bragged about how the negotiations between Iran and the West have bought Iran time to move forward with its nuclear program. The Security Council threatened Iran with sanctions if it did not comply by August 31. Iran responded by accelerating rather than stopping its nuclear weapons program, but has yet to be sanctioned.
The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East – including stopping terrorism before it reaches our homeland – until Iran and Syria are convinced that there is a price to pay for inflaming Iraq, supporting terrorism, and, in Iran’s case, building nuclear bombs. The danger that would be posed to the United States and its allies by a nuclear-armed Iran dwarfs the dangers our troops currently face in Iraq. If there is to be a “New Diplomatic Offensive,” it should focus on building support for sanctioning rather than appeasing Iran and Syria.
The writer is a professor of international law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He served in the U.S. State Department for 11 years, including as senior attorney for nuclear affairs, and negotiated five nuclear non-proliferation agreements between the United States and Russia.
Source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/1211kittrie1210online.html#
