{"id":115,"date":"2007-12-21T06:11:02","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T10:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2007\/12\/wait\/"},"modified":"2007-12-26T05:00:47","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T09:00:47","slug":"iran_did_coercion_work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2007\/12\/iran_did_coercion_work\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Did coercion work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Michael Rubin<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dilip Hiro, a London-based author who focuses on Iran and Iraq and a frequent commentator in The Nation<\/em>, addresses the question \u201cWhy Iran Didn\u2019t Cross the Nuclear Weapon Road\u201d in a recent essay<\/a> (YaleGlobal Online<\/em>, Dec. 11, 2007) he wrote for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.<\/p>\n

The bulk of Hiro\u2019s essay rehashes the timeline of Iran\u2019s nuclear program beginning with the Shah and continuing with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s decision to jump start the program during the Iran-Iraq War after the Iraqi military began utilizing chemical weapons and intermediate-range missiles against the Islamic Republic. On this issue, Hiro is on solid ground; he is the author of a short book<\/a> chronicling the Iran-Iraq War.<\/p>\n

But this background section, although comprising the bulk of his essay, is immaterial to the question he poses: if the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is accurate, why did Iran cease work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003? Hiro tackles the question in just four concluding paragraphs. His thesis: It was not President George W. Bush\u2019s willingness to pre-empt perceived WMD threats which led to the Iranian leadership\u2019s reversal, but rather the reports of the Iraq Survey Group, which did not find chemical or biological, let alone nuclear weapons stockpiles in Iraq. (That the Iraq Survey Group could only conduct its research because of Operation Iraqi Freedom is a paradox which Hiro ignores.)<\/p>\n

Hiro bases his argument solely on the decision of Hasan Rowhani, Iran\u2019s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, to suspend temporarily Iran\u2019s uranium enrichment.<\/p>\n

To draw such broad conclusions from such scanty evidence is bizarre. Rowhani may have been a negotiator, but he was no decision-maker. That responsibility rests with the Office of the Supreme Leader and with the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who run Iran\u2019s nuclear program. A lower-level\u2019s politician\u2019s assurance to European politicians means little, given the tendency of Iranian officials to say one thing and do another<\/a>. Add to this the fact that Iran\u2019s commitment to its suspension pledge proved transitory. In retrospect, the temporary suspension was even less than met the eye, given that Iranian officials continued, if not to run centrifuges, then to upgrade their capacity to industrial levels in a facility able to accommodate 50,000 centrifuges.<\/p>\n

A number of analysts have already questioned the NIE\u2019s conclusions. Putting aside the politics behind its findings, the NIE falls flat in definitions. What is civilian and what is military when pursuing technology such as uranium enrichment that is decidedly dual-use? Indeed, if both the NIE and International Atomic Energy Agency reports are accurate, then what the Iranian leadership has done is alter the sequence of its program, rather than its content. Indigenous production of weapons-grade nuclear fuel is a more difficult problem than warhead construction. Hiro\u2019s assumption that there has been a radical change in Iran\u2019s nuclear posture is spurious.<\/p>\n

So where does this leave Hiro\u2019s essay? Animosity to U.S. foreign policy is epidemic within U.S. academic circles and among the bulk of Middle East policy commentariat. Evidence may be overwhelming that the Bush administration\u2019s first-term policy coerced states\u2014most notably Libya\u2014to reverse its nuclear posture. And, even if the NIE does not suggest that Tehran altered its program to the degree of Tripoli\u2019s about-face, the NIE does suggest that Iranian policymakers changed their approach.<\/p>\n

Honest academics weigh evidence and draw conclusions upon it; politicized authors cherry pick evidence, ignore context, and conduct intellectual somersaults to reach conclusions they wish to draw. In this case, Hiro\u2019s goal appears less to explain honestly Iran\u2019s strategy than to discredit\u2014albeit unconvincingly\u2014any notion that coercion works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Michael Rubin Dilip Hiro, a London-based author who focuses on Iran and Iraq and a frequent commentator in The Nation, addresses the question \u201cWhy Iran Didn\u2019t Cross the Nuclear Weapon Road\u201d in a recent essay (YaleGlobal Online, Dec. 11, 2007) he wrote for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1812,622,2253,2223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligence","category-iran","category-michael-rubin","category-nuclear"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}