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![Reactor building of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant as seen on February 26, 2006. [? AP/WWP File photo]](../../images/Iran_Dossier.jpg)
Journal Articles
Disclaimer: The materials in this section are from sources outside the U.S. Government and should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein or as official U.S. policy.
POLITICAL ISLAM AND FOREIGN POLICY IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED
STATES. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Foreign Policy Analysis, October
2007, pp. 345–367. "European and American approaches to political
Islam rely upon commonly held secular assumptions about religion and
politics that have significant effects on foreign policy in Europe
and the United States. These secularist understandings affect
foreign policy in two ways: first, the appearance of Islam in
politics is equated with fundamentalism and intolerance, and second,
the forms and degrees of separation between Islam and politics that
do exist in contemporary Muslim-majority societies either do not
appear at all or appear as ill-fitting imitations of a Western
secular ideal."
READ MORE.
WHY CONTAINING IRAN WON'T WORK: WASHINGTON'S FLAWED NEW MIDDLE EAST STRATEGY. Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 2008, var. pages. "The Bush administration sees Iran as the source of all the Middle East's troubles and the aggressive containment of Iran as a panacea for them. But the administration is wrong on both counts — as the U.S. intelligence community's own new assessment of Iran's nuclear program confirms. Pushing hard for a U.S.-Israeli-Sunni alliance to counter Tehran will only make matters worse." READ MORE.
Iran and the United States: The Emerging Security Paradigm in the Middle East. Gawdat Bahgat. Parameters US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 2007, pp. 5-18. A constructive engagement with Tehran has the potential of convincing Iran to use its influence and intelligence capabilities to reduce tensions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and on the West Bank. Washington should also engage in a quiet diplomacy in an effort to reach a détente between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Such an initiative is likely to greatly enhance the prospects for political stability and regional security in the Middle East and west Asia. READ MORE
Gordon, Philip H. AMERICA, EUROPE, AND THE NUCLEAR CHALLENGE FROM IRAN. Paper presented at V. Annual GMF U.S.-EU Think Tank
Symposium, June 2007. pp. 1-6.
Full text available from publisher website
The central contention of this paper is that the United States and Europe have a strong common interest in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that this goal can only be achieved if the two sides work together to change Iranian calculations about the costs of attempting to do so. Philip Gordon is a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Harnisch, Sebastian. MINILATERAL COOPERATION AND
TRANSATLANTIC COALITION-BUILDING: THE E3/EU-3 IRAN INITIATIVE.
European Security, June 2007. pp. 1-27.
Full text available upon request
The article examines the factors that led to the establishment and evolution of the minilateral cooperation among France, Germany, the United Kingdom (and eventually the High Representative for CFSP) vis-à-vis Iran. The analysis brings together two theoretical approaches, institutional design and role theory. It posits that minilateral cooperation in the Iranian case and security affairs in general do not easily translate into multilateral cooperation. It finds that in contrast to the trade and economic realm, the course of security minilaterals is strongly shaped by rivalling formal institutions, specific characteristics in the non-proliferation regime (lack of specificity in central norms) and the role behaviour of the United States. European minilateral cooperation started (as in the case of the Middle East Quartet and Six-Party Talks) when the US rejected bilateral engagement. The initiative successfully mediated a temporary suspension of Iran's enrichment activities as long as Tehran believed that the EU-3 could bring the US to the table and commit the Bush Administration to a comprehensive negotiated settlement, including US security guarantees. Since the EU-3 and the subsequent P-5 (the permanent five members of the UNSC) plus Germany/EU High Representative for CFSP minilaterals have been incapable of forming a resilient transatlantic coalition of policy makers to negotiate a comprehensive settlement, another serious split could occur if Washington pursues a punitive course without having fully supported a cooperative solution to the crisis.
Lee, Henry and Dan A Shalmon. SEARCHING FOR OIL: CHINA'S INITIATIVES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Environment, June 2007, pp. 8-21.
Full text available via ProQuest
"In a world in which the supply of oil is limited by geology and politics, China's determination to fuel its rapidly growing economy is seen by many as a looming source of conflict. It is not simply the geographic breadth of China's initiatives that cause anxiety in Western capitals but also its willingness to enter into economic arrangements with "rogue" states. Critics believe that China, unfettered by concerns about human rights and willing to link oil investments with foreign policy goals, has been able to gain an unfair advantage in the competition for oil and regional influence. They point to China's relationship with nations such as Angola, Sudan, and Iran." Henry Lee is the Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, faculty co-chair of the School's International Infrastructure Program, and a lecturer in public policy. Dan A. Shalmon is a student in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He presently works for a Washington, DC-based defense contractor on counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency issues.
Wilson III, Isaiah. REDISCOVERING CONTAINMENT: THE SOURCES OF
AMERICAN-IRANIAN CONDUCT. Journal of International Affairs, Spring 2007,
pp. 95-114.
Full text available via ProQuest
"In July 1947, Foreign Affairs published an anonymous article entitled 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct,' which offered what would soon become the basis for US policy toward the Soviet Union. The policy offered was that of containment, which would remain fundamental for the duration of the Cold War. The author of that now famous memo, George Kennan, opposed what he deemed at that time to be a continuing American appeasement of the Soviets. Kennan's prescription was one of firm opposition to further expansion of communist power, through collective, flexible and adjustable strategies of containment. Others have looked to Kennan's "Sources of Soviet Conduct" as a potential guide to future puzzles of international security affairs. On the contrary, what is offered harkens a much more pragmatic, realpolitik approach to US-Iranian relations than the messianic utopianism that has come of late from the dominance of neoconservative approaches to American foreign policy and national security strategymaking." Isaiah Wilson III is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and an academy professor with the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, where he is the director of the american politics, public policy and strategy program.
Cohen, Jared. IRAN'S YOUNG OPPOSITION: YOUTH IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN. SAIS Review , Summer-Fall 2006,
pp. 3-16.
Full text available via ProQuest
"In a country of 68 million
people, the youth in Iran constitute close to 70 percent of the
population. In the absence of a strong opposition, young Iranians
are now the de facto opposition in the Islamic Republic. The
emergence of new youth networks of communications has allowed young
Iranians to circumvent the rules and regulations of the regime by
expressing themselves and communicating above the grid through
digital, audio, and visual media. This has changed the way they
think and created new opportunities to work with the youth of Iran
to bring about democracy on their terms."
Jared Cohen received his B.A. from Stanford University and his
M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University, where he
studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He has conducted research in Iran,
Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon on youth and how they view the post-9/11
world.
Baktiari, Bahman. IRAN’S CONSERVATIVE REVIVAL.
Current History, January 2007, pp. 11-16.
Full text available upon request
"No one has benefited more from American blunders in the Middle East than the conservatives in Iran who now control all the power centers. During the us invasion of Iraq, Iran put out feelers to explore the possibility of détente. Iranians wrote a letter in April 2003 to their American counterparts offering to discuss the mutual interests of the two countries, including the suspension of uranium enrichment, accepting a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis, and helping the United States to secure post-Hussein Iraq. The Americans, high on their ‘mission accomplished’ in Iraq, chose to ignore the letter. Much has changed since then. Just as the United States felt strong enough then to spurn Iran’s overture, the Iranians have now rejected incentives that the Americans and others proffered in the summer of 2006 to tempt the Iranian regime to give up its ambition to make the country an industrial producer of nuclear fuel." Bahman Baktiari is Director of Research and Academic Programming, William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce.
Zuhur, Sherifa D. IRAN, IRAQ, AND THE UNITED STATES: THE NEW TRIANGLE’S IMPACT
ON SECTARIANISM AND THE NUCLEAR THREAT. Strategic Studies
Institute monograph,
November 28, 2006, pp. 1-80.
Full text available from publisher website
"What is the best possible response to growing Iranian influence in Iraq? How does this issue relate to the crisis over Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear capabilities? Can the United States leverage one issue against the other, offering Iran incentives to shift down its nuclear program and, at the same time, withhold judgment on that country’s influence in Iraq? Or are these concerns best dealt with separately from the American policy perspective? Beyond American foreign policy and policy analysis, European, Arab, Israeli, Russian, and Chinese interests are factors in the new equation." Sherifay D. Zuhur is Research Professor of Islamic and Regional Studies. She has lectured widely, holding faculty positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; the American University in Cairo; and other universities.
McFaul, Michael, Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond.
A WIN-WIN U.S. STRATEGY FOR DEALING WITH IRAN. The
Washington Quarterly, Winter 2006-2007, pp. 121–138.
Full text available from publisher website
"It is time for the United States to get smart in dealing with Iran and frame its own win-win proposition, which we propose here: a sophisticated two-track policy that deals boldly and directly with the regime as well as the Iranian people on all issues in the bilateral relationship. By expanding the agenda to include not only the control of nuclear technologies but also Tehran’s support for terrorism, the lifting of sanctions, democracy and human rights, and even diplomatic relations, U.S. policymakers could radically change the very limited parameters of the stalemated debate with Iran in a way that would serve arms control and democratization." Larry Diamond, Michael McFaul, and Abbas Milani are fellows and coordinators of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. McFaul is a member of The Washington Quarterly’s editorial board.
Olson, Robert. RELATIONS AMONG TURKEY, IRAQ, KURDISTAN-IRAQ, THE WIDER
MIDDLE EAST, AND IRAN. Mediterranean Quarterly,
Fall 2006, pp. 13-45.
Full text available upon request
"In this essay, I address cooperative economic, trade, and
political relations
among Turkey, Iraq, Kurdistan-Iraq, the Wider Middle East, and
Iran, some
of which were imposed and expedited by the US invasion and
occupation of
Iraq in March 2003. I also address the relations in the broader
context of the
US-initiated and European-supported Wider Middle East Initiative
(WMEI).
The WMEI is interpreted here as a policy to support
privatization and capital
markets in the Middle East, and not just as a fund-raising
instrument to support
democratization. In my view, it is essential to consider
Turkey’s relations with Iraq, Kurdistan-Iraq, and Iran within
the context of the objectives of the WMEI,
especially with respect to Turkey’s relations with the United
States, Israel,
the American Jewish community, Jordan, the Palestinians and the
Arab Gulf
countries (the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf area)."
Robert Olson is professor of Middle East Politics at the
University of Kentucky.
Taheri, Amir and Arthur Herman. GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT
IRAN: FOR REGIME CHANGE. GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT IRAN: A MILITARY
OPTION. Commentary. November 2006, pp. 21-32.
Full text available upon request
"The first article discusses regime change in Iran, which has traditionally shown an Anti-American foreign policy. A look at American foreign policy towards the country from the Carter administration to the George W. Bush administration is presented, with an analysis of the possibility that America will facilitate a regime change. The second article discusses a possible military response by the United States against Iran to halt the country's nuclear-weapons program. While George W. Bush administration foreign policy officials believe an attack could only end in disaster, instead favoring economic sanctions, the author suggests that it is necessary." Amir Taheri was the executive editor of Khayan, Iran's largest daily newspaper, from 1972 to 1979. The author of ten books, he is a frequent contributor to publications in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Arthur Herman is a new contributor; has taught history at George Mason University and Georgetown University.
Pollack, Kenneth M. BRINGING IRAN TO THE BARGAINING TABLE. Current History, November 2006, pp.
365-370.
Full text available upon request
"If the Iranian people were ever forced to choose between the
nuclear program and their country's economic health, they likely
would choose the latter. Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons is
both wide and deep, but it is not adamantine. The issue, as
always in politics, is not whether Iran wants to see its nuclear
program through to completion, but what it would be willing to
sacrifice to keep it. On this matter, I believe the Iranians
would be willing to sacrifice a fair amount, but not everything.
This suggests that convincing Iran to give up its nuclear
program is going to require considerable inducements, both
positive and negative, but that doing so is not impossible."
Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow and director of
research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution.
Nasr, Vali. WHEN THE SHIITES RISE. Foreign
Affairs, July-August 2006, pp.
Full text available via ProQuest
"By toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has liberated and empowered Iraq's Shiite majority and has helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This development is rattling some Sunni Arab governments, but for Washington, it could be a chance to build bridges with the region's Shiites, especially in Iran." Vali Nasr is a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.
