12/19/13 – Trita Parsi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the show.
And I realize now that I probably need to go to a guitar center and swap out some old equipment for some new.
Not sure where the problem is, but there's a problem.
Now, hopefully.
Hopefully, Trita will come out sounding OK.
Trita Parsi, that is founder of the National Iranian American Council at NIA Council dot org.
That's NIA Council dot org.
And he's got this report with Reza Marashi and I'm sorry, one other guy.
It's called Extending Hands, Unclenching Fists, Reorienting Iran's Outlook Beyond the Nuclear Deal.
Isn't that interesting?
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Trita?
Doing good.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
Very happy to have you back on here.
And so that's a very provocative title here.
Reorienting Iran's Outlook Beyond the Nuclear Deal.
In other words, what America can do to help things inside Iran get better politically, presumably for the more democratically and less ayatollahly inclined.
Is that about right?
Essentially what it is saying is that if the nuclear negotiations succeed, this is going to be much bigger than about a bunch of centrifuges and enrichment and breakout capabilities.
This can actually reorient Iran's entire outlook, both on regional policies as well as its internal conduct.
And as a result, we have to take this out of just looking at it from a nuclear prism.
And then we give suggestions on how we can do this, how we can make sure that this is successful, because it is so valuable if it actually achieves what we're hoping to.
All right.
Well, now, recently when President Obama invoked those new sort of sub sanctions and the Iranians quit the technical, the lower level talks for a couple of days in protest and came back, I remember being very thankful that they were able to come back, that President Rouhani and Zarif, his foreign minister, that they have the, you know, the political wind at their back in Iran right now to such a degree that they're able to do that.
I don't know if it's still sort of his honeymoon period, 100 days kind of thing, like they give American presidents around here where he gets to get away with a little bit.
He's got some cushion, but it seems like the Americans are intent on making him use it all up.
But I guess you talk about in the article about how it was kind of a stroke of luck.
A lot of stars aligned and fell together for these reformers to be able to come to power at this time in the first place, and yet it seems like he does have quite a bit of political capital.
How far do you think that will go?
Well, the more successful it is, the more forward-leaning it can be and the further it can go.
And the problem with this sanctions designation, et cetera, I don't think it was necessarily a violation of the agreement, but the Iranians perceived it to be a violation of the spirit of the agreement.
And I'm sure we would be very unhappy if they did things that are not technically violations of the agreement but could be seen as a violation of the spirit.
And there's just a limited number of these things that can happen before the process gets so weak that it collapses.
So one has to think, okay, what can we do to do the opposite?
What are the things we can do to strengthen this process that does not necessarily entail giving any concessions on issues of substance?
But there are things we can do that could strengthen this and that could weaken those in Iran who are eager to sabotage this in order to make sure that the chances of a successful final negotiation increases.
And that's what this report aims to do, and it gives several recommendations on specific projects that can be done.
All right.
Now, so can you talk a little bit about the coalition of reformers and moderates, as you call them, as opposed to the Iranian right that came together to make Rouhani the president in the first place and just how – I guess how strong of a case the Iranian right has in criticizing them for trying to negotiate with the great Satan et al.?
Yeah, so essentially what has happened is that those who have this much, much more hardline view in Iran and who have this narrative that says that the West is always looking to weaken Iran, that negotiations cannot be done because the West cannot be trusted – I mean, you can see it's almost a mirror image of some of the hardliners in the U.S.
They dominated Iran's political elite for the last eight years.
During the Ahmadinejad years, they were very, very strong, and the other counter-narratives were essentially completely marginalized.
It was very difficult to see how that counter-narrative, the more open, positive, some, as we call it, narrative, could get a foothold, mindful of how sanctions and the confrontation with Iran had kind of given an air of vindication to the hardline narrative.
And this whole thing managed to change, though, as a result of the elections, because then the population went out, they voted for Rouhani, Rouhani put together this very unprecedented coalition of pragmatic conservatives, people in the center, reformists, and managed to challenge the hardline narrative and the hardliners.
And this brought back into power a team of people who, more than eight years ago, before Ahmadinejad stepped onto the scene, actually were pursuing the same policies of outreach and trying to see if there were ways to collaborate with the United States.
These are the people who were behind the collaboration that the U.S. had with Iran over Afghanistan in 2001.
These are the people who sent negotiations proposals to the United States in 2003, who offered to cap Iranian enrichment to 3,000 centrifuges in 2005.
Today they have 19,000.
These are the very same individuals you're saying?
Sorry, these are the same individuals with the same narrative.
It's not a narrative that just popped up.
It's been there, but it was so marginalized in the last eight years.
And it became even more marginalized because of the confrontational policies of sanctions and the covert war that was taking place between the U.S. and Iran.
But thanks to the elections and the choices of the population, they've been given essentially a second chance in life.
And now the question is, how far can they go without the hardliners making a comeback?
And the idea essentially is that they can't go very far unless they have something positive to show for it.
They need to be able to prove that moderation pays off.
And one way, and the most important way, is to make sure that the nuclear negotiations succeed.
But there are other ways as well.
There can be areas of collaboration and cooperation between Iran and the United States on areas of science, areas that have nothing to do with a nuclear issue.
We're not giving the Iranians anything of substance, but we can still strengthen collaboration in other areas.
And by that, make sure that those who actually want to move in a more constructive direction actually are proven right, that they are getting stronger because the entire nation is seeing that their approach is more effective.
All right.
Now, and you're arguing in the article here that the coalition of reformers, that really the people who came together to support them, it would only be a mistake to look at it from an American point of view, that it really had much to do with wanting a nuclear deal or relations with Iran at all, that it's not even about the sanctions really at all.
In fact, as much as it's a stroke of luck for America that they were able to put this coalition together for domestic political reasons, it's also in a sense a stroke of luck for the pro-sanctionists who get to brag that it's only because of their sanctions that this was accomplished.
But meanwhile, it's just really a lucky happenstance that, oh good, it's our old friends from the golden offer of 2003 that George Bush should have taken them up on.
I would say it's been a series of accidents.
And if there's anyone we should give credit to, it's the Iranian people, that they actually decided to go out and vote.
They realized that the regime could not cheat twice in a row, that they did not have the strength to be able to pull off another 2009.
In fact, if they tried to do that, they would risk the collapse of the entire regime.
So the population realized that, and then thanks to the coalition that existed, they all came back behind one candidate.
But if the population had decided that, you know what, last time they voted nothing happened, in fact they got beaten up on the streets, they're not going to go and vote again.
If the reformist candidate RF had not withdrawn and backed Rouhani, perhaps this whole thing would not have happened, because then the reformist vote would have been split in two.
And then there's another very interesting fact, which is that polls show that because Iran's election system is such that there's several candidates, and you have to win more than 50% in order to win the election.
So most of the time it ends up being a second round, because no one managed to get to 50%, so the top two candidates go to a second round.
Well, what happens in those systems is that a segment of the population starts voting strategically.
Meaning, if you're convinced that there's going to be a second round, and you're convinced that your top candidate is going to be in the second round, then you may not vote for him in the first round, because that's a waste.
Instead, you choose to vote for your second option, in order to manufacture a runoff between your two top candidates, or because you want to make sure that a bad candidate doesn't get in.
And it so just happens to be that in the poll done by Maryland University, the 24% of those who voted for Rouhani said that they actually preferred another candidate, Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, as their top candidate.
But essentially, they were so convinced he was going to be in the second round, because that's what all the polls showed, that they decided to go over and vote for Rouhani instead.
And they did so to the extent that Rouhani got 50.7%, which means that he won in the first round.
That gave this government in Iran, the Rouhani government, unprecedented strength and maneuverability, because they won at landslide, essentially.
And as a result, they're much more capable of going forward boldly with diplomacy, than had he won in the second round.
All right, but now what about the Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei?
Is he backing Rouhani 100% on this?
No, he's backing Rouhani to the extent that he feels that he has to, because he has no other choice.
Right now, it's a win-win for him.
He's going to back Rouhani with diplomacy, and if it works, then he's going to take credit.
If it doesn't work, and particularly if the U.S. does something stupid, such as these sanctions that were just introduced today by Senators Menendez and Kirk, and by that violates the deal and the negotiations fall apart, not because of bad misconduct from the Iran side, but from the American side, then he's going to say, see, I was right.
The Americans are not to be trusted, but I gave these more naive people a chance to try it.
Now they've proven it to themselves and everyone else that negotiations don't work, and now we're going to go back to my preferred strategy, which is resistance, confrontation, and all of that stuff.
Right.
Now, by the way, I'm sorry, but I'm so confused about this point.
Who cares if the Senate tries to pass these sanctions?
Obama can simply veto them or refuse to enforce them anyway, so they don't really, the Senate, and I guess the House has already passed them, right, but they don't, do they have enough votes to override his veto and force him to scotch his own deal?
Really?
Actually, this does matter a lot, Scott, for several different reasons.
First of all, yes, they may have enough votes to override the veto, but most importantly, at this stage, it's very unfortunate that we're still having a conversation about new sanctions.
I know.
Because in order to make the final deal succeed, we have to lift sanctions, which means that Congress has to lift sanctions.
So, it's a very bad sign of our ability to live up to our end of the bargain.
If, instead of starting a conversation about, okay, at what point and how do we start lifting sanctions in order to get to the final deal, we're still actually in a conversation of trying to stop new sanctions from being imposed.
So in that sense, it does matter gravely.
In which sense, it's already working.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bad news.
All right.
Well, so now talk a little bit, and we still got, what, three, four minutes here.
So tell us a little bit about this 20-year perspective and what the Iranian regime is working toward.
And, you know, like you mentioned there before about the possibilities of openings for scientific exchanges on non-dual-use technologies, simple stuff.
And maybe I was wondering, you know, do you have an initiative to push to educate Houston, Texas, about how much money is to be made in them thar hills, because where you can establish those kinds of economic connections, you'll have a much harder time, you know, making conflict worse.
Well, so what we're pointing out is that a core element of the hardliners' narrative is that the West is trying to make sure that Iran never develops scientifically.
They want to keep Iran as a third world country, and that's why Iran needs to have nuclear energy to disprove the West, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, if we engage in bold, smart, and at the same time proliferation, safe exchange of technology with Iranians, that can range from anything to just increase the number of university exchanges to having the U.S. help resolve air pollution problems in some of Iran's worst cities, to help with environmental disaster in northwestern Iran, in which one of the largest lakes in the Middle East is actually drying up.
We're not helping their nuclear program in the slightest, but we are doing one thing.
We're just proving the idea that the West is looking for Iran to consistently be underdeveloped.
And that actually helps strengthen those in Iran who say, you know what, let's try to see if we can work with the West.
Let's see if we can make a deal with the United States.
Let's see if we can find a win-win with the United States.
And that weakens those who say, no, the West cannot be trusted.
We have to confront the U.S.
We always have to be anti-American, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, at the same time, it really doesn't cost the U.S. anything.
It's a different thing if you said, hey, let's help the moderates by being softer on the nuclear issue.
That's not what we're suggesting.
We're suggesting that there should be clever measures in which we can do good things that are good for us and good for them that actually help the right people in Iran.
Imagine this.
Imagine if the Iranians came in and they fixed the health care website problems that the Obama administration had.
There would be a lot of people that would be pretty ticked off if the Iranians came in and solved this because they don't want them to take the credit for it.
Well, we're suggesting that the U.S. should do a couple of clever things and get credit for it.
Yeah, makes sense.
Both sides have so much to gain that you're right.
Even just from the State Department's perspective, with them not having to really lose anything, they can gain a lot and gain victories to claim for themselves and all kinds of stuff.
The possibilities probably are endless.
Absolutely.
Again, this is not just about a nuclear deal.
We have to have a bigger perspective.
This could end up being about making sure that if the United States doesn't gain a friend, at a minimum, it loses an enemy.
Well, I think the counterfactual is right there in the campaigns of Ron Paul for president where he would have just had an outright, here's a security guarantee.
I'll never bomb you, I promise.
And here's all the sanctions lifted.
I'll never enforce them.
And let's be friends.
Simple as that.
The whole thing would have been over.
And maybe they'd have signed the additional protocol just as an extra thank you, but it wouldn't even have been necessary kind of thing.
And things would have been a lot better by now.
So I think anything leaning that way is huge progress and certainly possible.
So thanks so much for your efforts.
Thanks so much for having me.
Appreciate it.
That's Trita Parsi, everybody.
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