Middle East Strategy at Harvard

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 “Why Iran Didn’t Cross the Nuclear Weapon Road” in a recent essay (YaleGlobal Online, Dec. 11, 2007) he wrote for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

The bulk of Hiro’s essay rehashes the timeline of Iran’s nuclear program beginning with the Shah and continuing with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 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 chronicling the Iran-Iraq War.

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’s willingness to pre-empt perceived WMD threats which led to the Iranian leadership’s 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.)

Hiro bases his argument solely on the decision of Hasan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, to suspend temporarily Iran’s uranium enrichment.

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’s nuclear program. A lower-level’s politician’s assurance to European politicians means little, given the tendency of Iranian officials to say one thing and do another. Add to this the fact that Iran’s 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.

A number of analysts have already questioned the NIE’s 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’s assumption that there has been a radical change in Iran’s nuclear posture is spurious.

So where does this leave Hiro’s 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’s first-term policy coerced states—most notably Libya—to reverse its nuclear posture. And, even if the NIE does not suggest that Tehran altered its program to the degree of Tripoli’s about-face, the NIE does suggest that Iranian policymakers changed their approach.

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’s goal appears less to explain honestly Iran’s strategy than to discredit—albeit unconvincingly—any notion that coercion works.