House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

FOREIGN POLICY ASPECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

 

 

TUesday 14 December 2004

DR ALI ANSARI

DR STEFAN HALPER and DR DANA ALLIN

Evidence heard in Public Questions 62 - 117

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 15 December 2004

Members present

Donald Anderson, in the Chair

Mr David Chidgey

Mr Fabian Hamilton

Mr Andrew Mackay

Andrew Mackinlay

Mr Bill Olner

Sir John Stanley

________________

Memorandum submitted by Dr Ali Ansari

 

Examination of Witness

 

Witness: Dr Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews, examined.

Q62 Chairman: Dr Ansari, may I welcome you again to the Committee. You gave very valuable evidence to us way back in February 2003.

Dr Ansari: I am very pleased to be back.

Chairman: The Committee visited Iran in October 2003. We were hosted by the chairman of the Majles Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Mirdamadi, who was not allowed to stand in the Majles election, which we cannot understand given the extremely correct way in which he dealt with the Committee. Since your first evidence session to us, I note from subsequent articles you appear to have hardened your position a little. I will move on to my colleague, Fabian Hamilton, to take that up.

Q63 Mr Hamilton: Welcome back to the Committee, Dr Ansari. Sadly, I was unable to join the rest of the Committee on the visit in November last year, but I did get a very full report and we then produced our report to the House. In our report to the House we noted that the elections to the Majles "may represent a swing of the pendulum of Iranian society back from democracy and openness towards fundamentalism and isolationism. If such is to be the context in which the United Kingdom must conduct its relations with Iran over the coming years, that relationship may be a difficult one to develop. On the other hand, in our estimation the weight of Iran's overwhelmingly youthful population is certain to push the pendulum once again towards reform." I wonder what you consider to be the current prospects for reform in Iran given the context of those elections.

Dr Ansari: I do not think anyone can deny that it has been a bad year. Both in the way domestic politics has worked out but also in the international dimensions of that it has been a very poor year for democratisation in Iran. I would tend to agree with the conclusions of your own report, however, in the sense that if one was to look at the overwhelming structures of democratisation of any country in the Middle East, certainly any Muslim country in the Middle East, and look at the foundations of that, then Iran still does present us with one of the more interesting cases of a sort of organic growth of democratisation. That is not to say that Iranians themselves did not find recent events quite distressing, quite traumatic or even a very serious setback. I think the overwhelming direction is still positive. I would say that in the long run rather than the short to medium run we have to deal with particular issues. Part of that has to do with the reform movement itself and the way it is organised but also the way in which the international community dealt with the reform movement.

Q64 Mr Hamilton: May I ask how you think the political spectrum is going to change after the presidential elections in which obviously President Khatami will have to stand down. Who is likely to be the candidate?

Dr Ansari: There are a number of candidates that are being put forward. The big issue is who will be allowed to stand. The second issue is how many people will vote. There is a lot of disillusionment with the process as it stands. There may be a certain amount of compromise vis‑à‑vis the guardian council to make sure that there is some sort of competitive electoral procedure. Iranians are well aware that the February elections were not their finest hour. I have heavily criticised this as well in open print and I have said to them that it did not do them any favours. I think the contest now has shifted to the centralists and the conservatives. My own view is that the presidential election is probably not quite as important as some Iranians would have us think and that is partly because the presidency itself has been so weakened. It all depends on who can possibly take over the mantle if Rafsanjani makes a comeback for instance, but even there we are not sure. What is much more fundamental is whether the more centralist conservatives, the conservative 'wets', and more of the left of centres, the reformists, can coalesce in some way to obstruct the more hard right revolution purists that I mentioned really seizing control of all the organisations of power. It is very possible that the presidency will not fall into the hands of a hard right, but the question that then arises is what this person can do when up against some of the institutions that are under the control of what I have termed revolution purists essentially.

Q65 Mr Hamilton: How sustainable is the current system given the weight of the youthful population, as we pointed out in our report, that within five or ten years will start moving into positions of authority, maybe 15 years, but eventually those people who were born since the revolution who very much see the establishment as the conservative establishment? How sustainable is the current system, or will it be overwhelmed by the desire for democratic control within ten or 15 years?

Dr Ansari: I have long argued that the system as it is currently constructed is not sustainable. The sad thing is that most Iranians are well aware of this. The question is how you manage this transformation or this transition of power structures and economic structures. I would say it will come much sooner than the ten to 15 years that you have been saying it will take.

Q66 Mr Chidgey: You wrote that "The revolutionary regime, and especially its more hard-line elements have become more emboldened. What they ask, can the 'West' do, having embroiled itself in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan? A military invasion is out of the question; a military strike is sustainable, and sanctions, if they are ever implemented (doubtful given the consequences for the oil price) ..." What lessons do you believe that Iran has taken from the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the changes in its regional environment? Secondly, how concerned do you believe Iran is about US policy towards it? Are there serious concerns that Iran could be next in line for US efforts of regime change? Finally, is Iran seeking to influence events in Iraq, particularly now with the elections that are upcoming?

Dr Ansari: The first thing we have to bear in mind is that there is no single Iran. We talk about what Iran wants. There are obviously different groups and different factions and what they are interested in is different. In terms of the regional change and the war on terror in broader terms, I think there was quite severe anxiety on the part of many members of the establishment about what this meant. Many reformists drew the conclusion that the swift collapse of the Ba-athist regime shows what happens to an unpopular regime when put under coercive pressure; others obviously took different lessons. But at the moment there certainly seems to be this view that some of the pressure that they felt in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now lessened and that Iran can play a much more influential role for good or ill in the region depending on the way that its relations develop with particularly the coalition powers. So it does have a certain amount of leverage and it sees that, it is not quite so one‑sided. What it anticipates from that depends on the various factions. Many of them will use Iraq as an example - and I am sure this is how it is being portrayed on the state television of Iran - of what Western freedom brings you, ie anarchy, and ask if this is what you want and would you not much rather have the stability that we have come to know and love rather than this more anarchist situation. That is certainly used. No doubt there are many younger Iranians who would have preferred to see a much smoother transformation of power in Iraq than we have witnessed. I think they would have liked to use that as an example to show what can happen. I think on the Iranian side it is fair to say that what all the different factions have in common is basically they want whatever emerges in Iraq to be non‑threatening, this is overwhelmingly the sense you get. They do not want a fragmented Iraq, they do not want instability on their western border, the last thing they want is an influx of refugees crossing the border and so on and so forth, but they do not want a militarily strong Iraq either.

Q67 Mr Chidgey: Do they want to influence directly the political power structure emerging in Iraq so that it is more towards fundamentalism or the Iranian version of that? Are they trying to coerce the elections?

Dr Ansari: I think what we have to be very realistic about is that obviously the Iranians will want to have an influence in Iraq. It is very difficult to argue why the United States can go 3,000 miles and interfere in the domestic policies of a country and Iran, which is right next door, cannot. It is part of its neighbourhood and it will obviously want to have some sort of effect.

Q68 Mr Chidgey: Are Iranian activists migrating across the border in order to take part in the elections?

Dr Ansari: There are two views on this. I was in the US over the summer and there are some quite exaggerated claims about what the Iranians are doing in Iraq to be honest. My colleagues here say clearly there is an Iranian role, certainly in southern Iraq and among the Shias. They do provide a lot of welfare services for instance, social welfare, stuff which in many ways the British have tolerated. They are offering something quite useful but, on the other hand, there is a political angle to that. They are establishing themselves quite well. On the other hand, there is no indication really on the part of any Iranian faction that they want to see another Islamic republic in Iraq. Their primary concern is a stable regime politically and militarily, not a particularly forceful one. They do not want a large army on their border and something that will provide a market for potentially Iranian goods. They see it as their back room. In terms of interfering, the Iranians are in this advantageous position of being in a situation where as long as you have these directly held elections the Shias are in the majority, so they are quite happy for that to happen and they have no reason to agitate otherwise. I do not want to over‑simplify the issue either. They have no reason to make the situation for the Americans particularly easy. There are certain elements in Iran that would not be anxious for the Iranians to leave either too quickly or too easily because it would free up the Americans to do other things in the region which they really do not want them to, which basically comes to the final part of your question. Yes, there is a very serious concern that the Americans are looking to finish up in Tehran and this is part three of the strategy.

Q69 Mr Chidgey: I think that answers my supplementary question which in fact is, has the war in Iraq accelerated or decelerated Iran's search to acquire nuclear weapons?

Dr Ansari: There are two catalysts when we talk about the search for nuclear technology and leave it up to others to enquire about how they want to use their nuclear technology and certainly one was the nuclearisation of South Asia. There is no doubt about it, the Pakistanis acquiring nuclear weapons was something that did bother the Iranians and worried them to some extent. There is the argument that the Americans are going to attack nuclear powers. I think it is a somewhat simplistic argument but it is an argument that says we should look at North Korea or Iraq and learn our lessons from those examples.

Q70 Chairman: Should we see the hand of Iran in the compilation of the list put forward by Ayatollah Sistani and his group?

Dr Ansari: To be honest, I hear many different stories about the influence that Iran has, particularly among the Shias. As far as I am aware, Ayatollah Sistani has a relationship certainly with the Iranian clerics but also with different factions. Sistani's relationship really is stronger probably with Khatami and Mondesserae (?) than it is perhaps with some of the more right-wing ayatollahs, whereas Muqtada al-Sadr will have relationships with other sides. On the other hand, they are all very heavily intermarried. I would be surprised if the influence was that direct that they were actually dictating lists of candidates, I do not think it would be that obvious and I certainly think Sistani is in a somewhat different category. He is very well regarded as a magi, as a supreme, a Grand Ayatollah and I do not think he would be that easily persuaded.

Q71 Sir John Stanley: The Iranian Government has come in for a fair amount of criticism both from the Americans and also from the Iraqi provisional government for not doing more to seal their border with Iraq. Could you inform the Committee of just how realistic or completely non‑realistic any such policy is? Is it basically an open border? Is it financially ludicrous to suggest the thing should be completely sealed, or is it actually a realistic possibility for the Iranian Government to do very much more in terms of controlling passage between Iran and Iraq?

Dr Ansari: The longest border Iraq has is with Iran and it is extremely difficult to police. Clearly there are elements where they can secure certain border crossings, but it would be very difficult to monitor the passage through it. I think the Americans in this case are being somewhat realistic and probably unfair if you look at the American‑Mexican border. These are difficult borders to monitor. Even in the northern areas you would find there is a lot of trans-national movement. I do not think there is any doubt that there are Iranians moving over and some of it is pilgrimages, some of it is other more political activities. I think there is undoubtedly an element of political exaggeration on behalf of probably the Iraqi interim government as well as the Americans in this regard about how much is going on.

Q72 Sir John Stanley: On the Iranian nuclear programme, the object of the exercise as far as the EU and America is concerned is to prevent that turning into a nuclear weapons programme. Do you think that the EU trio have basically gone down the right route or do you think they are guilty of naivety? Do you think that the alternative American policy of certainly looking for various forms of sanctions to put great pressure on the Iranian Government would be a better policy option?

Dr Ansari: I think this last year has been somewhat of a shock to my system in particular because what really has come home this year is the absence of a policy both on the EU side and the American side, and by a policy I mean a real long‑term strategic vision of how they intend to go about developing their relations with Iran or getting their goals. The EU now has got it about right but it has been a long time getting here. I think they spent a year running around and making mistakes and having a very steep learning curve. In fact, that was the phrased used by one of my colleagues. My argument is that there should not be a steep learning curve at this stage. The British should not need to go through a steep learning curve in their relations with Iran. I think this country has probably had the longest diplomatic relations with Iran of any European power going back over 200 years, so we should have enough expertise to know how to deal with the Iranians. Overall there needs to be quite a radical re‑think - this is a pretty personal view - both on the EU side and the American side about how to approach Iran so that we can get things constructed and get some benefit. At the moment we tend to react rather than respond and while we were dealing with the security issues and the nuclear issues I think we neglected other sides which equally deserved our attention over the past year and that was not to our credit.

Q73 Sir John Stanley: I am surprised you are so dismissive of the EU3 initiative. Is that not a fairly considerable achievement, having entered into an agreement with the Iranian Government which, if you believe the Iranian Government is going to adhere to it, will mean that the Iranian Government is not going to go into the nuclear weapons business?

Dr Ansari: I think now this is commendable, but we are really back to where we were last year after having gone through a year of renegotiating, a lot of hair pulling and a lot of frustration. Now, broadly speaking the EU, particularly the EU3, have got the position right. I think they are also taking seriously their own obligations under the NPT in order to give Iran certain character as well as insisting on certain restrictions. The initial agreement signed last October I was enormously in favour of at the time, but what I did not realise then was that certain compromises seem to have been made on other aspects of Iranian policy which dealt with human rights and democratisation and that was a pity.

Q74 Mr Olner: It might well be said that Iran is trying to talk up the conflict with the US and that is one of its reasons for pressing ahead with its nuclear programme. Given the negotiations with the EU3 as the way to move out of a conflict situation, how strong do you think the voices are now in Iran in calling for the nuclear programme to be upped a bit? It does not really matter, does it, to the Majles deputies, the 200 of them that have signed up and said we will go ahead no matter what with enrichment and what have you?

Dr Ansari: One of the flaws in the thinking of the EU3 last year was that in not actually protesting enough at what happened in the parliamentary elections we had a group of people coming into parliament through largely fraudulent means who were not sympathetic to an agreement. We had signed an agreement, hoped the additional protocol would be ratified but then effectively turned a blind eye to an election fraud. If we compare it to the reaction to the Iranian elections, it is quite telling to be honest, which is basically putting a group of people into parliament that were very unlikely to ratify the situation, they wanted extra concessions and so on and so forth. My big concern is that there are elements not just in Iran but in the United States, perhaps even in Israel, who have a confrontational and a rather antagonistic view of each other and if you put these three together it is quite a volatile mix. So in this respect I have enormous sympathy for the Europeans. I think the Europeans are stuck in the middle of a very volatile pot and they are trying, as you say, to pull us back from an escalation, whereas others are playing a very dangerous game, a bluff is the best way of putting it. My greatest concern is that in the following ten or 12 months we will see a situation develop where there is an enormous amount of goodwill in the various capitals but there are also a lot of spoilers who are going to cause difficulties. Really the task for us over the next year is to make sure that (a) we can anticipate some of these spoilers but (b) also have the mechanisms and the ability to communicate with each other to be able to avoid anything getting out of hand. One of the things we have to bear in mind is that the United States has no relations with Iran, they have no man on the spot. Even at the height of the Cold War they had an embassy in the Soviet Union. We have no contact between those two antagonists so to speak.

Q75 Mr Olner: Do you think the Americans are prepared for us to be the honest broker and the French and Germans? You have no contact. Are they happy with their contact with them?

Dr Ansari: I think at the moment they are, at least that is certainly the impression I get. One of your other witnesses may be able to tell you better than I. There is also a very influential group who are willing this agreement to fail. There is no doubt about it, there is also a group of people who do not want it to fail, who are quite happy to let the Europeans continue for a few more months and sweat and make all the effort, but they really will not be surprised if it fails. I was very struck for instance when hardly had the ink dried on this latest agreement than Colin Powell had announced that he had evidence that Iran was converting long-range missiles for nuclear warheads and it turned out that this was based on a single source of evidence. One would have liked at least a week for the agreement to settle in before we started moving on to the next issue of contention. The Americans' attentions at the moment are focused on Iraq and they are very happy to allow certainly the British to be the honest broker, but there are also groups there who would want to be able to turn round in six months and say "we told you so".

Q76 Mr Olner: You touched before on the trade agreement between Iran and the EU. Do you think that is of vital importance in getting the message over to ordinary Iranians that we have no wish to control them or anything like that and that to trade is a great leveller in bringing back prosperity? How widely amongst the general public in Iran are the trade agreements with the EU known about, spoken about or whatever?

Dr Ansari: I think the relationship of the EU to Iran is enormously important and enormously influential, which only heightens the fact that the lack of any response last year had a very bad effect. Trade agreements are a very useful way forward. My only wish is that in some ways the EU had been able to do this earlier. There is a general consensus that had a trade agreement been signed when Khatami was at his height it would undoubtedly have boosted his position domestically. In that way we have somewhat missed the boat. Nonetheless, it would be enormously beneficial and plain to an Iranian audience, a general audience, that the Europeans are not there simply to wield a big stick and constantly berate us for various reasons.

Q77 Chairman: Dr Ansari, how do you respond to the cynics who say that since the agreement with the EU3 in October of last year Iran has been playing games and there has been a fairly consistent line to obtaining military nuclear capability? Evidence pointed out would be the clear evidence of concealment and brinkmanship in terms of the UN Security Council and that ultimately they know that Russia and/or China would veto any sanctions of the Security Council. So, having bought off that referral, they would get fairly shortly to the point of nuclear breakout and achieve their aim.

Dr Ansari: I think there is a lot of validity to the argument that what the Iranians have been doing since the original agreement signed in October 2003 has been a lot of brinkmanship, a lot of manipulation of the political process. Part of the problem, however, still lies on our side of the negotiating table. One of the biggest complaints about the EU is that it is a very difficult organisation in some ways to co‑ordinate to be able to have a single policy coming out of the EU. I think the Iranians were very effective in being able to exploit various disagreements between EU partners and there needed to be a strength of determination in wills among the EU partners to let Iranians know these are the red lines and we would rather you did not cross them, but the trouble was that from an early stage there was a lot of provocation on a number of different partners, not necessarily the EU3 but certainly other partners as well may have sent different messages and I think that was certainly an issue. In terms of inconsistency, however, I feel that we must also bear in mind that as far as the Iranians are concerned there has been quite a heavy amount of inconsistency from the West as well and this has resulted in quite a deep sense of mistrust in actual fact and that we are in the situation we are in not because of the success of policy but the failure of policy. If I was to look at the most recent failure, in a sense it is the whole 'axis of evil' speech. This thing put the final nail in the coffin of Khatami as a reforming president who had gone out of his way to give the West things it wanted during the Afghan war and he was rewarded with this. So a lot of Iranian leaders are extremely sceptical and suspicious about how to deal with the West. In that sense I can fully understand that.

Q78 Chairman: But the suspicion of the West goes back far longer than that.

Dr Ansari: Absolutely. You are absolutely right, it goes much further back. The 'axis of evil' was maybe the latest in an unfortunate series of perhaps miscalculations on both sides.

Q79 Chairman: If it is a consistent aim of the Iranian authorities to obtain a military nuclear capacity, what is the relevance of the sweeteners, the carrots, the trade agreements?

Dr Ansari: I can tell you what I believe they may be up to and I can tell you what I know they may be up to and what I know they may be up to is very limited. If we knew what they were up to then we would not be in this difficulty. Clearly they have this determination that says that nuclear technology in its variety of forms - and it is a very widely held view among many Iranians which I disagree with but I am probably a minority of people in this respect - is a sign of modernity, it is a sign of being modern, it is prestigious, it is like Europe in the Sixties when the idea of having nuclear power was essential and it is something that they played very well on a nationalist card and even diaspora Iranians would be very positive on. I think much of the money could be spent on much more fruitful things. Nonetheless, I think the way to handle it perhaps is the way that Europe has done at this stage, which is to say, "Look, if you want to pursue the civilian side of it by all means do. We are not going to prevent you having the technology, but we need reassurances that you are not going to go down the other route", and I think that is why you have to have a very transparent procedure as far as possible.

Q80 Mr Mackay: Dr Ansari, may I explore again this issue of Iranian brinkmanship. You rightly say it has been a very frustrating year so far. Is it too simplistic to say that it is their policy to play the EU off against the United States of America?

Dr Ansari: It is not, because in the last year we have witnessed some of this taking place. It has been a long, well‑founded policy, prior to the last year, that the EU were Iran's ideological bedfellows and that the Europeans were the people to deal with. Clearly the Americans we were going to have long‑term problems with, therefore it is much better to consolidate ourselves with the EU. We have seen not only the EU being played against the Americans but we have seen the EU countries played against each other, that is the flaw. There are those more constructive people who will say that they see the EU as a route towards bringing America in from the cold so to speak, that is also an element and the route to Washington lies through London basically, but this is probably a more long‑term aim.

Q81 Mr Mackay: You have hinted at what the Iranian Government want to achieve. Would you like to say a little bit more on what you think their ultimate objective is?

Dr Ansari: In terms of their nuclear capacity?

Q82 Mr Mackay: Yes.

Dr Ansari: Let me put it this way. I think most Iranian governments even prior to the Islamic revolution had this yearning to restore their great power status and this is something that goes back a very long way, it is something that the Shah was very keen on and I think the vital element here is that they want to be technologically advanced. I think my own view, and it is a view I gathered from an American colleague, is that the Iranians were being quite clever about this, they were going out to the absolute edges of the NPT, providing the infrastructure of a weapons programme but not taking that final step. It would be a matter of debate, as you said, Mr Chairman, about whether the current threats are ones that would push them across the brink. My own view is that for prestige reasons, for the idea that nuclear technology in a broad sense provides them with legitimacy, they will go as far as they absolutely possibly can.

Q83 Mr Mackay: You have just said then, and I am sure you are probably right, that they are seeking again great power status. When you were before the Committee last time you said, in respect of some Iranians, "for them an American attack would be just the tonic to reinvigorate traditional values and national unity". Linking those two together, are we in for a dangerous confrontation between Iran and the international community?

Dr Ansari: That is a very serious concern. I have to say that this year I genuinely feel there are factions on both sides of the equation who are not averse to a confrontation and there is no doubt this is a problem. If it was only one side I would feel much more secure, but because there are both sides working in a way against each other it is something that I think we would be well advised to be acutely aware of.

Q84 Chairman: Dr Ansari, do you see any signs of any more flexibility or pragmatism in terms of foreign policy? For example, we were there and we were told that there are no diplomatic relations with Egypt because they named a street in Tehran after the assassins of Sadat. They have now resumed relations with Egypt. Does that show any greater flexibility to the Middle East in terms of the rejectionist views on the Middle East peace process, Israel/Palestine?

Dr Ansari: The debate on Israel/Palestine has been going on for some time. I fear that we are unlikely to see anything productive on that front certainly in the next year, but there is an increasing awareness among Iranians, even those involved in matters of political influence, that some sort of modus vivendi with Israel has to be arranged, you cannot continue like this ad nauseum particularly when they have to come to some sort of arrangement eventually with the United States and you cannot do that with the United States if you are looking for a peaceful solution. If you are looking for a more confrontational solution this situation is ideal at the moment, it cannot get better. I think there are strong motivations, strong pushes, towards being more flexible on the Middle East peace process.

Q85 Chairman: Have they encouraged their friends in the Palestine Authority to take part in the January elections?

Dr Ansari: I am not aware of their position on the January elections so I cannot comment on that directly.

Q86 Sir John Stanley: Can you explain a bit further why you take the view that there is unlikely to be any progress on Israel and Palestine over the next year? We were told that there was going to be no progress until we knew the outcome of the US presidential election. We have now got that outcome. Mr Blair is clearly very, very anxious to make progress in this next 12 months when he is going to be President of the EU and President of the G8. Just explain to us why your view is that we are unlikely to make any progress in 2005.

Dr Ansari: My view is entirely to do with Iran's relations with the Middle East peace process, not the peace process itself. Iran believes that Israel has recently purchased 500 bunker-busting bombs from the United States specifically as a threat essentially towards Iran. They are unlikely to be using bunker-busting bombs against the Palestinians. In that light and because of all that that implies I think in the next year you are unlikely to see anything from the Iranian aspect that is particularly productive or constructive vis‑à‑vis the Middle East peace process.

Q87 Chairman: Iran is a vast country in an unstable area and of enormous strategic significance. How would you advise us, the US or, more particularly, the European Union to engage most constructively?

Dr Ansari: There are a number of things that I think need to be dealt with including in terms of policy making. I think one of the great weaknesses of the last year has been the fact that so many of the Iran experts in the foreign policy establishment in this country have been directed towards Iraq and therefore we have had a dearth of resources and this has caused some of the problems we have had, ie people have been learning on-the-hoof. They have learned very well but it has caused a few delays. There are some very structural and personnel related issues to do with having the expertise, which is there, it exists, it is just directed towards other things. I think particularly at this moment in time what we need to do is to bring these people back into the fray and bring them back in on Iran. In terms of EU and US policy what we need is a united front, a very clear policy of how we are going to approach Iran, we need to know what we want from Iran and how we are going to get it, but it has to be united and it has to be clear and we must not allow the separate fissures in the EU and America to be exploited by those elements in Iran who would like to exploit them.

Q88 Sir John Stanley: Have you any information as to whether the American sale of bunker-busting bombs to Israel was done on a no strings attached basis or whether the use of those weapons is dependent upon the approval of the US Government?

Dr Ansari: I have been informed, but I would freely admit that this is not my area of expertise, I have taken advice from a number of people, that it would be impossible for the Israelis to launch any sort of air strike on Iran without prior US approval for the simple reason that they would have to fly over Iraq and if they flew over Iraq they would need to get air clearance if they did not want to be shot down. Certainly the view coming out of Washington that I am aware of is that the Israelis are unlikely to do anything without some sort of prior American sanction for it to happen.

Q89 Sir John Stanley: Are you making your statement in relation to the requirement to fly over Iraq on the basis of knowledge of the air-to-air refuelling capability of the Israeli Air Force?

Dr Ansari: That was one thing that they did say, that they would have to refuel. The argument is that the Israelis do not have the logistics capability to deal with a comprehensive air strike. They could hit certain targets, but they would need to refuel over Kurdistan. I do not know why over Kurdistan but this is the area they were talking about. I was very confidently told basically by an American diplomat that they cannot go over Turkey, Turkey would not allow them through, that the only route they could take was through Iraq, that they have a certain amount of range and limited capability to hit some targets but they certainly could not hit all the targets that the Americans could. The Americans have the capability sitting in the Gulf. I was told by an American that there is a lovely myth that their armed forces are over‑stretched. He said, "Our Army is overstretched, our Marine Corps is over‑stretched, but our Air Force hasn't got anything to do at the moment." That was basically his argument and they said they have to justify their budget.

Q90 Mr Hamilton: Do you think the Americans are likely to turn their attention now to Tehran and use military action against them if they do not comply with international agreements on nuclear development?

Dr Ansari: I think there is a very strong incentive among a number of Iranians to pursue this to its final conclusion. One would hope that wiser counsel would prevail because the consequences would be quite catastrophic.

Chairman: Dr Ansali, you have been very helpful to the Committee. Thank you very much.

 

Memorandum submitted by Dr Stefan Halper

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Stefan Halper, Centre of International Studies, and Dr Dana Allin, International Institute for Strategic Studies, examined.

 

Chairman: Dr Allin, Dr Halper, may I apologise, we have had a private meeting and of course the deliberations of the Committee have been interrupted by a division. I fear that there will another series of divisions at half past five so we will seek to contain as much as we can within the time available. May I call first on Mr Hamilton.

Q91 Mr Hamilton: Sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen. I wanted to start off with President Bush's recent electoral victory. It was obviously a much clearer result than in 2000, four years ago, and I wondered whether the clarity of the result and the Republican majority in Congress is likely to affect President Bush's foreign policy over his first term and whether you think that his attitude towards the Middle East and the war against terrorism is going to harden or be any different from the first term?

Dr Halper: Let me say that the question of the decisive nature of the victory, the majority in Congress and the second term all have different dimensions and different effects. The decisiveness of the victory, I think, is a confused result in foreign policy terms because the administration succeeded in conflating terrorism in the Iraq War such that there could be no clear opinion rendered by the public on support either for Iraq or not, or worry about terror. In that respect the election itself shed very little light on where the administration is on the question of Iraq. It did provide an endorsement on the issue of terror. As far as the Republican majority is concerned in Congress, it is a larger party now and there are different voices in it. It is still a very conservative party and it is clearly supportive of the war on terror and the Iraq War, but there are some new voices ‑ and we can talk about that in a minute. In terms of the second term there is the question of balancing his legacy, how he interprets it, and what it means in terms of the administration's foreign policy. I think principally second‑term Presidents ‑ Reagan would be an example ‑ tend to become more pragmatic, they become more cautious, they often become more inclined towards negotiation, as Reagan did in Gorbachev. In this term however this President is concerned about terrorism and it may take some of the wind out of the pragmatic sail.

Dr Allin: I would not find anything in that to differ with. Although it was in historical terms a very narrow victory, it was also a convincing victory. The President and his administration clearly feel vindicated by it. Given that the President governed and the administration governed in both domestic and foreign policy terms in a dramatic way as though they had won a landslide, when they narrowly lost the popular vote, you would expect the impulse of the election, as suggested by your question, to drive ‑ and it is hard to see how it could be more explicitly ideological - a continuing strongly ideological foreign policy.

Q92 Mr Hamilton: It could be more aggressive, though, could it not?

Dr Allin: However, there are the constraints of reality and Iraq is not going very well. Even a deeply ideological administration has to recognise some of the constraints on US policy. I suppose this is a crude way of putting it but not so long ago we were asking is Iraq the first step in a series of transformative projects that would involve the use of military force elsewhere? Leaving aside the whole question of Iran which is a complicated one, I would think not. We do not have the resources for it. On the Middle East specifically, there is a possibility, I would say, and it is only a possibility, that the President, who obviously feels strongly about what he feels strongly about and has made a commitment to the Road Map and to a Palestinian state, and although there are a lot of countervailing currents in the United States and the US administration, the question is opaque, I would not be surprised to see a more concentrated effort, including a degree of persuasion on the Israeli Government.

Q93 Mr Hamilton: Chairman, may I just come back and ask about Syria. Obviously you mentioned Iran and clearly that is very, very complex and the idea that the US military would be contemplating or President Bush would be contemplating military action is, I hope, open to question, but Syria surely is much more straightforward, is it not? It is a very similar regime to the former Iraq. Do you think the US Government is considering military action against Syria?

Dr Allin: I will just say briefly I do not know but I think it is probably implausible at this point. There are arguments for confronting Syria but the United States also needs Syria's co‑operation in stabilising Iraq and I do not think there is a sense that the United States is operating from a position of strength at this point.

Dr Halper: I would simply add to that that there has been a good deal of discussion about Syria but it appears as if the prospect has clearly diminished, just as it has with Iran, and there are very clear reasons for that. In the case of Iran an attack would certainly bolster the Mullahs and it would discredit the opposition. Secondly, there is no guarantee that an attack would impact all nuclear sites or the nuclear capability. Thirdly, unless you would like to come back to this, the British, French and German initiative in concert with the IAEA has brought a great deal of progress on Iran and it seems to have created a kind of informal model which is very interesting because the elements of that model with reference to Iran are not unlike what we see in North Korea. There is a trade component, a financial component, then a movement away from enrichment and towards light water nuclear systems, and the US is in the background with the threat of force if progress is not made. If you look at how we have muddled into this, we have got an approach, it has provided a kind of problem management process and it is actually working as far as Iran is concerned and to a degree as far as North Korea is concerned. Washington does not want a confrontation with either of these countries at this point.

Q94 Mr Olner: At this point, you say?

Dr Halper: At this point.

Q95 Sir John Stanley: I do not mind who bats first on this one but could you just give us your view as to the Bush administration's position as to how much of the occupied West Bank they consider the Israelis should withdraw from?

Dr Allin: My sense is that the Bush administration does not consider that to be the fundamental question. They believe the fundamental question is the nature of Palestinian governance and state and democracy. This is the first order question: does the Palestinian entity develop into a real democracy and a democratic state? There has to be some recognition that viability is an issue and that viability has a territorial component, but if you are asking is there a dominant view in the Bush administration that the eventually Israeli withdrawal has to be on the 1967 lines, my sense is that the administration is, like on many things, divided on this but, no, that is not the driving argument. Having said that, there is a line, and I cannot swear that it is new but it was heard recently from Steve Hadley, that the planned withdrawal from Gaza and from just four settlements in the West Bank is seen by the administration as a down payment on an eventual settlement. I interpreted this language as meaning we do recognise that if there is a suspicion that the Sharon Government might want to more or less use this withdrawal as a fait accompli for a final settlement that this is not something that the United States would support.

Q96 Sir John Stanley: Dr Halper, what is your answer to the question please?

Dr Halper: I have nothing to disagree with in my colleague's comments, except to say that both Zbigniv Brezinski and Brent Scowcroft, the national security advisors, to Carter and Bush I, have stated publicly that they are fearful that the Israelis may be thinking that a withdrawal from Gaza and a few selected areas in the West Bank is not the first step but rather the last step, and therefore because the level of distrust is so great at this point between the parties, that there is no option except for the United States to move to attempt to impose a solution together with whoever will join it. That was their statement. I do not know that in Washington there is a great deal of discussion about percentages of the West Bank or specific areas that they are expected to see where the Israelis will withdraw. There is a fair amount of discussion about the elections on 9 January and calls for them to be expanded beyond elections for President but rather for municipal and also parliamentarian seats.

Q97 Sir John Stanley: Can I ask you the same question from the Israeli Government's perspective. What is your interpretation of Prime Minister Sharon's policy in the West Bank? Do you believe it is a policy of effectively de facto annexation of the greater part of the West Bank and leaving the greater part of the settlement intact or do you believe that if the Sharon Government got the security assurances that it is seeking they would be willing to uproot those settlements and go back to the 1967 boundaries?

Dr Allin: I honestly do not know. I am familiar with the arguments that Prime Minister Sharon has a plan and that is to more or less to stop with this first phase, to make it the last step. The question is admittedly opaque in the context of Israeli politics because he can always claim he has to deal with the settler lobby and cannot be completely open about the final status. This may be an illusive way of putting it. I am not an expert on Israeli politics and certainly not on Ariel Sharon but I almost have the feeling that he, along with many Israelis, including Israelis on the right, accepts the demographic realities, accepts that the land has to be substantially divided, therefore accepts the inevitability and the necessity of a Palestinian state but somehow wants to combine the creation of a Palestinian state with the defeat of the Palestinian movement because that has been his life-long battle. Of course that is a contradiction in terms but it is possible to hold contradictory goals in one's mind.

Q98 Sir John Stanley: Dr Halper, what are your views on the Sharon Government's policy intention or otherwise towards the settlements on the West Bank?

Dr Halper: I think his government sees politics as the art of the possible, as the rest of us do, and they will push their position as far as they possibly can. He is moving to a new coalition, he may involve Labour, there may be some moderating influence in that and there may be moderating influence from Washington in the form of an insistence on a broader electoral process going forward. This is all to be negotiated as time proceeds. There will be a fair amount of pressure from the Israeli side to sustain their position as long as they can but ultimately they will have to conform to the pressure which is put upon them.

Q99 Chairman: Gentlemen, before I go further on the Middle East with Mr Hamilton, back to changes in Washington, how should we interpret the personnel changes that have taken place so far? Some claim that Secretary Powell had become fairly marginalised at the end and it is a good thing for the conduct of US foreign policy that an insider is Secretary of State, namely Ms Rice. How do you interpret the changes that have been made thus far?

Dr Halper: I think that the issue which arises with Secretary Powell's coming departure is the very troubling possibility of group‑think which could easily happen given the configuration of the senior staff positions. If you look at Paul Wolfowitz in a continuing position, John Bolton continuing, Steven Hadley, now the National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams soon to be named the Deputy, if you look at Douglas Feith, whose troubled tenure as Under‑Secretary for Defense continues for the moment, the key players remain. These were the architects of the neo‑conservative policy and those appointments reflect the value that the President places on loyalty. It also reflects his determination to reduce dissention among his senior ranks and, as any corporation does as it is moving to its next term, to consolidate senior management and to stream‑line it. It also reflects the President's comfort with policy direction, his belief that Iraq can be recast as at least having the preconditions for market democracy and that the region can move towards democracy, and finally I think it points to his acceptance of a neo‑conservative theory both of Iraq and more broadly of the region.

Q100 Chairman: Thank you. Dr Allin?

Dr Allin: The suggestion that you have alluded to that the replacement of Secretary Powell by Condoleezza Rice would offer a state department that was a more authentic voice of Bush administration policy and therefore more effective in various ways, I think in institutional terms it makes sense. The fact that in key issues Secretary Powell did not seem to speak for the administration was clearly problematic for foreign policy, so that could be seen in those terms as a positive change, but I agree absolutely with my colleague that the kind of insider‑itis that we see here is disturbing. Again referring to an earlier question, a sense of electoral vindication has been followed by the President appointing people whom he feels closest too and he is unlikely to get very contrary arguments from. Given that that kind of group‑think has arguably had a lot to do with the foreign policy mistakes of the first Bush term, a perpetuation of that dynamic is obviously worrying. Then there are issues of accountability for things that have gone wrong and the fact that we do not see high level changes, and one particular highest level change at the Department of Defense, is disquieting.

Q101 Chairman: Maybe we could turn to the Middle East before moving to Mr Hamilton and I could ask just one question. The President said in Belfast that he would devote the same energies to the Middle East peace settlement as our Prime Minister has devoted to Northern Ireland. Do you think there is any movement in that direction to an engagement by the US administration?

Dr Halper: I think that you are going to see high-profile movements in that direction. The political optics will be encouraging but the structure of the problem remains unchanged, except in the sense that the administration will either receive pressure perhaps from the UK or from other external forces, or perhaps not, but I do not particularly see the structure of this problem changing. You see a lot more discussion about it and I think that this does raise the possibility of how much pressure London wishes to put on Washington on this question. I think Washington may be expecting a very strong position to come from Whitehall.

Q102 Mr Hamilton: When you were answering the Chairman's question about the change in personnel or the lack of change in personnel, I was reflecting that many of the names you mentioned were people we meet with regularly when we go Washington so we actually know a bit about them. I just want to go back to the Middle East, to Israel and the Palestinians. I understand that Marwan Barghouti has withdrawn from the election for President and that leaves the field open really for Abu Mazen, the favourite, if you like, of the West and probably of the United States. But I wonder how much support he is going to get, not just in the election itself but from some of the crucial groups that he is going to have to control if there is ever going to be any peace with Israel. Would either of you like to comment with your views or the views of the American administration on a Palestinian Authority led by Abu Mazen?

Dr Allin: There are two problems, as I see it, in this administration's policy towards the Palestinians. One is, frankly I do not think there is internalised ‑ and maybe this is changing ‑ the view that you have in Europe that a solution to Israel/Palestine is a key element in the broader struggle against terrorism. We could argue about this. I think there are arguments on both sides but maybe because I have spent too much time in Europe I am sometimes astonished by the fact that this connection is not made. It is a complicated connection. It does not mean that Osama bin Laden would give up his jihad but it certainly would have an effect of legitimising moderate Islam, which is an important factor in the struggle against terrorism and, as I say, I am sometimes perplexed that this Republican administration does not really see that connection. Another way of phrasing your question is does the administration see the necessity of empowering a head of the Palestinian Authority so that he can negotiate with the Israelis and show progress to the Palestinians and finally be in a position to make the deals that need to be made and continue to fight against terrorism from the Palestinian territories. The problem is that I think intellectually there is a sense that this needs to be done but emotionally and ideologically there is a view that ending terrorism comes first. That is the first point. The second point is that it has to be observed that President Bush has never really wanted to put Prime Minister Sharon in an embarrassing position. Frankly, he has been more willing to embarrass the British Prime Minister than the Israeli Prime Minister. I guess my bottom line is I although there is an intellectual recognition that the Palestinian Authority needs to be empowered and certainly there is a willingness to help it, I am not sure I see a willingness to push Israelis to take concrete steps that would give the Palestinian leadership greater credibility among its people.

Dr Halper: One small point in answer to that question. What is at stake here is the legitimacy of the new Palestinian government and in order for that to occur Abu Mazen needs to draw into the new government Hamas, Fatah, and other important groups. If he does this in the course of parliamentary elections it will have a multi‑dimensional effect, including giving those groups a stake in an on‑going political society. So legitimacy is the first point. The second point is that Ariel Sharon has a unique capacity to tell President Bush that he is standing on the front line of terrorism and to approach Bush on an issue on which he is very sensitive. That tends to trump most further pressure which could come from the American side on the Israelis. This again is a point that Brent Scowcroft and Brezinski make continuously.

Q103 Mr Hamilton: Very, very briefly, I know, Dr Allin, that you said that you are not very familiar with Israeli politics but some may say there is only one person worse than Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister and that is Benjamin Netanyahu because he is far more extreme. That is why the Israeli Labour Party are prepared to support Sharon because they know they cannot get their own leader elected. I do not know whether that is going to help or hinder the support of the United States Government and President Bush if there is a Labour/Likud coalition under the leadership of Sharon rather than fresh elections that could throw up Netanyahu.

Dr Halper: Frankly, I do not think it will matter.

Q104 Mr Olner: Going back to Iran, I wonder what you think the feeling on the street is in America and perhaps the feeling of the President about whether there is any confidence in the agreement that the EU3 struck on Iran and the nuclear issue. It seems to me rather strange that the UK has this one position and yet France and Germany, the other two signatories were the ones who stopped us getting a second resolution on the war in Iraq. I wondered what the tensions were in that?

Dr Halper: The initial response to this agreement was that Washington had not seen the fine print and therefore could not confirm support or otherwise for it, but there is no question that Washington was generally pleased with a British, French and German initiative which, in effect, provided a kind of cat's paw to deal with the problem. It was not a problem the United States could deal with in this context at this time and it seemed as if, as people looked at it, it was an approach which was working. It had stabilised the problem and reduced the prospect of military activity, which is something that Washington was not inclined to do by virtue of its military requirements and budgetary expenditures in Iraq so that in a certain sense it was the right programme at the right time. As I said a moment ago, it is interesting that it is reflected somewhat by what has been going on in North Korea. So my sense is that it is an acceptable position for the time being.

Q105 Mr Olner: Strangely enough, that is exactly the opposite way that I read the American press on what they thought that we had achieved.

Dr Allin: I have a slightly different view. I agree that the United States cannot oppose this activity really because it does not have anything better to propose. The problem is the administration does not, in general, trust what is going to come out of it. It does not trust the Iranians, it does not believe ‑‑‑

Q106 Mr Olner: But does it trust us to do it?

Dr Allin: Well, I suppose it depends on the definition of "us". One of the ironies here is if the United States has a position it is to go to the Security Council, which given recent history might seem rather ironic, but I do not think the administration has wrapped its collective mind around the question of what is achievable in Iran in terms of an agreement. It believes that Iran will cheat. It may be right about that, and what it has to do is come to that threshold recognition that an agreement with the possibility of cheating, on suspension of enrichment, however temporary, is better than no agreement at all because no agreement at all and no process at all would lead you to a North Korea-type situation.

Q107 Mr Olner: But will that agreement go forward if President Bush removes Iran from the 'axis of evil' countries that he has?

Dr Allin: I do not expect the President to formally go back on his rhetoric.

Q108 Mr Olner: Not even in a pragmatic second term?

Dr Allin: Would the US remove Iran from its list to the extent of joining in and being willing to endorse the agreement and being willing to offer what presumably the Iranians are going to require if this moves further, which is American participation in whatever they are asking for, be it security guarantees, agreement not to try to overthrow regime, trade issues, and so forth? There is, I think, almost a paralysis in Washington on this question. There is a distrust of the idea of entering into this. My hunch is that if Prime Minister Blair went to President Bush, as he may have already, and said this is what we need, American participation and endorsement of this agreement, it would be very difficult for President Bush to say no, particularly since there is a general recognition in Washington that there is no better policy.

Dr Halper: You asked who the US trusts and who it does not trust. There is no question that it trusts the British effort to try to do this in a productive way. It has question marks about the French and the Germans. Certainly there is a lack of trust and comfort with the Iranian leadership but overall there is a willingness to proceed with this and to allow this to go forward because, as my colleague says, there really is not any option. I think this is the key point at this time. This is a balloon which is up in the air. It has not come down yet and the idea is to keep it up in the air for the moment and see where it goes.

Q109 Mr Olner: Just one final little one, you mentioned, I do not know whether it was a Freudian slip or not but you mentioned in answer, Dr Halper, to a colleague of mine that it was really only at this point.

Dr Halper: Yes.

Q110 Mr Olner: At what point does it become a possible option of engagement?

Dr Halper: It was not a Freudian slip!

Q111 Mr Olner: Share your views at what point it is then.

Dr Halper: I think that there are elements in Washington which do not believe the North Koreans will keep an agreement, even if one is achieved, and that there will come a time when the Japanese say, "North Korea has nuclear weapons, we need to weaponise our own systems," and there will be very little come back for that because they will feel as though their security is directly threatened. That will be followed almost immediately by the same comment from Taiwan which will bring a reaction from China. So we have a situation with North Korea where we really would like the Chinese to make some progress because the clock is running. On the question of Iran, if this three‑party talk process falls apart and if Iran returns to an enrichment programme, I think all bets are off. I do not know exactly what will happen but there will be some very forceful voices in Washington.

Q112 Sir John Stanley: We have four minutes left before a division so I will give some very brief questions and elicit some very brief answers. Is it just because I have listened to the wrong extracts from the White House Lawn or is it the case that the word "viable" before Palestinian state has now dropped out of the Bush administration vocabulary?

Dr Allin: I have not observed this. The President is not going to say "towards the creation of a non‑viable Palestinian state", but if viable is seen as somehow a red flag suggesting too many concessions in territorial terms, it is conceivable, but I have not noticed that.

Q113 Sir John Stanley: You still believe the Bush administration thinks of it as a viable Palestinian state?

Dr Halper: I have to agree with that because there is no benefit in a dysfunctional Palestinian state which would collapse around its component parts.

Q114 Sir John Stanley: Would you agree that a Palestinian state that was made out of the rump of what remains of the West Bank that is not occupied by current Israeli settlements, combined with the intense level of restrictions on road traffic by vehicles colour-coded with Palestinian number plates, which has recently been the subject of a very interesting study by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem that a combination of those acute restrictions on road movements plus the existing territory which the Palestinians are now allowed to occupy would mean definitely that the Palestinian state would be non‑viable?

Dr Allin: I personally agree with that but the problem in translating this into American policy because, of course, as you know, there is always a different default tendency on who to blame between the Americans and the Europeans, including I believe the British. The Americans tend to accept the Israeli narrative and blame the restrictions on the Palestinian inability/unwillingness to control terrorism.

Q115 Sir John Stanley: Leaving the blame culture aside.

Dr Allin: I agree with you.

Q116 Sir John Stanley: You agree that those are the facts of life and that on those terms the Palestinian state would be wholly non‑viable?

Dr Halper: I would simply say that in order for this to work, Israeli technology and Palestinian literacy and labour capability have to come together. That means there needs to be an easy flow of labour and skills. I cannot imagine there will be much benefit in proceeding otherwise.

Q117 Chairman: What has the administration learnt about the need for allies as a result of Iraq and other foreign policy events in the past four years?

Dr Halper: Chairman, I think that this administration is increasingly aware of rising anti‑Americanism and the lack of American credibility in multi‑lateral for a, and therefore the reduced scope for American action. In the sense that this imposes tangible limits on American foreign policy, to that degree, the American administration is becoming quite sensitive to it. The British have been a remarkable ally and have provided enormous support. Were it not for British support in the last two years the American effort in Iraq would be more broadly regarded as illegitimate and so British involvement has been critical to any sense of legitimacy that it now has. I think that we are looking at the possibility of a confrontation with the United Nations going forward. It revolves around a range of management and policy issues and certainly the corruption questions which are on the table.

Dr Allin: This administration recognises that it needs allies but I do not think it has transformed its view to believe that it needs alliances as an end in itself. I am not sure it is devoted to the traditional alliances. There seems to be no diminishment in the willingness in Washington discourse to demonise France. And so, yes, the administration needs allies but it has just won an election based on a constituency that is not sentimentally devoted certainly to Europe in general.

Chairman: Dr Halper, Dr Allin, I am afraid this session has been truncated but you have been valuable interpreters of the administration.