News Analysis: As Iraq war escalates, so does anxiety over Iran

by Steven R. Weisman

WASHINGTON With a violent insurgency mounting in Iraq, the Bush administration hardly has time for another crisis overseas. Yet a barrage of warnings from Washington about Iran seems likely to erupt into a confrontation with the Tehran government, perhaps before the end of the year.

American anxiety is focused not simply on Iran’s apparent efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. There are also signs, administration officials have said, of support by Iran for the insurgency in Iraq, which officials fear could grow if the Tehran government is pressed too hard on its nuclear program.

A parallel concern in Washington is Iran’s continued backing of Hezbollah, which the administration and the Israeli government say is channeling aid to Hamas and other groups responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel also warns that Iran’s nuclear program by next year will reach a "point of no return," after which it will be able to make a bomb without any outside assistance.

Complicating the American response to all these concerns, the Bush administration is in considerable disagreement with its allies over how to handle the situation without making things worse.

Britain, France and Germany are warning that a confrontation could backfire, and that positive incentives as well as punishments need to be presented to Tehran, at least at some point down the road. Threatening sanctions, such as a cutoff in oil purchases, for example, is not viewed as credible or likely to get much support, European officials say.

European views cannot be dismissed, especially after the trans-Atlantic discord on Iraq, administration officials say.

Last weekend, under European pressure, the United States agreed to water down its demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately refer Iran’s noncooperation on nuclear issues to the United Nations Security Council, where sanctions might be considered. Instead, Iran was given two more months to show that it was cooperating in shutting down its arms program, with the consequences of Iranian defiance not entirely clear. President George W. Bush’s advisers are taking a hard line with the Europeans.

Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, the leading advocate of diplomacy rather than confrontation in Bush’s inner circle, cites the gathering threat from Iran as justification of a tough stance. "Diplomacy does not mean failure to look in the lion’s mouth," Powell said in a recent interview. "Diplomacy doesn’t mean pretending something isn’t there when it’s there. The Iranians have a nuclear weapons program, and I keep telling everybody, it the responsibility of the international community to apply all the pressure we can."

With Iran policy in a state of flux, there is a drive among conservatives in favor of reaching out to Iranian dissidents and exiles and seeking to overthrow the Iranian government, much as efforts were made with Iraqis in the 1990s. Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, is sponsoring legislation favoring "regime change," with what some say is the tacit backing of administration conservatives. Last year, when it was trying to reach out to Tehran for cooperation on Iraq, the administration stated that it did not support "regime change," though Bush also spoke out in favor of greater democracy for Iranians.

Administration officials say there was an internal debate last year over whether American support should be given to dissident or exile groups seeking to overthrow the Islamic clerics who have run Iran since the 1979 revolution, but they said the idea was dropped for lack of any credible groups to support. One such group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, or Mujahedeen Khalq, has been based in Iraq for years. But the group is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, and administration officials say that after considering the matter, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, ordered that no contacts be made with it.

Yet the cause of "regime change" in Iran is expected to revive if Bush is re-elected, administration officials say. Leading the charge is John Bolton, the under secretary of state for nonproliferation affairs, a conservative who is close to the Pentagon hawks who pressed for war with Iraq after Bush took office in 2001. A colleague called Bolton "the self-appointed tip of the spear" in the discussions. Bolton declined to comment on whether "regime change" was appropriate for Iran, other than to say that even without outside support, widespread unhappiness among Iranians over the lagging economy and stifling religious rule could bring a "revolution from below" and a "completely new regime" with a different philosophy on nuclear matters.

"When the old regime in South Africa collapsed, they got rid of their nukes," Bolton said. "When Ukraine became independent, they did the same. At a time of profound dislocation, it is not inconceivable that a new government in Tehran might be persuaded to drop its nuclear program." On the other side of the spectrum, some at the State Department say that no solution on Iran is possible without a discussion of benefits to the Tehran government if it changes its behavior, or without progress in the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.

Some experts call for a "grand bargain" that would involve an across-the-board agreement in which changed behavior by Tehran on all fronts would be negotiated in return for normal relations and investment from the West. Still other experts say that such an approach is overly ambitious and that "selective engagement" on a few crucial issues, including steps to stabilize Iraq, should be tried first. That view is advocated by a Council on Foreign Relations task force led by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, and Robert Gates, a former director of central intelligence in the early 1990s.

Over three and a half years, the Bush administration has tried engaging Iran, but little has come of its efforts. Low-level diplomatic contacts were suspended in May of last year after a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia were linked to groups working within Iran, and a meeting between an American diplomat and Iranian envoys in Baghdad also did not result in progress. Meanwhile, Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is charging the Bush administration with ignoring the Iran problem.

For all the talk about new policies, few administration officials or policy makers and experts outside the administration think that any new approach will be unveiled soon. A final unpredictable factor in the discussions involves Israel, which some intelligence experts say would be willing to strike Iranian weapons plants, as it did with the French-built reactor in Iraq in 1981. Israeli and American officials insist a strike against Iranian facilities is impractical. Nevertheless, some diplomats were rattled by a recent warning from Iran’s defense minister, Vice Admiral Ali Shamkhani, that Iran would retaliate if Israel tried any such thing, and it even threatened a pre-emptive strike.

"I’m frankly very pessimistic about the future," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy.

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