Repression and the Long Game In Iran

Iranian paramilitary and security forces broke up another peaceful protest in Iran yesterday, reportedly using tear gas and clubs. The Guardian Council, which oversees the elections in Iran, certified the results today, making Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner and setting off more scattered protests. And many are asserting that the events amount to a military coup by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.



Clearly, there are competing loci of power. The ruling regime seems to be maintaining control through the IRGC and the Basiji and asserting a much greater role for them - close to a military dictatorship - while the opposition is trying to leverage the old clerisy that came to power in the 1979 Revolution. In the short run, those with the guns (as Fareed Zakaria says) are likely to win out. You can have all the defiance of women fighting for their rights, and all the admiration from throughout the Arab world, but ultimately, repressive states can hold power in the short term if they control the communications apparatus and deploy the security apparatus. Which is how Iran holds power today, and we're starting to see a consolidation of that control.

With the opposition visibly weakening in Iran amid a government crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters have begun to use his disputed victory in this month's election to toughen the nation's stance internationally and to consolidate control internally.

In recent days, they have vilified President Obama for what they call his "interventionist policies," have said they are ready to put opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisers on trial and have threatened to execute some of the Mousavi supporters who took to the streets to protest the election result [...]

The actions reflect the growing power of a small coterie of hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, Iranian analysts say. Revolutionary Guard members, in particular, have proved instrumental to the authorities since the June 12 election, and analysts say their clout is bound to increase as the conflict drags on.

The emerging power dynamics leave Mousavi with tough choices. Confronted with increasing political pressure over what supporters of the government say is his leading role in orchestrating riots, he can either acknowledge his defeat and be embraced by his enemies or continue to fight over the election result and face imprisonment.

"Everything now depends on Mousavi," said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst. "If he decreases the tension, politicians can manage this. If he increases pressure, the influence of the military and security forces will grow."

I don't know if that analysis is quite right. Mousavi's only ally is time. The cycles of mourning dictate that discontent and unrest will continue to have outlets into the future, and the full face of repression has been made clear to too many people for it to credibly turn back. While the regime has the upper hand in the short term, Mousavi - and actually, the demonstrators, who have driven this process more than he has - can allow the anger to simmer and use targeted, timely actions to continue that boiling. The crisis in Iran is one of legitimacy, and using clubs and tear gas doesn't exactly put that genie back in the bottle. Repressive societies can only keep control for so long.

We Had To Kill The Media In Order To Save It

The fact that the best reporting on the Iranian election crisis is coming from Twitter and random comments from students inside the country is not necessarily a testament to the expansive power of new media but to the irredeemable failure of the old media. Robert Farley has a pretty good roundup that matches my experience on vacation yesterday, trying to find a few scraps of information:

So, I'm trying to find out something about what's going on in Iran, and on CNN I can watch a rerun of Larry King interviewing several gentlemen without shirtsleeves who apparently assemble choppers. On Fox Mike Huckabee is trying to explain why Jesus hates credit card relief. MSNBC is rerunning something about a prison in New Mexico. CNBC is evaluating whether college students should be able to afford Chanel tote bags.

Media fail.

Sadly, if the elections were not a planned occurrence we wouldn't have any media in the country at all. The major TV networks have almost no international bureaus anymore, pooling their resources in London and sending out correspondents to act as individual news gathering machines, one-man or woman networks without the benefit of producers or editorial desks. This allows for a bit more flexibility, but also flattens the landscape so that the news-gathering capabilities of established media differ in no legitimate respect from a native speaker with a Twitter account or a Facebook page. It's not that the tweeters have ascended into the media stratosphere, it's that the traditional media has descended into the depths.

A few national newspapers do seem to have decent reporting on the ground. And thanks to the Internet, we can access a good deal of information about the world from local sources. And some bloggers, like those at the National Iranian American Council and Tehran Bureau (until they were shut down, allegedly by a denial of service attack from inside Iran), are doing heroic work. I would highly recommend this post by Brian Ulrich, positing the entire enterprise as a military coup, with the Revolutionary Guard consolidating power. However, I think we all remember how the networks would pull away from programming for hours to cover international crises as they unfolded. There's clearly an attitude of indifference this time around, but that is as much budgetary as it is cynical. Television simply cannot cover the story anymore. And that's to the great disservice of the still-overwhelming mass of people around the world who depend on it for news and information. The triumphalism of those who would see the sorry spectacle of TV news shoved aside fails to account for the remaining digital divide in the country as well as the tendencies of a mass of people who are not likely to otherwise be reached. And they become more closed off to the world, more uncomfortable with opposing points of view, more clueless about international relations or foreign affairs. And there are clear dangers to such an environment of mass ignorance.

I don't really have a solution to this, but the paucity of the Fourth Estate in this international crisis just leaves me sad.

...To balance out this post with some respect for the organizing capability of Twitter, please wear green tomorrow in support of the reformers in Iran. Maybe Abbi Tatton will report on it!

Drumbeat To Iran Update

The series of events on Iran in the last week are deeply troubling. Today the Bush Administration levied new sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force, accusing them of "proliferating weapons of mass destruction." As the Times article says, "this is the first time that the United States has taken such steps against the armed forces of any sovereign government." Combine this with Vice President Fourthbranch's speech warning of "serious consequences" should Iran pursue a nuclear program, and you can see the phrases being recycled from fall 2002. And then, the supplemental war spending bill includes a major line item for massive bunker buster bombs, the type of which would be used to get at underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

What's worrisome here is not only the horrible mistake it would be to bomb Iran, but that it is a classic distraction scenario , keeping people's minds off of the occupation of Iraq. Whether this threat is followed through or not, the Iraq adventure gets far less scrutiny. And indeed, Republicans view the Iran saber-rattling as good for their election chances.

The whole idea of the attack makes more sense as an attempt to revive the political dynamics that worked so well for the Republicans in 2002 and 2004, when they turned public anxiety about Islamist terrorism to their advantage, while dividing the Democrats and throwing them on the defensive and off their own issues. An attack on Iran could do the same.

We can already see how the politics might play out. On Sept. 26, the Senate adopted a resolution presented by Joseph Lieberman and Jon Kyl declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist organization. The vote was 76-22, with Democrats splitting almost exactly down the middle (Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid were among the supporters). The resolution passed only because its sponsors took out two paragraphs approving a military response, but Democrats split over the suspicion that the resolution might be used to justify one.

(As a side note, we are already seeing Democrats snipe amongst themselves on this and even starting new organizations as a result, while the Republicans are united in demonizing Iran and playing the fear card for electoral advantage. There's no doubt they think this helps them, although I'm not certain that we're in the same political environment as in 2002 or 2004.)

I think it's far more instructive to take a look at what's happening inside Iran to see if this aggressive strategy is working. Late last week Ali Larijani, the top nuclear negotiator, resigned. Commentators in the United States believed this to be evidence that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was taking over the nuclear negotiations and installing his man in the post. But others see it differently:

As ever, the Tehran political scientist Kaveh L. Afrasiabi offered an intriguing explanation in Asia Times — one that reads the political significance of the change quite differently. He suggests that the move obviously reveals a state of open political warfare between the president and Larijani, but that Larijani continues to enjoy the confidence of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, when nuclear talks with EU chief Javier Solana resume on Tuesday with Jalili in Larijani’s old role, Larijani will still be present, according to Iranian officials, “as the representative of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution.”

If so, then far from throwing his weight behind Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Leader may instead be empowering the opponents of the president who are making clear that they can’t work under him. Ahmadinejad was reportedly enraged that President Vladimir Putin presented Russia’s new offer not only to the president, but also went over his head and presented it directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei. (Ahmadinejad has since denied that an offer was made, which seems a little ridiculous since not only Larijani, but the Supreme Leader himself had acknowledged that Russia had indeed made a proposal which Iran would study and respond to.)

Afrasiabi sees the developments as signaling a widening split over handling the nuclear issue: “Various commentators, especially in Europe and the United States, have been quick in interpreting Larijani’s resignation as a ‘bad omen’ reflecting a triumph for hardliners led by Ahmadinejad,” he writes. “But that is simplistic and ignores a more complex reality in the Iran’s state affairs. The quest for greater centralization of nuclear decision-making has met a contradictory response in, on the one hand, the move for more direct input by Khamenei, and, on the other hand, a parallel effort by Ahmadinejad to gain greater control of decision-making.”

Indeed, Larijani did attend the most recent negotiation with the UN, and while Ahmadinejad attempted to negotiate through the media and say that "Iran will not retreat one iota," 180 MPs in Iran signed a letter praising Larijani and denouncing Ahmadinejad's handpicked successor. There is a lot of uneasiness in Tehran over an impending attack, and this is clearly not provoking regime change, but insulating and hardening the Supreme Leader and his inner circle, as they crack down on dissent and centralize the decision-making process, probably elbowing out Ahmadinejad instead of allowing him to set policy. The mullahs control Iran, and this saber-rattling is only making them tighten their grip.

Never mind the fact that the "threat" posed by Iran is beyond minimal, even to Israel:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.

The Bushies must be on another planet if they think the public is going to swallow this nonsense that Iran is a growing and gathering threat that must be bombed without delay or the Revolutionary Guard is going to take over the country and force our women into hijabs. But what's the most depressing is the knowledge that these madmen might be able to get away with it.

Hillary's Talking Without Speaking

You know, I'm beginning to think that Hillary Clinton has John Kerry disease. Actually, that's an insult to present-day John Kerry, who actually manages to speak with some clarity when he's not telling jokes. But 2004-era Kerry tied himself up in knots trying to explain his positions, trying not to commit to one side or the other and rhetorically tie his hands. Hillary is exhibiting these tendencies.

First there's the three-page letter she sent to Iowans trying to explain her vote on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment seeking to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

In a three-page letter mailed directly to Iowans, Clinton (D-N.Y.) insisted her vote last month to name Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group does not put her in league with the Bush administration.

Clinton wrote that she was about to vote "no" on the measure, but changed it to "yes" after Democrats removed language she thought President Bush "could use to justify military action."

"After the problematic language was removed, it was clearly a vote for stepped-up diplomacy, not military action," she said.

This is as dense as anyone saying the initial authorization for Iraq was a vote for more diplomacy. We've seen all too often that this President will use votes like this as mandates for military action. Why would you even give him a pretext for doing so? It's just disingenuous to paint the Lieberman-Kyl amendment in that manner. Yes, the worst was taken out of it, but what remained is still propagandistic and unadvisable. Nothing in that amendment will lead to negotiation, but it may lead to war. Why take the chance?

Similarly, Clinton managed to say a lot while saying nothing at all in this interview with Michael Tomasky:

I want to start with some questions about foreign policy and terrorism. If you become president you'll enter the White House with far more power than, say, your husband had. What is your view of this? And what specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example the power to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant?

Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection. But when you take the view that they're not extraordinary powers, but they're inherent powers that reside in the office and therefore you have neither obligation to request permission nor to ask for ratification, we're in a new territory here. And I think that I'm gonna have to review everything they've done because I've been on the receiving end of that. There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution. There were other actions they've taken which could have obtained congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.

I guess I'm asking, can a president, once in the White House, actually give up some of this power in the name of constitutional principle?

Oh, absolutely, Michael. I mean that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that.

That's a vow to "study the issue," which is pretty much what Bush says when someone asks him about climate change. In truth a President cannot be reasonably expected to give up their own power. Congress must seize the mantle. But these are not encouraging signs. It's the kind of answer that's like a nice finish on the coffee table, but doesn't end up making it look any different.

Later in the interview, she completely equivocates on the issue of Michael Mukasey's Attorney General confirmation, saying she's going to "look closely" at his record and was "troubled" by some of his comments. Again, talking without speaking. And then there was the fallback position that there's nothing the Congress can do on Iraq because "we don't have the votes," which is not true at all (how about not passing a funding bill?).

In some ways this is endemic to the politician, but it's just the kind of gobbledygook answers that really damaged Kerry in 2004. For some reason we may be headed right back to the same type in 2008.

UPDATE: I will say that this answer on terrorism shows more intelligence than we've seen in 7 years of Bush:

Do you think that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, or do you think they have specific geopolitical objectives?

Well, I believe that terrorism is a tool that has been utilized throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological, others territorial. There are personality-driven terroristic objectives. The bottom line is, you can't lump all terrorists together. And I think we've got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d'être of terrorists. I mean, what the Tamil Tigers are fighting for in Sri Lanka, or the Basque separatists in Spain, or the insurgents in al-Anbar province may only be connected by tactics. They may not share all that much in terms of what is the philosophical or ideological underpinning. And I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against when it comes to those who pursue terrorism for whichever ends they're seeking.

Iran Update

The President went on Arab satellite TV and denied that the US was about to attack Iran:

"I have said that if they suspend their nuclear program, we will be at the table," Bush said, according to a transcript of the interview the White House released on Friday. "But they have so far refused to do that."

Bush brushed off as "gossip" reports in the Arab press that he has issued orders to senior U.S. military officials to prepare for an attack on Iran at the end of January or in February.

"I would call that empty propaganda," Bush said. "Evidently, there's a lot of gossip in the parts of the country - world that try to scare people about me personally or my country or what we stand for. And that kind of gossip is just what it is. It's gossip. It's baseless gossip."

Somehow, I'm not getting the believing vibe off of him. On the one hand, it's true that, as the Iranian foreign minister said, that the US is too tied up in foreign entanglements to get involved in committing ground troops to Iran. It's also true that Iraq would be totally against any military strikes on its neighbor.

On the other hand, the neocons who are desperate to change the subject on Iraq don't care about the sensitivities of the Iraqis or the lack of manpower. They still believe in this fantasy that you can get in and out, make precision strikes that hit nuclear facilities and nothing else, provoke no radioactive accidents, and cause no retaliation. It's something less than a real-world view.

Robert Byrd is absolutely right, just as he was when he spoke in that empty chamber before the war with Iraq:

It is deeply troubling to see the U.S. Senate joining the chest-pounding and saber-rattling of the Bush administration. I am no apologist for the Iranian regime, anymore than I was for Saddam Hussein, but I fear that we may become entangled in another bloody quagmire. We have been down this path before. We have seen all too clearly where it leads.

The Senate has refused to learn the lessons of history. And just maybe, they just want the war as much as the neocons:

When I asked Hersh who wants to bomb Iran, he said, "Ironically there is a lot of pressure coming from Democrats. Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all said we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran. Clearly the pressure from Democrats is a reflection of - we might as well say it - Israeli and Jewish input." He added the obvious: "a lot of money comes to the Democratic campaigns" from Jewish contributors.

But while Democrats argue that we must "do something" about an Iranian nuclear threat, Hersh says the White House has concluded their own effort to convince Americans that Iran poses an imminent threat has "failed." Apparently the public that bought the story of WMD in Iraq is now singing the classic Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again."

I don't know if the front-runners are at all committed to military action, but they are cautious to appear "sensible" to the foreign policy community, in other words completely un-sensible. And while Hillary has signed on to Jim Webb's bill blocking funding for military action against Iran, she also supported the Kyl-Lieberman bill giving Bush a back door to attack. And it concerns me greatly that Wes Clark is indrectly endorsing Kyl-Lieberman because he can't criticize the candidate he endorsed:

Last week, Hillary voted for a non-binding resolution that designates the odious Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization in order to strengthen our diplomatic hand. (emphasis mine) On Monday, she joined Senator Jim Webb in co-sponsoring a bill that would prohibit the use of funds for military action in Iran without specific authorization by Congress.

I support Hillary in both these votes. She is committed to ending the unilateralism of the Bush-Cheney administration. She is a strong supporter of direct nuclear talks with Iran, because she believes that direct dialogue with our adversaries is a sign of strength and confidence, and a prerequisite to achieving America's goals and objectives.

What the...

Is the guy who created StopIranWar.com really falling for the "strengthening our diplomatic hand" nonsense?

This concerns me more than ever that, as Byrd said, we are sleepwalking into another conflict.

The Wurlitzer Starts

Well, maybe the timing was off, but it certainly feels like the next war is starting, to Seymour Hersh:

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

Which makes the Lieberman/Kyl amendment, passed in the Senate this past week, all the more dangerous, since it specifically labels the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, and therefore counterterrorism efforts to attack them have credibility. What does not have credibility is the idea that the Revolutionary Guard are Iran are doing any kind of major attacks within Iraq. I'm sure at some level they're providing some advice, and certainly they're strengthened by having a Shiite theocratic state in power, but foreign fighters are the least of our worries in Iraq. This is a scapegoating play designed to shift the blame for failure in Iraq from the Administration to Iran. And right-wing propaganda groups are joining in that chorus.

The New York Times reports that next month, the White House-front group Freedom’s Watch “will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States”:

“If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of Freedom’s Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. “Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel.”

We are seeing a lot of the same signs as we did in the fall of 2002: a neutered Congress, a propaganda war, an inevitability strategy for war in friendly media, resources within the intelligence community moved to Iran, and telling the IAEA to go fly a kite.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned the U.N. nuclear watchdog group Wednesday not to interfere with international diplomacy over Iran's alleged weapons program.

Condoleezza Rice criticized the U.N. nuclear watchdog group Wednesday while en route to the Middle East.

The International Atomic Energy Agency "is not in the business of diplomacy," Rice told reporters traveling with her to the Middle East.

The IAEA's role should be limited to carrying out inspections and offering a "clear declaration and clear reporting on what the Iranians are doing; whether and when and if they are living up to the agreements they have signed," she said.

Maybe it's because they carried out inspections in Iraq, were on their way to finding nothing, and got kicked out of the country before they were done, leading to a global foreign policy disaster. They're "butting in" because they don't want to see disaster number two.

All of which goes back to this Lieberman/Kyl vote, a major win for the neocons which now puts practically all the impetus for stopping a war with Iran on the MILITARY, which is simply an un-American scenario. Ezra Klein gets this exactly right.

Five years after the start of the Iraq War, after seeing all of George W. Bush's deceptions and mismanagement, after seeing our forces chewed up and our prestige shredded, you might imagine Democrats would be reticent to allow any steps towards a confrontation with Iran, particularly under this president. But quite the opposite: 29 Democrats voted to go to war with Iraq. Five years later, 30 voted to push us towards war with Iran. They are still cowards, and they have still learned nothing.

Read all of Hersh's article.

A Vote For War

To be fair, two of the more offending paragraphs were removed entirely, the ones calling for the use of "all instruments" of American power to "combat" Iran, but the Senate just essentially voted for war with Iran, unquestionably stating that Iranian arms are killing American troops (not a definitive in any respect) and declaring that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization. This will be an easy way to back-door an attack on Iran as part of the overall "war on terror" under the 2001 AUMF. The vote was 76-22, with Obama and McCain missing it. Hillary Clinton voted FOR it; Biden and Dodd voted against.

The full marked-up amendment is here. This lays the foundation for an attack on Iran, and keeping in the part about making the Revolutionary Guard a terror organization is abominable.

Picking A Fight With Iran

You don't roll out new product in August, perhaps, but it looks like you can set things up for the fall:

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

I heard Robin Wright, who wrote this article, try to explain on NPR that this shows an increase in diplomatic means to solve the Iranian problem, because now the US can block financial assets of the Republican Guard and companies who do business with them. And while it's true that the Revolutionary Guard has extensive business ties with multinational corporations in the telecom and pharamceutical and transportation industries, that's naive nonsense. Under the White House's way of thinking, this probably enables them to attack Revolutionary Guard targets within Iran as a means of protecting the nation from terrorism under the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force of 2001. This is completely dangerous.

Meanwhile, China is making all kinds of deals with Iran that will help them prop up their struggling economy. If a move like this was strictly economic, all it would do would be to send Iran running further into the arms of China. The Chinese wouldn't sanction the Republican Guard through the UN, after all. But this is not about economic pressure, anyway.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

Such sanctions can work only alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added.

"Sanctions can serve as a prod, but they have very rarely forced a country to capitulate or collapse," he said. "All of us want to back Iran into a corner, but we want to give them a way out, too. [The designation] will convince many in Iran's elite that there's no point in talking with us and that the only thing that will satisfy us is regime change."

This is about forcing a confrontation, and every move that the President has made regarding Iran needs to be viewed in that light.