Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy 3031043898, 9783031043895

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Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy

Kevjn Lim

Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy

Kevjn Lim Tel Aviv, Israel

ISBN 978-3-031-04389-5 ISBN 978-3-031-04390-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

My fascination with Iran, or Persia, and the broad sweep of its historical narratives, cultures, religions, languages, and intellectual traditions goes back a long way. But my specific interest in Iran’s contemporary domestic politics and foreign conduct had their beginnings over a decade ago. At the time, I was posted as a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) around the region, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the gravitational pull of Iran’s presence and influence was at once unmistakable and unescapable. This preoccupation subsequently acquired urgency as the prospect of a regional war, with Israel, rose in direct proportion to Iran’s aggressively expanding nuclear program. At a more fundamental level, the questions didn’t tarry in coming—and neither did the attempts at answering them. The result of that intellectual engagement is this book, which evolved from my doctoral dissertation, as is often the case with freshly minted Ph.Ds. uncowed by the thought of slaving that extra mile. By foraying into two academic disciplines, International Relations (IR) theory and Iranian studies, it also attempts to address what would turn out to be two related, but still very different sets of inquiries. Within IR, my discontent with (for the most part) mutually exclusive paradigmatic silos seeking to explain state behavior nudged me to continue that elusive—and perhaps to some, quixotic—pursuit of theoretical synthesis, or a unified theory. That rarefied integrative effort, in turn, helped clarify the way I thought about the very real-life challenge posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. v

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

And so, I am deeply indebted to my doctoral dissertation advisors at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Amir Lupovici and Prof. David Menashri. Amir, a brilliant social constructivist, proved forbearing, theoretically rigorous, and yet undogmatic—requisite elements for any intellectual discipline hoping to push new boundaries. David, Israel’s foremost political historian of the Islamic Republic and already Emeritus Professor before I solicited his involvement, gave generously of his time, advice, and insights on endless chapter drafts, and on the finer nuances of the Iranian way of thinking. Indeed, if there is a single noun that I think best captures the notion of Iran, it is nuance. Gratitude likewise goes to my two other dissertation committee members, Professors Meir Litvak and Steven Lobell. Meir, another highly recognizable authority within the Iranian studies circuit, is likewise a top-tier specialist of Twelver (Davazdah-Emami) Shi’ism, that spiritual current that drives the Islamic Republic and gives its fiercest proponents collective meaning. Steven, with zero formal obligation at the outset, graciously and patiently agreed to weigh in from the University of Utah as I constructed my theoretical edifice, one that moreover both emerged from, and repeatedly challenged, the neoclassical realism he has very prominently and formidably come to champion. I additionally thank Benjamin Miller, from whose own, often transparadigmatic approach to theorizing, I drew some inspiration. As it turned out, he would also come to be the one reviewing my finalized Ph.D. manuscript, supplying both encouragement and invaluable feedback in equal measure. I similarly thank, at one remove, Yitzhak Ben Yisrael (Isaac Ben Israel), an indispensable figure in Israel’s security establishment and the advisor for my M.A. thesis, where the first buds of this current book project had their inception. Many obliquely or directly helped contribute to shaping the way I think about, understand, and interpret my adopted subject matter. Some of these individuals are mentioned in my footnotes, while others came through in discussions or exchanges at different times throughout the past decade, including inside both Israel and Iran. My brother Daniel, who accompanied me on one of my trips to Iran (midway along his 38month walk from Singapore to Spain’s Cape Finisterre, literally, the end of the earth), read the entire draft with that annoying balance of literary criticism and an educated layman’s eye, helping—I hope—somewhat soften

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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the overly academic edges of a book henceforward intended for nonspecialists too. I also thank the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan for this finished product. Finally, I owe no greater debt of gratitude, and love, than to Andreea, our daughters Daniela and Emily, and my parents-in-law Robert and Lidia Cohen (alongside my own parents David and Lina Lim), who patiently suffered my virtual absence, or eccentricities, for those seemingly interminable four years which concluded just before COVID-19 became pandemic. A flawlessly proofed book-length manuscript is like perfect government. Neither exists. And so, any errors and shortcomings throughout are mine alone. Nonetheless, I hope the reader takes as much pleasure reading this book as I had writing it. Tel Aviv, December 2021

Kevjn Lim

Contents

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Introduction: The Riddle of Iran’s External Conduct 1.1 What’s Been Written and How This Book Contributes 1.2 The Book’s Layout References Toward a Dynamic-Integrative Model of Grand Strategic Adjustments 2.1 Defining the Domain of Grand Strategy 2.2 Competing IR Theories and Why They Fall Short 2.3 A Theoretical Alternative 2.4 The Dynamic-Integrative Model of Grand Strategic Adjustments 2.5 Research Design and Case Selection References The Theoretical Model in Context 3.1 The Dilemma of Measuring Relative Power 3.2 The Ideational Microfoundations of Threat Perception and Political Preferences 3.3 The Evolution of Domestic Politics and Preferences 3.4 Grand Strategic Adjustments in Three Orders References

1 5 8 8 11 11 14 17 26 38 41 49 49 57 71 78 82

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x

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CONTENTS

After the Big Bang: Revolution, War, and Elusive Victories, 1979–1988 References Sobering Up and Adjusting Course, 1989–1991 5.1 Economic Reconstruction and the Rationalization of Government 5.2 Engagement with the GCC Monarchies, Industrialized States, and Major Powers 5.3 Military Rehabilitation, Modernization, and Indigenization 5.4 Rafsanjani and Permissive Accommodationism References

87 93 95 98 102 111 121 123

More Looming Threats, 1991–1997 6.1 The Gulf War and Iranian Diplomacy with the GCC and the West 6.2 Fraught Appeasement: The Elusive Détente with Washington 6.3 Ideology and Balancing: Iran’s Opposition to the Middle East Peace Process 6.4 External Balancing Against US Dominance: Russia and China 6.5 In Russia’s Shadow: Forays into Post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan (CA/A) 6.6 Rafsanjani and Restrictive Accommodationism References

129

Resurrected Engagement, 1997–2001 7.1 Engagement Through ‘Dialogue Among Civilizations’ 7.2 The Reformist President’s Domestic Battles 7.3 Khatami and Permissive Accommodationism References

167

Ambiguous Embrace, 2001–2005 8.1 Bandwagoning and Appeasement: The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars 8.2 Appeasement Through Nuclear Negotiations with the EU3

179

133 139 141 144 153 160 162

169 173 176 177

181 187

CONTENTS

8.3 Khatami and Restrictive Accommodationism References 9

10

11

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Resurgent Revisionism and the Path to Confrontation, 2005–2009 9.1 Nuclear Revisionism and Diversionary Posturing 9.2 Iranian Expansionism in Post-Saddam Iraq 9.3 Soft Power Expansionism in the Global South and the East 9.4 Ahmadinejad and Permissive Revisionism References

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192 197 199 204 212 221 234 237

Precarious Under Pressure, 2009–13 10.1 Nuclear Negotiations: The Challenges of ‘Revisionist’ Appeasement 10.2 ‘Look East’: Internal and External Balancing 10.3 Subversion or Astuce as ‘Para-Balancing’ 10.4 Ahmadinejad and Restrictive Revisionism References

243

Averting One War, Igniting Another, 2013–2017 11.1 Appeasement: Nuclear Negotiations and the JCPOA 11.2 The Shi’a-Sunni Contestation: Balancing (and Hard Power Expansionism) 11.3 Rouhani’s First Term and Restrictive Accommodationism References

263 269

Conclusion: Iranian Grand Strategy Between Crusade and Crisis Reference

248 252 255 257 260

279 291 301 303 315

References

317

Index

341

Abbreviations

AEOI AFP AP BBC SWB CCMES CRS CSIS CTC EIA FBIS FT IAEA ICG IISS ILNA IMF DOTS IRGC IRIB IRNA ISNA MEK MOIS NCR NPT NYT OPEC

Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Agence France-Presse Associated Press (or Additional Protocol, depending on context) British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts Crown Center for Middle East Studies Congressional Research Service Center for Strategic and International Studies Combating Terrorism Center US Energy Information Administration Foreign Broadcast Information Service The Financial Times International Atomic Energy Agency International Crisis Group The International Institute for Strategic Studies Iranian Labour News Agency International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Agency Islamic Republic News Agency Iranian Students’ News Agency Mojahedin-e Khalq Ministry of Intelligence and Security Neoclassical Realism Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons The New York Times Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries xiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

PRC RFE/RL SIPRI TIV TNI UPI WINEP WP WSJ

People’s Republic of China Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Trend-Indicator Value The National Interest United Press International The Washington Institute for Near East Policy The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3

Ideas as ‘Janus-faced’ Causal pathway A Causal pathway B

28 32 32

Graph Graph Graph Graph

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

51 52 53

Graph Graph Graph Graph

3.5 3.6 3.7 9.1

Relative power Relative power: Iran and major powers Relative power: Iran and regional powers Value of petroleum exports and net oil revenues, 1978–2019 Iran crude oil exports (1,000 b/d) Oil prices, OPEC Reference Basket, nominal ($/b) GDP growth per capita, annual %, 1977–2020 Bilateral trade (imports and exports) as % of Iran’s total trade, 2005–2013 Oil prices, OPEC Reference Basket, $, June ’13–June ’16

Graph 11.1

55 55 56 56 233 277

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 10.1 Table 11.1 Table 12.1

The dynamic-integrative model of grand strategic adjustments Iran’s arms suppliers by value (in $ millions), 2005–13 Iran’s defense spending as % of GDP (& in constant 2017 $ billions, in bold), 2009–2018 Summary of grand strategic orientations and corresponding presidencies

35 252 296 304

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Riddle of Iran’s External Conduct

A decade after the 1979 revolution transformed Iran into a revisionist theocracy committed to replacing the existing international order with a pan-Islamist alternative, Tehran’s leadership visibly mellowed down and remarkably, if cautiously, began normalizing its external conduct. Yet, tensions between a severely war-weakened Iran and the sole remaining US superpower, of all countries, persisted and even deteriorated. Then after 2001, Iran uncharacteristically cooperated with the US over the war in Afghanistan, before swinging to the other extreme in late 2005, culminating in an international nuclear crisis. By 2013, Iran again changed directions, acquiescing to nuclear negotiations leading to a landmark deal, but only 12 years after talks and accompanying sanctions first began, even as its military involvement in the region’s conflicts intensified. What shapes Iran’s external conduct, and specifically adjustments to grand strategy? If revolutionary ideology guides conduct as constructivists argue, why soften it with Tehran’s acceptance of nuclear constraints, silence vis-à-vis the repression of Russia and China’s Muslim minorities, or support for Christian Armenia against Shi’ite Azerbaijan? If external pressures such as US military and economic preponderance trump other considerations as realists hold, why continue defying these pressures in ways which imperil national security and welfare? And if individuals act to promote self-interest as liberals contend, why pursue

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_1

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policies which could jeopardize their domestic positions, like when hardliners benefitting economically from isolation backed a relatively moderate centrist government in accepting nuclear limitations and reopening Iran’s economy? This book is an attempt to answer this set of questions with a unified theory of grand strategic adjustments, which I advance in two steps. In the first, I argue that grand strategic adjustments—the phenomenon of interest—are the product of three interacting factors: the structural distribution of material power; ideas and the perceptions they shape; and agency as a function of domestic politics. I take as my theoretical starting point neoclassical realism (NCR), a multicausal theory which also incorporates all three factors. Yet I depart from it by challenging NCR’s assumption of structure’s causal and analytical primacy, and its approach to material power. I show why structure should not unconditionally be privileged, grounding my arguments in claims which neoclassical realists themselves have made. Likewise, I contend that the meaning of material power differentials cannot be disentwined from the ideas which constitute them. I then propose a theoretical alternative which incorporates a priori all three factors corresponding to the main International Relations (IR) paradigms, yet accommodates a posteriori variations in causal primacy based on the empirical record alone rather than deductive reasoning. In the second step, I specify the interaction among all three and show how variation in structure and agency, with ideas as intermediary, produces outcomes. Ideas in the form of ideational-constitutive elements such as national identity and regime ideology interact with the structure of material power to generate perceptions of threat on the one hand. Put differently, where they impinge, structural imperatives or shifts in relative capabilities are interpreted through decisionmakers’ ideational lenses as threat or opportunity, producing constraining or enabling effects. On the other hand, ideas similarly interact with agents, shaping their preferences in the context of domestic politics. While ideas are often collectively shared and relatively stable, agents or factions can diverge enough in their interpretive nuances to mold adjustments toward different outcomes. This is particularly the case in states with both revisionist and accommodationist tendencies, the scope of this work. The resulting causal mechanism, which corresponds to binary variations in threat perceptions and political preferences, leads to four ideal-type first-order grand strategic orientations: Restrictive Accommodationism, Restrictive Revisionism, Permissive Accommodationism, and

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Permissive Revisionism. These orientations in turn yield a set of logically corresponding second-order strategies such as balancing, bandwagoning, and expansionism, which then translate into context-specific third-order security, diplomatic, and trade policies. To test the theory, I empirically examine all executive tenures, namely the prime ministry between 1979 and 1988 and the presidency from 1989 to 2017, which embody variance in perception of external threat and domestic politics. I then demonstrate that variation within my causal model produces consistent variation in the observed outcomes, which is an improvement on existing theories. Why this work, and why now? The Islamic Republic remains one of the more pressing epistemic puzzles in world politics. Lurching between crusade and crisis, Iran’s state conduct since 1979 has often violated international norms while its internal logic has rarely facilitated ease of inquiry. Of greater concern is Iran’s chronic embroilment with its regional neighbors, along with the US, even as it (once again) careened toward a conflict with potentially nuclear dimensions from 2019 onwards. For perspective, consider the following. Iran is the 17th largest country in the world by territory, and the fourth largest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) after Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria in ascending order. In 2018, Iran’s $454 billion GDP ranked 27th globally, and within MENA (excluding Turkey) only Saudi Arabia ($782 billion) surpassed it.1 As of 2018, Iran’s population with nearly 82 million people ranked 19th worldwide and second regionally after Egypt.2 Similarly, regional defense spending in 2017 placed Iran fourth ($16 billion) after Israel ($18.5 billion), Iraq ($19.3 billion), and Saudi Arabia ($77 billion).3 As to active armed forces as of 2018, Iran led at 523,000-strong (of which 125,000 belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), followed by Egypt (439,000) and Saudi Arabia (227,000), while its reserve forces (350,000) ranked third after Egypt (479,000) and Israel (465,000). Whereas Iran’s conventional military capabilities are eclipsed by those of Israel and the Gulf monarchies, Tehran compensates by relying on its ballistic missile arsenal, indigenous 1 Gross domestic product 2018, World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 1 July 2019, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf; at its pre-sanctions peak in 2012, the figure stood at $599 billion. 2 Population 2018, World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 1 July 2019, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/POP.pdf. 3 IISS 2018, 505.

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defense-industrial base, cyber capabilities, network of armed proxies and client groups, and increasingly, weaponized drones. A founding member of OPEC, Iran as of 2018 possessed the world’s second largest (16.7 percent) proven natural gas reserves at 33.9 trillion cubic meters and the world’s third largest (10.4 percent) oil deposits at 155.6 billion barrels (fourth if Canada’s oil sands are included).4 Notwithstanding formidable sector-specific problems, Iran remains a global energy superpower. Finally, Iran’s location at the intersection of the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Southwest Asia, the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman toward the Indian Ocean makes it a hybrid land-maritime frontier state and endows it with an importance far surpassing its size. Iran is only one of two Eurasian land bridges—the other being Russia—linking Europe and East Asia, which has at the same time made it a historical ‘arena of great power rivalry…extremely vulnerable to events beyond its control’.5 Geography determines climate, economic bases, and neighbors, while topography also ‘conditions the direction and nature of contact with those neighbors’.6 Iran shares land borders with seven countries (Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan) and maritime frontage with another eight (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, and at one remove, Russia and Kazakhstan). It likewise controls the Strait of Hormoz through which two-fifths of Persian Gulf oil transits. All told, populous Iran occupies a plateau straddling multiple critical regions, abounds with hydrocarbon endowments, boasts quality education and manpower, commands one of the region’s largest conventional armed forces and its largest ballistic missile arsenal, and lays claim to a long history of assertive empire and subtle cultural influence. Taken together, these arguably render Iran the indispensable major player in the Middle East, the grand strategic conduct of which underscores the contemporary policy relevance and timeliness of this work.

4 OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2019; Iran makes up over 46 percent of OPEC’s gas reserves and 13 percent of its oil reserves. For comparison, Russia has the world’s largest proven gas reserves at 50.5 trillion cubic metres, while the top two oil states possess 302.8 billion (Venezuela) and 267 billion (Saudi Arabia) barrels of oil. 5 Hunter 1992, 101. 6 Spykman 1938a, 39–40; 1938b, 213.

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1.1 What’s Been Written and How This Book Contributes External pressures, ideology, and domestic politics as independent variables have been widely broached in studies of post-revolutionary Iran’s external conduct. These fall into three strands of scholarship: history and area studies, security policy-oriented thinktank research, and IR theory. Iran specialists like Ramazani, Keddie, and Gasiorowski examine wartime Iran’s relations with its regional neighbors and the Cold War superpowers in light of ideology, clerical power struggles, and international constraints.7 Fuller discusses the constants of Iran’s foreign policymaking, while Hunter scrutinizes the role of history, geography, and nationalism, and in a later work, both internal and especially external factors in Iran’s relations with key governments.8 Menashri and, separately, Esposito and Ramazani’s edited volume shed light on domestic factors, including the struggle between conservatives and reformists over ideological interpretations and power in shaping Iran’s foreign outlook, and the role of ideology in impeding détente with the US and Israel.9 Scholars focusing on domestic politics further draw out the links between factionalinstitutional wrangling and policy outcomes, including expansionism.10 Ehteshami explores the role of identity, historical mistrust, geography, economic development, and factionalism in five stages in Iran’s foreign policy development, while a more recent work surveys foreign policy changes since 1979 and across all four post-Khomeini presidencies, pitting domestic against external pressures as explanations.11 Policy-oriented thinktank studies focus primarily on Iran’s national security. Thus, Chubin examines the eight-year war’s influence on Iran’s subsequent rearmament and capabilities, Byman et al. discuss the interests and influence of security institutions on foreign policy, while Thaler et al. investigate the links between informal factions and policy outcomes.12

7 Ramazani 1986; Keddie and Gasiorowski 1990. 8 Fuller 1991; Hunter 1990, 2010. 9 Menashri 2001; Esposito and Ramazani 2001. 10 Moslem 2002; Baktiari 1996; Arjomand 2009; Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007. 11 Ehteshami 2002, 2017. 12 Chubin 1994; Byman et al. 2001; Thaler et al. 2009.

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Clawson’s edited volume throws into focus Iran’s intentions and capabilities and the implications for international security, as does Katzman’s more recent assessment of Iran’s foreign and defense policies.13 Researchers have also examined Iran’s strategic culture, often relating this to the country’s military and nuclear postures,14 or its ideationalconstructivist wellspring.15 Within IR, studies pitched at the longer-term grand strategic scope are exceedingly rare, with most instead focused on specific policies or periods. For instance, Terhalle claims that structural pressures prompted Iran’s 2015 acquiescence to nuclear limits, but only after previously arguing that revolutionary ideas and the conservatives’ institutional dominance combined have stymied Iran’s socialization in world politics.16 Warnaar situates Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy behavior entirely within the intersubjective, discursive context of regime ideology, and posits external pressures as intersubjectively constituted, including in terms of international (il)legitimacy.17 Rakel proposes a ‘critical geopolitics’ framework combining ideology, international pressures, and especially elite politics in the period spanning 1979–2008, but other than a descriptive treatment does not demonstrate how all three actually interact.18 Among the rare multicausal approach is Juneau’s, who employs NCR to demonstrate how structural imperatives between 2001 and 2009 were filtered by Iran’s status discrepancy, ideology and domestic politics in that order, before shaping foreign policy, often in suboptimal ways.19 These studies are empirically rich and offer explanations for different aspects of Iranian conduct. Monocausal theories have however yet to prove sufficient when scaling up from concrete policies to the diachronic expanse of grand strategy, or at times even among policies within a synchronous setting. Thus, realist explanations shed light on Iran’s nuclear concessions, but not its revolutionary ideology and persisting

13 Clawson 1994; Katzman 2017. 14 Knepper 2008; Stanley 2009; Taremi 2014; McInnis 2015; Eisenstadt 2015; Khalaji

2008. 15 Adib-Moghaddam 2007; Maloney 2002. 16 Terhalle 2015; Terhalle 2009. 17 Warnaar 2013. 18 Rakel 2009. 19 Juneau 2015.

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hostility toward the US and Israel. Constructivism explains the latter, but not sudden anomalies like why Iran offered a ‘grand bargain’ when it did, or why it accepted nuclear constraints. Liberalism and second-image approaches clarify the factional interests underlying policy choices, but alone hardly explain why reformists and hardliners briefly cooperated with the US from late 2001 despite longstanding animosity. Yet, none of this should surprise given that research traditions simplify reality precisely to focus on a problem’s specific aspect, in line with their theoretical, ontological, epistemological, methodological, and normative commitments. Even existing multicausal explanations do not systematically inquire into the determinants of Iran’s grand strategic adjustments. Crucially, neither do they specify causal pathways and the conditions under which certain outcomes are likelier than others. Despite its relevance, Juneau’s study also focuses on a restricted period and set of issue-areas, and assumes structure’s default primacy.20 Perhaps more symptomatic of the thread common to other multicausal explanations is Ehteshami, who contends that ‘[Iran’s] international relations take shape through the interplay of elite interactions and factional interpretations of the republic’s imperatives…a constant assessment of the immediate external pressures…and the opportunities presented’, but abstains— consciously, given his differing research aims—from specifying how these causes interact to produce which outcomes.21 This book complements and extends the existing body of work by explaining variation in Iranian grand strategy across a four-decade time horizon. It contributes to International Relations theory (and related disciplines such as strategic and security studies) by advancing an alternative explanatory model which deductively unifies the field’s three major perspectives, but inductively or abductively—that is dynamically—establishes causal primacy based on the empirical record. In offering a fresh and systematic interpretation of the Islamic Republic’s grand strategic behavior, it likewise contributes to the field of Iranian studies.

20 Ibid. 21 2017, 251.

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1.2

The Book’s Layout

Chapter 2 begins by defining grand strategy, before surveying the notion as it speaks to competing IR theories, along with their limitations. The next section offers a multipronged critique of the most competent and prolific of these existing theories, neoclassical realism, and proposes a theoretical alternative. This is the substructure upon which the causal argument, model of grand strategic adjustments, and hypotheses then rise. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research design. Chapter 3 situates the explanatory factors as well as the dependent variable in the Iranian context, and further establishes the values relevant to the empirical section. Chapters 4–11 proceed to a discussion of the empirical record. Setting the baseline and the tone is a brief survey of the period spanning the revolution to the Iran-Iraq war’s end. The subsequent chapters examine in greater detail all four post-war presidencies at historical inflection points, starting and wrapping up in reference to the broader theoretical framework. The conclusion chapter summarizes the empirical findings and their theoretical fit, extends the causal model to Rouhani’s second term, and offers some policy implications. To demonstrate the external validity of the proposed model in both its specified and basic forms, the chapter also briefly applies it to three contemporary cases—China, Turkey and Israel. The book then ends with some general remarks and a restatement of the overarching theoretical argument.

References Secondary Sources (English) Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin, Iran in world politics: the question of the Islamic Republic (London: Hurst & Co., 2007). Arjomand, Said A., After Khomeini: Iran under his successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Baktiari, Bahman, Parliamentary politics in Revolutionary Iran: the institutionalization of factional politics (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Byman, Daniel, Shahram Chubin, Anoush Ehteshami & Jerrold D. Green, Iran’s security policy in the post-revolutionary era (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). Chubin, Shahram, Iran’s national security policy: capabilities, intentions, and impact (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994). Clawson, Patrick, ed., Iran’s strategic intentions and capabilities (Washington, DC: National Defense University/INSS McNair Paper 29, April 1994).

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Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). ———, ‘The foreign policy of Iran’, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds., The foreign policies of Middle Eastern states (London: Lynne Rienner 2002): 283–309. Ehteshami, Anoushiravan & Mahjoob Zweiri, Iran and the rise of its Neoconservatives (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007). Eisenstadt, Michael, ‘The strategic culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran: religion, expediency, and soft power in an era of disruptive change’, 2nd edition, MES Monographs No. 7 (Marine Corps University), Nov 2015. Esposito, John L. & Rouhollah K. Ramazani, eds, Iran at the crossroads (NY: Palgrave, 2001). Fuller, Graham E., The center of the universe: the geopolitics of Iran (Westview Press/RAND, 1991). Hunter, Shireen T., Iran’s foreign policy in the post-Soviet era: resisting the new international order (California: Praeger, 2010). ———, Iran after Khomeini, The Washington Papers 156 (New York: Praeger, 1992). ———, Iran and the world: continuity in a revolutionary decade (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), ‘Chapter ten: country comparisons and defence data’, The Military Balance 118.1 (2018): 499–508. Juneau, Thomas, Squandered opportunity: neoclassical realism and Iranian foreign policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Katzman, Kenneth, ‘Iran’s foreign and defense policies’ (Washington, DC: CRS, 2 Aug 2017). Keddie, Nikki R. & Mark J. Gasiorowski, eds, Neither east nor west: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Khalaji, Mehdi, ‘Apocalyptic politics: on the rationality of Iranian policy’, Policy Focus no. 79, WINEP, 2008. Knepper, Jennifer, ‘Nuclear weapons and Iranian strategic culture’, Comparative Strategy 27.5 (2008): 451–68. Maloney, Suzanne, ‘Identity and change in Iran’s foreign policy’, in Identity and foreign policy in the Middle East, Shibley Telhami & Michael Barnett, eds (NY: Cornell University Press, 2002): 88–116. McInnis, J. Matthew, ‘Iran’s strategic thinking: origins and evolution’, American Enterprise Institute, May 2015. Menashri, David, Post-revolutionary politics in Iran: religion, society, and power (London: Frank Cass 2001). Moslem, Mehdi, Factional politics in post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

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Rakel, Eva Patricia, Power, Islam, and political elite in Iran: a study on the Iranian political elite from Khomeini to Ahmadinejad, International Comparative Social Studies vol. 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Ramazani, Rouhollah K., Revolutionary Iran: challenge and response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Spykman, Nicholas J., ‘Geography and foreign policy, I’, American Political Science Review 32.1 (Feb 1938a): 28–50. Spykman, Nicholas J., ‘Geography and foreign policy, II’, American Political Science Review 32.2 (Apr 1938b): 213–36. Stanley, Willis, ‘Iranian strategic culture and its Persian origins’, in Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner & Jeffrey A. Larsen, Strategic culture and weapons of mass destruction (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 137–56. Taremi, Kamran, ‘Iranian strategic culture: the impact of Ayatollah Khomeini’s interpretation of Shiite Islam’, Contemporary Security Policy 35.1 (2014): 3– 25. Terhalle, Maximilian, ‘Why revolutionary states yield: international sanctions, regime survival and the security dilemma. The case of the Islamic Republic of Iran’, International Politics 52.5 (2015): 594–608. ———, ‘Revolutionary power and socialization: explaining the persistence of revolutionary zeal in Iran’s foreign policy’, Security Studies 18.3 (2009): 557–86. Thaler, David E., Alireza Nader, Shahram Chubin, Jerrold D. Green, Charlotte Lynch and Frederic Wehrey, Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009). Warnaar, Maaike, Iranian foreign policy during Ahmadinejad: ideology and actions (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

CHAPTER 2

Toward a Dynamic-Integrative Model of Grand Strategic Adjustments

2.1

Defining the Domain of Grand Strategy

The notion of grand strategy originally evolved from the lower level of military strategy, which defined political power until the rise of the nationat-arms and industrialization in the nineteenth century. Reflecting on the Napoleonic wars, Carl von Clausewitz amended his view of war’s aim as the absolute defeat and destruction of the adversary’s forces, conceding ‘that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means’. ‘The political object’, he continued, ‘is the goal, war is the means of achieving it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose’.1 This dictum explicitly transcends the ambit of military strategy toward the threshold of grand strategy. Scalded by World War I, Basil Liddell Hart later added that ‘while the horizon of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace’, the supreme political objective.2 Paul Kennedy perhaps offers the best contemporary definition of grand strategy as the effort ‘to bring together all of the elements, both military and non-military, for the preservation and enhancement of the nation’s

1 Clausewitz 1976, Ch. 1 (Sect. 24) 87. 2 Liddell Hart 1967, 336.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_2

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long-term (that is, in wartime and peacetime) best interests’.3 For Walter Lippmann, it ‘consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power’,4 while Barry Posen calls it ‘a state’s theory of how it can best “cause” security for itself’.5 At its most abstract, grand strategy is the balancing of ends and means, which taken together constitute a conceptual map to a state’s desired destination. Policy, then, is the vehicle to reach it. This map guides resource-limited states in positioning themselves within the international arena, creating or seizing opportunities, and fending off threats. Internal factors like leadership and morale, demography and social cohesion, industry and technology are of course crucial. Yet, the concrete manifestations of grand strategy lie chiefly in the three outward-looking instruments of statecraft: security, foreign, and trade policy. National security concerns the state’s force posture and overseas military deployments, defense spending, arms acquisitions and production. Foreign policy encompasses diplomacy, alliances, and similar bilateral or collective arrangements, as well as foreign and humanitarian aid. Alliances often complement defense policy, including to compensate for relative military weakness. Conversely, a strong military increases one’s diplomatic gravitas and bargaining leverage. Foreign policy is thus a subset, not synonym, of grand strategy. Trade policy takes as its point of departure the state’s position in the international division of labor and its comparative advantage (factor endowments such as capital and labor, natural resources, infrastructure) as a basis for securing and exchanging strategic goods and services, such as hydrocarbons, grain, minerals, and technologies. Liberals promote free trade while mercantilists use commerce to increase state power or adopt protectionism to shield sensitive and import-competing industries from foreign competition. Ultimately, trade volume, direction, and diversity all affect a state’s international fortunes. Studies of grand strategy have typically privileged empires and great powers. According to Williamson Murray, ‘grand strategy is a matter involving great states and great states alone. No small states and few

3 Kennedy 1991, 5 (emphasis original). 4 Lippmann 1943, 9. 5 Posen 1984, 13.

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medium-size states possess the possibility of crafting a grand strategy’.6 By ‘possibility’ he meant its cognate, ‘power’, consistent with the Athenians’ 416 B.C warning to Melos, then a colony of Athens’ archrival Sparta, ‘that right…is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’.7 Raymond Aron likewise held that small powers worry about self-preservation, while great powers act ‘to achieve an ill-defined purpose […] the maintenance or creation of a favorable international environment’.8 But while power enables choice, it says nothing about how states reconcile ends and means, a challenge no less implicating small and middle powers which must seek ways to compensate for relative weakness and limited means. For these, grand strategy is even more critical since ‘[i]nopportune acts, flawed policies, and mistimed moves may have fatal results’ whereas great powers ‘can do the same dumb things over again’.9 ‘All states have a grand strategy, whether they know it or not’, Edward Luttwak thus argues, even if ‘not all grand strategies are equal’.10 The term ‘grand strategy’ should therefore neither be conflated with a state’s power or ranking, nor necessarily with any notion of a ‘grand scheme’ in the sense of intentional, teleological calculation by perfectly rational leaders. Instead, the ‘grand’ aspect of strategy merely resides in its holistic, national-level compass as opposed to the lower levels of theatre strategy, operations, and tactics.11 Assuming they have clear goals and preferences, even the helmsmen of great powers find themselves continually negotiating unforeseen challenges and opportunities. Since all states in this sense have a grand strategy, the question, then, is why states adopt certain strategies and how they implement them.

6 Murray 2011, 1. 7 Thucydides 1996, 352 (Bk V:89). 8 Aron 1974, 41. 9 Waltz 1979, 195. 10 Luttwak 2009, 409. 11 Luttwak 1987.

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2.2 Competing IR Theories and Why They Fall Short Neorealism posits that the structure of relative capabilities drives grand strategy.12 According to Waltz, anarchy socializes states for survival and punishes those failing to adapt.13 Differentiated only in material capabilities, states with similar capabilities confronting similar external pressures should react in similar ways.14 Realists however disagree over whether self-help incentivizes states to balance against power, threats, or interests.15 Defensive (neo)realists believe states seek to maximize relative security and pursue grand strategies sufficient to defend the status quo, such as balancing.16 For offensive (neo)realists, states maximize relative power to survive and therefore favor expansionism and hegemony.17 Neorealism brackets unit-level factors like ideology and agency, and simply assumes that states are motivated by survival. It also claims to explain only longer-term systemic-structural phenomena and not specific state behavior.18 Yet even then, it failed to predict a systemic-structural phenomenon as significant as the end of the Cold War. Structural cues alone may suggest when states might consider adjustments, but outcomes remain indeterminate. Neoliberal institutionalism, pluralism, liberal intergovernmentalism, and other theories associated under the rubric of (neo) liberalism approach grand strategy inside-out.19 According to this view, innenpolitik factors like regime type, institutions, and the distribution of policy preferences, interests, and influence among domestic actors are the primary determinants of grand strategy.20 Liberals recognize the power of ideas

12 Waltz 1979, 80. 13 Ibid., 77 (FN 1). 14 Ibid., 104. 15 Ibid., 118; Walt 1985; Schweller 1998. 16 Waltz 1979; Walt 1985; Van Evera 1999. 17 Mearsheimer 2001, 33–54, Chap. 5. 18 Waltz 1979, 71. 19 Moravcsik 1997, 547. 20 Ibid., 521; Sterling-Folker 1997, 7; Rosecrance and Stein 1993; on bureaucratic poli-

tics, see Allison 1969; on how cartelized logrolling pushes states towards overexpansion, see Snyder 1991; on systemic liberalism, see Keohane and Nye 1977.

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and institutional norms, most notably as embodied in democratic peace theory,21 but focus on how they shape domestic preferences. While neoliberals agree with neorealists that states operate within anarchy, they emphasize absolute rather than relative gains, predisposing them toward cooperative rather than competitive strategies.22 Innenpolitik theories may suffice to demonstrate how competing domestic preferences explain outcomes where external pressures or governments are weak. However, beyond the challenge of reconciling centrifugal, self-serving domestic preferences with a coherent ‘national’ interest, liberals often also overlook the reverse effects of geopolitics on domestic politics.23 Furthermore, without co-opting complementary theories, liberal accounts struggle to explain why states with similar domestic characteristics vary in their foreign interactions (or vice versa). The causal significance of ideas underlying the preferences and behavior of domestic and international actors finds itself bracketed by neorealists and downplayed by neoliberals. Constructivism and related sociological, cultural, and epistemic perspectives posit political reality as socially and intersubjectively constituted.24 Actors endogenously produce and reproduce values, belief systems, and norms, which mold cognitive processes and domestic institutions, and in turn shape views on Ego and Alter, threats and opportunities.25 In making grand strategy, elites are profoundly conditioned by factors like history and identity, ideology, and role conception, what Wendt would broadly call the ‘discursive conditions of possibility’.26 Periods of revolutionary flux provide fertile laboratories for constructivist inquiry. Scholars have studied ideational and policy change, including in policy legitimation processes and when external crises contradict a state’s identity narrative.27 Nevertheless, despite constant (re)negotiation, contestation, and the possibility of change over time, at

21 Russett 1994. 22 Powell 1991, 1994; Snidal 1991. 23 Trubowitz 2011, 3; Gourevitch 1978. 24 Wendt 1992, 395. 25 Katzenstein 1996, 18–19; Tannenwald 2007, 43–72; Johnston 1995a; for similar

views outside the constructivist canon, see Goldstein and Keohane 1993 and Jervis 1998, 988–9. 26 Wendt 1999, 136. 27 Goddard and Krebs 2015; Suboti´c 2016.

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least when examined within specified periods, ideational-cultural factors, self-understanding, and foundational narratives tend to be relatively stable once institutionalized (otherwise identities and social structures would never emerge).28 And although intuitively a fundamental aspect of many explanations, ideas alone often do not suffice. Hence, while constructivism illuminates ideational co-constitutive processes and preference formation, by co-opting realist or liberal theories it may better explain for instance why leaders with different ideational antecedents evince similar strategic behavior (the Allies and Stalin jointly balancing against Hitler), or why decisionmakers sharing the same hardline revolutionary norms diverge in their approach to foreign affairs.29 If grand strategy concerns agents steering states under structural constraints in ways consonant with internalized codes and modes of thinking, explanations must include multiple, situational, and dispositional levels of analysis to be jointly sufficient. In the earlier spirit of Rosenau’s ‘linkage politics’, Gourevitch’s ‘second image reversed’ and Putnam’s ‘two-level games’ among others,30 neoclassical realism (NCR) produces causal models interweaving the first, second, and third images.31 Like its neorealist forebear, NCR attributes causal primacy to structure because invasions threaten state survival, but ‘relax[es] the constraints of external determinism’ to account for state-level particularities.32 Structure remains indeterminate ‘because its influence on outcomes must pass through intervening domestic-level processes that can amplify, obstruct, or distort it’.33 Decisionmakers do not always perceive structural imperatives correctly, act on them rationally, or mobilize resources for them efficiently.34 Consequently, Friedberg suggests that structure offers a useful point to begin, not end, analysis.35 As Sterling-Folker notes,

28 Wendt 1992, 423, and 2006, 201. 29 Constructivists who downplay relative material capabilities do not necessarily ignore

structure insofar as intersubjective meanings. See Wendt 1999. 30 Rosenau 1966 and 1969; Gourevitch 1978; Putnam 1988; see also Snyder 1991, 64, 317; Morgenthau 2006, 50; 31 On the three images, see Waltz 1959; Rose 1998, 146. 32 Ripsman et al. 2016, 19, 25. 33 Ibid., 117. 34 Wohlforth 1993, 2. 35 Friedberg 1988, 8; also Nye 1987, 372.

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‘[r]ealism argues that both systemic environment and domestic process have causal impact because the former determines the ends [i.e. primarily survival] to which actors strive but the latter is the means by which actors obtain those ends’.36 Domestic process, she adds, ‘determines how actors react to external events and pressures’,37 the convergence of which forms the operative arena for grand strategy. NCR asks why states occasionally fail to respond to structural imperatives, posits unit-level pathologies, and compares anomalies with ideal-type baselines predicted by neorealism.38 This objective rationalism assumption however ignores subjective and contextually-bound imperatives that may be far more meaningful and consequential to domestic actors.39 Its proponents now recognize that NCR can also explain foreign policies and grand strategies on their own merits.40 Yet even then, something is still amiss.

2.3

A Theoretical Alternative

Although it is a signal improvement on monocausal theories, NCR carries an important flaw and is itself therefore only a starting point for my theoretical alternative. I advance a multicausal argument modelling power, perceptions, and preferences, but diverge from NCR over its approach to structure and material power and hence its ontological underpinnings. I accept NCR’s claim that the structure of relative capabilities plays an important, even often dominant role in shaping grand strategic adjustments. I however problematize NCR’s insistence on according analytical and causal primacy to structure. Now, NCR’s prioritization of causal primacy is rooted in three neorealist assumptions: (1) international anarchy necessitates self-help; (2) security (survival) trumps all other national interests; and (3) anarchy and the lure of relative gains render interstate cooperation difficult.41 Accordingly, ‘states conduct foreign

36 Sterling-Folker 1997, 4. 37 Ibid., 16. 38 Rose 1998; Taliaferro et al. 2009; Friedberg 1988; Snyder 1991; Wohlforth 1993; Christensen 1996; Zakaria 1997; Schweller 1998; Juneau 2015. 39 Sterling-Folker 1997, 22; Johnston (1996, 268) likewise argues that ideational variables shape ‘nondeviant’ and not just deviant outcomes. 40 Ripsman et al. 2016, 29–31. 41 Ibid., 179.

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policy – and particularly grand strategy – with an eye to constraints and opportunities at the level of the international system’.42 I challenge this causal primacy claim from three angles. First and most intuitively, agents have been behind some of history’s most dramatic strategic events and turnarounds, so that the Mongol expansion would be meaningless without Genghis Khan, France’s European conquests without Napoleon, and World War Two without Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Not only have leaders been the primary determinants of grand strategy, some like Hitler have idiosyncratically shaped outcomes despite overwhelming systemic-structural odds.43 Moreover, agency often peaks precisely during times of crisis, as Churchill demonstrated during World War Two. Byman and Pollack note that other than when power is concentrated in the leader, and domestic forces and institutions are internally fissured, individuals are likely to be most influential during periods of instability and ‘great change’.44 For this reason, the Roman Republic and its Senate allowed the rise of limited-mandate dictators to deal with immediate crises at hand.45 Goddard and Krebs have also argued that it is precisely in ‘unsettled times’, when structural challenges to national security and grand strategy emerge, that ‘“policy entrepreneurs” enjoy the freedom to redefine the national interest and to advance new constructions of threat’.46 Clearly then, agency does not arise only under permissive structural conditions. Even if less common, it can also exert independent effects. Second, the claim to causal primacy logically presupposes structure as a necessary condition. Yet, structure as necessary condition does not ipso facto imply causal primacy. Consider the following. Waltz, the consummate structural realist, accommodates the possibility of anomalies by noting that ‘a unit of the system can behave as it pleases’ even if ‘the international arena is a competitive one in which the less skillful must expect to pay the price of their ineptitude’.47 Similarly, neoclassical realists assert that structural imperatives sometimes compel agents to act in 42 Lobell et al. 2012, 33. 43 Byman and Pollack 2001. 44 Ibid., 109. 45 Ibid., 142. 46 2015, 28 (and FN 61). 47 Waltz 1986, 331.

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anticipated ways, but at other times including in their absence agents can act more freely and as they please.48 In addition, neoclassical realists admit that internal threats to regime survival—a unit-level phenomenon— unambiguously trump external imperatives.49 To concede the above three propositions is in effect to vitiate the claim that structure is a necessary condition (or, on its own, even a sufficient condition in most cases). Ironically, NCR’s explanatory ‘home turf’ lies where structure plays the lead role but does not dominate, allowing additional variables to intervene.50 Neoclassical realists might counter by contending that structural imperatives matter even in their absence since this allows unit-level agency leeway to dominate. While this correlation might be empirically consistent, could its ‘truth value’ not equally be rooted in the frequent absence of strong leaders, and hence agency strong enough to override structural constraints? Of course, structure is a necessary condition, but so are domestic variables as implied in the clockwork consistency of NCR works incorporating both, even if neither is sufficient on its own. But confusingly, Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell also note that ‘while in extreme circumstances the system or domestic environment may dominate, they do not determine’.51 That domestic variables are a necessary condition, and ‘may dominate’ occasionally, in their own telling, has never prompted neoclassical realists to claim domestic variables as causally primal. Yet, if structure likewise ‘may dominate’ only occasionally, and does not determine, how then does it still by default retain causal primacy and analytic priority, if not for neoclassical realists’ unconditional adherence to their neorealist roots? Either the structural dominance claim is consistently correct, which even in NCR’s own telling is not the case, or causal primacy may flow from both structure and unit under conditions requiring further specification. Similarly, NCR might re-emphasize that structure matters generally even if not necessarily all the time, which would then presumably leave room for anomalies. The trouble is that even where structure exerts its effects, this may comprise weak cues merely catalyzing the start of

48 Ripsman et al. 2016, 53. 49 Steven Lobell, personal communication, 11 December 2017; also Waltz 1979, 91–2. 50 Taliaferro et al. 2009, 4–5. 51 Ripsman et al. 2016, 4.

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certain processes, the outcomes of which are then still causally determined by agents. Thus, to exploit a medical analogy, HIV ‘sets the stage’ by rendering its host vulnerable to other pathologies, one of which, say cancer, might eventually become the ‘main cause’ of demise. Here, would we properly call HIV—structure—the ‘main cause’ of a specific outcome, or at best only its causal ‘stimulus’ in a longer chain concatenating other determinants? Of course, some structural effects are causally predominant as the example of one’s straightforward escape instincts during a hotel fire illustrates. But hotel fires are uncommon in world politics.52 Moreover, as Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell note, ‘the international system only rarely provides clear enough information to states to guide their policy responses’.53 Schweller is even more explicit, arguing that ‘[i]n history, the external environment has rarely (if ever) left policymakers with no other choice but to act the way they did. Political leaders in control of significant human and material resources can shape events and change the course of history’.54 If structural cues are often indeterminate and ambiguous, can they just as often really be causally predominant? Realists do little to distinguish the merely ‘catalytic’ from the genuinely ‘causative’ effects of structure.55 Sterling-Folker’s formulation that the ‘anarchic environment remains primarily but indirectly causal, while process remains secondarily but directly causal’ points in this direction but does little to illuminate the internal paradox.56 We would probably be hard put to say HIV was the ‘primary but indirect cause’. It was at most the catalyst, a permissive underlying cause (an expression common in NCR). Intentional agents—what Sterling-Folker refers to as ‘domestic process’—act as the ‘final arbiter for state survival within the anarchic environment’ by executing policies, often making them the proximate or efficient cause.57 Indeed, given structure’s indeterminacy, the residual variance being increasingly explained by domestic, intervening variables in works

52 Wendt 1999, 129. 53 2016, 22 (emphasis added). 54 1998, 3. 55 These terms are Friedberg’s 1988, 287. 56 Sterling-Folker 1997, 22. 57 Ibid., 19.

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self-described as neoclassical realist must surely undermine the claim that structure remains causally and analytically prior.58 Third, while realists, and rationalists more generally identify ‘causal primacy’ with the eventuation of actual behavior, they instead confuse behavior on the one hand with structure-induced imperatives shaping states’ underlying preferences (e.g., survival) on the other.59 Powell has noted the frequent conflation between what he calls ‘preferences over actions’ and ‘preferences over outcomes’. Structural theories ‘take the units’ preferences over possible outcomes as given and, consequently, lack a theory of preferences over outcomes’.60 Based on assumed preferences over outcomes, which are exogenously derived from the strategic setting, the same theories then make predictions about actual (preferences over) actions. Yet structure’s effects first interact with agents’ preferences rather than directly ‘cause’ behavior and actions.61 By bracketing preferences (over outcomes), it is hardly surprising that realists must then directly focus on actions as the causal object. Even if we concede that structure can directly shape Powell’s ‘preferences over actions’, they rarely shape the ‘actions’ themselves. Preferences do not necessarily lead to matching behavior and actions because, as neoclassical realists themselves argue, unit-level variables like ideology and domestic politics can impinge, creating ‘pathologies’. Yet, if structure is no longer causally privileged, then neither is there reason unit-level factors should be unconditionally subordinated as ‘intervening’ variables or pathologies which merely mop up residual variance. They too can exert independent effects. That structure prompts leaders to prioritize ways of dealing with threats (preferences) is therefore distinct from the claim that structure causes actual behavior and actions. Only in ‘hotel fires’ do we see behavior aligning with preferences (escape), in which case structure becomes an efficient cause. If structure and agent can both exert independent causal effects, it is because a third element, ideas, links and mediates the interaction

58 Narizny 2017, 178. 59 For a realist perspective of the distinction between strategically-induced preferences

and domestically-determined outcomes, see Tellis 2007, 8–9. 60 Powell 1994, 318; see also Legro 1996, 119. 61 See the strategic-choice approach discussion in Lake and Powell 1999, and the

chapters in the same volume by Jeffry Frieden and James Morrow.

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between them. While the structure of material power may be an objective fact as realists hold, how it is perceived and interpreted—as threat or opportunity—is (inter)subjective and fundamentally constitutive.62 In Wendt’s view, ideas ‘constitute social situations and the meaning of material forces’, and consequently the structure of capabilities cannot be disentangled from the structure of ideas when considered as part of a social phenomenon.63 Material structures require ideas to mean or motivate anything, while ideas require matter as vehicle for action.64 Even where threats result from securitization or are constructed for instrumental purposes, the process remains essentially ideational. Moreover, in the case of highly ideological states, blanket securitization may already have occured at the source (of the founding ideology), coloring subsequent threat perceptions. Without perceptions, structure alone—already often indeterminate as we saw above—is insufficient to influence even preferences, let alone actual behavior. Taking this view, ideational effects do not simply cause misperceptions and cognitive lapses,65 but substantively shape the way agents view the external world. If ‘leaders’ preexisting beliefs frequently incline them to distort reality’, then as Haas notes, ‘domestic ideologies are frequently the “preexisting” beliefs through which people filter and select information’.66 Ideas as perceived likewise inform the preferences of agents—their creators and vehicles—and in this way shape outcomes, a process I discuss in Sect. 2.4 and 3.2. None of this is to imply that ideas or perceptions alone should in the interests of parsimony constitute the causal focus. While ideas clearly matter, it is agents who in the first instance formulate, promulgate, (re)interpret, and execute them, transforming them into hegemonic narratives. Where new ideas emerge, these ‘do not achieve political prominence on their own’, Berman writes, ‘but must be championed by carriers or entrepreneurs…[who], in turn, advocate new beliefs or concepts if

62 Wendt 1999, 24–5, 104; even some closer to the realist camp acknowledge at least the subjective link, see Jervis 2013, 157; Kupchan 1994, ch. 1; and Rose 1998, 147. 63 Wendt 1999, 78 (emphasis original), 110–12. 64 On the implications of the Cartesian mind–body divide on social action, see Wendt

2015. 65 Jervis 1976. 66 Haas 2012, 307; 2005.

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they can help them achieve their goals or legitimize their interests’.67 Even where ideas change, it is still agents who enact them. Additionally, perception necessarily requires a subject (agent) and direct object (structure, other agents, even if imagined), including in the context of intersubjectivity. The foregoing suggests that NCR’s structural primacy assumption stands on shaky ground. Even Schweller alludes to this contextually contingent structure-agent relationship and the need to establish a hierarchy of causes for specific historical cases, but puzzlingly continues to privilege structure. Later, he reiterates that neither structure nor agent is ‘ontologically primitive’ but that both codetermine each other.68 Indeed, let’s briefly consider his balance-of-interests theory, which illustrates some of these concerns. Schweller attributes equal roles to structure and unit interests, arguing that states’ alignment decisions are driven by ‘compatibility of political goals, not imbalances of power or threat’, and that ‘changes in unit interests alone can drastically alter system dynamics and stability’.69 He criticizes defensive neorealism’s status quo bias, and argues that classical realists have shown aggrandizement and revisionism to also be a state motive.70 He then proposes a five-point continuum bookended by status quo and revisionism. These are useful analytical categories. But other than general references to goals and desires, Schweller, like Waltz whom he criticizes, brackets these interests and seems to mostly attribute them as a function of power.71 He hence insists his ‘scheme is still based on the traditional realist classification of states as either satisfied or dissatisfied’, ostensibly allowing him to treat ‘the power preferences of the actors as a model-based feature that…differentiates the units of the system’.72 Classical realism indeed focuses on power. But unlike structural realism, it plumbs causes at the level of the individual and states (Waltz’s first and second images). Power matters, but so does the will to power, which as mentioned Schweller seems to acknowledge too. Furthermore, while offensive and especially defensive neorealism, which he quotes, 67 2001, 235. 68 1998, 4, 25. 69 Ibid., 20, 22. 70 Ibid., 20. 71 Ibid., 21. 72 Ibid., 22, 24.

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straightforwardly assume a constant revisionist or status quo preference, Schweller does not explain how variance specifically arises among his five categories other than suggesting they are driven by power. What are the preconditions for states to be, say, limited-aims revisionists, and what might cause them to become unlimited-aims revisionists? Schweller again hints at capabilities, so that those which ‘aspire to conquer the world’ must be top-tier great powers.73 But then while he defines for instance Weimar Germany as a limited-aims revisionist power, he argues that Hitler’s advent and ‘his obsession to become master of Europe and then the world’ transformed Germany into an unlimited-aims power.74 In other words, only after Hitler arrives does Germany rearm, seek more power and become the international system’s third pole in 1936–1938 alongside the US and the USSR, evidence that the will to power, a hallmark of agency and hence preference, matters. Schweller further notes that ‘[r]evisionist states are not always actively engaged in overturning the status quo; they may be temporarily passive because they lack the relative economic, military, and/or political capabilities needed’.75 Do these assertions not undermine the (neoclassical) realist claim that rising capabilities presage expansionist intentions? In other words, intentions can presage capabilities, and revisionist preferences do not necessarily derive from power. Surely they have to derive from somewhere. Finally, despite Schweller’s linking interests to power alone, he writes that ‘[b]y including both unit and structural attributes in the definition of the international system, what emerges is both a positional and ideational model of system structure’.76 But how is the ideational aspect suddenly an intrinsic part of realists’ structure of material capabilities, unless it first derives from ideational sources? He provides another distant clue, when he writes that ‘[r]evisionist states will readily side with the dominant state or coalition if they believe that its goal is to overturn the established order to their advantage’.77 Put differently, although Schweller subordinates

73 Ibid., 24. 74 Ibid., 33. 75 Ibid., 25. 76 Ibid., 26. 77 Ibid., 189 (italics added).

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unit interests to power, in practice he implicitly introduces not just unitlevel preferences but also belief and hence perceptions, which are clearly independent of power. Again, none of these is to imply that structure does not matter or that unit-level factors necessarily dominate. But they do carry three implications for theory-building. First, since both structure and agent may codetermine as independent or ‘master’ variables, my theoretical logic focuses instead on how they interact, and determines the relative causal weight of each depending on the empirical context. What emerges is a via media truer to the term’s sense than NCR’s ‘hierarchical eclecticism’.78 Lobell, Taliaferro, and Ripsman charge that ‘without a systematic approach to prioritizing or weighting the variables, these eclectic approaches make generalization difficult and tend to generate ad hoc explanations’.79 Yet, while useful in some cases, their ‘systematic approach’ risks setting into dogma, introducing distortions or omitted-variable bias where structure does not causally predominate, or self-selecting for where it does. Thus, Zakaria’s claim that innenpolitik theories ‘typically consider only those cases where the behavior they are examining exists, biasing their conclusions’ is, ironically, likewise applicable to structure-first approaches.80 The alternative proposed in this book deductively specifies and systematizes the broad explanatory factors—structure, ideas and agents—which ought to matter, reflecting realist, constructivist, and liberal conceptions of IR. It makes no claim that only one specific aspect within each IR paradigm matters, say interest groups as opposed to individual leaders in liberalism, or securitization rather than strategic culture within constructivism. Following this, it is ‘ad hoc’ only in the sense that it lets the empirical record determine which factor carries more weight in any given case, and which specific intraparadigm aspects are relevant (an approach common within NCR). In this way it also differs from ‘analytic eclecticism’, which selectively incorporates any number of causal mechanisms from across paradigms depending on the research problem.81 An empirical pragmatism nested within a specified theoretical structure avoids

78 Juneau 2015, 32 (see also FN 8); Rose 1998. 79 Lobell et al. 2012, 33. 80 Zakaria 1992, 197. 81 Sil and Katzenstein 2010.

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fruitless metatheoretical debates over causal primacy and gets on with the actual substantive work. The second implication is that unit-level factors, and not just structure, may also be the source of a state’s ends, just as structure, and not only unit-level factors, may conversely set the boundaries for the material capabilities—means—at its disposal. Anarchy and relative power may push states towards survival-, power- or influence-maximization, yet domestic factors driven by identity, ideology, and leaders’ agency, in addition to coloring threat perceptions in the first place, also determine if states mean to challenge or accommodate the existing order. Structure, after all, is only very rarely a direct cause rather than a catalyst. By linking motives and ends to domestic politics and not just to structure, I again depart from realist assumptions, according to which agents should only matter insofar as they distort state capabilities or rationality. This leads to the third implication, that intentions may preface increased capabilities too, and not just the reverse. Otherwise, strong states need not worry when leaders with malicious intent rise to power in relatively weaker states—which is clearly not the case. Such states can resolve to acquire game-changing capabilities. Since it can derive from intentions, and given that it still requires perceptions to mean anything, relative power alone lacks sufficient heft as independent variable. However, relative power is still useful in determining lower-level nuances such as the choice between internal and external balancing, or between balancing and hard expansionism (see next section). Finally, agency during external crisis would be the ‘hard case’ for my model and non-great powers in general since the easy case, and NCR’s baseline prediction, is that agents prevail only when structural constraints are low.

2.4 The Dynamic-Integrative Model of Grand Strategic Adjustments Structure (power), ideas (perceptions), and agents (preferences) interact to generate variation in grand strategic choices. Structural imperatives correspond to often dramatic shifts in the international or regional system’s distribution of power, and therefore determine a state’s relative capabilities. Such shocks may be advantageous or adversarial but usually contradict prior beliefs of the status quo. Structure matters, but only in conjunction with perceptions. Only after external threat has been

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established does power acquire relevance.82 This is especially true for nongreat powers, which obviously do not perceive all states more powerful as default threats. And even if statesmen’s failure to correctly perceive structural shifts can impose objective costs, adjustments occur only because they’ve acted on their perceptions. Perceptions are informed by existing beliefs of how the world works or how it should. Perceptions are therefore a priori theory-laden, shared among members of a political collective, and hence intersubjective. This may explain why, as Raymond Cohen writes, ‘threat may be perceived, and countermeasures taken, even when the opponent possesses no malicious intent’.83 External threats imply at least one adversary with the perceived intent and capabilities to prejudice one’s national security or priorities, and are exacerbated if an adequate response is lacking.84 Even so, non-military challenges such as global recession, pandemics and asymmetrical cultural, commercial, political, and technological penetration can also fit the bill. Internal threats on the other hand are not a function of structure but of agency or innenpolitik (see below). Opportunities bespeak the absence or diminishing of these external threats, and relative power shifts in one’s favor. Threat urgency, including imminence and perceived time horizons for resolving threats,85 generally compels decisionmakers towards more realistic or cautious assessments. Since situational gravity helps overcome dispositional inertia and collective action problems, high threat also encourages consensus at the political apex and allows leaders to tighten up decisionmaking and override normal bureaucratic politics.86 Under such ‘restrictive’ conditions, greater emphasis is accorded to material power and realpolitik. Conversely, the absence or reduction of perceived threats in ‘permissive’ environments incentivizes leaders to pursue their ideal preferences and values, and thus greater idealpolitik, with heavier emphasis on non-material influence rather than power (see Sect. 3.1).

82 For experimental evidence that power and identity both matter interactively in threat perceptions, see Rousseau and Garcia-Retamero 2007. 83 1978, 93. 84 Miller 2010, 37; Walt (1987) defines four elements of threat: states’ aggregate power,

offensive military capabilities, geographic proximity and perceived aggressive intentions. 85 Ripsman et al. 2016, 46. 86 Miller 2017, 44.

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Fig. 2.1 Ideas as ‘Janus-faced’

The ideational microfoundations of threat perception are in turn an aggregate function of national identity, regime ideology, and status or role conceptions. These ideational-constitutive antecedents anchor a state’s Self in space and time and positions it vis-à-vis the Other. Greater mutual ideological distance often correlates with a greater tendency to attribute threatening intentions to the Other, certainly if animosity already exists.87 Where religion infuses ideology, states typically possess even higher levels of conviction concerning good and evil. Variation in ideational-constitutive factors in this way helps explain how different leaders construct and distinguish threats from opportunities so that, for instance, the Shah viewed US power as a boon while Khomeini viewed it as a bane. Ideational-constitutive microfoundations set the stage not only for agents’ perceptions but also for their preferences and are in this sense ‘Janus-faced’ (Fig. 2.1). Consider the notion of strategic culture, which guides how one thinks about conflict, the role and efficacy of force, the nature of adversaries, and grand strategic preference-ranking.88 Strategic culture shapes the norms, assumptions, terms of debate, and expectations determining the boundaries of acceptable action.89 It likewise raises the domestic costs of policy reversals inconsistent with these assumptions, and helps the decisionmaking elite ‘cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration’.90 Shared ideas and beliefs also often permeate the broader body politic. However, while ideas may generate variation such as when informing legitimation campaigns, securitization 87 Haas 2012, 285–6. 88 Johnston 1996, 223; Johnston 1995b; Dueck 2006. 89 Ripsman et al. 2016, 67; Berman 2001; Kupchan 1994, 5–6. 90 Edgar Schein, cited in Johnston 1995b, 44.

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discourses, or individual leaders’ ‘operational codes’,91 they often stabilize when reproduced over time and thus, on their own, provide necessary but insufficient explanatory and predictive leverage on grand strategic change. Put another way, ideas primarily mediate between structure and agents, exerting causal effects on outcomes only indirectly. The interaction of structure and ideas generates variation, as does the interaction of ideas with unit-level agency. This assumes the form of domestic political preferences and decisionmakers’ initiatives, which usually acquire preeminence through internal competition. In this way, political preferences inform and reflect factional dominance. Here, internal threats to regime survival as mentioned also fall under this rubric since they risk altering the existing political system and can motivate, inside-out, the state’s external responses. Scholars studying democracies codify domestic politics in terms of leaders’ support from constituencies, interest groups, coalitions, or the public at large.92 In authoritarian regimes, decisionmaking elites have greater latitude to override public opinion and procedural constraints. But they must nonetheless compete with internal rivals for policy prerogatives and (re)distributional gains including through logrolling and formal voting mechanisms, while seeking to maintain domestic legitimacy. Although I do not problematize domestic interests specifically, I not only assume that leaders and elites are capable of operating autonomously and that they also genuinely believe in their own ideological convictions, I similarly assume that domestic political outcomes ultimately reflect such domestic interactions and cross-pressures. Elites often share ideational-constitutive referents in common, yet they may also diverge enough in interpretive nuances so that ‘winning coalitions’ which eventually implement these ideas can impact grand strategy differently. Competition implies at the very least two political tendencies contending over preferred grand strategic ends and means. Ends insofar as long-term ideal-world national objectives (e.g., world conquest, hegemony, another state’s destruction) may not always be explicit or ascertainable, notably in the case of opaque, authoritarian regimes. Yet, we can more meaningfully evaluate, as preferences, ends which political agents render explicit and deem attainable under real-world conditions,

91 Goddard and Krebs 2015; Buzan et al. 1998, ch. 2; George 1969. 92 Trubowitz 2011.

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and which serve essential interests such as survival and autonomy (see Sect. 3.2).93 Preferences are therefore those ends, driven by fundamental interests, deemed attainable by agents. Scholars have for instance postulated such preference dichotomies as free-trade liberals vs. autarkic nationalists, guns vs. butter, and realist vs. ideological.94 Even more fundamental and therefore consequential is the status quo accommodationist vs. revisionist divide, that is between ‘those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes’.95 This dichotomy has usually been applied at the level of states.96 But there is no reason it cannot apply to sub-state politics too. Even in the case of revolutionary states, revisionist fervor can mellow unevenly over time with only part of the political elite revising its ideological preferences, thereby engendering schisms. Such schisms can likewise result from interpretive ambiguities persisting in the original positions of revolutionary leaders who have passed on. Whether as states or within-state actors, revisionists challenge the existing world order along with its chief proponents, and generally advocate confrontational diplomatic postures, military preponderance, expansionism, and mercantilism. To revise the existing system and their position in it, they are willing to use force if necessary, and take risks potentially detrimental to state security.97 Inversely, accommodationists accept the world order (even if only begrudgingly or temporarily), generally preferring recourse to diplomacy and trade cooperation, rather than force, to secure state and regime. Even if inward-looking priorities distract from active diplomacy, accommodationists are expected to pursue a non-confrontational stance at the very least. Where driven by revolutionary ideas, revisionists often privilege ideological orthodoxy while accommodationists urge greater flexibility and pragmatism, with knockon implications for guns vs. butter preference intensities, even if this is not to suggest that revisionists cannot cooperate and accommodationists do not compete.

93 For similar approaches, see Schweller 2008, 38, and Jervis 1976, 48–54. 94 Lobell 2003; Trubowitz 2011; Miller 2010. 95 Kissinger 1968, 910. 96 Wolfers 1962, 18, 84–6, 138–40; see also Morgenthau 2006, Aron 2017 and

Schweller 1998. 97 Wolfers 1962, 125; Aron 2017, 598.

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How can we know if revisionism and accommodationism are not solely endogenous with structural conditions such as the balance of power? If structure’s primacy assumption is flawed as 2.3 showed, then it follows that a state’s ends do not necessarily and exclusively derive only from structure but can also originate in unit-level factors. A similar claim has been made in a work consciously self-identified not as constructivist or liberal, but as neoclassical realist. Davidson traces the origins of revisionist and status quo states to the interaction effects among three variables: international opportunities (‘balance of allied resolve’), external threat perceptions (affecting security and autonomy), and domestic politics (externally- vs. internally-oriented groups controlling resources the government seeks). For Davidson, while structural effects dominate, they are insufficient, and domestic politics remain a necessary condition.98 If threat perceptions and international opportunities alone sufficed to motivate revisionism, why don’t all states facing high threat and a favorable ‘balance of allied resolve’ automatically turn revisionist? States may feel they need to, or can, but they must also want it for revisionism to occur. Ends can therefore derive from both structure and agent. Beyond deductive logic, two additional observations from the subsequent chapters reinforce this claim. Firstly, in revolutionary states, while revisionism as founding ideology may have been shaped by external developments, it intuitively, organically, and empirically originates from deeply domestic grievances directed primarily against the internal status quo ante, and outlives the revolution (see 3.2 and 4). Secondly, if revisionists and accommodationists were so constituted owing only to external threats and opportunities, we should expect to see structure-preference covariation. Yet, this postulate has little empirical support (Chapters 4–11). On the contrary, accommodationists and revisionists often not only declare their preferences from the outset, but are willing, as it were, to ‘stick to their guns’ as a matter of principle—and pay the price. Now, how do perceptions of structural threat and domestic political preferences then shape strategic outcomes? Perceptions of structural threat alone predispose states towards certain strategies based on theoretical expectations associated largely with the realist canon. Accordingly, high threats are likely to prompt balancing and similar deterrence-type strategies, or alternatively appeasement and/or bandwagoning, while

98 2006, ch. 2.

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Fig. 2.2 Causal pathway A

Fig. 2.3 Causal pathway B

low threats at the very least create the conditions of possibility for retrenchment.99 But alone, the range of possibilities remains inchoate and indeterminate (Figs. 2.2 and 2.3). Conversely, domestic political preferences alone based on theoretical expectations associated with innenpolitik and innenpolitik-influenced realist perspectives predispose states toward certain other, albeit still limited, strategies. Hence, accommodationists by disposition prioritize cooperation or engagement, while revisionists tend toward expansionism and subversion.100 Combining both causal pathways facilitates greater determinacy. I hence model adjustments as the interaction among three explanatory factors—two ‘true’ variables and an ideational intermediary. Structure interacts with ideas to determine threat perceptions (‘restrictive’/‘permissive’). These ideas likewise interact with agents to produce political preferences (‘revisionist’/‘accommodationist’). Ideas in this way

99 Waltz 1979, Walt 1985 and 1987; Schweller 1994 and 1998; Trubowitz 2011, and Kupchan 1994. 100 Snidal 1991; Trubowitz 2011, and Schweller 1998 and 2008. See also Snyder 1991 and Mearsheimer 2001, for whom expansionism derives respectively from domestic logrolling and structural imperatives.

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mediate between structure and agency.101 Thus conceived, they generate four, ideal-type first-order grand strategic orientations with associated second-order strategies. In the real world, the typological boundaries become fuzzier since leaders may for specific issues mix strategies from across orientation types. This reflects domestic trade-offs, factional one-upmanship, decision conflicts and incoherence, hedging, and the complexities of managing disparate policy theaters.102 Nonetheless, leaders are likely to still privilege these specified second-order strategies, which in turn provides a guide for theory-building. Under conditions of high perceived external threat, states typically undertake balancing, including against specific components of power.103 Where capabilities and time permit, states are likely to prioritize internal balancing—converting economic resources into military means—by (re)arming and emulating technologies or practices from more successful states. Resource diversion may however incur significant socioeconomic costs. States with weak internal power and tight time pressures tend toward external balancing by aggregating their capabilities and forging alliances especially with major powers to keep threats at bay.104 They however risk abandonment or entrapment in fights not of their choosing (including through chain-ganging), and often relinquish some degree of foreign policy autonomy.105 As Trubowitz suggests, alliances ‘can add geopolitical value by expanding a state’s defensive perimeter (“defense-in-depth”), by denying a challenger strategically valuable real estate (“forward defense”), and by forcing a potential enemy to spread its forces along multiple geographic fronts’.106 In practice, both types of balancing are often likely to occur in tandem, particularly for threatened small and medium states. 101 Despite similarities, my model differs from Schweller’s (1998): he emphasizes

polarity, relative power disparities alone rather than threat perceptions, and revisionism/status quo (accommodationism) at the state level. Additionally, I do not link revisionism/accommodationism to power alone, but to ideational factors. My approach also differs from Trubowitz (2011) who combines structure and agents unmediated by ideas, and ultimately emphasizes statesmen’s self-interest and hence domestic politics. 102 On mixed strategies, see Johnston 1995a, 113 (FN 8). 103 Lobell 2009, 55; for component balancing, see Lobell 2012. 104 Wohlforth et al. 2007, 157. 105 Schweller 1998, 64–5; Morrow 1993. 106 Trubowitz 2011, 33 (FN 28).

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According to theoretical expectations, particularly from offensive realism, revisionist states ought to pursue hard expansionism. The paradox, however, is that under high-threat conditions, hard expansionism by circumstance often blurs into balancing imperatives, depending on relative capabilities. The reverse is also true. If particularly vigorous, defensive realist balancing against threats may sometimes become outwardly indistinguishable from an expansionism involving hard military power, and in extreme cases may lead to direct or proxy wars. Both internal and external balancing in addition implicitly allow states to pursue longer-term deterrence-type strategies as a show of resolve, since ‘reputation and prestige are fungible across theatres’, and failed resolve might encourage allies to defect to the stronger state.107 But beyond a common balancing strategy, high threats may still prompt diverging domestic responses. Revisionists may opt for lower-investment yet high-yield, ‘Byzantine’ indirect strategies like subversion, particularly if relative capabilities are weak.108 On the other hand, to mitigate threats, accommodationists are likelier than revisionists to try and first appease or bandwagon with, rather than immediately balance against a potential threat.109 While such defensive engagement-type strategies are also conceivable when relative power and alliance sets are weaker, they do not necessarily mean surrender. Appeasement deflects or defuses an adversary’s grievances. But despite its negative, Chamberlainian connotation, appeasement also creates the conditions to defer war until it can be waged on favorable terms.110 Accommodationists can discursively justify such strategies by invoking them as part of broader engagement, whereas for revisionists they would constitute costly preference reversals, politically feasible only under extreme external or domestic circumstances (Table 2.1). Under conditions of low perceived external threat, differences in political preferences can lead to strategies as varied as expansionism,

107 Kupchan 1994, 76–7. 108 For contrast between the Byzantines’ indirect, and the Romans’ gladiatorial

approaches, see Luttwak 2009 and 1976. 109 Schweller 1994 and 1998; Christensen and Snyder 1990; Walt 1987, 28–33. 110 On the latter, see Ripsman and Levy 2012; for a positive depiction of Chamberlain’s

appeasement, see Lobell et al. 2012.

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Table 2.1 The dynamic-integrative model of grand strategic adjustments Structural Imperatives Threat Perception Political Revisionist Preferences

Accommodationist

High: Restrictive Restrictive Revisionism Hard Expansionism (or Balancing) Subversion

Low: Permissive Permissive Revisionism Soft Expansionism (Influence) Diversionary Posturing* Restrictive Permissive Accommodationism Accommodationism Appeasement/Bandwagoning Engagement Balancing (or Hard Retrenchment* Expansionism)

NB: within each ideal-type orientation, the upper strategy takes precedence * likely only if domestic issues take priority or threaten regime stability

engagement, and even retrenchment.111 Given their intrinsic goal of changing the existing order, revisionists are likely to pursue expansionism and some form of overseas adventurism. But this is also likely to involve soft power and influence rather than hard power to avoid needlessly triggering a counterbalancing response. Where domestic priorities are urgent, accommodationists have more leeway for retrenchment. Here, conversely, because they challenge the status quo, revisionists are likely to still adopt some degree of diversionary posturing, including to distract from domestic problems.112 To be sure, posturing per se is not a strategy. But since it may serve critical internal objectives (regime stability and legitimacy) and could lead to actual armed conflict whether intended, posturing can have important strategic implications. Retrenchment is implied in a substantially increased focus on domestic issues, but reducing commitments in theaters or issues of lower strategic importance is also a matter of degree without necessarily portending isolationism. Realists hold that capabilities shape intentions and that as capabilities increase,

111 On expansion by rising states and retrenchment by declining states under low external threat, see Kupchan 1994, 17 (tab. 1); on appeasement by declining states under high external threat, see ibid. tab. 2; on low-threat environments encouraging expansionism, see also Krasner 1978. 112 On diversionary wars, see Levy 1989.

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states’ external behavior becomes more assertive.113 Yet, if intentions may equally shape capabilities as I suggested earlier, then assertiveness can also be consistent with non-aggressive, non-expansionist ends under accommodationist governments, another indicator that liberal preferences matter. The result, engagement, manifests in amplified diplomacy, increased and diversified trade, and even security-military cooperation with the leading status quo powers.114 Engagement under low-threat conditions differs from bandwagoning and appeasement under highthreat conditions in that the latter aim primarily to minimize losses while the former aims at maximizing gains.115 Below is a summary of the four grand strategic orientation types and the accompanying hypotheses they generate. Permissive Revisionism: when external threat is perceived as low and revisionists dominate, states tend to exploit the permissive conditions in favor of expansionary strategies, not usually through territorial conquests but instead through influence by buying goodwill, applying suasion and maximizing soft power and ideas. A revisionist government may not preclude hard military power, but this could unnecessarily provoke counter-responses and is thus expected to be rare or miscalculated. Furthermore, revisionists may engage in diversionary posturing if it distracts from unresolved domestic problems. Facing low external threats, such states have little need to pursue alternatives such as balancing, let alone bandwagoning or appeasement. And given revisionism’s raison d’être vis-à-vis the West, they have similarly little motivation to select engagement or retrenchment. H1 When external threat is perceived as low (or structural opportunities are perceived as high) and revisionists dominate, they are likely to favor expansionism based on idealism more than military power, or diversionary posturing if domestic problems are salient.

113 Rose 1998, 152; Gilpin 1981, 23–4. 114 By engagement, I intend its broadest sense rather than Schweller’s (1998, 74–5)

which is limited to accommodating dissatisfied powers. 115 The inverse exception is bandwagoning for profit, Schweller 1994; the discussion concerning strategies draws mainly from Schweller 2008 (ch. 1) and 1998 (ch. 3), and Johnston 1995a (ch. 4).

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Permissive Accommodationism: when external threat is perceived as low and accommodationists dominate, states tend to prioritize diplomatic engagement and trade with the leading proponents of the existing order, potentially even based on ‘shared’ values or ideals. Where domestic issues take priority, accommodationist governments may also retrench foreign commitments to some degree. Facing reduced external constraints, accommodationists have little logical need to prioritize balancing, appeasement, or bandwagoning. Given their position toward the Western-led status quo, neither do they, in principle, have much reason to opt for expansionism or subversion. H2 When external threat is perceived as low (or structural opportunities are perceived as high) and accommodationists dominate, they are likely to pursue engagement based on idealism, and/or some degree of retrenchment if domestic issues are pressing. Restrictive Revisionism: under conditions of high perceived external threat coinciding with revisionist dominance, states undertake a hard form of expansionism entailing military power, depending on the nature and urgency of the threats, but this may often approximate internal and/or external balancing depending on relative power. States with relatively weaker capabilities may instead, or in parallel, adopt ancillary, indirect approaches such as subversion. Facing high external constraints, such states would be misguided if they prioritized only soft expansionism or worse, retrenchment. And given their open opposition to the US-led order, revisionists would have a harder time politically justifying appeasement and bandwagoning or other engagement-related strategies, at least in the absence of ‘hotel fires’. H3 when external threat is perceived as high and revisionists dominate, they are likely to favor military expansionism possibly indistinguishable from balancing, as well as subversion strategies if capabilities are more limited. Restrictive Accommodationism: under conditions of high perceived external threat and accommodationist dominance, states are likely to countenance defensive engagement-type strategies like appeasement and bandwagoning vis-à-vis the leading proponents of the existing order as

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a first resort to mitigate pressures. In parallel though, an accommodationist government may still pursue ancillary balancing as a hedge, and in extreme cases may not necessarily preclude military action if engagement fails. Faced with external threats, such states must mobilize, not demobilize or retrench, the means deemed necessary to deal with those threats. Both the external constraints and their general attitude toward the West also give accommodationists little pretext to pursue an ideals-based expansionism or subversion. H3 when external threat is perceived as high and accommodationists dominate, they are likely to prioritize strategies such as bandwagoning and/or appeasement, but are also likely to maintain some kind of balancing, which may in extreme cases appear indistinguishable from hard expansionism.

2.5

Research Design and Case Selection

To test these hypotheses, I adopt a single-country case study based on time-series covariation and ‘causes of effects’. I employ process tracing to describe and explain the relationship between causes and effects, and the congruence method to strengthen inferences concerning causal pathways.116 Concluding each empirical chapter, I also use counterfactuals to assess the validity of competing explanations.117 I organize the empirical chapters according to factional dominance within the executive, namely the prime ministry from 1979 to 1988 (alongside a ceremonial presidency), and the constitutionally empowered presidency from 1989. The first decade unfolds amid revolutionary flux, internal unrest, and an external war during the Supreme Leadership of Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini and, for much of the time, Mir-Hossein Musavi’s prime ministership. The relatively brief survey of this period and its key strategic features establishes a baseline for subsequent analysis. From here, the work then focuses on the four post-war presidencies from 1989 to 2017, a more institutionally stabilized period which encapsulates substantial variation in both agency and the external environment, and thus continuity and change. 116 George and Bennett 2005. 117 Fearon 1991; Levy 2015.

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Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s presidency coincided with the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini’s death, the First Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union’s collapse. Seyyed Mohammad Khatami’s presidency began with little external threat, but 9/11 prompted the US invasions of neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq, and the increasing threat of war on an encircled Iran. Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s presidency accompanied the US’ relative regional decline, but also the gradual intensification of nuclear-related international sanctions and external pressures. Finally, Hassan Rouhani’s election came in response to the crippling economic impact of those same sanctions, while the Arab uprisings sparked off a region-wide sectarian struggle. This latter period (and beyond) corresponds to the Supreme Leadership of Khomeni’s successor, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and hence allows for this factor to be held constant. This is the reason variation in agency focuses on the executive. In fact, as we see further, the consistencies in executive agency even extend across Supreme Leadership tenures. To determine external shocks, I identify events with regionally or internationally significant security, diplomatic and/or trade implications with respect to Iran, and complement these with Correlates of War data on objective changes in relative capabilities. To operationalize perceptions of these shocks, I code ‘restrictive’ where elite discourse: (1) unanimously (across factions) identifies imminent threats to Iran’s security, interests, or welfare; and (2) articulates concerns and possible counterresponses. To minimize noise and the difficulties of coding non-discrete values, I exclude threat discourse where structural shifts are only gradual, but not where adjustments actually follow—and can be traced to—rising threat perceptions. Under conditions of structural ambiguity, rising threat perceptions often vindicate innenpolitik perspectives, but external threat perceptions are rather unlikely to rise in the complete absence of structural shifts. Conversely, a ‘permissive’ external environment prevails where no such determination of imminent threat exists or where elites explicitly note such threats to be receding, even if the external environment may still generally be seen as unfriendly. To be sure, opportunities may accompany threats within the same strategic context, exacerbating structural ambiguity. Under ‘restrictive’ conditions however, I assume that those opportunities are constrained and that as such only ‘permissive’ conditions allow opportunities to be maximized. Section 3.2 examines the ideational microfoundations of these threat perceptions. Juxtaposing

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perceptions with the Correlates of War dataset highlights how ideas mediate material structure, and shows that the latter alone is necessary but causally insufficient given how stronger states are not automatically viewed as threats (see 3.1). I operationalize factional dominance (political preferences) by employing the elected executive—prime minister or president—as baseline, tying it to factional affiliation and declared positions vis-à-vis the West, i.e., the US and Western Europe. Cooperation with the non-West alone therefore does not suffice as accommodationism. An executive is accommodationist if it explicitly prioritizes cooperation in its electoral program or pre-adjustment policy pronouncements and debates, and revisionist if it signals confrontation. Executives may adopt a harder or softer line in the course of their tenures in response to external and internal stimuli, but this does not contradict the basic factional dominance determination, except in the event of categorical defection. To be sure, the Supreme Leader, a constant interrupted only once, has the final word and often backs the hardline unelected power centers which—another constant—control security policy. Yet, elected executives and especially post-war presidencies have clearly varied in external outlooks and wield significant influence, especially in diplomacy and trade, if not always security. Indeed, early in his presidency, Rafsanjani was even more powerful than the fledgling second Supreme Leader. In the latter’s case, rather than rule by fiat, Khamenei must balance factional interests and operate within certain unwritten limits undergirding the revolutionary compact or risk rebellion. Even he ‘too possesses the inescapable human trait of being influenced by others around him, particularly a president…elected by the majority’.118 Furthermore, rather than directly foisting their preferences on elected governments, non-elected power centers, typically revisionists, often exert a restraining or veto effect instead. Still, to account for accommodationists’ within-executive inconsistencies, I track instances of revisionists undermining, and where relevant, even derailing or reversing the elected government’s policies. Adjustment outcomes comprise qualitatively new or quantitatively revised foreign, security, and/or trade policies, which should in turn correspond to second-order strategies associated with the relevant orientation type (see Sect. 3.4). Policies are systematic and sustained endeavors

118 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 126.

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and as such exclude isolated events even if the latter contradict the elected government’s position. This book’s chief concern with adjustments lies in their genesis, not in how successfully they unfolded. Accordingly, it also devotes less attention to policies continued without change across presidencies. Moreover, the goal is to highlight key adjustment patterns rather than present an exhaustive catalogue. The secondary literature provides extensive data for the independent and dependent variables. Primary sources including memoirs of insiders like Rafsanjani, Rouhani, and Mousavian offer insights into ideology, politics, and strategy. The archival work of Baktiari and Moslem unlocks additional windows onto parliamentary debates over external policy. Otherwise, given the challenges of accessing official Iranian archives and closed-door deliberations, I instead infer from official statements and Iranian media reports, which are highly variegated and reliable. Open sources likewise capture shifts in interfactional and interpersonal power relations with the Supreme Leader as reference point. Separately, while discussions with ordinary Iranians on foreign policy issues during two private visits remain anecdotal, they provide additional perspective from the ground. The next step, before the empirical analysis, is to situate the theory within the Iranian context.

References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements Mousavian, Seyed Hossein & Shahir Shahidsaless, Iran and the United States: an insider’s view on the failed past and the road to peace (NY: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Secondary Sources (English) Allison, Graham, ‘Conceptual models and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, American Political Science Review 63 (1969): 689–718. Aron, Raymond, ‘Is isolationism possible?’, Commentary 57.4 (1 April 1974): 41–46. ———, Peace and war: a theory of international relations, trans. R. Howard & A. Baker Fox (Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Berman, Sheri, ‘Review article: ideas, norms, and culture in political analysis’, Comparative Politics 33.2 (Jan 2001): 231–50.

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Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver & Jaap de Wilde, Security: a new framework for analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). Byman, Daniel L. & Kenneth M. Pollack, ‘Let us now praise great men: bringing the statesman back in’, International Security 25.4 (Spring 2001): 107–46. Christensen, Thomas J. & Jack Snyder, ‘Chain gangs and passed bucks: predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity’, Intemational Organization 44 (Spring 1990): 137–68. Christensen, Thomas J., Useful adversaries: grand strategy, domestic mobilization, and Sino-American conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Clausewitz, Carl von, On war, Michael Howard & Peter Paret, eds & transl. (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). Cohen, Raymond, ‘Threat perception in international crisis’, Political Science Quarterly 93.1 (1978): 93–107. Davidson, Jason W., The origins of revisionist and status-quo states (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Dueck, Colin, Reluctant crusaders: power, culture and change in American grand strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). Fearon, James D., ‘Counterfactuals and hypothesis testing in political science’, World Politics 43.2 (1991): 169–95. Friedberg, Aaron L., Weary titan: Britain and the experience of relative decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). George, Alexander L. & Andrew Bennett, Case studies and theory development in the social sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). George, Alexander L., ‘The “operational code”: a neglected approach to the study of political leaders and decision-making’, International Studies Quarterly 13.2 (June 1969): 190–222. Gilpin, Robert G., War and change in world politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Goddard, Stacie E. & Ronald R. Krebs, ‘Rhetoric, legitimation, and grand strategy’, Security Studies 24.1 (2015): 5–36. Goldstein, Judith & Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and foreign policy: an analytical framework’, in Judith Goldstein & Robert O. Keohane, eds, Ideas and foreign policy: beliefs, institutions, and political change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993): 3–30. Gourevitch, Peter, ‘The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics’, International Organization 32.4 (Autumn 1978). Haas, Mark L., ‘Soviet grand strategy in the interwar years’, in Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Norrin M. Ripsman & Steven E. Lobell, eds., The challenge of grand strategy: the great powers and the broken balance between the world wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 279–307.

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———, The ideological origins of great power politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). Jervis, Robert, ‘Do leaders matter and how would we know?’, Security Studies 22.2 (2013): 153–79. ———, ‘Realism in the study of world politics’, International Organization 52.4 (Autumn 1998): 971–91. ———, Perception and misperception in international politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). Johnston, Alastair I., ‘Cultural realism and strategy in Maoist China’ in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The culture of national security: norms and identity in world politics (NY: Columbia University Press, 1996): 216–68. ———, ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’, International Security 19.4 (Spring, 1995b): 32–64. ———, Cultural realism: strategic culture and grand strategy in Chinese history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995a). Juneau, Thomas, Squandered opportunity: neoclassical realism and Iranian foreign policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Katzenstein, Peter, ‘Introduction: alternative perspectives on national security’, in Peter Katzenstein, ed., The culture of national security: norms and identity in world politics (NY: Columbia University Press, 1996). Kennedy, Paul, ‘Grand strategy in war and peace: toward a broader definition’, in Grand strategies in war and peace, Paul Kennedy, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991): 1–7. Keohane, Robert O. & Joseph S. Nye, Power and interdependence: world politics in transition (Boston: Little Brown, 1977). Kissinger, Henry A., ‘The white revolutionary: reflections on Bismarck’, Daedalus 97.3 (Summer 1968): 888–924. Krasner, Stephen D., Defending the national interest: raw materials investments and U.S. foreign policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Kupchan, Charles A., The vulnerability of empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). Lake, David A. & Robert Powell, ‘International relations: a strategic-choice approach’, David A. Lake & Robert Powell, eds, Strategic choice and international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999): 3–38. Legro, Jeffrey W., ‘Culture and preferences in the international cooperation twostep’, American Political Science Review 90.1 (1996): 118–37. Levy, Jack S., ‘Counterfactuals, causal inference, and historical analysis’, Security Studies 24.3 (2015): 378–402. ———, ‘The diversionary theory of war: a critique’, in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of war studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989): 259–88. Liddell Hart, B. H., Strategy, 2nd revised edition (New York: Praeger, 1967). Lippmann, Walter, U.S. foreign policy: shield of the republic (Boston, 1943).

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Lobell, Steven E., ‘Britain’s grand strategy during the 1930s: from balance of power to components of power’, in Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Norrin M. Ripsman & Steven E. Lobell, eds., The challenge of grand strategy: the great powers and the broken balance between the world wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 147–70. ———, ‘Threat assessment, the state, and foreign policy: a neoclassical realist model’, in Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman & Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, eds., Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 42–74. ———, The challenge of hegemony: grand strategy, trade, and domestic politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). Lobell, Steven E., Jeffrey W. Taliaferro & Norrin M. Ripsman, ‘Introduction’, in Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Norrin M. Ripsman & Steven E. Lobell, eds., The challenge of grand strategy: the great powers and the broken balance between the world wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 1–36. Luttwak, Edward, Strategy: the logic of war and peace (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987). ———, The grand strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). ———, The grand strategy of the Roman Empire: from the first century A.D. to the third (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). Mearsheimer, John J., The tragedy of great power politics (NY: W.W. Norton, 2001). Miller, Benjamin, ‘Explaining changes in U.S. grand strategy: 9/11, the rise of offensive liberalism, and the war in Iraq’, Security Studies 19 (2010): 26–65. ———, ‘Explaining great power cooperation in conflict management’, in his International and regional security: the causes of war and peace (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017): 25–65. Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘Taking preferences seriously: a liberal theory of international politics’, International Organization 51.4 (1997): 513–553. Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006). Morrow, James D., ‘Arms versus allies: trade-offs in the search of stability’, International Organization 47.2 (1993): 208–33. Murray, Williamson, ‘Thoughts on grand strategy’, in Williamson Murray, Richard H. Sinnreich & James Lacey, eds, The shaping of grand strategy: policy, diplomacy, and war (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 1–33. Narizny, Kevin, ‘On systemic paradigms and domestic politics: a critique of the newest realism’, International Security 42.2 (Fall 2017): 155–90. Nye, Joseph S., ‘Nuclear learning and U.S.-Soviet security regimes’, International Organization 41.3 (Summer, 1987).

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Posen, Barry R., The sources of military doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). Powell, Robert, ‘Absolute and relative gains in international relations theory’, American Political Science Review (Dec 1991): 1303–20. ———, ‘Anarchy in international relations theory: the neorealist-neoliberal debate’, International Organization 48.2 (Spring, 1994): 313–44. Putnam, Robert D., ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games’, International Organization 42.3 (1988): 427–60. Ripsman, Norrin M. & Jack S. Levy, ‘British grand strategy and the rise of Germany, 1933–1936’, in Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Norrin M. Ripsman & Steven E. Lobell, eds., The challenge of grand strategy: the great powers and the broken balance between the world wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 171–92. Ripsman, Norrin M., Jeffrey W. Taliaferro & Steven E. Lobell, Neoclassical realist theory of international politics (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Rose, Gideon, ‘Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy’, World Politics 51.1 (October 1998): 144–72. Rosecrance, Richard & Arthur A. Stein, eds, The domestic bases of grand strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). Rosenau, James N., ‘Pre-theories and theories of foreign policy’, in R. Barry Farrell, ed., Approaches to comparative and international politics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966): 27–92. ———, ed., Linkage politics: essays on the convergence of national and international systems (NY: Free Press, 1969). Rousseau, David L. & Rocio Garcia-Retamero, ‘Identity, power, and threat perception: a cross-national experimental study’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51.5 (2007): 744–71. Russett, Bruce M., Grasping the democratic peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Schweller, Randall L., ‘Bandwagoning for profit: bringing the revisionist state back in’, International Security (Summer 1994): 72–107. ———, Deadly imbalances: tripolarity and Hitler’s strategy of world conquest (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998). ———, Unanswered threats: political constraints on the balance of power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Sil, Rudra & Peter J. Katzenstein, Beyond paradigms: analytic eclecticism in the study of world politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Snidal, Duncan, ‘Relative gains and the pattern of international cooperation’, American Political Science Review 85.3 (Sept 1991): 701–26. Snyder, Jack, Myths of empire: domestic politics and international ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

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Sterling-Folker, Jennifer, ‘Realist environment, liberal process, and domestic-level variables’, International Studies Quarterly 41 (1997): 1–25. Suboti´c, Jelena, ‘Narrative, ontological security, and foreign policy change’, Foreign Policy Analysis 12.4 (2016): 610–27. Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Steven E. Lobell & Norrin M. Ripsman, ‘Introduction: neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy’, in Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman & Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, eds, Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 1–41. Tannenwald, Nina, The nuclear taboo: the United States and the non-use of nuclear weapons (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Tellis, Ashley J., ‘Overview: domestic politics and grand strategy in Asia’, in Ashley J. Tellis & Michael Wills, eds, Strategic Asia 2007–08: domestic political change and grand strategy (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2007). Thucydides, The landmark Thucydides: a comprehensive guide to the Peloponnesian War, a newly revised edition of the Richard Crawley translation, Robert B. Strassler, ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1996). Trubowitz, Peter, Politics and strategy: partisan ambition and American statecraft (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2011). Van Evera, Stephen, Causes of war: power and the roots of conflict (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). Walt, Stephen M., ‘Alliance formation and the balance of world power’, International Security 9.4 (Spring 1985): 3–43. ———, The origins of alliance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987). Waltz, Kenneth, ‘Reflections on Theory of International Politics: a response to my critics’, in Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and its critics (NY: Columbia University Press, 1986): 322–45. ———, Man, the state and war: a theoretical analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). ———, Theory of international politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Wendt, Alexander, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’, International Organization 46.2 (Spring 1992): 391–425. ———, ‘Social theory as Cartesian science: An auto-critique from a quantum perspective’, in Stefano Guzzini & Anna Leander, eds, Constructivism and international relations: Alexander Wendt and his critics (2006): 181–219. ———, Quantum mind and social science: unifying physical and social ontology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015). ———, Social theory of international politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Wohlforth, William C. et al., ‘Testing balance-of-power theory in world history’, European Journal of International Relations 13.2 (2007): 155–85. Wohlforth, William C., Elusive balance: power and perceptions during the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).

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Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962). Zakaria, Fareed, ‘Realism and domestic politics: a review essay’, International Security 17.1 (1992): 177–98. ———, From wealth to power: the unusual origins of America’s world role (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

CHAPTER 3

The Theoretical Model in Context

3.1

The Dilemma of Measuring Relative Power

Power is most associated with realism, and realists like Morgenthau and Waltz have proposed analyzing it in terms of elements or properties such as geography, population, territory, natural resources, economic and industrial activity (GDP) and military capability, as well as less concrete indices like national morale, political stability, and the quality of civilian government and military leadership.1 Others from a wider spread of disciplines tend to view power in its relational effect causing behavior change.2 Analysis of relative power shifts would seem to require the relational approach. Conceptual and operational difficulties beset both approaches. However, scholars have to date most systematically measured relative power differentials using the Correlates of War (CoW) Project’s National Material Capabilities (NMC) dataset, which is based on the properties approach. Despite its flaws, the NMC is at the moment the best and most widely used proxy measure of power. The NMC incorporates six measures—military expenditures, military personnel, iron and steel

1 Morgenthau 2006, ch. 9; Waltz 1979, 131. 2 Dahl 1957; for discussions on both types of power conceptions, see Baldwin 2013,

and Schmidt and Juneau 2012, 62–3.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_3

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production, energy consumption, total population, and urban population—encompassing the military, economic-industrial, and demographic basis of state power. A Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) then aggregates all six measures into a score ranging between 0 and 1, representing the state’s share of total system capabilities.3 Before applying the CINC in context, any contemporary discussion of power also requires differentiating it from influence. Neoclassical realists emphasize influence, instead of power or security, to ‘shape the environment that [a state] inhabits’.4 Maximizing influence is to ensure one has a say, ‘increasing the quantity and quality of a state’s options and reducing those of rivals…on the basis of its relative power’.5 Rose writes that ‘as their relative power rises states will seek more influence abroad, and as it falls their actions and ambitions will be scaled back accordingly’.6 Influence here however remains inadequately distinguished from power. On the other hand, Wolfers contrasts power, ‘the ability to move others by the threat or infliction of deprivations’, with influence, ‘the ability to do so through promises or grants of benefits’.7 This is closer to Nye’s definition of ‘soft power’, the ability to get ‘others to want what you want’,8 so that ultimately, ‘[s]oft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others’.9 To link this to the earlier discussion in 2.3, if hard power especially under high constraints directly shapes (preferences over) actions or behavior, then soft power shapes the other element, preferences (over outcomes). Influence is primarily ideational, hard to measure, and the reason states employ tools like ideology, religion, culture, and language abroad as part of grand strategy. Influence can also compensate middle and small states for what they lack in hard power. However, since it is relative power that can be objectively measured, let’s take this one step further. Graph 3.1 is a deliberately condensed snapshot of the CINC scores covering the years 1970–2016 (the latest year available) for Iran, alongside 13 other states relevant because they are major powers (the

3 Singer, Bremer & Stuckey 1972. 4 Schmidt 2005, 546; classical and offensive realists maximize power, defensive realists

maximize security. 5 Juneau 2015, 52–3. 6 Rose 1998, 152; see also Gilpin 1981, 94–5. 7 1962, 103. 8 Nye 1990, 31–2. 9 Nye 2004, x.

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Graph 3.1

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Relative power

Security Council Permanent Five plus India) or actual and potential regional competitors (Iraq, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan). Changes in Iran and the regional powers’ scores seem minuscule when compared against the major powers. Yet these figures illustrate objective shifts in relative power. To ease visualization, Graphs 3.2 and 3.3 separately capture Iran’s scores vis-à-vis the major powers and regional powers. Capability differentials come through more distinctly among the major powers. The US’ power share jumps perceptibly between 1988 and 1989 and again in 1992 after the Cold War. In 2002 following 9/11’s wakeup call, US power again rises, peaking at nearly 16 percent by 2005. As it collapses, the Soviet Union /Russia’s power is dramatically halved between 1989 and 1992, dropping to under 7 percent, and creating a power vacuum and thus strategic opportunity. Meanwhile, China’s share, stable throughout the 1970–80s rises significantly from 1992 and doubles

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Graph 3.2

Relative power: Iran and major powers

to 23 percent of world capabilities by 2016, a figure also partially skewed by China’s disproportionate population. Similarly, from 1991 India’s share of global capabilities steadily rises, culminating at nearly 9 percent by 2016. Conversely, although UN Security Council permanent members, both the UK and France are steadily but unmistakably in decline. Indeed, Iran’s power share—in CINC terms at least—surpasses both as of 2012, having risen slowly from 1995 onwards. Among regional states, power differentials are not as stark. Israel’s share peaks in 1997 and again in 2014–2015 but theoretically poses little threat to Iran (the index ignores Israel’s qualitative edge such as nuclear capability). Syria approximates Israel’s score, peaking in 1993 and again in 2011 for the last time, but again without Israel’s (uncaptured) qualitative advantage. Iraq stands cleanly in Iran’s shadow throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, even when Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. Then in 1986, its score eclipses Iran’s for the first time, and peaks in absolute terms in 1990, but halves swiftly by 1992 with little recovery after its botched invasion of Kuwait. Egypt’s score remains below Iran’s from 1974 onwards,

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Relative power: Iran and regional powers

dipping further in 2012 after the 25 January Revolution. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s share spikes in 1991 (even briefly outdoing Iran that year), and reaches a new peak in 2012 coinciding with Iran’s rising capabilities, the Arab Uprisings, and the start of the Sunni-Shi’a contestation. In 2015, Saudi power reaches its culmination, briefly placing it in the regional lead. To put this in perspective, in 1970 Riyadh’s power was a third of Iran’s, in 1979 it was nearly two-thirds, and by the 1990s onward it was just trailing behind Iran, even eclipsing it in 2014–2015. With its score gradually increasing until a peak of over 1.6 percent in 1998, Turkey’s power share largely stays in the regional lead. It mostly betters Iran by a slight margin, but has been occasionally surpassed including after 2011. Finally, like Turkey, Pakistan’s capabilities also mostly approximate those of Iran’s in the period under scrutiny. By 2016, Iranian power (again in CINC terms) led the region. Given the inescapable prominence of oil in Iran and its implications for grand strategy, and since the CINC score does not directly

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capture hydrocarbons as a measure of power, a brief discussion is useful. According to the World Bank, the oil sector comprised about 25 percent of Iran’s GDP in 2011, and slightly under 13 percent in 2016.10 While oil does not occupy the largest share of Iran’s national product, it is the most significant source of the state budget and the primary driver of economic growth, even as oil-derived foreign exchange earnings remain ‘vital to the maintenance of all other economic sectors’, including by financing imports.11 Oil more than gas exports historically represented 70–80 percent of Iran’s total export revenues,12 90 percent of its foreign exchange earnings,13 and between half to a more recent 30 percent of its state revenues amid repeated attempts at diversification.14 A rentier economy renders Iran extremely vulnerable to the risks of oil price fluctuations, dependence on global markets, skewed and retarded economic development, and sanctions.15 However, ‘oil windfall directly and immediately increases monetary resources in the government’s hands’, Amuzegar noted, and ‘in essentially non-democratic regimes like the Islamic republic, more money leads directly to greater state power’.16 To assess this claim and its relation to power, I will, in the empirical chapters, additionally refer to Graphs 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7, which respectively capture the value of petroleum exports/net oil revenues, crude export volumes, oil prices, and GDP growth per capita.17

10 ‘Iran economic monitor: oil-driven recovery’, World Bank Group, Spring 2017 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/344651498863986174/pdf/117165-WPP162048-OUO-9-P162048-Iran-Economic-Monitor-FINAL-web-Jun-29-2017.pdf. 11 Amuzegar 2008, 50. 12 This figure peaked at 95 percent in the Shah’s final years. 13 Amirahmadi 1990, 70. 14 Decreasing proportions from 2013 to 2016 reflect decreased sanctions-affected exports rather than diversification (see ch. 8); Azadi et al. 2016. 15 Mahdavy (1970) first proposed the term ‘rentier state’, specifically for Iran. 16 2008, 53. 17 OPEC net oil revenue data for Iran accessed via EIA (no longer available) span 1994– 2016. More recent EIA publications provide 2017–19’s figures. While OPEC’s value of petroleum exports dataset does not offset outlays including oil imports and production costs, it is available for a broader period and captures trend directions, and hence remains useful for analysis.

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Graph 3.4 Value of petroleum exports and net oil revenues, 1978–2019

Graph 3.5 Iran crude oil exports (1,000 b/d) (Source OPEC)

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Graph 3.6 Oil prices, OPEC Reference Basket, nominal ($/b) (Source OPEC)

Graph 3.7 GDP growth per capita, annual %, 1977–2020 (Source World Bank)

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Notwithstanding the CINC’s exclusion of hydrocarbons and inability to capture post-industrial technological advances,18 the figures matter and tell part of the story of Iran’s grand strategic adjustments. But they do not suffice for two reasons. Firstly, leaders do not always correctly calculate or even perceive relative power shifts even at the great power level, let alone among lesser powers.19 But more relevant to our discussion, objective material capabilities alone cannot explain why growing US power at the end of the Cold War and again after 9/11 exerted pressure on Iran while China and India’s growing capabilities from the early 1990s posed little threat, or why Iran viewed Saudi Arabia and especially Israel with such hostility even though the capabilities of Turkey and Pakistan—its direct land neighbors—were often greater. To account for this, we need to incorporate the ideational element.

3.2 The Ideational Microfoundations of Threat Perception and Political Preferences How leaders interpret shifts in relative power depends on how they view the nation-state’s place in the world. Responsibility for grand strategy lies with the foreign policy and national security executive, which ‘sitting at the juncture of the state and the international system, with access to privileged information from the state’s politico-military apparatus, is best equipped to perceive systemic constraints and deduce the national interest’.20 As Putnam notes, these ‘[c]entral executives have a special role in mediating domestic and international pressures precisely because they are directly exposed to both spheres, not because they are united on all issues nor because they are insulated from domestic politics’.21 Beyond the executive, the broader political class and even the country’s body politic often share common perceptual, affective, and cognitive filters shaped by national identity, regime ideology, and status aspirations.

18 Including advanced military-relevant technology (nuclear, cyber, space, etc.) not necessarily reflected in military expenditures. 19 Friedberg 1988, 306. 20 Taliaferro et al. 2009, 25. 21 Putnam 1988, 432–3.

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Identity formation transpires through socialization.22 Wendt associates personal or corporate identity with ‘a consciousness and memory of Self as a separate locus of thought and activity’, even as the collective represents a ‘“group Self” capable of group-level cognition’.23 This is the ground of the nation’s self-understanding, and a common cultural genealogy and historical narrative of triumph and sacrifice, including myths it selectively tells itself or expunges, constitute it as an ‘imagined community’.24 Wendt identifies a second kind of identity based on ‘type’ corresponding to the nature of the political regime.25 While he recognizes type identity as intrinsic and pre-social, contemporary state regimes often postdate the nations onto which they are grafted. In this way, the regime type and ideology of the Islamic Republic grafted itself onto the preexisting Iranian nation in 1979. National identity, recast through regime ideology, sharpens status aspirations and in turn frames state interests, defines threats, structures political discourse, narrows the range of grand strategic options, and catalyzes collective action. ‘Ideas help to order the world’, Goldstein and Keohane argue. ‘By ordering the world, ideas may shape agendas, which can profoundly shape outcomes’.26 The aim of unpacking ideational-constitutive microfoundations in this section is not to trace direct causal connections to outcomes. Rather, by showing how ideas inform both threat perceptions and political preferences, it aims to establish how conditions emerge rendering such strategic outcomes conceivable in the first place. National Identity: ‘Iranianness’ A territorial core aside, two principal pillars of national identity stand in perennial mutual tension in the Islamic Republic: Iranian nationalism and Islam. Persian Iran sits at the intersection of a predominantly Arab Middle East, a heavily Turkic Central Asia and Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It draws upon at least 2,500 years of documented civilizational consciousness, first as multiethnic world empire under the 22 Wendt 1999, 170. 23 Ibid., 225. 24 Anderson 2016. 25 Wendt 1999, 226. 26 Goldstein and Keohane 1993, 12.

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Achaemenids, then as regional power under the Arsacid Parthians, the Sassanians, the Safavids, and others. However, this is offset and marred by a vulnerability birthed from repeated foreign conquests and domination over the centuries, facilitated by Iran’s locus along Eurasia’s east–west expanse. And yet, even Iran’s pageant of foreign conquerors—Alexander the Great, the Muslim Arabs (in 651 A.D.), Genghis Khan and Tamerlane included—found themselves indelibly influenced if not absorbed by their hosts, who would likewise bequeath a considerable imprint in broad areas of intellectual exertion including science, medicine, administration, religion, philosophy, and literature. The notion of a ‘Persian’ Iran locates its origins in Fars (Pars), the Ursprung of two of its most consequential dynastic empires, the Achaemenids and Sassanians, which over centuries including through Herodotus came to connote all of Iran by synecdoche. Yet, the miscegenation of Persians with related Iranic ethnic groups (Kurds, Baluch, Lors-Bakhtiyaris, Gilaks) and notably non-Iranic ethnicities (Arabs, Turkmens, Azeris, Qashqais, Georgians, Circassians, Armenians) permeate Iran’s history. Iran’s Turco-Mongolian element, in common with much of Central Asia and the Caucasus stands out in particular, having also engendered Iran’s Turkic-speaking Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Timurid, Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid, Afshari and Qajar dynasties, and the Mongolian Ilkhanids. Notwithstanding unresolved tensions, this amalgam has nonetheless come to undergird a broader civilizational in-group identity deemed simply ‘Iranian’ or ‘Persian’ (Azeri Turkic-speakers, for instance, being as much Iranian as Persian-speakers). Non-Persians themselves adopted Persian culture, language, and literature, and were often the most vigorous disseminators thereof.27 As it happened, the Azeri Turkish-speaking Safavids, militarily backed by the Turkmen Qizilbesh, were the ones who founded the modern Iranian state, united it politically and bounded it territorially, and Iran’s Azeris more than other minorities are generally well-integrated including in commerce and politics.28 ‘Iranianness’, Ansari writes, helped ‘bind disparate peoples together in a revitalised

27 ‘Their force ruled us Iranians, while our culture ruled them’, Meskoob 1992, 49. 28 Supreme Leader Khamenei and former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Musavi, relatives,

both share Azeri heritage for instance.

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imagined community with a renewed spirit of civilisation’.29 But from the early modern period onward, it was Shia Islam which cemented this identity, and even more powerfully so. National Identity: Shi’a Islam and the Rise of Iran’s Clergy The Shi’a emerged as Islam’s minority faction after the Sunni traditional mainstream denied Ali Ibn Abi Talib’s hereditary claim to directly succeed his father-in-law, the Prophet Mohammad, as leader of the Islamic community. Shi’a identity acquired more definite form with the 680 A.D. martyrdom of Ali’s son Hossein in Kerbala at the hands of the Sunni Umayyad Caliph Yezid, before taking root in eighth-century Iraq. Shi’ism sets contemporary Iran apart from its Sunni neighbors, but underwent institutionalization as state religion only in 1501 with the advent of the ‘warrior theocracy’ led by the militantly chiliastic Safavids (1501–1722).30 Only fourteen when he declared Iran’s conversion, Shah Esma’il laid claim to divinity through Ali and his descendants—the 12 infallible Imams. In this way, Twelver Shi’ism legitimated dynastic rule.31 Shi’ism further reinforced transethnic unity and social conservatism at home, and differentiated Persia from its hostile Sunni Ottoman neighbor and to an extent the Sunni Shaybanid Uzbeks encroaching from the northeast.32 Given Sunnism’s earlier predominance in Iran, the Safavids had to transplant the ‘scholarly infrastructure’ of Arab Shi’ites from Syria /Southern Lebanon (especially Jebel Amel), southern Iraq and Bahrain, gradually reviving the nineth century Shi’a theological centers of Mashhad and Qom.33 Early on, Shi’a Imams had discouraged political agitation and even endorsed dissimulating one’s beliefs (taqiyya) in a hostile environment and temporarily submitting to unjust (Sunni) rulers. The occultation of the Twelfth and last Imam (the Mahdi) in 941 A.D., combined with an 29 Ansari 2017, 113. 30 Arjomand 1984, 77; Sunni Iranian minorities exist, notably among the Baluch and

Kurds. 31 Arjomand 1984, 81–2; Golden 1992, 372–5. The Twelver (Emami/Ithna-‘Ashari), Sevener (Esma’ili) and Fiver (Zaydi) Shi’a currents reflect succession disputes over the Imamate’s last legitimate representative. 32 Keddie 2006, 10–11, 13–14. 33 Golden 1992, 374.

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inward devotion to the Imamate reinforced this fatalism. By indefinitely postponing to a distant ‘end of time’ the Mahdi’s return and transmuting Messianism into a ‘passive expectancy’, orthodox Shi’ism thus further encouraged political quietism.34 By the early nineteenth century, an autonomous Shi’a clergy decoupled from the post-Safavid ruling class had consolidated itself in Qajar Iran (1785–1925), evincing growing sociopolitical interests as a result of a recent shift in the intraclerical struggle for dominance.35 The preeminence of the legalist-jurist camp,36 combined with the Mahdi’s occultation produced two developments with contemporary political repercussions. First, Twelver Shi’ite laity followed the most competent living jurists (mojtaheds qualified to practise ejtehad), each known by peer consensus as a ‘Source of Emulation’ (Marja’-ye Taqlid, or collectively Marja’iyyat ).37 After the death in 1961 of the last widely acknowledged Marja’, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, this meant at times competing authorities in a structurally informal Shi’a realm. Second, the Mahdi’s occultation gave rise to the notion of a vice-gerency on his behalf, known as the ‘guardianship of the Jurisconsult’ (Velayat-e Faqih), but limited to the affairs of society’s more vulnerable, even as the clergy continued to recognize the shah’s temporal authority. Both developments merged with a third to ignite the 1979 Revolution. The post-Safavid mosque-state division empowered the clergy’s grip on religion but circumscribed its involvement in politics.38 However, the exposure of a relatively weak Qajar Iran to western imperialism transmuted this inert formula into an explosive admixture. Combined with the clergy’s influence on the masses and the absence of secular society, this meant that when the Shah failed to defend Persia and Shi’a interests from foreign encroachment, the clergy would mobilize the

34 Arjomand 1984, 161. 35 Ibid., 262–3. 36 The Osuli legalist-jurists who won the struggle believed legal norms could be derived from Shari’a, Islamic Law, through independent reasoning (ejtehad). Their rivals, the Akhbari gnostic-rationalists considered the Imams’ transmitted Traditions the only source for deducing these norms. See Arjomand 1984, 261, 132–54. 37 Ejtehad contrasts with the Sunni practice of employing analogy and legal precedent. 38 Arjomand 1984, 265.

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people toward purposive political action.39 Then during the Pahlavi era (1925–1979), foreign influence accompanied a pre-Islamic nationalism, significant secularization, and far-ranging reforms as part of the Shah’s ‘White Revolution’, which marginalized and dispossessed the clergy even from areas they traditionally dominated. Tensions reached a new peak after a 1963 sermon by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (who would be exiled in 1964) censured the Shah’s policies, forcing clerics to take a stand. By the time of the 1979 Revolution, the clergy—marginalized but autonomous, organized and networked—were in a position to fill the vacuum with a revamped Shi’a traditionalism as legitimating ideology, one which would henceforth reunite both temporal and spiritual powers in the same person. Regime Ideology Iranian nationalism and Shi’ism provided the stem base onto which the Revolution’s leaders would graft a distinct regime ideology and normative order. The Pahlavis had cast regime identity in terms thoroughly preIslamic Persian and ‘Aryan’ (cognate with ‘Iran’, Persia’s official name from 1935), emphasizing the superiority of Iran over its Arab-Semitic and Turkic neighbors and binding Iran to the West through a common Indo-European heritage.40 Khomeini forcefully retilted Iranian identity toward its Islamic pillar. His revolution brandished a unitive, internationalist Islam transcending the nation-state, a move in theory allowing it to overcome its Persian-Shi’ite minority status.41 According to this narrative, Iran was merely the ‘starting point’, not its culmination.42 The theological innovation undergirding the revolutionary state resided in Velayat-e Faqih, which Khomeini transformed into a blueprint for comprehensive Islamic government centered on the person and authority of the Jurisconsult, supposedly the top mojtahed.43 Khomeini

39 Ibid., 252; for instance, Mirza Shirazi’s fatwa during the Tobacco revolts in 1891– 1892. 40 Adib-Moghaddam 2007, 46. 41 See Khomeini’s 2 November 1979 sermon, cited in Rajaee 1983, 82. 42 See Khomeini’s interview with Al-Mustaqbal, 13 January 1979. 43 Mottahedeh 1987, 243–4.

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overruled the traditional belief that justice and redress were impossible before the Mahdi’s return.44 He likewise suppressed both the Marja’iyyat ’s traditional pluralism and clerics who contested his interpretation of Velayat. This imbued the state with an active political purpose yoked to his vision of change. A transnational Islamism and Velayat-e Faqih’s reinvented mandate meant that Iran now saw itself as the custodian, vanguard, and paragon for the Shi’a and even all Muslims. As Khomeini announced in 1979, ‘Islam wishes to bring all of humanity under the umbrella of its justice’, which Art. 154 of Iran’s constitution subsequently enshrined as a national objective.45 The ‘downtrodden’ or ‘dispossessed’ (mostaz’afan) merged into a carefully calibrated discursive dichotomy opposed to the ‘global arrogance’ (mostakbaran), affirming the justness and transcendence of the Revolutionary cause.46 Nationalism nonetheless continued to surface, if only obliquely at first, in the Revolution’s defining slogan (‘Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic!’) and during the eight-year war with Iraq when overwhelming Arab support for Saddam Hussein controverted the illusion of panIslamism. Iran also inveighed against imperialism given its experience with Russia (and later, the Soviet Union), Britain, and the US. The long litany of national humiliation included Qajar Iran’s defeat and dismemberment by Tsarist Russia in the Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828) Treaties, and the December 1911 dissolution of Parliament under Russian pressure. The latter event definitively extinguished the Constitutional Revolution, Iran’s early experiment with democracy. National humiliation likewise included British and Soviet occupation during both World Wars, and the 1941 deposal of Reza Khan, the elder Pahlavi Shah, for sympathizing with Nazi Germany. The US entered Iran’s hall of hate only more recently after the CIA’s 1953 toppling of the democratically elected Mossadeq government to reinstate the younger Pahlavi Shah, and because of the 1963 Status-of-Forces agreement with him. Despite Cold War constraints, Khomeini backed ‘neither [communist] East nor [capitalist] West, only the Islamic Republic’ (na sharqi, na gharbi, Jomhuri-ye

44 Enayat 1983, 174. 45 FBIS-MEA, 18 Dec 1979 (emphasis added). 46 Menashri 2001, 173–4.

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Eslami). In this one stroke, he rejected the superpower-dominated status quo, and both American and Soviet materialism.47 But importantly, the revolution also rejected the Shah’s perceived dependence and ‘apish imitation of the West’.48 This state of ‘Westoxification’ or gharbzadegi as Jalal Al-e Ahmad diagnosed it, was to be remedied by a return to the authentic self (bazgasht be khishtan) rooted in Shi’a Islam as Ali Shariati saw it, taking his cue from the likes of Frantz Fanon and the post-colonial groundswell. The influence of Al-e Ahmad and Shariati amid a broader ‘nativist “cult of authenticity”’ permeated a rapidly industrializing Iran and profoundly colored the revolutionary regime’s ideology.49 Iranians perceived the Shah as an American puppet whose ‘surrogacy’ alienated the country’s social classes.50 The Shah’s heavy-handedness, especially through his feared intelligence apparatus SAVAK attracted no less domestic censure. When the US later refused to extradite the self-exiled Shah, radical students held US embassy staff hostage for 444 days in a ‘second revolution’, institutionalizing anti-US antagonism as the cornerstone of Iranian state conduct.51 After Iraq’s 1980 invasion, the Shi’a’s historical oppression and ‘theodicy of suffering’52 transformed into a potent reserve for social mobilization and self-sacrifice. Fired up by clerics, zealous conscripts rushed into enemy fire with paradise on their minds. Ideology profoundly influences strategy under such circumstances by ‘shap[ing] the expectations and goals of those who decide and the ferocity and stamina of those who fight’.53 This ‘imposed war’ (jang-e tahmili) and ‘holy defense’ (defa’-e moqaddas ) confirmed the nation’s belief in its struggle as good against evil, underscored its manifest destiny, and justified defending Islam even abroad, starting with Iraq’s Shi’a shrines.54

47 Ramazani 1986, 21–2; 1990, 49. 48 Boroujerdi 1997, 4. 49 Boroujerdi, 1996, 18. 50 Ramazani 2013, 112. 51 Ramazani 1990, 44. 52 Arjomand 1984, 165. 53 Knox 1994, 627. 54 Adib-Moghaddam 2007, 65.

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The war reinforced Iran’s sense of victimhood.55 The Gulf states and the Western powers backed Iraq financially, militarily, and diplomatically, while the international community watched from the sidelines even when Saddam employed chemical weapons.56 Furthermore, none of the UN Security Council Resolutions issued during the war identified Iraq as the aggressor. ‘If the revolution changed the character of Iran as a state’, Ehteshami notes, ‘then the Iran-Iraq War defined its relations with the outside world’.57 When they affect an entire generation, such formative experiences can linger on for a long time in strategic thinking. Combined, this sense of righteousness, suffering, the holiness of martyrdom and even the ‘nobility of failure’58 meant that defeat could still be interpreted as ‘religious virtue and even moral fulfillment in its own right’, raising the threshold for pain required to change strategic course.59 Besides national identity and regime ideology, there is yet another element. Role Conception National identity, refracted through the prism of regime ideology, informs Iran’s national role conception or perceived status. Holsti describes status as a ‘rough estimate of a state’s ranking in the international system’, while Doran correlates role to ‘informally legitimated responsibilities and perquisites associated with position and place’.60 Wendt views role identity as necessarily intersubjective and therefore structural (e.g., master-student).61 Alternatively, Juneau points to status discrepancy, which is the gap between status aspirations and a state’s perception of the status ascribed to it by others, both of which are unit-level factors.62

55 The West’s ‘unjust’ backing of Saddam consistently surfaced as the chief existing grievance in conversations I had with Iranian interlocutors in Tehran in 2015. None of them mentioned the US embassy episode however. 56 CIA, GI M 85-10180; only one statement in March 1986 by the then Security Council president cited Iraq for using chemical weapons. 57 2017, 185. 58 Adib-Moghaddam 2007, 186. 59 Fuller 1991, 15. 60 Holsti 1970, 244; Doran 1991, 39. 61 Wendt 1999, 227. 62 Juneau 2015, 42–3.

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When states are denied the recognition commensurate with their aspirations and not just actual status, they become dissatisfied with the status quo, with implications for threat perception. Considering its civilizational memory, Iran understandably demands greater recognition than it currently receives. Post-revolutionary Iran’s self-image, prestige demands, and aspirations to an internationalist Islamism and indeed, a new international order flow from but also exacerbate this status discrepancy.63 Of Holsti’s 17 role categories, half speak to Iran’s self-image: ‘bastion of revolution-liberator’, ‘regional leader’, ‘regional protector’, ‘liberation supporter’, ‘defender of the faith’, ‘antiimperialist agent’, ‘active independent’, and ‘example’.64 While roles like ‘anti-imperialist agent’ may be externally recognized, others like ‘regional leader’ or ‘defender of the faith’ and ‘example’ are tenuous and contested, which in turn fuels status discrepancy. Status is granted and withheld by others. Pahlavi Iran’s regional status increased with its role as bulwark against Soviet encroachment and as one of the Nixon administration’s two Persian Gulf ‘policemen’, boosted by Tehran’s growing industrial and military power. Since the Revolution, the US and its allies have opposed and denied Iran’s regional, let alone international, role aspirations. Iran is hence revisionist in respect of status if not territory.65 In severe instances, status revisionism has led to war as the example of Germany, constrained in a state of ‘artificial inferiority’ by the Treaty of Versailles, demonstrated.66 Role conception and discrepancy do not suffice in determining Iran’s threat perceptions and policy choices, but they partly account for why revisionism continues to be a powerful domestic force. Threat Perceptions National identity explains why post-revolutionary Iran is fiercely independent, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonialist. Shi’ism clarifies why it is justice-seeking and suffering-tolerant with potential Messianist streaks. As Arjomand notes, religion ‘can induce or inhibit propensities to different

63 Dehghani Firooz-Abadi 2012, 51–3; this is also why Juneau’s placing status conception sequentially before regime ideology is problematic. 64 Holsti 1970, 260–271. 65 Chubin 2009, 166. 66 Taylor 1962, 23.

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kinds of activity’, and while it may not strictly determine behavior, the ‘logic of the Shi’ite doctrine…is bound to constrain the range of eventual viable outcomes through the requirement of consistency’.67 Regime ideology then intensifies both nationalism and religion by producing an ideological rejectionism directed against the US and its allies in favor of the underdog, even as the experience of war exacerbates Iran’s mistrust of the international community. Finally, status discrepancy tells us why Iran remains revisionist with respect to the status quo. The ontological security scholarship sheds additional light on the more intransigent aspects of Iranian behavior. The Islamic Republic’s ideology and role conception draw profoundly upon an antagonism to the status quo’s custodians, so that perpetuating conflict becomes almost the only meaningful way to preserve its ontological security, even at risk to physical security.68 Such states ‘prefer conflict to cooperation’, Mitzen suggests, ‘because only through conflict do they know who they are’.69 Furthermore, the loss of distinctness poses a parallel threat to identity and even one’s raison d’être, so that ‘[i]nventing or problematizing new sources of group differentiation shores up the boundary between the group Self and the Other’.70 Belief systems in this way color perceptions and help leaders interpret structural cues and calibrate ends and means. These cognitive shortcuts help order and tame overwhelming quantities of information, reduce uncertainty and processing costs, invoke causal relationships, and fill in information gaps based on deductive expectations. Furthermore, this need to maintain cognitive consistency may sometimes even see contradictory information strengthening rather than eroding prior beliefs.71 However, as powerful as they are, and assuming there are agents who subscribe to them, ideas still do not impel behavior overnight. For this, ideas must be understood in actionable ways, and in relation to the state.

67 Arjomand 1984, 4, 270. 68 Mitzen 2006, 342–3, 354, 361. 69 Ibid., 361. 70 Wendt 1999, 356. 71 Stein 2001, 293.

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Interests as Causal Bridge to Behavior Before ‘enacting’ grand strategy, leaders must first ‘operationalize’ national identity, regime ideology, and role conception by translating these values into defined priorities—interests. For Wendt, identity implies interests (and by extension, preferences) and interests presuppose identity, since who we are conditions what we want. ‘Without interests identities have no motivational force, without identities interests have no direction’.72 Interests justify state action and bridge the causal chasm between ideational-constitutive elements and behavior in the material realm. ‘Not ideas, but material and ideal interests’, Max Weber recognized, ‘directly govern men’s conduct’.73 The notion of state interest or ‘reason of state’ is an oft-bandied term intertwined with the concept of power, but carries little definitional clarity.74 In its original seventeenth century rendering, Cardinal Richelieu’s raison d’état meant the ‘well-being of the state’—France and specifically its ruling elite—which ‘justified whatever means were employed to further it’. In the event, Catholic France allied itself with the Protestant princes to thwart efforts by the Catholic Habsburg Holy Roman Empire to dominate Europe and hence encircle it.75 Referring to ‘public interest’, Kratochwil defines this as evaluative constructs ‘argue[d] on the basis of intersubjective grounds that can be adduced for backing a claim’, and which benefit in utilitarian terms a significant part of a defined community of stakeholders, such as a nation-state.76 The neorealist Waltz argued that survival (i.e., security) constitutes the only irreducible state interest and its ‘ground of action’.77 Building on Alexander George and Robert Keohane’s work, Wendt however proposes four fundamental or ‘objective’ types of interests specific to state-corporate identity: survival, autonomy, economic well-being, and collective self-esteem.78 These are

72 Wendt 1999, 231. 73 Weber 1946, 280. 74 Morgenthau 2006, 5. 75 Kissinger 1994, 58; see also Malcolm 2007, 93. 76 Kratochwil 1982, 6. 77 Waltz 1979, 92, 126. 78 Wendt 1999, 233–38.

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fundamental because they are necessary for states to ‘secure their identities’ and ‘reproduce themselves’.79 If violated, states may lose not just potential gains but also an essential part of these identities. Fundamental interests as such differ from discretionary (‘subjective’) interests, which in part derive from the former.80 These fundamental interests are common to all states and do not explain variation in grand strategic preference. For the latter, the first step is to specify them in context. These interests are encapsulated in ‘Islamic’, ‘Republic’, and ‘Iran’, and spelt out in the constitution’s triple formula to preserve the Islamic Revolution, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Former Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Maleki defines Iran’s goals as ‘maintaining of our territorial integrity and security, safeguarding of our evolving political system, providing our people with basic welfare, and pursuing a foreign policy that acknowledges our Muslim identity as a nation and operates within the context of values generated by Islam’.81 This corresponds to all four types: Survival: in a physical sense, of a distinct national identity as Iran, and of a regime ideology and political culture as Islamic Republic. Threats to survival in this broad sense include military invasion, regime change, and the much-touted ‘cultural invasion’ (tahajom-e farhangi) by foreign ideas.82 Depending on the extent, the violation of territorial integrity does not necessarily threaten survival (the Turkmenchay and Golestan treaties in the nineteenth century did not destroy Iran), but it can threaten other fundamental interests. Autonomy: of regime or state action and hence independence and sovereignty. Threats to autonomy include foreign interference in state decisions and foreign control of national resources. Economic well-being: the undisrupted exploitation of economic resources for the state’s self-perpetuation and well-being, and ideally though not necessarily, society’s well-being. Threats to economic wellbeing include sanctions, attacks on energy infrastructure or export–import pathways, and domestic economic crises. 79 Ibid., 238. 80 Ibid., 234. 81 Maleki 1996, 747. 82 Khomeini once declared that losing the cultural war would render political or mili-

tary victories meaningless, Ettela’at, 23 June 1988; the theme of cultural imperialism is ubiquitous in modern Iran, even captured in high school textbooks.

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Collective self-esteem: needs related to respect and national pride (ezzat ), prestige, and ‘face’ (aberu). Whereas role conception concerns a state’s place in the international pecking order based on self-image, collective self-esteem needs are more generic. Threats to the three preceding fundamental interest types, especially survival and autonomy can in turn dent collective self-esteem (as well as role conception), as can interstate discrimination, denial of the perceived right to pursue advanced technologies (e.g., nuclear), and the rejection of a role in issue-areas significant to Iran. As we see further, Iran’s adjustment choices can be traced to one or more of these interest types. They are not equal however. The survival and autonomy of the political order midwifed by revolution and predicated on Velayat-e Faqih eclipses all else in importance, including even Islamic law, and permits regime expediency or interest—maslahat-e nezam (and thus raison d’état )—where fundamental interests clash.83 As Khomeini advised then President Khamenei in 1988: The government (state) which is a part of the absolute vice-regency of the Prophet of God is one of the primary injunctions (ahkam-e avvaliyeh) of Islam and has priority over all other secondary injunctions, even prayers, fasting and Hajj.84

Political expediency is hardly original to Iran. But seen through the Shi’ite historical experience, it has precedents in ejtehad which in turn bespeaks an officially sanctioned strategic flexibility not otherwise evident from the Islamic Republic’s ideological discourse. An Expediency Council was even created for this purpose besides adjudicating differences between Parliament (Majles, used interchangeably henceforth) and the Guardian Council. If findings from prospect theory are correct—that humans are generally risk-averse in situations of gain but risk-acceptant in situations of loss—then the notion of fundamental interests yields insights concerning Iran’s red lines and when it would react to protect those interests.85 Ideas

83 As Ahmad Khomeini put it, ‘Turning our back on the Velayat will lead to the collapse of the system’, ‘Khamenei and Ahmed Khomeini on importance of Revolutionary Guards’ role’, IRIB, 28 Jan 1990, BBC SWB, 30 Jan 1990. 84 Cited in Moslem 1999, 81. 85 Kahneman & Tversky 1979.

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translated into interests now require agents to act on them. But even there, preferences can diverge, and are not spared from politics.

3.3

The Evolution of Domestic Politics and Preferences

Ideational-constitutive elements are relatively stable and fundamental interests are common to all states. Agents, however, interpret and shape these toward different preferred outcomes. Embodied in factions and institutions, agents vie and logroll with each other for power, resources, and policy prerogatives. Regime type and in Iran’s case, the highly diffused complexion of domestic politics determine the nature of elite competition. The Islamic Republic of Iran is sui generis in that the elected ‘republican’ establishment, particularly the presidency and Parliament, operate in parallel to an unelected yet privileged coterie of revolutionary Islamic-supervisory, judicial, and security-military institutions subordinate to the Supreme Leader.86 The resulting system is ‘at once both democratic and repressive’, and the question of whether political authority flows from theos or demos still fuels a key interfactional conflict axis.87 The Supreme Leader balances, regulates, and brokers among the various political forces rather than rule by fiat, but this was easier with Khomeini’s undisputed stature than with Khamenei, who has had to build up his power base firmly within the conservative fold. This relatively collegial, as opposed to patrimonialist power set-up is reflected in the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the official clearinghouse where the foreign policy and national security executive debates and ratifies grand strategic and policy options before implementation. The president and Majles speaker have seats at the SNSC, and the Supreme Leader officially appoints half of the SNSC’s members while the president appoints the other half including its secretary, who likewise doubles as one of two of the Supreme Leaders’ representatives there.

86 Officially, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts, whose members are popularly elected every eight years; Iran is obviously not a ‘republic’ strictly speaking. Still, alongside Islam, republicanism is domestically represented as a basis of national legitimacy, and therefore, sovereignty. 87 Kamrava 2003, 109.

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Political preferences split along ideological camps or factions rather than institutionalized political parties, although these exist.88 Factions coalesce loosely around key figures and power brokers, and propagate their views through a slew of associated media outlets. While cross-line ‘defections’ do occur and individual ideological positions are by no means static, factions generally correspond to broadly identifiable sets of preferences. Since 1979, five such factions have existed at different times or synchronously, and they include radicals, reformists, pragmatic conservatives (centrists), traditional conservatives, and hardline neoconservatives. Before unpacking them, seven remarks are in order. First, factions share in common revolutionary ideational-constitutive referents, the fundamental interests these engender, as well as deference to Khomeini’s authority and a normative commitment to the Velayatbased political order. However, they debate Velayat’s interpretation and how best to secure Iran’s fundamental interests.89 As such, despite a centralized government, cohesion often eludes the political class, creating a ‘corporate schizophrenia’.90 Second, while factions compete in a host of issue-areas including the economy, sociocultural mores, the role of religion in the public sphere, external trade and diplomacy, and security and defense, their ‘labels’ have come to affectively invoke positions along the grand strategy-sociocultural axis. Insofar as external orientation, the main organizing (and dividing) principle is each faction’s attitude toward the US and the US-led world order. Traditional and neoconservatives tend toward confrontational grand strategies vis-à-vis the West (and stringent sociocultural and religious policies), as did the erstwhile radicals in the 1980s. Pragmatic conservatives and reformists (formerly the radicals) tend instead toward relatively conciliatory orientations vis-à-vis the West (and relatively liberal sociocultural and religious policies). For the purpose of analysis, I reduce these groups to two superfactions: ‘revisionists’ (traditional and neoconservatives, as well as the radicals during the 1980s) and ‘accommodationists’ (reformists and pragmatic conservatives).91

88 On why factionalism developed despite the early existence of a single, ruling party, see Mohammadi 2014; on the clientelist roots of factionalism, see Alamdari 2005. 89 Moslem 2002, 4. 90 CIA, 17 Aug 1988. 91 In domestic matters, accommodationists ironically seek to revise the pro-hardline status quo while revisionists seek to preserve it.

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Third, unusually for the Middle East barring isolated exceptions, disagreements often accompany vigorous and sometimes very public debates.92 Fourth, their inherent fluidity and relative informality mean factions are subject to ‘shifts and rifts’ in often opportunistic response to the political environment, and competition sometimes cuts across factional lines.93 Cross-cutting support for different issues facilitates ad hoc cooperation, which may also through loosely organized lists during election time make strange bedfellows of political rivals. Fifth, political competition regularly manifests itself through interinstitutional rivalry.94 Conversely, ‘institutions, once created’, Arjomand notes, can ‘in turn give rise to new constellations of interests’.95 Sixth, elites ousted from elected power are often co-opted into parallel, non-elected institutions like the Expediency Council rather than face career obliteration, thereby allowing them to reorganize, and incentivizing them to perpetuate the system.96 Finally, the ascendency of factions has corresponded to their control of the executive, and if domestic politics allows factional representatives to win elections, executives in turn empower their constituent factions. The 1980s: Radicals vs. Conservatives Between 1979 and 1983, the fledgling Islamic Republic focused on sidelining and extirpating the Monarchists, Liberal Nationalists, Islamic Modernists, Islamic Marxists (the Mojahedin-e Khalq /MEK) and Communists (Tudeh)—roughly in that order. The vehicle for imposing theocratic rule lay in the ultrasecretive Council of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), the sole legal political party then. With anti-Velayat forces expunged, two principal factions took shape within the IRP.97 92 Chehabi (2001) calls this ‘factionalized authoritarianism’, while Keshavarzian (2005) calls it ‘fragmented autocracy’. 93 Moslem 2002, 7. 94 Ibid., 9, 37. 95 1984, 270. 96 Keshavarzian 2005, 77–9. 97 Akhavi 1987, 184; the existence of two camps was noted even earlier by then Pres-

ident and IRP Secretary-General Khamenei, Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 21 August 1983; For an account, see Baktiari 1996, esp. ch. 3; Milani (1994, 199) and Moslem (2002, 48) argue that Rafsanjani represented a third, pragmatic though relatively weak pole in the 1980s.

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On the ‘left’, the radicals advocated social welfare redistributive principles, state control of the economy and the public sector, nationalization of foreign trade, land reform, unrelenting export of the revolution through support for liberation movements and even military means, and relatively tolerant sociocultural policies. Moreover, they subscribed to a ‘dynamic’ interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh-e puya). Throughout the 1980s, the radicals controlled the prime ministry (under Mir-Hossein Musavi), Parliament, the judiciary, and the various revolutionary organizations. On the ‘right’, the conservatives enjoined ownership of private property and enterprise (and therefore enjoyed the support of the Bazaar guilds), and ‘equal distribution of opportunities’ rather than a classless society.98 They advocated a cautious foreign policy—even normalization—so long as western cultural penetration was curtailed, though they also opposed the radicals’ relatively lenient sociocultural outlook and particularly their dynamic interpretation of Islamic Law.99 The conservatives controlled the (then largely ceremonial) presidency under Khamenei, and the Guardian Council. The war over economic policy—the major bone of contention then— was underway by April 1982, when Qom’s Friday Prayer Leader Ayatollah Ali Meshkini ruled that ‘any attempt to establish a classless society was a move against “the natural order of things”’.100 In the legislature, Mehdi Karrubi and Ayatollah Ahmad Azari-Qomi faced off over the economy.101 In the executive branch, factional tensions peaked over the scope of constitutional authority between Prime Minister Musavi and President Khamenei, who had named Musavi as a compromise candidate after Parliament rejected his choice of premier, Ali-Akbar Velayati. Reelected in 1985, Khamenei opposed Musavi’s nomination. Meanwhile, the conservative-controlled Guardian Council repeatedly

98 Arjomand 1988, 160; The traditional clergy and the bazaari merchants, historical allies, were the only social sectors the Shah could not subjugate, which explains the conservatives’ twin emphasis on free markets and sociocultural conservatism, Abrahamian 1982, 533; for the Bazaar’s political role and influence, see Keshavarzian 2007, 230–55. 99 Dynamic fiqh reinterprets Islamic Law to match the times, while traditional fiqh adheres to the Eternal Law, see Moslem 2002, 47–50; the issue of private property was likewise intensely contested, see Baktiari 1996, 84. 100 Arjomand 1988, 159. 101 Baktiari 1996, 140–1.

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stonewalled legislation proposed by the radicals including the nationalization of foreign trade, which eventually prompted Khomeini to create the Expediency Council to adjudicate such disputes.102 Khomeini sought to balance both factions, for instance backing private property without capitalist excesses like price manipulation, but opposing the nationalization of foreign trade.103 In 1985, he intervened on the radicals’ side, ensuring that Musavi’s prospective second term would not be derailed by a parliamentary no-confidence vote.104 Irreconcilable differences prompted Khomeini to dissolve the IRP in 1987. Rafsanjani and Khamenei, who had both recommended the measure, argued that having fulfilled its original objective of establishing and institutionalizing Velayat, the IRP would henceforth only fuel division.105 Formalizing the factional split was the (re)emergence of the right-leaning Militant Clergy Society (Jame’-ye Rouhaniyat-e Mobarez, est. 1977) and its left-leaning splinter, the Combatant Clerics Association (Majma’-ye Rouhaniyun-e Mobarez, est. 1988). The 1990s: Traditional Conservatives, Centrists, and Radicals-Turned-Reformists Khomeini’s death foreshadowed the decline of the radical left and its ideological fundamentalism. Yet, it also left unchecked the already simmering factional infighting. Rafsanjani and Khamenei joined forces after respectively becoming President and Supreme Leader in 1989, and gradually eliminated the radicals from government. This was necessary to complete the shift toward pragmatism for post-war reconstruction, which in turn required normalized relations with the mostly Western industrial powers including the US. However, personal tensions and Rafsanjani’s own pragmatist-centrist orientation finally prompted him to part ways with Khamenei and the traditional conservatives. Between November 1995 and January 1996, this division was formalized in the establishment of the technocratic and

102 Milani 1994, 200. 103 Akhavi 1987, 185. 104 Ibid. loc. cit.; the conservatives sought to replace Musavi with Mahdavi-Kani. 105 Arjomand 1988, 169.

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socially progressive Executives of (Re)construction (Kargozaran-e Sazandegi) party.106 Furthermore, by around 1994, the pragmatists had found themselves making common cause with the erstwhile radicals, many of whom had now reinvented themselves as reformists bent on transforming the system from the inside. Reformism as a political force took centerstage in the Second Khordad Movement, named after the Persian date of Khatami’s landslide victory in the May 1997 presidential elections. Struggling to field their own candidate, the pragmatists around Rafsanjani supported the reformists.107 If the 1980s saw the consolidation of political Shi’ism, the late 1990s witnessed a period of reformulation. And if the pre-reformist radicals were ‘left-wing’ in their sense of redistributive social justice, the post-radical reformists were so owing to their progressive views on democracy and social freedoms.108 Reformism spilled over into external policy, reflected in Khatami’s engagement with the US. The 2000s: Neoconservatives, Traditional Conservatives, Centrists, and Reformists Khatami’s reformist government provoked an ideological backlash from an emerging subfaction within the conservative fold, which eventually produced the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2005. These neoconservatives (or Osulgerayan, ‘Principlists’) espoused even more hardline views and reclaimed Khomeini’s original revolutionary principles. While they advocated sociocultural strictures and traditional Fiqh, the neoconservatives like the earlier radicals also preached economic populism, social justice, statism, and an acutely confrontational external stance including over Iran’s nuclear program. Unlike the heavily clerical conservative Old Guard, neoconservatives like Ahmadinejad comprised lay fundamentalists of the Revolution’s second generation, many of whom had cut their teeth in the IRGC or the Basij during the eight-year war, and lived pious and frugal lifestyles unlike the more commercially minded conservatives. Furthermore, they were

106 For the founding text, see Ettela’at, 18 January 1996. 107 Aside from the left’s deradicalization, the pragmatic conservatives’ greater economic

statism also abetted this rapprochement, Moslem 2002, 227–8. 108 See also Abrahamian 2004.

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critical of the conservatives for their paternalistic monopoly over decisionmaking.109 Rather than shunning the clergy altogether, however, they allied themselves with key figures of the clerical far-right including Ayatollahs Ahmad Jannati, Mohammad Yazdi and notably Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, who held that the Vali’s infallibility and therefore absolute authority rendered republicanism redundant.110 Despite their differences, Khamenei and the traditional conservatives found the neoconservatives useful allies in the counteroffensive against the reformists. But with the latter sidelined, internal frictions surfaced within the broader conservative camp, spilling over into grand strategy. The 2010s: Pragmatic vs. Traditional Conservatives After his 2013 electoral victory, the pragmatic conservative Hassan Rouhani advocated moderation and détente with the West, embodied in the nuclear negotiations. Rouhani intermittently took up reformist causes although he was also criticized for not doing enough. Still, other than the sidelining of Ahmadinejad and his closest associates, the factional landscape has changed little. The traditional conservatives have remained dominant with the thinly veiled patronage of Khamenei whose hardline has become the norm from which ‘any departure…must be justified’.111 Khamenei has been Supreme Leader since 1989, and his closest associates have controlled or held majorities in key institutions such as the Guardian Council which vets all legislation and electoral candidates; the Assembly of Experts which selects and supervises the Supreme Leader; the judiciary; the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting agency (IRIB/Seda o Sima); the numerous ‘charitable’ foundations (bonyads ); and all security and intelligence organizations, especially the IRGC. During this period, Iranian media has increasingly referred to the factions in binary terms, with ‘reformist’ (eslah-talab) typically including the centrists, and ‘principlist’ (osulgera) as a general label for traditional and hardline conservatives. Having developed diverging preferences from shared ideas and interests, agents can now also respond to perceived external imperatives by selecting and enacting adjustments.

109 Naji 2008, 47. 110 Mesbah-Yazdi 1999, 317. 111 Chubin 1994, 68.

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3.4 Grand Strategic Adjustments in Three Orders Adjustments to grand strategy refer primarily to shifts in first-order grand strategic orientations, four of which ideal types were introduced in 2.4. Orientations are a function of the interaction among power, perception, and preferences (or politics), generating variation along the restrictive/permissive and revisionist/accommodationist axes, such that change in even one axis by definition implies change in orientation. Where changes apply to both axes, adjustments are likely to be stark. First-order changes ought to manifest in second-order strategies such as balancing and appeasement, these being deducible from first-order orientations, before translating into contextually specific third-order security, diplomatic and trade policies. Unlike the first two orders, the third is not directly deducible given the myriad possibilities but should nonetheless correspond to second-order strategies. Adjustments mean we should expect qualitatively new policies or significant quantitative changes to existing policies and commitments. The baseline for assessing shifts in t0 is simply the existence of a different grand strategic orientation, strategy set, and concrete policies from the preceding period, t−1 . Grand strategy thus defined may appear oddly fickle. However, recall that it comprises means and ends made explicit under real-world constraints (i.e., preferences), both of which in turn derive as much from structure as from unit-level factors (2.3). The proposed model does not attribute such contingent shifts to the four types of objective interests common to all states, or to the more epistemically problematic realm of subjective interests or ideal-world ends (3.2). Neither of these in themselves should be confused with ‘grand strategy’ as used here. Consider US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Both presumably viewed the US’ objective interests or even ideal-world ends in similar ways—physical security, economic growth, the protection and diffusion of liberal democratic values, and the preservation of the international status quo under US leadership. Yet both still presided over diverging orientations, strategies, and policies. Adjustments in first-order orientation and second-order strategies are often implied rather than explicit. Contrast this with the US’ context, again, where Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’, Kennedy’s ‘Flexible Response’, Nixon’s Détente, the Reagan Doctrine, Bush Sr.’s ‘New World Order’, and Bush Jr.’s ‘War on Terror’ (and even the published US National

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Security Strategy documents) explicitly set out strategic orientations often intended to differentiate the incoming administration from its predecessor. Elsewhere, the rarity of articulated clarity instead requires close attention to observable shifts in grand strategy’s component parts. In what follows, I expand on 2.4 and suggest how second-order strategy sets translate into third-order policies using Iran-specific examples. Soft Expansionism (Influence) This is likely when perceptions of low external threat coincide with revisionist dominance. Observable indicators include attempts to increase and consolidate influence with foreign governments or societies, aimed at remolding or at least reducing the influence of the existing US-led order. Influence can assume political, economic, social, civilizationalcultural, ethnolinguistic, religious-sectarian, and scientific-technological forms, including for ‘hearts and minds’. Under Ahmadinejad, Iran pursued an expansionism in post-Saddam Iraq which chiefly entailed consolidating influence and leverage with Iraq’s political class and various Shi’a militias. Nuclear nationalism and space launch achievements also served a strategy of soft power expansionism playing to Iran’s scientific advancement claims. Finally, seeking to challenge the status quo, Iran sought to expand its sphere of influence in Latin America and Africa, as well as with the ‘Eastern’ powers. Engagement This is likely when perceptions of low external threat coincide with accommodationism. Engagement may resemble a ‘benign’ form of revisionist expansionism but differs in that it converges with the broader, noncoercive accommodationist goal of working with rather than against the West, and within the rules of the existing order. Engagement aims at increasing mutual understanding, communication, and interdependence to foster cooperation. Observable indicators include increased diplomatic and sociocultural contacts, trade volume and diversification, and even security cooperation with the West. Khatami’s ‘dialogue among civilizations’ perceptibly improved ties with the US and Europe, and was itself a continuation of Rafsanjani’s opening shot to the West when trade and diplomatic relations also improved.

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Balancing and Hard Expansionism Both external and especially internal balancing are expected to varying degrees when threats are perceived to be high, regardless of factional dominance. Observable indicators of external balancing include new or upgraded relations or alliances with states sharing an interest in opposing the West and especially the US, notably major powers. Internal balancing indicators include large-scale rearmament, expanding military-industrial complexes, development or acquisition of advanced military-relevant technology, and increased defense expenditures or budget allocations. When capabilities permit, states generally prefer self-reliance and hence internal balancing, but for threatened non-great powers, internal and external balancing often go hand-in-hand. Hard expansionism often encompasses these same characteristics, but additionally includes significant overseas military deployments, which in turn implies high relative power. In Rafsanjani’s first term, war-wrought destruction uniquely necessitated large-scale economic and military rehabilitation. The lessons of war prompted Iran to develop an indigenous defense-industrial base while acquiring replacement and new weapons systems and technology transfers from friendly states. Despite the relatively low-threat external environment early on, the domestic focus on rehabilitation would from around 1991 serve an internal balancing strategy given Iran’s unresolved interstate tensions. Rafsanjani furthermore strengthened relations with post-Soviet Russia and China, already its leading arms suppliers, to balance against the US when structural conditions changed. As international pressures over its nuclear program rose, Ahmadinejad’s Iran also increasingly relied on expanded ties with the ‘Eastern’ powers and Latin American and African governments for external balancing aims. On the other hand, the clearest case of hard expansionism was in 1982, when having retaken occupied territory, Iran prosecuted a total war into Iraqi territory. Subversion This is a likely complement to, or substitute for revisionist expansionism or balancing under conditions of high perceived threat. States seek recourse to subversion or astuce as a third way where arms (internal balancing) are too costly, and allies (external balancing) threaten one’s

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autonomy of action or are unavailable. Subversion is therefore a lowercost, lower-risk option which still preserves self-reliance and power. Subversion encompasses a wide array of measures including payoffs or inducements, stoking cross-border coethnic or coreligious dissent, deception, covert operations, and coercion through blackmail. But what they share in common is the use of indigenous means to actively yet indirectly counter or blunt perceived threats, and in a way which avoids open war. Observable indicators for instance include cyberspace operations especially for offensive objectives; disinformation campaigns; and covert measures including assassinations—all of which were particularly prominent during Ahmadinejad’s second term. Appeasement and Bandwagoning When faced with high threats, accommodationists are more likely than revisionists to also countenance strategies like appeasement and bandwagoning. While technically subtypes of engagement, they differ from the latter in that they aim to defuse tensions with a more powerful adversary when conflict appears imminent. Observable indicators include (re)aligning with, or granting concessions to mollify ordinarily unfriendly Western states. Instances of appeasement include Khatami and later, Rouhani’s concessions over Iran’s nuclear program, as well as Rafsanjani’s offer for US oil firm Conoco to develop Iran’s Sirri fields.112 In Afghanistan, the Khatami administration’s decision to cooperate on security with the US as the latter waxed in power and ambition is in effect bandwagoning—the opposite of balancing—where a state voluntarily allies itself, even if temporarily, with the stronger power or threat. ‘Bandwagoning for profit’ may also occur when strategic gains justify the move.113 Rouhani’s first term offers an example of how an accommodationist government balances against high threat in one arena while appeasing in another. Despite the nuclear negotiations eventually leading to an international agreement, Iran simultaneously intensified its military involvement in Syria (a strategy begun under Ahmadinejad), Iraq and then Yemen 112 Multilateral agreements may likewise involve binding, another form of appeasement aimed at restraining a rival co-signatory while accommodating its demands (cf. Germany within the ECSC/EU), Schweller 1998, 70–1. 113 Schweller 1994.

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in the proxy contest against Saudi Arabia. Over time, this balancing strategy started resembling hard expansionism, at least when seen from the outside. Retrenchment and Diversionary Posturing Finally, accommodationist governments are likelier than revisionists to consider retrenchment where external threat perceptions are low and domestic imperatives take priority. Observable indicators include reductions in overseas commitments, notably in non-essential military deployments and economic or humanitarian assistance. An example is the comparably high degree of attention to domestic sociocultural reforms during Khatami’s first term. Given their avowed anti-status quo stance, revisionist governments in similar circumstances are likely to engage in diversionary posturing instead, and at the very least. Indicators include gratuitously provocative rhetoric, especially if domestic tensions are salient. Ahmadinejad issued a deluge of provocative statements against adversaries like Israel, particularly in his first term when external threat was perceived as relatively lower than before and Iran was on an expansionist trajectory. While this ultimately remained a rhetorical device, had it provoked an Israeli attack leading to interstate war, the consequences would have been strategically significant. As the following chapters now illustrate, context-specific third-order security, diplomatic, and trade policies are all consistently traceable to these second-order strategies. These, in turn, derive their individual logic from variation affecting first-order grand strategic orientations.

References Primary Sources (English) US government documents Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Memo, ‘An evaluation of DI [Directorate of Intelligence] reporting on Iran’s acceptance of a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War’, 17 August 1988, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/ CIA-RDP90G01353R001200090002-2.pdf.

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Primary Source (Persian) Mesbah-Yazdi, Mohammad Taghi, Hoquq va siyasat dar Qur’an [Law and politics in the Qur’an], M. Shahrabi, ed. (Qom: Entesharat-e Mo’assase-ye Amuzeshi va Pazhuheshi-ye Emam Khomeini, 1999).

Secondary Sources (English) Abrahamian, Ervand, ‘The Islamic Left: From radicalism to liberalism’, in Stephanie Cronin, ed., Reformers and revolutionaries in modern Iran: New perspectives on the Iranian Left (London: Routledge, 2004). ———, Iran between two revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin, Iran in world politics: The question of the Islamic Republic (London: Hurst & Co., 2007). Akhavi, Shahrough, ‘Elite factionalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Middle East Journal 41.2 (Spring 1987): 181–201. Alamdari, Kazem, ‘The power structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Transition from populism to clientelism, and militarization of the government’, Third World Quarterly 26.8 (2005): 1285–301. Amirahmadi, Hooshang, Revolution and economic transition: The Iranian experience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Amuzegar, Jahangir, ‘Iran’s oil as a blessing and a curse’, Brown Journal of World Affairs 15.1 (2008). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 2016). Ansari, Ali M., ‘Iranian nationalism and the question of race’, in Meir Litvak, ed., Constructing nationalism in Iran: from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017): 101–16. Arjomand, Said A., The shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: religion, political order, and societal change in Shi’ite Iran from the beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). ———, The turban for the crown: the Islamic Revolution in Iran (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988). Azadi, Pooya, Hassan Dehghanpour, Mehran Sohrabi & Kaveh Madani, ‘The future of Iran’s oil and its economic implications’, The Stanford Iran 2040 Project, working paper #1, Oct 2016. Baktiari, Bahman, Parliamentary politics in Revolutionary Iran: the institutionalization of factional politics (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Baldwin, David, ‘Power and international relations’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse & Beth A. Simmons, eds, Handbook of international relations (London: Sage, 2013): 273–97.

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Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, ‘Iranian Islam and the Faustian bargain of western modernity’, Journal of Peace Research 34.1 (1997). ———, Iranian intellectuals and the west: the tormented triumph of nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996). Chehabi, Houchang E., ‘The political regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran in comparative perspective’, Government and Opposition 36.1 (January 2001): 48–70. Chubin, Shahram, ‘Iran’s power in context’, Survival 51.1 (February–March 2009): 165–90. ———, Iran’s national security policy: capabilities, intentions, and impact (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994). Dahl, Robert A., ‘The concept of power’, Behavioral Science 2.3 (1957): 201–15. Dehghani, Firooz-Abadi, Sayyed Jalal, ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran and the ideal international system’, in Anoushiravan Ehteshami & Reza Molavi, eds, Iran and the international system (Oxon: Routledge, 2012). Doran, Charles, Systems in crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Enayat, Hamid, ‘Iran: Khumayni’s concept of the “Guardianship of the Jurisconsult”’, in James P. Piscatori, ed., Islam in the political process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 160–80. Friedberg, Aaron L., Weary titan: Britain and the experience of relative decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). Fuller, Graham E., The center of the universe: the geopolitics of Iran (Westview Press/RAND, 1991). Gilpin, Robert G., War and change in world politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Golden, Peter B., An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples: ethnogenesis and state-formation in medieval and early modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992). Goldstein, Judith & Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and foreign policy: an analytical framework’, in Judith Goldstein & Robert O. Keohane, eds, Ideas and foreign policy: beliefs, institutions, and political change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993): 3–30. Holsti, Kal J., ‘National role conceptions in the study of foreign policy’, International Studies Quarterly 14.3 (September 1970): 233–309. Juneau, Thomas, Squandered opportunity: neoclassical realism and Iranian foreign policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Kahneman, Daniel & Amos Tversky, ‘Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk’, Econometrica 47.2 (March 1979): 263–91. Kamrava, Mehran, ‘Iranian Shiism under debate’, Middle East Policy 10 (2003): 102–12. Keddie, Nikki R., Modern Iran: roots and results of revolution, updated edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

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Keshavarzian, Arang, Bazaar and state in Iran: the politics of the Tehran marketplace (Cambridge University Press, 2007). ———, ‘Contestation without democracy: elite fragmentation in Iran’, in Marsha Pripstein Posusney & Michele Penner Angrist, eds, Authoritarianism in the Middle East: regimes and resistance (Colorado: Rienner, 2005): 63–88. Kissinger, Henry A., Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). Knox, MacGregor, ‘Conclusion: continuity and revolution’, in Williamson Murray, M. Knox & A. Bernstein, eds., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994): 614–45. Kratochwil, Friedrich, ‘On the notion of “interest” in international relations’, International Organization 36.1 (1982): 1–30. Mahdavy, Hossein, ‘The patterns and problems of economic development in rentier states: the case of Iran’, in M. Cook, ed., Studies in the economic history of the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1970): 428–67. Malcolm, Noel, Reason of state, propaganda, and the Thirty Years War: an unknown translation by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Maleki, Abbas, ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy: the view from Iran’, Iranian Journal of International Affairs 7.4 (Winter 1996): 744–53. Menashri, David, Post-revolutionary politics in Iran: religion, society, and power (London: Frank Cass 2001). Meskoob, Shahrokh, Iranian nationality and the Persian language (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1992). Milani, Mohsen M., The making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: from monarchy to Islamic Republic, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1994). Mitzen, Jennifer, Ontological security in world politics: state identity and the security dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations 12.3 (2006): 341–70. Mohammadi, Ariabarzan, ‘The path dependent nature of factionalism in postKhomeini Iran’ (Durham, UK: al-Sabah paper No. 13, Dec 2014). Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006). Moslem, Mehdi, ‘Ayatollah Khomeini’s role in the rationalization of the Islamic government’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 8:14 (1999). ———, Factional politics in post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002). Mottahedeh, Roy, The mantle of the Prophet (UK: Peregrine/Penguin, 1987). Naji, Kasra, Ahmadinejad: the secret history of Iran’s radical leader (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). Nye, Joseph S., Bound to lead: the changing nature of American power (NY: Basic Books, 1990). ———, Soft power: the means to success in world politics (NY: Public Affairs, 2004).

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Putnam, Robert D., ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games’, International Organization 42.3 (1988): 427–60. Rajaee, Farhang, Islamic values and world view: Khomeyni on man, the state and international politics Vol. XIII (London: University Press of America, 1983). Ramazani, Rouhollah K., ‘Iran’s export of the Revolution: politics, ends, and means’, in John L. Esposito, ed., The Iranian Revolution (Miami, Fl.: Florida International University Press, 1990): 40–62. ———, Independence without freedom: Iran’s foreign policy (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2013). ———, Revolutionary Iran: challenge and response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Rose, Gideon, ‘Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy’, World Politics 51.1 (October 1998): 144–72. Schmidt, Brian C. & Thomas Juneau, ‘Neoclassical realism and power’, in Asle Toje & Barbara Kunz, eds, Neoclassical realism in European politics: bringing power back in (UK: Manchester University Press, 2012): 61–78. ———, ‘Competing realist conceptions of power’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33.3 (2005). Schweller, Randall L., ‘Bandwagoning for profit: bringing the revisionist state back in’, International Security (Summer 1994): 72–107. ———, Deadly imbalances: tripolarity and Hitler’s strategy of world conquest (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998). Singer, J. David, Stuart Bremer & John Stuckey, ‘Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965’ in Bruce Russett, ed., Peace, war, and numbers (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972): 19–48 (v6.0). Stein, Janice Gross, ‘Psychological explanations of international conflict’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse & Beth A. Simmons, eds, Handbook of international relations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001). Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Steven E. Lobell & Norrin M. Ripsman, ‘Introduction: neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy’, in Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman & Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, eds, Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 1–41. Taylor, Alan J. P., The origins of the Second World War, 1st US ed. (NY: Atheneum, 1962). Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of international politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Weber, Max, Essays in sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (NY: Oxford University Press, 1946). Wendt, Alexander, Social theory of international politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962).

CHAPTER 4

After the Big Bang: Revolution, War, and Elusive Victories, 1979–1988

By way of baseline to the subsequent empirical chapters, this brief section presents an overview of the defining features of the 1980s. While the revolution represented wholesale regime change rather than adjustments, it was an unmistakable testament to the centrality of agency and ideas as drivers of political change. It was, no less, also an external shock for the region and beyond.1 The revolution midwifed a vehemently revisionist external orientation aimed at remolding the international status quo. This was particularly the case after the Council of the Islamic Revolution and the IRP ousted, first, Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan’s transitional liberal nationalist government, and then President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr’s Islamic modernists by 1981. Despite nearly two executives operating under a charismatically dominant Supreme Leader, it was the radical left under Prime Minister Musavi rather than the conservatives represented by President Khamenei (or Majles Speaker Rafsanjani) which more often than not asserted its preferences in Iran’s external policies throughout much of the 1980s, starting with the US embassy seizure. The fledgling regime’s threat perception and paranoia were already elevated by virtue of ideology and domestic insurrections. External developments early on would add fat to the fire, including the Carter administration’s sanctions on Iran in response to the embassy hostage 1 On the Revolution, see Abrahamian 1982; Arjomand 1988; Keddie 2006.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_4

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crisis, and most critically, Iraq’s invasion in September 1980—the Islamic Republic’s first external shock. Given the internal flux, military purges, government instability, and discontinued US military assistance, not only did the war pose a real threat, Khomeini and other decision-makers initially even believed Iran faced defeat, according to then President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Bani-Sadr.2 The domestic and structural conditions combined correspond to Restrictive Revisionism from 1980 to 1988, which in turn suggests hard expansionism, balancing, and subversion strategies. The Islamic Republic’s avowed aversion to dependence on external allies and especially both superpowers meant, by default, the prioritization of internal balancing. But unable to significantly increase its domestic military power on such short notice, Iran instead sought compromise through arms acquisitions from multiple suppliers. These included Western governments and the Eastern Bloc, and especially China, North Korea, Libya, and Syria. During the war, Iran took delivery of military equipment worth about $24 billion (in 1988 dollars), compared to Iraq’s $80 billion.3 Shortly after the release of the US embassy hostages in 1981, Iran with Washington’s knowledge began secretly and controversially purchasing US-made arms, ammunition, and spare parts from Israel—mostly shipped from Eilat to Bandar Abbas—in what would by 1986 evolve into the arms-for-hostages Iran-Contra affair.4 On the battlefield, Iranian forces—both the regular army and the newly created IRGC, notwithstanding mutual tensions and literal in-fighting— slowly fought back Iraq’s offensive.5 In July 1982, Iranian forces recovered Khorramshahr and other occupied territory. But rather than end the conflict from a position of strength, Iran—under the influence of IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaei and Majles Speaker Rafsanjani, and against Khomeini’s better judgment—instead pursued a total war into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, crossing the Rubicon from balancing to hard expansionism.6 The decision coincided with rising oil revenues and GDP 2 Bani-Sadr 1991, 74. 3 Razoux 2015, Appendix F. 4 Seymour M. Hersh, ‘The Iran pipeline: a hidden chapter/a special report; U.S. said

to have allowed Israel to sell arms to Iran’, NYT , 8 December 1991. 5 Akhavi 1987, 192–4. 6 See Ostovar 2016, 78–80; Pollack 2004, 193–5; for an Iranian view justifying the

war’s continuation, see Ardestani 2005–6, 11; similarly, official Iranian archives portray

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growth that year, unprecedented on both counts since 1979 (Graphs 3.4 and 3.7). But it also placed both the US and the USSR firmly in Iraq’s camp.7 Lacking conventional military advantage and driven by its ideological support for Islamic causes worldwide, Tehran concurrently resorted to subversion based on the export of the Revolution. Khomeini had made it clear before Iraq’s invasion that we want to export the same spirituality which has emerged in Iran.…We do not want to draw our swords and take our guns and attack.…We want to export…our cultural revolution and our Islamic revolution to all Islamic countries. Once this revolution is exported…it will solve problems.8

A key element of subversion involved creating or supporting ideological allies abroad. The radicals under the patronage of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, subsequently if only briefly Khomeini’s anointed successor, helped establish within the IRGC the Office of Islamic Liberation Movements led by Montazeri’s son Mohammad and afterward by his sonin-law’s brother, Mehdi Hashemi.9 In Lebanon, with Syria’s assent, the IRGC deployed in 1982 and under the direction of Iranian government officials, including ambassador to Damascus Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur, helped establish the Shi’ite militia which would become Hezbollah, following Israel’s invasion that June. This also coincided with Iran’s military expansionism into Iraq. While Tehran and especially the IRGC’s broader objective was to liberate Jerusalem, the Iraqi threat and obstacle remained the immediate priority.10 Iran likewise helped establish Iraqi opposition groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps between 1982 and 1983.

the counter-invasion as an indispensable defensive measure to prevent Iraq from enhancing its capabilities, Ruzshomar 2002, 17–20. 7 On the war, see Razoux 2015. 8 ‘Khomeyni addresses representatives of liberation movements’, Tehran Domestic

Service, 9 August 1980, FBIS-MEA, 11 August 1980. 9 For how the IRGC saw ‘export of the Revolution’, see Payam-e Enqelab No. 4, 19 March 1980, 32–9. 10 Ostovar 2016, 109–10.

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But under war conditions, subversion extended beyond mere ideational struggle to actual ‘swords’ and ‘guns’ including terrorism, such as Hezbollah’s suicide attacks in Beirut against US and French servicemen in 1983 and the US embassy in 1984, as well as the abduction of foreign nationals. To a degree, this form of Iranian subversion also extended to Europe, especially Paris, as well as Gulf states backing Saddam Hussein, notably Kuwait. Within the Gulf, Iran was similarly perceived to be behind attempts at destabilization (Saudi Arabia, especially in its Eastern Province and in Mecca during the Hajj) or even outright coups (Bahrain in 1981). The radicals strongly abetted this aspect of Iran’s foreign conduct, although the conservatives too backed it discriminately when it suited their purposes.11 Despite the revolutionary fervor, Iran’s leadership nonetheless evinced pragmatism (not moderation) when expediency demanded it, especially for balancing objectives. The Iran-Contra affair has already been mentioned, when Iran parleyed with two of its leading self-selected archadversaries for urgently-needed military supplies. Not only did Khomeini approve the arms deal, he also quashed the investigation and permitted the execution of Mehdi Hashemi for allegedly leaking the affair to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986 to discredit Rafsanjani, who had led the arms negotiations. Likewise, in October 1984, two years into an increasingly stalemated attrition war now involving mutual attacks on cities and shipping, Khomeini told a gathering of Iranian diplomats: We should act as it was done in early Islam when the Prophet...sent ambassadors to all parts of the world to establish proper relations….We should have relations with all governments with the exception of a few with which we have no relations at present.12

Spearheaded by Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, Iran’s diplomatic and trade relations expanded, reversing the country’s initial isolation. According to a 1985 CIA assessment, member states of the OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)—Japan and West Germany in the lead—comprised two-thirds of Iran’s trade, with trade ties rising with the Eastern Bloc as well.13 By 1987, ties with 11 DCI 1987. 12 Cited in Sick 1990, 113. 13 CIA, NESA 85-10083C, 13, 15.

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Moscow were signally improving while within Europe, Tehran’s relations were such that West Germany and Italy, unlike France and Britain, were unwilling to press for an arms embargo against Iran.14 Iran also pursued relations with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and its constituent members with the aim of balancing, through diplomacy, against Iraq, the US, and the latter’s allies.15 If pragmatism was expedient in advancing balancing objectives, it proved necessary when hard expansionism and balancing failed. In July 1988, persuaded by Rafsanjani, Khomeini agreed to accept UN Resolution 598’s ceasefire.16 The decision coincided with the downing of an Iran Air passenger aircraft by the USS Vincennes earlier that month, mounting military defeats—the US had intervened directly in 1987– 1988, notably after the Iran-Contra revelation—and an economic crisis worsened by plunging oil revenues. Khomeini’s accepting the ‘chalice of poison’ despite earlier promises of ‘war until victory’ would become the Islamic Republic’s first major adjustment with wideranging repercussions. To explain Iranian state conduct in this period, realism would point to external pressures though likely without accounting for the revolution itself, the moral, motivational and missionary force of which underscores first and foremost the role of ideas and agency. Constructivism falls short from the other direction in its inability to reconcile ideological fervor with structure-induced pragmatism, particularly the Iran-Contra affair and Khomeini’s ‘chalice of poison’. Liberalism may shed light on how the domestic push-and-pull between the regime’s radical and conservative elements manifested in external policy fluctuations, but risks omittedvariable bias where structure clearly impinges, which was the case for much of the decade. For its part, NCR would look to structure first and posit that ideology and domestic politics only play an intervening role. The external pressures embodied in the war occupied Iran on the military, diplomatic

14 CIA, NESA M 87-20115C. 15 Ibid. 16 Then IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei claimed he had requested from commander-

in-chief Rafsanjani $4.5 billion in resources, which he was certain existed, to invade Baghdad and end the war. Rafsanjani instead reported these resources as unavailable, whereupon Khomeini decided to accept Resolution 598. See interview with Rezaei, Baztab 28 September 2006, via National Security Archives, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB394/docs/2006-09-28%20Rezaie%20interview.pdf.

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and trade fronts, and deeply scarred and reshaped its domestic economy and society. They were therefore anything but indeterminate, whether in respect of threat clarity, time horizons or imminence, or even the appropriate response options. According to neoclassical realists, in such restrictive structural conditions ‘variance in policy choices across states and across societal coalitions within states should be low’.17 And yet, unitlevel ideas and domestic politics still exerted clear and independent effects. To be sure, Iran balanced or militarily expanded, as realists would predict. But it was balancing or expanding against self-selected threats engendered (or in Iraq’s case, triggered) by its own ideology. Furthermore, the role of ideas and agency also explain why—if it was indeed the world versus Iran as perceived (see Sect. 3.2), and despite bouts of qualified pragmatism— Tehran’s leaders challenged the unambiguously overwhelming structural odds at a time when Iran suffered internal and external material power deficits, instead of ending the war much earlier in 1982 when they could, from a position of relative strength. The dynamic-integrative model of adjustments deductively incorporates the structure, ideas, and agency, but accommodates causal variation according to the empirical context. Going further, the model specifies how the interaction of structure and agent, mediated by ideas, increases the likelihood of certain strategies over others. Structural pressures shaped Iran’s strategic behavior toward balancing. However, ideology and agency mattered no less during this period, evident in Iran’s hard expansionism and subversion based on the export of the revolution. Although the all-consuming fire of the revolution would have rendered it highly implausible then, for argument’s sake, had a hypothetical accommodationism of the type favored by Bazargan or Bani-Sadr dominated domestic politics, the balance of preferences would have more easily favored strategies such as appeasement if not bandwagoning. While balancing would still have been important, it nonetheless substantively differs from bandwagoning and appeasement.

17 Ripsman et al. 2016, 46–52.

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References Primary Sources (English) US Government Documents Bani-Sadr, Abol Hassan, My turn to speak: Iran, the Revolution and secret deals with the U.S. (NY: Brassey’s, 1991). Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Research Paper (NESA 85-10083C), ‘Iran: the struggle to define and control foreign policy’, May 1985, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00587R000200190004-4. pdf ———, Memo (NESA M 87-20115C), ‘Iran: waging the diplomatic war’, 25 November 1987, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIARDP90T00114R000700740001-0.pdf Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Interagency Intelligence Assessment (NI IIA 87-10012C), ‘Iran’s use of terrorism’, September 1987, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91T00498R000800100002-2. pdf.

Primary Sources (Persian) Ardestani, Hossein, Tajziye va tahlil-e jang-e Iran va Eraq, Jeld 3: tanbih-e motajavez [An analysis of the Iran-Iraq war, vol. 3: Punishing the aggressor] (Tehran: Markaz-e Motala’at va Tahghighat-e Jang, 1384/2005-6). Ruzshomar-e jang-e Iran va Eraq [Chronology of the Iran–Iraq War], Vol. 20 (Tehran: Center for War Studies and Research, 1381/2002).

Secondary Sources (English) Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between two revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). Akhavi, Shahrough, ‘Elite factionalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Middle East Journal 41.2 (Spring 1987): 181–201. Arjomand, Said A., The turban for the crown: the Islamic Revolution in Iran (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988). Keddie, Nikki R., Modern Iran: roots and results of revolution, updated edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Ostovar, Afshon, Vanguard of the Imam: religion, politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Pollack, Kenneth M., The Persian puzzle: the conflict between Iran and America (NY: Random House, 2004).

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Razoux, Pierre, The Iran–Iraq War, trans. Nicholas Elliott (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015). Ripsman, Norrin M., Jeffrey W. Taliaferro & Steven E. Lobell, Neoclassical realist theory of international politics (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Sick, Gary, ‘Trial by error’, in R.K. Ramazani, ed., Iran’s revolution: the search for consensus (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990): 104–24.

CHAPTER 5

Sobering Up and Adjusting Course, 1989–1991

The ceasefire following the eight-year war removed the immediate menace posed by Iraq and diminished Iran’s perception of threat. Between 1988 and 1989, Iran’s objective relative material power improved slightly (Graphs 3.2 and 3.3). Furthermore, as we see below, Khomeini’s passing ushered in a new leadership indisputably dominated by accommodationists even with the radicals’ residual influence in Parliament. These conditions correspond to Permissive Accommodationism at the level of first-order grand strategic orientation. This chapter traces out secondorder strategic priorities including Iran’s engagement with the West and retrenchment to focus on rebuilding the economy and military, a stark turnaround considering that until just shortly before, when elevated wartime threat perceptions and revisionist dominance prevailed, Iran had instead been pursuing a mix of balancing, hard expansionism and subversion. ∗ ∗ ∗ In August 1988, Iran emerged from a decade of unbridled revolutionary zeal and war militarily stalemated, economically debilitated, diplomatically isolated, politically fragmented and ideologically sobered. While the war rallied Iranians around the flag, it came close to snuffing out the young regime. The exuberance which carried the revolution knew no limits to ambitions and greatly outstripped means with painful consequences, as © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_5

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the misguided pursuit of a total war into Iraqi territory had demonstrated. The peace that followed six years later was worse than had Iran exercised restraint and negotiated from a position of strength earlier. Direct damage to the economy aside, dwindling oil exports and revenues could no longer finance the war’s continuation.1 Shortly after the war’s conclusion came the death, in June 1989, of Khomeini, the factional balancer-in-chief, which in turn precipitated momentous uncertainty over Iran’s future for the second time in a decade. But all this coincided with the rise of a new leadership marked by a Thermidor period and greater pragmatism. Khomeini’s right-hand man and Majles Speaker Rafsanjani won the July 1989 presidential elections with nearly 95 percent of the votes, while President Khamenei assumed the Supreme Leader’s mantle. Rafsanjani was the first executive since 1979 to gain Majles approval for all his ministerial appointments. As a sign of his personal influence, he had convinced the 83-member Assembly of Experts to elect Khamenei as the next Supreme Leader, claiming the choice was based on Khomeini’s wishes.2 Only in the following month did a national referendum approve several constitutional amendments including the removal of the Marja requirement for the Supreme Leader. In facilitating the accession of Khamenei—an uncharismatic, mid-ranking cleric bordering on a ‘theological nonentity’3 —Rafsanjani (himself a midranking Hojjat-ol-Eslam) almost certainly hoped he would eclipse his less influential ally. Rafsanjani also pushed for the constitutional removal of the prime minister in favor of a centralized presidential system, aimed at both weakening the radicals and making for a more effective government. Rafsanjani amassed a series of institutional appointments including the Chairs of the newly created Expediency Council and the revamped Supreme National Security Council (the wartime Supreme Defense Council), and direct oversight of the Plan and Budget Organization, previously an independent ministry. If nothing else, the public also widely considered him the most capable candidate to steer national

1 ‘Rafsanjani on Iran’s conduct of the war’, Aftab News, 21 June 2008, via National Security Archives http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB394/docs/200806-21%20Rafsanjani%20interview.pdf. 2 Footage of the 4 June 1989 Assembly of Experts session, released in 2009 https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSk3Ij_l0XA. 3 Ansari 2012, 230.

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rehabilitation.4 With Khamenei still bereft of a solid support base, the duumvirate cooperated to emasculate the radicals, removing them from their redoubts in the executive (1989), and then the Assembly of Experts (1990). The conservative-dominated Guardian Council likewise moved from merely observing elections to directly supervising them, previously the prerogative of the radical-controlled interior ministry. In the 1990 Assembly of Experts elections, the Guardian Council even imposed Shi’ite jurisprudence examinations, humiliatingly failing radical clerics like Mehdi Karrubi, the notorious ‘Hanging Judge’ Sadeq Khalkhali, and Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur.5 But in Parliament, where they would retain their majority until 1992, the radicals criticized Rafsanjani’s economic reforms and moves to thaw relations with the West, and grilled Health and Education Ministers Iraj Fazel and Mohammad-Ali Najafi, prompting the former’s dismissal on a no-confidence vote.6 They likewise questioned Khamenei’s Supreme Leader qualifications, with 80–100 parliamentarians suggesting at one point their deference to Khomeini’s defrocked heir Ayatollah Montazeri, or at least their preference for a Supreme Leader confirmed by popular vote.7 With immense change afoot, Rafsanjani began reversing some of Khomeini’s policies and priorities. One effect of the Thermidor was a cautious but greater relative emphasis on nationalism compared to Islam. In 1990, Rafsanjani presided over a year-long commemoration of the eleventh-century poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi, author of the national epic Shahnameh (the Persian Book of Kings), which had been banned from schools after the Revolution. In 1991, he visited Persepolis, in effect rendering homage to the pre-Islamic Achaemenids.8 Moreover, the government openly redisplayed the Royal Jewels of Imperial Iran and increased funding to preserve historical monuments, many predating Islam.9 During this period, no matter how vague, references to the ‘national interest’ similarly resurfaced. Greater focus on the national 4 Moslem 2002, 89. 5 Arjomand 2009, 139. 6 Sarabi 1994, 93. 7 Ibid., 91–2. 8 Rafsanjani 2014b, 72–3. 9 Milani 1994, 229.

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condition dovetailed with the pressing, domestic material needs at hand. The first order of the post-war agenda was therefore economic rehabilitation, along with a diplomatic charm offensive to normalize relations with the states best positioned to assist Iran in this task.

5.1 Economic Reconstruction and the Rationalization of Government Charles Tilly noted that wars make states even as states make wars.10 Although less dramatic than state-formation, wars, especially when lost, also force states to reconsider their grand strategies. When Iran’s leaders finally accepted the UN ceasefire in 1988, the country’s economy was in pieces. Human casualties aside, the eight-year war had incurred direct damages to infrastructure, economic activity and oil revenues estimated at $644.3 billion, compared to $452.6 billion for Iraq.11 According to Amirahmadi, Iran’s wartime oil revenues amounted to under $145 billion, after including Tehran’s initial self-imposed export cuts.12 Compared to before the war, GDP per capita had roughly halved, an effect of the population growing from 37.2 million in 1979 to 56 million in 1990.13 Furthermore, inflation trebled beyond 32 percent and unemployment rates brushed 30 percent.14 The war aside, the revolution also triggered massive private-sector capital flight and brain drain. And further straining dwindling resources were three to four million Afghan, Kurdish and Iraqi Shi’a refugees.15 Overriding the radicals’ call to prioritize defense rehabilitation, the pragmatist government and its conservative allies instead privileged economic rehabilitation, citing among other things the economy as the

10 Tilly 1975, 42. 11 Mofid 1990, 115–25. 12 Amirahmadi 1992, 69. 13 Amuzegar 1993, 276. 14 Ehteshami 2017, 134. 15 Amuzegar 1992, 417.

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reason for Japan’s global clout despite its neutered military.16 Khomeini’s contempt for economic matters no longer carried the day.17 The domestic debate focused on the merits of self-reliance versus reintegration into the global capitalist economy. The radicals urged continued self-reliance and the provision of domestic resources for reconstruction, alongside economic planning and socioeconomic equality. They were chary of increased Western influence inside Iran, preferring instead the Third World and Islamic countries.18 Rafsanjani dismissed a centralized economy outside emergency war conditions, and conservatives allied with the bazaaris called for greater trade liberalization, imports, and foreign assistance to sustain rapid growth.19 Rafsanjani’s camp argued that to attain economic self-reliance and independence, Iran needed to revive and boost its domestic, particularly non-oil, production capacity which in turn necessitated capital and technology transfers from the mostly Western industrialized economies.20 Rafsanjani therefore early on signaled and justified his preference for accommodationism with the West, consistent with his political pragmatism, if only to strengthen Iran’s economic base. The final, ratified program combined elements from both factions but especially privatization of production, tilting toward the pragmatic conservative agenda.21 The magnitude of the economic crisis settled the question in its favor.22 Likewise, Rafsanjani demonstrated that existing debt equaling as much as $12 billion invalidated the radicals’ claim that foreign borrowing would turn Iran into a debtor state.23 Rafsanjani persuaded the hardliners that for reforms to work, Iran needed external assistance, which meant re-establishing ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, alongside industrialized countries and regional neighbors.24 16 Amirahmadi 1990, 242. 17 Ayatollah Khomeini on Tehran radio, 8 September 1979, via FBIS, 10 September

1979. 18 Pesaran 2011, 77. 19 Ehteshami 2017, 136; Amirahmadi 1990, 243. 20 Pesaran 2011, 71–3, 80. 21 See Rafsanjani’s reconstruction vision, in Ettela’at, 9 June 1989. 22 Baktiari 1996, 158–60. 23 Amirahmadi 1990, 255. 24 Ehteshami 2002, 289–90; for these debates, see Pesaran 2011, 69–80.

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Rafsanjani hence initiated his policy offensive with a $120 billion Five-Year Development Plan (1989/1990–1993/1994) aimed at raising GDP growth by an ambitious 8 percent annually, and along with that, per capita income and employment levels.25 Structural adjustments included deregulating the economy and expanding the private sector; privatizing unproductive state-owned enterprises and non-strategic industries; rescinding subsidies and price controls; unifying the multiple exchange rates; imposing fiscal discipline to offset budget deficits; creating free trade zones in the Persian Gulf; and devaluing the rial. They also included, despite historical and domestic political sensitivities, attracting foreign investment and loans to the tune of $27 billion.26 On the latter, even Khomeini in his will had admitted Iran’s need for foreign assistance despite his fierce opposition to foreign dependence.27 Remarkably, Rafsanjani managed to open the way for foreign investment in Iran’s highly sensitive energy industry. During the war, oil production continued albeit at reduced levels, but Rafsanjani’s plans now aimed to roughly double Iran’s $1 billion per annum non-oil economy to boost foreign exchange reserves.28 In 1996, the government also applied to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Simultaneously, Rafsanjani sought to rationalize and routinize governance to cope with the death of its charismatic founder, prioritizing professional ability over revolutionary commitment. His 23-member cabinet included a higher proportion of lay politicians with technocratic expertise than clerics. Strategic decision-making became centralized, more institutionalized, and less susceptible to factional caprice including in external policy, backed by professional thinktanks.29 A key product of this shift was the creation, enshrined in the 1989 constitutional amendments, of the SNSC officially bringing together the regime’s top decision-makers. Rafsanjani’s rationalizing project extended to the sprawl of parallel regular and revolutionary government organizations, in part also to diminish the radicals’ lingering influence. The Law Enforcement Forces (niru-ha-ye entezami) created in 1991 under the Ministry of Justice 25 Amuzegar 1992, 423; Amirahmadi 1990, 253–4. 26 Ehteshami 2017, 137. 27 Ramazani 1990, 59. 28 Amirahmadi 1990, 278. 29 Moslem 2002, 176; Ansari 2008, 109.

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henceforth unified the police, the gendarmerie, and the revolutionary komites. Likewise, the Defense and IRGC Ministries merged into the Ministry of Defense and Armed Force Logistics (MODAFL) under Akbar Torkan, a tested technocrat with loyalties to neither the Army nor the IRGC. While the IRGC (sepah) ultimately remained separate from the Army (artesh), as of 1992 the former reported to the same General Staff under Hassan Firuzabadi after also professionalizing and adopting a regular rank structure. Prominent commanders from one were similarly appointed into the top brass of the other. Among the lessons of the eight-year war deeply conditioning Iran’s security outlook was the necessity of efficient organization, long-term planning, and the rational balancing of ends and means. Nonetheless, efforts to merge both military organizations faced, from 1992, stiff resistance from Supreme Leader Khamenei, who instead expanded the revolutionary mandate of the IRGC, especially its extraterritorial elite unit, the Qods Force, whose commander answered directly to him.30 Rafsanjani coaxed the IRGC to refocus on post-war economic reconstruction, but this would ironically undercut his attempts to centralize power, and strengthen Khamenei instead.31 Over time his decision would abet the phenomenal expansion of the Guards’ engineering and development entity Khatam ol-Anbia in large swathes of the economy, which in turn supplied them with an independent source of revenue. Ultimately, reconstruction provoked significant economic malaise and accompanying socioeconomic disaffection, notably by 1994–1995. Nonetheless, reconstruction was the first step in preparing the country to deal with future crises including another war. To deflect potential criticism that his reforms deviated from Khomeini’s ideals, Rafsanjani portrayed reconstruction as the fourth and longest part—and thus continuation— of the Islamic Revolution, the first three being the struggle against the Shah, the revolution itself, and the eight-year war.32 According to this view, reorientation was necessary for Iran’s political independence and its self-invoked role conception as a model Islamic polity. The sheer scale of domestic needs necessitated reconstruction regardless of faction, 30 Arjomand 2009, 60. 31 Rafsanjani 2014b, 520 (7 January 1992); ‘Rafsanjani urges IRGC to play a role in

Iran’s reconstruction and development’, Voice of the IRI (Tehran), 7 January 1992, BBC SWB, 9 January 1992. 32 Rafsanjani 2014b, 551–2 (FN 1).

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and the war’s end and consequently, decreasing perceptions of external threat allowed for greater inward focus at this juncture. But critically, Rafsanjani’s accommodationism would also be instrumental in coupling reconstruction with his other key strategy, engagement.

5.2 Engagement with the GCC Monarchies, Industrialized States, and Major Powers Given the scope of economic rehabilitation, the government deemed technological assistance, expertise, joint ventures and capital from abroad indispensable, which in turn necessitated an improved international image.33 Moreover, as much as 65 percent of inputs required for Iranian industries were only available abroad and demanded foreign exchange reserves amounting to some $6.5 billion annually.34 As early as October 1988, that is after the war and before Khomeini’s death, Rafsanjani sought to dispel any ambiguity surrounding the violent export of the revolution—the persisting linchpin of Iran’s overseas image: if under the present [postwar conditions] we manage to create an acceptable type of society and set up a suitable model of development, progress, evolution, and correct Islamic morals for the world, then we will achieve what the world has feared; that is, the export of the Islamic revolution.35

Supreme Leader Khamenei in 1990 likewise emphasized that rather than state-sponsored subversion, export of the revolution meant enabl[ing] all nations in the world to see that they are capable of standing on their own feet, resisting submission with all of their strength by relying on their own will and determination and by replacing their trust in God.36

Although lower-key cultural and socioeconomic outreach activities, along with sporadic security operations continued overseas, the post-Khomeini leadership softened the more febrile aspects of revolutionary export and

33 Amirahmadi 1990, 256. 34 Ibid., 274–5. 35 Cited in Ramazani 1990, 54. 36 Cited in Moslem 2002, 150.

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confined these to Iran, not unlike Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’.37 Furthermore, Rafsanjani conceded the strategic implications of improved diplomatic relations. Toward the end of the war in July 1988, as Iran’s setbacks intensified, he had noted that one of the wrong things we did in the revolutionary atmosphere was to constantly make enemies. We pushed those who could be neutral into hostility, and did not do anything to attract those who could be friends. It is part of the new plan that in foreign policy we should behave in a way not to needlessly leave ground to the enemy.38

The imperative of rehabilitating Iran’s main source of revenue and foreign exchange, and of stabilizing the region required prioritizing the Persian Gulf. ‘If there is no peace in the region, then I do not think that matters can progress as they should,’ Rafsanjani said around the time of the ceasefire. ‘Trust among neighbours and a calm…region can automatically solve many problems for us’.39 Following Rafsanjani’s election, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) decided to re-engage Iran. In November 1989, the foreign ministryaffiliated Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in Tehran organized the International Conference on the Persian Gulf, where Rafsanjani urged cooperation with the GCC, particularly in collective security.40 Despite the unsettled peace, Iran cooperated with Iraq on crude output quotas and increased prices, and focused on bettering ties with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in particular, despite continually criticizing Riyadh.41 Already a potential source of investments, the affluent GCC monarchies represented potential markets for Iran’s non-oil exports, while Dubai remained Iran’s key re-export hub and, therefore, crucial economic lifeline.42 Détente with Riyadh—Iraq’s main wartime financier and the GCC’s political center of gravity—mattered because of the Hajj pilgrimage and Riyadh’s position as OPEC’s swing producer. After the

37 Arjomand 2009, 137–8. 38 Cited in Ehteshami 2017, 190; Ettela’at, 3 July 1988. 39 Cited in Ehteshami 1995, 146. 40 Baktiari 1996, 205. 41 Amirahmadi 1990, 277–8; Rafsanjani 2013 (12 May 1990). 42 See Keshavarzian 2007, 173–5.

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1988 ceasefire, the Saudis had exceeded their own production quota from 4.3 to 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd) to prevent Iran’s market share from increasing, before threatening to cut oil prices if Iran refused to resolve bilateral disputes.43 In May 1990, Iran hosted an oil and gas conference attended by most of the GCC states as well as US and foreign oil companies, where Rafsanjani again declaimed that ‘cooperation and understanding should replace confrontation and opposition’.44 For Iran, Foreign Minister Velayati added, ‘economic considerations overshadow political priorities’.45 In July 1990, OPEC members including Iran accepted production limits and increased oil prices at $21 per barrel.46 Iran’s factions agreed the Persian Gulf was priority, but disagreed on the approach. Rafsanjani believed that had Iran not been so antagonistic, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others, would not have supported Iraq.47 Senior Iranian officials similarly supported renewing ties. In December 1989, then secretary of the newly created SNSC Hassan Rouhani noted that The extraordinary events that have taken place in the world recently…the events that have happened in our own region, as well as the events that have taken place within our country, are persuading us to re-examine…our own place and position in the world.48

The radicals demurred. Speaker Mehdi Karrubi attacked Rafsanjani for deviating from the ‘Imam’s line’ and encouraging the same ‘American Islam’ from the likes of Saudi Arabia opposed by Iran’s Revolution.49 Then Chairman of the Defense and Military Affairs Committee Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur opposed rapprochement with the Gulf states if this was

43 Amirahmadi 1990, 80. 44 Cited in Baktiari 1996, 205. 45 Elaine Sciolino, ‘The world; is Iran’s urge to prosper overtaking its Islamic zeal?’,

NYT , 2 June 1991. 46 Amirahmadi 1990, 82. 47 IRNA, 19 November 1988. 48 Cited in Baktiari 1996, 206–7. 49 Kayhan, 25 February 1990.

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to ‘secure the interests of foreign powers or blocs in the region’.50 With memories of the Hajj incident still fresh, the radicals had censured Rafsanjani’s ally and Chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Saeed Raja’i-Khorasani for suggesting Iran should make the first move toward Saudi Arabia.51 The traditional conservatives too were critical of the Saudis. Khamenei had earlier called Riyadh’s rulers ‘the sinful idols of arrogance and colonialism’.52 Rafsanjani however eventually found common ground with his critics by rejecting the monarchies’ attempts to create a regional security order excluding Iran. Despite tentative diplomatic overtures from both sides, it would not be until the Gulf War before Iran–GCC relations palpably improved. Reconstruction required assistance in the form of loans, foreign direct investment, and technology from leading OECD industrialized nations such as France, Britain, and Germany. Although Iran’s relations with these three during the 1980s had been fraught, a CIA National Intelligence Estimate assessed that Tehran thought these nations less likely than the US to condition ties on Iran’s behavior, and viewed them as potential counterweights to Washington amid Soviet decline.53 While France had briefly hosted Khomeini at Neauphle-le-Château, it subsequently backed and armed Iraq, and took in Iranian opposition figures including the Shah’s last prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar and MEK head Mas’ud Rajavi. In civil war Beirut, pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants killed 58 French marines in 1983 and abducted several French nationals that decade. Paris suffered a series of bombings in 1985–1986 blamed on Iran, and when French authorities tried to arrest an Iranian embassy official, Tehran detained French diplomats in retaliation. Relations ruptured in July 1987. France only resumed ties with Iran in June 1988 after the freeing of the last three French hostages in Lebanon. That July, an Iranian trade team visited Paris, persuading Peugeot to produce cars in Iran and securing a $500 million barter trade agreement.54 In

50 Tehran Times, 8 January 1990. 51 Baktiari 1996, 204; according to Iran’s version, over 400 pilgrims, 270 of them

Iranian, died during an anti-US/Israel demonstration in Mecca on 31 July 1987 after Saudi security forces opened fire. Others apparently died in the resulting stampede. 52 Menashri 2001, 241. 53 CIA, October 1991, 15. 54 Hunter 1990b, 153 (FN 75).

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February 1989, during French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas’ visit, Rafsanjani welcomed doing business with Paris ‘on the basis of mutual interests’ while Khamenei called for ‘a broadening of mutual cooperation’.55 That November, French financial executives inked a $3.6 billion agreement to purchase 15 percent of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports.56 Likewise, in September 1988, London announced the restoration of diplomatic ties and reopened its Tehran embassy that December. Britain had withdrawn its Tehran embassy staff in September 1980 but nonetheless retained a small interests section in the Swedish embassy.57 Furthermore, Britain remained one of Iran’s leading trade partners throughout the 1980s, while Iran remained the UK’s third largest market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and the UAE.58 More important than France and Britain was West Germany.59 In Autumn 1988, Bonn’s Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher visited Tehran, during which he identified Iraq as the aggressor, while Iran’s Minister of Economy and Finance proposed greater West German involvement in Iran’s reconstruction in exchange for oil payments.60 Before 1979, West Germany had been Iran’s single largest source of nondefense imports.61 It had also helped kickstart Iran’s military-industrial complex, complementing it with the construction of two nuclear reactors in Bushehr.62 In the 1980s, Bonn dominated over a quarter of Iran’s import market, placing it in the lead.63 Despite West German (and other European) companies supplying chemical weapons-relevant material and equipment to Iraq, the Federal Republic had officially remained neutral during the war and, according to Iran’s ex-ambassador to Germany, was ‘the only Western diplomatic intermediary for Iran’.64 From October 55 Ettela’at, 19 February 1989. 56 Amirahmadi 1990, 245. 57 Parsons 1990, 71, 75. 58 Hunter 1990b, 145–6; Parsons 1990, 83. 59 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 129. 60 Amirahmadi 1990, 276. 61 Ibid., 29. 62 Mousavian 2008, 17. 63 Ibid., 197. 64 Ibid., 2; Iranian contacts with Germany’s ambassador in Tehran, and the mediation that resulted, enabled the release of the US embassy hostages, Parsons 1990, 78.

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1990, a reunified Germany only became more important. In August 1992, Dresdner Bank granted DM4.5 billion in credit to Iran, the largest since the Revolution.65 Then in February 1994, Iran and Germany reached a full debt rescheduling agreement for DM4.2 billion owed to the government and DM4 billion owed to Germany’s private sector, despite US pressure. These decisions to extend credit and reschedule Iran’s debt would help remove a crucial obstacle to Rafsanjani’s reconstruction challenges.66 Iran had a stake too in Japan and other European states such as Italy, but Germany, France and Britain—the latter two Security Council permanent members—were its main regional interlocutors. In 1991, Iran’s merchandise trade with the Euro Area and Japan amounted to $24 billion, about half of Iran’s global trade (up from 44 percent in 1988), while Iranian imports from these comprised nearly 56 percent of its global imports.67 Rafsanjani’s government also reciprocated the European thaw in ways other than efforts to free European hostages in Lebanon. Offsetting ideology with pragmatism, Rafsanjani announced that ‘we support the policy of respect for international regulations and are committed to the policy of nondomination and nonacceptance of domination’.68 In May 1990, the head of Western European affairs at Iran’s foreign ministry Hossein Mousavian proposed what the European Council would in 1992 adopt as ‘critical dialogue’, broaching common challenges such as drug trafficking but also Iran’s position on human rights, terrorism, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the Middle East Peace Process.69 The struggle between conservatives and radicals shaped Iran’s rollercoaster relations with Europe. On 14 February 1989, Khomeini in his last major foreign policy decision issued a religious ruling (fatwa) entailing a death sentence against the British-Indian author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie, a move which vindicated the radicals. The Rushdie affair

65 Mousavian 2008, 51. 66 According to Mousavian (2008, 59), debt rescheduling ‘was probably the most

complex and challenging economic dilemma faced by President Hashemi Rafsanjani during his tenure of office’. 67 IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS). Note that DOTS excludes services. 68 Cited in Moslem 2002, 175. 69 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 126–7.

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triggered the full rupture of ties with London in March. Paris, Bonn and other West European capitals briefly recalled their ambassadors. Beyond the fatwa, other aspects of Iranian conduct mentioned earlier continued to beset relations with Europe. Among the significant non-OECD countries with which Iran mended fences was the Soviet Union. The Islamic Republic’s relations with Moscow oscillated between cooperation and animosity. During the IranIraq war, despite disclosures of Soviet infiltration in Iran and an officially neutral Moscow’s arming of Iraq (from 1982), Iran continued to maintain mostly technical and economic ties with the Kremlin to counteract war pressures.70 In 1987, the US stepped up naval operations against Iran, nudging Tehran closer to Mikhail Gorbachev’s government, despite some setbacks.71 Moscow in turn rejected a US-led Security Council arms embargo resolution against Iran for not implementing Resolution 598. The August 1988 ceasefire and the Soviets’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989 paved the way for improved bilateral relations. In December 1988, an Iranian military delegation visited Moscow, and in January 1989, another delegation led by Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli bore a missive from Khomeini—the first from the Supreme Leader to any head of state—urging Gorbachev to reject Communism and study Islam in Qom.72 Moscow read this as a positive opening.73 In February, Khomeini received Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on the latter’s final Middle East tour stop and suggested they ‘cooperate against the troublemaking of the West’.74 Shevardnadze’s visit benefited from the recent tensions generated by the Rushdie fatwa. Since détente with the West was slow in producing dividends, the radicals advocated inclining toward the Soviets instead.75 Meanwhile, Velayati and Deputy Foreign Minister Yuli Vorontsov respectively traded visits to Moscow (March 1989) and Tehran (May 1989). Then in June, 70 Hunter 1990a, 87–8; then Majles Speaker Rafsanjani had also accused Russia of supplying chemical weapons to Saddam, Rafsanjani 2014a, 30. 71 In March 1988 for instance, protesters stormed the Soviet embassy in Tehran to protest Iraq’s use, against Tehran, of Soviet-supplied Scuds. 72 Patrick E. Tyler, ‘Shevardnadze, Khomeini meet in Tehran’, WP, 27 February 1989; ‘Study Islam, Khomeini suggests to Gorbachev’, Reuters via NYT, 5 January 1989. 73 CIA, 23 June 1989, 2. 74 Tyler, ‘Shevardnadze, Khomeini meet in Tehran’. 75 Hunter 1990a, 97–8.

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during the sensitive transition period following Khomeini’s death, then Majles Speaker Rafsanjani met Gorbachev in Moscow, regretted that only Saddam’s imposed war had prevented Iran from mending ties with the Soviets earlier, and concluded an extensive raft of economic, political and military agreements.76 The $15 billion barter arrangement included dam and railroad construction, natural gas production, and military purchases reportedly worth $4 billion.77 In a joint declaration, Moscow promised among other things to help enhance Iran’s defensive capability.78 During that trip, Rafsanjani visited Baku—the first of any senior Iranian official since the Czarist annexation of Azerbaijan in 1828—where he addressed Muslims during the Friday sermon. By early 1990, Iranian natural gas resumed flowing to the USSR. Meanwhile, a potential diplomatic quantum leap was seemingly underway with the US. A window of opportunity opened up when both Rafsanjani and President George H. W. Bush came to power. At his 1989 presidential inaugural address, Bush obliquely but unmistakably beseeched Iran’s help in freeing American hostages in Lebanon: ‘Assistance can be shown here and will be long remembered. Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on’.79 Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Larijani suggested that compensation to the victims of the 1988 Iran Air incident could improve Iranians’ perception of America.80 Rafsanjani sought normalization ‘based on mutual respect, non-interference in domestic affairs, and advancing mutual interests’.81 According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s then Director for European Affairs, Rafsanjani agreed with Ministry officials that normalization with the West should begin with Europe to prepare the ground with the US.82 Rafsanjani thought the best, indirect way was for Washington to first unfreeze billions of dollars in overseas Iranian assets. Tehran would, correspondingly, help secure the release of Western hostages in Lebanon, while the US reciprocated 76 Pesaran 2011, 79. 77 Ehteshami 1995, 177. 78 CIA, 23 June 1989, 3. 79 Bush, 20 January 1989. 80 Murray 2010, 68. 81 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 108. 82 Ibid., 109.

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with Iranian or Lebanese prisoners, including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Obeid who was detained in Israel.83 Foreign Minister Velayati suggested, via UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, that the US release 10 percent of Iran’s frozen assets.84 If the US reciprocated with mutual respect and confidence-building measures, Khamenei—who rejected talks, believing Washington only sought regime change and saw itself as superior—might warm to the idea of normalization.85 The radicals, especially Hezbollah’s Iranian patron Mohtashamipur continued strongly opposing the release of American hostages. In late 1989, the US announced it would unfreeze $567 million in Iranian assets and offered compensation to the families of those killed in the Iran Air incident.86 Yet, persisting regime ideology complicated détente efforts. Khomeini’s Rushdie fatwa and subsequent footage of US hostage Marine Col. William Higgins’ hanging soured expectations in the US. In April 1990, Vice-President for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Ata’ollah Mohajerani cited Islamic historical precedent to justify dialogue with the enemy.87 The conservative backlash was such that even Rafsanjani sought to dissociate himself from similar views.88 Down the road, Rafsanjani’s principal obstacle, more than the radicals, would be his own conservative ally. Lacking a popular support base, Khamenei had begun appealing to Khomeini’s followers by openly continuing his predecessor’s rejectionist legacy, consolidating his own position some six months after his appointment.89 In May 1990, Khamenei announced ‘I oppose negotiations with the US and without my permission, the government of the Islamic Republic cannot possibly negotiate with the US’.90 Unlike Rafsanjani,

83 Rafsanjani 2014b, 43; Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 110; Rafsanjani 2013 (26 April 1990). 84 Murray 2010, 73. 85 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 161–3; Alan Cowell, ‘Iran’s top cleric rejects

talking to Washington’, NYT , 15 August 1989. 86 Elaine Sciolino, ‘Bush hopes to settle Iranian assets issue’, NYT , 8 November 1989. 87 Menashri 2001, 194. 88 Ibid., 196; see also Rafsanjani 2013 (29 April 1990). 89 Milani 1994, 224. 90 Khamenei, 2 May 1990.

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Khamenei did not trust the US to reciprocate ‘goodwill for goodwill’. Indeed, even after the release of the last US hostage in Lebanon in December 1991 and the repatriation of deceased hostages, the Bush administration still refused to reciprocate beyond declarations and nonsubstantive gestures. From an administration official’s perspective, these gestures were ‘too little, too late’, with Iran’s hardliners already undercutting Rafsanjani and the pragmatists.91 Iran tried again with Washington from August 1992, this time briefly through German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s mediation.92 While Khamenei grudgingly consented to a quid pro quo entailing Iran’s unfrozen assets as recognition for the released hostages, efforts still led nowhere. In this immediate post-war period then, the perception of diminished external threat smoothed Iran’s path to engagement with the West and the US in particular. But Rafsanjani’s accommodationism dominated, tilting the scales in favor of this strategic response in the first place, whereas a revisionist (radical) alternative would plausibly have privileged soft expansionism instead. Rafsanjani’s government however had one more major task at hand as part of its domestic rebuilding process.

5.3 Military Rehabilitation, Modernization, and Indigenization Defense rehabilitation too remained at the top of the government’s agenda. By one account, the eight-year war had obliterated half of Iran’s military inventory.93 Once past the debate on the relative priority of military as opposed to economic rehabilitation and the means available to this end, the domestic factions agreed Iran needed to recover its strength, which meant replenishing its already obsolescent arsenal, diversifying suppliers, securing technology transfers and indigenizing arms production. Rafsanjani’s first Five-Year Plan initially envisioned $10 billion in military purchases, or just under $2 billion annually.94 Defense 91 Haass 2010. 92 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 133. 93 Chubin 1994, 29. 94 Ehteshami 1995, 169.

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comprised 7.5 percent of total expenditures ($9.05 billion out of $119.15 billion) for the period, compared to industry (29 percent), commerce (16 percent) and oil (12 percent).95 According to IISS, Iran’s military expenditures totaled $9.9 billion in 1988, the last year of the war, dropped to $8.6 billion in 1989,96 and $3.18 billion in 1990, before recovering slightly to $3.77 billion in 1991.97 However, the outlays later reported by Iran’s Central Bank fell short of the Five-Year Plan’s $10 billion figure.98 Parliament had even reduced the 1992/1993 defense budget from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, and possibly even as low as $850 million.99 According to SIPRI, Iran’s defense spending in the 1990s decreased in both absolute and relative terms among regional countries surveyed. As a percentage of GDP, military spending between 1990 and 1999 averaged 2.26 percent.100 Iranian defense expenditures are notoriously opaque, reflect official figures, and may omit allocations for non-conventional weapons programs and revolutionary organizations like the IRGC. Yet, even taking these into account for more generous estimates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Israel, Iran’s three main regional rivals maintained 1990 military budgets respectively amounting to $13.86 billion, $8.61 billion and $6.16 billion, compared to Iran’s $3.18 billion.101 For perspective, consider that Riyadh’s peacetime defense spending—over one-fifth ($63.6 billion) of all Third World arms transfers from 1985 to 1992102 —dwarfed those of Iran at the height of its own existential war.103 The qualitative differences between Iranian arms acquisitions and those of its Gulf neighbors were equally stark. The latter acquired a constant stream of advanced weaponry from the 1980s through to the 1990s including F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, F/A-18 Hornets, AWACs, Mirage 95 Ibid., 170 (Table 25). 96 IISS 1990, 103. 97 IISS 1991, 105. 98 Eisenstadt 1996, 2. 99 Ehteshami 1995, 193. 100 See SIPRI 2019. 101 IISS 1991, 107–8, 117; for Riyadh, this excludes $18 billion in contributions to

US and UK military spending during the Gulf War. 102 Grimmett 1993, 73. 103 Chubin 1994, 35.

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F-1s, and Mirage 2000s. Saudi Arabia alone signed contracts for $20 billion worth of advanced US-made weaponry. With the preferred US arms and spare parts pipeline blocked, and Washington dissuading its allies from selling Iran arms, weapons acquisitions naturally focused on Moscow and Beijing. Of Tehran’s $19 billion in arms imports between 1983 and 1990, China and the USSR respectively supplied 26 percent ($4.9 billion) and 15 percent ($2.7 billion).104 Between 1986 and 1990, China supplied nearly half of Iran’s total arms imports (about $1.5 billion out of $2.9 billion), making Iran China’s largest arms client ahead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.105 Greater reliance on advanced Soviet and Chinese weaponry in the absence of significant alternatives likewise encouraged consistency given the incompatibility between these and Iran’s Shah-era, US-made military systems.106 But even then, Tehran’s existing palimpsest of military procurements still often lacked effective force integration and interoperability beyond the necessary human training.107 Thus, Moscow supplied MiG-29 air superiority fighters, Su-24 strike craft, Su-25 close air support craft, SA-5 and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles (SAMS), T-72 main battle tanks (MBTs), and three Kilo-class dieselelectric submarines—the Persian Gulf’s first submarines. Between 1989 and 1993, Tehran spent $10 billion on Soviet weaponry.108 Chinese transfers included Shenyang J-6/F-6 (modeled on the MiG-19) and Chengdu F-7 fighters, SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, C-801, and C-802 anti-ship surface-to-surface missiles (based on the French Exocet), and Hudong-class fast missile boats. To be sure, Iran also sought arms and military expertise from elsewhere including Ukraine, North Korea, India, Brazil, and Europe. But ultimately, Moscow and Beijing commanded the lion’s share, at 82 percent, of Iran’s total arms imports worth $5.5 billion (in 1998 dollars) between 1990 and 1993.109 In the longer run, more crucial than rearmament was an indigenized military-industrial complex, for only self-reliance could mitigate supply disruptions in future wars. Indigenous arms production began 104 Ehteshami 1995, 181 (Table 29). 105 Ibid., 179 (Table 28). 106 Chubin 1994, 29, 33–4. 107 Ibid., 40. 108 Rashid 1994, 213. 109 Russia at 49 percent and China at 33 percent, Grimmett 1998, 62.

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after 1973 with Western assistance but was interrupted by the Revolution. Late in his presidency, Khamenei identified ‘the development and expansion of our arms production industries’ as ‘a foremost goal of the Islamic Republic’s reconstruction policy’.110 Between 1990 and 1992, Iran’s military-industrial complex employed 45,000 individuals, short of Israel’s 60,000 but more than Turkey’s 25,000 and Brazil’s 40,000.111 MODAFL oversaw the growing domestic capacity to produce spare parts, light arms and ammunition, artillery projectiles and assorted weapons systems including the Zolfiqar MBT (based on the US’ M60 Patton), mostly reverse-engineered.112 Tehran faced a daunting $25 billion projected outlay merely to restore pre-revolution force levels, which would require the next 13 years based on the current Five-Year Plan’s defense allocation.113 And even then, it was still unlikely to match, let alone outgun its main adversaries’ conventional militaries. Tehran hence considered other high-leverage alternatives. The eight-year war exposed the futility of faith without hard power and discredited the frontal approach, given post-revolutionary Iran’s mediocre military.114 While Rafsanjani had supported the human wave tactic earlier and the war’s continuation (at least rhetorically) as late as 1988,115 a shift in preference toward the indirect approach had been apparent in 1987 when he criticized the human wave tactic in favor of a ‘battle strategy of retaliatory strikes and limited offensives based on caution rather than fervor’.116 Ballistic missiles and nuclear, biological, 110 Cited in Ehteshami 1995, 147; on self-sufficiency, see Rafsanjani’s statement, Voice of the IRI , 25 July 1992, via BBC SWB ME/1443/A/8-9, 27 July 1992. 111 Ehteshami 1995, 183 (Table 30). 112 Eisenstadt 1996, 62. 113 Absent a domestic military-industrial capacity, Amirahmadi estimated that spare part

imports alone would cost $3 billion annually (1990, 275). 114 For a contrarian view, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili’s PhD thesis (1995, 103–4) cites faith as a necessary condition in the Prophet’s wars allowing believers to defeat a force tenfold larger. During the war, Rafsanjani too emphasized faith and purity as necessary and even sufficient conditions for victory against kinetic weapons, ‘Rafsanjani praises Iranian Revolution Guards’, Tehran Home Service, 9 January 1985 via BBC SWB, 11 January 1985. 115 Ostovar 2016, 84; ‘Rafsanjani on war with Iraq “No compromise or surrender”’, Tehran Home Service, 3 June 1988, via BBC SWB, 6 June 1988. 116 Elaine Sciolino, ‘Iran queries toll of war strategy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 July

1987.

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and chemical weapons constitute decisive force-multipliers or powerful deterrents at least. To be sure, some if not all of these programs had already been spurred into existence during the war, and Iraq’s unpunished use of chemical weapons—including after Tehran accepted the ceasefire in 1988—merely reinforced Iran’s conviction. Now, Rafsanjani’s challenge of ever closing the conventional military gap with Iran’s rivals added fresh impetus. Despite indications, the continuation of Iran’s chemical and biological weapons programs after the war remained largely in the realm of allegation or speculation.117 Conversely, evidence for the nuclear and especially missile programs is better attested. Ballistic missiles greatly increased Iran’s deterrent and offensive range, compensated for its weak airpower and allowed Tehran to ‘leapfrog back into Middle Eastern politics’.118 North Korea along with China and Russia were the major sources of long-term assistance. In 1985, Iran acquired some Scud-Bs (Shahab-1, 320 km) from Libya and reportedly Syria, before obtaining larger numbers from North Korea around the war’s end.119 In 1988, Iran began domestically producing and possibly test-launching a small number of Shahab-1s/Scud-Bs. When the 1990 Gulf War broke out, Iran started acquiring the longer-range Scud-C (Shahab-2, 500-600 km) from North Korea, modified with Chinese assistance, part of them then transshipped via Syria. In 1993, 21 Iranian missile specialists led by a brigadier-general traveled to North Korea for training. By 1997, Iran began domestically producing these Shahab-2s/Scud-Cs with North Korean assistance. Iran helped finance Pyongyang’s development of the Nodong-1 (1000 km+),120 which it then indigenized with Russian and Chinese assistance as the Shahab3 (1300 km), bringing into range for the first time all of Israel and Saudi Arabia in addition to Iraq, including from fixed launch silos.121 In 1998, Iran began the first of a series of Shahab-3 tests, reportedly started 117 On chemical weapons, see the CBW Conventions Bulletin 1998, 43; Department

of Defense, April 1996, 15; Cordesman & Al-Rodhan 2006, 30–2; DCI, 2003, 3. On biological weapons, see Cordesman and Seitz 2008b, 5–6, 14–15. 118 Chubin 1994, 63. 119 Rafsanjani 2014b, 16; Cordesman and Seitz 2008a, 13–5; Cordesman and Al-

Rodhan 2006, ch 9 (these are also the main sources for this section). 120 Cimbala 2000, 82–3; Wright and Kadyshev 1994, 87. 121 Kan 2003, 9–10; Rubin 2006, 18–22.

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producing it in 2001, and worked on improved variants (Shahab 3D/3M, and later, Qadr-101/110 etc.) possibly using solid fuel.122 While ostensibly for self-defense rather than offensive purposes, Iran’s ballistic missile program was placed in the hands of the hardline IRGC’s Air (and from 2009, Aerospace) Force, not the regular Army. China contributed the most significantly to Iran’s missile development and indigenization.123 Iran purchased and reproduced a number of surface-to-surface missiles patterned on Chinese models including M-9s (600 km), M-11s (280 km, a solid-fueled improvement on the Scud-B), and M-18s (300 km+). In 1992, Iran took delivery of a large consignment of Chinese-produced CSS-8s (150 km, based on the Soviet S-75/SA-2), which from 1997 onwards became the likely basis for Iran’s own solid-propellant Fateh A-110 (200 km+) and its variants, which are similar to the Zelzal-2.124 Beijing also transferred solid-fuel technology to Iran’s missile program, in December 1992 for instance.125 Among the Iranian artillery rockets developed during this period, Chinese prototypes provided the basis for the Oqab (45 km, based on the WM-40/Type83), the Fajr-5 (75 km, based on the Weishi-1 MLRS), the Mushak-120 (or Naze’at-10, 130 km) and the Mushak-200 (150 km), the latter two based on the CSS-8. If missiles constitute a key element of Iran’s defense posture, then China (and North Korea) clearly played an important role in advancing this plank of Iranian grand strategy, despite official denials.126 Theoretically, nuclear weapons represent the ultimate value-for-cost equalizer and deterrent against Iran’s many enemies, particularly Iraq, the US, and Israel. Furthermore, a covert program could avert tensions resulting from an unconcealable conventional military buildup. Rhetorically, Iranian leaders forswore nuclear weapons and WMD as un-Islamic, immoral, self-defeating, or a tripwire for a regional nuclear arms race, and consistently advocated a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. Toward the end of his appointment, Defense Minister Akbar Torkan thought that

122 Cordesman and Seitz 2008a, 19–21. 123 Rafsanjani 2015, 400; Garver 2006, 173. 124 Cordesman and Seitz 2008a, 38. 125 Rafsanjani 2015, 499. 126 See also Rezaei and Vosoughi 2017, 29–31.

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Possessing nuclear weapons today is like playing with fire for Iran because, with accurate and long-range missiles which big powers possess, these sites can be easily targeted and destroyed. Thus possessing nuclear weapons and deploying them is not in our strategic [program].127

Yet, others have made statements to the contrary. In May 1979, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini’s right-hand man, had allegedly ordered a Shah-era specialist to ‘build this bomb for the Islamic Republican Party’ because ‘[o]ur civilization is in danger’.128 According to the head of the Shah’s nuclear program Dr. Akbar Etemad, the post-revolutionary government had asked him to return for reasons it did not specify. He refused.129 In February 1987, President Khamenei told Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization ‘we need [atomic energy] now….Our nation has always been threatened from outside. The least we can do to face this danger is to let our enemies know that we can defend ourselves….With this in mind, you should work hard and at great speed’.130 That same year, Khomeini reportedly gave the order to restart the nuclear program.131 In October 1988, Rafsanjani publicly exhorted the IRGC to ‘fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons’.132 In 1992, pointing to Israel’s nuclear facilities, Rafsanjani’s Deputy Ata’ollah Mohajerani said ‘Muslim states too should be equipped with the same capacity’.133 Finally, in a 2015 interview, Rafsanjani revealed that Iran had considered a nuclear deterrent during the Iran-Iraq War in case the enemy thought likewise. Although Tehran ultimately focused on a civilian program, he said, the military option was never ruled out in case a threat necessitated it one day.134 127 Cited in Ehteshami 1995, 188. 128 David Segal, ‘Atomic ayatollahs: just what the Mideast needs—an Iranian bomb’,

WP, 12 April 1987. 129 Zubeida Malik, ‘The man who turned Iran nuclear’, BBC, 28 March 2013. 130 Segal, ‘Atomic ayatollahs’. 131 Ehteshami 2017, 196. 132 IRNA, 19 October 1988, via BBC SWB ME/0288/A/2, 21 October 1988. 133 R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘Officials say Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability’, WP, 30

October 1991. 134 ‘Khaterat-e haste-i-ye Hashemi Rafsanjani; az jang-e hasht-sale ta tasvib-e Barjam’, Radio Farda, 26 October 2015.

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According to a CIA memo, in 1982 Iran’s leaders had reversed an earlier decision to abandon the Shah’s nuclear program, but intended it for electricity at the time, while they struggled to find contractors willing to finish the Bushehr project and supply enriched uranium.135 Initiated from the Atoms for Peace Program in 1957, Pahlavi Iran’s nuclear infrastructure included a US-supplied, five-megawatt lightwater research reactor (the Tehran Research Reactor/TRR); the Frenchoperated Esfahan Nuclear Technology Center; and two pressurized 1296megawatt reactors in Bushehr under construction by Siemens’ subsidiary Kraftwerk Union AG (later interrupted in 1979).136 During Rafsanjani’s 1985 visit to China ‘to establish strategic ties’,137 both governments signed a secret agreement for nuclear cooperation including the building of a nuclear research center in Iran.138 Rudimentary work on gas centrifuge enrichment reportedly began that year.139 In February 1986, the father of Pakistan’s bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan discreetly visited the Bushehr plant, which was followed by a secret nuclear cooperation accord (and possibly Pakistan’s assistance in enriched uranium from 1988). In 1987, Iran apparently requested a centrifuge model from Islamabad.140 According to subsequent reports, Khan provided designs, P-1 centrifuge components, and supply network contacts.141 Between the 1988 ceasefire and 1993, Iran proceeded slowly and carefully by all accounts, focusing, at least publicly, on a civilian nuclear program supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency

135 CIA, August 1985, 1–3; according to Rafsanjani (2016, 19), the nuclear authority (hey’at-e haste-i) was revived during the war. 136 See Cordesman and Al-Rodhan 2006, ch 6. 137 Rafsanjani 2014b, 12. 138 Garver 2013, 74. 139 Cirincione et al. 2005, 299. 140 In Islamabad, future IRGC Minister Ali Shamkhani allegedly asked for three,

‘promised’ nuclear weapons, R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick, ‘Pakistani scientist Khan describes Iranian efforts to buy nuclear bombs’, WP, 14 March 2010. 141 ‘Iran bought centrifuges, Pakistan says’, NYT , 11 March 2005; Smith & Warrick, ‘Pakistani scientist Khan describes Iranian efforts’; Pakistani nuclear scientists later admitted they transferred information and know-how, though not material or equipment, Massoud Ansari, ‘Nuclear scientists from Pakistan admit helping Iran with bomb-making’, Sunday Telegraph, 25 January 2004.

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(IAEA).142 The long list of developments has been enumerated elsewhere but a few are worth highlighting.143 In 1990, Iran agreed to supply Russia with natural gas in exchange for Russia completing the Bushehr reactors and supplying two additional 400-megawatt pressurized water reactors, all under safeguards. The Chinese offered even more significant assistance including uranium hexafluoride (the gas feedstock for centrifuges to enrich uranium), electromagnetic separators used in producing isotopes for research and high enriched uranium (HEU), a fusion reactor for Azad University’s Plasma Physics Research Center, and four small research reactors for the Esfahan Nuclear Technology Center.144 From its 2003 inspections, the IAEA determined that Iran had imported about 1.8 tons of undeclared nuclear material (uranium isotopes) from China in 1991.145 China also assisted in uranium mining.146 In 1995, Beijing under US pressure canceled a 1993 agreement to build two 300-megawatt reactors in Darkhovin, but continued assisting Iran with uranium conversion technology for fuel production.147 In the early 1990s, reports circulated of Iran attempting to obtain nuclear expertise, material, and allegedly at least two tactical warheads from postSoviet countries, notably Kazakhstan.148 Iran also reportedly requested assistance from elsewhere including Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, India, and notably Argentina.149 A fifth and relatively low-cost, high-leverage strategic asset consisted of Iran’s alliances with, or direct patronage of regional non-state actors. While these varied in their allegiance to Iran, they helped deter and 142 Cordesman and Al-Rodhan 2006, ch 6; according to Iranian documents seized by Israeli intelligence in 2018, the military program began in 1992–1993 beginning with A. Q. Khan, Ronen Bergman, ‘Iran’s great nuclear deception’, Ynet News, 23 November 2018. 143 Cordesman and Al-Rodhan 2006, 107–20; see also Koch and Wolf 1998. 144 Koch and Wolf 1998. 145 Ehteshami 2017, 261 (FN 95). 146 Rafsanjani 2014b, 24. 147 Ibid., 23. 148 Steve Rodan, ‘Iran paid $25m for nuclear weapons, documents show’, JPost, 10

April 1998; a Kazakh official however later said all three nuclear warheads reported missing, two of which Iran having allegedly acquired, had been found in Kazakhstan. 149 In his memoirs, Rafsanjani (2015, 19) singles out Pakistan and Argentina’s civil nuclear assistance.

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hold potential aggressors hostage, and expand Iran’s forward defense and offensive reach, while providing a modicum of distance and plausible deniability.150 These non-state clients represented a highly flexible instrument of statecraft alongside or in lieu of conventional hard power, and a veritable ‘transnational military alliance’ compensating for Iran’s lack of significant state-level allies.151 In 2016, Lebanese Hezbollah openly admitted that Iran provided all its funding and arsenal,152 estimated at $100–200 million annually. Iran’s patronage network, which would come to include Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, various Iraqi Shi’a militias and Yemen’s Houthis would merge the physical ‘line of least expectation’ with the ideological ‘line of greatest resistance’.153 The IRGC Qods Force handled these frontline contacts and coordination. It also handled military contacts with other Muslim causes and Islamic movements abroad. On 1 August 1992 for instance, then Qods Force Commander Ahmad Vahidi reported back to Rafsanjani about his trip to Bosnia-Herzgovina and the ‘dispatch of weaponry aboard a 747 aircraft’, and requested ‘arms, oil, military advice and the presence of our political representatives’ there, which the SNSC approved that same day.154 According to former IRGC officers MajorGeneral Saeed Qassemi and Hossein Allahkaram, members of the IRGC operating as Iranian Red Crescent workers trained Al-Qaeda fighters in Bosnia in the 1990s.155 If the eight-year war proved the indispensability of missile capabilities potentially reinforced by WMD in the absence of aerial superiority or even battlefield competence, the impending US-led Gulf War would reaffirm both the futility of a frontal conventional approach, and Iran’s need

150 By ‘forward defense’ I accept Trubowitz’s definition of ‘denying a challenger strategically valuable real estate’, but also especially what he calls ‘defense-in-depth’, i.e. ‘expanding a state’s defensive perimeter’, Trubowitz 2011, 33 (FN 28). 151 Ostovar 2019, 183. 152 ‘Hezbollah to send more fighters to Syria’s Aleppo’, Aljazeera, 25 June 2016; in

August 1993, Rafsanjani (2016, 259) records, Hezbollah’s new leader Hassan Nasrallah requested money and weapons from Iran. 153 The allusion is to Liddell Hart’s (1967, 341) physical ‘line of least resistance’ and psychological ‘line of least expectation’. 154 Rafsanjani 2015, 241. 155 Saleh Hamid, ‘Qiyadi Irani akhar bil-Haras yu’taref: na’am ta’awanna ma’ al-

Qa’eda’, Al Arabiya, 18 April 2019.

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for an asymmetric edge. Meanwhile, like economic reconstruction, postwar imperatives necessitated military rehabilitation regardless of factional dominance, while decreased threat perceptions enabled, at this point in time, greater attention to this internal task.

5.4

Rafsanjani and Permissive Accommodationism

From 1989 to 1991, external threat perceptions waned while accommodationism seized the ascendant, the confluence of which—Permissive Accommodationism—should prompt second-order strategies like engagement and retrenchment. The evidence indicates qualitatively new thirdorder policies across all three instruments of grand strategy. An unprecedented flurry of diplomatic and trade engagement especially with the GCC and Western Europe, and for a time even the US, consumed Rafsanjani’s government, speaking to the need to preserve at least two objective interests—economic well-being and autonomy of state action.156 Rafsanjani likewise engaged the Bush administration over frozen Iranian assets and the release of US hostages in Lebanon, and brooked what would subsequently become ‘critical dialogue’ with Europe over sensitive issues including WMD, human rights, and terrorism. Above all, the special post-war circumstances saw, after a military drawdown, intensive domestic focus on economic and military rehabilitation to ensure Iran’s economic well-being, physical survival, and autonomy. Indeed, much of the logic of Rafsanjani’s engagement was to facilitate rehabilitation, which an increase in Iran’s material means in turn helped underwrite. From Rafsanjani’s first term, rising oil prices accompanied recovering crude production and exports, which accordingly raised the value of petroleum exports from $8.4 billion in 1988 to an annual peak of $15.3 billion in 1991, the highest since 1984 (Graph 3.4). Iran’s GDP per capita growth at the same time jumped significantly compared to the 1980s (Graph 3.7). The damage and imperatives imposed by a war meant Iran’s leadership had to recuperate to earlier capability levels, while lessons learnt prompted changes in force posture and self-reliance in arms production. And yet, defense expenditures remained lower compared to neighboring states, and to Tehran’s own wartime spending. On the other hand, given Iran’s relative conventional weakness, rehabilitation of hard 156 Ironically, Rafsanjani’s opening up the energy sector to foreign investors also created tensions between these same interests.

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power also accompanied the development of non-conventional capabilities and ballistic missiles, which would lay the ground for subsequent internal balancing and deterrence when necessary. The end of the war and the destruction it bequeathed catalyzed the need for adjustments. But while these conditions may broadly suggest economic and military rehabilitation irrespective of factional preferences, they do not explain why Tehran specifically pursued economic liberalization and such intensive engagement and normalization with the GCC and the industrialized West. While there was consensus on the broad need for reconstruction, there was none on the specific details. Had another radical after Prime Minister Musavi assumed the helm, post-war Iran would probably have banked toward as much, if not even greater economic statism and, quite plausibly, less openness to the West. In March 1989, in response to Rafsanjani’s diplomatic opening and emboldened by Khomeini’s Rushdie fatwa, Musavi’s outgoing radical government declared that its foreign ministry ‘sees itself as the executor and protector of the foreign policy of Islam against infidelity and thus regards defence of dear Islam and its values a divine and legal task’.157 Interior Minister Mohtashamipur likewise struck down any intimation of reform by insisting that ‘there will be no change whatsoever in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s position and policy after Imam Khomeini’s demise’.158 Until 1992, the radicals continued to attack the government’s policies from their parliamentary perch. Rafsanjani was a key revolutionary figure who adhered to the established ideological-discursive boundaries, but sparred with his rivals on interpretive nuances born of ambiguities in some of Khomeini’s positions. Rafsanjani’s personal disposition, stature, and political capital decisively carried Iran in the direction of economic liberalization and varying degrees of détente with the West and particularly with the US. That he had enjoyed Khomeini’s confidence greatly helped. That he now had a free hand immediately after Khomeini’s passing all but ensured his preferences would take precedence. NCR would highlight structure’s indeterminacy to explain the qualified dominance of agency as ‘pathology’. But if the structure is indeterminate in most cases as NCR explicitly points out, and agency is

157 Cited in Ehteshami 2017, 191. 158 Cited in Pesaran 2011, 71.

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no less a necessary condition as NCR also implicitly suggests, then the latter must also exert independent causal effects (see Sect. 2.3). Between 1988 and 1989, structure catalyzed the need for adjustments and tilted preferences toward reconstruction and rehabilitation. But Rafsanjani’s agency, fully empowered by Khomenei’s death, ultimately set Iran on the path of domestic liberalization and diplomatic engagement. The dynamic-integrative model of adjustments goes a step further by demonstrating how the interaction of structure and agent, mediated by ideas, renders these strategies likely. In the immediate post-Khomeini period, a hypothetical radical government would certainly have had to pursue domestic rehabilitation. However, it would also likely have favored continued expansionism based on soft power rather than engagement with the Western powers. These two strategies differ substantially and are a function of domestic politics.

References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements Mousavian, Seyyed Hossein, Iran–Europe relations: challenges and opportunities (Oxon: Routledge, 2008). Mousavian, Seyed Hossein & Shahir Shahidsaless, Iran and the United States: an insider’s view on the failed past and the road to peace (NY: Bloomsbury, 2014). US Government Documents Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Memo (SW M 85-10095CX), ‘Overview of Iran’s renewed efforts for nuclear development’, August 1985, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88R01225R000200900002-7. pdf. ———, Intelligence Assessment, ‘Soviet-Iranian relations after Khomeini’, 23 June 1989, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_000060 2666.pdf Department of Defense (DoD), ‘Proliferation: threat and response’, April 1996, https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=233915. Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), ‘Unclassified report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional munitions, 1 July Through 31 December 2003’, 2003, https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/archived-reports-1/721 report_july_dec2003.pdf.

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Primary Sources (Persian) Jalili, Saeed, Siyasat-e khareji-ye payambar [the Prophet’s Foreign Policy] (Tehran: Markaz-e Chap va Nashr-e Sazeman-e Tablighat-e Eslami, Spring 1374/1995). Khamenei, Seyyed Ali, ‘Bayanat dar didar-e mo’alleman va kargaran’ [Speech during a meeting with teachers and laborers], 2 May 1990, http://farsi.kha menei.ir/speech-content?id=2304. Rafsanjani, Ali-Akbar Hashemi, Be su-ye sarnevesht: Karname va khaterat-e sal-e 1363 [Memoirs, 1984] (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’aref-e Enqelab, 1393/2014a). ———, Sazandegi va shokufayi: khaterat-e 1370, ed. Emad Hashemi (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’aref-e Enqelab, 1393/2014b). ———, Rownaq-e sazandegi: khaterat-e 1371, ed. Hassan Lahuti (Tehran: Daftare Nashr-e Ma’aref-e Enqelab, 1394/2015). ———, Salabat-e sazandegi: khaterat-e sal-e 1372 (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’araf-e Enqelab, 1395/2016).

Secondary Sources (English) Amirahmadi, Hooshang, ‘Economic destruction and imbalances in postrevolutionary Iran’, in Hooshang Amirahmadi & Nader Entessar, eds, Reconstruction and regional diplomacy in the Persian Gulf (London: Routledge, 1992). ———, Revolution and economic transition: the Iranian experience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Amuzegar, Jahangir, Iran’s economy under the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993). ———, ‘The Iranian economy before and after the Revolution’, MEJ 46.3 (Summer 1992). Ansari, Ali M., ‘Iran and the United States in the shadow of 9/11: Persia and the Persian question revisited’, in Homa Katouzian & Hossein Shahidi, eds, Iran in the 21st century: politics, economics and conflict (Oxon, UK: Routledge 2008): 107–22. ———, The politics of nationalism in modern Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Arjomand, Said A., After Khomeini: Iran under his successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Baktiari, Bahman, Parliamentary politics in Revolutionary Iran: the institutionalization of factional politics (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1996).

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CBW Conventions Bulletin, ‘A draft convention to prohibit biological and chemical weapons under international criminal law’, Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation 42 (December 1998) https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hsp/bulletin/cbwcb42.pdf. Chubin, Shahram, Iran’s national security policy: capabilities, intentions, and impact (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994). Cimbala, Stephen J., Nuclear strategy in the twenty-first century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000). Cirincione, Joseph, Jon B. Wolfsthal & Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly arsenals: nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2005). Cordesman, Anthony H. & Adam C. Seitz, ‘Iranian weapons of mass destruction: capabilities, developments, and strategic uncertainties’, working draft (Washington, DC: CSIS, 14 Oct 2008a) https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/081015_iran.wmd.pdf. ———, ‘Iranian weapons of mass destruction: biological weapons programs’, working draft (Washington, DC: CSIS, 28 Oct 2008b) https://csis-prod.s3. amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/081028_ira nbw_chapterrev.pdf. Cordesman, Anthony H. & Khalid R. Al-Rodhan, Iran’s weapons of mass destruction: the real and potential threat (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2006). Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, After Khomeini: the Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995). ———, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). ———, ‘The foreign policy of Iran’, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds., The foreign policies of Middle Eastern states (London: Lynne Rienner 2002): 283–309. Eisenstadt, Michael, ‘Iranian military power: capabilities and intentions’, Policy Paper 42 (Washington, DC: WINEP, 1996). Garver, John W., China and Iran: ancient partners in a post-imperial world (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). ———, ‘China–Iran relations: cautious friendship with America’s nemesis’, China Report 49.1 (2013): 69–88. Grimmett, Richard F., Conventional arms transfers to developing nations, 1990– 1997 (Washington, DC: CRS, July 1998). ———, Conventional arms transfers to the Third World, 1985–1992 (Washington, DC: CRS, July 1993). Haass, Richard N., ‘The George H.W. Bush administration’, in Robin Wright, ed. The Iran primer: power, politics, and U.S. policy (Washington, DC: USIP/Woodrow Wilson Center, 2010) http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/ george-hw-bush-administration.

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Hunter, Shireen T., Iran and the world: continuity in a revolutionary decade (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990b). ———, ‘Soviet–Iranian relations in the post-Revolution period’, in R. K. Ramazani, ed., Iran’s revolution: the search for consensus (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990a): 85–103. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The military balance 1990–91 (London: Brassey’s, 1990). ———, The military balance 1991–92 (London: Brassey’s, 1991). Kan, Shirley A., China and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles: policy issues, RL 31555 (Washington, DC: CRS, August 2003). Keshavarzian, Arang, Bazaar and state in Iran: the politics of the Tehran marketplace (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Koch, Andrew & Jeanette Wolf, ‘Iran’s nuclear facilities: a profile’, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 1998 http://www.bits.de/public/documents/ iran/iranrpt.pdf. Liddell Hart, B. H., Strategy, 2nd revised edition (New York: Praeger, 1967). Menashri, David, Post-revolutionary politics in Iran: religion, society, and power (London: Frank Cass, 2001). Milani, Mohsen M., The making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: from monarchy to Islamic Republic, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1994). Mofid, Kamran, The economic consequences of the Gulf War (London: Routledge, 1990). Moslem, Mehdi, Factional politics in post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002). Murray, Donette, US foreign policy and Iran: American–Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution (Oxon: Routledge, 2010). Ostovar, Afshon, ‘The grand strategy of militant clients: Iran’s way of war’, Security Studies 28.1 (2019): 159–88. Ostovar, Afshon, Vanguard of the Imam: religion, politics, and Iran’s revolutionary guards (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Parsons, Anthony, ‘Iran and western Europe’, in R. K. Ramazani, ed., Iran’s revolution: the search for consensus (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990): 69–84. Pesaran, Evaleila, Iran’s struggle for economic independence: reform and counterreform in the post-revolutionary era (Oxon: Routledge, 2011). Ramazani, Rouhollah K., ‘Iran’s export of the Revolution: politics, ends, and means’, in John L. Esposito, ed., The Iranian revolution (Miami, FL: Florida International University Press, 1990): 40–62. Rashid, Ahmed, The resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or nationalism? (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1994). Rubin, Uzi, ‘The global reach of Iran’s ballistic missiles’, Institute for National Security Studies Memorandum 86, Nov 2006.

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Sarabi, Farzin, The post-Khomeini era in Iran: the elections of the fourth Islamic Majlis’ Middle East Journal 48 (1994): 89–107. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), ‘Military expenditure by country as percentage of gross domestic product, 1988–2018’, 2019 https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Data%20for%20all%20countries% 20from%201988%E2%80%932018%20as%20a%20share%20of%20GDP%20% 28pdf%29.pdf. Tilly, Charles, The formation of national states in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Trubowitz, Peter, Politics and strategy: partisan ambition and American statecraft (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2011). Wright, David C. & Timur Kadyshev, ‘An analysis of the North Korean Nodong missile’, Science and Global Security 4 (1994).

Secondary Sources (Persian) Rezaei, Masoud & Saeed Vosoughi, ‘Sanjesh-e ravabet-e defa’i-ye Iran va Chin dar dowre-ye riyasat-e jomhuri-ye Hassan Rouhani’ [Review of Sino-Iranian defense relations during Hassan Rouhani’s presidency], Faslname-ye Motale’ate Rahbordi-ye Siyasatgozari-ye Omumi 7.24 (1396/2017): 23–47.

CHAPTER 6

More Looming Threats, 1991–1997

Starting in Rafsanjani’s first term and continuing into his second, the Gulf War and Soviet dissolution constituted and were perceived as both external threats and opportunities with far-reaching implications. The Gulf War underscored the US’ military power and diplomatic influence. The Soviet Union’s final dissolution and the end of the Cold War altered the entire structure of international relations, unraveled Khomeini’s neither east nor west posture, and saw Iran’s discretionary enemy emerging as the sole superpower pushing for a ‘New World Order’.1 Iran’s relative material power dropped in 1990, the year the Gulf War began, while the US’ relative capabilities rose from 1991 to 1993 (Graphs 3.2 and 3.3). In Rafsanjani’s second term (1993–1997), the accommodationists still governed despite increasing challenges from their erstwhile allies, the traditional conservatives, who would now control Parliament. This confluence of conditions corresponds to Restrictive Accommodationism. If Rafsanjani’s agency hitherto dominated grand strategy-making, emerging geostrategic threats and opportunities would significantly influence policy in this period. Ideas, particularly an anti-US regime ideology, interacted with systemic-structural pressures to elevate threat perceptions. 1 See ‘Excerpts from Pentagon’s plan: “prevent the re-emergence of a new rival”’, NYT , 8 March 1992.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_6

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Yet, when ideas interacted with domestic politics, agentic or factional nuances still sufficed to produce diverging responses. Previously focused on second-order strategies like engagement and retrenchment (domestic rehabilitation), Iran now shifted toward a mix of bandwagoning and appeasement vis-à-vis the US, juxtaposed alongside balancing with the help of Russia and China. ∗ ∗ ∗ Domestically, the radicals’ waning influence was about to complete its course. The 1988 ceasefire had dampened their uncompromising revolutionary ardor, and the USSR’s slow-motion collapse would now discredit their economic statism.2 In 1992, the Guardian Council took over the Interior Ministry’s prerogative to screen electoral candidates, unprecedentedly disqualifying nearly a third of the 3133 registrants from competing in the upcoming Fourth Majles elections—including most radicals.3 In the watershed elections, the Rafsanjani-Khamenei alliance displaced the radicals from their last bastion of institutional power. The radicals represented by the Combatant Clerics Association won only 40–79 of the 270 seats compared to the conservatives’ Militant Clergy Society and Rafsanjani’s allies, who took about 70 percent of the seats and all of Tehran’s 30 seats.4 Mehdi Karrubi missed the slate at 34th place, and Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri replaced him as Speaker. Gallingly, the Guardian Council had even disqualified 39 incumbent MPs, almost only radicals including Mohtashamipur and Khalkhali.5 The conservativeengineered victory entailed the judiciary compiling ‘evidence’ of radicals’ wrongdoing, and publicly tarnishing their reputations.6 Despite bitter protests including suggestions of an American conspiracy, the radicals bowed out civilly, a measure of the republican norms taking root. With the radicals out, the traditional conservatives turned on the pragmatists. The freshly minted Fourth Majles almost immediately began its offensive. Increasingly impatient with the results of economic liberalization, the conservatives criticized aspects of the government’s Five-Year 2 Asr-e Ma, 30 December 1995. 3 Menashri 1992, 393–4. 4 Menashri 1997, 24–26; Banuazizi 1995, 566. 5 Menashri 1992, 394. 6 Ibid., 396.

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Plan (which they previously backed), including the annual budget, tax hikes, and the floating of the rial.7 Large-scale industrial reforms and cheap imports imperiled the privileged import-substitution of protectionist bazaaris , on whom the traditional conservatives historically depended including for political support. Rafsanjani’s attempts to rein in the bazaaris ’ ability to dictate prices alienated them, the clergy and importantly the IRGC, which by now increasingly backed the traditional conservatives and Khamenei. Ironically, with his religious credentials and Marja’iyyat potential downplayed, Khamenei’s political influence rose, presaging the fraying of his alliance with Rafsanjani by the end of the president’s first term. Significantly, the traditional conservatives targeted the liberalizing sociocultural effects of reform and attempts at dialogue with the West, which they charged facilitated a cultural invasion led by the US. ‘The enemy is claiming that during the period of reconstruction, revolutionary spirit and morality must be put aside,’ Khamenei darkly warned in October 1992. ‘Is this the meaning of reconstruction? It surely is not’.8 For other conservative hardliners, ‘[d]emocracy is nothing but the dictatorship of capital, consumerism and selfishness. Democracy is reactionary; it is a return to [the pre-Islamic age of ignorance], paganism and disbelief…’.9 Countering Rafsanjani’s relatively lenient view of press freedom, the traditional conservatives succeeded in replacing Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Khatami in 1992 and then IRIB Head Mohammad Hashemi—Rafsanjani’s brother—in 1994, both with Ali Larijani. Conservatives displaced other incumbent centrists including Interior Minister Abdollah Nuri (with ultrahardliner Ali-Mohammad Besharati) and Science and Higher Education Minister Mostafa Moin (with Mohammad-Reza Hashemi Golpayegani). In 1993, hardliners withdrew their vote of confidence from Rafsanjani’s Economy Minister, Mohsen Nurbakhsh, who then instead became deputy president for economic affairs.10

7 Ehteshami 2002, 294; for the budget, see Baktiari 1996, ch. 6. 8 Cited in Moslem 2002, 201. 9 Cited in Bayat 2007, 114. 10 Resalat, 18 August 1993.

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Conservatives likewise controlled other bastions of power, including the Judiciary under Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi (1989–1999), the Intelligence Ministry (MOIS) under Ali Fallahian (1989–1997) and the enormously wealthy Mostaz’afan Foundation headed by former IRGC Minister Mohsen Rafiqdust (1989–1999). The Fourth Majles period (1992–1996) saw significantly greater emphasis on moral policing, enforced by vigilante groups such as Hadi Ghaffari’s Hezbollah, Mas’ud Dehnamaki’s Ansar-e Hezbollah and its female counterpart, Khaharane Ansarollah. Crackdowns increasingly targeted intellectuals, academics, journalists, and civil society activists. On sociocultural liberalization, Rafsanjani found more support instead from the marginalized radicals, who after 1992 would become the reformists. Yet the conservative onslaught ultimately forced Rafsanjani to limit sociocultural reforms, which irked his more liberal supporters. On external policy, the conservatives took over from where the radicals left off in their dogged opposition to détente with the US and Israel. In 1993, Rafsanjani won reelection but this time with only 63 percent of the votes. In an earlier speech, despite backing Rafsanjani’s reelection bid, Khamenei had implicitly criticized his economic reforms, in favor of social justice.11 Furthermore, in December 1994, Khamenei attempted to merge his growing political influence with religious authority by bidding to be Marja-e Taqlid after the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Araki. While he eventually withdrew, he still declared himself Marja for Shi’ites outside of Iran. The cracks within the Rafsanjani-Khamenei duumvirate continued deepening in the president’s second term. In September 1996, Khamenei vetoed a proposal floated by Deputy President Ata’ollah Mohajerani for Constitutional Article 114 to be amended to allow Rafsanjani to run for a third term.12 Khamenei was by now politically preeminent. Yet, until then, Rafsanjani’s accommodationism remained the main motive force in external affairs.

11 Resalat, 28 March 1993. 12 Arjomand 2009, 64–5.

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6.1 The Gulf War and Iranian Diplomacy with the GCC and the West Although Washington had by 1988 shifted from tacitly supporting Iraq to actively punishing Iran, unrestrained American hard power truly came to the fore during the Gulf War. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. A US-led, UN-backed 29-nation coalition began building up forces in the region (Operation Desert Shield). Then on January 17, 1991, with UN Resolution 678’s ultimatum unmet, the coalition launched an air offensive (Operation Desert Storm), followed on 24 February by a ground counteroffensive (Operation Desert Saber) to prevent Iraq from controlling the ‘second- and third-largest proven oil reserves with the fourth-largest army in the world’.13 Iraq’s military was annihilated by 28 February. In contrast, eight years of war had hardly dented the strategic balance between Iran and Iraq. Criticism aside, Tehran remained neutral throughout, refusing embroilment in another conflict so soon and even uncharacteristically refrained from militarily assisting uprisings by southern Iraq’s Shi’a.14 Despite its fraught wartime experience with the UN, Iran now supported UN-brokered multilateral diplomacy. It also backed Kuwait’s territorial integrity, a stark turnaround from earlier efforts to topple Kuwait’s ruling family. Tehran even discreetly opened up its airspace to US warplanes, which approximates bandwagoning.15 In mid-August 1990, two weeks after the invasion and four months after he first reached out in a secret letter to Rafsanjani,16 Saddam announced he would withdraw his troops from Iran (as part of UN Resolution 598) and honor the 1975 Algiers Accord demarcating the Arvand-Rud/Shatt al-Arab maritime border. These key objectives had eluded Iran during the 1988 ceasefire but now fell squarely into its lap. Iraq similarly repatriated Iranian prisoners-ofwar and allowed Iranian pilgrims access to Iraqi Shi’ite shrines. In order to focus militarily on the Kuwait front, Saddam had to concede diplomatically on the Iranian one. In addition, Saddam transferred to Iran a number of advanced combat aircraft including MiG-29 s for safekeeping

13 Cited in Haass 2010. 14 Arjomand 2009, 141. 15 Parsi 2007, 142. 16 Rafsanjani 2013, 1 August 1990 and 15 August 1990.

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in January 1991, which Iran subsequently refused to repatriate. The invasion prompted UN Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar in December 1991 to finally designate Iraq as the aggressor during the eight-year war, paving the way for Iran to demand reparations. The Gulf War accompanied a diplomatic thaw in Iran’s relations with the GCC monarchies, their Sunni allies (Jordan, Tunisia, and to an extent, Egypt and Morocco), the Western Europeans and even for a while, the Bush administration. The GCC states were keen to renew ties with Iran, through Oman’s Foreign Minister, and to dissuade Iran from cooperating with Iraq.17 Iran had apparently even tipped off Kuwait hours before Saddam’s offensive.18 Foreign Minister Velayati visited Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar to discuss cooperation.19 In September, he met the Saudi Foreign Minister at the UN while Rafsanjani received Kuwait’s war-exiled foreign minister. In October, Bahrain’s foreign minister visited Tehran, a meeting which foreshadowed the full reinstatement of bilateral relations that November. By April 1991, Tehran reopened its embassy in Riyadh, followed in June by the visit to Tehran of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the first such visit by a senior Saudi official since 1979. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain had opposed Iran vigorously during the eight-year war, and the Saudis severed all diplomatic ties in April 1988 after the Hajj incident the July before. Iran-GCC talks also involved some progress on security matters; the GCC’s SecretaryGeneral in late 1990 announced that containment of Iraq, not Iran, was henceforth the region’s pressing priority.20 And in July 1992, Rafsanjani’s government created the Supreme Council for the Persian Gulf to expand cooperation with the GCC.21 Iran’s Gulf War conduct and its assistance in securing the release of foreign hostages in Lebanon similarly eased relations with the Europeans. In September 1990 the UK reinstated ties with Iran, and in October 1990 the European Community lifted economic sanctions and a diplomatic ban on high-level contacts with Iran.22 The US too partially relaxed 17 Rafsanjani 2013, 15 August 1990. 18 Kimche 1991, 233. 19 CIA, November 1990, 9. 20 Ibid. loc. cit. 21 Rafsanjani 2015, 209. 22 CIA, November 1990, 11.

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a 1987 domestic ban on Iranian goods by allowing Iranian crude imports in December 1990.23 Overnight, Iraq’s international standing and war-making capability— and with it the threat of renewed hostilities in the near term—declined, boosting Iran’s own standing and self-perceived role as regional counterweight to Baghdad. Iraq now displaced Iran as the region’s bogeyman, vindicating Iran’s self-image as a victim during the eight-year war and palliating the humiliation of accepting Resolution 598. Iran’s handling of the Gulf Crisis remarkably ‘accelerated [its] transformation into a status quo power,’ Milani notes.24 With Iraq alienated from its Gulf sponsors, the war obliterated any remaining illusion of pan-Arab solidarity, allowing Iran to reverse its isolation by (again) appealing to Islamic solidarity. As of late 1991 and early 1992, Iran’s leadership even viewed a coup d’état against Saddam as increasingly probable.25 In an August 8, 1992 meeting, the SNSC furthermore discussed the probability of Iraq’s dismemberment.26 The Gulf War may have improved Iran’s lot, including by pushing up oil prices, but the accompanying US presence on its doorstep muddied the waters. Moreover, the Bush administration opted to leave Saddam in place to keep Iran on its toes.27 Domestically, the Gulf War generated opposing views regarding Iran’s appropriate conduct, notably how it should engage the US. Despite the threat of a looming superpower presence and the anathema of mending fences with Iraq, policy coherence eluded the elite. Rafsanjani and Khamenei agreed neutrality would avoid giving the US excuses to further intervene in the region, while the SNSC both ruled out military confrontation with Iraq and opposed the regional presence of foreign forces.28 In August 1990, Rafsanjani warily noted that the ‘presence of foreign forces has created a crisis in the region and turned it into a powderkeg’.29 Rafsanjani and his associates

23 Robert D. Hershey Jr., ‘U.S. Is relaxing its ban on oil imports from Iran’, NYT , 23 December 1990. 24 Milani 2005. 25 Rafsanjani 2014, 562. 26 Rafsanjani 2015, 248. 27 Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 383. 28 Rafsanjani 2013, 5 August 1990, 11 August 1990. 29 Cited in Marschall 2003, 108.

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were, however, willing to accommodate a US military presence provided it evacuated after the crisis.30 The radicals and traditional conservatives were ironically united in their categorical opposition to any US presence. Khamenei accused the Americans of ‘planning to expand their power.[…] They do not want to end aggression’, a view widely shared and even taken to extremes by the radicals.31 The latter, still holding out in Parliament, advocated expelling US troops from the region and cooperating with Iraq,32 especially with Saddam now extraordinarily inclined to concede most of Iran’s demands (except reparations). For the government and to an extent its traditional conservative allies, neutrality however reflected their will to moderation as much as their intention to cut the radicals down to size. Speaker Karrubi criticized ‘American Islam’ in Saudi Arabia as well as Iran, obliquely referring to Rafsanjani, and subsequently asserted that ‘Moslem nations will expel America from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf with humiliation’.33 Sadeq Khalkhali denounced Kuwait’s ruling al-Sabah family rather than their Iraqi aggressor, and claimed the Saudis owed their power to the ‘global arrogance and international Zionism’.34 In January 1991, just before the coalitional air campaign against Iraq, Parliament’s radicals narrowly succeeded in removing the Minister of Health, whom both Rafsanjani and Khamenei backed.35 At one point, the risks of the radicals using the IRGC as a spoiler even prompted Rafsanjani ‘to rush General Mohsen Rezaei, the IRGC commander, to Khorramshahr to stop a missile battery from firing at American forces’.36 Caught between reconstruction imperatives and the US’ Gulf presence, the centrists called for only regional states to resolve regional disputes.37 Rafsanjani held his ground against the radicals, cautioning at the start of

30 CIA, November 1990. 31 Cited in Baktiari 1996, 210. Moslem (2002, 149) attributes this stance to

Khamenei’s initial weakness as Supreme Leader and therefore the need to maintain Khomeini’s line. 32 Kayhan, 20 January 1991; Moslem 2002, 124. 33 Cited in Baktiari 1996, 206 and 210. 34 Arjomand 2009, 139; cited in Baktiari 1996, 209. 35 Arjomand 2009, 140. 36 Ibid., 141. 37 Baktiari 1996, 210.

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the coalition’s ground offensive that the US’ regional buildup ‘can well be turned against us if we go too far in our denunciation of the Americans’.38 Rafsanjani won the day. Six days before coalitional forces invaded Iraq, even Karrubi conceded the wisdom of neutrality.39 The sensitivity of the Gulf Crisis, which now pitted two of Iran’s foremost adversaries against each other required careful handling and hedging. While Tehran backed UN sanctions against Iraq, it allowed food and medicine to be smuggled into Iraq, possibly to keep Baghdad interested in ongoing bilateral negotiations.40 But Khamenei’s support amid the ‘decisive rhetorical shift towards pragmatism’ during the Gulf War was crucial.41 Despite his animosity to the US, Khamenei collaborated with Rafsanjani to marginalize the radicals. On foreign policy, Khamenei fought fire with fire, preempting and even outdoing the radicals’ (and Saddam’s) rhetoric by calling for Jihad against the US and taking up the Palestinian cause after the October 1990 Temple Mount killings.42 After hostilities concluded, the US’ removal became Iran’s overriding priority. Khamenei believed the ‘global arrogance’ would be ‘brought to its knees’ just like the Soviets.43 Suspicions over Washington’s longerterm regional intentions also kept the pragmatists on edge. Iran’s UN representative Kamal Kharrazi demanded that the littoral powers replace foreign forces in guaranteeing their own regional security.44 Similarly, then Deputy Head of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Mohammad-Javad Larijani intimated that the Gulf War gave the US an excuse to meddle in internal Persian Gulf political affairs.45 Despite improved relations, the Arabs sidestepped Tehran’s proposal for inclusive security and in March 1991, proceeded to sign the Damascus Declaration providing for a regional security condominium incorporating

38 Ettela’at, 20 January 1991. 39 Baktiari 1996, 212. 40 CIA, November 1990, 6. 41 Arjomand 2009, 143. 42 Ibid., 139–40. 43 IRNA, 23 August 1992. 44 Marschall 2003, 118. 45 Voice of the IRI , external service (English), Tehran, 29 August 1995 via BBC SWB ME/2396 MED/9, 31 August 1995.

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the six GCC states and, incongruously, Egypt and Syria’s military presence. And yet, during its December 1990 summit in Qatar, the GCC had welcomed Iran’s involvement in any regional security arrangement, and in February 1991, US Secretary of State James Baker even told Congress such an arrangement could include Iran.46 When the ‘sixplus-two’ proved stillborn, the GCC states fell back on bilateral security relations with the US. Most of the Gulf monarchies remained wary of Iran potentially fomenting unrest among local Shi’ite communities—the majority of the population in Bahrain’s case—and denounced Iran’s move in 1992 to enforce claims on three islands astride the principal oil tanker route near the Strait of Hormuz. Then in 1995, the Pentagon revived its Fifth Fleet after a half-century hiatus, headquartering it in Manama. In Europe, Iran’s human rights abuse allegations and broader conduct impeded normalization. In August 1991, the assassination in Paris of Shahpour Bakhtiar, later linked to Tehran, led to French President François Mitterrand aborting his Iran visit, which would have been the first of any major Western government since 1979. In September 1992, assailants gunned down four Iranian-Kurdish opposition figures in Berlin’s Mykonos Restaurant. That November, Hassan Sanaei, the conservative head of the 15 Khordad bonyad contradicted Rafsanjani’s efforts by raising the $2 million bounty on Salman Rushdie. In December 1992, treading a middle path between normalization and severance of relations, the Western Europeans engaged Iran in a ‘critical dialogue’ on its behavior.47 But then in 1997, a German court directly incriminated Iran’s decisionmakers for the Mykonos Restaurant assassinations, igniting a diplomatic firestorm and shortcircuiting ‘critical dialogue’. Tellingly, Germany’s percentage share of Iran’s total trade dropped by half between 1989 and 1997.48 Through this period, a mix of perceived opportunity and growing threat conspired with accommodationist dominance to explain why, beyond the across-the-board diplomatic flurry facilitated by the Gulf War, Tehran remained neutral and reportedly allowed the US to use its airspace—a form of bandwagoning if true. Indeed, Tehran would seek to continue defensively engaging—appeasing—the US despite the growing pushback from hawks on both sides.

46 Murray 2010, 80. 47 See Mousavian 2008, 194–202. 48 IMF DOTS.

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6.2 Fraught Appeasement: The Elusive Détente with Washington The Gulf War’s demonstration effect and the Soviet demise raised the urgency of both defusing and countering tensions with the US. When Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, Tehran Times stated that ‘[a]ny sign of goodwill will be responded to by goodwill’, echoing Bush’s earlier exhortation.49 In February, Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Vaezi relayed to the Europeans Rafsanjani’s willingness to engage on issues concerning WMD, terrorism and human rights, which however failed to move Washington.50 Clinton made Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations his foreign policy centerpiece. Iran remained a subaltern problem and spoiler, but by characterizing it as a threat, Washington raised the prospects of convergence between Israel and the Arabs. Facilitating peace in the ‘western half’ of the Middle East therefore went hand-in-glove with confronting threats in the ‘eastern half’. In May 1993, the US announced its Dual Containment policy targeting Iran and Iraq, a shift away from using Iraq to balance against Iran in the 1980s. The announcement did not deter Iran’s centrists. In late 1993, Chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee and exrepresentative to the UN Raja’i-Khorasani advocated reestablishing ties with the US in a letter to Khamenei. The letter drew the ire of conservative intransigents including Azari-Qomi and Nateq-Nuri.51 Ayatollah Abdolkarim Musavi-Ardebili, a founding member of the defunct Council of the Islamic Revolution, deemed reconciliation an act against the Revolution.52 The radicals, presently in the political wilderness, continued to match the magnitude of their decline with the asperity of their anti-US rhetoric.53 For relations to resume, Khamenei had demanded that the US ‘repen[t] of all the tragedies they have created in the world’, which was nonetheless softer than his earlier ban on negotiations.54 Others, including Guardian Council Chairman Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati charged

49 Tehran Times, 20 January 1993. 50 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 134–5. 51 Moslem 2002, 225–6. 52 Ettela’at, 20 November 1993. 53 See Salam, 27 July 1994. 54 Radio Tehran, 3 November 1993.

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that ‘[s]howing mercy to the “wolf” [the US]….is unlikely either to satisfy the wolf or rescue the sheep [Iran]’.55 In March 1995, Rafsanjani made another attempt at détente and, indeed, appeasement, by offering US oil giant Conoco Inc. an unprecedented $1 billion tender to develop two massive oil fields in the offshore Sirri project, originally slated for France’s Total S.A.56 Rafsanjani had secured Khamenei’s reluctant buy-in only with great effort. In response, and to address existing loopholes allowing US oil companies to continue trading Iranian oil, Clinton issued an executive order banning US investments in Iran’s oil sector, effectively scuppering the Conoco-Iran deal. Total S.A. took up the slack with dispatch. In May 1995, Clinton issued a second executive order, this time imposing a total trade and investment ban with Iran. Both executive orders in fact preempted two even harsher bills by Senator Alfonse D’Amato, the one ending trade links with Iran, the other punishing third parties doing business with it.57 But Congress maintained its offensive, authorizing $18 million for CIA regime-change operations against Iran meanwhile. In July 1996, Congress unanimously rolled out an even more extensive bill, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA, again sponsored by D’Amato), imposing what would later be a $20 million limit on even non-US companies investing in Iran’s energy sector. This coincided with a June attack, blamed on Iran, which targeted the Khobar Towers military residential complex in al-Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and killed 19 American servicemen. Still, so Iran could reciprocate, Rafsanjani continued urging the US to ‘prove its good intentions’ in practice and release Iranian assets frozen during the embassy hostage crisis.58 As late as January 1996, assessing that the US’ campaign to isolate Iran might eventually force the Europeans to side with Washington, Iran’s SNSC greenlighted direct talks for the first time between Iranian Members of Parliament and US Congressmen, which Washington rebuffed.59 Other centrists echoed Rafsanjani including Iran’s UN Ambassador Kharrazi, who had

55 Radio Tehran, 27 January 1995. 56 ‘Burned by loss of Conoco deal, Iran says U.S. betrays free trade’, NYT , 20 March

1995. 57 Murray 2010, 98–9. 58 Cited in Menashri 2001, 189; IRNA, 11 March 1996. 59 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 139–40.

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in March 1993—when the Clinton administration was still debating its Iran policy—proposed ways to avoid further bilateral tensions, and now conditioned relations on the US improving its behavior toward Iran.60 Yet as sanctions hardened, Rafsanjani’s political capital evaporated, vindicating Iran’s hardliners. The latter were at this time also gaining traction on another issue then at the top of Washington’s agenda.

6.3 Ideology and Balancing: Iran’s Opposition to the Middle East Peace Process Iran’s troubled relations with the US closely intertwined with its unabating hostility to Israel, another key tenet of the Revolution.61 As President, Rafsanjani had signaled a crucial shift by backing any solution to the conflict accepted by the Palestinians, without necessarily recognizing Israel.62 In the October 1991 Madrid Conference co-sponsored with the terminally declining USSR, the Bush administration invited 43 states including 15 from the region, but carefully excluded Iran despite Rafsanjani’s indication of interest.63 Beyond its conduct, Iran was perceived to lack leverage, and hence relevance, in the Palestinian arena.64 Iranian officials however viewed participation in Madrid as the regional power’s opportunity to help shape a new Middle East.65 Spurned and already status-discrepant (including after the Damascus Declaration), Tehran responded not by allying itself with the other target of Dual Containment (Iraq) as Washington had anticipated, but by backing extremists opposed to the Peace Process, notably Palestinian Islamic Jihad and later, Hamas.66 According to conservative strategist Amir Mohebian, Khamenei tasked leading radical Mohtashamipur to organize an anti-conference bringing together these rejectionist groups in

60 Rafsanjani 2015, 629; IRNA, 26 December 1996. 61 Khomeini, 3 June 1963. 62 Hooglund 1995, 88. 63 Baker 1995, 444. 64 Parsi 2007, 153. 65 Ibid., 153–4. 66 Ibid., 191.

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Tehran, coinciding with the Madrid Conference.67 This forced Rafsanjani’s administration to also oppose the Peace Process.68 The Madrid Conference fell through in any case. Then in June 1992, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s right-wing Likud government lost the elections to the left-of-center Labor Party. This reenergized peace efforts and led to the Oslo Accords, first signed in September 1993. If Shamir’s government refused to have truck with the Palestinians, Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor government now portrayed Iran as the region’s menace to marshal domestic support for peace with the Palestinians.69 With Iraq debilitated and posing less of a threat and counterweight to Israel and Iran, and the Soviet collapse rendering obsolescent Israel’s role (alongside Kemalist Turkey and Pahlavi Iran) as regional anti-Communist bulwark, Jerusalem’s rhetorical strategy began targeting Islamic fundamentalism. The Peace Process threatened to keep Iran out in the cold. Even Syria, Iran’s closest regional ally now bereft of its Soviet benefactor and more inclined to look west, had participated in the Gulf coalition against Saddam and was contemplating peace with Israel.70 Tehran pulled out all stops and charged Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with selling out the Palestinian cause and undermining Islamic unity. Tehran also promised ‘limitless support’ to those who opposed the Peace Process.71 Appealing directly to the Arab street, Iran sought from below to delegitimize, upstage, and outbid moderate Arab governments considering normalization with Israel. Before this, Iran’s hostility to Israel and Zionism had remained largely ideological and rhetorical.72 Even in the early 1990s, Tehran did not consider Israel a serious security threat despite the latter’s military capabilities, partly because of Tehran’s focus on its immediate security environment.73 But now, Arab–Israeli normalization under the US’ aegis

67 Parsi 2007, 155 (FN 92). 68 Baktiari 1996, 215. 69 Menashri 2006, 116. 70 Rafsanjani 2014, 100; in April 1993, Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah complained

that Syria had not permitted arms to reach the group in Lebanon for a while, Rafsanjani 2016, 58. 71 Menashri 1997, 81. 72 See Menashri 2001, ch. 8; 2006. 73 Parsi 2007, 144–5.

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risked undercutting a key element of Iran’s revolutionary ideology and further isolating it. Moreover, with Iraq incapacitated, Israel—the region’s only putative nuclear weapons state—directly competed with Tehran for both power and influence. In this rare instance, ideological dogmatism dovetailed with realpolitik and state interests. Hence for the first time since 1979, Iran systematically surpassed rhetoric to directly, if discretely, support terrorism against Israel. On Israel’s periphery previously, Iran had now insinuated itself into the Palestinian territories and thus Israel’s security core. Iran’s one-upmanship also discursively transformed the conflict from an Arab-nationalist to a pan-Islamic religious issue.74 If timing for détente with the US was unripe, it remained categorically unthinkable with Israel, which Iran had from the outset chosen as its ‘discretionary foe’.75 In the first half of the 1990s, the declining radicals and now the traditional conservatives played hardball on both issue areas, partly to thwart Rafsanjani’s moderating shift toward the West.76 Conversely, Israel, if not the US, also furnished a rare valence issue and therefore a safety valve for revolutionary excess, and would largely remain the common denominator among Iran’s factions. The spate of terrorist attacks ultimately tilted the 1996 Israeli elections a hair’s breadth in favor of the right-wing Likud party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. With the Peace Process no longer an imminent threat, and the Likud government ironically dialing down its Labor predecessor’s anti-Iran vitriol, Tehran ventured low-cost gestures to reduce bilateral tensions, including pressuring Hezbollah toward a ceasefire amid the 1996 hostilities with Israel and the release of Israeli hostages and soldiers’ remains. Iran’s leaders even suggested they would renew efforts in determining the fate of an Israeli airman captured by Lebanese Shi’a militants in 1986. On balance, growing tensions between Iran and Israel were catalyzed by the Soviet collapse, a defanged Iraq, and Iran’s perception of marginalization by the US-led coalition. Iran’s attempts at a separate détente with the US had been torpedoed by Israeli interests in Congress and the White House.77 In this period, Tehran changed stance not once but twice:

74 Menashri 2006, 110. 75 Chubin 2009, 179. 76 Baktiari 1996, 214. 77 Mearsheimer and Walt 2007, 286–91.

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potentially receptive toward any Israel-Palestinian peace at first, and when rejected at Madrid, hardening toward support for terrorism to undermine the Peace Process. Terrorism doubled as a form of deterrence and external balancing against Israel and especially the US, even as engagement-type strategies with Washington failed. Meanwhile, anticipating the growing need for balancing, Iran was already neck-deep in cultivating major power allies.

6.4 External Balancing Against US Dominance: Russia and China When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in December 1991, so did the colonial power which had, in two wars and three humiliating treaties in the Czarist nineteenth century, cut Qajar Persia down to size by appropriating its northern provinces.78 In the twentieth century, the Soviets attempted to establish autonomous communist governments in Gilan, Azerbaijan and Kordestan provinces, and backed communist influence in post-revolutionary Iran through the Tudeh Party. For Khomeini, the USSR was even worse than both the US and Britain.79 Yet, the Soviet collapse also redefined the international system and portended enormous uncertainty for Iran, whose relations with Moscow had been on the upswing since 1989. As the trajectory of events became clearer with the failed August 1991 coup in Moscow, Rafsanjani’s government, already struggling to stabilize Iran, brooded over its disruptive potential. Iran’s radicals had futilely urged Tehran to support Moscow’s hardline coup plotters.80 Others saw dangerous parallels between Gorbachev and Rafsanjani’s reforms. Foreign Minister Velayati initially called this an internal matter and did not expect instability to affect the broader ‘favorable trend’ in Soviet-Iranian ties; Velayati and Rafsanjani even congratulated Gorbachev for restoring order and called

78 The Treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828) gave Russia control of Dagestan, Eastern Georgia, modern-day Azerbaijan and Armenia, besides exclusive naval use of the Caspian Sea and extraterritorial privileges in Iran. The Treaty of Akhal (1881) gave Russia control of Khwarezm, i.e. the southern parts of modern Turkmenistan. 79 Yodfat 2011, 104. 80 Rafsanjani 2014, 278; Sarabi 1994, 93.

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for bilateral relations to expand.81 Then days before the USSR’s final dissolution, Alexander Rutskoy—deputy to Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin—met Rafsanjani in Tehran and requested ‘special relations’, recognizing Iran as ‘the region’s most important country’.82 Soviet dissolution left Iran’s adoptive arch-nemesis as the world’s unchallenged superpower.83 This disrupted the balance of threats implied in ‘neither East nor West’ and required recalibration to counteract the US-led ‘New World Order’. Shortly before his death, Khomeini had sworn that ‘[a]s long as I am alive…I will not deviate from “no East, no West”… I will cut off the influence of American and Soviet agents…’.84 For some, the end of the bipolar system offered Iran an opportunity to lead. ‘Iran is shouldering the leadership of many communities of the world,’ Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Hassan Rouhani noted. ‘But Iran’s leadership is different from America’s domineering leadership’.85 Still, external pressures, worsened by unresolved tensions with Washington and combined with a shifting alignment of interests, prepared the ground for prospective balancing alliances with other major powers. Throughout the 1980s, Iran’s alliances were limited to Syria, Libya, and to an extent, Algeria, North Korea, and Pakistan. By the early 1990s, countries like Syria and Pakistan were increasingly accommodating the post-Cold War order.86 While frail, the newly emerging Russian Federation remained a major nuclear power, a Security Council permanent member and diplomatic counterweight to the US, and a significant repository of advanced arms and technology. And despite its prodigiously checkered imperial-colonial history, compared to the US, Russia was nowhere as culturally attractive and, it follows, subversive.87 Unable to overcome diplomatic isolation by reconciling with Washington or maximizing relations with other key Western governments, even Iran’s 81 CIA, September 1991, 2; ‘Payam-e vizhe-ye Gorbachev be rais-e jomhuri’, Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 24 August 1991. 82 Rafsanjani 2014, 497. 83 Rafsanjani believed the US would now seek to ‘ensure absolute dominance’, cited in

Menashri 2001, 189. 84 Cited in Ehteshami 2017, 191. 85 Cited in Kayhan Weekly (English), 13 January 1994. 86 Chubin 1994, 3. 87 Khamenei singled out the US as ‘the main propagator of corrupt, materialist culture aimed at Iran’, cited in Baktiari 1996, 223.

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historically Moscow-wary conservatives set their sights on relations with post-Soviet Russia as one pillar of what would become Tehran’s external balancing strategy. In 1992, buoyed by the West’s halfhearted pace of rapprochement with Iran, Moscow reiterated its willingness to help bolster Tehran’s self-defense.88 The Cold War’s end left Russia with little hard currency reserves but a bursting stock of weaponry, and Moscow’s other regular arms clients were either under sanctions or floundering economically. In 1991, the Soviet Union had exported to the Islamic Republic arms worth $772 million (by SIPRI’s trend-indicator value), a single-year record still unsurpassed as of 2018.89 While Iran’s rearmament had begun after the 1988 ceasefire, the Gulf War generated fresh impetus owing to rising oil prices and revenues, the distancing of most countries from Iraq and hence evaporating inhibitions in selling arms to Iran, and the demonstration effect of US military might and arms sales to Iran’s Gulf rivals. Yet the choice of Russian patronage and arms—particularly fighter craft and aerial defense systems—also had to do with footdragging by the West. Despite enthusiasm for business with Iran from some quarters including Russia’s defense and atomic energy ministries and the hydrocarbons sector, between 1991 and 1994, the Kremlin’s pro-west bent under President Boris Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev dampened the flourishing of relations. However, from around mid-decade, stalled Russian-Western ties over mismatched expectations—including an equal global role for Russia, which did not occur, and NATO’s eastward expansion, which did—inclined Moscow further toward Iran, with increasing intimations of strategic relations. Iran persisted and repaid the compliment by muting criticism of Russia’s pro-Serbian policy in Bosnia and its 1994–1996 war in Muslim Chechnya, and deferring to Russian priorities in Central Asia and Transcaucasia (see Sect. 6.5). A feistily anti-American Iran offered the Kremlin leverage in its own deteriorating ties with the US.90 Moreover, both countries now shared several common political, security, and energy interests in their neighborhood, notably Afghanistan 88 Claude van England, ‘Iran steps up arms purchases to prop military’, Christian Science Monitor, 20 April 1992. 89 Importer/Exporter TIV (Trend-Indicator Value) Tables, SIPRI database (March 2019). TIV captures an item’s price index based on military capability, not actual financial value. 90 Interview with Russian diplomat, 5 February 2015.

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and the Caspian Sea, even if they were also competing energy exporters especially to European gas markets.91 Valued at $418 million in 1990, bilateral trade rose over twofold to $954 million by 1997, with Russian goods comprising 4.4 percent of Iran’s total imports.92 Although seen as a crucial ally, Russia was unreliable. Moscow periodically proved willing to shortchange Iran for US concessions. In January 1995, Moscow signed a $1 billion agreement to finish building Bushehr’s two light water reactors and furnish technical training.93 However, in a summit with President Clinton that May, Yeltsin rescinded a gas centrifuge deal promised by Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov to Iran as an aside in the January agreement.94 In June, US Vice-President Al Gore and Russia’s Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin signed a secret agreement, concealed even from Congress, waiving US sanctions against Russia for its support of Iran. In exchange, Russia agreed to halt new sales of advanced weaponry to Iran and conclude deliveries of existing contracts— including a third Kilo-class submarine—before 2000.95 And in 1999, just before US-Russia security talks, and amid Russia’s efforts to attract IMF credit at a time of domestic financial crisis, Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov offered to limit nuclear cooperation with Iran if the US waived fresh sanctions targeting two key Russian nuclear research institutions.96 Until the turn of the millennium, despite improved ties, Russia’s post-Soviet internal transition and the Kremlin’s relatively pro-Western outlook continued to hamper any prospective alliance with Iran. Given lukewarm relations with the West and Russia’s unreliability, Iran naturally focused on China, another UN Security Council permanent member, as the other pillar of external balancing. Alongside Russia, China too became Iran’s diplomatic patron and principal military and technological purveyor. But unlike Russia, China would also be Iran’s leading oil client. 91 David Hearst, ‘Russia sees rich reward in Iranian links’, The Guardian, 31 May 1995. 92 IMF DOTS. 93 ITAR-TASS, world service, Moscow (English), 18 August 1995 via BBC MEW/0398 WME/4, 22 August 1995. 94 Freedman 2000. 95 Arms deliveries continued however, see John M. Broder, ‘Despite a secret pact by

Gore in ’95, Russian arms sales to Iran go on’, NYT , 13 October 2000. 96 Michael R. Gordon, ‘Russia to offer U.S. deal to end Iran nuclear aid’, NYT , 17 March 1999.

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Ideologically, Khomeini’s Islamist and Mao’s atheist revolutions could not be further apart. Yet, scarred by the shared trauma of national humiliation in the modern era, both revolutionary worldviews rejected and openly defied foreign imperialism, colonialism and cultural penetration. China and Iran’s civilizations also went back a long way. Han Dynasty envoys ventured into Central Asia and then Parthian Iran to solicit allies and cavalry capabilities against China’s arch-enemy, the Xiongnu. These contacts inadvertently paved the way for the Silk Road. While Iran was a major trade partner of China, it also commanded the sole landbridge for east–west trade and taxed it vigorously while preventing direct contact between China and Rome, even as Sogdian (east Iranian) merchants from Samarkand became critical middlemen for China’s external trade. Following the Muslim conquest of Iran, the Sassanian Shah’s household received refuge in Tang China. Furthermore, the Toluid khans Kublai and Hulagu separately and briefly brought Yuan Dynasty China and Ilkhanid Iran under common Mongol dominion in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries. Beijing’s support for the Shah just before Khomeini’s revolution initially unsettled bilateral relations.97 But during the eight-year war, China became Iran’s major arms supplier, often indirectly via North Korea. In 1983 alone, China sold Iran $444 million worth of ‘Sovietstyle military equipment’.98 That April, with Pyongyang’s assistance, a secret Iranian delegation to China secured a three-year, $1.3 billion armaments deal which included Shenyang J-6/F-6 fighters and T-59 MBTs.99 During his March 1985 visit to Tehran, China’s State Councilor Zhang Jinfu and Iran’s Chief-of-Staff Colonel Esma’il Sohrabi inked a $1 billion arms deal to be financed mainly through Iranian oil.100 That June, with Iran’s self-imposed international isolation slowly thawing, Speaker Rafsanjani visited China, signing an agreement to raise bilateral trade from $250 million to $600 million.101 He went so far as to call China ‘the best

97 One-time Paramount Leader Hua Guofeng’s August 1978 visit to the Shah offended Iran’s Khomeinist opposition, and Deng Xiaoping’s pro-US turn constrained close bilateral association at least until 1982. 98 CIA, April 1984, 2. 99 Garver 2006, 81; Rezaei and Vosoughi 2017, 28. 100 Garver 2006, 81. 101 Hunter 1990, 160 (FN 21, 22).

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country for Iran to cooperate with….China does not have a colonialist mentality. In cooperating with Iran,’ he insisted, ‘China absolutely will not harm Iran’s interests’.102 This declaration spoke volumes considering China’s simultaneous arms sales to Iraq during the war. In 1987, China’s arms exports to the Islamic Republic, valued at $539 million (by SIPRI’s trend-indicator value), broke a new record of any supplier during the war (and even for China itself, as of 2018).103 Until 1988, before US pressure prevailed, Chinese arms included HY-2 Silkworm anti-ship cruise missiles which Iran used against maritime traffic, notably a US-(re)flagged oil tanker anchored in Kuwait.104 When a UN arms embargo on Iran loomed in the wake of Resolution 598, Beijing sought to buy time for diplomacy, but also possibly to disincentivize Iran from pivoting toward Moscow. Diplomatic exchanges intensified. During the August 1988 Tehran visit by Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Qi Huaiyuan, Rafsanjani called Beijing a ‘true friend’ during the difficult war years.105 In May 1989, President Khamenei became the first Iranian head of state ever to visit China, while Rafsanjani again visited in 1992 as president.106 During Premier Li Peng’s July 1991 Tehran visit, both sides highlighted their joint opposition to a new post-Cold War hegemon, a clear reference to the US.107 President Yang Shangkun followed with a visit in October 1991.108 Western criticism of Beijing’s heavyhanded response to the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations (which Tehran supported) had given China another reason to warm to Iran. Furthermore, US plans to sell F-16s to Taiwan prompted China to consider suspending disarmament cooperation with Washington and to increase its arms exports, which Rafsanjani

102 China’s diplomatic overview, 1987, 104. 103 Importer/Exporter TIV Tables, SIPRI database (March 2019). 104 Garver 2006, 80–2. 105 Cited in Hunter 1990, 161–2 (FN 30). 106 Khamenei had already visited China at least once before in February 1981 as a

parliamentarian. Both were also allowed to visit China’s Xinjiang province despite the effect Iran’s revolution might have on Muslim Uyghurs. 107 CIA, October 1991, 15. 108 Rafsanjani 2014, 394.

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interpreted favorably as a ‘green light’ during his September 1992 visit to Beijing.109 If China represented a major Cold War counterweight to the US and USSR, it could now, with Moscow, offset the sole remaining superpower.110 During the September 1992 visit, Rafsanjani reportedly pushed for a common anti-US front which would include Iran, China, Russia, India and Pakistan.111 In 1993, Rafsanjani told the Hindustan Times that China was ‘another suitable partner’ in addition to India [given Iran’s tensions with the West]. ‘We have tested their honesty. If we work together we can have the last word on international issues’.112 The world’s fastest rising economy was a willing partner in Iran’s reconstruction efforts, and constituted proof that revolutionary ideology could coexist with free markets.113 In 1993, China became a net oil importer amid Iran’s increasing isolation by Dual Containment. Driven by growing energy security concerns, China became the largest purchaser of Iranian crude and the leading investor in its hydrocarbons sector. In 1989, China imported 266,215 metric tons of Iranian oil (worth $34.5 million), whereas, by 1997, the figure had risen over tenfold to 2.7 million metric tons (worth $418 million).114 Iran supplied 5.5 percent of China’s oil imports in 1995, a figure which would reach 18 percent in 2001.115 In 1997, China signed an oil and gas exploration agreement—its first foray into Iran’s energy industry since Tehran opened it up to foreign investment shortly before. This came at a time when international energy firms were increasingly deterred by ILSA’s $20 million energy investment limit. From $58.4 million in 1989, total bilateral merchandise trade rose 16-fold to $938.4 million by 1997, the bulk of it comprising Iranian crude besides base metals and minerals. By 2000, the figure stood at 109 Rafsanjani 2015, 321. 110 In their October 1991 Tehran meeting, Rafsanjani and President Yang Shangkun

for instance discussed ‘the US exploiting the vacuum left by a powerful rival’, in Rafsanjani 2014, 395. 111 Garver 2006, 109–10. 112 Cited in ‘Iran talks of bid for new alliances’, NYT , 26 September 1993. 113 Mahmoud Sariolghalam (2008, 426) later noted the difference between both coun-

tries’ revolutions: for China, global integration and ‘economic wealth is the bedrock of any power, even ideological power’. 114 Garver 2006, 266. 115 Calculations based on International Trade Centre (ITC) data.

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$2.2 billion, with China comprising 5.7 percent of Iran’s total trade and receiving 6.7 percent of Iran’s total exports that year.116 Official figures typically exclude arms and nuclear cooperation but include other high-value items sought by Iran such as industrial machinery, electrical equipment, and vehicles. Although Chinese technology including capital goods were often inferior to Western equivalents, quality widely improved over time, and Chinese companies proved willing to transfer acquired western technologies to Iran.117 China’s economic foray encompassed contracts for the construction of infrastructure, most prominently Tehran’s metro system, inked in 1995 (after Iran rejected costlier tenders) and completed in 2006.118 Chinese banks extended credit lines worth hundreds of millions of dollars mainly linked to Iranian infrastructural projects. Given the US’ military presence in the Persian Gulf and its perceived threat to China’s energy security, Beijing’s mandarins favorably viewed an increased regional role for Iran, the only regional partner they could rely on if both major powers clashed.119 Between 1994 and 1997, China inked deals to furnish 56.3 percent of Iran’s imported weaponry by delivery value, compared to Russia’s declining 12.5 percent.120 In 1996, Tehran and Beijing also announced a $4.5 billion arms deal— Iran’s largest since 1979—for China to supply combat aircraft, warships, armored vehicles, and missiles.121 Insofar as actual deliveries, China ultimately supplied 42.1 percent of Iran’s military imports in the 1994– 1997 period, still more than Russia’s 36.8 percent.122 Like Russia and Chechnya, Tehran too largely refrained from criticizing China’s crackdowns on the Turkic Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. Although not as unreliable as Russia, China’s own relations with the US nonetheless created occasional setbacks for Tehran. US–China tensions had been building up over Washington’s sales of F-16s to

116 IMF DOTS; China’s DOTS figures exclude Hong Kong and Macau. 117 Garver 2006, 241. 118 Ibid., 261–4. 119 See Tang 2000. 120 Grimmett 1998, 29. 121 James Bruce, ‘Iran and China in $4.5 billion partnership’, Jane’s Defence Weekly,

11 September 1996. 122 Grimmett 1998, 40.

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Taiwan, China’s assistance to Iran and Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs, and US sanctions, before coming to a head in the 1995– 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. In the October 1997, US–China presidential summit, to defray tensions, President Jiang Zemin agreed to suspend nuclear cooperation with Iran, which afterward extended to missile cooperation. China’s decision ceded the way for Russia to become Iran’s main nuclear partner.123 Previously, China had also canceled the supply of Silkworm missiles in March 1988 (ostensibly), the delivery of a 27-megawatt research reactor in September 1992, and the sale of 300-megawatt reactors capable of producing plutonium in 1995, the latter supposedly over ‘technical’ disagreements.124 That Beijing maintained nuclear cooperation with Pakistan—an NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) non-signatory state—despite US entreaties says something about China-Iranian relations. Finally, China refrained from a ‘strategic’ partnership with Iran despite similar partnerships with Russia, the US and even Saudi Arabia, let alone back Iran’s vision of an anti-US alignment,125 even as it normalized relations with Israel in 1992. Like Russia, China too would dominate bilateral relations with Iran and occasionally shortchange it, creating new dependencies ironically enabled by Iran’s irreconcilable differences with the US. Throughout this period then, perceptions of rising external threats, namely growing US power and influence as a result of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, prompted Tehran’s accommodationist government toward balancing as a hedge in case bandwagoning or appeasement failed with Washington, as indeed transpired. Given lukewarm relations with the other mostly Western industrialized states, external balancing principally revolved around Russia and China, the only major powers with some measure of capability and will to offset the US. Both had been central to Iran’s initial military rehabilitation, which currently also served internal balancing needs. As we now see, the priority of relations with Russia in the 1990s was a critical factor behind accommodationist Iran’s own ultimately restrained engagement in Central Asia, despite obvious incentives to expand in the post-Soviet space.

123 Garver 2006, 209. 124 Ibid., 214, 219; Cirincione et al. 2005, 303. 125 Garver 2006, 110, 124–5.

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In Russia’s Shadow: Forays into Post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan (CA/A)

The Soviet Union’s dissolution transformed Iran’s erstwhile borderlands in Central Asia and Transcaucasia into sovereign but unstable states (Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia). It also reconnected Iran with a broader region historically part of its political or civilizational-cultural imperium.126 While predominantly Turkic, Tajikistan’s majority is ethnolinguistically Persian, and Azerbaijan is nominally Shi’a and coethnic with Iranian Azeris, who themselves make up Iran’s largest minority or approximately 20–25 percent of the population. The Soviet collapse created a power and influence vacuum, and unsolicited top-down independence left CA/A’s communist Old Guard searching for political exemplars and repositories of historical identity for their emergent nation-states. Rafsanjani believed CA/A saw Iran as their ‘refuge’ and ‘second home’, and Iran would hence pay them special attention.127 The new geopolitical arena offered a strategic opportunity considering Iran’s tensions with the Arabs, its ambivalent relations with non-Arab Muslim states like Turkey and Pakistan, and US containment efforts. It also hinted at the possibility of decommissioned Soviet-era nuclear material. Conversely, armed conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia and within Tajikistan, and actual Azeri and potential Turkmen ethnic irredentism posed new threats to Iran. As the Soviet Union floundered, Iran’s CA/A priority was to contain potential instability, with Tehran voicing its preference for a strong Gorbachev government.128 Interior Minister Abdollah Nuri worried about an influx of Soviet refugees in addition to the Afghan and Iraqi refugees already in Iran.129 Glasnost had produced the unforeseen effect of stirring ethno-religious nationalism on Iran’s borders. Within a week of the August 1991 Moscow coup, Tehran Times, close to Rafsanjani’s government, called on the Muslim Soviet republics’ leaders to convene

126 In Soviet-era CA/A, Iran had maintained only a consulate in Baku, CIA, February 1997, 5. 127 Rafsanjani 2014, 13–14. 128 CIA, September 1991, 2–3. 129 Ibid., 4.

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in Tehran to discuss developments, and cautioned them about ‘extremist nationalistic movements’.130 Earlier, in January 1990 during the Soviet suppression of Azerbaijan’s uprising, Rafsanjani’s government had merely chided Moscow, even as Iran cracked down on small-scale solidarity protests by its own ethnic Azeris.131 Iran’s growing pact with Moscow not only enabled but also constrained its maneuverability in CA/A. This balance of interests— and opportunities—gave Iran access, yet obliged moderation. In late November 1991, Foreign Minister Velayati led a ministerial delegation on a ten-day visit to CA/A even before the USSR’s official dissolution. Yet, he had taken the trouble to first visit Moscow, and afterwards publicly emphasized Tehran’s deference to the Kremlin in respect of CA/A.132 On December 24, 1991, Iran recognized the six Muslim republics alongside Russia.133 The emerging geostrategic incentive in CA/A facilitated domestic consensus on the projection of Iranian influence in the region,134 and justified the creation of a Supreme Inquiry Council (Shura-ye Ali-ye Residegi) dedicated to this aim.135 Disagreements plagued the form and desired extent, however. Hardliners called for revolutionary export and for Tehran to support both the Islamists in Tajikistan’s civil war, and Shi’ite Azerbaijan against Christian Armenia. Rafsanjani maintained but perceptibly played down Iran’s support for these actors. Moreover, he preferred to marry the pragmatic with the geostrategic: ‘Co-operation should certainly be carried out via Iran. For links between the north and the south, the east and the west, these countries and Europe, Europe and Asia, everything should cross Iran – oil and gas pipelines, railways, communication routes and international airports’.136 Deputy Foreign 130 CIA, October 1991, 16; CIA, September 1991, 4. 131 CIA, June 1990, 3. 132 ‘Doktor Velayati vared-e Mosko shod’, Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 25 November 1991; ‘Velayati on visit to Soviet Republics’, IRIB Television First Program Network, 8 December 1991, in Daily Report, Near East & South Asia, FBIS-NES-91-236, 9 December 1991. 133 ‘Iran Jomhuri-ye Federativ-e Rusiye va 6 jomhuri-ye Asia Miyane ra be rasmiyyat shenakht’, Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 25 December 1991. 134 See Rafsanjani’s remarks, Voice of the IRI , 11 February 1992, via BBC SWB ME/1303/A/3, 13 February 1992. 135 Rafsanjani 2014, 14. 136 Cited in Menashri 2001, 253.

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Minister Abbas Maleki saw in Iran’s relations with CA/A the potential to ‘transform the geo-ethnic configuration of Southwest Asia and the Middle East’ toward a less dominantly Arab and ‘a more balanced and multi-ethnic interaction’.137 Iran’s ambassador to the UN Kamal Kharrazi believed CA/A offset a united, anti-Iranian Arab front and compensated for Iran’s slow-moving trade with the GCC.138 Likewise, Iran’s Foreign Ministry launched two regionally dedicated academic journals, reflecting CA/A’s emerging importance. Azerbaijan, part of Persia until the nineteenth century, posed Iran’s primary regional challenge. As the USSR collapsed, Azeri Iranians and Azerbaijanis on both banks of the River Aras reached out to each other in ethnic and Islamic solidarity.139 However, irredentism also persisted on both banks, and the November 1991 emergence of an independent Azerbaijan with what would be comparably higher per capita oil-powered living standards threatened to reinforce Azeri-Turkic identity and foment dissent among Iranian Azeris. Concurrently, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1988–1994) between Azerbaijan and Armenia—another former Persian province with coethnics inside Iran—risked spilling over into Iranian territory. Despite some Iranian Azeri support for Azerbaijan, Tehran initially remained neutral. Azerbaijan’s President Abülfez Elçibey proved particularly antiIranian and pro-West in contrast to his predecessor, Ayaz Mutalibov whose first trip abroad as President in August 1991 had been to Tehran. Not only did it criticize Iran’s theocracy and the Azeri minority’s cultural suppression, Baku openly suggested a reunified Azerbaijan on its terms. Tehran consequently tilted toward Yerevan as the war intensified in 1992, becoming its only external trade, electricity and gas supply pipeline given the economic blockade on Armenia by Turkey from the west and Azerbaijan from the east, and Georgia’s civil war to its north. As of January 1992, Iran’s foreign policy principals favored greater cooperation with Armenia to counter Turkey’s influence.140 In March,

137 Maleki 1993. 138 Kharrazi 1994, 87. 139 Rafsanjani 2014, 13. 140 Ibid., 544.

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Azerbaijan’s leaders also requested Tehran’s mediation following Armenia’s territorial conquests.141 Iran only occasionally intervened to restrain, even censure Armenia where its military offensive threatened destabilization. When he succeeded Elçibey, Heydar Aliyev desperately sought Iran’s assistance, and during Rafsanjani’s visit in October 1993, requested that the delivery of weapons already purchased from Tehran be expedited.142 The SNSC afterward approved provision of training, weaponry and political assistance to Baku, but not Iran’s military-operational cooperation.143 Meanwhile, the Azerbaijanis placed a base near Baku at the Qods Force’s disposal.144 Yet, Tehran preferred a negotiated settlement. Azerbaijan’s defeat would dent Iran’s self-image as defender of the Shi’a, let alone Muslims, and provoke Iran’s radicals and ethnic Azeris. On the other hand, victory could embolden Baku’s irredentism vis-à-vis Iran and tempt Azerbaijan to seek a direct link with its Nakhchevan enclave, which would risk severing Armenia from Iran and link Turkey directly to CA/A.145 Additionally, despite Armenia’s military-territorial gains, Iran refrained, like even Yerevan itself, from recognizing the Armenian-sponsored breakaway Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Tehran’s mediation efforts reflected its stabilizing potential as much as its own security imperatives. Though dominated by Russia’s lead role, Iranian mediation fared better in Tajikistan’s civil war (1992–1997) between Emomali Rakhmon’s government and the opposition led by the Islamic Renaissance Party. While Iran had initially offered financial support to the Islamists during the conflict, this ended by late 1992.146 In September 1992, Rafsanjani accepted Dushanbe’s request for arms, provided there was a secret and secure conduit.147 Here, Iran similarly trod a tightrope. Too much assistance to the Islamist-led opposition risked damaging its relations with Moscow, Dushanbe’s main military sponsor, while too little assistance

141 Ibid., 622. 142 Rafsanjani 2016, 403–5. 143 Ibid., 411. 144 Ibid., 445. 145 Ibid., 82. 146 Clark 2015, 167–72. 147 Rafsanjani 2015, 350.

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would provoke Iran’s radicals. In any case, as Rafsanjani saw it, Iran as a regional power had found an effective role in resolving regional crises.148 Tehran’s policies with respect to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan paralleled broader efforts at cultural diplomacy, which had begun in CA/A during Gorbachev’s era. The Iranian foreign ministry’s CA/A brief targeted ‘political, cultural and especially religious ties’, for which the region was, according to Rafsanjani, ‘thirsting’.149 In December 1991, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran had dedicated $130 million for Central Asia and dispatched clerics to proselytize.150 In Azerbaijan, as bilateral tensions waxed (until 2005), Tehran allegedly funded pro-Iran Islamic schools and backed Islamist groups.151 In Central Asia, Sunni Islam’s historical dominance dampened the spread of Shi’ism. Iran instead emphasized their common Turco-Persian cultural heritage, while assisting Tajikistan in ‘rediscovering’ its own Persian patrimony. Indeed, in Tajikistan, Iran advanced a slew of proposals covering everything from highways and direct flights to commerce and Persian-language institutes.152 Iran’s foray into CA/A faced vigorous strategic, political, and economic competition by countries including Russia, China, the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel. But on the ideational plane, Sunni Turkey posed the primary challenge. Five of the six republics are ethnolinguistically Turkic and all but one is (nominally) Sunni. Pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism, a late nineteenth-century racial ideology promoting a united Turkestan or Turan from the Balkans to western China, and advanced by an ultranationalistic fringe in Turkey, appeared resurgent.153 Pan-Turanism manifested for instance in Turkish President Turgut Özal’s effusive talk of a ‘Turkic century’, and more concertedly in Ankara’s hosting in 1992 of the first of a series of Turkic summits. Turkey, unlike Iran, exemplified a moderate, progressive Islamic nation adeptly balancing secular constitutionalism with economic dynamism. At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan vigorously promoted Sunni Islam, especially the Wahhabist-Deobandist variety raging across the border in Afghanistan 148 Ibid., 18. 149 Rafsanjani 2014, 14. 150 Cited in Freij 1996, 81. 151 Cornell 2011, 334. 152 Clark 2015, 139. 153 See Landau 1995.

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and later embodied in the 1996 rise of the Taliban. While Iran exercised restraint, Riyadh dispatched a million Qur’ans to CA/A in 1990 alone, and funded Islamic groups alongside the construction of religious schools and mosques.154 In addition, Uzbekistan, the region’s most populous state often evinced open hostility toward Iran.155 The balance of opportunities in CA/A ultimately saw Iran emphasizing trade and economic policy. In its first summit in Tehran in February 1992, the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) comprising Iran, Turkey and Pakistan expanded to ultimately include all six CA/A republics and Afghanistan, bringing the ECO’s total population to 325 million.156 Rafsanjani viewed Iran as the ‘heart’ and ‘connecting link’ (halqe-ye vasl ) of the ECO region.157 However, by the decade’s end, the ECO’s utility as a cultural-regional bloc proved largely symbolic owing to economic incompatibilities, Iran-Turkey-Pakistan political competition, and tariff reduction disagreements.158 In 1997, while Iran came to comprise 16 percent of Turkmenistan’s and 24 percent of Azerbaijan’s total exports, the ECO’s total trade with Iran amounted to only $1.85 billion (3.6 percent of Iran’s total imports and 7 percent of its total exports), comparable to Iran’s imports from Germany alone.159 On the other hand, the more concrete preconditions for expanded trade links proved forthcoming, and Turkmenistan—the only Central Asian republic sharing a land border with Iran—would pave the way for the latter’s ambitions as CA/A’s landbridge and energy hub. October 1991 saw the opening of a highway linking Ashgabat with Mashhad and Tehran. In May 1996, a day before the 4th ECO summit in Ashgabat, 12 regional heads of state attended the inauguration, in Sarakhs, of the Mashhad-Sarakhs-Tejen railway, construction of which had begun

154 Rashid 1994, 220–1. 155 In an Ashgabat meeting on 9 May 1992, Uzbek President Islam Karimov told

Rafsanjani the Central Asian republics feared Iran’s ‘fundamentalist influence’, Rafsanjani 2015, 118. 156 Originally the CENTO-linked Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) created in 1964 by then US allies Iran, Turkey and Pakistan before being dissolved during Iran’s Revolution, the ECO was revived in 1985, retaining its secretariat in Tehran. 157 Rafsanjani 2014, 581 (FN 1). 158 Pomfret 1997, 662; Afrasiabi and Pour Jalali 2001. 159 Calculations based on IMF DOTS.

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in 1992 with partial Iranian financing and IRGC contracts.160 This crucial link connected Central Asia and Iran’s rail networks, provided the quickest locomotive route joining China and Central Asia to the Persian Gulf and Europe, and offered an alternative to constrictive and often extortionate Russian road-rail-pipeline transit for the landlocked CA/A republics. Rafsanjani confidently declared that ‘the world is moving toward greater regional cooperation’ and that ‘sustained and regionally coordinated economic growth and development will consolidate peace and stability’.161 In December 1997, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) completed a pipeline begun in 1995 to bring Turkmen gas from Korpeje to Kordkuy in Iran’s Golestan province and potentially further.162 Turkmen gas-powered Iran’s energy-scarce northern regions, the bulk of Iran’s hydrocarbons being concentrated in the Persian Gulf. Simultaneously, swap arrangements via the Caspian saw Iran selling an equivalent amount of gas to international markets on Ashgabat’s behalf, as it similarly did with Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil. However, in the Caspian Sea Iran also faced challenges such as its contested legal status and boundary delimitations (given three new riparian states), costlier deep-water drilling, and US opposition to any Iranian involvement including as transit node for proposed pipeline routes.163 As such, despite strong interest in CA/A and intensified diplomatic and economic ties during Rafsanjani’s presidency, several factors curbed Iran’s regional ambitions including the sensibilities of Russia, for which securing its soft Eurasian underbelly was priority. Russia was clearly important for Iran especially given the latter’s growing balancing imperatives vis-à-vis the US. Conversely, having deferred to Moscow and proven its restraint, stabilizing influence, and curbing effect on Sunni fundamentalism, Iran enjoyed access to CA/A, at times with overt Russian

160 On Ashgabat’s explicit requests for Iranian cooperation on railways and many other areas, see Rafsanjani 2014, 365, 539–40. 161 Sarah Chowdhry, ‘Iran-Turkmenistan railway launched’, United Press International,

13 May 1996. 162 Distrusting Russia, Turkmen President Niyazov during the February 1992 ECO Summit wanted Turkmen gas to be piped to Turkey via Iran, Rafsanjani 2014, 578. 163 US Secretary of State James Baker made it clear that the US’ Central Asia policy aimed at countering Iran, see Thomas L. Friedman, ‘U.S. to counter Iran in Central Asia’, NYT , 6 February 1992.

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cooperation including joint support for Armenia, as well as shared opposition to Ankara’s pan-Turkic ambitions, the Afghan Taliban, and external actors’ involvement in Azerbaijan’s oil industry.

6.6

Rafsanjani and Restrictive Accommodationism

The Gulf War, the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union’s collapse, which collectively brought US power to the fore, elevated Iran’s perception of external threat. In addition, between 1991 and 1992, Iran’s GDP growth per capita slowed tremendously and even contracted through 1994, although petroleum exports or oil revenues in that period fluctuated less dramatically (Graphs 3.4 and 3.7). All this coincided with ongoing accommodationist dominance in Tehran. The result, Restrictive Accommodationism, yields a mix of bandwagoning, appeasement and balancing. This is borne out by the empirical record. Neutrality in response to the Gulf War made sense for an Iran still rehabilitating its depleted strength, and it likewise kept Iran’s two leading adversaries busy with each other. Neutrality was however hardly a foregone conclusion if we recall the radicals’ attempt to undercut Rafsanjani through their support for Saddam against the US, and their hostility to the GCC’s ‘American Islam’. On the other hand, Tehran’s decision to open up its airspace to the US air force during the Gulf War, despite neutrality, nearly bordered on bandwagoning. The Gulf War ultimately vindicated Tehran and Rafsanjani’s accommodationist turn, enhancing Iran’s relations with the GCC, Europe, and to a limited extent the US. This engagement, begun in 1989, satisfied multiple objective interests although hardliners also perceived the accompanying ‘cultural invasion’ as a threat to the survival of regime identity and ideology. The emergence of the US as the sole superpower strengthened the case for Iran’s (defensive) engagement with the Bush administration, but mutual intransigence stood in the way. Rafsanjani even sought to appease the Clinton administration through the Conoco offer, but détente—let alone rapprochement—remained elusive. In parallel, Iran tightened up relations with Russia and China to balance against the US, beyond merely securing weaponry and technology to improve its own capabilities and ultimately, self-reliance. However, Tehran’s challenge was also to juggle its survival and collective self-esteem

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interests against overdependence on these allies, which would undercut autonomy. Iran exploited the unprecedented opportunity emerging in the former Soviet space by pursuing cautious diplomatic and economic engagement, but refrained from vigorously expanding its influence unlike Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey. Indeed, Tehran subordinated engagement in CA/A to its own external balancing-oriented alliance with Moscow. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, Iran first sought to engage the US by relatively softening its stance on Israel. But when this failed, and systemic-structural shifts deepened Iran’s isolation, Tehran briefly aligned ideology with realpolitik by increasing its support for rejectionist Palestinian militant ‘spoilers’ as a form of external balancing and deterrence. Given the stark power differentials, why didn’t Iran categorically bandwagon with the US as realist alliance theories predict? The conjunction of ideology as interpreted by the increasingly revisionist traditional conservatives (dispositional), and the growing viability of external balancing through Russia and China (situational) offers some insight. And yet, the accommodationists, unlike the revisionists, preferred prioritizing ties with the West (dispositional), and only deferred to Russia and China because of deadlocked US–Iran relations (situational). While structural considerations dominated Iran’s policies vis-à-vis China, Russia and CA/A, Tehran’s unabating, if varying ideological hostility toward the US (and Israel) also exacerbated these same structural constraints. Had TehranWashington relations normalized, Iran’s accommodationists would have felt less compelled than the revisionists to align with Moscow and Beijing. NCR accounts for structure’s dominance during the 1990–1991 inflection point, but it would also erroneously attribute Iran’s longstanding anti-Zionism to mere pathologies arising from indeterminate structural cues. The US was now unmistakably the unipolar power and there was nothing unambiguous in respect of the threat this posed to Iran if tensions persisted. To take Rafsanjani’s accommodationism to its logical conclusion would have required resolving tensions with the US and by extension with Israel, which Rafsanjani attempted only very initially, and even then, in non-committal fashion. Instead, despite the mounting damage to Rafsanjani’s outreach to the West, anti-Zionism persisted and even intensified, although this was also partly in reaction to Bush and then Clinton’s Iran policies. In this specific issue-area then, regime ideology and (its influence on) domestic politics, especially Supreme Leader Khamenei’s veto, prevailed in spite of restrictive structural conditions.

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References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements Baker, James, The politics of diplomacy (NY: Putnam, 1995). Bush, George & Brent Scowcroft, A world transformed (NY: Vintage Books, 1998). Mousavian, Seyyed Hossein, Iran–Europe relations: challenges and opportunities (Oxon: Routledge, 2008). Mousavian, Seyed Hossein & Shahir Shahidsaless, Iran and the United States: an insider’s view on the failed past and the road to peace (NY: Bloomsbury, 2014). US Government Documents Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Intelligence Assessment, ‘Seizing the day: Iran’s response to the Persian Gulf Crisis’, November 1990, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000266045.pdf. ———, Memo, ‘Iran: response to Soviet disunion’, September 1991, https:// www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000602681.pdf. ———, Memo, ‘Redirecting Iranian foreign policy: Rafsanjani’s progress’, June 1990, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000602680. pdf. ———, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 34-91), ‘Iran under Rafsanjani: seeking a new role in the world community?’ October 1991, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000602664.pdf.

Primary Sources (Persian) Rafsanjani, Ali-Akbar Hashemi, Rownaq-e sazandegi: khaterat-e 1371, ed. Hassan Lahuti (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’aref-e Enqelab, 1394/2015). ———, Salabat-e sazandegi: khaterat-e sal-e 1372 (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’araf-e Enqelab, 1395/2016). ———, Sazandegi va shokufayi: khaterat-e 1370, ed. Emad Hashemi (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma’aref-e Enqelab, 1393/2014).

Secondary Sources (English) Afrasiabi, Kaveh L. & Yadolah Pour Jalali, ‘The Economic Cooperation Organization: regionalization in a competitive context’, Mediterranean Quarterly 12.4 (2001): 62–79. Arjomand, Said A., After Khomeini: Iran under his successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Baktiari, Bahman, Parliamentary politics in Revolutionary Iran: the institutionalization of factional politics (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Banuazizi, Ali, ‘Faltering legitimacy: the ruling clerics and civil society in contemporary Iran’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 8.4 (1995): 563–78. Bayat, Asef, Making Islam democratic: social movements and the post-Islamist turn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Chubin, Shahram, Iran’s national security policy: capabilities, intentions, and impact (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994). ———, ‘Iran’s power in context’, Survival 51.1 (February–March 2009): 165– 90. Cirincione, Joseph, Jon B. Wolfsthal & Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly arsenals: nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2005). Clark, Brenton, ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran’s relations with the Republic of Tajikistan in the post-Soviet period’, PhD Diss., Australian National University, 2015. Cornell, Svante E., Azerbaijan since independence (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2011). Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). ———, ‘The foreign policy of Iran’, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds., The foreign policies of Middle Eastern states (London: Lynne Rienner 2002): 283–309. Freedman, Robert O., ‘Russian–Iranian relations in the 1990s’, MERIA 4.2 (June 2000), unpaginated. Freij, Hanna Yousif, ‘State interests vs. the Umma: Iranian policy in Central Asia’, Middle East Journal 50.1 (1996): 71–83. Garver, John W., China and Iran: ancient partners in a post-imperial world (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). Grimmett, Richard F., Conventional arms transfers to developing nations, 1990– 1997 (Washington, DC: CRS, July 1998). Haass, Richard N., ‘The George H.W. Bush Administration’, in Robin Wright, ed. The Iran primer: power, politics, and U.S. policy (Washington, DC: USIP/Woodrow Wilson Center, 2010), http://iranprimer.usip.org/res ource/george-hw-bush-administration. Hooglund, Eric, ‘Iranian views of the Arab-Israeli conflict’, Journal of Palestine Studies 25.1 (1995): 86–95. Hunter, Shireen T., Iran and the world: continuity in a revolutionary decade (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

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Kharrazi, Kamal, ‘New dimensions of Iran’s strategic significance: challenges, opportunities, and achievements’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 1 (1994): 81–95. Kimche, David, The last option (NY: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991). Landau, Jacob M., Pan-Turkism: from irredentism to cooperation (London: Hurst & Company, 1995). Maleki, Abbas, ‘Cooperation: a new component of Iranian foreign policy’, Iranian Journal of Iranian Affairs 5 (Spring 1993): 17–20. Marschall, Christin, Iran’s Persian Gulf policy: from Khomeini to Khatami (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Mearsheimer, John J. & Stephen M. Walt, The Israel lobby and US foreign policy (London: Penguin, 2007). Menashri, David, ‘Iran, Israel and the Middle East conflict’, Israel Affairs 12.1 (2006): 107–22. ———, Post-revolutionary politics in Iran: religion, society, and power (London: Frank Cass 2001). ———, ‘Revolution at a crossroads: Iran’s domestic politics and regional ambitions’, Policy Paper 43 (Washington, DC: WINEP, 1997). ———, ‘The domestic power struggle and the fourth Iranian Majlis elections’, Orient 33.3 (1992): 387–408. Milani, Mohsen M., ‘Iran, the status quo power’, Current History 104.678 (January 2005). Moslem, Mehdi, Factional politics in post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002). Murray, Donette, US foreign policy and Iran: American–Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution (Oxon: Routledge, 2010). Parsi, Trita, Treacherous alliance: the secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Pomfret, Richard, ‘The economic cooperation organization: current status and future prospects’, Europe-Asia Studies 49.4 (1997): 657–67. Rashid, Ahmed, The resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or nationalism? (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1994). Sarabi, Farzin, ‘The post-Khomeini era in Iran: the elections of the fourth Islamic Majlis’, Middle East Journal 48 (1994): 89–107. Sariolghalam, Mahmood, ‘Iran in search of itself’, Current History 107.713 (December 2008): 425–31. Yodfat, Aryeh Y., The Soviet Union and revolutionary Iran (Oxon: Routledge, 2011).

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Secondary Sources (Persian) Rezaei, Masoud & Saeed Vosoughi, ‘Sanjesh-e ravabet-e defa’i-ye Iran va Chin dar dowre-ye riyasat-e jomhuri-ye Hassan Rouhani’ [Review of Sino-Iranian defense relations during Hassan Rouhani’s presidency], Faslname-ye Motale’ate Rahbordi-ye Siyasatgozari-ye Omumi 7.24 (1396/2017): 23–47.

Secondary Sources (Other Languages) 中国外交概简 [China’s diplomatic overview] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1987). Tang, Shiping, 理想安全环境与新世纪中国大战略 [The ideal security environment and Chinese grand strategy in the new century], 战略与管理 [Strategy and Management ] 6 (2000) http://www.sirpa.fudan.edu.cn/_upload/art icle/0f/45/7264b2b54ee0bb429e1577179fda/26de6f5c-de26-46c6-9a13b4034d99e084.pdf.

CHAPTER 7

Resurrected Engagement, 1997–2001

In 1997, Iran’s relative power reached a new peak since its 1990 nadir. In its immediate region, only Turkey and Pakistan were objectively more powerful (Graph 3.3). According to the empirical record and primary sources, although a domestic economic crisis was underway initially affecting oil revenues and GDP, Iran perceived no pressing external threat. These conditions, combined with the unprecedented rise to power of the reformists as we see below, correspond to Permissive Accommodationism (1997–2001). Given the continuing dominance of accommodationism, the only other variable which changed—relatively lower levels of perceived external threat—sufficed to remove the immediate need for bandwagoning, appeasement and balancing, the mix of second-order strategies operative between 1991 and 1997. Instead, in line with theoretical expectations, Iran shifted toward its most proactive engagement hitherto with the US and the West, and a degree of retrenchment as domestic issues took precedence. ∗ ∗ ∗ In May 1997, with nearly 70 percent of the votes and an 80 percent turnout, the head of Iran’s National Library and erstwhile radical Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, surprised by winning the presidential elections against the conservative favorite, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_7

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Majles Speaker Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri. Between their 1992 parliamentary ouster and 1996, the radicals wandered the political wilderness and reinvented themselves with a view to reforming the revolution from within, represented by newspapers like Salam and Asr-e Ma.1 In light of their own ideological-factional Thermidor, they now believed Iran’s interests were best secured through accommodating the existing order, even as they remained within, rather than revolt against, the discursive boundaries of Khomeini’s Revolution. Furthermore, the newly minted reformists advocated an Islamic democracy (mardomsalari-ye eslami) undergirded by genuine pluralism and freedoms, and justified by a dynamic interpretation of Islamic Law. They viewed republicanism as fully compatible with Islam and as the fount of political legitimacy—including of Velayat-e Faqih. Consequently, they also challenged the absolutist authority, if not the legitimacy of the Supreme Leader, along with clerical predominance, while advocating evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. The worldview of these radicals-turned-reformists would find its most eloquent voices in religiously devout lay intellectuals like Abdolkarim Sorush and Saeed Hajjarian, as well as mojtaheds like Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari and Mehdi Haeri Yazdi. A host of groups endorsed Khatami, including the Militant Clerics Society, the Coalition of the Imam’s Line and notably the pragmatic conservatives’ newly formed Kargozaran. The election results contrasted against the conservatives’ dominance in the 5th Majles. In the 1996 parliamentary elections, the Guardian Council’s mass disqualifications had enabled the traditional conservatives to control 110 of Parliament’s 270 seats, leaving Kargozaran’s centrists with about 80, while the rest included many conservative supporters.2 Before the presidential elections in 1997, the conservatives had anticipated the centrist-reformist alliance and the challenge it posed. Conservative Majles Speaker Nateq-Nuri warned that ‘[l]iberalism is a real threat for the country and it must be eradicated. . . .The building of a few roads and

1 Rafsanjani had allowed the radicals to thrive elsewhere including thinktanks like the Center for Strategic Research, while former PM Musavi became his political advisor. 2 Ehteshami 2017, 48.

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bridges and the completion of some development projects is not tantamount to upholding revolutionary values’.3 More ominously, in April 1998, newly appointed IRGC Commander Yahya Rahim Safavi issued what amounted to death threats against reformists.4 Yet, as of the 1997 elections, the reformist star had appeared dizzyingly on the rise. The incoming president inherited an economic crunch exacerbated by the Asia currency and Russian debt crises, which manifested among other things in declining oil prices and revenues, a budget deficit, and currency weakness.5 However, the transition into Khatami’s presidency was also striking for the absence of any ‘serious’ external threat to the Revolution, according to outgoing President Rafsanjani’s own assessment.6 Wasting little time, the reformists immediately began shaping their own legacy.

7.1 Engagement Through ‘Dialogue Among Civilizations’ Khatami’s reformist outlook and the lack of pressing external threats did not mean he discounted all foreign threats to Iran’s Revolution. However, unlike the conservatives and Khamenei, he advocated proactive conciliation, though one still based on mutual respect, building on the cautious accommodationism begun under Rafsanjani. During his election campaign, he spelt out his preferences by repeatedly advocating relations with all nations and even dialogue with the US, if they agreed to respect Iran’s ‘independence, dignity, and interests’.7 In December 1997, Khatami expressed hope for ‘a thoughtful dialogue with the American people’, and hinted that unresolved US-Iranian tensions were ‘a source of sorrow’ to him and that Iran would not

3 Cited in Moslem 2002, 235; Rafsanjani had earlier proposed a joint candidate list with the traditional conservatives, but was rejected by Nateq-Nuri. 4 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 21. 5 Pesaran 2011, 112. 6 Vision of the IRI , Network 1 (Persian), 12 February 1997, via BBC SWB ME/2845 MED/6, 17 February 1997. 7 Menashri 2001, 206–7.

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act against the Peace Process.8 Khatami articulated the centerpiece of his thinking in a CNN interview in January 1998 addressed to the ‘great American people’, when he called for a ‘crack in this wall of mistrust’ between both nations, and more grandly, a ‘dialogue among civilizations’.9 Khatami even expressed ‘regret’ for the 1979 US embassy ordeal.10 In his UN General Assembly speech that September, he revisited his ‘dialogue among civilizations’ proposal, while the UN dedicated the year 2001 to this goal.11 In another speech at a UN-sponsored conference in September 2000, he brandished ‘the hope to live in a world permeated by virtue, humility and love, and not merely by the reign of economic indices and destructive weapons’.12 With Iranian nationalism now eclipsing a quixotic Iran-led panIslamism (though not Islam per se), civilizational self-awareness became the basis for dialogue with the Other. The discursive shift involved an increasing appreciation of Iran’s Western inheritance (Khatami, a philosopher, had lived in Hamburg, knew German, and was acquainted with German philosophy). Both the national and Islamic pillars of Iran’s identity had to be viewed in light of their own historical debts and contributions to Western civilization, creating common ground for mutual understanding and engagement. Neither the extremes of ‘Westoxification’ nor hostile rejection thereof sufficed. This echoed Abdolkarim Sorush’s view that Iran was heir to three cultures (pre-Islamic, Islamic and Western), and that rather than privileging any one, all three should be reconciled.13 Furthermore, Khatami justified engaging with Western civilization in order to ‘use its strengths’ and avoid its ‘defects by relying on our revolution’s values’.14 Even Mehdi Karrubi now backed détente with 8 Douglas Jehl, ‘Iranian president calls for opening dialogue with U.S.’, NYT , 15 December 1997. 9 ‘Dialogue among civilizations’ first surfaced a month earlier in Khatami’s speech at the OIC’s Tehran summit, see Khatami 2000a, 14–25. This was in implicit reference to, and rejection of Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’. 10 ‘Transcript of interview with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’, CNN , 7 January 1998; a week later, Supreme Leader Khamenei nonetheless announced that the US remained Iran’s enemy, Naji 2008, 190. 11 Khatami 1998. 12 Khatami 2000b. 13 Boroujerdi 1996, 162. 14 Cited in Menashri 2001, 186, 206.

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Washington over intersecting strategic interests, noting that the American ‘wolf’ notwithstanding, Iran was now a ‘lion’.15 Presently in its second term, the Clinton administration cautiously responded in kind despite a hawkish Congress having driven its Iran policy. In July 1997, anticipating a thaw, the administration had relaxed its objection to a $1.6 billion Turkmenistan-Turkey gas pipeline project transiting Iran.16 In May 1998, it waived sanctions for a $2 billion South Pars gas field exploration agreement between Iran and an international consortium involving Total, Gazprom, and Petronas, blunting ILSA’s bite.17 Between 1998 and 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Clinton returned Khatami’s compliment, acknowledging the US’ role in the 1953 coup, its ‘regrettably shortsighted’ backing for Iraq during the 1980s, and the legitimacy of Iran’s grievances.18 The US undertook a series of other conciliatory, if largely minor, gestures. In January 1999, Albright even pronounced Dual Containment dead, and the State Department afterward removed Iran’s designation as the leading government sponsor of terrorism. In September 2000, after his own speech at the UN General Assembly, Clinton stayed on for Khatami’s. As an indicator of how far the reformists had come, prominent ex-radical Behzad Nabavi praised Albright’s 2000 speech and called on Iran’s leaders to carry out a logical, calculated and wise analysis of the changes that have come about in American stances and policies. Instead of relying upon a wave of blind emotions, they must act on the basis of national interests.19

Whereas Rafsanjani had prioritized economic reconstruction, Khatami now emphasized the ‘reconstruction of civilization’ as well as ‘reintegrative legitimation’ within the international order.20 Khatami continued improving relations with Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors, partly to hasten a region-only security arrangement, and in 1998, to jointly deal with 15 Cited in ibid., 211. 16 Dan Morgan & David B. Ottaway, ‘U.S. won’t bar pipeline across Iran’, WP, 27

July 1997. 17 Elizabeth Shogren & Robin Wright, ‘U.S. waives sanctions on Iran gas deal’, LA Times, 19 May 1998. 18 Clinton, 12 April 1999; Albright, 17 June 1998 and 17 March 2000. 19 Cited in Sick 2011, 143. 20 See CNN interview with Khatami; Ansari 2011, 24.

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depressed global oil prices.21 In May 1999, Khatami became the first post-revolutionary incumbent Iranian president to visit Saudi Arabia.22 Facilitating Arab engagement was Iran’s 1997–2000 rotating chairmanship of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a measure of its integration within the multilateral milieu and ironically, Iran actually ‘leading’ the Islamic community for the first time. Khatami also eased tensions with the Europeans, renounced the death threat against Salman Rushdie in September 1998, and—despite backing a strong anti-Israel resistance front—reaffirmed that Iran would nonetheless not sabotage any peace deal the Palestinians agreed to with Israel.23 In contrast to efforts to prevent its own isolation in the first half of the 1990s, no similar situation threatened Iran this time around—ironically, given the right-wing Netanyahu’s directly elected prime ministership in Israel. Yet, a fundamental misunderstanding prevailed between Tehran and Washington, which was where any foreign policy adjustment would have mattered most. Khatami’s outreach expressly identified people-topeople exchange first—the ‘crack’ sought in his CNN interview—while eschewing political relations, at least beyond interparliamentary dialogue. Conversely, the US had in mind diplomatic relations and unsuccessfully sought direct, bilateral official meetings including through Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.24 The conservatives, still firmly in control of the coercive apparatus, opposed direct talks and did not relent even after Albright’s conciliatory speeches, forcing Khatami to tread an impossible tightrope, including in his handling of the June 1996 Khobar Towers incident. In August 1999, Clinton relayed a secret cordial message to Khatami, via Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf Bin Alawi, enclosing the details of IRGC, Lebanese and Saudi militiamen allegedly linked to the Khobar

21 In his first address to the General Assembly as Khatami’s foreign minister in 1997, Kamal Kharrazi stated that Iran’s ‘highest foreign policy priority…is to strengthen trust and confidence and peace in our immediate neighborhood [the Gulf]’, cited in Herzig 2004, 506. 22 Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah had also attended the December 1997 OIC Summit in Tehran, and direct Iran Air flights between Tehran and Jeddah resumed for the first time in eighteen years. 23 IRNA, 27 May 1997; Parsi 2007, 212. 24 Riedel 2010.

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incident, and requesting their extradition.25 In September, Iran’s government rejected the allegations as ‘fabricated’, and drew attention instead to the non-prosecution of those responsible for shooting down the Iran Air flight in 1988, although Tehran also stressed its desire for détente.26 According to Mousavian who at the time headed the SNSC’s Foreign Relations Committee, despite good intentions, Clinton’s letter placed the Iranian president in a bind vis-à-vis the conservative hardliners and ‘completely derailed’ Khatami’s US détente plan, which had incidentally just been finalized.27 But ultimately, despite his accommodationist preferences, Khatami’s true domestic political standing became apparent in the constraints placed on him by the revisionists, which in turn limited what his administration could achieve abroad. The focus of Khatami’s force for change would instead remain at home. By virtue of its accommodationist disposition, Khatami’s reformist government sought an ideals-based engagement with the West, including at unprecedented levels in respect of the US. With external situational threats perceived to be low by 1997, the reformists could at the same time turn inwards to other non-economic aspects of the liberalization begun under Rafsanjani.

7.2

The Reformist President’s Domestic Battles

For all his talk of dialogue and conciliation, Khatami’s burning priority lay in the domestic expansion of social, cultural and political freedoms, and the strengthening of civil society and the rule of law, reforms Rafsanjani had to ditch to win over conservative support. This was already evident during Khatami’s 1997 presidential campaign. When the reformists took control of Parliament for the first time, placing both the legislative and executive branches in their hands, Khatami’s brother and reformist coalition leader Mohammad-Reza made clear that détente with the West came

25 Clinton Presidential Records, Document 2, c.June 1999. 26 Ibid., Document 3, c.early September 1999; Rafsanjani and Speaker Nateq-Nuri

reportedly opposed Khatami’s preference for negotiations, see Clinton Presidential Records, Document 4, 10 September 1999. 27 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 154.

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second place to domestic issues.28 Tensions with the more powerful hardline conservatives throughout 1998–99 and the prospect of forfeiting their political gains forced reformist leaders to tread extremely carefully. Khatami’s presidency was marred early on by the ‘chain murders’ of secular intellectuals in 1998 (only the climax of a decade of such killings), the jailing of religious intellectuals like Mohsen Kadivar in 1999, and assassination attempts including against reformist strategist Saeed Hajjarian in 2000 (his assailant was briefly jailed and then freed). While Khatami succeeded in extraordinarily forcing the resignation of Intelligence Minister Qorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi over the ‘chain murders’, he could or would do little else to seek redress or restrain the hardliners especially within the judiciary.29 Undeterred, MOIS arrested 13 Iranian Jews on accusations of spying for Israel, creating fresh tensions between Khatami’s government and the West just when Iran and the UK had reinstated their ambassadors. The conservative-controlled judiciary also ordered the shuttering of dozens of reformist-affiliated newspapers. In July 1999, students at Tehran University staged peaceful protests against the shutdown of pro-reformist newspaper Salam for accusing conservatives of censoring the pro-Khatami press. Protests quickly spread to major cities, posing the most serious internal challenge to the ruling establishment since the early 1980s. Hardline vigilantes like Ansare Hezbollah, followed by the IRGC and the Basij retaliated, killing several and arresting hundreds. Away from the streets, the conservatives exploited the judicial and security apparatuses, significantly reversing Khatami’s early sociocultural, educational, and press reforms. Then, 24 IRGC commanders addressed a letter to Khatami, later leaked, warning him against failure to control the unrest—a measure of the IRGC’s domestic influence and its willingness, against Khomeini’s injunction, to intervene in politics.30 Subsequently, while Khatami called for prosecuting the vigilantes involved in the university attacks, he also chided the protesters, seemingly taking the regime’s side but (correctly) calculating 28 Howard Schneider, ‘Iran’s reformers weigh U.S. ties’, WP, 23 February 2000. 29 A government inquiry uncovered the existence of a death squad of some 30 ‘rogue’

former agents led by ex-deputy intelligence minister Saeed Emami, who were then arrested. Emami ‘committed suicide’ in prison. 30 In 1997, Khamenei had replaced IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaei with Yahya Rahim Safavi, considered more hardline and less adverse to political activism.

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that street protests would only vindicate the hardliners at a time when he sought to build bottom-up pressure while negotiating top-down with the conservatives. In the same period, the reformists’ momentum led, in February 1999, to Iran’s first municipal elections, which they heavily dominated, especially in Tehran. Provision for these elections was enshrined in Chapter VII of the constitution but never exercised. Then in the 2000 legislative elections for the 6th Majles, reformist candidates swept between 65–75 percent of the 290 seats and all of Tehran’s 30 seats, with Mehdi Karrubi becoming Speaker. The conservatives retained only 74 seats.31 Now in control of the executive, the legislature and the municipal councils, the reformists’ star seemingly reached its apogee, strengthening Khatami’s mandate ahead of his second term. Yet, reformism as a political force had already begun its decline. Despite the reformists’ parliamentary dominance, the conservatives did not relent and Khamenei himself nixed an attempt to undo the press restrictions amid the ongoing crackdown on reformist media. Exploiting the Guardian Council’s authority to vet legislation, the conservatives paid them back in the same coin. The Council repeatedly stonewalled reformist-proposed bills, and in spring 2003 Khatami was forced to withdraw one aimed at abolishing the Guardian Council’s electoral vetting authority, and another strengthening the presidency’s constitutional power vis-à-vis the Supreme Leader. Meanwhile, the hardline judiciary prosecuted and jailed key accommodationists including long-time Tehran Mayor and Kargozaran Secretary-General Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, and reformist former Interior Minister Abdollah Nuri. The judiciary also forced the resignation of Islamic Guidance Minister Ata’ollah Mohajerani, and handed down a one-year suspended sentence and three years’ ban from government posts to Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, who had overseen the 2000 elections. Again, Khatami’s hands were tied. Moreover, in 2000, Rafsanjani had also turned against the reformists after they accused him of links to the ‘chain murders’, even as he suffered a humiliating setback in that year’s Majles elections for Tehran.32 Now Expediency Council chairman, Rafsanjani contributed to blocking reformist legislation during

31 Ehteshami 2017, 55. 32 Axworthy 2014, 353–4.

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the 6th Majles. Without Rafsanjani’s support, the reformists were even more vulnerable to the conservatives’ legal (and physical) attacks. By November 2000, Khatami in effect conceded defeat against the hardliners.33 Domestic impotence reinforced the impression abroad that even if genuinely well-intentioned, Khatami’s government had become irrelevant.

7.3

Khatami and Permissive Accommodationism

Khatami’s 1997 electoral victory brought the reformists to the fore, the same reformists who had previously been the radicals. By the end of Rafsanjani’s presidency, Iran faced a slew of economic problems, including contracting per capita economic growth and net oil revenues. However, the incoming administration did not perceive high external threat at this juncture. The confluence of factors produced a Permissive Accommodationism which, according to theoretical expectations, should yield second-order strategies such as engagement and retrenchment. As a matter of policy, Khatami very visibly and unprecedentedly rehabilitated diplomacy with Iran’s greatest adversary, the US, based on an idealism founded on ‘dialogue among civilizations’. Still, notwithstanding the discursive shift and heightened engagement, his was largely a continuation of Rafsanjani’s foreign opening with little new by way of actual adjustments. Iran’s external commitments retained a relatively light footprint (little or no foreign troop deployments for instance), while his bigger priority lay at home, focused on political and sociocultural liberalization, along with an economy tweaked with greater social justice.34 Rafsanjani’s domestic focus, conversely, had revolved heavily around material and economic rehabilitation, exceptionally required after a long war. The absence of external imperatives furnishes an ‘easy case’ for neoclassical realists to justify agency under such permissive circumstances. I do not intend to suggest otherwise since the harder and more interesting case for agency presents itself under structural constraints, as we saw during Rafsanjani’s term. Hence, at least initially, Khatami’s personal

33 ‘Iran’s president under fire for taking on hard-liners’, Associated Press, via LA Times, 29 November 2000. 34 For his economic policy, see Pesaran 2011, 112–27.

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and factional preferences significantly shaped his policies as NCR might predict. Had Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri won the 1997 presidential elections, the resulting traditional conservative government would conceivably have pursued an ideals-based revisionist expansionism abroad and illiberalism at home. It could likely also have dialed back or slowed down some of Rafsanjani’s détente measures including overtures to the US, trade relations with Europe and the GCC, and the opening up of Iran’s energy sector to foreign investment. Khatami, however, pursued his reformist ideals to the hilt, producing third-order policies different from what his revisionist rivals would have implemented, even if success ultimately eluded him.

References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements Khatami, Mohammad, Islam, dialogue and civil society (Canberra: Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University, 2000a). Khatami, Mohammad, ‘Speech at the UN-sponsored Conference of Dialogue Amongst Civilizations’, New York, 5 September 2000b, http://www.payvand. com/news/00/sep/1022.html. Khatami, Mohammad, ‘Statement by H.E. Mohammad Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, before the 53rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly’, New York, 21 September 1998, http://www.parstimes. com/history/khatami_speech_un.html. Mousavian, Seyed Hossein & Shahir Shahidsaless, Iran and the United States: an insider’s view on the failed past and the road to peace (NY: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Secondary Sources (English) Ansari, Ali M., ‘Iranian foreign policy under Khatami: reform and reintegration’, in Ali Ansari, ed., Politics of modern Iran: critical issues in modern politics Vol. IV (Oxon: Routledge, 2011): 13–31. Axworthy, Michael, Revolutionary Iran: a history of the Islamic Republic (London: Penguin, 2014). Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, Iranian intellectuals and the west: the tormented triumph of nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996).

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Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Ehteshami, Anoushiravan & Mahjoob Zweiri, Iran and the rise of its Neoconservatives (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007). Herzig, Edmund, ‘Regionalism, Iran and Central Asia’, International Affairs 80.3 (2004): 503–17. Menashri, David, Post-revolutionary politics in Iran: religion, society, and power (London: Frank Cass 2001). Moslem, Mehdi, Factional politics in post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002). Naji, Kasra, Ahmadinejad: the secret history of Iran’s radical leader (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). Parsi, Trita, Treacherous alliance: the secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Pesaran, Evaleila, Iran’s struggle for economic independence: reform and counterreform in the post-revolutionary era (Oxon: Routledge, 2011). Riedel, Bruce O., ‘The Clinton administration’, in Robin Wright, ed. The Iran primer: power, politics, and U.S. policy (Washington, DC: USIP/Woodrow Wilson Center, 2010), http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/clinton-admini stration. Sick, Gary, ‘Iran’s foreign policy: a revolution in transition’, in Ali M. Ansari, ed., Politics of modern Iran: critical issues in modern politics, vol. IV (Oxon: Routledge, 2011): 131–48.

CHAPTER 8

Ambiguous Embrace, 2001–2005

Things were about to change dramatically in Khatami’s second term with the events of 9/11. Iran’s relative power waxed and waned alternatively, particularly around 2002 between the US’ invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; in contrast, the US’ relative power spiked prominently as it progressively expanded its presence in Iran’s region (Graphs 3.2– 3.3). Iran’s leadership saw in these developments both opportunity and especially constraint. Despite Khatami’s weakening executive authority, the reformists seized the parliamentary majority in 2000, temporarily buttressing the faction’s political position. This combination of factors corresponds to Restrictive Accommodationism. Structural pressures interacted with ideational antecedents, raising threat perceptions. But those ideational antecedents also interacted with domestic politics, producing diverging responses reflecting the role of agency. Given the changing structural environment and an accompanying increase in threat perceptions, Khatami’s government—still accommodationist in disposition—shifted away from proactive engagement and retrenchment, strategies likely or even viable only under low-threat conditions. Instead, Tehran now focused on defensive engagement strategies like bandwagoning and appeasement vis-à-vis the US and the Europeans, and what appears to be a degree of balancing. ∗ ∗ ∗ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_8

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In June 2001, President Khatami won reelection in yet another landslide or 77 percent of the votes, beating his closest rival, the conservative Ahmad Tavakkoli, by a fivefold margin. Yet, this did little to reverse Khatami’s domestic impotence, which was compounded from his own supporters by increasing disappointment and anger at the pace of reform. Khatami’s ‘aversion to rocking the clerical boat’ and challenging Khamenei and Velayat ultimately undermined the thoroughness of his administration’s reforms.1 Then came the events of 11 September 2001, which would fly in the face of ‘dialogue among civilizations’, mark a watershed since the end of the Cold War, and eventually reshape the regional status quo. US President George W. Bush, who took office in January 2001, declared a ‘War on Terror’ with widespread sympathy and support, invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to eradicate Al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts, before embarking on an ambitious campaign to democratize the Middle East by ousting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iran’s leaders initially believed Bush would take after his pragmatic father. Furthermore, Bush administration officials’ close ties with the oil industry raised the prospects of improved relations with oil-rich Iran.2 Similarly, signs in Washington suggested a softening of Iran’s policy.3 Ironically, an increasingly de-revolutionized and realist Iran now faced a fervently idealist and, because of that, revolutionary US fixated on a preemptive ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle East (or in the 2002 National Security Strategy’s words, ‘a balance of power that favors human freedom’).4 American military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and auxiliary support infrastructure in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan bordered Iran on almost all fronts, a conundrum for Tehran decidedly graver than during the First Gulf War. In Central Asia, even Russia was now cooperating with the US. Hence, while the US had unwittingly helped Iran solve its two-front dilemma posed by Saddam and the Taliban, in the space of 18 months it also 1 Amuzegar 2004, 78. 2 Parsi 2007, 223–4; as oil giant Halliburton’s then chief, Vice-President Dick Cheney

had even criticized Clinton for imposing sanctions on Iran. 3 Murray 2010, 119. 4 Ansari 2008, 108; National Endowment for Democracy, 6 November 2003, http://

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-11.html; Department of State, National Security Strategy, September 2002.

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completely reshaped and destabilized Iran’s strategic environment, and tightened the proverbial noose around Tehran. Such was the balance of perception and opinion within Iran’s foreign policy elite.5

8.1

Bandwagoning and Appeasement: The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars

Iran was among the first to condemn the 9/11 attacks and Iranians held street candlelight vigils for victims. Yet, before Operation Enduring Freedom, Supreme Leader Khamenei had in no uncertain terms warned the US against invading Afghanistan and ruled out any Iranian assistance in the event, Tehran remaining especially wary of US forces swelling along Iran’s eastern borders.6 Behind the scenes, Iran evinced greater pragmatism, cognizant of the convergence, if not symmetry, of interests between Washington and Tehran in the war against Sunni extremism. The circumstances likewise facilitated the first high-level direct meetings since the mid-1980s between US and Iranian officials in Geneva and Paris, sponsored by the UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi.7 Before this, both countries’ officials had also discreetly met in the multilateral framework of the ‘6 + 2’ on Afghanistan. But again, 9/11 catalyzed action. Khatami’s broader conciliatory orientation certainly helped, but Khamenei’s approval was decisive. In addition, reformist parliamentarians and even conservatives like Expediency Council Secretary-General and former IRGC Chief Mohsen Rezaei called for direct talks or at least softened their positions.8 Both countries shared an enemy in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In 1998, the Pashtun-majority Taliban had murdered eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist, along with large numbers of Shi’a Hazara, when they marched into Mazar-e Sharif. In response, Iran deployed 200,000 troops along the

5 Afrasiabi and Maleki 2003, 255. 6 Samii 2005, 29. 7 German and Italian representatives were initially included in the direct meetings, known as the Geneva Initiative, for plausible deniability. 8 Amy Waldman, ‘In louder voices, Iranians talk of dialogue with U.S.’, NYT , 10 December 2001.

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border. Only Khamenei’s rare decision to veto the SNSC’s recommendation averted war.9 Then in 1999, the Taliban interrupted the Helmand river’s westward course, causing some 140,000 hectares of farmland in Iran’s parched Sistan Basin to dry up. Cooperation with the US hence made sense. It could similarly help stabilize Iran’s unruly eastern border, contain a narcotics scourge which had created 1.2 million heroin addicts inside Iran, and enable the repatriation of 2.5 million Afghan refugees. As Operation Enduring Freedom revved into gear in October 2001, so did US-Iranian security dialogue. This contrasted dramatically with Khamenei’s public statements mere weeks before. Not only was it cooperating—indeed, bandwagoning—with the US, Iran was doing so against another Islamic country. Having ‘reluctantly’ supported Khatami’s outreach to the US and the West, Khamenei now backed security cooperation, including to test the waters for détente.10 According to a senior Iranian diplomat, the unprecedented trauma of 9/11 on the American psyche had persuaded Tehran to cooperate without ‘qualify[ing it] on Afghanistan or mak[ing] it contingent upon a change in U.S. policy’.11 Responding to US requests for assistance, Iran provided tactical intelligence on Al-Qaeda and Taliban positions and orders of battle, shared insights concerning Afghan politics and society, and enabled the cooperation of the Northern Alliance—the principal anti-Taliban force on the ground.12 Iran likewise facilitated overflight rights and overland humanitarian access via Chabahar port, and offered the US use of Iranian air bases and search-and-rescue support for distressed American personnel near the Afghan-Iranian border.13 At the political level, cooperation unfolded under UN auspices, with the Iranian and US delegations respectively led by Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif and Ambassador James Dobbins. During the December 2001 Bonn Conference, Zarif helped secure the Northern Alliance’s agreement over the distribution of ministries in

9 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 157. 10 Ibid., 155, 167. 11 Barbara Slavin, ‘A broken engagement’, TNI 92 (November/December 2007), 40. 12 ‘Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Afghanistan’, transcript of discussion moderated by

Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 17 September 2012, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/091712_transcript_crocker1.pdf. 13 Parsi 2007, 228.

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the interim government, thus sealing Afghan consensus at the ninetieth minute.14 Moreover, Zarif, it was, who pointed out that the draft declaration lacked references to ‘democracy’, ‘elections’, or ‘international terrorism’.15 ‘America hadn’t only won the war’, one analyst noted, ‘but, thanks to Iran, it had also won the peace’.16 At the January 2002 Tokyo donor conference, Iran pledged $540 million toward Afghanistan’s rehabilitation, or 12 percent of the total pledged assistance, compared to the US’ $290 million.17 Beyond Afghanistan, Khatami’s representatives even sought dialogue ‘covering all of the issues that divided the two countries’, as well as information that might help trace rogue events (the Karine-A, see below) back to Iran’s hardliners.18 Then, during his 29 January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush abruptly bundled Iran together with Iraq and North Korea in an ‘Axis of Evil’. Just before on 3 January, Israel had seized 50 tons of weaponry with Persian lettering aboard a vessel, the Karine-A, allegedly sailing from Iran’s Kish Island to Gaza. Reports also suggested the Qods Force was helping top-level Al-Qaeda operatives flee into Iran, or that Iran’s authorities had detained but refused to extradite most of these operatives.19 Worse, in August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), MEK’s political wing, revealed the existence inside Iran of two secret nuclear facilities. Emerging from dual containment and on the cusp of rapprochement, Iran unexpectedly found itself on the perilous path of confrontation. Bewildered, disillusioned, and incensed by the ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, Iran’s government briefly absented itself from the Geneva Contact Group meeting, and released anti-US Afghan Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, originally detained at the US’ request to prevent him from

14 Dobbins 2010, 154. 15 Ibid., 151–2. 16 Parsi 2007, 229. 17 Dobbins 2010, 155. 18 Ibid. loc. cit. 19 Slavin 2007, ch. 5; Mohammad-Javad Larijani conceded that Iran had facilitated

Al-Qaeda operatives’ transit through Iran “without stamping their passports”, in Hamid, ‘Qiyadi Irani akhar bil-Haras yu’taref’.

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undermining Karzai’s government. Khatami’s accommodationist engagement having failed, Iran’s hardliners now went on the offensive.20 Khamenei declared Iran ‘proud to be the target of the rage and hatred of the world’s greatest Satan’.21 The reformists remained relatively sanguine, trying to rationalize the US’ move and counseling reason while persisting with talks.22 Taking Khamenei’s cue, the judicial head for Tehran district unilaterally banned all talk about negotiations.23 In November 2002, the judiciary made good on this pledge by prosecuting Abbas Abdi, a radicalturned reformist involved in the 1979 US embassy seizure, after he ran a poll showing majority popular support for renewed relations with the US. Despite the ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, the Khatami government did not cut off all security-related contacts with the US. Iranian officials over the next 12 months or so stressed their intention to continue cooperating with the US, even to partially rebuild Afghanistan’s army under US leadership. No response came from Washington.24 The Bush administration had already made up its mind about Iraq next, and was weighing its options in Iran.25 Tehran opposed any unilateral invasion of an already enfeebled Iraq (attributing Washington’s underlying motives to oil), emphasized multilateralism through the UN, and held talks with all key stakeholders, moves comprising what it called ‘active neutrality’.26 During pre-invasion talks with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Zarif emphasized Tehran’s opposition to US occupation, called for an Iraqi government-in-exile to be swiftly established, and backed ‘deep de-Baathification’.27 He also accepted Khalilzad’s request that Iran refrain from firing on US aircraft in the event the latter accidentally coasted or entered Iranian airspace. 20 Neil MacFarquhar, ‘A nation challenged: Iran; Bush’s comments bolster Old Guard

in Tehran’, NYT , 8 February 2002. 21 ‘Khamenei calls Bush “thirsty of human blood”’, AFP, 31 January 2002; ‘Iran lashes out at Bush’, BBC, 31 January 2002. 22 ISNA, 2 February 2002; Nowruz, 2 February 2002; Ahmad Zeydabadi, cited in ISNA, 16 March 2002. 23 ‘Judiciary will enforce ban on talks with United States’, Payvand, 27 May 2002. 24 Dobbins 2010, 156; Pollack 2004, 343–4, 350. 25 Plans to target Iraq had been in evidence even in September 2000, before 9/11, Parsi 2007, 238. 26 Samii 2005, 30, 35–6. 27 Khalilzad 2016, 170.

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Iran apparently even offered the use of its airspace by Persian Gulf-based US warplanes attacking Iraq.28 Khamenei’s foreign affairs advisor Velayati likewise reportedly opened an office in Dubai ‘to facilitate clandestine contacts [with the US]’.29 These all hinted at ongoing bandwagoning despite Iran’s reservations about the US invading Iraq. At the same time, Iran rejected Baghdad’s proposals—sweetened with the promise of long-overdue wartime reparations, resolution of the Shatt al-Arab/Arvand-Rud maritime border, and curtailment of support for the MEK—for an alliance against Washington, even as it hedged by hosting and backing Iraqi opposition groups.30 Furthermore, the dominant thinking in Tehran was that Saddam’s removal—a clear Iranian preference—would naturally lead to a Shi’a-majority democracy friendlier toward Iran.31 This would later incentivize Iran to help stabilize postinvasion Iraq and its political process. In June 2002, Expediency Council Chairman Rafsanjani offered cooperation with the US as before in Afghanistan, but on the condition that Iran be treated on equal terms.32 Still, he later also expressed concern over the US’ potential use of Iraq to influence oil prices, and the effect a pro-US front comprising post-Saddam Iraq and the GCC states could have on Iran’s position.33 At any rate, between November 2001 and May 2003 (following public disclosure), Iran remained in contact with the US via the Geneva Contact Group. If regime change in Kabul encouraged Iranian cooperation, regime decapitation in Baghdad accompanying US encirclement convinced Iran’s leadership this was their final opportunity to forestall a similar fate. Following the Iraqi invasion, a member of Khatami’s reformist coalition opined: ‘Previously, America was far away. Now, unfortunately, America

28 Mousavian 2012, 194. 29 Samii 2005, 31. 30 Mousavian 2012, 194, 435; Samii 2005, 30–3, 33–4. 31 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 193; as Majles deputy speaker and the president’s

brother Mohammad-Reza Khatami said, Saddam’s overthrow ‘through whatever means will be the happiest day for all the Iranian people’, in AFP, 26 September, 2002, cited in Samii 2005, 33. 32 ‘Iran: Rafsanjani says Tehran ready to cooperate if there is change in US policy’, Voice of the IRI , 21 June 2002, via BBC Monitoring Middle East Political, 22 June 2002. 33 Ettela’at, 14 April 2003.

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is Iran’s neighbor in all directions….mak[ing] it necessary for Iran to reconsider its foreign and international policies’.34 On 4 May 2003, right after the US-led coalition had defeated Iraq’s forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Swiss ambassador to Tehran Tim Guldimann faxed a proposal to the US’ State Department from Khatami’s government detailing a grand bargain—and the clearest ever indicator of Iranian appeasement. Unprecedented in scope, the proposal offered negotiations ‘in mutual respect’ on all issues of concern to Washington ‘from A till Z’, including Iran’s nuclear program, an end to Iran’s support for anti-Israel militias, acceptance of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative for Israel and the Palestinians, and cooperation in Iraq.35 It also demanded concessions of importance to Iran, including the extradition of MEK militants from Iraq (in exchange for Al-Qaeda detainees in Iran). More remarkably, while drafted by the foreign minister’s nephew and Iran’s then ambassador to France Sadeq Kharrazi, and edited by Iran’s UN ambassador Zarif, this ‘roadmap’ carried the approval of President Khatami, Foreign Minister Kharrazi and Supreme Leader Khamenei notwithstanding some reservations by the latter.36 Then Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Seyed Mohammad-Hossein Adeli confirmed ‘[t]hat letter went to the Americans to say that we are ready to talk, we are ready to address our issues’.37 The proposal apparently remained unofficial for plausible deniability should the Americans leak it.38 Outside the US State Department, Bush administration principals including Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld questioned the authenticity and authority of this unusual démarche, considered it too good to be true, rejected or ignored it, and reportedly

34 Cited in Ehteshami 2004, 181. 35 For the document’s various versions, see Nicholas D. Kristof, ‘Iran’s proposal for a

“grand bargain”, NYT , 28 April 2007; the Iranians claimed ‘their’ proposal was merely an amended response to an earlier US proposal, Parsi 2007, 334 (FN 23). 36 Glenn Kessler, ‘2003 memo says Iranian leaders backed talks’, WP, 14 February

2007; Mousavian (2014, 198–9) believes that Guldimann had initiated the offer and that Khamenei had seen the draft after it reached the Americans, but asserts that it was authentic nonetheless. 37 Gordon Corera, ‘Iran’s gulf of misunderstanding with US’, BBC, 25 September 2006. 38 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 198.

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rebuked Guldimann for freelancing.39 The US had just militarily toppled two rogue regimes, and some saw this offer as proof of Iran’s weakness and preferred outright regime change instead.40 Furthermore, contradictory signals from inside Iran underscored Khatami’s domestic weakness and therefore his lack of authority to enforce any international agreement. Believing that Al-Qaeda operatives detained in Iran knew about an imminent attack in the Persian Gulf, Washington had requested that Tehran interrogate them, but at the same time refused Tehran’s offer for an MEK-Al-Qaeda swap. When the attack eventually came, killing and wounding a score of Americans and Saudis in Riyadh on 12 May 2003, the US severed all talks with Iran.41 The chain of events following 9/11 nudged Iran from an ideals-based to a more defensive type of engagement. Wary of the US’ swelling presence, but having something to gain from the fall of the Taliban and Saddam, Iran’s accommodationist government limbered up—conceivably with less inertia than a hypothetical revisionist counterpart—toward cautious bandwagoning on Afghanistan and, to a limited extent, Iraq. But when a third US invasion felt imminent, Iran reservedly ventured a oneoff appeasement offer unprecedented in scope. Appeasement efforts did not end there. They would however unfold in a multilateral context for an issue already rapidly accumulating outsized importance for international security.

8.2 Appeasement Through Nuclear Negotiations with the EU3 The NCRI’s August 2002 nuclear revelations turned up the heat on Iran just as the US was preparing to invade Iraq for ostensibly possessing WMD. The revelations concerned a centrifuge facility in Natanz for enriching uranium, and the construction of a heavy-water reactor in Arak for reprocessing plutonium from spent uranium fuel. Both fuel types

39 Glenn Kessler, ‘In 2003, U.S. spurned Iran’s offer of dialogue’, WP, 18 June 2006; Murray 2010, 126–7. 40 Sanger 2009, 48–9. 41 Khalilzad 2016, 170.

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could power civilian reactors or nuclear weapons.42 In February 2003, Khatami reaffirmed Iran’s willingness to cooperate with the IAEA to dispel any doubts concerning its nuclear program.43 Following inspections at the Natanz facility and elsewhere from February 2003 onwards, the IAEA found traces of HEU (from second-hand Pakistani centrifuges as it later turned out), and indications of Iran violating its Safeguards Agreement including in the undeclared import of nuclear-related material and components.44 But the IAEA did not deem all this proof of a weapons program and thus a violation of the NPT itself. In August 2003, Iran indicated its willingness to negotiate adopting the ‘93 + 2’ Additional Protocol (AP), but then threatened to downgrade cooperation with the IAEA in response to its Board of Governors’ September resolution.45 As recent as June 2003, Iranian government officials had still believed in the full legality of their nuclear program and failed to anticipate the looming international crisis.46 The program’s secrecy was justified, in their view, since US hostility would have prevented any open program from advancing, no matter how peaceful.47 Iran’s hardliners rejected adopting the AP and even suggested leaving the NPT altogether to resist the West and call its bluff.48 Former Foreign Minister Velayati likened adopting the AP to the 1828 Turkmenchay Treaty.49 Still others urged uninterrupted technical-legal cooperation with the IAEA focused on Iran’s nuclear rights or to improve diplomatic alliances with countervailing powers like China and Russia.50 Accommodationists not only called for cooperation with the IAEA but also negotiations with the West, at least Europe if not the US.51 Khatami’s

42 According to Murray (2010, 125), the US had already known but nonetheless chose to suppress the intelligence to not distract from Iraq. 43 ‘Khatami on the right of all nations to nuclear energy’, IRNA, 9 February 2003, via Iran Watch. 44 Mousavian 2012, 66. 45 Ibid., 71–2. 46 Ibid., 75 (esp. FN 38). 47 Haghighatjoo 2006, 9; Mousavian 2012, 62, 111 (FN 16). 48 Mousavian 2012, 77, 80–1. 49 Ibid., 69. 50 Ibid., 81, 83–4. 51 Ibid., 82, 85–7.

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government similarly calculated that ‘successful European diplomacy on the nuclear issue could weaken [US] hegemony in arbitrating future crises in the Middle East’.52 With the ‘grand bargain’ attempt in tatters, and more critically, to avoid being referred by the IAEA to the UN Security Council where Iran would be disproportionately vulnerable to US pressure, Tehran began negotiations with the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) ahead of the IAEA’s 31 October deadline. This was Iran’s middle path between yielding to, and categorically defying the IAEA, and the EU3 was keen for talks to prevent another Middle East war. In the October 2003 Tehran (Saadabad) Declaration and again in the November 2004 Paris Agreement, Iran agreed to clarify its past nuclear activities, ‘voluntarily’ and temporarily suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities as a confidencebuilding measure, and provisionally implement the AP.53 Iran regarded suspension as legally non-binding since it exceeded Safeguards Agreement requirements. In exchange, Tehran would receive recognition of its undisputed right to peaceful nuclear energy (including indigenous uranium enrichment) and guarantees of cooperation in other areas such as Iran’s admittance into the WTO. The EU3 and IAEA demanded ‘objective guarantees’ that Iran’s nuclear program was exclusively peaceful. Iran’s negotiators argued that implementation of the NPT’s Safeguards Agreement, its Subsidiary Arrangement Code 3.1 (signed in December 2003, obliging states to declare nuclear facilities upon decision to construct them) and the AP would together maximize transparency. Despite hardliners accusing Khatami’s government of buckling and even advancing US designs against Iran, Khamenei gave his reluctant approval, not least because of the consensus already forged within the SNSC.54 Negotiations temporarily averted a nuclear crisis, as reflected in the IAEA’s comparably more forgiving November 2004 resolution.55 Still

52 Ibid., 90. 53 The AP commits signatories to the NPT, which Iran ratified in 1970, to disclose

the activities and thus existence of all sites of nuclear concern, not just those they have declared. It also permits intrusive ‘anytime/anywhere’ snap inspections. 54 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 189–90; Mousavian 2012, 342; Ostovar 2016,

165. 55 In December 2004, the IAEA even officially invited Iran to join the newly created Committee on Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle. Mousavian 2012, 155– 6.

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mindful of the US’ veto influence, Khatami’s government then repeated its grand bargain (and hence appeasement) bid to Washington in March 2004, this time through IAEA Secretary-General Mohamed ElBaradei— again to no avail. According to ElBaradei, Bush would have liked to ‘talk leader to leader’ but doubted that Khamenei was ‘ready to engage’, believing him still ‘bent on the destruction of Israel’.56 Notwithstanding the conservative backlash at home, Khatami had been the one in 1998 to establish and chair the council, unquestionably with Khamenei’s guidance, overseeing uranium enrichment and the decisions to construct the Arak reactor and eventually install 54,000 centrifuges in Natanz.57 Iranian archives seized by Israeli intelligence in January 2018 indicated that Iran maintained a military nuclear program dubbed ‘Project AMAD’, stood up and chaperoned by Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh between 1999 and 2003. Approving the technical (as opposed to the political) dimension of the project was then Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, along with members of the ‘Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council’ which included President Khatami, SNSC Head Rouhani, and the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh. According to these documents, AMAD aimed to produce at least five 10-kiloton warheads and fit them onto the Shahab-3 ballistic missile. Cooperation extended to other agencies including MOIS as well as the IRGC, especially its Aerospace Force, for the construction of facilities required for the project.58 Around August–September 2003, Shamkhani shut down AMAD but then renamed it the SPND Project comprising an overt, regular track to deflect attention from the existing covert, military one, both of which allegedly continued from 2004 to 2015.59 If true, this would amount to a form of balancing. In his 2004 address commemorating the Revolution’s anniversary, despite an agreement for Russia to supply Iran with nuclear fuel, Khatami announced that ‘to produce electricity from our nuclear power plants, 56 ElBaradei 2011, 131–4. 57 Ehteshami 2017, 211 (FN 139). 58 Interview with Institute for Science and International Security President David

Albright, 29 January 2019; see also Ronen Bergman, ‘Iran’s great nuclear deception’, Ynet News, 23 November 2018. 59 ‘Tarahi 110 bar mabna-ye tadabir-e jadid: moqaddemeh’ (Project 110), in Bergman, ibid.; on ‘possible military dimensions’ of the program existing beyond 2003, see also IAEA GOV/2015/68.

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we need to complete the circle from discovering uranium to managing remaining spent fuel’.60 According to Mousavian who was on Iran’s negotiations team then, Tehran grew distrustful of the EU3, which it believed was trying, under US pressure, to force a shift from nuclear transparency—Iran’s proposal—toward indefinite and categorical suspension of enrichment, under pain of sanctions.61 Meanwhile, Khamenei had accepted the Paris Agreement only on condition that enrichment suspension not last longer than a further three months, or 15 months in total since the Tehran Declaration. Furthermore, neoconservative hardliners had taken the majority in the 2004 parliamentary elections (see next chapter) and now institutionally and decisively opposed suspending uranium enrichment and ratifying the AP. While the US by 2005 had reversed its earlier stance and begun reluctantly endorsing the talks, it did so on condition that the EU3 back incremental Security Council sanctions should Iran not honor the deal.62 Chief nuclear negotiator Rouhani advocated exploiting the transatlantic wedge, noting that western ‘countries compete with each other even on simple matters and we too can exploit these rivalries’.63 But unlike the 1990s and despite French and German opposition to the US’ Iraq war, this was presently more difficult, at least where the nuclear dossier was concerned. Iran’s decision to brook negotiations did not only aim at averting punitive international measures. According to Rouhani, it also aimed to prevent the disruption of uncompleted aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, notably the fuel cycle.64 Through the earlier secrecy shrouding the program, Iran had hoped to force a fait accompli (amal-e anjam shode) the world would have no choice but to accept once it mastered the fuel cycle.65 As talks unfolded, the number of centrifuges operating non-stop rose from 150 to 500. ‘If we wanted to increase this number to 1000

60 ‘Iran mining uranium for fuel’, BBC, 9 February 2003. 61 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 175, 189–90. 62 Sanger 2009, 52–3; Mousavian 2012, 171. 63 Rouhani 2005, 30. 64 Rouhani 2011, 456; see also Mohsen Aminzadeh, ‘Siyasat-e haste-i-ye Iran va peyamad-ha-ye an’, Gooya, 7 March 2006, https://mag.gooya.com/politics/archives/ 2006/03/045138print.php. 65 Rouhani 2005, 32.

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centrifuges, we wouldn’t have a problem’, Rouhani vaunted.66 Although negotiations collapsed afterward, he noted in hindsight that While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the Esfahan facility….In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Esfahan.…today, Esfahan is complete and we can convert yellowcake into UF4 and UF6.67

Given the dramatic rise in external threat perceptions vis-à-vis the US and the failure of its ‘grand bargain’ overture, Khatami’s administration opted to allay tensions by accepting negotiations over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, appeasing with respect to some of the terms. Rising external threat perceptions could have prompted one of a number of different strategies such as balancing, hard power expansionism, subversion, bandwagoning, and appeasement. Yet, the persistence of accommodationism or a preference to cooperate with the US and the US-led international order, despite growing domestic pushback, made it easier for Khatami’s government to justify negotiations and even implicit appeasement as its primary response, after having already bandwagoned earlier.

8.3

Khatami and Restrictive Accommodationism

The confluence of Khatami’s accommodationist government and the suite of events comprising September 11 and both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which aggravated Iran’s threat perceptions, produced Restrictive Accommodationism. According to theoretical expectations, knock-on second-order strategies should include bandwagoning, appeasement, and likely even some kind of balancing. In Afghanistan and Iraq, structural opportunities and pressures rendered Iran ‘both thankful and fearful’, wrote Dobbins.68 September 11 and the Afghanistan invasion dovetailed with Khatami’s engagement efforts, and provided an opportunity for Iran’s reformists to brook dialogue with Washington against a loathed common enemy, the Taliban. Indeed, Tehran took engagement with the US an uncharacteristic notch 66 Ibid., 20. 67 Ibid., 17. 68 Dobbins 2010, 158.

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higher to actual security cooperation and therefore a form of bandwagoning vis-à-vis the sole superpower. States bandwagon with a more powerful adversary if they see little or no prospect of overcoming it. They may also bandwagon for profit, which in both the Afghan and Iraqi theaters was a strong motivating factor for Iran. Furthermore, bandwagoning with the US when it was not (yet) perceived as a major threat served a parallel balancing objective against the Taliban. In this way, bandwagoning and to an extent balancing co-existed. Yet, despite the opportunity presented by the toppling of two of Iran’s neighboring adversaries, US forces quickly filled that vacuum, clouding opportunity with threat. Iran’s economic means also initially suffered decline. Between 2000 and 2002, shaky global oil prices and decreasing crude exports brought Iran’s oil revenues down from $23.1 billion to $18 billion, and in 2001, GDP per capita registered negative growth (Graphs 3.4–3.7). Were it not for acute external pressures and the strategic uncertainty Iran faced surrounding the US’ regional intentions, Khamenei’s initial opposition to cooperation might have significantly constrained Khatami’s maneuver room. As the heat on Iran rose over the rapidly developing nuclear crisis and a possible US invasion, Tehran first discreetly proposed a ‘grand bargain’ with the US, before commencing nuclear negotiations with the EU3 and accepting key conditions such as suspension of enrichment and reprocessing, and adoption of the Additional Protocol. Unlike engagement under conditions of low external threat, appeasement is a defensive form of engagement under high threat, and does not necessarily mean surrender but could also mean defusing tensions or deferring conflict until a more favorable time. As Rouhani himself noted, negotiations enabled Iran to complete the fuel cycle, a critical step for national prestige and a hypothetical nuclear weapons capability. Either way, Iran’s survival and autonomy objective interests at the very least were at stake. Alone, negotiations aimed at securing mutual concessions do not necessarily reflect appeasement. But in this case, Iranian officials themselves recognized their nuclear-related measures as ‘voluntary’ confidence-building measures exceeding the requirements of existing agreements. And according to the US’ 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in autumn 2003, even if the ‘atomic archive’ subsequently acquired by Israel showed the program

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merely shifting focus onto its overt civilian component to evade the political fallout.69 If indeed true, this dual-track policy created the conditions for both appeasement and a form of internal balancing to unfold at the same time. Despite the elected reformist government, ‘unelected hands’ controlled national security, which meant the security dialogue with the US had the buy-in of the hardliners and the Supreme Leader himself.70 Ironically, this coincided with the revisionist hardliners’ intensifying domestic onslaught against the reformists, and alleged attempts to undermine Khatami’s overseas engagement (e.g. Karine-A). The hardliners’ acceptance of Khatami’s dialogue with the US likely aimed at ‘steering Washington in a direction that was not harmful to [Tehran’s] own interests’ rather than reflect any longer-term intention to renounce anti-Americanism—the major pillar of Iran’s foreign policy and regime legitimacy.71 Supreme Leader Khamenei firmly believed that the US was dangling cooperation merely for tactical objectives, a view seemingly confirmed by the Bush administration’s rejection of Tehran’s ‘grand bargain’.72 Yet, jarringly inconsistent with Tehran’s domestic political atmosphere then, US-Iran security cooperation also meant that external imperatives were assessed urgent enough for policy convergence, which Khatami’s own accommodationist preferences helped shape and justify. Mousavian and Iranian officials, more generally, dismiss threats and fear as the motivation behind the ‘grand bargain’.73 Yet his claim begs the question of why such a sweeping and, for domestic politics, potentially compromising proposal surfaced precisely when it did, and not in Khatami’s first term when Iranian engagement was in full swing. He points out that Iran cooperated over Afghanistan ‘while there was no threat of an attack on Iran’.74 Yet it is rather difficult to imagine Iran, irrespective of faction, unperturbed by a massive US military buildup on

69 DNI, November 2007. 70 The term featured in Madeleine Albright’s 17 March 2000 speech, sparking

controversy in Tehran. 71 Pollack 2004, 353. 72 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 169. 73 Ibid., 200. 74 Ibid. loc. cit.

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its borders, and harder still to believe that Tehran was not pondering the ‘what-ifs’ down the road. Furthermore, given the subsequent ‘big failure with Afghanistan’ as Mousavian put it, the betrayal in Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, and the assertion that Khatami’s ‘administration did not trust the Americans and felt it was a real possibility that the US might use the proposal against us by leaking it to the media’, why would Iran even engage the US at all, let alone so soon, even discreetly?75 In May 2003, other than the fastdeveloping nuclear crisis and the very real prospect of an attack by the US after its military victory in Iraq (the first ‘Axis of Evil’ target), there were no other pressing matters.76 Iran’s demands as enumerated in the ‘grand bargain’ fax were either not urgent (measures against MEK, removal of longstanding US sanctions), or were more general and symbolic (halting hostile US behavior, a democratic Iraq, recognition of Iran’s security interests, access to peaceful nuclear technology etc.). If it was in response only to the nuclear revelations, why not just address the nuclear issue (which Iran subsequently did in October 2003 with the EU3) rather than offer such a sweeping proposal? Finally, Mousavian claims Tehran did not believe the US could invade Iran without complicating Iraq’s post-war stabilization process, which would then, according to this view, rule out fear as motivation for the ‘grand bargain’.77 Militarily, the US had made short shrift of Afghanistan and Iraq. Why US neoconservatives at their peak and ‘on a roll’ would preclude also invading Iran—which many in Washington held to be the main prize78 —is hard to fathom, at least as of May 2003.79 Mousavian claims—correctly—that yielding under threat would contradict Iran’s revolutionary independence.80 Perhaps then it was for this reason that Iran revived an old US proposal, amended it slightly before discreetly and unofficially forwarding it for maximum deniability. This would have 75 Ibid. loc. cit. 76 Parsi 2007, 341–6. 77 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 201. 78 As the saying went among US neoconservatives then, ‘everyone wants to go to

Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran’, in Dunn 2007, 19; furthermore, the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the media, had included Iran as a possible next military target. 79 Mousavian concedes as much elsewhere (2012, 199). 80 Mousavian and Shahidsaless 2014, 200.

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been the only way for it to balance its survival and autonomy interests alongside collective self-esteem. Needless to say, had it been accepted, the ‘grand bargain’ would have been Iran’s most significant grand strategic adjustment since the Revolution. Constructivism, liberalism, and realism each explains only partial aspects of Khatami’s grand strategic adjustments. Constructivism and liberalism shed light on accommodationist preferences. These innenpolitik perspectives, notably longstanding regime ideology, cannot however account for why Supreme Leader Khamenei and the hardliners also agreed to security cooperation with the US, let alone the ‘grand bargain’, especially in light of the accommodationists’ relative domestic weakness. Structural imperatives were clear and present, shifting rapidly from opportunity to threat, and played the main role in determining Iran’s strategic choices at this inflection point. Unlike NCR, the dynamic-integrative model of adjustments asserts that this is also in part due to the absence of strong agency. On the other hand, neither was Khatami’s accommodationism negligible even under such strong external constraints, for it accounts for why bandwagoning and appeasement—rather than outright balancing, hard expansionism, and/or subversion—were even conceivable, let alone implemented. These differences are strategically substantive, and not merely differences in ‘style and tone’ which realists habitually impute to unit-level factors. The dynamic-integrative model advances a step further by specifying how the interaction of structure and agent mediated by ideas renders certain strategies likelier than others. Had Nateq-Nuri or Ahmad Tavakkoli occupied the presidency in 2001, the resulting revisionist administration could have proven less inclined to cooperate with the US and EU3 given the political costs of deviating from revolutionary values. And even if it had exploited tactical cooperation to mitigate external pressures and reap profit, a revisionist administration would, nonetheless, also plausibly have pursued a greater degree of military balancing and/or subversion, even in defiance of structural imperatives.

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References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements ElBaradei, Mohamed, The age of deception: Nuclear diplomacy in treacherous times (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ‘Final assessment on past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme’, GOV/2015/68, 2 December 2015, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/ files/gov-2015-68.pdf Khalilzad, Zalmay, The envoy: From Kabul to the White House, my journey through a turbulent world (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016, ebook version). Mousavian, Seyyed Hossein, Iran-Europe relations: challenges and opportunities (Oxon: Routledge, 2008). ———, The Iranian nuclear crisis: a memoir (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2012). Mousavian, Seyed Hossein & Shahir Shahidsaless, Iran and the United States: an insider’s view on the failed past and the road to peace (NY: Bloomsbury, 2014). US Government Documents Department of State, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/ 63562.pdf.

Primary Sources (Persian) Rouhani, Hassan, Amniyat-e melli va diplomasi-ye haste-i [National security and nuclear diplomacy] 2nd ed. (Tehran: Center for Strategic Research, 1391/2011). ———, ‘Farasuye chalesh-ha-ye Iran va azhans dar parvande-ye haste-i’ [Beyond the challenges facing Iran and the IAEA concerning the nuclear dossier], Rahbord, 30 September 2005 (Text of speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council).

Secondary Sources (English) Afrasiabi, Kaveh & Abbas Maleki, ‘Iran’s foreign policy after 11 September’, Brown Journal of World Affairs 9.2 (2003): 255–65. ———, ‘Khatami: A folk hero in search of relevance’, Middle East Policy 11 (2004): 75–93.

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Ansari, Ali M., ‘Iran and the United States in the shadow of 9/11: Persia and the Persian question revisited’, in Homa Katouzian & Hossein Shahidi, eds, Iran in the 21st century: politics, economics and conflict (Oxon, UK: Routledge 2008): 107–22. Dobbins, James, ‘Negotiating with Iran: reflections from personal experience’, TWQ (January 2010): 149–62. Dunn, David Hastings, ‘“Real men want to go to Tehran’: Bush, pre-emption and the Iranian nuclear challenge’, International Affairs 83.1 (2007). Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, ‘Iran’s international posture after the fall of Baghdad’, MEJ 58.2 (2004): 179–94. ———, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Haghighatjoo, Fatemeh, ‘Factional positions on the nuclear issue in the context of Iranian domestic politics’, Iran Analysis Quarterly 3.1 (2006): 2–10. Murray, Donette, US foreign policy and Iran: American-Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution (Oxon: Routledge, 2010). Ostovar, Afshon, Vanguard of the Imam: religion, politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Parsi, Trita, Treacherous alliance: the secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Pollack, Kenneth M., The Persian puzzle: the conflict between Iran and America (NY: Random House 2004). Samii, Abbas William (Bill), ‘‘The nearest and dearest enemy: Iran after the Iraq war’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 9.3 (September 2005): 27– 51. Sanger, David, The inheritance: the world Obama confronts and the challenges to American power (NY: Harmony Books, 2009). Slavin, Barbara, Bitter friends, bosom enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the twisted path to confrontation (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2007).

CHAPTER 9

Resurgent Revisionism and the Path to Confrontation, 2005–2009

In 2005, Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory placed, for the first time, nearly all levers of power in the hands of the hardliners and especially the rising generation of neoconservatives. From the outset, Ahmadinejad saw the US in terminal decline, a view bolstered by Iran’s improving regional strategic position and unprecedented oil revenues. Indeed, Ahmadinejad’s government earned more oil revenue in its first two years alone than Rafsanjani’s did in eight.1 The incoming president’s perception of Iran’s rising power may have been even more pivotal than his perception of receding external threats. Objectively, Iran’s relative power rose sharply between 2005 and 2006, matching Pakistan’s and falling just short of Turkey’s, while the US’ capabilities correspondingly declined after 2005 (Graphs 3.2–3.3). This confluence of threat perceptions and domestic politics corresponds to Permissive Revisionism. For the first time since 1988–1989, both perception of structural conditions and domestic politics underwent a change, generating dramatic adjustments. Ideas, especially regime ideology interacted with structural incentives to diminish threat perceptions. When those same ideas interacted with domestic politics, agentic or factional nuances sufficed to generate diverging responses. With the US now posing relatively lower

1 ‘Namayande-ye dowlat: dashtim va kharj kardim!’, Baztab, 1 July 2007.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_9

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threat and Iran’s power on the rise, Khatami’s appeasement, bandwagoning and balancing were no longer necessary. But instead of renewed engagement, a neoconservative Iran shifted toward soft expansionism and, on the side, diversionary posturing . ∗ ∗ ∗ By about 2004–2005, Iran’s strategic circumstances were improving perceptibly. The threat of a US invasion was receding given Washington’s growing difficulties in the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies. Even the Baker-Hamilton Commission’s Iraq Study Group report of 2006 would call for dialogue with both Iran and Syria to help stabilize Iraq and facilitate the US’ own military pullout. America’s image and credibility had also suffered meanwhile from the Abu Ghraib abuse scandals and failure to locate Saddam’s alleged WMD. In the wider region, Iranian allies were making strategic gains. In May 2000, Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak had pulled Israeli troops out from southern Lebanon—Israel’s first unilateral withdrawal from enemy territory without a peace treaty—allowing Hezbollah to claim victory and Iran to entrench its presence on Israel’s northern front. The Second Intifada from September 2000 onwards, accompanied by suicide bombings inside Israel, strengthened Iranian traction among Palestinian rejectionists. In 2005, Ariel Sharon’s government unilaterally evacuated Jewish settlers from Gaza, providing the backdrop to the 2006 electoral victory of Hamas—whose first official overseas visit was to Iran—and its de facto takeover of the Strip in mid-2007. Hamas’ resulting international isolation merely increased Iran’s leverage and influence in Gaza. In Beirut, although the domestic protests and international outcry over Rafiq al-Hariri’s assassination forced Syria to end its 29-year military occupation of Lebanon in 2005, Hezbollah’s political stock rose further still that year when it entered government for the first time after making parliamentary gains. During the summer 2006 war, armed with Iranian weaponry (produced, among other places, in Syria’s Aleppo province2 ) Hezbollah managed to resist Israeli firepower to a standstill, and nearly sank an Israeli corvette, significantly bolstering the credentials and popularity of the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’. Finally, Iran’s oil revenues were 2 ‘Rais-e setad-e kol-e niru-ha-ye mosallah-e Iran: dar Halab san’at-e sakht-e mushak ijad kardim’, Radio Farda, 10 November 2016.

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rising unprecedentedly thanks to global prices in the wake of the Iraq war. Both hard and soft power had reached new heights for Tehran. The confluence of circumstances would reinforce the coming Iranian president’s belief that the US was in decline, and therefore posed less of a threat.3 Meanwhile inside Iran, the reformists’ rise and electoral dominance had provoked a conservative, or more accurately, neoconservative backlash. Washington’s subsequent slighting of Khatami’s government discredited the reformists and helped tilt Iran’s domestic balance of power in favor of the hardliners, who now began moving from the wings onto the political centerstage. In the 2003 municipal elections, reformist voters disillusioned by Khatami boycotted the ballots in droves—Tehran’s voter turnout totaled only 12 percent—giving the conservatives a walkover. Candidates of an obscure group called the Coalition of Islamic Iran Developers (E’telaf-e Abadgaran-e Iran-e Eslami)—the first genuine neoconservative party—won 14 of Tehran’s 15 seats.4 These Abadgaran council members then voted for another even more obscure figure, traffic engineer and Ardabil’s former governor-general Mahmud Ahmadinejad as Tehran’s mayor by virtue of ‘his Basij militia mentality’.5 The momentum reached a critical turning point in the 7th Majles elections of 2004, when Abadgaran took all of Tehran’s 30 seats and conservatives and neoconservatives jointly swept up between 160 and 200 of Parliament’s 290 seats, with Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel becoming its first non-cleric speaker.6 This time, they were aided not only by a reformist boycott especially in the larger cities, but also by the Guardian Council’s brazen disqualification of scores of reformist candidates (including 80 incumbent reformist MPs), who secured only 40 seats.7 Late in Khatami’s second tenure, the revisionists—traditional and neoconservatives alike—were again in the ascendant, undercutting the reformist government’s initiatives though not yet reversing them. For this, it would take the 9th presidential elections of June 2005, when

3 Ansari 2007, 58–9; Naji 2008, 192. 4 Samii 2005a; another closely affiliated group was the Society of Devotees of the

Islamic Revolution (Isargaran). 5 Arjomand 2009, 150. 6 Ehteshami 2006, 143. 7 Ansari 2006, 210; Kazemzadeh 2008, 203.

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regime hardliners sealed their takeover of almost all elected officialdom in addition to the unelected bodies already under their control.8 Tehran mayor Ahmadinejad, an unknown quantity even to Tehran’s residents, won in a surprise victory after beating Rafsanjani nearly twofold in an unprecedented run-off. Rafsanjani had led in the first round with 21 percent, though only slightly ahead of Ahmadinejad’s 19.5 percent. While the reformists collectively secured 35 percent of the vote, they distinguished themselves by mortally splitting it three ways among Speaker Mehdi Karrubi who came in a close third place in the first round of voting, ex-Minister of Science Mostafa Moin, and ex-Vice President Mohsen Mehralizadeh. Rafsanjani had sought to return as ‘conservative reformer’ and the country’s top executive.9 Yet he bothered little with public campaigning, and his reputation by this time suffered from corruption allegations, fatally costing him second-round votes. Ahmadinejad’s victory surprised all the more given both the lack of direct support from even Abadgaran, and the caliber of his conservative contenders: Police Chief Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, IRIB Head Ali Larijani, and former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei, who withdrew before the first round. Ahmadinejad’s victory was the first in the Islamic Republic’s history by a non-cleric since the first two presidents, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and Mohammad-Ali Raja’i. It also introduced a ministerial lineup with unprecedentedly intimate ties with the security establishment. As mayor, Ahmadinejad’s ties with the IRGC and Basij were such that he offered IRGC firms development contracts while they placed money and other resources at Tehran municipality’s disposal, including in the run-up to his presidential campaign. Within months of his becoming president, Ahmadinejad awarded the IRGC $10 billion worth of tender-free contracts.10 From 2004, IRGC-linked individuals comprised about a third of Parliament. In 2005, IRGC veterans or affiliates represented about half of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet and a third of his provincial governors.11

8 The exception was the Expediency Council and from 2007 to 2011, the Assembly of Experts, both of which remained under Rafsanjani’s stewardship. 9 Naji 2008, 60. 10 Ibid., 53–6, 258. 11 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 69.

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The IRGC and Basij featured heavily in the president’s support base, with their involvement extending even to the logistical conduct of the elections, prompting allegations of electoral fraud.12 Yet, their support was in large part also because of Khamenei’s willingness to gamble on this obscure figure, which in itself was a measure of both the conservatives’ unrelenting struggle against the reformists and the influence of Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.13 This momentary unity of pan-conservative power despite the earlier lack of a consensus presidential candidate facilitated clarity of purpose and strategic consistency. Together with Iran’s perceived rising power and oil revenues, the new administration now shifted from cooperation to confrontation, categorically standing Khatami’s accommodationism on its head. Ahmadinejad’s electoral campaign had mostly avoided foreign policy issues and instead focused on Islamic governance, piety and frugality, the economy, combating corruption, and redistributing oil money to people’s tables—populist messages resonating heavily with Iran’s poor and ‘dispossessed’. In the previous year’s Majles electoral campaign, similar messaging had set the neoconservatives apart from the disappointments of Khatami’s socioeconomic policy and the traditional conservatives’ flagging commitment to social justice.14 The neoconservatives’ central role in the Iran-Iraq war conferred them a sense of entitlement in respect of the conservative Old Guard. ‘The former adjutants of the clerics, who have finished their apprenticeship in revolution’, Mehrzad Boroujerdi noted, ‘are now demanding recognition as the linchpins of the Islamic Republic’.15 But beyond his revolutionary views and affiliations, there were already crucial hints about Ahmadinejad’s future revisionism. As mayor, he had commissioned a large mural depicting a Palestinian female suicide bomber in Tehran and nurtured an obsession with memorializing Iran’s war martyrs.16 During his electoral campaign, Ahmadinejad dismissed the

12 See the telling remarks of then deputy IRGC commander Gen. Mohammed-Baqer Zolqadr, Alamdari 2005, 1297; for background on Ahmadinejad’s IRGC ties, see Naji 2008, ch. 1. 13 Ansari 2008b, 698; Ansari 2007, 36. 14 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 41. 15 Cited in Alamdari 2005, 1298. 16 Arjomand 2009, 150.

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importance of negotiations with the US—in contrast to Rafsanjani— and criticized Khatami’s nuclear negotiators for being ‘weak’ vis-à-vis the EU3.17 Moreover, the abadgaran—his political base—had also since their 2004 parliamentary début taken a hard line on the US, the EU3, and especially the nuclear talks, and lobbied to reduce foreign investment stakes in Iran’s economy. However, with the reformists marginalized, tensions erupted between the governing neoconservatives and their conservative patrons, starting with Parliament’s rejection of six of Ahmadinejad’s ministerial appointees, including his first three choices for oil minister (one withdrew). Parliament likewise criticized Ahmadinejad’s heavily lopsided $217 billion budget.18 Ahmadinejad’s claim of a halo around him as he spoke at the UN General Assembly’s 60th Session in September 2005 alarmed the conservative clergy. Worse, his alleged personal communication with the Mahdi—the regime had meticulously suppressed Shi’ite Messianism— threatened to put Velayat, let alone the clergy, cleanly in the shade.19 Ahmadinejad’s move to allow women to attend football matches despite his general sociocultural ultraconservatism triggered protests by senior conservative clerics, prompting Khamenei to veto it.20 Then, in the December 2006 Assembly of Experts and municipal elections, the neoconservatives lost ground to the increasingly critical traditional conservatives. Yet, the revisionists as a superfaction still dominated Iran’s foreign, security and trade policy, and would make their mark in three major areas. The first, and most explosive, was the nuclear issue.

9.1 Nuclear Revisionism and Diversionary Posturing By the time of the 2005 presidential electoral campaign, domestic discourse over the nuclear program had changed dramatically with candidates criticizing Khatami’s nuclear talks as a sell-out, contradicting cooler

17 Bakhash 2005, 16. 18 Sohrabi 2006, 4. 19 For the Islamic Republic’s attitude toward Shi’ite Messianism, see Rahnema 2011, 35–113. 20 ‘Iran women sports ruling vetoed’, BBC, 8 May 2006.

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heads still in government. Nuclear accommodationism, even an exceptional ‘grand bargain’, had signally failed to yield results with the West. But according to Mousavian, admittedly a critic of Ahmadinejad, there was still some leeway at that point for talks to improve between Iran and the EU3, which would become the P5+1 by May 2006. The EU had even quietly accepted Iran’s resumption of uranium conversion.21 Moreover, the pragmatic conservative Rouhani noted that the Europeans had opposed Washington’s attempts to refer Iran to the Security Council, with Britain even ‘going face-to-face against the US’.22 Dismissing the international community, the Security Council, and even the threat of sanctions as bluff, Ahmadinejad changed all that and swiftly countermanded Khatami’s nuclear stance. In so doing, he chaperoned Iran toward full-fledged crisis. To be sure, the decision to restart Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle had been taken before Khatami left office. As talks with the EU3 grounded to an impasse over ‘objective guarantees’ and Iran’s right to continue indigenously enriching uranium, Khatami’s government adopted a stiffer stance against the Europeans, a move simultaneously aimed at outmaneuvering Iran’s hardliners.23 In April 2005, Supreme Leader Khamenei instructed chief nuclear negotiator and SNSC secretary Rouhani to restart activities at the Esfahan Uranium Conversion Facility.24 Then on 1 August, just before Ahmadinejad took office, Iran announced it was unilaterally resuming uranium conversion. The Iranians believed that the lack of American buy-in weakened the EU3’s hand, and refused to accept indefinite suspension of enrichment activities. ‘Europe is neither our friend nor does it have good relations with Islam’, Rouhani noted in 2005. ‘But owing to Iran’s strategic position it does not want to lose Iran’.25 The Ahmadinejad administration viewed nuclear concessions in capitulatory terms redolent of the UK and US’ 1953 diktat on Mossadeq.26 Other non-P5 nuclear weapon states like Israel, Pakistan, and India had not become pariahs. And unlike North Korea, Iran remained within the 21 Mousavian 2012, 186. 22 Rouhani 2005, 14. 23 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 100. 24 Mousavian 2012, 165. 25 Rouhani 2005, 32. 26 Ansari 2006, 230.

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NPT and its safeguards regime, avoided explicit nuclear weapon threats, and yet ‘was penalized for possibly having future intentions to develop nuclear weapons’.27 Khatami had no less ardently defended Iran’s NPTenshrined right to nuclear power. The new administration however opted to press for Iran’s nuclear rights through confrontation, with any diplomacy at all not over but rather after enrichment.28 Ahmadinejad looked at Nixon and China, and reasoned that only increased resistance would compel Washington to eventually recognize Iran as a regional power.29 With the EU3 talks run aground, the nuclear program was rapidly becoming a potent symbol of Iranian prestige, independence, and nationalism, commanding widespread support across political cleavages.30 Whether intended to be exclusively peaceful, nuclear technology would bolster national identity, the regime’s standing, Iran’s status aspirations vis-à-vis the existing international order, and ultimately its influence if not (yet) hard power. ‘Many Iranians believe that US pressure…is a conspiracy by the western powers to deny or prevent Iran from acquiring advanced technology and keep Iran backward and dependent on the West’, Tehran University’s Sadegh Zibakalam wrote.31 No faction including the reformists could afford not to back Iran’s nuclear program. They even sought to outbid each other. Ahmadinejad himself certainly made it near impossible for Iran to concede on its nuclear program—a ‘train with no brakes and no reverse gear’, and ‘a flood which cannot be stopped by a matchstick’—without blemishing the nation’s honor.32 In turn, this immensely reduced the scope for external negotiations and, combined with the rise of a security state, stifled domestic dissent. In August 2005, Ahmadinejad signaled his nuclear preferences by replacing chief nuclear negotiator and SNSC Secretary Rouhani (who had resigned after a tiff with the new president) with Ali Larijani, IRIB’s 27 ElBaradei 2011, 203 (emphasis added). 28 Mousavian 2012, 190, 202. 29 Ibid., 196. 30 Just after Rouhani became president in 2013, dozens of interlocutors I had

casual discussions with (university students, policemen, businessmen, bazaaris , taxi drivers, museum curators and restaurant owners) in Tehran, Esfahan and Kashan emphasized their support for a peaceful nuclear program as a function of Iranian independence. Interestingly, few regarded Israel or the Palestinian issue as crucial to Iran’s interests. 31 Zibakalam 2006. 32 ‘Iran defiant on nuclear programme’, BBC, 25 February 2007; Naji 2008, 123.

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conservative head and a 2005 presidential contender. Larijani had recently likened Rouhani and Khatami’s acceptance of enrichment suspension to swapping a ‘pearl for a candy’. Ahmadinejad imposed his own staffing preferences within the SNSC which he as president officially chaired, and reshuffled Iran’s ambassadors, particularly those accredited to West European governments. In his September 2005 UN General Assembly address, Ahmadinejad railed against the West and ‘nuclear apartheid’ before invoking the Mahdi. That same week during a meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, he made the first of several disquieting offers to share nuclear technology with Islamic states.33 Raising the nuclear stakes, Ahmadinejad questioned the Holocaust’s veracity and threatened, in only one of many instances, to have Israel removed ‘from the pages of time’.34 Ahmadinejad’s statements—diversionary posturing—were unprecedented in their vehemence but not their vintage. Then in November, Iran’s Parliament passed a bill suspending voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol. The following month, Iran snubbed a proposal by Moscow, backed by the EU3, to transfer enrichment exclusively to Russian territory. In January 2006, Tehran informed the IAEA it was resuming suspended nuclear activities including enrichment, before removing the IAEA’s seals at Natanz. Iranian officials warned that referral to the Security Council would trigger retaliation. Ahmadinejad’s administration apparently assessed referral to be a bluff, or at least belittled its significance.35 However, Iran’s decision prompted the IAEA—in a majority vote including Russia, China, and India—to in fact refer it to the Security Council in February 2006.36 Now that this threshold had been crossed, Tehran focused on defying the world with a fait accompli. In April 2006, Iran declared its scientists

33 ‘Iran “may share nuclear know-how”’, CNN , 15 September 2005. 34 ‘Ahmadinezhad: koshtar-e yahudiyan afsane ast’, BBC Persian, 14 December 2005;

‘Ez’harat-e Ahmadinezhad darbare-ye rezhim-e sahyunisti, khashm-e hamiyan-e sahyunism ra barangikht’, Fars News, 27 October 2005—Iran however insists the reference is to Israel’s political rather than physical existence. 35 See Ali Larijani’s remarks on Russia and China’s reluctance to refer Iran to the Security Council, in Roula Khalaf and Gareth Smyth, ‘Transcript of interview with Ali Larijani’, FT , 22 January 2006. 36 IAEA GOV/2006/14.

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had succeeded in enriching uranium to 3.5 percent fissile purity— suited for generating electricity—with a laboratory-scale, 164-centrifuge cascade, and that it had thus joined the ‘nuclear club’ [sic].37 In July 2006, Security Council Resolution 1696 gave Iran a month to (re)suspend all fuel cycle-related activities, and threatened to invoke Art. 41 (Ch. VII) of the UN Charter, which provides for non-military economic and diplomatic measures against threats to international peace and security.38 On 26 August 2006, just before the deadline expired, Tehran inaugurated the Arak heavy-water facility. Earlier, on 8 May 2006, Switzerland’s ambassador in Tehran, Philippe Welti, had received a letter from Ahmadinejad addressed to Bush, which he delivered. Perhaps Iran’s president saw this as his own ‘Nixon goes to China’ moment, for bilateral contacts at this level remained politically taboo for leaders less hardline and revolutionary. And indeed, Khamenei had unprecedentedly removed his red lines for direct talks.39 Yet the letter offered no solution to the nuclear crisis. Instead, it berated the US’ moral compass, questioned not only the Holocaust but also the authorship of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and heralded the end of liberal democracy.40 In August, Ahmadinejad suggested a televised debate with Bush. The White House dismissed both letter and debate offer. After Iran’s failure to heed the EU3 /P5+1’s offers, the IAEA’s demands, and finally, UN Resolution 1696, the Security Council passed a series of resolutions beginning with the unanimously adopted-adopted Resolution 1737 in December 2006 identifying Iran as a threat to international peace and security, and consequently imposing nuclear proliferation-related sanctions.41 Ahmadinejad’s government met pressure with pressure, announcing the activation of 3000 more centrifuges and intensifying threats to abandon the NPT.42 37 ‘Ahmadinejad: Iran has joined nuclear club’, Iran Focus, 11 April 2006; the IAEA however first reported that Iran produced 3.5 percent-enriched uranium in February 2008. 38 UN Security Council Resolution 1696, 31 July 2006, http://www.un.org/ga/sea rch/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1696%282006%29. 39 Mousavian 2012, 327. 40 For the text, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/09_05_06ahmadin

ejadletter.pdf. 41 UN Security Council Resolution 1737, 23 December 2006, http://www.un.org/ ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1737(2006). 42 Mousavian 2012, 263.

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Yet, Tehran still dangled the possibility of cooperation and even reimplementing the AP provided Iran’s nuclear dossier was removed from the Security Council, but at the same time threatened to cease cooperation with the IAEA if another UN resolution was issued.43 In March 2007, the Security Council passed Resolution 1747, which extended its proliferation blacklist and banned the export of major conventional weapons systems to and from Iran.44 On 9 April, Ahmadinejad responded by declaring Iran now belonged to the club of countries producing nuclear fuel ‘on an industrial scale’, and that the same day be henceforth commemorated as the National Day of Nuclear Technology.45 While Ali Larijani and the EU’s Javier Solana resumed talks in Spring 2007, internal disagreements over the possibility of some limited suspension, which Ahmadinejad fiercely opposed and to which he responded by fielding parallel envoys to the Europeans, eventually triggered Larijani’s resignation in October 2007.46 Ahmadinejad replaced Larijani with the even more hardline Saeed Jalili. The issue of weaponization was enough for the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 1803 in March 2008 (only Indonesia abstained), which gave Iran 90 days to suspend all enrichment in line with earlier resolutions and implement the Additional Protocol.47 The following month, Ahmadinejad announced that another 6000 centrifuges were being installed at Natanz, and that Iran had also tested a new generation of centrifuges.48 In September 2008, mere days after Ahmadinejad’s fiery speech at the UN General Assembly’s 63rd Session, the Security Council issued Resolution 1835 with all 15 members voting in favor, a feat considering the tensions created by Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia. Resolution 1835 however stipulated no new sanctions, merely calling on Iran to heed the

43 Ibid., 272. 44 UN Security Council Resolution 1747, 24 March 2007, http://www.un.org/ga/sea

rch/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1747%282007%29. 45 Mousavian 2012, 273. 46 Gareth Smyth and Quentin Peel, ‘Spotlight: Ali Larijani, a gathering storm’, FT , 16

February 2007; Mousavian 2012, 275–77. 47 UN Security Council Resolution 1803, 3 March 2008, http://www.un.org/ga/sea rch/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1803%282008%29. 48 ‘Iran “installing new centrifuges”’, BBC, 8 April 2008.

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four earlier resolutions.49 In October, Tehran responded by declaring that design had begun for a 360-megawatt power plant at Darkhovin, and in the same month unsurprisingly lost a bid for membership inside the IAEA’s Board of Governors to Kazakhstan, which replaced Pakistan. As tensions over the nuclear program’s ‘possible military dimensions’ spilled over notably after IAEA Chief ElBaradei’s November 2008 report, AEOI Head Aghazadeh announced plans to install 50,000 centrifuges over the next five years, with 5000 centrifuges—or a tenth of Natanz’s capacity—currently already in operation. In the interim, Iran intensified its space program, the satellite launch vehicle (SLV) component of which shares similar technology with ballistic missiles. In February 2008, Iran had announced the launch of its first Safir-class suborbital research rocket, Kavoshgar-1. In February 2009, the same rocket for the first time successfully placed into orbit Iran’s first indigenously built satellite, Omid.50 In Washington, Barack Obama’s election paved the way in 2009 for renewed engagement based on ‘mutual respect’, which he pressed home with a Nowruz (Persian New Year) message to Iran’s leadership in March, and then broader overtures to the Muslim world during his Cairo speech in June. In November 2008, Ahmadinejad had even congratulated Obama for his electoral victory. Extending an open invitation to Iran, the Oval Office offered to resume talks without preconditions. During the Islamic Republic’s 30th anniversary celebrations in February, Ahmadinejad took up Obama’s call for direct talks provided they were ‘just’ and based on ‘mutual respect’.51 Then, commemorating Nuclear Technology Day in April, Ahmadinejad announced further progress including new centrifuge types, a nuclear fuel production facility in Esfahan, and a fuel rod production factory, while AEOI Chief Aghazadeh revealed that 7000 centrifuges were now installed at Natanz.52 According to an IAEA report, Iran as of February possessed over one ton

49 UN Security Council Resolution 1835, 27 September 2008, https://www.un.org/ ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1835(2008). 50 ‘Timeline: Iran launches first own satellite’, Reuters, 3 February 2009. 51 ‘Ahmadinezhad: taghir-e siyasat-e emrika bayad bonyadin bashad’, BBC Persian, 10

February 2009. 52 Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Daniel Dombey, ‘Iran hails nuclear progress’, FT , 9 April 2009.

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of low enriched uranium (LEU), enough fuel for one bomb if enriched further.53 Setting little store by these boasts, Obama dispatched a confidential letter to Khamenei in early 2009 through UN channels, suggesting direct dialogue. In his memoir, Obama described the Supreme Leader’s response as tantamount to ‘the middle finger’.54 Then, responding to Obama’s June Cairo speech, Khamenei called on the US president to go beyond ‘words, speeches, and slogans’ toward ‘actual change’.55 A second letter from the White House followed in May 2009 through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, but the tumultuous events following Iran’s controversial 2009 presidential elections (see further) shortcircuited the correspondence.56 Things significantly worsened for Iran in late September. Just before another round of negotiations with the P5+1 slated for October, Obama revealed the existence of yet another secret uranium enrichment facility under a mountainside near Qom. Iranian officials pushed back by insisting that the Fordow facility was still under construction and that the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement obliged them to inform the IAEA only 180 days before the introduction of radioactive material, that is, before it actually began operations.57 Nonetheless, they conceded, the IAEA would be granted access. The P5+1 countered that Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangement, which Iran could not legally and unilaterally suspend, and to which it hence remained bound, required a declaration upon decision to construct such a facility.58 Construction of the Fordow facility likely began sometime between June 2006 and July 2007, i.e., when Iran was still bound by Code 3.1.59 Like the Natanz and Arak revelations, the Fordow disclosure palpably increased the external pressure on Iran, particularly with Russia and 53 Ibid. 54 Obama 2020, 454. 55 Khamenei, 4 June 2009. 56 Borzou Daragahi, ‘Iran: report of second letter from Obama to Tehran’, LA Times, 2 September 2009. 57 Later archival seizures indicate it was part of the secret program dubbed Ghadir Project, see Bergman, ‘Iran’s great nuclear deception’. 58 Mousavian 2012, 351–2. 59 ‘Nuclear sites: Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP)’, Institute for Science and

International Security,http://www.isisnucleariran.org/sites/detail/fordow/.

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China now also losing their patience. Before the public disclosure, and to win Moscow’s support, Obama had shared the intelligence with Medvedev, which ‘seemed to rattle’ the latter and prompted the Russian president to back tougher measures against Iran.60 Earlier that year, in their first personal meeting just before the G20 London summit, Medvedev had even unexpectedly acknowledged to Obama that ‘Iran’s nuclear and missile programs had advanced much faster than Moscow had expected’.61 Just before the negotiations of early October (see Sect. 10.1), the IRGC, uncowed, very publicly tested Shahab-3 and Sejjil2 missiles with a theoretical reach extending to the US’ Persian Gulf bases, Israel, and even a part of Europe. In sum, Iran’s highly visible soft expansionism and posturing, fueled by nuclear nationalism and substantiated by indigenous technological advances, followed from the rise of a vociferously revisionist neoconservative government and exasperation with the EU3 negotiations. The perceived waning of US power and influence in Iran’s proximity in turn diminished the immediate need for alternative strategies such as balancing, hard power expansionism, and subversion. As we see in the next two sections, soft expansionism would consistently characterize Iranian strategic conduct elsewhere.

9.2

Iranian Expansionism in Post-Saddam Iraq

As tensions over the nuclear issue rose, so did Iranian assertiveness in Iraq. While the Ba’ath elite may have been decapitated, Iran still needed to subdue Iraq to prevent the emergence of another threat of Saddam’s magnitude. If the trauma of the eight-year war he initiated shaped Tehran’s view of the external world, post-Saddam Iraq would now become the principal forward staging area for Iran’s twenty-first-century grand strategy. Iraq shares a 1450 km land border with Iran, the latter’s longest, and the cultures and histories of both are profoundly intertwined. Iran’s Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanian dynasties ruled Mesopotamia and maintained a royal capital first at Babylon, then at Ctesiphon, near Baghdad, itself very likely a toponym of Persian origin. With Islam’s

60 Obama 2020, 471. 61 Ibid., 342.

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advent, the tables turned and Arabs from southern Iraq conquered Sassanian Persia. Najaf and Kerbala, respectively the resting places of the first and third Shi’a Imams, Ali and Hossein, constitute the ground zero of world Shi’ism, although repression under Saddam helped burnish Qom and Mashhad’s eminence instead. Furthermore, several prominent Iranian political figures were Iraqi-born, including the Larijani brothers. Tehran’s priority was to preserve Iraq’s territorial integrity and national unity, and stabilize it without helping midwife a hostile pro-US client regime or one with a strong central government. Between 2003 and 2005, Iran quietly encouraged its longtime Iraqi Shi’a allies—many of whom had lived in Iranian exile during Saddam’s time—to contribute to reconstruction.62 Meanwhile, it also supported the US-shaped democratic transition, which would enfranchise and empower Iraq’s Shi’a majority. Iran intensified its support for key Shi’a actors including the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), its armed wing the Badr Brigade, the Da’wa Islamiyya (Islamic Call) Party, and to an extent, the controversial leader of the Sadr Movement, Muqtada al-Sadr.63 At the same time, Tehran maintained good relations with secular Shi’a groups, moderate Sunnis, the two main Sunni Kurdish parties in northern Iraq and even Kurdish Sunni-Islamist movements.64 Iran prodded the Shi’a toward a unified political force eventually resulting in the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which enjoyed the backing of Iraq’s Marja-ye Taqlid, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. In the spring and summer of 2004, following violent unrest in Najaf incited by Sadr against the Iraqi government and US forces, Iran had intervened alongside Sistani to prevent instability from disrupting the upcoming elections.65 In the January 2005 interim legislative elections, the Iranian-backed UIA won 140 of the 275 seats. Da’wa’s Ibrahim al-Ja’afari became prime minister of the Iraqi Transitional Government, sidelining Iyad Allawi and the Iraqi National Accord-led Iraqi List, which had previously headed the US-backed Iraqi Interim Government. With 28 of the Constitution 62 Pollack 2004, 355. 63 SCIRI was founded in 1982 by the al-Hakim brothers in Tehran (for its links

to Tehran, see Rafsanjani 2014b, 522, 551 and passim); Badr Brigade, renamed Badr Organization in 2003, fought on Iran’s side during the eight-year war as part of the IRGC. 64 Samii 2005b, 32. 65 Felter and Fishman 2008, 33–4.

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Drafting Committee’s 55 seats, the UIA and especially SCIRI and Da’wa dominated the shaping of the new constitution, which was ratified in October 2005 and devolved more power to the provinces.66 In the parliamentary elections that December, the UIA led with 128 (out of 275) seats, 30 of which went to Muqtada al-Sadr’s freshly coopted movement, allowing the latter to play kingmaker. Heading the first permanent post-Saddam government was a weak, compromise figure from Da’wa by the name of Nuri al-Maliki. No Velayat-based theocracy emerged. Yet, the creation of the Arab world’s first Shi’a-majority government had already begun altering the region’s strategic balance in Iran’s favor. Between the 2003 invasion and 2005, despite Iran’s stated intent to help stabilize its western neighbor, the US and top (including Shi’ite) Iraqi leaders alleged rising Iranian interference in Iraq. Allegations extended, beyond meddling in Iraq’s politics, to Iran arming insurgents including the Badr Organization and Sadr’s Mahdi Army.67 Iranian agents were detained repeatedly and accused of planning bombing attacks.68 Jordan’s King Abdullah II asserted that Iran was encouraging over a million Iranians to vote inside Iraq, and that a pro-Iranian Iraq could help create a game-changing Shi’a ‘crescent’ in the region.69 Tehran denied the allegations, notably those related to military activities, which largely lacked hard evidence, but it charged that the US-appointed caretaker Interim Government failed to represent Iraq’s sectarian makeup.70 Political support for pro-Iranian groups was expected, but Iraqi instability served no Iranian interest, certainly not when Iraq’s Shi’a were on the cusp of finally inheriting their own state. Unlike Washington and Baghdad, UK officials noted a positive Iranian influence in Iraq during this period.71 Khatami’s government and the Supreme Leader appeared to have reconciled their preference for Iraq’s prior stabilization on the one hand, with pressures from the IRGC and

66 Ibid., 40. 67 Samii 2005b, 36–7, 40–1. 68 Ibid., 40. 69 Robin Wright and Peter Baker, ‘Iraq, Jordan see threat to election from Iran’, WP, 8 December 2004. 70 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 135. 71 Ansari 2007, 59.

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establishment hardliners for a more muscular strategy on the other, by agreeing on a compromise. Hence, intelligence activities would unfold (from 2003), without them however turning operational yet.72 Under Ahmadinejad, all this changed. At about the same time, Iraq’s domestic insurgency spiraled out of control, sparking off a sectarian conflagration after the fateful February 2006 bombing of the Askariyya Shi’ite mosque in Samarra by Sunni extremists, and prompting the emergence of Shi’a ‘death squads’. As Iraq’s government consolidated its Shi’a bona fides, Iran discarded cooperation for confrontation to thwart the US from entrenching its political influence, hold it to ransom over the nuclear crisis, and diminish the possibility of US-led regime change. Like in Afghanistan, the US was increasingly mired and militarily exposed in a sectarian war from which, already lacking a post-invasion stabilization program, it had trouble exiting. Then IAEA Chief ElBaradei noted that ‘[t]he Iranian authorities also believed they had cards of their own to play. If relations with the Americans did not improve, [Rouhani] told me, Iran was confident that it could make the situation in Iraq even more difficult’.73 Having politically strengthened the Shi’a factions, Tehran also significantly increased its patronage of the fringe, rejectionist militias behind the death squads, which the US dubbed ‘special groups’. As in its nuclear program, Iran maintained separate, overt, and covert pathways, in its Iraq policy. These ‘special groups’ were relatively more reliable than pro-Iran factions such as ISCI and Da’wa, which were currently integrating themselves into the political process, were willing to cooperate with the US, and whose interests hence increasingly diverged from Iran’s.74 Although Sadr was making tentative forays into politics, he was a loose cannon, divisive, and swayed toward Iraqi nationalism rather than Islamic unity. These groups maintained ties with pro-Iran factions like Badr and most prominently included Kata’eb Hezbollah, founded in 2007 by Abu Mahdi

72 Pollack 2004, 355–8. 73 ElBaradei 2011, 135. 74 In 2007, SCIRI changed its name to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), removing ‘revolution’ and hence downplaying its association with Iran. ISCI also formalized its allegiance to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. SCIRI/ISCI’s armed wing, the Badr Organization (previously Badr Brigade) headed by Hadi al-Ameri integrated into the political process but remained close to Iran, and fully broke away from ISCI in 2012.

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al-Muhandis, who had previously led the Badr Brigade; Asa’eb Ahl alHaqq (AAH), founded around 2006 by Sadr’s former spokesperson Qais Khaz’ali; and the arms smuggling network run by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani.75 A November 2009 US embassy cable estimated that, more broadly, Iran was financing its ‘Iraqi surrogates’ $100–200 million annually, ‘with [$]70 million going to ISCI/Badr coffers’ alone.76 From around 2005–2006, these groups significantly increased their use of Iranian-designed lethal weaponry including armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), improvised rocket-assisted mortars (IRAMs) propelled by 107 mm rockets, and 240 mm Fajr rockets. The former proved the bane of armored security convoys and the latter two were frequently deployed against US diplomatic and military installations. Tehran assisted these groups in developing nimbler niche military capabilities in the (preferred) absence of a strong central Iraqi military. In return, they offered a counterweight against Sunni extremists, leverage over Iraq’s various political stakeholders and most importantly, a means of distracting and undermining the US inside Iraq and deterring Washington from attacking Iran. Instability deteriorated to such a point that in January 2007, the US announced it was deploying over 20,000 additional troops in a ‘surge’ to help PM al-Maliki secure and stabilize Iraq, including against Iran and Syria’s alleged support for Shi’a extremists.77 US forces took to killing or capturing Iranian agents in Iraq, especially suspected IRGC officers. Shortly after, AAH militants supported by the IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah operative Ali Musa Daqduq captured and killed five US soldiers in Kerbala. Bilateral tensions peaked, exacerbating fears of war inside Iran. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaei, and Deputy Majles Speaker MohammadReza Bahonar for instance believed an attack was imminent. Conversely, Ahmadinejad dismissed tensions as psychological warfare and argued the US could not afford to attack Iran at the moment.78 75 Eisenstadt et al. 2011, 8–11. 76 United States Department of State, memo, in ‘US embassy cables: Iran attempts to

manipulate Iraq elections’, The Guardian, 4 December 2010. 77 Bush, 10 January 2007. 78 Naji 2008, 201; according to nuclear negotiatior Abbas Araqchi, even the IRGC

‘expected to awake to military operations unfolding around them’ in 2006–2008, in ‘Revealed: Iran’s 15 deal secrets’, Iranwire, 3 August 2015.

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In May 2007, five days after a display of US naval power in the Persian Gulf, the American and Iranian ambassadors, Ryan Crocker and Hassan Kazemi-Qomi met directly in Baghdad’s Green Zone under PM al-Maliki’s auspices, the first of three such meetings over the next months. This came almost a year after Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush, and Nuclear Negotiator Ali Larijani’s proposal, via IAEA Chief ElBaradei, to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice for direct talks over Iraq and other issues.79 At the time, however, Iran’s nuclear issue had been freshly referred to the Security Council, dampening enthusiasm in Washington to engage, and while Rice accepted direct talks in May 2006, she continued to precondition these on Iran suspending enrichment.80 Ahmadinejad justified the talks by arguing that Iran was now speaking as an equal, and from a position of strength rather than weakness.81 Again, impeccable hardline credentials afforded the political capital of violating such a taboo without compromising the Revolution’s ideals, which Khamenei consequently backed. For Washington, although they would lead nowhere, talks became expedient as its position in Iraq deteriorated.82 The role of the IRGC-Qods Force in Iraq cannot be overemphasized, and in this context reflects the subsuming of diplomacy under Tehran’s security priorities. If the IRGC was created to defend the Revolution, its elite Qods (‘Jerusalem’) Force originally existed to lead the struggle against Israel, before subsequently expanding its brief to all extraterritorial covert operations.83 Iran’s ambassadors in post-Saddam Iraq—Hassan Kazemi-Qomi (2003–2010, initially as chargé d’affaires), Baghdad-born Hassan Danaie-Far (2010–2017) and Brigadier-General Iraj Masjedi (2017–)—were Qods Force veterans. Above all, Qods Force Commander Major-General Qassem Soleimani, who replaced Ahmad Vahidi in 1998, would prove the prime mover of Iranian grand strategy in Iraq and the broader region. The Qods Force is ‘not just the executor of regional foreign policy’, Chubin noted, ‘but also its formulator, subject to no civilian institutional control’.84 79 ElBaradei 2011, 194; Mousavian 2012, 235. 80 Murray 2010, 134–5. 81 Naji 2008, 204. 82 Sanger 2009, 46. 83 Ostovar 2016, 6. 84 Chubin 2012, 12.

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In 2008, reflecting Iran’s self-confidence and assertiveness in Iraq, Soleimani dispatched a message through Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s cellphone to the then commander of US forces in Iraq. ‘Dear General [David] Petraeus’, it read, ‘you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member’.85 Soleimani told Petraeus only to negotiate with him and to forget talks with Iranian diplomats.86 Soleimani also offered to ‘discuss any issue’ with the Americans, which Petraeus ultimately dismissed.87 Soleimani was also Iraq’s powerbroker-in-chief. When violence escalated, Soleimani mediated and balanced between rival Shi’a militias, including between Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the ISCI in 2007.88 In March 2008, with Coalition support, PM al-Maliki cracked down on the increasingly unruly Sadrists in Basra. Unable to bring the latter to heel, alMaliki’s Da’wa and ISCI/Badr allies as well as President Talabani sought Soleimani’s assistance in mediating a ceasefire in Qom, where Sadr had relocated in 2007. Conversely, Iran’s role in fomenting and then resolving instability was evident when even Badr and ISCI government officials requested that Iran stop arming the Sadrists.89 ‘By stoking violence and then mediating the conflict’, the New York Times noted, ‘[Soleimani] could make himself indispensable and keep the Iraqis off balance’.90 Tehran could not prevent Baghdad and Washington from inking the Strategic Framework Agreement and Status of Forces Agreement in November 2008. Still, Baghdad mollified Iran by incorporating clauses stipulating a timetable for US troop withdrawal by December 2011, and prohibiting the use of Iraq’s territory for military operations on neighboring countries. These were two key Iranian priorities. During 85 Dexter Filkins, ‘The shadow commander’, The New Yorker, 23 September 2013. 86 ‘Zheneral Petraeus: Qassem Soleimani payam ferestad ke diplomat-ha ra faramush

kon, bayad ba man mozakere koni’, BBC Persian, 15 March 2019. 87 Scott Peterson and Howard LaFranchi, ‘Iran’s role rises as Iraq peace broker’, Christian Science Monitor, 14 May 2008. 88 Eisenstadt et al. 2011, 7. 89 Leila Fadel, ‘Iranian general played key role in Iraq cease-fire’, McClatchy, 30 March

2008. 90 Michael R. Gordon, ‘Iran’s master of Iraq chaos still vexes U.S.’, NYT , 2 October 2012.

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the January 2009 governorate elections, dissension racked the UIA’s constituent parties, prompting al-Maliki to distance himself with the creation of the Da’wa-led State of Law Alliance (SLA), which won the most seats. Da’wa’s main Shi’a rival ISCI polled poorly, likely because of perceived proximity to Iran. Then in the March 2010 legislative elections, al-Maliki’s State of Law again ran separately from, and won more votes than the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) comprising the other Shi’a parties. Tehran intervened in government-formation by pressuring the SLA and INA to close ranks against Allawi’s secular Iraqiyah List, and then pressuring ISCI, the Sadrists, and even Allawi to accept a second term for al-Maliki.91 Soft expansionism inside Iraq extended to other instruments of statecraft. In 2003, Iran’s non-oil exports to Iraq amounted to $184 million.92 By the 2008/2009 Persian calendar year, Iraq had become Iran’s leading destination for non-oil exports, valued at $2.4 billion or over 13 percent of Iran’s total exports.93 Conversely, Iranian non-oil imports from Iraq were hardly significant enough to feature in the Iran Trade Promotion Organization’s report. A US embassy cable estimated total bilateral trade in 2009 at some $4 billion, and that Iran represented 48 percent of Iraq’s total imports.94 Iran imported crude and refined petroleum products while it exported a wide range of consumer goods including Iranianassembled Peugeots, with trade remaining heavily protectionist in Iran’s favor.95 ‘Iraq doesn’t have anything to offer Iran’, an Iranian border official later said. ‘Except for oil, Iraq relies on Iran for everything’.96 Iranian competition would over time price out local producers especially in agriculture and manufacturing. Iranian commerce extended to bank branches and large-scale construction projects, as well as electricity. By 2010, as UN sanctions intensified 91 Eisenstadt et al. 2011, 4. 92 Milani 2010. 93 ‘Gozaresh-e modiran-e arshad sal-e 1387’, Sazeman-e Tawse’e-ye Tejarat-e Iran, 12, http://www.tpo.ir/uploads/modiran_arshad_87_5122.pdf. 94 ‘US embassy cables: Iran attempts to manipulate Iraq elections’, The Guardian, 4 December 2010. 95 Eisenstadt et al. 2011, 12; Gulnoza Saidazimova, ‘Iran/Iraq: trade flow increases, but mostly from Tehran to Baghdad’, RFE/RL, 4 March 2008. 96 Tim Arango, ‘Iran dominates in Iraq after U.S. ‘handed the country over’, NYT , 15 July 2017.

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against Iran, Iraq depended on its eastern neighbor for 10 percent of its electricity supply, even though Tehran also occasionally disconnected transmission grids for political leverage.97 During Ahmadinejad’s March 2008 visit to Iraq—the first of any post-revolutionary Iranian president— he announced a $1 billion credit line to finance Iranian exports and signed seven bilateral agreements in various areas. Given the millions of Iranian Shi’a pilgrims visiting each year, Iran disbursed $20 million annually to upgrade Najaf’s religious tourism infrastructure including its airport.98 In southern Iraq, Iranian funding underwrote social and welfare programs.99 Similarly, from 2003, Iranian media diffusion in Iraq rose dramatically, which included the Arabic-language Al-Alam channel established that year by IRIB.100 With Najaf and Kerbala’s emancipation from Saddam came the prospect that Iraq’s historically paramount seminaries might once again eclipse Qom. Iraq’s clerical establishment advocated political quietism rather than Iran’s politically maximalist interpretation of Shi’ism. Much of the Twelver Shi’a world regarded as their Marja’ the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who had inherited his teacher Abolqasem Khoi’s mantle in 1992, rather than Iran’s Supreme Leader. Although Sistani avoided overtly criticizing Iran, his mere existence and standing implicitly brought under question Khamenei’s legitimacy and hence that of Iran’s political system. In the early 2010s, Ayatollah Mahmud HashemiShahrudi, the Iraqi-born former head of Iran’s judiciary and a close ally of Khamenei began to increase his (i.e. Iran’s) presence inside Iraq, opening offices and disbursing patronage and funds to seminary students in a move interpreted as an attempt to undermine and replace Sistani. Given revisionist dominance and relatively lower threat perceptions, Tehran’s influence first penetrated a broad spectrum of post-Saddam Iraq’s political constellation, before also extending into the security sphere, the economy, public utilities, the media, and religion. While Iran likewise sponsored Shi’a militias acting kinetically against US forces, soft expansionism took precedence—including far beyond Iraq. 97 Sam Dagher, ‘Iran’s ambassador to Iraq promises closer trade ties’, WSJ , 11 August 2010. 98 Edward Wong, ‘Iran is playing a growing role in Iraq economy’, NYT , 17 March 2007. 99 Ehteshami and Zweiri 2007, 136. 100 Samii 2005b, 42.

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9.3 Soft Power Expansionism in the Global South and the East Ahmadinejad’s revisionist turn hardly emerged from an ideological vacuum, but it also came in response to the US’ aggressive unilateralism and its rejection of the reformists’ overtures.101 Moreover, the EU had proven its inutility as a countervailing or restraining influence on the US. Besides a more assertively expansionist approach over its perceived nuclear rights and in Iraq, such a volte-face also implied greater emphasis on relations with states or blocs which could or at least desired to offset US hegemony. Then Foreign Minister Mottaki explained his president’s thinking this way: One of the axes of the ninth government’s foreign policy…is diversification of Iran’s international relations by stressing…confrontation with the present order of world domination and unilateralism and the preservation of the Islamic Republic’s national interests and national security through the creation of an international coalition.102

Even former Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Maleki, who had served under Rafsanjani, saw the world as ‘a set of interlinked and overlapping regions. The emergence and reinforcement of these regions and their internal and mutual linkages is…part of a benign globalization process that will limit the capacity of any single power to dominate the system’.103 Ahmadinejad declared that ‘[a] movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with global responsibilities. God willing, Iran will be the axis of the leadership of this movement’.104 Iran needed as many preferably all-weather alliances as it could muster. But as Rouhani noted in 2005, it needed Security Council veto powers even more.105 If Khomeini backed ‘neither east nor west’, and Rafsanjani and Khatami both tilted westwards, Ahmadinejad would now ‘Look East’ (negah be sharq), notably China and Russia, but also the developing countries in the global south and regional

101 Mottaki 2009. 102 Cited in Dehghani Firooz-Abadi 2012, 55. 103 Maleki 2007, 171. 104 Cited in Amuzegar 2008, 56. 105 Rouhani 2005, 31–2.

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blocs such as NAM, the OIC and the Developing-8 (D8).106 To be sure, Iran already maintained relations with many of these governments. What differed now was the emphasis accorded these relations—at the West’s expense. Ahmadinejad’s diplomacy initially focused on the GCC and the broader Arab world including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria, with the aim of securing support over its nuclear program and against the US, and coordinating regional policy in Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Ahmadinejad even attended the GCC’s 2007 summit in Doha, unprecedented for any Iranian head of state considering the main catalyst behind the GCC’s creation. Yet, despite Iran’s attempts at recasting itself as a force for stability and cooperation, Arab suspicions lingered over unresolved tensions, Ahmadinejad’s disproportionately vehement support for the Palestinian cause, and the seemingly expansionist regional intentions implied in Tehran’s messaging. Ahmadinejad made more salient headway in Latin America. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Cuba’s governments touted thoroughly secular, leftist-socialist ideologies in contrast to Iran’s by now reactionary (neo)conservatism. However, like Iran, they were populist, feistily anti-imperialist, and opposed to US hegemony, views reflected in their constituting the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). They were also located in Washington’s backyard, sweetening the prospects for an anti-American front.107 While ties with individual Latin American countries existed previously and picked up slightly under Khatami, as with Iraq and the nuclear program, Ahmadinejad significantly intensified Iran’s regional stakes and involvement, doubling the number of embassies in Latin America within his first term and bringing Iran into ALBA as an observer state in 2007. The warmest relations were with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, another major oil exporter and a prominent purveyor of anti-US vitriol looking for likeminded allies. Moreover, Chavez was Iran’s conduit to Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. In Ahmadinejad, Chavez saw a fellow revolutionary and a ‘fighter for just 106 ‘Manafe’-ye Rusiye va Chin ba Iran gereh khorde ast’, Mehr News, 21 August 2010; According to Mousavian (2012, 190), the ‘Look East’ strategy originated with SNSC Head Ali Larijani in response to what the latter saw as Europe’s weakness and untrustworthiness. 107 Molana and Mohammadi 2008, 175.

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causes’, a compliment Ahmadinejad repaid in kind.108 Both governments signed an extensive raft of economic, industrial, and financial agreements, with planned cooperation extending to petrochemicals, joint oil exploration in the Orinoco Belt, and uranium ore. Bilateral trade consequently jumped from $1.1 million in 2004 to $50.7 million in 2006.109 When Chavez died in March 2013, Iran declared a day of national mourning. Iran’s ties with Chavez’s other poorer regional allies ran along similar lines, suffused with pledges for a cocktail of energy, infrastructural, industrial and investment projects, while these governments backed Iran’s nuclear program, which had by now become depicted by Tehran as a right deprived from developing states.110 Yet, rhetoric outstripped action. Iran’s relations with Venezuela and even Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador were heavily driven by the personal chemistry between Ahmadinejad and Chavez, and common animus toward the US, but little else. The symbolism was so important, certainly for Ahmadinejad, that despite the lack of commercial viability, direct Caracas-Tehran flights with a stop in Damascus began in 2007 until they were canceled in 2010. Indeed, almost all bilateral projects served ‘political objectives or possible clandestine technology transfers, not…profits’.111 Conversely and rather instructively, Venezuela’s crude exports continued flowing in large volumes to the US.112 Between 2007 and 2008, Iran’s trade with Latin America tripled to $2.9 billion, but under half of it was with Brazil, with Argentina in second place.113 Iran’s two largest regional trade partners had greater stakes in preserving the status quo, while Venezuela trailed behind in fifth place and the other radical governments mainly imported or received investments and assistance from Iran and in smaller volumes.114 Still, these governments helped mitigate Tehran’s diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. Just before Ahmadinejad’s visit to Brasilia

108 Simon Romero, ‘Iranian president visits Venezuela to strengthen ties’, NYT , 14 January 2007; ‘Chavez welcomes Ahmadinejad in Venezuela’, CNN , 25 November 2009. 109 Brun 2010, 41. 110 Caro and Rodriguez 2009. 111 Johnson 2012, 4. 112 Brun 2010, 44. 113 ‘Latin America: Iran trade triples’, Latin Business Chronicle, 2 December 2009. 114 Fite and Coughlin-Schulte 2013, 10.

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in November 2009, he declaimed that ‘Iran, Brazil and Venezuela can play a determining role in planning, regulating and establishing new orders in the world’.115 Mechanisms such as the jointly established but Iranian-controlled Banco Internacional de Desarrollo improved the odds of Iran circumventing sanctions. Latin American alliances furthermore facilitated operational objectives insofar as they provided cover for Iran and Hezbollah (both accused of the 1992 and 1994 Buenos Aires bombings) to expand their presence, particularly in the Brazil-ArgentinaParaguay Tri-Border area, while tapping into the continent’s narcotics trade and its sizable Lebanese diaspora. Finally, Ahmadinejad’s presidency also oversaw the establishment of Spanish-language broadcast media such as the IRIB-operated HispanTV, another indicator of soft expansionism. A similar, though less pompous diplomatic offensive in the global south unfolded in Africa, and by September 2010, Tehran had hosted a twoday Iran-Africa summit attended by over 40 African state representatives where Ahmadinejad again censured ‘former colonisers and slave masters’ for ‘exploiting the wealth of African nations’.116 For instance, cooperation with Muslim-majority Gambia and Senegal extended to industrial projects and energy investments including the 2007 opening of a Khodro car factory in Senegal.117 Comoros, notably under President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi who had studied in Qom and reportedly hired Iranian bodyguards, allowed Iranian industrial leaders and businessmen to purchase passports between 2008 and 2013, which in turn facilitated Iranian sanctions-busting.118 In practical terms, Iran’s closest continental ally was Sudan. The relationship, which began after Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 Sunni-Islamist coup, intensified in 2008 with military cooperation including Iranian arms supplies and training, Iranian warships docking at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, the co-production of missiles on Sudanese soil, and Iranian arms movements from there to Gaza.119

115 Jonathan Wheately and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, ‘Ahmadinejad tests Brazilian diplomacy’, FT , 22 November 2009. 116 ‘Ahmadinejad says Iran, Africa want new world order’, Mail & Guardian, 14 September 2010. 117 ‘Iran makes inroads in parts of Africa’, Deutsche Welle, 28 February 2010. 118 Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and David Lewis, ‘As sanctions bit, Iranian executives

bought African passports’ Reuters, 29 June 2018. 119 Small Arms Survey, 2014.

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In several African states, Iran also had potential access to uranium (Niger, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe) and naval ports (East Africa, especially Eritrea and Djibouti). However, absent a stronger motive beyond north–south inequalities and in some cases, Islam as shared religion, Iran’s African overtures enjoyed less traction compared to Latin America since these African governments also depended more on western and especially US capital and assistance. Taken together, these regional alliances provided some strategic depth and diplomatic ballast especially in support of Iran’s nuclear rights, including at the 2006 D8 and NAM summits held in Bali and Havana respectively. In the five IAEA Board of Governors resolutions against Iran between 2005 and 2012, Venezuela and Cuba repeatedly voted against, while other Latin American and African countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa abstained.120 However, within the UN Security Council in the period spanning 2006–2010, Latin American and African rotating members evinced little support for Iran and its nuclear program. In Resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, and 1929, other than Brazil (in 2010, alongside Turkey, see Sect. 10.1), all rotating members from both regions (Argentina, Republic of Congo, Ghana, Peru, Tanzania, Panama, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Gabon, Mexico, Nigeria and Uganda) voted for. The significance of Tehran’s periphery diplomacy paled in comparison with its standing relations with the political ‘East’. Russia and China consistently voted in favor of those same Security Council (and except for September 2005, IAEA) resolutions, and India did likewise within the IAEA context. However, Russia and China also sought to soften the letter if not the spirit of the resolutions, keeping them beyond the military purview of Art. 42 (Ch. VII) of the UN Charter—to protect their own economic interests and forestall the option of regime change—while insisting on deadline extensions for Iran.121 By 2000, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin had replaced his mentor Yeltsin as president, an event which presaged the rise of a more authoritarian, nationalistic, and assertive Russia. Moscow’s ties with Tehran 120 Syria (2006), Malaysia (2009) and Ecuador (2011) each also voted ‘against’ once; Ecuador however additionally voted twice ‘for’ (2005, 2006). 121 Mousavian 2012, 236; Garver 2011, 75–6 and 2013, 82; this ‘sanction first, dilute afterwards’ approach has had its advocates in China. See, for instance, Xue et al. 2011, 29.

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would steadily improve over time as the Kremlin’s relations with Washington deteriorated over cumulative developments including the Robert Hanssen double-agent affair; NATO’s eastward expansion; US intentions to emplace missile defense systems in Eastern Europe; and the West’s perceived hand behind the ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. In March 2001, more than four years before Ahmadinejad came to power, Khatami visited Moscow, the first of any Iranian leader in almost 40 years, to strengthen bilateral cooperation.122 Putin had freshly abandoned the 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin Protocol, and in October 2001 additionally concluded a framework agreement with Tehran for military cooperation, resuming arms sales. In January 2005, Russia agreed to help Iran construct its Zohreh telecommunications and broadcast satellite, and that October, Russia helped place Iran’s first satellite, the Sina-1, into orbit.123 In 2006–2007, Russia exported $1.2 billion worth of military hardware to Iran including 29 TOR-M1 (SA-15 Gauntlet) mid-range SAMs.124 In October 2007, Putin became the only leader from Moscow to visit Iran since Stalin in 1943, even if this occurred in the multilateral context of the Second Caspian Summit. Then in 2008, Russia, Iran, and Qatar, which collectively controlled 60 percent of global gas reserves and were a part of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) established in 2001, officially announced an OPEC-style gas cartel troika first suggested in 2002 by Putin. In 2009, after Dmitry Medvedev replaced Putin as president, Iran and Russia held their first ever joint naval exercise, in the Caspian Sea, focusing on search-and-rescue and anti-environmental pollution measures.125 However, Russia remained unreliable. Moscow appeared willing to sell Iran out if its own fluctuating, but more important, relations with Washington demanded it. In a 2004 meeting with Iranian officials, Putin reportedly said ‘Tehran should not expect Moscow to be on a boat in which Iran is the only passenger when the whole international community

122 ‘Khatami on landmark visit to Russia’, UPI , 12 March 2001. 123 ‘Iran, Russia sign satellite agreement’, UPI , 1 February 2005; ‘Timeline: Iran

launches first own satellite’, Reuters, 3 February 2009. 124 Solmirano and Wezeman 2010, 4. 125 ‘Iran, Russia conduct naval exercise’, UPI , 30 July 2009.

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is on another boat’.126 In late 2005, as mentioned (see Sect. 9.1), Tehran snubbed a proposal by Moscow to transfer all enrichment activity to Russia, a move which would have amplified its dependence on an already fairweather ally. After Obama’s 2009 US-Russia ‘reset’, US pledges to abandon the Eastern Europe missile defense system, and the Fordow revelations, President Medvedev moved to support harsher UN sanctions against Iran in June 2010 (see Sect. 10.1). That September, Medvedev imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, banned the sale of major military equipment, and canceled a 2007 agreement worth $800 million to supply S-300 SAMs, critical for the aerial defense of Iranian nuclear facilities.127 Russia similarly tempered its assistance to Iran’s missile and space programs on counter-proliferation grounds, and delayed, before finally ditching the Zohreh satellite project in 2009.128 In March 2010, Tehran issued a notice for Russian pilots involved in Iran’s civilian aviation industry to leave within two months.129 Furthermore, linked up to the national power grid in February 2012, the Bushehr plant only reached full capacity that August, 12 years after its original deadline. Russia cited technical reasons, but Russian officials reportedly told their Israeli counterparts Putin had ordered ‘measures to delay progress’, including postponing fuel rod deliveries and modifying Bushehr’s hardware components.130 With sensitive advanced weaponry temporarily out of the picture and both economies structured around energy exports with little additional economic complementarity, Iran and Russia’s merchandise trade crested at a mere $1.7 billion in 2008.131 Finally, Moscow has also repeatedly attempted to keep Iran out of Europe’s gas market, which Russia supplies. During Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Moscow refrained from upgrading bilateral relations to a strategic

126 Mousavian 2012, 398. 127 Kozhanov 2012, 7–8, 16. 128 Ibid., 14; ‘San’at-e faza’i-ye Iran dar gozar-e zaman’, IRNA, 3 February 2019. 129 Hunter 2010, 115. 130 ‘Rosatom ready to hand Bushehr nuclear plant to Iran’, RFE/RL, 9 August 2013; ‘Russia sabotaged Iran nuclear programme: report’, AFP, 19 May 2011, available at https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/59/59765_Russia%20110519.docx. 131 IMF DOTS.

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alliance in order to preserve its maneuvering room with other partners.132 Only from 2012, with the onset of the Syrian civil war and the prospect of Russia’s shrinking regional influence, would relations once again significantly improve. China proved less unreliable and more significant, driven by the far-reaching compatibility between China’s vigorous quest for energy security, and Iran’s search for demand stability and military technology. On nuclear cooperation, Rouhani had earlier noted that the Chinese were ‘perhaps slightly easier to work with’ since ‘the Russians have certain sensitivities about us that the Chinese do not have to the same extent’.133 Justifying Iran’s involvement in the EU3 negotiations, Rouhani also believed that ‘if we go to the Security Council because political negotiations have failed [as opposed to being referred for violating UN resolutions]… a strong country like China can argue at the Security Council that Iran was negotiating and must return to the path of negotiations’.134 ‘Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China’, Kayhan’s hardline editor Hossein Shariatmadari noted, while another Iranian observer wrote that ‘China’s emergence as an economic power created a strategic opening for Iran, enabling it to face Western pressure’.135 In 1997, when improved ties with the US accompanied China’s reduced cooperation with Iran, Beijing imported 2.7 million metric tons of crude oil from Tehran. But in 2003, that figure rose to over 12 million metric tons.136 Four years before, in 1999, the US’ reportedly accidental bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy had again precipitated US-Chinese tensions. In 2000, President Khatami visited China, a gesture conspicuously reciprocated in April 2002—just after Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech—in Jiang Zemin’s visit to the Islamic Republic, the first by a Chinese paramount leader. In March 2004, Iran signed an unprecedented $20 billion contract to supply China’s state-owned Zhuhai Zhenrong Corporation 132 Kozhanov 2015, 15; a Middle East-based Russian diplomat told me: ‘Russia is not a strategic ally of Iran, or even of anyone else. It is friends with them all. As Peter the Great once said, Russia’s only ally is its army.’ Interview, 21 February 2019. 133 Rouhani 2005, 25. 134 Ibid., 26–7. 135 Cited in Robin Wright, ‘Iran’s new alliance with China could cost U.S. leverage’, WP, 17 November 2004; Shariatinia 2012, 192. 136 Garver 2006, 266 (table 9.5).

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with liquefied natural gas (LNG) for 25 years starting from 2008.137 That November, Iran signed an even larger $70–100 billion agreement to supply gas for three decades in exchange for Sinopec—Asia’s largest refiner—investing in the development of the Yadavaran oil field, a deal finalized in 2007.138 With Ahmadinejad in power and foreign sanctions mounting, Iran effectively gave China a monopoly of its energy sector, including highly sensitive upstream investments. In December 2006, the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) signed a $16 billion memorandum of understanding to develop the North Pars gas field, just before China became the world’s leading net importer of gas in 2007.139 In 2009, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) replaced France’s Total as the only remaining foreign stakeholder in Phase 11 of the South Pars gas field, the world’s largest.140 That same year, as China’s oil import dependence peaked at 50 percent, CNPC inked a preliminary agreement concerning the North and South Azadegan fields.141 Between 2007 and 2009, China’s total investment pledges in Iran amounted to $48 billion, far ahead of any other country.142 Iran was the only major oil exporter in the Persian Gulf outside of the US’ sphere of influence, and was hence unlikely to disrupt supplies in the event of Sino-US tensions. Given its own underdeveloped refining capacity, Iran imported a third of its refined petrol from China in the same period, mostly via intermediaries.143 By 2011, Iran accounted for 11 percent of China’s oil imports in value terms, and 25 percent of Iran’s crude exports went to China.144 In September 2013, China surpassed the US as the world’s largest net

137 Zhao Renfeng, ‘Iran prefers China for oil exploration projects’, China Daily, 9

November 2004. 138 ‘China, Iran sign biggest oil and gas deal’, China Daily, 31 October 2004; Garver 2006, 271; Parisa Hafezi, ‘Iran, China’s Sinopec sign oil-field deal’, Reuters, 9 December 2007. 139 Wang Yu, ‘CNOOC to develop Iranian gas field’, China Daily, 22 December 2006. 140 ‘South Pars Phase 11 shelved’, Financial Tribune, 27 October 2014. 141 ‘Iran, China sign major deal to develop South Azadegan’, BBC Monitoring via Comtex, 29 September 2009. 142 Garver 2016, 195. 143 ‘China “selling petrol to Iran”’, Aljazeera, 23 September 2009. 144 Calculations based on ITC data.

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importer of oil.145 While Iran’s share of China’s oil imports in value terms fluctuated between 9 and 18 percent in the period spanning 2000–2011, China’s share of Iran’s oil exports rose from 10.5 percent in 2001 to 36 percent in 2013 (and a record 55 percent in 2015).146 Similarly, in 2013, China became Iran’s largest petrochemicals market. In terms of trade, China surpassed Japan in 2006 and then the EU (mainly Germany) by 2010 to become Iran’s largest partner.147 In 2009, Iran opened its first overseas commerce center, in Shanghai.148 In 2005, China represented 10 percent ($8.8 billion) of Iran’s total merchandise trade. By 2013, that figure reached 26 percent ($31 billion).149 In addition, Iran joined the Beijing-headquartered Asia–Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) in 2005. This extension of its bilateral space cooperation with China begun in 1991 included the development of satellites and, reportedly, multistage ballistic missiles to put them into orbit.150 Yet problems abounded even with Beijing. Iran ranked among China’s three largest souces of oil, but Saudi Arabia supplied roughly a fifth of China’s imports between 2008 and 2013—easily twice Iran’s average share.151 With sanctions peaking in 2012–2013, Iran’s share dropped to eight percent with Russia displacing it as China’s third largest oil supplier.152 For reasons including sanctions, Chinese energy firms seeking stakes in the US’ rising shale energy sector, and technical-contractual issues, Chinese enthusiasm dampened over several Iranian energy projects,

145 ‘China is now the world’s largest net importer of petroleum and other liquid fuels’, EIA, 24 March 2014. 146 Calculations based on ITC data. 147 Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Geoff Dyer, ‘China overtakes EU as Iran’s top trade

partner’, FT , 8 February 2010; China-Iran trade also partly goes through the UAE, which explains discrepant figures. According to Iran–China Chamber of Commerce deputy head Majid-Reza Hariri, over half of Iran’s trade with the UAE, valued at $15b in 2009–2010 included China-bound transshipments, cited in Liu and Wu 2010. 148 ‘Iran opens first overseas commerce center’, Tehran Times, 21 November 2009. 149 IMF DOTS. 150 Garver 2016, 197; established in 2003, APSCO also included China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Mongolia, Peru and later, Turkey. 151 Calculations based on ITC data. 152 ‘China’, EIA, 14 May 2015, https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis_inc

ludes/countries_long/China/china.pdf.

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prompting withdrawals or contract rescissions.153 Having diversified its energy suppliers, China needed Iran less than Iran needed China. Furthermore, Beijing’s development imperatives such as foreign direct investment and advanced technologies lay with developed countries.154 Then Iranian ambassador to Beijing, Javad Mansuri, fretted that ‘the Chinese don’t think trade with Iran is going to get any higher than it is, and as such prefer to align themselves with the West’s policies’.155 One effect of this asymmetric relationship and of the sanctions-necessitated barter arrangement was China’s flooding of Iranian bazaars with cheap consumer goods. Finally, despite Ahmadinejad’s ‘Look East’ tilt—Tehran’s hardliners unlike the reformists consistently supported stronger ties with China— Beijing refrained from broaching a bilateral alliance and preferred instead to focus high-level talks on resolving Iran’s nuclear issue. While China’s intent may have been opportunistic at a time when sanctions raised the costs of the West doing business with Iran, bilateral relations nonetheless helped stopgap Iran’s worsening economic and diplomatic crises. India constituted a third pillar in Iran’s eastward turn. Both civilizations share common origins in the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European peoples, and the period spanning the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire (the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries) accompanied the emergence of an Indo-Persian political and culturallinguistic realm (again, founded by Turkic tribes). Furthermore, India’s Shi’a community ranks among some of the world’s largest. Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and President Rafsanjani first exchanged visits after India liberalized its economy in 1991, relations which Khatami and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee then expanded. The resulting Tehran and Delhi Declarations in 2001 and 2003 respectively encompassed broad-ranging cooperation including in energy, transit, and defense.156

153 Najmeh Bozorgmehr, ‘China ties lose lustre as Iran refocuses on trade with west’, FT , 23 September 2015. 154 See Ch. IV, ‘China’s peaceful development road’, Information Office of the State

Council of the PRC, 22 December 2005 http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005/Dec/ 152669.htm. 155 ‘Tasvib-e qat’name elzaman be ma’ana-ye ejra-ye an nist’, ILNA, 13 June 2010. 156 For the respective texts, see https://mea.gov.in/in-focus-article.htm?20048/

Tehran+Declaration and https://mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/7544/The+Rep ublic+of+India+and+the+Islamic+Republic+of+Iran+qu.

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Like China, the world’s second most populous nation constituted a crucial energy export market for Iran. Between 2005 and 2013, bilateral merchandise trade ballooned. While India represented just under two percent of Iran’s total trade in 2005, by 2013, the figure would rise to over 10 percent, much of it comprising Iranian energy exports.157 Before sanctions peaked in 2012, Iran had become India’s second largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, covering 16 percent of India’s needs, while India represented Iran’s third largest oil client, or 13 percent of the latter’s oil exports.158 Like China, India exported refined petroleum products to Iran, although these decreased from 2009 under US pressure.159 Iran and India’s interests also converged in post-invasion Afghanistan, where both sought to counter Pakistan and its backing for the WahhabiDeobandi brand of Sunni extremism embodied by the Taliban. Likewise, Iran allowed India to circumvent Pakistan in accessing Afghanistan and Central Asia via Chabahar port, and the Zaranj-Delaram Afghan route upgraded in 2009. Iran and India similarly increased military interaction during the decade. Having helped readapt Iran’s Russian-built Kilo-class submarine batteries for warm waters in the 1990s, India’s assistance reportedly included the servicing and upgrading of some of Iran’s other Russianmade systems such as the MiG-29 and T-72. In March 2006, both countries conducted their second joint naval exercise to improve sea-lane security, coinciding with President Bush’s visit to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.160 Rumors also abounded of India’s potential use of Iranian bases if war erupted with Pakistan.161 Yet, what ultimately moderated India’s outlook concerning Iran was the imperative of balancing its own relations with the Gulf monarchies, Israel (a major arms supplier), and especially the US, with which India would finalize a landmark civil nuclear agreement in 2008, allowing the US to resume nuclear cooperation after a three-decade moratorium.162

157 IMF DOTS. 158 Sara Vakhshouri, ‘Iran-India energy ties may take off’, Al-Monitor, 5 March 2014. 159 Kumaraswamy 2013, 295–6. 160 The first joint naval exercise had taken place in March 2003 during Khatami’s presidency, and at a time when US presence was increasing in the Gulf. 161 Dasgupta 2004. 162 Shidore 2014, 423–4, 429–33.

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Graph 9.1 Bilateral trade (imports and exports) as % of Iran’s total trade, 2005–2013 (Source IMF DOTS)

Hence, although it underscored Iran’s right to civilian nuclear power and sought to shield Iran’s energy sector from non-UN sanctions, India still voted against Iran over the latter’s IAEA nuclear safeguards noncompliance (September 2005). It also voted for the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council (February 2006), and for a US-sponsored IAEA resolution censuring Iran over the Fordow revelations (November 2009). ‘Look East’ similarly entailed engagement with and within regional multilateral organizations. In 2005 Iran joined APSCO, and in 2006, it was a founding member of the revamped Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA) headquartered in Tehran. In 2007, Iran acquired observer status with unanimous backing in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), while from 2012, Ahmadinejad (and then his successor, Rouhani, until 2016) presided over NAM. While Iran was also actively involved with other intergovernmental or regional organizations such as the OIC, OPEC, and ECO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which Iran joined as observer in 2005 would prove the most important from Iran’s grand strategic perspective (see Sect. 10.2). On the whole, ‘Look East’ attended palpable shifts in Iran’s security, diplomatic, and trade policies. While tensions over the nuclear program sapped the potential strength of Iran’s alliances, they prompted dramatic changes in trade patterns. As a percentage of Iran’s total external trade, the EU’s share (especially Germany, France and Italy) dropped from

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34 percent in 2005 to a mere 6.3 percent by 2013, while China and India alone, excluding Russia, jointly rose from 12 percent in 2005 to 37 percent in 2013 (Graph 9.1).163 In that latter year, China alone represented over a quarter of Iran’s total external trade. Consistent with theoretical expectations then, under initial conditions of low perceived threat, a revisionist Iran didn’t just prioritize soft power expansionism in its nuclear program and Iraq. It also did so far more broadly across-the-board, including with the global south, the ‘Eastern powers’, and a raft of intergovernmental organizations.

9.4

Ahmadinejad and Permissive Revisionism

As Khatami’s presidency came to a close, the US found itself increasingly mired in both Afghanistan and Iraq, significantly alleviating Tehran’s earlier concerns of invasion. Iran’s economy was also improving, with both rising oil prices and exports creating an unprecedented influx of revenues into the state coffers (Graphs 3.4–3.7). The relatively improving strategic environment combined with the first revisionist government since Khomeini’s death corresponded to Permissive Revisionism, which should lead to soft expansionism and diversionary posturing. Indeed, alterations in both structural conditions and agency for only the second time (after 1988–1989) preceded dramatic adjustments. As a matter of policy, Iran pursued unambiguously assertive expansionism. Ahmadinejad’s foreign (and arguably security) policy centerpiece revolved around a nuclear nationalism predicated on confrontation, itself a response to the failure of the EU3 negotiations. Having evolved from a legal-technical issue (Iran’s NPT-enshrined right), it now morphed, with across-the-board domestic consensus, into the symbol of national honor, prestige, and identity. Nuclear advancement spoke to Iran’s claims to independence and justice, and by implication its status conception, corresponding to autonomy and collective self-esteem interests. Nuclear grandstanding and brinkmanship, which ebbed and flowed with external pressures and negotiations, likewise aimed at enhancing Iran’s image and influence, even at the cost of economic well-being. By offering to share nuclear technology, Iran perhaps also sought to instigate bandwagoning.

163 IMF DOTS.

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Finally, even without an actual arsenal, landmark nuclear advances still added to an internal balancing serving survival interests. To be sure, Rafsanjani and Khatami—accommodationists—presided over key aspects of the nuclear program’s development. However, Ahmadinejad dramatically reframed the issue and presided over the program’s explosive expansion. By May 2013, Natanz alone had 13,555 fully installed centrifuges and 8960 kg of 5 percent-enriched uranium (LEU).164 Furthermore, while the Supreme Leader ultimately makes these decisions, Ahmadinejad’s high-tension nuclear revisionism is evidence that despite his own misgivings about Khatami’s EU3 negotiations, Khamenei respects the consensus created around presidential preferences, personally monopolizing only the issue of direct negotiations with the US. When a likeminded president came along, Iran’s nuclear stance changed accordingly. In post-Saddam Iraq, Ahmadinejad’s government pursued a soft expansionism in Baghdad’s political corridors initially begun under Khatami’s presidency, before penetrating a broad spectrum of areas including Iraq’s media, economy, power grid, and Shi’a seminaries. Iranian influence extended to extremist Shi’a militias, parlayed into hard power to spur the US’ exit and deter it from attacking Iran as the nuclear stand-off intensified. Given Saddam’s legacy, Iran’s leaders regardless of faction acted in Iraq to guarantee their own state’s survival first and foremost, with knock-on effects for the other three objective interests. Elsewhere, to confront ‘the present order of world domination and unilateralism’, Tehran embarked on a conspicuous campaign to create an ‘international coalition’, expand its sphere of influence, and build up situations of strength. Iranian diplomacy and trade focused on the global south, the ‘Eastern’ powers, and various multilateral organizations. Soft expansionism pivoted on moral superiority and collective self-esteem with Iran as the prime mover within this revolutionary resistance front and reimagined international order. But it also carried implications for autonomy and—with international sanctions looming on the horizon— both economic well-being and even survival. Ahmadinejad likewise launched into sustained bouts of diversionary posturing, some considered gratuitous even by hardliners, as the ruling regime faced a growing crisis of legitimacy which would peak by the

164 IAEA GOV/2013/27, 4.

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2009 protests. Furthermore, his government grandly touted Iran’s space and nuclear achievements and future intentions, especially in relation to uranium enrichment—a matter of considerable domestic pride and international consternation—and threatened to abandon the NPT and disregard the IAEA. To be sure, Ahmadinejad’s administration also offered direct talks with the US in 2006, and brooked them in Baghdad in 2007 and again that year with Brussels’ foreign policy high representative. Yet, the first two instances lacked gravitas and even projected condescension. And despite the Larijani-Solana talks in 2007, Ahmadinejad rejected his own nuclear negotiator’s offer for limited enrichment suspension, and even sidestepped Larijani’s brief by appointing parallel envoys. Hence, while they may have belied some degree of flexibility within the neoconservative government, none of these instances ultimately approximated appeasement. Low structural pressures from the start of Ahmadinejad’s first term again provides an ‘easy case’ for the agency, as NCR would also uncontroversially assert. Indeed, the US’ undermining of Khatami’s accommodationism and the disappointment of the EU3 talks externally contributed to the domestic rise of revisionism. Still, the dynamic-integrative model advances further by positing likely strategies from the specified confluence of situational and dispositional factors. Revisionist preferences steered Iran toward confrontation with the West. Iran’s emphasis on independence and justice, key ideational constituents of its identity, left unmistakable imprints on those same preferences especially regarding the nuclear issue. Neoconservatism combined with a perceived reduction in external threat derived from structural incentives (Iran’s growing power vis-à-vis the US) precluded retrenchment in favor of expansion overseas and at home, the latter as reflected in Ahmadinejad’s inordinate fiscal and economic policies. Growing domestic problems under permissive structural conditions likewise provided tempting grounds for relatively low-cost diversionary posturing. Had Rafsanjani won the 2005 elections—most ‘known’ bets were on him—the resulting accommodationist administration would at least have focused more on salvaging the nuclear negotiations and reducing tensions

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with the US, as Rafsanjani himself told CNN .165 With structural opportunities clearly in evidence, engagement, if not retrenchment, would likely have been his first resort—at least for as long as the US and EU3 reciprocated. By implication, engagement would logically have portended less confrontation (if not more cooperation) with US forces in neighboring Iraq, as well as a more balanced diplomacy without Tehran categorically snubbing the West. Here, high structural incentives—not just low structural constraints—may perhaps catalyze more assertive behavior as realists contend, but accommodationist agency would plausibly have molded it toward engagement rather than a confrontation-oriented expansionism. Finally, an accommodationist government might have better deflected, or at least mitigated, the nuclear-related external pressures facing Iran by 2009–2010, illustrating the independent effects of agency on structure typically ignored by realist perspectives.

References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements ElBaradei, Mohamed, The age of deception: Nuclear diplomacy in treacherous times (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2013/27, 22 May 2013, https://www. iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2013-27.pdf ———, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2006/14, 4 February 2006, https://www.iaea.org/ sites/default/files/gov2006-14.pdf Mousavian, Seyyed Hossein, The Iranian nuclear crisis: a memoir (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2012). Obama, Barack, A promised land (NY: Crown, 2020).

165 ‘If Americans are sincere in the cooperation, working with Iran, I think the time is right to open a new chapter in our relations with the United States’, in ‘Iranians choosing new president’, CNN , 17 June 2005.

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Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, ‘Iran’s assessment of the Iraq crisis and the post-9/11 international order’, in Ramesh Thakur & Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, eds, The Iraq crisis and world order: structural, institutional and normative challenges (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2006): 134–60. Ehteshami, Anoushiravan & Mahjoob Zweiri, Iran and the rise of its Neoconservatives (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007). Eisenstadt, Michael, Michael Knights & Ahmed Ali, ‘Iran’s influence in Iraq: countering Tehran’s whole-of-government approach’, Policy Focus 111 (Washington, DC: WINEP, April 2011). Felter, Joseph & Brian Fishman, ‘Iranian strategy in Iraq: politics and “other means”’, Occasional Paper Series, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 13 October 2008, https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2010/06/Iranian-Str ategy-in-Iraq.pdf. Fite, Brandon & Chloe Coughlin-Schulte, ‘U.S. and Iranian strategic competition: the impact of Latin America, Africa, and the peripheral states’, CSIS, 9 July 2013 http://csis.org/files/publication/130709_Iran_Latinamerica_oth erstates.pdf. Garver, John W., China and Iran: ancient partners in a post-imperial world (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). ———, ‘China and Iran: expanding cooperation under conditions of US domination’, in Niv Horesh, ed., Toward well-oiled relations?: China’s presence in the Middle East following the Arab Spring (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016):180–205. ———, ‘China–Iran relations: cautious friendship with America’s nemesis’, China Report 49.1 (2013): 69–88. ———, ‘Is China playing a dual game in Iran?’, TWQ 34.1 (2011): 75–88. Hunter, Shireen T., Iran’s foreign policy in the post-Soviet era: resisting the new international order (California: Praeger, 2010). Johnson, Stephen, ‘Iran’s influence in the Americas: executive summary’, CSIS, February 2012. Kazemzadeh, Masoud, ‘Intra-elite factionalism and the 2004 Majles elections in Iran’, MES 44 (2008). Kozhanov, Nikolay, ‘Russia’s relations with Iran: dialogue without commitments’, Policy Focus 120 (Washington, DC: WINEP, 2012). ———, ‘Understanding the revitalization of Russian-Iranian relations’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 2015. Kumaraswamy, P. R., ‘India’s energy dilemma with Iran’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 36.2 (2013): 288–96. Liu, Jun & Wu Lei, ‘Key issues in China-Iran relations’, Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia) 4.1 (2010): 40–57.

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Maleki, Abbas, ‘Iran’, in S. Frederick Starr, ed., The new silk roads: transport and trade in Greater Central Asia, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, 2007: 167–92. Milani, Mohsen M., ‘Meet Me in Baghdad’, Foreign Affairs, 20 September 2010. Mottaki, Manouchehr, ‘Iran’s foreign policy under President Ahmadinejad’, Discourse: An Iranian Quarterly 8.2 (2009): 1–15. Murray, Donette, US foreign policy and Iran: American-Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution (Oxon: Routledge, 2010). Naji, Kasra, Ahmadinejad: the secret history of Iran’s radical leader (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). Ostovar, Afshon, Vanguard of the Imam: religion, politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Rahnema, Ali, Superstition as ideology in Iranian politics: from Majlesi to Ahmadinejad (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Samii, Abbas William (Bill), ‘The changing landscape of party politics in Iran: a case study’, Vaseteh: The Journal of the European Society for Iranian Studies 1.1 (Winter 2005a), http://www.payvand.com/news/06/apr/1014.html. ———, ‘The nearest and dearest enemy: Iran after the Iraq war’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 9.3 (September 2005b): 27–51. Sanger, David, The inheritance: the world Obama confronts and the challenges to American power (NY: Harmony Books, 2009). Pollack, Kenneth M., The Persian puzzle: the conflict between Iran and America (NY: Random House 2004). Shidore, Sarang, ‘Collateral damage: Iran in a reconfigured Indian grand strategy’, in Kanti Bajpai, Saira Basit & V. Krishnappa, eds, India’s grand strategy: history, theory, cases (New Delhi: Routledge, 2014). Sohrabi, Naghmeh, ‘Conservatives, neoconservatives and reformists: Iran after the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad’, CCMES, Middle East Brief 4 (April 2006). Solmirano, Carina & Pieter D. Wezeman, ‘Military spending and arms procurement in the Gulf States’, SIPRI Factsheet, October 2010 http://books.sipri. org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1010.pdf. Zibakalam, Sadegh, ‘Iranian nationalism and the nuclear issue’, Bitter Lemons International, 5 January 2006 http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/ inside.php?id=465.

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CHAPTER 10

Precarious Under Pressure, 2009–13

By 2009, Iran’s isolation and the progressive spate of UN sanctions, exacerbated by scrutiny of the nuclear program’s ‘possible military dimensions’ and the Fordow disclosure, struck a tipping point in Iran’s threat calculus. Moreover, from 2008 to 2009 the economy was in recession with GDP per capita registering negative growth for the first time since 2001, and global oil prices were on a precipitous, 35 percent year-on-year average decline, sharply slashing oil revenues (graphs 3.4–3.7). In objective terms, relative power changes were not as clear-cut (Graphs 3.2–3.3). Iran’s capabilities declined slightly between 2008 and 2010 while US power increased slightly in 2010 (for the first time since 2005). However, Iran’s objective relative capabilities also matched Pakistan’s to become the second regional conventional power after Turkey, and surpassed the latter altogether in 2011 (the year of Iran’s highest registered oil revenues). Back home, an unprecedented political firestorm was about to break, further destabilizing the ruling regime. Yet, as we see below, once the dust settled, and despite the infighting between Ahmadinejad’s circle and traditional conservative power centers, political dominance on the whole remained with the revisionists. This blend of circumstances corresponds to Restrictive Revisionism. With threats perceived to be rising, revisionist Iran shifted away from soft expansionism and diversionary posturing. While Ahmadinejad briefly

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_10

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flirted with appeasement, Iran during his reelected tenure ultimately prioritized a balancing strategy (though not hard expansionism) revolving around China, Russia, and the SCO, and subversion through measures including cyberattacks and assassinations. ∗ ∗ ∗ In the March 2008 8th Majles elections, while the neo- and traditional conservatives ran under a coalition known as Jebhe-ye Mottahed-e Osulgerayan (United Principlists’ Front)—the former having been burnt when they ran alone, overconfident, in the municipal elections—Ahmadinejad’s supporters won only 60 seats in contrast to the traditional conservatives’ 140.1 In May 2008, Ali Larijani was elected Majles speaker, further increasing Parliament’s will and ability to constrain the executive. Predictably, Parliament challenged the president’s ministerial appointments, dismissing Interior Minister Ali Kordan in August 2008, and rejecting four of Ahmadinejad’s ministerial appointments in 2009. It also questioned his economic management as well as the 2008 budget, which had been directly proposed by the president’s office after Ahmadinejad unprecedentedly dismantled the Management and Planning Organization in 2007. Parliament moreover attacked his foreign policy. Misgivings over the latter were such that back in June 2006, Khamenei had decreed the creation of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations led by ex-Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, likely to remedy Ahmadinejad’s diplomatic inexperience and restrain or possibly even bypass his appointees, at least on sensitive issues. Ahmadinejad’s populism and disregard for many senior regime figures brushed new heights, prompting several high-profile resignations from government.2 Disagreements over his policy also led Ahmadinejad to fire several ministers and top officials including Interior Minister Mostafa Purmohammadi, Economic and Finance Minister Davud Danesh-Ja’afari, and Central Bank Governor Tahmasb Mazaheri, all in 2008 alone. Ahmadinejad’s ill-conceived redistributive policies exacerbated Iran’s economic crisis and made life harder for those he purported to defend, and his pork-barrel petro-populism, already short-sighted and simplistic, 1 Mohammadi 2014, 20. 2 Besides Larijani, others included Central Bank Governor Ebrahim Sheibani and

Industry and Mines Minister Ali-Reza Tahmasbi.

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menaced the conservatives’ long-established bazaari economic interests.3 Despite soaring oil prices and revenues, production stagnated, and increased domestic consumption, encouraged by subsidies, ate into exports which in turn diluted state revenues. In June 2007, the government’s decision to ration petrol triggered violent protests countrywide, including against service stations. Inflation and unemployment skyrocketed even before international sanctions seriously kicked in, and the government swiftly depleted the Oil Stabilization Fund, set-up by Khatami, to finance its own budget deficits.4 In the lead-up to the June 2009 presidential elections, the Guardian Council approved only four of the 471 prospective candidates including Ahmadinejad, Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, Mehdi Karrubi, and Mir-Hossein Musavi. During the campaigning, the contenders attacked Ahmadinejad’s misguided economic policy and excessively antagonistic foreign stance, including his Holocaust denial. In the event, an unprecedented 85 percent of eligible voters turned out. Despite evidence that reformists had mobilized in force to press their vote, especially in Tehran, the Interior Ministry under IRGC veteran and presidential ally Sadeq Mahsuli declared Ahmadinejad the winner with 63 percent of the ballots—even higher than his 2005 showing—against Musavi’s 34 percent.5 Khamenei swiftly supported the results, calling it divine will.6 This was the first time that he, as Supreme Leader, had directly entered the fray and taken sides—certainly after the voting results if not (overtly) before, and even when faced with the pushback about to erupt. The alleged ballot fraud brought millions of protesters into the streets a day after, giving rise to the gravest domestic unrest since 1979. Demands to recount the vote evolved, for the first time, into protesters chanting ‘death to Khamenei!’, alongside ‘Ya [Imam] Hossein, Mir-Hossein [Musavi]’. The already simmering tensions between Iran’s ‘Islamic’ and ‘Republic’ components reached boiling point. The proreformist ‘Green Movement’, as it came to be called, took part of the fight online and prompted retaliatory brutality and arrests in a to-and-fro that

3 Baktiari 2007. 4 Amuzegar 2008, 54. 5 Boroujerdi and Rahimkhani 2018, 98–99. 6 Cited in Rahnema 2011, 24.

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lasted months. And from February 2011, Musavi, Karrubi, and Musavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard would remain under long-term house arrest. Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the hardliners linked the protests to foreign powers. The IRGC warned darkly of a velvet revolution by the reformists and stepped up its campaign against the ‘soft war’ (jang-e narm) prosecuted by their supposed foreign backers. The IRGC’s structure at the same time underwent changes in response to rising perceived threats. Its Intelligence Department became a full-fledged organization with a head directly appointed by the Supreme Leader. Its Air Force morphed into the Aerospace Force, prioritizing missile defense. And the Basij, which had recently integrated into the IRGC, merged with the IRGC’s land forces.7 Meanwhile, a large number of clerics supported Musavi, including, most authoritatively, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. In a 17 July 2009 Friday sermon, Expediency Council Head Rafsanjani questioned the election results and called for detained protesters to be released, openly contradicting Khamenei’s stance.8 Former president Khatami suggested a referendum to settle the issue, and even Rezaei, the only other conservative candidate, protested the results. If regime legitimacy could be questioned, so could Iran’s self-image as political paragon and, by extension, its claims to the leadership of the Ummah. The factional divide since the IRP’s days in the 1980s had never seen higher stakes. Despite the crackdowns and brief unity against the reformists, Ahmadinejad’s post-reelection relations with the conservatives hardly improved, and the bickering became increasingly public. In July, he named as first vice-president Esfandyar Rahim-Mashaei, known for his anti-clerical, Messianist, and nationalist views. This riled many conservatives, and Khamenei’s opposition forced Rahim-Mashaei’s resignation after only one week. Ahmadinejad himself swung toward Iranian nationalism at the clergy’s expense, serially adulating the Achaemenid Cyrus the Great, promoting celebration of (pre-Islamic) Nowruz, and promulgating an indigenous Iranian rather than an Arabized brand of Islam—an ideological mishmash conservative rivals later labeled the ‘deviant current’ (jaryan-e enherafi).

7 ‘Taghirat-e mohemm va tajdid-e sakhtar: Sepah amade mishavad’, BBC Persian, 8 October 2009. 8 Ehteshami 2017, 79–80.

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Ahmadinejad also questioned the clergy’s amassed wealth and control over social mores and called for separation between state and mosque. At the same time, thickening criticism from clerics opposed to both elected and unelected pillars of the regime, including the Supreme Leader’s authority, prompted Khamenei to issue a sweeping fatwa affirming himself as the legitimate representative of both the Prophet and the Mahdi.9 From 2010, tensions between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei worsened (as with all second presidential terms except Khamenei’s own), possibly driven by the president’s desire to step out of the Supreme Leader’s shadow and patronage. In April 2011, Ahmadinejad fired Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi. Khamenei reinstated the latter, prompting Ahmadinejad to stay away from work for 11 days. Tensions between the populist president on the one hand, and the Supreme Leader and other branches of government (particularly Parliament) on the other reached such a point that Khamenei even raised the possibility, ‘if required’, of abandoning the direct-vote presidential system for a parliamentary one.10 Traditional conservatives and their allies in the IRGC and other revisionist centers of power who had previously supported Ahmadinejad serried ranks with Khamenei. Even Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi distanced himself from Ahmadinejad over the latter’s refusal to part ways with RahimMashaei. Ahmadinejad’s divisiveness moreover brought some moderate principlists and reformists onto the same side. During the 9th Majles elections in 2012, conservatives and principlists who no longer backed Ahmadinejad took 148 seats altogether, challenging the president and his remaining neoconservative allies.11 The Monotheism and Justice Front (Jebhe-ye Towhid va Edalat ) affiliated with Rahim-Mashaei won only 17 seats.12 Yet, despite the intrabloc rifts, the revisionists on the whole continued to dominate grand strategic decisionmaking between 2009 and 2013—and again, most explosively, on the nuclear dossier.

9 Geneive Abdo and Arash Aramesh, ‘The widening rift among Iran’s clerics’, NYT , 4 August 2010. 10 Khamenei, 16 October 2011. 11 Ehteshami 2017, 63. 12 ‘Arayesh-e siyasi-ye Majles-e nohhom’, Jam-e Jam, 6 May 2012.

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10.1 Nuclear Negotiations: The Challenges of ‘Revisionist’ Appeasement If Tehran intended to reduce diplomatic tensions with the West amid growing external pressures and the most serious domestic protests since 1979, the upcoming October 2009 talks in Geneva with the P5+1 provided the stage. Not only did US Undersecretary of State William Burns participate directly but he also met Saeed Jalili one-on-one for 45 minutes, although Jalili afterward downplayed its significance.13 Moreover, Ahmadinejad appeared to agree in principle to an IAEA proposal to transfer four-fifths (1.2 tons) of its LEU to Russia for enrichment to 20 percent and then to France for conversion into fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor.14 By transferring out LEU, Iran would have less fuel to enrich toward creating a single bomb. At one point, AEOI Chief AliAkbar Salehi even offered to transfer the LEU directly to the US.15 Iran had been insisting on nuclear fuel provision for the TRR’s production of medical isotopes to justify more significant concessions on its part, and had turned to the IAEA for assistance just before June’s disputed elections—allowing the US and Russia to table the current offer.16 However, on Khamenei’s instructions, Ahmadinejad’s government found itself obliged to announce it would transfer out the LEU in three batches of 400 kg, retaining them on Iranian soil meanwhile, and only after it received the fuel rods.17 The October agreement collapsed, and Ahmadinejad’s solo gambit failed. Ironically, hardliners, centrists, and reformists alike (the latter still seething from the hijacked elections), possibly also to deny him credit, now accused Ahmadinejad of selling out on Iranian interests for political gain.18 For the Khatami-era accommodationists, Ahmadinejad’s move cynically smacked of their own nuclear

13 Glenn Kessler, ‘Iran, major powers reach agreement on series of points’, WP, 2 October 2009. 14 Mousavian 2012, 354–8; ElBaradei 2011, 301. 15 ElBaradei 2011, 307. 16 Parsi 2017, 88. 17 ElBaradei 2011, 310. 18 Mousavian 2012, 359–60; Michael Slackman, ‘Iran’s politics stand in the way of a

nuclear deal’, NYT , 2 November 2009.

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diplomacy. Khamenei meanwhile accused the Americans of ‘hiding a dagger behind their back’.19 In response to the November 2009 IAEA resolution criticizing Iran’s rejection of the exchange proposal and demanding it suspend construction of the Fordow facility, Tehran threatened reduced cooperation, while Ahmadinejad instructed the AEOI to build 10 new enrichment facilities. In early February 2010, Iran officially began enrichment to 20 percent in Natanz, and on the 11 February anniversary of the Revolution, Tehran claimed it had produced a quantity, later confirmed by the IAEA.20 At the same time, Iran unveiled a new and more powerful SLV, the twostage Simorgh, which harnessed four Shahab-3 missile engines unlike the Safir’s single engine; Tehran also launched a Kavoshgar-3 rocket carrying a live payload into space for the first time. AEOI Chief Salehi suggested that Iran was still prepared to forego nuclear fuel production for the TRR if foreign supply alternatives were forthcoming and without ‘illogical conditions’.21 Iran’s threat perceptions continued rising palpably. Rumors of a possible strike by Israel—which had destroyed Syria’s partially completed al-Kibar nuclear facility in September 2007, and quietly received GBU-28 bunker-buster bombs from the US in late 2009—were gaining currency and would peak toward the end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency. According to then Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel nearly attacked on three occasions between 2010 and 2012.22 Tensions were also thickening over the nuclear program’s ‘possible military dimensions’, underscored by the IAEA’s incoming chief, Yukiya Amano, who was discernably more critical of Iran than ElBaradei had been. In its April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the US declared it was reducing the role of nuclear weapons, but singled out ‘states that possess nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations’—North Korea and Iran—for a possible nuclear strike even if they used conventional or chemical and biological

19 Farhad Pouladi and Jay Deshmukh, ‘Khamenei says U.S. “hiding a dagger’ in talks with Iran’, AFP, 3 November 2009. 20 IAEA GOV/2010/10. 21 Interview with Ali-Akbar Salehi, Aljazeera, 12 February 2010. 22 Jodi Rudoren, ‘Israel came close to attacking Iran, ex-defense minister says’, NYT ,

21 August 2015.

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weapons.23 Khamenei bristled at Obama’s ‘atomic threats against Iranian people’, accusing Washington of wanting to ‘renew its hellish dominance over Iran’.24 Still unbeknown to Tehran then, the ‘Stuxnet’ virus was already putting out a proportion of Iran’s centrifuges. In May 2010, after months of diplomacy, Iran, Erdo˘gan’s Turkey, and Lula da Silva’s Brazil jointly announced a modified fuel exchange proposal, according to which Iran agreed to escrow the required 1.2 tons of LEU, all at once, on Turkish soil. In return, Iran’s negotiating counterparts would, in the framework of the IAEA, transfer 120 kg of 20 percent-enriched uranium fuel for Iran’s TRR within a year.25 Turkey and Brazil were at the time Security Council members, on good terms with Iran, and reflected the latter’s pursuit of support outside the West. Furthermore, Iran’s fragmented elite accepted the deal this time, with 234 out of Parliament’s 290 members including Speaker Larijani voting in favor.26 The next day, however, the P5+1 announced agreement on a new UN resolution. By this time, Iran’s LEU stock had increased from 1.6 to 2.5 tons.27 In June, the Security Council passed Resolution 1929 with Russia and China’s support (only Turkey and Brazil voted against; Lebanon abstained), noting the Fordow facility’s disclosure, Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent fissile purity, and the 17 May agreement failing to address core issues. The resolution targeted transactions with Iranian banks, access to financial services and insurance, the Iranian government’s shipping lines, servicing and fueling of Iranian vessels, key members of the IRGC and its affiliate companies, and Iran’s ballistic missile program.28 Several other governments including, critically, the EU, followed with unilateral sanctions, significantly impacting Iran’s energy and financial sectors. In response, Tehran deferred nuclear negotiations and subjected resumption to additional conditions. Iranian officials, dismayed, criticized

23 Department of Defense, ‘Nuclear Posture Review Report’, 2010, 16. 24 Nazila Fathi and David E. Sanger, ‘Decrying U.S., Iran begins war games’, NYT ,

21 April 2010. 25 For the full text, see https://fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/joint-decl.pdf. 26 Parsi 2017, 105. 27 ElBaradei 2011, 313. 28 UN Security Council Resolution 1929, 9 June 2010, https://www.un.org/ga/sea

rch/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1929%282010%29.

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both China and Russia in unusually harsh tones. The foreign policy significance of the nuclear issue was such that in December 2010, Ahmadinejad abruptly fired Foreign Minister Mottaki and replaced him with AEOI Chief Salehi. In August 2011, Tehran accepted a new Russian proposal entailing mutual concessions in four phases, including a three-month moratorium on enrichment in exchange for UN sanctions relief. That month, Iran granted unprecedented access to the IAEA’s Safeguards Chief Herman Nackaerts, and reportedly even offered to implement Subsidiary Arrangement Code 3.1 and the Additional Protocol, and cooperate over the next five years to put to rest the IAEA’s weaponization concerns.29 According to Mousavian, the West again rejected the proposal. That November, the IAEA issued another report enclosing details about Iran’s alleged weaponization program and the possibility that such research continued after 2003.30 That same month, the UK’s decision to sanction Iran’s Central Bank and financial system prompted the Majles to approve expelling the recently reinstated British ambassador. Protesters afterward stormed and firebombed the British embassy in Tehran. In January 2012, enrichment to 20 percent commenced in Fordow. Tensions continued to spiral. In July, the EU implemented a full embargo on Iranian oil and oil shipment (re)insurance.31 The Brussels-based transnational financial transaction giant SWIFT complied by cutting off Iran’s financial system, and therefore its ability to officially transact with banks around the globe. Iran’s oil revenues in 2012 dropped from $93 billion to $65 billion. Rapid-succession talks in Istanbul (April), Baghdad (May), and Moscow (June) that year had yielded little, although in his Istanbul bilateral with EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton (Javier Solana’s successor), Jalili had reportedly ‘asked 100 times’ for the EU to delay its July sanctions, a sign of Tehran’s swelling strain.32 Despite further talks, it would take a new, accommodationist administration—and a change in the P5+1’s redlines—to finally reach a nuclear agreement.

29 Mousavian 2012, 410–11. 30 IAEA GOV/2011/65. 31 Jerry A. DiColo, ‘EU embargo on Iran oil takes effect’, WSJ , 1 July 2012. 32 Laura Rozen, ‘How Iran talks were saved from verge of collapse’, Al-Monitor, 16

April 2012.

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10.2 ‘Look East’: Internal and External Balancing As Tehran’s threat perceptions rose, ‘Look East’ too grew in importance, with the policy’s strategic motive now shifting from soft expansionism to more hard-nosed balancing, which weakened means favored over military expansionism. Security Council permanent members Russia and China were already key diplomatic backstops in respect of nuclear-related sanctions, while India and China had also become Iran’s major trade and energy partners. Furthermore, Russia and especially China’s willingness to transfer, not just sell defense technologies over previous years had enabled greater Iranian self-reliance and internal balancing. Yet, as mentioned, Russia during Medvedev’s presidency (2008–12) toned down its diplomatic engagement with Iran, and despite some military cooperation including the 2009 joint naval exercise, significantly reduced its arms sales and altogether suspended the contracted delivery of the S-300 SAMs.33 Similarly, the importance of India’s ties with Washington restrained the potential of its own relations with Tehran, which other than oil included transit and limited military cooperation, but not arms sales. On the other hand, already Iran’s number two source of arms between 2001 and 2008, China subsequently became Iran’s largest arms supplier, while Iran represented China’s second largest arms client after Pakistan.34 According to SIPRI’s Trend-Indicator Value data (Table 10.1), between 2005 and 2013, only three countries sold arms to Iran: Russia, China, and Table 10.1 Iran’s arms suppliers by value (in $ millions), 2005–13

Russia China Belarus Total

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Total

15 43

368 54

283 47

15 47

15 47

41 62

15 31

22 9

57

423

331

62

62

103

33 52 15 100

46

31

805 394 15 1213

Source SIPRI database

33 Deliveries of minor systems continued, including anti-tank missiles, infantry fighting vehicle turrets, and air-search radar systems, Trade Register, SIPRI database (March 2019). 34 Shariatinia 2012, 194.

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Belarus. Russia’s arms exports to Iran plunged 19-fold between 2007 and 2008 after Medvedev and Putin swapped jobs. The value of China’s arms exports however increased or remained unchanged. In 2012, at the peak of international sanctions, China’s arms exports remained double that of Russia’s.35 Between 2008 and 2012, deliveries from China included antiship missiles (C-802; the FL-6 based on Italy’s Sea Killer/Marte; TL-10; C-704; and C-801), Type-86 armored personal carriers (‘Boraq’), along with QW-11 portable SAMs.36 Furthermore, in March 2010, Iran’s Defense Minister BrigadierGeneral Ahmad Vahidi inaugurated a Chinese-built factory to produce the radar-guided Nasr-1 anti-ship missile modeled on China’s C-704.37 During the 2009 post-electoral unrest, Iranian authorities employed antiriot equipment and online surveillance technology allegedly provided by China, which prompted anti-China slogans during protests.38 Despite the absence of a military alliance, by simply continuing its arms trade with Iran in Ahmadinejad’s second term, China became Tehran’s default lead partner for internal balancing. For external balancing, Iran set its eyes on the SCO. Established in 1996 as the ‘Shanghai Five’ to resolve border disputes, the SCO in 2001 emerged in its revamped form—a regional bloc co-led by China and Russia with an expansive agenda encompassing security, political, and economic cooperation.39 In the SCO’s July 2005 Astana summit, Khatami’s Iran joined as observer state alongside India and Pakistan.40 Ahmadinejad’s administration applied for full membership in March 2008—the same month the UN Security Council passed its fourth resolution (1803) against Iran’s nuclear program—thereby situating ‘Look East’ within a multilateral-institutional context. This was the first time the Islamic Republic was voluntarily seeking a security-oriented partnership with major powers. But it set an uneasy precedent given Tehran’s 35 Russia on the whole still remained Iran’s largest supplier during the 2005–13 period, however. 36 Trade Register, SIPRI database (March 2019). 37 ‘China opens missile plant in Iran’, UPI , 23 April 2010. 38 Harold and Nader 2012, 13–4. 39 China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are founding members, and Uzbekistan joined in 2001. 40 Other observer states included Mongolia (2004), Afghanistan (2012) and more recently, Belarus (2015).

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revolutionary opposition to alignment with, and dependence on, foreign governments. The SCO’s members, observers, and dialogue partners represented half the world’s population, 30 percent of its proven gas reserves, and eight percent of its proven oil reserves. The potential entry of Iran, a major Persian Gulf energy producer and OPEC member, would dramatically increase these figures to nearly 50 and 18 percent, respectively, paving the way to a veritable Caspian ‘energy club’ with leverage over global markets.41 Similarly, intrabloc relations potentially underwritten by a nondollar common reserve currency offered increased scope for economic relations as sanctions on Iran increased. But the larger, unspoken significance of the SCO lay in its potential as counterweight—‘an OPEC with [nuclear] bombs’—to NATO, the US, and the West more generally, especially as perceived by Iran.42 In this, the SCO shared a common frame of reference with Russian-dominated regional organizations such as the Commonwealth of Independent States and its military analogue, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Officially aimed at combating the ‘three evils’ comprising terrorism, separatism, and extremism, the SCO’s defense cooperation evolved into joint, large-scale conventional and counterterrorism exercises at a time when the War on Terror accompanied swelling US troop deployments in Eurasia. In July 2005, shortly after the Uzbek crackdown on the Andijan protests and the resulting criticism from the West, SCO member states jointly demanded that the US specify a timeframe for its military withdrawal from Central Asia. At subsequent SCO summits, Ahmadinejad repeatedly appealed to the eastern bloc’s potential to counter the West.43 Even without a NATO or CSTO-type mutual defense clause, the SCO still represented the closest thing to a security bulwark for Tehran. Notwithstanding its massive energy reserves and geography, Iran’s membership request was repeatedly denied or deferred. At the 2010 Tashkent summit, the SCO formalized its membership criteria, explicitly excluding states under UN sanctions or involved in armed conflict, 41 Brummer 2007, 187. 42 ‘Central Asian bloc considering Iran for membership’, The Washington Times, 4 June

2006; the SCO rejected the US’ 2005 application to join as observer state but accepted Iran’s. 43 Akbarzadeh 2015, 93–4; ‘Ahmadinejad calls for regional security alliance to counter US influence’, AP via The Guardian, 15 June 2011.

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although it subsequently relented on the latter, allowing India and Pakistan to join in 2017. Then SCO Secretary-General Bolat Nurgaliyev clarified that new members ‘should strengthen the organization, but not cause new problems’.44 Russia and China may seek to challenge US dominance, but Ahmadinejad’s bluntly maximalist approach risked entrapping them in fights not of their choosing. Perceiving rising threats from abroad and domestically, revisionist Iran shifted from soft expansionism toward an emphasis on internal and especially external balancing at a time of relative economic decline. The results ultimately proved suboptimal owing to the growing international consensus against Tehran’s nuclear intransigence. Still, ongoing revisionist dominance, combined with the inadequacy of balancing, meant seeking alternative ways of pushing back.

10.3

Subversion or Astuce as ‘Para-Balancing’

The Stuxnet virus co-created by the US and Israel (‘Olympic Games’) and reportedly introduced by a Dutch intelligence-recruited mole damaged approximately 1000 Iranian centrifuges between 2008 and 2010.45 Stuxnet’s creators were likely also behind ‘DuQu’ and the far more massive ‘Flame’ which targeted Iran for separate espionage purposes.46 Stuxnet’s discovery, and lessons learnt, prompted Iran to greatly expand its cyber capabilities beyond internal surveillance. Tehran stood up several new cyber entities including the Cyber Defense Command and in March 2012, the Supreme Council of Cyberspace. With the IRGC playing a commanding role and the Basij running its own Cyber Council, state funding also flowed to an army of official and non-official hacker outfits such as Ashiyane, Simorgh, Shabgard, Jehad-e Gomnam-e Majazi (Virtual Anonymous Jihad), Rocket Kitten, and Magic Kitten. Similarly, cyber defense programs kicked off in Iranian universities.

44 ‘Iran: too problematic for Shanghai Cooperation Organization’, Eurasianet, 19 March 2009. 45 Albright et al. 2010; David E. Sanger, ‘Obama order sped up wave of cyberattacks against Iran’, NYT , 1 June 2012; Kim Zetter & Huib Modderkolk, ‘Revealed: how a secret Dutch mole aided the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran’, Yahoo News, 2 September 2019. 46 Kim Zetter, ‘Meet “Flame”, the massive spy malware infiltrating Iranian computers’, Wired, 28 May 2012.

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In July 2012, researchers uncovered a spyware dubbed ‘Mahdi’ likely originating from Iran.47 In August 2012, as Iranian-Saudi tensions rose (see 11.2) and Iranian oil sanctions stiffened, Tehran-linked hackers unleashed the ‘Shamoon’ virus on Saudi Aramco, deleting data in 30,000—three-quarters—of the oil corporation’s computers.48 This appeared to be retribution for, and a cruder copy of an attack of a new type that April dubbed ‘Wiper’ which had destroyed data in Iran’s oil industry.49 A fortnight after ‘Shamoon’, a similar attack ravaged Qatar’s RasGas. Between September 2012 and early 2013, a group called the Ezzeddin al-Qassam Cyber Fighters targeted multiple major US financial institutions with distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, dubbed ‘Operation Ababil’.50 Iran-linked hackers also attempted to compromise US defense contractors along with firms in industries relevant to critical infrastructure, telecommunications, and civil aviation, and even servers belonging to the IAEA, the latter in November 2012.51 Consistent with Iran’s asymmetrical force posture, the plausible deniability and attribution ambiguity inherent in cyberspace provided the perfect theater for subversion as an ancillary strategy to balancing. Subversion assumed a less virtual guise in response to another threat front against Iran’s nuclear program. Between January 2010 and January 2012, assassins killed four nuclear scientists and wounded a fifth in Tehran. Accusing Israel and the US, Iran responded in kind. In 2012 alone, Iran-linked agents dramatically intensified attempts on Israeli interests across multiple countries, elevating covert action to the level of strategy to counter external threats. In January, Thai authorities arrested a Lebanese Hezbollah agent allegedly intending to attack Israeli citizens, while authorities in Baku detained an Iranian-financed Azerbaijani cell for plotting attacks against

47 Kim Zetter, ‘Mahdi, the Messiah, found infecting systems in Iran, Israel’, Wired, 17 July 2012. 48 Nicole Perlroth, ‘In cyberattack on Saudi firm, U.S. sees Iran firing back’, NYT , 23 October 2012. 49 Kim Zetter, ‘Wiper malware that hit Iran left possible clues of its origins’, Wired, 29 August 2012. 50 Nicole Perlroth and Quentin Hardy, ‘Bank hacking was the work of Iranians, officials say’, NYT , 8 January 2013. 51 Anderson and Sadjadpour 2018, 37–8, 66 (FN 76).

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Israel’s ambassador and a Baku-based rabbi, among other foreigners.52 In February, authorities thwarted a triple-bombing plot in New Delhi, Tbilisi, and Bangkok partially involving magnetic bombs resembling those used against some of Iran’s nuclear scientists.53 In March, Baku authorities arrested 22 persons for allegedly planning attacks against the Israeli and US embassies.54 In June, authorities in Nairobi arrested two alleged Iranian IRGC members and seized at least 15 kg of explosives intended against foreign, including Israeli interests.55 In July, Limassol’s authorities arrested a Swedish-Lebanese citizen suspected of planning attacks for Hezbollah against Israeli tourists.56 Days later, in Burgas, a Hezbollah bomb attack killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian driver, and wounded dozens.57 Though many of these ill-conceived and bungled attempts seemed out of character for Hezbollah and especially the Qods Force, national investigations all pointed back to Iran. In parallel to, and perhaps in lieu of suboptimal internal and external balancing (arms and allies), Iran sought recourse to subversion: a cheaper, indirect, and hence lower-risk, and yet still independent homemade alternative against external threats.

10.4

Ahmadinejad and Restrictive Revisionism

Threat perceptions again rose toward 2009 mainly over the nuclear issue, compounded domestically by the Green Movement protests that summer. Reinforcing the perceived threat in 2010 were the US’ Nuclear Posture Review, the Stuxnet cyberattacks, and critically, Security Council Resolution 1929 which both Russia and China also supported, opening the way for unprecedentedly crippling sanctions on Iran. Moreover, from 2008 52 Lada Yevgrashina, ‘Azerbaijan arrests plot suspects, cites Iran link’, Reuters, 25

January 2012. 53 Jason Burke, ‘Iran was behind bomb plot against Israeli diplomats, investigators find’, The Guardian, 17 June 2012. 54 ‘Azerbaijan arrests 22 suspects in plot to attack Israeli, U.S. targets’, Haaretz, 14 March 2012. 55 ‘Iranians charged with plotting attack on Israeli embassy in Kenya’, AP, via Haaretz, 1 December 2016. 56 Barak Ravid, ‘Man detained in Cyprus was planning attack on Israeli targets for Hezbollah’, Haaretz, 14 July 2012. 57 ‘Hezbollah linked to Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria’, BBC, 5 February 2013.

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to 2009, oil revenues had plunged from $76.1 billion to $49.3 billion, presaged by a similar drop in average oil prices from $94 to $61, while Iran’s economy registered negative growth (graphs 3.4–3.7). The change in threat perceptions, given an ongoing revisionist government, corresponded to Restrictive Revisionism. Based on theoretical expectations, we ought to see greater emphasis on hard expansionism, balancing, and subversion. The relatively piecemeal increase in external threats and changes in the perception thereof meant that while adjustments ensued, they were not as stark as in 2005, and as such continued overlapping to a degree with the soft expansionism and diversionary posturing of Ahmadinejad’s first term. Russia and China constituted the fulcrum of Iran’s external and internal balancing. But under lowthreat conditions early in Ahmadinejad’s first term, balancing and hard expansionism had assumed the rear seat in favor of an influence-based expansionism. From around 2009, balancing acquired renewed urgency, ruling out hard expansionism amid weakened capabilities. Iran now increasingly needed the ‘Eastern’ powers to counteract sanctions and threats of war, driven by survival, autonomy, and economic well-being interests. Russia and China found themselves treading a tightrope, backing a raft of UN resolutions but watering down their severity until the September 2009 Fordow revelations, which clearly annoyed both and especially Russia, Iran’s main nuclear partner, at least judging by Medvedev’s reaction to Obama. Whereas Moscow winched down cooperation, Beijing filled the vacuum by default, eclipsing Russia as Iran’s largest arms supplier even as it continued assisting in Iran’s indigenous development of weapons systems. At a time of peaking military threats then, Beijing stood alone among the major powers in assisting Iran’s internal and, to a seeming extent, external balancing efforts. Furthermore, in the April 2012 Istanbul talks, Iran rejected bilaterals with the P5+1 delegations except China.58 If not Russia, then at least China helped palliate Iran’s military vulnerability, economic crisis, and diplomatic isolation in this period. Iran’s balancing strategy acquired a multilateral complexion with respect to the SCO, full membership of which it formally requested in 2008, although the nuclear controversy sprawled in the way notably from

58 Rozen, ‘How Iran talks were saved’.

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2010 when Iran most needed an external security guarantor. In addition, with UN sanctions intensifying, the earlier influence campaign in the global south now yielded some dividend in offsetting Tehran’s diplomatic and trade isolation, even if, as a bloc, these countries’ support for Iran remained more declarative than substantive. Given the suboptimal state of its arms and allies, Ahmadinejad’s government sought recourse to homemade astuce and subversion to counteract perceived threats largely in connection with its nuclear program. The mid-2010 disclosure of Stuxnet prompted Iran toward offensive cyber capabilities, which it employed for espionage, denial, and sabotage purposes. Following the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, Iran-linked agents noticeably intensified attempts to target Israeli expatriates and tourists. In the Comoros, Iranian officials paid off the government to acquire passports allowing for sanctions-busting, much of it during Ahmadinejad’s second term. Besides balancing and subversion, rising perceptions of external (and in mid-2009, internal) threat combined with the incoming Obama administration’s outreach momentarily softened Iran’s revisionism. Consider Ahmadinejad’s unilateral acceptance of the IAEA’s October 2009 fuel swap deal, alongside reported offers to directly transfer Iran’s LEU stock to the US, moves ultimately torpedoed by Khamenei—an instance of structure influencing preferences first rather than outcomes, only to be disrupted by a mix of domestic politics and ideology (see 2.3). Iran accepted a similar 2010 agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil, but struck down by the P5+1. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad had also countenanced direct talks with Obama’s administration, conditioning them on mutual respect. While nothing in the dynamic-integrative model implies that revisionists cannot cooperate, or accommodationists cannot compete, the costs for the hardliners of deviating from revolutionary principles under the given circumstances, and the mutual tensions this generated vis-à-vis external interlocutors precluded appeasement or bandwagoning. Given changing perceptions of external threat, Iran’s decision-makers would have been theoretically expected to adjust strategy and policy. Yet, responses as varied as balancing, bandwagoning, appeasement, and subversion were possible. Since it was still the dominant force, revisionism—i.e., the agents advocating it—tilted the scales in favor of balancing (if not hard expansionism) and subversion, strategies no IR scholar would define as differing from bandwagoning and appeasement merely ‘in tone and style’.

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Had radical-turned reformist Mir-Hossein Musavi won the 2009 presidential elections—polls established his popularity and largely predicted his victory—would Iran have taken a different course? While Musavi rejected halting Iran’s nuclear program (enrichment), he was keen to assure the world of its peaceful nature. Musavi furthermore promised a conciliatory stance and détente vis-à-vis the West, if elected.59 Given a freshly elected Obama’s outreach to Iran, and to Khamenei personally, and the neoconservative government’s hesitatingly positive response, the external conditions would at least have been propitious for a hypothetical Musavi administration to deescalate tensions, if not prosecute an accommodationist turn altogether. Concurrently, while likely to remain as a hedge against high external threats, it is plausible that balancing would nonetheless have receded in relative salience and priority. Despite growing structural constraints then, the agency can exert independent effects too.

References Primary Sources (English) Memoirs and official statements ElBaradei, Mohamed, The age of deception: Nuclear diplomacy in treacherous times (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2011/65, 8 November 2011, https:// www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2011-65.pdf ———, Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2010/10, 18 February 2010, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2010-10.pdf Mousavian, Seyyed Hossein, The Iranian nuclear crisis: a memoir (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2012). US Government Documents Department of Defense (DoD), ‘Nuclear Posture Review Report’, April 2010, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/ 2010_Nuclear_Posture_Review_Report.pdf.

59 Parisa Hafezi, ‘Iran candidate backs nuclear talks with the West’, Reuters, 29 May 2009; Ehteshami 2017, 68, 70.

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Secondary Sources (English) Akbarzadeh, Shahram, ‘Iran and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Ideology and realpolitik in Iranian foreign policy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 69.1 (2015): 88–103. Amuzegar, Jahangir, ‘Iran’s oil as a blessing and a curse’, Brown Journal of World Affairs 15.1 (2008). Anderson, Collin & Karim Sadjadpour, ‘Iran’s cyber threat: espionage, sabotage, and revenge (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2018). Baktiari, Bahman, ‘Iran’s conservative revival’, Current History 106.696 (January 2007). Boroujerdi, Mehrzad & Kourosh Rahimkhani, Postrevolutionary Iran: a political handbook (NY: Syracuse University Press, 2018). Brummer, Matthew, ‘The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Iran: a powerfull union’, Journal of International Affairs 60.2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 185–98. Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Harold, Scott & Alireza Nader, ‘China and Iran: economic, political, and military relations’ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012). Mohammadi, Ariabarzan, ‘The path dependent nature of factionalism in postKhomeini Iran’ (Durham, UK: al-Sabah paper No. 13, Dec 2014). Parsi, Trita, Losing an enemy: Obama, Iran, and the triumph of diplomacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). Rahnema, Ali, Superstition as ideology in Iranian politics: from Majlesi to Ahmadinejad (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Secondary Sources (Persian) Shariatinia, Mohsen, ‘Avamel-e ta’ayin konande-ye ravabet-e Iran va Chin’ [Determinants in Iran-China relations], Faslname-ye Ravabet-e Khareji 4.2 (Summer 1391/2012) http://www.sid.ir/fa/VEWSSID/J_pdf/308139 11406.pdf.

CHAPTER 11

Averting One War, Igniting Another, 2013–2017

By 2012–2013, the Arab uprisings were in full swing, reshaping the regional distribution of capabilities and generating a flux of opportunities and threats for Iran and the entire region. Comparably static, objective power indicators between 2012 and 2016, the latest year for which the CoW’s NMC data are available (Graph 3.3), point to unprecedented capabilities for Iran and Saudi Arabia, and steady capabilities for Turkey and Israel, the region’s four major poles—a further reflection of the prevailing strategic ambiguity. Yet, an unambiguous near-term threat for Iran lay in the growing raft of UN and unilateral sanctions, accompanied by covert attacks and the real threat of military strikes. And while an entire host of issues by the end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency had come under public scrutiny, the nuclear issue and its effect on the economy sealed the electoral victory of Hassan Rouhani, who had made plain his intention to pursue détente with the West and removal of sanctions. At the time he assumed the presidency, Rouhani noted that Iran’s economy was suffering a 5.8 percent contraction and 40 percent inflation, alongside hollowed-out oil coffers.1 This confluence of external circumstances and domestic politics corresponds to Restrictive Accommodationism. 1 ‘Rouhani goft erade-ye dowlat kam kardan-e tahrim-ha va ba’ad laghv-e hame-ye tahrim-ha-st’, Tasnim, 4 November 2013; Roula Khalaf, Lionel Barber and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, ‘FT interview: Hassan Rouhani’, FT , 29 November 2013.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1_11

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The shift in domestic politics alone, given ongoing perceptions of high threat, sufficed to nudge Tehran away from its earlier frontline emphasis on balancing and subversion. As we see below, Iran shifted toward appeasement by way of the nuclear negotiations. Separately though, given its importance, the regional Shi’a-Sunni contestation also prompted Iran toward a balancing strategy initially aimed at minimizing losses, but which would over time resemble hard expansionism. ∗ ∗ ∗ Barely two years after Iran’s Green Movement protests, the chain of uprisings in the Arab world triggered by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor in December 2010 would challenge the regional status quo and topple the ruling regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. In Sunni-ruled Bahrain, home of the US Fifth Fleet, protests by the Shi’a-majority were also growing. Egypt’s post-revolution military council appeared more conciliatory toward Tehran, allowing the Islamic Republic’s warships to transit the Suez Canal in February 2011 for the first time. Early on, Khamenei heralded an ‘Islamic Awakening’ inspired by Iran’s own revolution.2 Tehran even established a ‘World Assembly for the Islamic Awakening’ for this purpose, chaired by Ali-Akbar Velayati. Others like Deputy IRGC Commander Hossein Salami noted that these ‘revolutionary people … have risen against the colonial and American policies and the United States’ lights [i.e., allies] are being turned off one by one’.3 Initially then, the destabilizing of governments close to the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, along with the swelling tide of political Islam appeared to redound to Iran’s benefit. However, these uprisings bubbled from deeply rooted and indigenous socioeconomic and political grievances, and had visibly little to do with either anti-Western animus or Iran’s revolution. The groundswell of political Islam in places like Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, and Tunisia with Ennahda, was thoroughly Sunni in complexion and dissimilar to Iran’s and its self-conception as a model Islamist polity. Founded back in 1928 and a source of inspiration even for Khomeini’s followers, the Muslim Brotherhood made Iran’s revolution look like ‘a 2 Khamenei, 5 February 2011. 3 Cited in Ostovar 2016, 192.

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relative newcomer’.4 Moreover, Tehran now faced strategic setbacks. The Saudi-led GCC Peninsula Shield Force thundered into Bahrain upon the ruling Al-Khalifa family’s request, stifling the immediate threat posed by protests, but worsening longer-term political grievances. More critically, protests degenerated into an all-out civil war in Syria, imperiling Tehran’s closest Arab state ally and the linchpin of Iranian regional strategy. While it backed the other Arab uprisings, especially in Bahrain, Iran portrayed the Syrian rebellion as a ploy to undermine the ‘Axis of Resistance’.5 Intervention on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s beleaguered government rapidly—and unintendedly—deepened the sectarian rift, grievously scuttling Tehran’s undying pan-Islamist bid to overcome its Shi’aminority handicap. Egypt’s newly elected Islamist president, Mohammad Morsi, visited Tehran for the NAM summit in August 2012, but then openly called for Assad’s deposal.6 Worse, backing for Assad, who reportedly employed chemical weapons, cost Iran precious public opinion, political capital, and hence soft power accrued to its favor on the Arab street in recent years.7 Meanwhile, diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, cyberattacks, sabotage, assassinations, and threats of war continued in view of Iran’s nuclear program. Toward the end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the combined effect of sanctions and economic mismanagement took their toll on Iran’s economy. Between 2012 and 2013, crude exports and oil revenues plunged. In 2012, Iran’s per capita GDP growth contracted to the worst levels since the war’s end in 1988 (Graphs 3.4–3.7). Between January and June 2012, the rial lost 60 percent of its value. In his 2013 Nowruz speech, Supreme Leader Khamenei acknowledged that because of Iran’s oil dependence, ‘sanctions have had an effect’, although he continued advocating a ‘resistance economy’.8 For him, these supposedly ‘smart sanctions’ had become a ‘full-scale economic war’ starting in early 2012.9 4 Abdo 2013, 54. 5 ‘Hadaf-e doshmanan-e Suriye taz’if-e khatt-e moqavemat ast’, Hamshahri, 26 July

2012. 6 ‘Selected excerpts from Morsi’s speech’, NYT , 30 August 2012. 7 James Zogby, ‘The rise and fall of Iran in Arab and Muslim public opinion’,

Huffington Post, 9 March 2013. 8 Khamenei, 21 March 2013. 9 ‘Ayatollah Khamenei va Barjam: ruzshomar-e mavaze’ va vakonesh-ha’, BBC Persian,

30 May 2018.

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These circumstances formed the backdrop to yet another watershed in Iranian politics. Ahead of the 11th presidential elections in 2013, the Guardian Council approved only eight of the original 686 candidates. The final slate included SNSC Secretary and chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili; Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei; the Supreme Leader’s foreign affairs advisor Ali-Akbar Velayati; Tehran Mayor MohammadBaqer Qalibaf; former Majles Speaker (and father-in-law to Khamenei’s son Mojtaba) Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel; former Petroleum Minister Mohammad Gharazi; Khatami’s reformist vice-president MohammadReza Aref; and security establishment veteran and former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rouhani. The first six were firmly in the traditional conservative camp, the seventh represented the only reformist, while Rouhani had long been associated with Rafsanjani’s centrist camp. The Guardian Council rejected Rafsanjani’s last-minute candidacy ostensibly on age grounds, to significant controversy. It also rejected Ahmadinejad’s choice, Rahim-Mashaei, effectively cutting out the neoconservatives. The electoral campaign evolved into a referendum on the nuclear issue and the economy. Jalili grandly proposed more resistance and noncompromise in response to external threats, closely reflecting Khamenei’s views. The conservative vote appeared to favor Qalibaf, Velayati, and Khamenei’s presumed favorite Jalili. However, while Haddad-Adel withdrew early on, the conservatives, like the reformists in 2005, failed to rally behind a single candidate. Worse, they even turned on each other, as when Velayati openly blamed Jalili for failing to reach a nuclear deal and preventing Iran’s sanctions from intensifying.10 For his part, Rouhani capitalized on his earlier track record as a nuclear negotiator vis-à-vis the EU3 and argued that spinning centrifuges were good only if people’s livelihoods were not disrupted.11 On 15 July 2013, amid a relatively encouraging 73 percent turnout, Rouhani, the only cleric among the candidates, secured a first-round electoral victory with three times the votes of his closest contender, Qalibaf (50.6 vs. 16.5 percent), and more than the other five remaining candidates combined. Mere days before, Aref had withdrawn on Khatami’s advice. This, along with Rafsanjani and especially Khatami’s subsequent

10 See 16:55–17:40, The third presidential debate, 1392/2013, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=lrFrY8dLEWQ. 11 ‘Anche gozasht gofte-ha va shenide-ha’; 5 ruz ta entekhabat’, BBC, 9 June 2013.

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endorsement of Rouhani, crucially refocused reformist and centrist votes onto a single—and the least hardline—candidate. Rouhani turned out to be a compromise figure, neither the reformists’ nor the revisionists’ first choice. The conservative media claimed that the ballot box assigned to the Supreme Leader’s Office contained 200 votes for Jalili, 124 for Qalibaf, and under 20 for Rouhani.12 Yet, Rouhani’s unexpected victory also provided a safety valve for popular disaffection and helped repair regime legitimacy following the disputed 2009 elections. And after the morass bequeathed by Ahmadinejad, almost any other presidential contender unassociated with him would have appeared in a comparably positive light. Rouhani made explicit his accommodationist preferences during his electoral campaign, criticizing Ahmadinejad’s confrontational stance and advocating ‘good international interactions to gradually reduce the sanctions and finally remove them’.13 He similarly noted that the current state of affairs between Iran and the US cannot and should not remain forever…. As a moderate, I have a phased plan to deescalate hostility to a manageable state of tension and then engage in promotion of interactions and dialogue between the two peoples to achieve détente, and finally reach…the point of mutual respect that both peoples deserve.14

In his post-victory press conference, Rouhani affirmed that his ‘government of prudence and hope’ would pursue its national objectives ‘with moderation and constructive engagement with the world’. He called on both Iran and the US to ‘think of the future and resolve past problems’, conditioned talks with the US on ‘mutual respect’ and equality, and affirmed Iran’s wish to reduce tensions.15 That September, in stark contrast to Ahmadinejad, Rouhani took the unprecedented step of wishing ‘all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah

12 Bastani 2014, 7. 13 Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Iran elections: former presidents endorse moderate Hassan

Rouhani’, The Guardian, 11 June 2013. 14 Ali M. Pedram, ‘In conversation with Hassan Rouhani’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 15 June 2013. 15 ‘Anche gozasht: konferans-e khabari-ye Hassan Rouhani, lahze be lahze’, BBC Persian, 17 June 2013; see also Hassan Rouhani, ‘President of Iran Hassan Rouhani: time to engage’, WP, 19 September 2013.

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[Jewish New Year]’.16 Like Rafsanjani, Rouhani staffed his cabinet with technocrats, a number of whom, besides himself, had earned Ph.D.s from western universities, including Foreign Minister Zarif. Rouhani’s centrism allowed him to bridge some of the toxic differences between the accommodationist (reformist) and revisionist (traditional conservative) camps. A number of conservatives likewise shifted centerwards in support of Rouhani, including Majles Speaker Ali Larijani (reportedly in a logroll with Rouhani appointing Larijani’s ally Abdol-Reza Rahmani-Fazli as interior minister).17 The accommodationist shift under Rouhani was no flash-in-the-pan. In the subsequent February 2016 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, centrists allied with reformists secured important gains, riding on the momentum of Rouhani’s success in reaching a nuclear agreement (see Sect. 11.1) to now push for greater rapprochement with the West and domestic liberalization. This occurred despite a record number of disqualifications, including that of Hassan Khomeini, the reformistleaning grandson of the Republic’s founder. In Parliament, the reformists and centrists including Rouhani’s Moderation and Development Party rallied under the List of Hope led by former presidential contender Mohammad-Reza Aref, which won a total of 121 seats and swept all of Tehran’s 30 seats in the first round, making this their biggest electoral victory in Parliament since 2004. The Grand Coalition of Principlists comprising traditional conservatives and Ahmadinejad’s former neoconservative supporters won 83 seats, but their frontman, Hadded-Adel, failed to secure another term as MP. A third pole, the Voice of the Nation led by conservative maverick Ali Motahhari and ideologically located between the other two (Motahhari’s name also appeared on the List of Hope) won 11 seats.18 Ali Larijani, by now a Rouhani ally who had backed nuclear diplomacy, ran independently, rather than with the principlists, and was reelected Speaker. In the Assembly of Experts, Rafsanjani’s 16-candidate People’s Experts list, which included Rouhani, won 15 of Tehran’s 16 seats with Rafsanjani leading and Rouhani placed third. Remarkably, the ultrahardliners

16 Rouhani’s Twitter account, 4 September 2013, https://twitter.com/HassanRou hani/status/375278962718412800. 17 Bastani 2014, 13. 18 Ehteshami 2017, 102; independents took the remaining seats.

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Mohammad Yazdi (the Assembly’s Chairman) and Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi failed to make the list, while Guardian Council Chairman Ahmad Jannati came in only in final (16th) place for Tehran, although he afterward assumed the Assembly’s chair. In all, the accommodationists took 52 of the Assembly’s 88 seats, for once dominating all three of Iran’s nationally elected institutions.19 Then in 2017, despite conservative pushback and a Supreme Leader increasingly critical of his nuclear détente and economic scorecard, Rouhani secured reelection as president.20

11.1 Appeasement: Nuclear Negotiationsand the JCPOA Rouhani’s external priority was to resolve the nuclear issue and end Iran’s diplomatic isolation, in order to rehabilitate the economy. In his Nowruz speech of March 2013, Khamenei had explicitly stated that while he remained pessimistic, he did not oppose negotiations with the US. Curiously, he also denied that ‘certain people have negotiated with the Americans on [his] behalf’, and even where this had taken place, they were only for ‘certain temporary issues’ and at their own initiative while observing his red lines.21 It later emerged that in 2012, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa’id had mediated the creation of a secret back-channel between the US and Iran, with the full knowledge of Khamenei, though not of President Ahmadinejad. The tentative talks involved then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Omani envoy Salem Ben Nasser al-Ismaily, and—through the latter’s contacts with Iranian businessmen—Iran’s then Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi, which Obama and Khamenei approved around March 2012.22 In July 2012, the US and Iranian negotiation teams met for the first time in Muscat. In early 2013, after reelection, Obama decided to relax the US’ insistence on zero domestic enrichment, a move communicated

19 Ibid., 101. 20 Babak Dehghanpisheh, ‘Ayatollah Khamenei criticizes Iran’s president on economy

ahead of vote’, Reuters, 15 February 2017; Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, ‘Iran’s leader rebuffs Rouhani’s detente policy ahead of vote’, Reuters, 30 April 2017. 21 Khamenei, 21 March 2013. 22 Parsi 2017, 156.

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to Khamenei through Sultan Qaboos.23 Khamenei greenlighted a second round of talks, which took place over three days in March 2013 with the teams led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Deputy Foreign Minister Ali-Asghar Khaji. The Americans confirmed that Washington was prepared to explore the option of limited domestic enrichment, but further talks had to wait out Iran’s June presidential elections.24 After Rouhani assumed the presidency, things dramatically accelerated. He had apparently not known about the Muscat channel either.25 But once briefed, Rouhani swiftly transferred management of the nuclear negotiations (not nuclear policy itself) from the SNSC to the Foreign Ministry. A third meeting in Muscat took place, now led by Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, followed by another seven secret meetings between August and November 2013.26 During a September speech to the IRGC, and aware of the ongoing secret talks, Iran’s Supreme Leader justified diplomacy through ‘heroic flexibility’ (narmesh-e qahremanane), noting that a ‘wrestler also sometimes shows flexibility for technical reasons though he never forgets who his rival is and what his main goal is’.27 Majles Speaker Larijani welcomed ‘logical’ talks without the shadow of threats, but stressed that heroic flexibility ‘doesn’t mean that our strategy has changed’.28 In late September at the UN General Assembly meeting, Obama and Rouhani attended each other’s speeches, and while a ‘planned’ run-in at the UN premises proved politically unfeasible for Rouhani, the latter’s retinue proposed, instead, that Obama call Rouhani over the phone as the Iranian President was leaving New York for the airport.29 During those 15 minutes, both countries’ elected leaders spoke directly for the first time since 1979.

23 Ibid., 161–75. 24 Laura Rozen, ‘Inside the secret US-Iran diplomacy that sealed nuke deal’, Al-

Monitor, 11 August 2015. 25 Ibid. 26 Parsi 2017, 198–99. 27 Khamenei, 17 September 2013. The historical reference was to Shi’a Imam Hassan’s

accepting Sunni Umayyad ruler Muawiya’s peace treaty in 661 A.D, and thereby ceding the caliphate to the latter, in order to avert unnecessary war. 28 ‘Speaker urges West to start logical interaction with Iran’, Fars News, 21 September 2013. 29 Parsi 2017, 204.

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The Americans afterward informed their other P5+1 partners of the Omani-mediated talks, to some irritation, but negotiations in both tracks then merged. On 24 November 2013 in Geneva, Iran and the P5+1 signed the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), an interim agreement toward a comprehensive deal to be reached within a year. The JPOA constituted the first step toward enshrining Iran’s right to domestic enrichment, while temporarily restraining Iran’s nuclear program and freezing its evershrinking ‘breakout’ time.30 The agreement placed a moratorium on additional UN and unilateral sanctions and allowed trade to resume in mutually defined areas and for part of Iran’s foreign-held assets to be repatriated. In April 2015, the negotiating parties reached the next milestone in Lausanne with a political framework agreement toward a final deal.31 Iran and the US had agreed on a ‘breakout’ lead time of one year, an arrangement flexible enough to allow Iran to still retain a comparably large number of centrifuges without red lines, provided other areas were scaled back in compensation.32 Both sides had also mere weeks earlier roped in their leading technical experts, Ali-Akbar Salehi (now as AEOI Head) and US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Meanwhile, they agreed to defer discussion of sticking points, including sanctions relief modalities, concerns over the program’s ‘possible military dimensions’, and Iran’s ballistic missile program.33 Finally, on 14 July 2015, Iran and the P5+1 signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, to enter into force from January 2016. Building on the JPOA and the Lausanne framework, the JCPOA would limit Iran’s enrichment to 3.67 percent, its LEU stockpile to 300 kg, and the number of operational centrifuges—allowed only in Natanz—to 5060 first-generation IR-1s. Iran would be required to repurpose the other 1044 IR-1 centrifuges at Fordow exclusively

30 The time required to enrich uranium to military levels for a bomb. The full text is available at https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/24/world/meast/iran-deal-text/index. html. 31 For the full text, see United States Department of State, ‘Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program’, 2 April 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/02/par ameters-joint-comprehensive-plan-action-regarding-islamic-republic-ir. 32 Parsi 2017, 254–55. 33 Ibid., 257.

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toward non-enrichment research and medical isotope production—altogether a two-thirds reduction of Iran’s centrifuge numbers. Furthermore, the JCPOA entailed neutering the Arak heavy-water facility’s capacity to produce plutonium, limiting activities only to research and isotope production. These restraints were valid for 10–15 years, but the reinforced verification regime would be permanent.34 In exchange, the UN, US, and EU would lift all nuclear-related sanctions after the IAEA verified that Iran had undertaken the necessary measures and unlock some $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The JCPOA dramatically downsized Iran’s nuclear program and subjected it to unprecedented international monitoring, increasing its ‘breakout’ time from mere weeks to a year. Yet it also conceded a domestic Iranian enrichment capacity so adamantly sought by Tehran for years, and virtually guaranteed Iran’s nuclear threshold status, compared to earlier US red lines evolving from zero program to zero domestic enrichment. Zarif noted that for the first time, the Security Council ‘will give official recognition to a developing country’s enrichment program’.35 While non-nuclear sanctions remained, the JCPOA did not require Iran to change behavior on non-nuclear issues. Annex B of UN Resolution 2231 capping the nuclear agreement called on Iran ‘not to undertake’ ballistic missile activity. Rather than a categorical ban, it restricted—unless approved beforehand by the Security Council on a caseto-case basis—ballistic missile-related assistance and technology transfers for eight years, and major arms sales to and from Iran for five years.36 Finally, while Iran’s controversial past nuclear weapons research still required a reckoning with IAEA investigators, the emphasis fell on future non-repetition rather than punishment of past violations, without at this point impeding sanctions relief. Having secured a nuclear deal, Rouhani honored his electoral pledge to engage with the West. With the White House not yet done tussling with resistance from Congress, which still needed some weeks to review the agreement, European political and business leaders rushed to Tehran

34 ‘Iran nuclear deal: key details’, BBC, 7 May 2019; for the full text (159 pages), see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/122460/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal.pdf. 35 ‘Iran nuclear deal: “99% of world agrees” says Obama’, BBC, 15 July 2015. 36 UN Security Council Resolution 2231, 20 July 2015, https://undocs.org/S/RES/

2231(2015).

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to renew ties, and the UK reopened its embassy.37 Apart from the UN General Assembly’s 2015 session in New York, Rouhani made his first post-JCPOA trips overseas to Italy and France in January 2016, securing $43 billion in contracts in the aviation, metals and heavy machinery, energy, automobile, and construction sectors.38 Between 2015 and 2017, Iran’s total merchandise trade with the EU recovered threefold from $7.8 billion to $22.4 billion. The change was starkest in Iran’s exports (largely oil), from $1.3 billion to 10.8 billion, more than half of it to Italy and France alone.39 In 2016, Iran’s GDP per capita grew over 12 percent, and in 2017, France’s Total acquired a 50.1-percent stake in a joint venture with Iran’s Petropars and China’s CNPC to develop the South Pars gas field, the first such post-sanctions energy contract.40 Whereas Ahmadinejad had tended toward qualified autarky by favoring trade ties with the non-West, Rouhani’s government believed, as VicePresident Es’haq Jahangiri noted, that ‘Iran’s economy should be linked with the world’s economy in such a way that cutting ties with Iran would become impossible and costly for other countries’ (in effect, a binding strategy).41 To facilitate its economic integration, Tehran also agreed in 2016 to begin meeting the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) compliance standards in combating terrorism financing and money laundering, although revisionist obstruction on national security grounds would later stall ratification of two remaining conventions.42 Domestically, the urgency of the external threats and internal pressures revolving around the nuclear issue failed to forestall tensions between accommodationists and revisionists. Even though Rouhani’s election signaled a broad mandate for strategic adjustment, and Khamenei had secretly approved the back-channel talks and publicly advocated 37 Michael Birnbaum and Carol Morello, ‘European companies beat US to Iran business

after nuclear deal reached’, The Guardian, 25 August 2015. 38 Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Iran’s dealmaking with Europe: the seven biggest contracts’, Reuters, 29 January 2016. 39 IMF DOTS. 40 Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Rania El Gamal, ‘Total marks Iran return with South

Pars gas deal’, Reuters, 3 July 2017. 41 Cited in Ehteshami 2017, 159. 42 Financial Action Task Force, Public Statement, 21 October 2016, https://www.fatf-

gafi.org/fr/publications/juridictions-haut-risques-et-sous-surveillance/documents/publicstatement-october-2016.html?hf=10&b=0&s=desc(fatf_releasedate).

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‘heroic flexibility’, Iran’s hardliners pushed back, particularly against the thin line separating nuclear negotiations from broader détente with the US. Furthermore, Rouhani now had to sell any prospective deal at a time when nuclear nationalism and resistance to its antithesis, western subjugation, had become deeply embedded within the body politic. In September 2013, Rouhani’s mentor Rafsanjani claimed that before he died, Khomeini had in private accepted they could eventually end the practice of chanting ‘Death to America!’.43 Hardliners fought back, ensuring that the chant would continue resonating during the upcoming 4 November anniversary of the US embassy seizure.44 And while he commended Rouhani’s firm position at the UN General Assembly, IRGC Commander Mohammad-Ali Ja’afari publicly criticized him for accepting Obama’s phonecall, which he deemed premature.45 Preempting the rising tide of criticism, on 3 November 2013—the eve of the US embassy seizure anniversary and just before the start of the P5+1 talks—Khamenei called Iran’s negotiators ‘our children and the children of the Revolution’, rather than ‘appeasers’ (sazeshkar). He also warned against anyone weakening their hand despite his pessimism regarding the talks.46 A day later, Rouhani requested that parliamentarians opposed to talks suspend judgment for the next six to 12 months to give diplomacy a chance.47 Criticism continued however. While Khamenei publicly if cautiously backed the JPOA, a minority of MPs accused Rouhani of selling out, and the IRGC upbraided Zarif for suggesting that the US grossly outclassed Iran’s military.48 In February 2014, IRIB’s hardline head

43 Rafsanjani, 30 September 2013. 44 See BG Massoud Jazayeri’s remarks, ‘Tashkil-e setad-ha-ye mardomi baraye ruz-e

“marg bar Emrika”’, Fars News, 5 October 2013. 45 ‘Iranian commander says Rouhani-Obama call “too soon”: report’, Reuters, 30 September 2013. 46 ‘Hichkas nabayad mozakere-konandegan-e ma ra sazeshkar bedanad: az in mozakerat zarar nemikonim’, ISNA, 3 November 2013. 47 ‘Rouhani goft erade-ye dowlat kam kardan-e tahrim-ha va ba’d laghv-e hame-ye tahrim-ha-st’, Tasnim, 4 November 2013. 48 ‘Iran hard-liners call nuclear deal ’poisoned chalice’’, AP via Haaretz, 27 November 2013; Isabel Coles, ‘Iran foreign minister defends himself against hardline “slander”’, Reuters, 10 December 2013; ‘Emrika dast az pa khata konad dar sho’aa’ qabel-e tavajjohi manafe’-sh ra be sheddat mored-e hamle qarar midehim’, Tasnim, 13 December 2013.

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Ezzatollah Zarghami, a former IRGC brigadier-general and close associate of Ahmadinejad, briefly prevented a live address by Rouhani, prompting a presidential statement on Twitter instead.49 In May 2014, Iran’s top military official, the ordinarily hardline Armed Forces Chiefof-Staff Hassan Firuzabadi intervened, chastising IRGC-affiliated media outlets and threatening to take the negotiations’ detractors to task.50 That August, Rouhani called critics of nuclear diplomacy ‘cowards’ and suggested they go ‘to hell!’.51 As domestic resistance threatened to scuttle a potential nuclear agreement, Rouhani threatened to put matters to a referendum.52 That month, Basij Commander Mohammad-Reza Naqdi censured Zarif’s Geneva lakeside stroll with Secretary of State John Kerry as a ‘show of intimacy with the enemy of humanity’.53 After the signing of the Lausanne political framework, and despite Tehran disputing the US’ version of the text, security establishment principals including Firuzabadi, Ja’afari, his deputy Hossein Salami and SNSC secretary Ali Shamkhani softened their stance.54 Nuclear discourse by this stage shifted toward preserving the Supreme Leader’s ‘red lines’, which boiled down to irrevocable recognition of Iran’s civilian nuclear program, one-shot removal of all nuclear-related sanctions, and refusal to allow IAEA inspections inside military bases.55 Hardliners were particularly wary of talks extending to broader US–Iran rapprochement, which would allow in Western influence and empower the accommodationist camp.

49 Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Rouhanicare: Iran’s president promises healthcare for all by 2018’, The Guardian, 6 February 2014. 50 ‘Est’efa-ye farmandar-e Borujerd; pasokh be afkar-e omumi’, IRNA, 20 May 2014. 51 Michelle Moghtader, ‘Rouhani calls Iranian critics of his nuclear policy “cowards”’,

Reuters, 11 August 2014. 52 Amir Paivar, ‘Iranian President Rouhani’s referendum warning to hardliners’, BBC, 6 January 2015. 53 Thomas Erdbrink, ‘Iran’s hard-liners show restraint on nuclear talks with U.S.’,

NYT , 23 March 2015. 54 Akbar Ganji, ‘Newsflash: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards support the nuclear deal’, TNI , 20 May 2015. 55 Khamenei, 9 April 2015; Khamenei’s official Twitter account, 12 October 2014 https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/521212555587383296, and 24 June 2015 https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/613649656950718465.

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Meanwhile, rehabilitating Iran’s heavily sanctioned economy also meant very cautiously rolling back the outsized economic influence of the IRGC, the leading institutional advocate of the nuclear program. Rouhani praised the IRGC and urged it to flex its economic muscles by assuming large national projects—away from the private sector—and thus part of the national burden. But he criticized the IRGC’s interference in domestic politics, which Khamenei echoed a day later in his ‘heroic flexibility’ speech, where he also hinted that the IRGC’s vigilance against political threats need not imply intervention in politics.56 In June 2014, Oil Minister Bizhan Namdar Zanganeh revoked 15 oil field development contracts, including three parceled out to the IRGC’s Khatam ol-Osiya construction wing, citing inefficiencies.57 At a December 2014 anti-corruption conference, Rouhani again took the IRGC to task, albeit obliquely, charging that no matter how wellintentioned, ‘if intelligence, arms, money, newspapers, media and other instruments of power are concentrated in one entity … it becomes corrupt’.58 Rouhani similarly took on powerful economic interests associated with the IRGC and clerical hardliners. In December 2014, Parliament approved a bill he had sponsored requiring several parastatal organizations such as Khatam ol-Anbia, Bonyad-e Mostaz’afan and Setad-e Ejra-ye Ferman-e Hazrat-e Emam (Setad) to pay taxes.59 Between June 2014 and January 2015, Iran’s economy suffered another blow. Oil prices dropped by over half to a new six-year nadir of $44 per barrel (Graph 11.1), worsening the effect of sanctions and raising the urgency of economic reforms, even though Rouhani had by then also managed to bring inflation down by over 50 percent. While Iran’s share of non-oil exports—mainly petrochemicals, automobiles, carpets, and foodstuffs—had been increasing gradually over the years, it remained oildependent. The government had to revise its annual budget for fiscal year 1394 (March 2015–March 2016), further slashing crude price projections

56 ‘Sepah bayad az jariyanat-e siyasi be dur bashad’, ILNA, 16 September 2013. 57 Hamid Mafi, ‘Laghv-e se qarardad-e nafti; Zur-azmayi Zanganeh ba Sepah’, Radio

Zamaneh, 23 June 2014. 58 ‘Rouhani: vaqti tofang, pul va resane dar ekhteyar-e yek nahad bashad, fesad miyavarad’, BBC Persian, 8 December 2014. 59 Ali Alfoneh, ‘Iran’s “reformist” president is shielding the Revolutionary Guards’, Business Insider, 12 January 2015.

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Oil prices, OPEC Reference Basket, $, June ’13–June ’16 (Source

from $72 to $40 per barrel.60 Despite plans to compensate by broadening its tax base and selling government bonds, the Rouhani administration had to cut spending elsewhere, affecting development projects and public-sector salary hikes, among other things.61 But Rouhani simultaneously appeased the IRGC, whose support he needed for a final nuclear agreement with the P5+1. As the fiscal spending cuts were being discussed, and at a time when Iran’s regional military involvement was also growing (see Sect. 11.2), his administration proposed a 33.5-percent increase in the defense budget, much of it for the IRGC.62 In further concessions to the hardliners, out of 107 agreements worth $80 billion reached with foreign concerns between July 2015 and January 2017, four went to the IRGC and another five to bonyads linked to the Supreme Leader including Setad and the Mashhad-based Astan-e Qods-e Razavi, totaling $11 billion, while another 81 went to entities

60 ‘Vazir-e omur-e eghtesadi va darayi: budje-ye keshvar ra bar asas-e naft-e 40 dolari eslah mikonim’, Fars News, 15 January 2015. 61 ‘Outlines of 2015–16 budget approved’, IRNA, 20 January 2015. 62 ‘Iran to hike military spending despite lower oil prices, sanctions’, Reuters, 7

December 2014; Hooshang Amirahmadi, ‘Rouhani’s new budget offers pain without hope’, TNI , 14 February 2015.

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controlled by the elected government, possibly again with links to the IRGC and bonyads .63 In addition, Rouhani reluctantly retained Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a hardliner close to the IRGC, as Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs, firing him only after the JCPOA’s signing to signal (according to one hardline parliamentarian) a softening in Iran’s Middle East resistance policy.64 Finally, despite reformists’ expectations, Rouhani refrained from overpushing sociocultural liberalization to avoid alienating the traditional conservatives on the nuclear issue. In the event, although Khamenei cautiously endorsed the JCPOA and ordered the muzzling of criticism targeting the deal, he ensured this did not suggest Iran’s willingness to concede in other areas.65 During a 12 July Tehran address to university students two days before the final agreement was reached, Khamenei declared that ‘fighting against arrogance, fighting against the dominant order, cannot be suspended … This is one of the principles of the revolution … America is the embodiment of this arrogance’.66 After the JCPOA, Khamenei made it clear that Iran– US dialogue entailed neither improved bilateral relations nor curtailed support for Iran’s regional ‘friends’. Censuring the US negotiating team’s post-agreement claims, Khamenei said ‘they can only dream about making Iran surrender’.67 Over the next months, he repeatedly warned of the US’ political, economic, and cultural influence (nofuz) penetrating Iran.68 The IRGC in parallel conducted several shows of strength, including in March 2016 during US Vice-President Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem, when it test-launched two Qadr-class ballistic missiles imprinted, in incomplete Hebrew, with ‘Israel must be erased from–’.69 A day before

63 Yeganeh Torbati, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Babak Dehghanpisheh, ‘After Iran’s nuclear pact, state firms win most foreign deals’, Reuters, 19 January 2017; only 17 agreements went to the private sector. 64 ‘Hossein-Amir Abdollahian vazir-e pishnehad-e vezarat-e khareje kist?’, Rouydad 24, 11 August 2021. 65 Khamenei, 15 July 2015; Kasra Naji, ‘Iran nuclear: media ordered to be positive about deal’, BBC, 26 July 2015. 66 Cited in Khalaji, 14 July 2015. 67 Khamenei, 17 July 2015. 68 ‘Ayatollah Khamenei va Barjam’, BBC Persian. 69 ‘Payam-e mushaki-e Sepah be zaban-e “Ebri” mokhabere shod: “Yisra’el tzricha

lehimachek me’al”’, Fars News, 9 March 2016.

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the JCPOA was agreed, Iran’s hardline judiciary announced the imprisonment of five persons, including émigré returnees, for their alleged involvement in the 2009 protests, repeating a familiar compensatory pattern.70 More broadly, from 2014, the revisionists had increasingly redirected their attacks on accommodationists toward Islamic morality and sociocultural issues, including censorship of social media and the internet.71 At the same time, they also repeatedly undermined Rouhani’s efforts to narrow the chasm between the rival factions.72 Elite perceptions of external threats and particularly the effect of sanctions on Iran’s economy had straddled a new peak by 2012–2013. Combined with the election of a relatively moderate pragmatic conservative seeking resolution through accommodation, Iran swung back toward negotiations and ultimately, appeasement (for more, see Sect. 11.3). Resolving the nuclear issue, however, also allowed Tehran to dedicate fuller attention to another strategic problem increasingly consuming the entire region, and for which Iran would pursue a parallel balancing response entailing significant security deployments.

11.2 The Shi’a-Sunni Contestation: Balancing (and Hard Power Expansionism) The ‘Arab Spring’ begun during Ahmadinejad’s second term quickly threatened to overtake, and realign, the region’s governments. Initially, Tehran’s factional elites agreed that an ‘Islamic Awakening’ was underway, inspired by Iran.73 Qods Force Deputy Commander Esma’il Qa’ani even attributed Iran’s lead role to other nations’ belief that Velayat-e Faqih was the source of Iran’s success.74 When he became president, Rouhani looked to improving ties with Iran’s Arab neighbors. Foreign Minister Zarif announced ‘our neighbors are our priority’ and that Iran would not promote its interests at the expense of its neighbors’ 70 ‘Akharin vaziyat-e parvande-ha-ye dakal-e nafti, forush-e forudgah-e Qeshm, miliarder-e nafti va sarkarde-ye goruh-e erfan-e halqe’, Quds Online, 13 July 2015. 71 Bastani 2014. 72 ‘Sadeq Zibakalam: “Barjam-2” ya’ani che?’, Asr-e Iran, 13 February 2016. 73 ‘Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani: sahyounist-ha az mouj-e bidari-ye eslami negran-and’,

Khabar Online, 15 September 2012. 74 ‘Sardar Qa’ani: jelo-ye koshtar-ha-ye bozorg dar Suriye ra gereftim’, Quds Online, 27 May 2012.

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since their security and stability were intertwined, before touring the Gulf states except Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.75 In June 2014, Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah paid a historic visit to Tehran amid a short-lived thaw in Iran-GCC ties. Yet, these efforts failed to reverse mutual tensions. The increasingly sectarian character of the Arab uprisings found its most potent catalyst in Syria, where unrest erupted in March 2011. During the Iran–Iraq War, Hafez al-Assad’s Ba’athist government went against the grain of the Arab world by backing Tehran against Saddam, whose own Ba’athist regime opposed Damascus. In that period, Tehran’s fledgling government supplied Syria with $11.3 billion worth of discounted or free oil for its support, and Assad blocked Iraqi oil exports pipelined through Syrian territory.76 While its Alawite denomination originated as a secretive, heterodox offshoot of Shi’ism, and was only recognized as part of the latter in the 1970s, the Assad regime was officially secular and ties with Iran were strategically, not confessionally grounded. By consenting to IRGC operations in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley in 1982, Syria helped Iran facilitate the creation of what would in 1985 officially become Hezbollah, many of whose leaders had struggled alongside Iran’s pre-revolutionaries in the 1970s. Damascus has remained Tehran’s logistical lifeline to Hezbollah in the conflict against the US and Israel. If strategy was designed in Tehran, and tactics in Lebanon’s Shi’ite hinterland, then the operational fulcrum of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ literally lay in Syria. The alliance with Syria, along with Hezbollah, gave Iran a foothold in the heart of the Arab world and softened, if only slightly, the otherwise stark Persian-Arab dichotomy. Despite the importance of supporting Syria, Iran’s elites did not always agree on a response. Tehran initially but unsuccessfully tried to dissuade Assad from employing excessive violence on protesters, to avert domestic instability which might in turn affect Iran.77 While the IRGC saw the uprising in conspiratorial terms, Ahmadinejad’s government ironically viewed it as a ‘genuine popular revolt … against Assad’s authoritarianism’, and argued that reforms, not the IRGC’s proposed military intervention,

75 Mohamad Javad Zarif, ‘Opinion: our neighbors are our priority’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 21 November 2013. 76 Amirahmadi 1990, 61. 77 ICG, 13 April 2018, 15–16.

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were needed to avoid aggravating sectarianism.78 These opposing views led to contradictory responses within Iran, but Speaker Ali Larijani reportedly broke the impasse by suggesting both military backing for Assad and reforms to be undertaken by Damascus. The latter never materialized. In the spring of 2011, before the civil war began in earnest, Iran began sending advisors and trainers including from the Qods Force, alongside anti-riot equipment and surveillance technology to quell the protests.79 When Syria’s unrest degenerated into the region’s bloodiest civil war by the end of 2012, Ahmadinejad’s government backed Assad, in line with a 2006 bilateral mutual defense pact.80 In 2012, Khamenei openly declared Iran’s support for Syria because of Damascus’ role within the ‘Axis of Resistance’.81 Mehdi Ta’eb, the head of the Ammar base established after the 2009 protests to counter the ‘soft war’, declared Syria to be Iran’s ‘35th province’. ‘If the adversary attacks us and wants to seize Syria or Khuzestan [province in Iran], the priority lies with keeping Syria’, he said. ‘If we keep Syria, we can also recover Khuzestan, but if we lose Syria, we won’t even be able to keep Tehran’.82 Qods Force Chief Soleimani was likewise unequivocal: ‘Syria is our red line. The land of Sham is our ascension to heaven and will be the graveyard of the Americans’.83 In 2012, Khamenei limited the number of Iranian military advisors deployed inside Syria to 1200.84 That May, Qods Force Deputy Commander Qa’ani for the first time acknowledged the unit’s presence in Syria, while Hezbollah confirmed the presence of its fighters along border areas.85 The US Treasury, meanwhile, sanctioned the Qods Force’s top brass including Qassem Soleimani and Mohsen Chizari, along with several

78 Ibid., 16; Neil MacFarquhar, ‘In shift, Iran’s president calls for end to Syrian

crackdown’, NYT , 8 September 2011. 79 Joby Warrick, ‘Iran reportedly aiding Syrian crackdown’, WP, 27 May 2011. 80 Bilal Y. Saab, ‘Syria and Iran revive an old ghost with defense pact’, Brookings, 4

July 2006. 81 ‘Tabyin-e sarih-e elat-e hemayat-e Iran az Suriye’, Raja News, 29 March 2012. 82 ‘Rais-e qarargah-e Ammar: olaviyyat-e ma negahdari-ye Suriye be-ja-ye Khuzestan

ast’, BBC Persian, 14 February 2013. 83 ‘Payam-e Hajj Qassem be Emrika darbare-ye Suriye’, Tabnak, 1 September 2013. 84 ICG, 13 April 2018, 16–17. 85 ‘Sardar Qa’ani: jelo-ye koshtar-ha-ye bozorg dar Suriye ra gereftim’, Quds Online, 27 May 2012; Ostovar 2016, 216.

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Iranian airlines, for their role in supporting Syria’s crackdowns.86 In February 2013, the first in the series of deaths of senior Iranian officers (including by Israeli strikes) was reported, involving Qods Force MajorGeneral Hassan Shateri while en route between Damascus and Beirut.87 By 2016, the head of one Iranian bonyad revealed that fighting had killed over 1000 Iranian and Iran-affiliated soldiers inside Syria.88 Given the priority of nuclear diplomacy, Rouhani’s incoming administration leaned toward an intra-Syrian political solution.89 At one point, it even reportedly contemplated a post-Assad ‘Syrian Karzai’ to break the impasse.90 The chemical attack on civilians in Damascus’ Ghouta suburb in August 2013, allegedly by government forces, attracted Rouhani’s denunciation although he did not name the culprits.91 Likewise, Expediency Council Head Rafsanjani reportedly reproached Damascus, although Iran’s media and Foreign Ministry afterward denied that such a statement had ever been made.92 The IRGC however soon got its way on Syria, if not on the nuclear issue. The turning point came after Iran was invited to, and then, within 24 hours under US pressure, uninvited from the Geneva II peace talks in January 2014 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Burnt for trying, Rouhani lost ground to the revisionists, and subsequently—with Sunni extremism on the rise—vowed to back Assad ‘until the end of the road’.93 In February, when the US Secretary of State Kerry tried to discuss Syria’s situation, Foreign Minister Zarif reportedly said he did not control Syria

86 Ibid., 208. 87 Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Elite Iranian general assassinated near Syria-Lebanon

border’, The Guardian, 14 February 2013. 88 Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, ‘Death toll among Iran’s forces in Syrian war passes 1,000’, Reuters, 22 November 2016; ‘Revayat-e moshaver-e farmande-ye Sepah-e Kerbala-ye Mazandaran az “Khan Toman”’, ISNA, 9 May 2016. 89 ‘New Iran president “not pessimistic” over talks with US’, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), 5 August 2013, via BBC Monitoring Middle East. 90 Sadjadpour 2013, 13. 91 Yeganeh Torbati, ‘Iran’s Rouhani acknowledges chemical weapons killed people in

Syria’, Reuters, 24 August 2013. 92 ‘Iran denies ex-president said Assad’s forces used poison gas’, Reuters, 2 September 2013. 93 ‘Iran’s Rouhani vows to back Syria “until the end of the road”’, Reuters, 2 June 2015.

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policy.94 Apparently, not even did Syria’s president himself, according to IRGC Brigadier-General Hossein Hamedani who, before he was killed in Aleppo, had declared ‘Bashar al-Assad is fighting on our behalf’.95 Iran’s diplomatic involvement continued meanwhile, but mainly within the framework of the Russian-led Astana process focused on deescalation and ceasefires rather than political resolution. In 2013, amid its own massive economic crisis, Iran extended $4.6 billion in credit for Syria to purchase mostly Iranian petroleum products, and around those months injected up to $750 million into Syria’s Central Bank to stabilize the Syrian pound.96 Between 2011 and 2016, Iran transferred arms worth $142 million by SIPRI’s trend-indicator value, including Fateh-110 missiles, C-801s, C-802s, and Yasir and Shahed-129 drones.97 Over time, the IRGC-Qods Force deployed noncommissioned officers and Basij members with its military strategists, alongside thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah and Shi’a combatants from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, to bridge the swelling manpower gap in Assad’s defenses. Inside Iran, Afghan refugees were offered $500 each to fight for Assad as part of the Fatemiyun Brigade, or face deportation.98 Pakistani Shi’ites were similarly organized into the Zeinabiyun Brigade. To reinforce Syria’s urban warfare capabilities without restructuring its army, the IRGC oversaw the creation of a paramilitary force sometime by 2012, based on its own Basij, called the National Defense Forces largely comprising Alawites and Shi’a. While originally kept discrete, Iranian intervention became justified in funerals back home as defense of Syria’s Shi’a sites, especially the Seyyeda Zeinab Shrine in Damascus, and was even likened to the ‘holy defense’ (against Iraq in the 1980s).99 In late 2013, Qom-based Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri declared that

94 Geneive Abdo, ‘The end of Rouhani’s honeymoon’, Aljazeera America, 18 February 2014. 95 ‘Farmande-ye arshad-e Sepah’, BBC Persian, 5 May 2014. 96 Suleiman al-Khalidi, ‘Exclusive: Iran’s support for Syria tested by oil price drop’,

Reuters, 19 December 2014. 97 Importer/Exporter TIV Tables, SIPRI database (March 2019); Trade Register, SIPRI database (March 2019). 98 BBC Persian Radio, 13 April 2018. 99 ‘Farmande-ye arshad-e Sepah: Iran Hezbollah-e dovvom ra dar Suriye tashkil dad’,

BBC Persian, 5 May 2014.

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supporting Assad was to defend Islam against infidels.100 Between late 2013 and early 2014, Iran increased the stream of military personnel, munitions, and equipment to Damascus.101 In 2016, even Iran’s regular army (Artesh) deployed its 65th Airborne Special Forces Nohed Brigade, ostensibly in advisory capacity.102 In neighboring Lebanon, retaliatory attacks and suicide bombings targeted Iranian, Hezbollah, and Shi’a concerns. In late September 2015, after Qassem Soleimani’s visit to Moscow, and as Syria’s military suffered growing manpower shortages and battlefield losses, Russia began officially supporting Assad and Iranian-allied forces with airstrikes.103 In 2016, the Islamic Republic even unprecedentedly allowed Russian sorties from an Iranian airbase in Hamedan (although domestic objections over the decision’s unconstitutionality prompted Iran to reverse course). Russia maintained a warm water port at Tartus and ongoing weapons exports to Syria, and may have been concerned by its potentially shrinking sphere of influence in the region. Moscow’s intervention, coming amid tensions with the West over Crimea and, afterwards, alleged meddling in the US presidential elections, would prove vital for Assad’s survival, but rising Russian influence in Syria also dented Iran’s dominance. Nonetheless, in November 2015, Iran was invited for the first time to multilateral talks on Syria, held in Vienna, likely facilitated by Russia and justified by Tehran’s demonstrated utility in stemming the growing regional Sunni extremist threat. The sectarianism increasingly exacerbated by the Syrian conflict fanned the flames of Jihadist extremism, and further destabilized neighboring Iraq. In June 2014, an Al-Qaeda successor group seized Mosul, along with other towns, and declared itself a caliphate spanning large parts of northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria. With the rabidly anti-Shi’a ‘Islamic State’ now nearing Iran’s borders and threatening Iranian investments in Iraq in addition to Syria, Tehran again went beyond traditional military intervention-by-proxy to directly, and visibly, intervene. In stark 100 Nazeer Rida, ‘Iraqi Shi’ite ayatollah issues fatwa allowing fighting alongside Assad’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 16 December 2013. 101 Jonathan Saul and Parisa Hafezi, ‘Iran boosts military support in Syria to bolster Assad’, Reuters, 21 February 2014. 102 ‘Iranian army commandos in Syria on advisory mission’, Tasnim, 4 April 2016. 103 ‘Iran Quds chief visited Russia despite U.N. travel ban: Iran official’, Reuters, 7

August 2015.

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contrast to the prevaricating in Western and Gulf capitals, Tehran swiftly organized the defense of Baghdad, Samarra, and southern Iraq’s Shi’a cities, redeployed Iraqi Shi’a from Syria, and delivered military assistance including to the Kurdish Peshmerga in the north.104 A 150-man Qods Force unit along with IRGC Saberin special forces deployed to Iraq in June, and Soleimani requested that Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah dispatch 120 commanders to help direct operations in Iraq.105 Mere days after the Islamic State declared its caliphate, Tehran had already lost at least three senior IRGC officers in hostilities.106 Between 2014 and 2015, Iran transferred heavy weaponry worth $42 million (by SIPRI’s trend-indicator value),107 alongside at least nine Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft in its custody after Saddam first sent them to Iran for safekeeping during the 1991 Gulf War.108 Iranian F-4s even provided air support inside Diyala Province near Iran’s border, while Iranian M60A1 tanks reportedly assisted Kurdish forces in retaking Jalawla, all this in parallel to US airforce combat sorties in support of Iraq.109 The threat posed by the Islamic State facilitated elite consensus in Iran. Khamenei declared that the emerging struggle was between ‘terrorism and lovers of the west’ on the one side, and the ‘opponents of terrorism and supporters of the independence of nations’ (the ‘Islamic Awakening’) on the other. He similarly excoriated the West’s attempts to divide Shi’a and Sunnis.110 Khamenei saw the Sunni extremist group as a creation of

104 Rebecca Collard, ‘The enemy of my enemy: Iran arms Kurds in fight against ISIS’, Time, 27 August 2014. 105 Hugh Tomlinson, ‘Iran’s special forces rush in to help floundering ally’, The Times, 12 June 2014; ‘Nasrallah: darkhast-e sardar Soleimani baraye e’zam-e farmandehan-e Hezbollah be Eraq’, Tasnim, 25 September 2019. 106 Tomlinson, ‘Iran’s special forces rush in’. 107 Importer/Exporter TIV Tables, SIPRI database (March 2019); Babak Dehghan-

pisheh, ‘Insight – Iran’s elite Guards fighting in Iraq to push back Islamic State’, Reuters, 3 August 2014. 108 Trade Register, SIPRI database (March 2019). 109 Ostovar 2016, 227–28; Jassem Al Salami, ‘Iran sends tanks to Iraq to fight ISIS’,

RealClearDefense, 25 August 2014. 110 ‘Iran Supreme Leader warns of enemy bid to incite Shia-Sunni conflict’, ABNA (Ahlul Bayt News Agency), 29 June 2014.

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the West and Israel.111 Others asserted that the group ‘was created in order to destroy the [Iran-led] Islamic resistance in the region’.112 Qombased Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem-Shirazi declared Jihad to ‘defend Iraq’s territorial integrity and especially its holy shrines’, echoing Shi’a potentate Ali Sistani’s own unprecedented fatwa exhorting Iraqis to take up arms (albeit within, not outside existing Iraqi security institutions).113 Ali Younesi, Rouhani’s special advisor for ethnic and religious minorities and a former intelligence minister went further still, asserting that Iraq is not only part of our civilizational sphere of influence, it is our identity, culture, center and capital, now as always. Since Iran and Iraq are geographically and culturally inseparable, we must either fight each other, or be united.114

Younesi’s remarks invited wideranging criticism including from Iraq’s government, but it laid bare a thread of thinking current among Tehran’s elites.115 Iranian media likewise began publicizing panegyrics of IRGC officers and members of Hezbollah and other allied groups slain in action in Iraq (and Syria), including while protecting Samarra’s holy shrine. Unprecedentedly, Qods Force Commander Soleimani stepped out of the shadows into the (social) media glare, hinting not only at Iran’s growing regional role but also its frontline presence and indispensability to regional security.116 The Islamic State’s spectacular barbarism 111 ‘U.S., “wicked” Britain created ISIS: Iran’s Khamenei’, Reuters via Al Arabiya, 13 October 2014; ‘Supreme Leader says Iran will counter extremism’ (Persian), Khamenei.ir, 25 November 2014 via BBC Monitoring Trans-Caucasus, 25 November 2014. 112 This quote was by Hossein Hamedani, an IRGC brigadier-general later killed in Syria, BBC Persian Radio, 8 February 2015; this view was widespread—Ali Jeyhounian, a filmmaker I met by coincidence in a northern Iranian resort village in 2015 held that the Islamic State was a thoroughly American invention. 113 ‘Bayaniye qat’ane-ye Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi darbare-ye havades-e akhir-e Eraq’, Tabnak, 23 June 2014; ‘Iraq cleric issues call to arms against ISIL’, Aljazeera, 14 June 2014. 114 ‘Marz-ha-ye-ma masnu’i-st va nofuz-e farhangi-ye Iran bozorgtar az in marz-ha-st’,

Mehr News, 9 March 2015. 115 ‘Al-Ja’afari li”Asharq al-Awsat”: lan nasmah li Iran yamas siyadatna’, Asharq alAwsat, 11 March 2015. 116 ‘Naqsh-e Sepah-e Qods-e Iran dar mobareze ba Da’esh, cherayi va chegunegi-ye hemayat az Eraq va Suriye’, ISNA, 12 October 2014; ‘Qassem Soleimani fermande-ye sepah-e Qods va tarane-ha-ye farsi va arabi’, BBC Persian, 23 February 2015.

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recast Iran as a seemingly moderate, responsible power, and an increasingly important strategic, if not ideological, counterweight. Top-level exchanges between Washington and Tehran regarding the Islamic State certainly loan credence to the changing perceptions of Iran’s security role.117 Given the Iraqi armed forces’ near-immediate collapse in the face of the Islamic State’s onslaught, and riding on—if also abusing—Sistani’s fatwa, PM Nuri al-Maliki (unconstitutionally) decreed the formation of the Popular Mobilization Forces (al-Hashd ash-Sha’abi/PMF). The PMF mainly encompassed seven founding militias openly deferential to Iran and Khamenei’s Velayat, including Badr, AAH and Kata’eb Hezbollah, as well as volunteers loyal to Ayatollah Sistani and Sadr. While al-Maliki, not Iran, established the PMF, Iraq’s prime minister had become deeply indebted to, and dependent on Iran and these Iranian-aligned militias for his political survival. These militias likewise won popular support and leverage by containing the Islamic State’s advance. Furthermore, although officially subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office, the PMF remained in practice under the operational and administrative direction of figures close to Soleimani and Khamenei, particularly Kata’eb Hezbollah Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Badr Organization Chief Hadi al-Ameri, who also controlled Iraq’s Interior Ministry. With Iran now the dominant force in Iraq especially after US troops withdrew in late 2011, Qassem Soleimani in 2014 even ordered the construction of a road in Diyala province, supervised by Badr militiamen, to bring Iranian pilgrims to Samarra, and Iranian fighters and military supplies into Iraq and onwards to Syria.118 Soleimani also reportedly convinced Iraq’s Transportation Minister Bayan Jabr—another Badr veteran—to close both eyes on Iranian airlifts to Syria via Iraqi airspace.119

117 Jay Solomon and Carol Lee, ‘Obama wrote secret letter to Iran’s Khamenei about fighting Islamic State’, WSJ , 6 November 2014; ‘U.S. strategy in Iraq increasingly relies on Iran’, NYT , 5 March 2015. 118 Tim Arango, ‘Iran dominates in Iraq after U.S. “handed the country over”’, NYT , 15 July 2017; Martin Chulov, ‘Iran changes course of road to Mediterranean coast to avoid US forces’, The Guardian, 16 May 2017. 119 Tim Arango et al., ‘The Iran Cables: secret documents show how Tehran wields power in Iraq’, NYT , 19 November 2019.

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Iranian regional involvement and balancing extended to a third major geopolitical theater. Between August 2014 and February 2015, after Yemen’s UN-brokered national dialogue collapsed, the Zaydi Shi’a Houthis, alongside ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s supporters, seized key cities including the capital Sana’a, before forcing President Abdrabbo Mansur Hadi and his government into exile.120 That March, as Iran and the P5+1 stood on the cusp of a comprehensive nuclear agreement, Saudi Arabia, abetted by the UAE, assembled a Sunni coalition and initiated an air campaign to dislodge the Houthis, reinstate Hadi’s government, and stanch Iran’s influence.121 Despite some overlapping views vis-à-vis the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis were not beholden to Iran and had even ignored Iran’s advice not to seize Sana’a.122 Nonetheless, Tehran had been providing money, weapons, and training for some time.123 Initially, Rouhani and his inner circle convinced Tehran’s national security principals of the value of diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. But by mid-2016, Rouhani shifted to backing the revisionists’ position after Riyadh rejected these overtures and accused Iran of interference in Arab affairs.124 In response to the air campaign, Tehran hardened its rhetoric. Khamenei accused the Saudis, particularly the freshly appointed and virulently anti-Iran Defense Minister (and future Crown Prince) Muhammad bin Salman of ‘barbarism’ and war crimes. Others like IRGC Chief Ja’afari, SNSC Secretary Shamkhani, and Khamenei’s Chief-of-Staff Gholam-Hossein (Mohammad) Mohammadi Golpayegani warned of the House of Saud’s impending fall, while Kayhan’s Hossein Shariatmadari wrote that ‘after the barbarous Saudi attack on Yemen, it is the legal and religious right of Yemeni Muslims to attack Saudi Arabia’s borders’.125 120 The Houthis are named after Hussein al-Houthi, who in 1992 founded the group,

officially called Ansar Allah. 121 David D. Kirkpatrick, ‘The Most Powerful Arab Ruler Isn’t M.B.S. It’s M.B.Z.’, NYT , 2 June 2019. 122 Ali Watkins, Ryan Grim and Akbar Shahid Ahmed, ‘Iran warned Houthis against Yemen takeover’, Huffington Post, 20 April 2015. 123 Yara Bayoumy and Mohammed Ghobari, ‘Iranian support seen crucial for Yemen’s Houthis’, Reuters, 15 December 2014; Carole Landry, ‘UN: Iran arming Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2009’, AFP via Times of Israel, 1 May 2015. 124 ICG, 13 April 2018, 21–22 (and FN 108). 125 These are all quoted in Khalaji, 18 May 2015.

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Between 2015 and 2016, Iran increased military assistance to the Houthis in defiance of Security Council Resolution 2216 (of April 2015), supplying relatively sophisticated systems including Scud-C/Qiam 1-based Borkan-2H short-range ballistic missiles and Ababil-T explosivesbearing UAVs, and even considered establishing a base on Yemen’s coast.126 IRGC Chief Ja’afari however continued claiming that Iran only supported the Houthis ‘in advisory and moral capacity’, and at their own request.127 Already fighting fires in areas of core national security significance (Syria and Iraq), Iran’s elective intervention in Yemen—peripheral in comparison—aimed instead at turning up the heat on Saudi Arabia by the threat of envelopment from the south. Increasingly bogged down in its quagmire, Riyadh had more to lose in Yemen than Iran had to gain. Even if unintended, Iran and Hezbollah’s backing for the Alawite government in Syria, the deployment of thousands of Shi’a fighters there and in Shi’a-majority Iraq, and Tehran’s support for the Zaydi Shia Houthis came across as premeditatedly sectarian to the region’s Sunnis, for whom Iran’s gain was their loss. This in turn stymied any nearterm prospects for détente, let alone for a regional security condominium incorporating Iran. On the contrary, the GCC even invited Jordan and Morocco, two other Arab monarchies to join, and Sudan shifted away from Tehran toward Riyadh. Meanwhile, Riyadh’s troubled relations with Doha improved, Hamas’ politburo-in-exile relocated from Damascus to Doha, and Iran –Turkey tensions rose after a period of relative cooperation which had begun when Erdo˘gan’s Islamist Justice and Equality Party (AKP) came to power. The Saudi–Iranian contestation had become more intensely direct after Saddam’s 2003 removal placed Iraq in thrall to Tehran, prompting Jordanian King Abdullah’s ‘Shi’a crescent’ warning and the Saudi King’s exhortation that the US ‘cut off the head of the snake [Iran]’.128 In May

126 UNSC S/2018/594, 28–35; ‘US: Iranian arms shipments to Yemen stopped’, AFP via Al Arabiya, 27 October 2016; ‘Puli ke dowlat dade 20 darsad-e barname-ha-ye emsal-e niru-ha-ye mosallah ast/Ehtemal-e ijad-e paygah-e darya’i-ye Iran dar Suriye va Yaman’, Fars News, 26 November 2016. 127 ‘Farmande-ye Sepah: Iran be Yaman “komak-e mostashari” mikonad’, Tasnim, 24 November 2017. 128 Diplomatic cable, US Embassy in Riyadh, ‘Saudi King Abdullah and senior princes on Saudi policy toward Iraq’, 20 April 2008, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08RIYA DH649_a.html.

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and October 2011, respectively, the Qods Force allegedly ordered the assassination of a Saudi diplomat in Karachi, and bungled an attempt on Riyadh’s ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, who would become foreign minister.129 Statements from Tehran’s elite exacerbated suspicion of Iranian expansionism. In late 2011, a year into the Arab uprisings, Qods Force Chief Soleimani said ‘today, Iran’s defeat or victory is not determined in Mehran or Khorramshahr; our borders have expanded farther, and we must witness victory in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. These are the products of [Iran’s] Islamic Revolution’.130 In 2014, hardline Member of Parliament Ali-Reza Zakani declared that ‘[t]hree Arab capitals [Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad] have today ended up in the hands of Iran and belong to the Islamic Iranian revolution’, with Sana’a about to become the fourth.131 While he dispelled extraterritorial aspirations, Rouhani’s advisor Ali Younesi declared that ‘[w]ithout taking into account our area of influence’, which he said spanned China’s borders, the northern Indian subcontinent, the north and south Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf, ‘we cannot preserve our interests and security’.132 In March 2015, even Erdo˘gan, until recently at odds with Riyadh for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood (alongside Qatar), accused Iran of intending to ‘dominate the region. How can this be allowed? Iran has to abandon this ambition. It should withdraw its forces from Yemen, Syria, and Iraq’.133 The Saudi-Iranian struggle over shaping the regional order continued to worsen. In January 2016, Saudi Arabia beheaded Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Shi’a cleric from the Kingdom’s restive Eastern Province accused of working for Iran. Iran denounced the execution, while protesters ransacked and firebombed Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran

129 David Ignatius, ‘Intelligence links Iran to Saudi diplomat’s murder’, WP, 13 October 2011; United States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, News release, 11 October 2011 http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-alleged-plotassassinate-saudi-arabian-ambassador-united-states. 130 ‘Kabus-e Emrikayi-ha’, Mashregh News, 6 November 2011. 131 ‘Sanaa is the fourth Arab capital to join the Iranian revolution’, Middle East

Monitor, 27 September 2014. 132 ‘Marz-ha-ye-ma masnu’i-st va nofuz-e farhangi-ye Iran bozorgtar az in marz-ha-st’, Mehr News, 9 March 2015. 133 Cited in Bacık 2016.

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and consulate in Mashhad with Iranian police only reacting belatedly. In response, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, and Comoros severed ties with Iran, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar downgraded them or recalled their ambassadors, and Egypt and others accused Iran of regional meddling. In March 2016, the 22-member Arab League, excluding Lebanon and Iraq, declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. In addition, despite the unresolved Palestinian issue, many of the Gulf monarchies stepped up unofficial security cooperation with Israel and warmed up to the Jewish state more publicly than ever, further isolating Iran. For the Sunni powers, Iran’s perceived regional expansionism, including in the southern Gulf, had to be stopped. Ironically, Iran now saw itself primarily fighting to preserve the status quo against Sunni revisionism.

11.3 Rouhani’s First Term and Restrictive Accommodationism By 2013, growing economic sanctions, covert attacks, and the possibility of actual military strikes coincided with the region’s Arab uprisings, reinforcing Iran’s already elevated threat perceptions. Between 2012 and 2013, sanctions also brought Iran’s crude exports down from 2.1 million to 1.2 million bpd (Graph 3.5), consequently pulling down oil revenues from $65.3 billion to $47.4 billion (Graph 3.4) and constraining Iran’s material capabilities. In 2012, Iran’s per capita GDP growth tanked at −8.6 percent, the lowest since the war’s end in 1988 (Graph 3.7). At the same time, the pragmatic conservative Hassan Rouhani won the presidential elections, signaling Iran’s move toward détente. The resulting mix yields Restrictive Accommodationism, which should theoretically lead to strategies such as appeasement, bandwagoning, and perhaps balancing. The shift in the domestic balance of power in favor of accommodationism (external threats had been building up more gradually) signaled a broader mandate for strategic adjustment, certainly in respect of the nuclear issue. The accommodationist turn similarly prepared the discursive ground for appeasement, if not bandwagoning, with the stated purpose of sanctions removal, which the Supreme Leader knowingly couched in terms of ‘heroic flexibility’. While Khamenei had cautiously approved secret talks toward the end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the circle of regime figures involved was so tight it excluded both

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Ahmadinejad and Rouhani. During this tentative period, the Iranian officials involved understood that the US would concede domestic Iranian enrichment. When the final deal was reached, Iran secured a limited-scope but nonetheless legally recognized indigenous enrichment program which it could claim as a victory. Was this, then, necessarily appeasement? The answer depends not only on one’s standpoint but importantly, the motives for, and the results of, the negotiations. The general view in the West is that sanctions brought Tehran to heel. Iranian officials argue instead that their country’s nuclear progress, especially enrichment and the reduced ‘breakout’ time implied by it pressured the US, the key veto player, to relent on zero enrichment.134 Parsi for instance claims that while sanctions hurt the economy and provided leverage, Iran’s calculus changed first and foremost in response to Obama’s conceding on indigenous enrichment.135 There is little doubt that the nuclear program was important to Iran on intrinsic grounds alone. During a closed-door meeting with IRIB directors, nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi argued that the JCPOA was a ‘great victory’, not defeat, since Iran had only sought a ‘completely peaceful nuclear program’, not nuclear weapons which were what the US attempted to prevent. Furthermore, although economically unjustified, the nuclear program secured ‘our honor, our independence and our progress. We will not be bullied by others’.136 Zarif had previously called nuclear energy ‘a leap … toward deciding our own destiny rather than allowing others to decide for us’.137 Securing a legitimate, indigenous enrichment program with Iran being treated on equal terms thus spoke to collective self-esteem and autonomy interests at the very least. But as Araqchi himself noted, Iran’s uphill struggle for its own nuclear program came at extortionate cost. And even if he didn’t say so, this was largely because of the persisting role of regime ideology. The magnitude of these costs in terms of sanctions alone has been mentioned and cannot be discounted for their knock-on effects on society. Iran’s stated bottom line, alongside indigenous enrichment, was the removal of all international

134 Parsi 2017, 236. 135 Ibid., 324. 136 ‘Revealed: Iran’s 15 deal secrets’, Iranwire, 3 August 2015. 137 ‘Iran’s message: there is a way forward’, 19 November 2013, https://www.you

tube.com/watch?v=Ao2WH6GDWz4.

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sanctions, a point of crucial importance to Iran’s leadership and body politic.138 Sanctions from the Iranian perspective pushed Tehran to step up, rather than stand down, its nuclear program, especially for leverage in negotiations. Yet, they also unquestionably altered Tehran’s structure of incentives and electorally empowered the accommodationists, pushing to the forefront economic well-being interests, and perhaps even (regime) survival, amid growing prospects of war. On the other hand, had the US in particular acquiesced to indigenous enrichment during Ahmadinejad’s tenure, could Iran have returned to negotiations in good faith and reached an agreement? Possibly. Yet, Iran would have had far less (dis)incentive and nearly nothing else to lose at a time when its nuclear program was expanding quickly, while its economy had not yet been seriously affected by international sanctions (as opposed to internal mismanagement). In contrast, Khatami’s administration had brooked talks with the EU3 in 2003, amid immense international pressure and the threat of invasion after the US rejected its ‘grand bargain’. Now, assume that Iran’s nuclear program also concealed military objectives, as the ‘atomic archive’ seized by Israel seemingly indicates. If Iran’s intent was maximal deterrence and a fully developed nuclear weapon, then the JCPOA both preempted and significantly reversed and constrained its progress. If Tehran intended to merely secure a threshold capability, then the JCPOA ultimately locked in its status as a threshold state (or very close to it), with, moreover, little linkage with, or consequence for other aspects of Iranian grand strategy including its missile program and support for regional militias. Motives for the program alone hence do not easily adjudicate the question of appeasement. But the results of the negotiations paint a more compelling picture. The JCPOA limited and reduced the previous scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which had been far larger, and altogether neutered its plutonium separation capacity (though not knowledge). Except for cases approved ad hoc by the Security Council, the JCPOA restricted all major conventional military and ballistic missile assistance for five and eight years, respectively—further concessions from Tehran since the measures ought to already have been lifted after Iran accepted the JPOA in 2013.139 Paragraph 37 of the Security Council’s

138 Khamenei, 9 April 2015. 139 Esfandiary and Tabatabai 2018, 129.

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Resolution 1929 (2010) provides for the suspension of these measures ‘if and for so long as Iran suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities…as verified by the IAEA, to allow for negotiations in good faith in order to reach an early and mutually acceptable outcome’. It also provides for the termination of these measures, along with others, ‘as soon as [the Security Council] determines … that Iran has fully complied with its obligations…and met the requirements of the IAEA Board of Governors’.140 The P5+1 agreed to lift nuclear-related sanctions once Iran’s measures were verified and to unlock $100 billion of Iranian funds frozen abroad. Sanctions had constrained Iran’s economic capacity for years—a net loss— and their removal meant Iran could now resume regular business without handicaps like other states. Moreover, these frozen funds were Iran’s own. The JCPOA may have put a lid to the IAEA’s investigations on Iran’s past weaponization experiments, yet, whether these experiments actually occurred, the clause merely meant Iran removing an additional obstacle rather than making gains—unless it concealed a military program. And while Iran managed to delink the nuclear program from issues other than the time-bounded conventional arms and ballistic missile bans, this also meant that the US sanctions targeting these other aspects remained in place, which would continue deterring many foreign commercial concerns from reengaging with Iran. In the event of Tehran’s non-compliance, international sanctions would immediately snap back. In asymmetric contrast, Iran’s response to P5+1 non-compliance would be to reverse its nuclear constraints, some of which require far more effort like repurposing the Arak reactor and its core, or which cannot be recovered like the vast bulk of the enriched uranium already transferred out or downblended. Unlike sanctions snapback, this is a time-consuming process. In such circumstances, given the henceforth legally uncertain status of the civilian nuclear program and its ongoing economic non-viability, it is hard to imagine how the JCPOA would be a ‘great victory’ to use Araqchi’s term, when Iran’s fortunes differ little whether within, or without, the nuclear agreement. In the long-term, constraints would be lifted on some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program including enrichment levels, the quantity of stockpiled enriched uranium and heavy-water, the quantity and quality of

140 UN Security Council Resolution 1929, 9 June 2010.

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operational centrifuges, and the building of additional heavy-water reactors—prompting claims of appeasement by Iran’s external adversaries. But in the short-term, even if Rouhani’s government did not portray it as such (in contrast to his domestic revisionist detractors), the lopsided terms of the agreement for Iran amounted to appeasement. The JCPOA was ultimately about minimizing Iran’s losses more than maximizing its gains. Iran had had an even bigger nuclear program lacking only pro-forma recognition, and besides, India, Pakistan, and Israel have attained military nuclear programs with neither legal recognition nor the trauma of crippling sanctions. Furthermore, the JCPOA realigned Iran more closely with the West starting with trade and opened it up to more western influences to the chagrin of Iran’s revisionists. On the other hand, Iran’s regional competition against Saudi Arabia outwardly appears to approximate military expansionism, contradicting Iran’s nuclear appeasement. And yet, if the JCPOA was mainly about minimizing losses, so was the initial thinking behind Iran’s regional policy which, I argue, centered on balancing. The expansionist thesis is heavily nourished by the suspicion with which others view Iran and its ambitions. Recall that initially, Iran’s leadership associated the regional uprisings with an ‘Islamic Awakening’ calqued on its 1979 Revolution, and briefly and arguably even flirted with soft power expansionism by voicing support for the revolts in countries such as Egypt and Bahrain. In line with rhetoric openly alluding to Iran’s expanding borders and transnational influence, Tehran’s military posture then became visibly more aggressive as the threats unambiguously eclipsed the opportunities. Support for Damascus and Baghdad was nothing novel. What changed was the quantitative dimension of that support, entailing significantly ramped-up multinational Shi’a-majority force deployments in several countries. The qualitative aspect also weighed in. Tehran now openly committed itself to the Assad regime’s political survival and sacrificed not just treasure but Iranian blood, including that of high-value IRGC generals. Defense spending also increased in absolute and GDP-proportional terms (see Table 11.1), despite Iran’s relatively constrained material capabilities. For the Iranian fiscal year spanning March 2015 to March 2016, Rouhani’s government announced a 33.5 percent hike on the defense

3.2 (13.9) 9.6 (51.3) 3.6 (1) 2.5 (13.3) 6.8 (16.6)

Source SIPRI database

Israel

Saudi Arabia Bahrain Turkey

Iran

2009

2.9 (14.2) 8.6 (53.4) 3.3 (1) 2.3 (13.1) 6.2 (16)

2010

2.4 (12.8) 7.2 (54.1) 3.6 (1.2) 2.1 (13.2) 6.2 (16.6)

2011

2.8 (13.5) 7.7 (61.2) 3.8 (1.3) 2.1 (13.5) 6 (16.7)

2012

5.9 (17.2)

4.1 (1.4) 2 (13.8)

2.2 (10.6) 9 (70.2)

2013

2.3 (10.6) 10.7 (82.7) 4.4 (1.5) 1.9 (13.9) 6 (18.1)

2014

2.8 (11.1) 13.3 (88.2) 4.6 (1.5) 1.8 (14.3) 5.6 (18.2)

2015

9.9 (63.1) 4.7 (1.5) 2.1 (16.6) 4.6 (15.7)

3 (12.6)

2016

3.1 (13.9) 10.3 (70.4) 4.4 (1.5) 2.1 (17.8) 4.4 (15.6)

2017

2.7 (12.6) 8.8 (65.8) 3.6 (1.3) 2.5 (22.1) 4.3 (15.7)

2018

Table 11.1 Iran’s defense spending as % of GDP (& in constant 2017 $ billions, in bold), 2009–2018

−5.8

39 65

28

−10

Change in spending (%) 2009–2018

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budget, most of it for the IRGC.141 Then in January 2017, Parliament approved raising defense spending from nearly two percent to five percent of the state budget, including for ballistic missiles, as part of the sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2016–2021).142 All this evidence requires careful parsing, however. As before, Iran’s defense spending needs to be placed in perspective. If defense expenditures are an indicator of military expansionism against Saudi Arabia and its allies, then the figures hardly make sense, especially if—according to SIPRI’s figures—Iran’s defense spending includes the IRGC at least from 2012 onwards. Take 2017, the year in which Iran spent the most in both absolute and GDP-proportional terms ($13.9 billion, 3.1 percent of GDP). Saudi Arabia spent an estimated $70.4 billion or 10.3 percent of GDP, respectively, fivefold and threefold more than Iran, even if we assume additional undeclared Iranian military expenditures including through the IRGC’s independent revenue streams. And that is only Saudi Arabia, let alone its allies on the one hand, and the region’s other major powers Turkey and Israel on the other. Moreover, Iran’s 2017 defense spending echoed earlier (2009) levels rather than set new precedents, and at a time when the country’s GDP growth per capita fell sharply. What if we examine Iran’s more relevant asymmetric force posture? The main thrust of Iran’s regional policy in this period lay in its network of armed clients. These groups serve a variety of defensive, offensive, power projection, and deterrence roles, but battlefield fighting in the twenty-first century has become more central to them than terrorism.143 There is little disagreement among Tehran’s political elites on ‘forward defense’, which is mainly enabled by these groups.144 SNSC Secretary Ali Shamkhani, an ethnic Arab, justified involvement in Iraq as Iran defending its own borders.145 IRGC Deputy Commander Salami argued that (the pro-Iran armies of) Syria and Iraq constituted Iran’s ‘defensive strategic depth’, and that it was better to engage the adversary far from home.

141 ‘Iran to hike military spending despite lower oil prices, sanctions’, Reuters, 7 December 2014. 142 Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, ‘Iran to expand military spending, develop missiles’, Reuters, 9 January 2017. 143 Ostovar 2019, 166–67. 144 ICG, 15 December 2015, 20. 145 ‘Shamkhani: dar Eraq az marz-ha-ye khod defa mikonim’, ISNA, 30 May 2016.

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For him, the height of imprudence was for a state ‘to limit its security zone to its actual borders’.146 Many hardliners viewed these groups as Iran’s shield (separ) abroad.147 In June 2017, an Islamic State twin suicide bombing targeted Tehran’s Parliament building and Khomeini’s Mausoleum, uncovering a chink in Iran’s security, but underscoring the importance of ‘forward defense’. In this reading, Iran’s regional intervention appears to serve irreducible interests vis-à-vis survival and autonomy. ‘Sufficient’ security is clearly (inter)subjective. However, the empirical record points toward initial balancing priorities. In Syria and Iraq, Tehran intervened to minimize losses at a time when its core interests and investments were at risk, including after the Islamic State’s rise. Given the stakes, reflected in the number of IRGC generals killed while on mission, Iran had little reason to view itself as overreaching from foreign adventurism. In Yemen, a case for Iranian expansionism is plausible since Tehran had no ‘skin in the game’ and instead supplied weapons and advice from afar to a militia sharing common adversaries. But even then, Iranian support was limited, and the Houthis had other political objectives too. The balancing imperative sheds light on three other related issues: (1) the similarity between Ahmadinejad (revisionist) and Rouhani’s (accommodationist) regional outlook; (2) the question of whether revisionists hijacked Rouhani’s policy prerogative; (3) and the puzzle of increased Iranian regional involvement despite lower economic capabilities. Ahmadinejad and Rouhani both at first favored intra-Syrian reconciliation and diplomacy (and for Rouhani, diplomacy in Yemen). However, as rising external pressures forced Iran to choose between staying the course and high-stakes intervention, their approach became more assertive. This approach in turn lay squarely within the ambit of the IRGC, to which Rouhani deferred likely in part as compensation for the Guards not undermining the concurrent nuclear negotiations (domestic politics). While the IRGC’s ballistic missile tests and near-misses with the US navy in the Persian Gulf may have irked Rouhani, its regional involvement in view of the threats generally overlapped with, rather than overrode the government’s own external outlook and preferences. 146 ‘Sardar Salami: artesh-e Suriye va Eraq omq-e estratezhik-e ma hastand’, Tasnim, 4 February 2018. 147 Ariane Tabatabai, ‘What are Iranian hardliners saying on social media?’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 5 April 2018.

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Thirdly, rising threat perception and not capabilities—Iran’s were heavily constrained until 2015 at least—fueled Tehran’s regional involvement, another indicator that structure alone is insufficient and that ideational factors are necessary. Threat perception combined with the need to calm domestic anxiety also explains the growing visibility of Qassem Soleimani and Iran’s military support, since, otherwise, operating in the shadows has better suited Iran’s purposes, and hard power expansionism, especially in the absence of threat, is very likely to provoke a counterbalancing response. None of this necessarily excludes Iranian military expansionism in response to strategic opportunities, only that adjustments in this period initially served balancing needs in response to threats. In Syria, as Assad retakes more lost territory, Iran’s influence may expand even despite Russia’s dominance, but this is an effect rather than the original driver of Iranian policy. Iran’s progressive military entrenchment near Syria’s border with Israel during this period also underscores the thin line between forward defense and military expansionism. Over time, where battlefield victories in these regional theaters redound to Iran’s advantage, and especially now that another revisionist Iranian government, that of Ebrahim Raisi, is in place, the line between balancing and expansionism is likely to blur still further. Where does the structure-agency debate fit into all of this? With its economy already wrecked by mismanagement and corruption, sanctions undoubtedly created immense structural pressure for Iran to adjust course. Yet Rouhani’s election and agency allowed it to unfold in the way it did. The explanation for course adjustment not occurring before 2012, or even as late as March 2013 when Khamenei admitted sanctions had an effect, may lie in part in Obama’s accepting, in principle, indigenous enrichment in that period. But had a conservative contender like Saeed Jalili—the Supreme Leader’s presumed favorite and frontrunner, although he ultimately placed a very distant third—won, while negotiations might still have unfolded, the outcome could have been rather different. He had not only publicly called for greater resistance during the election campaign, but had before that, as Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, vehemently opposed the Omani-facilitated secret channel talks.148 Despite

148 Parsi 2017, 178.

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the US’ enrichment concession, White House officials also believed that Jalili’s election would have portended escalation.149 Realists hold that structural pressures—especially sanctions—forced Iran to fold. Building on this structure-first claim, Terhalle for instance contends that ‘because the hardliners had felt the pressure that had been imposed on them, they let Rouhani win the election’.150 This view is theoretically simplistic and fails to explain why hardliners including Khamenei did not act earlier to effect change, and instead waited for a new president, which in turn ironically implies the importance of agency and not just structure. Khamenei either was reluctant to act altogether, in which case Rouhani’s presidency was decisive in persuading the Supreme Leader to accept official negotiations, or Rouhani’s election allowed Khamenei to spread any risk to his domestic position by pursuing talks. Whether actively or passively, the presidency made a difference to the resulting adjustment. Structural pressures as perceived clearly played the lead role in this period in both areas of adjustment. But even under highly constraining structural conditions, agency—which neoclassical realists treat as intervening variable—exerts independent effects, as the presidential turnover and what it meant for nuclear appeasement showed. While the Supreme Leader has the final word, he still defers to the popular consensus accompanying the elected executive. Furthermore, notwithstanding the external constraints, Rouhani’s accommodationism explains why Tehran at least initially emphasized appeasement and balancing, in separate policy theaters, rather than directly gun for military expansionism and subversion. Again, these nuances are not insubstantial. Terhalle furthermore concedes he has shifted to this structural view from his earlier constructivist explanation for ‘the persistence of revolutionary zeal in Iran’s foreign policy’.151 This ad hoc shift is precisely the result of theories with monocausal commitments. The dynamicintegrative model of adjustments deductively incorporates structure, ideas, and agency within the same theoretical edifice. However, unlike NCR, itself a theoretical improvement, it inductively or abductively allows for causal weight to shift between different levels of analysis depending on

149 Ibid., 324. 150 Terhalle 2015, 603. 151 Terhalle 2009.

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the empirical context. By specifying how structural conditions and agents’ dispositions, mediated by ideas, conjointly render some strategies likelier than others, the alternative proposed in this work offers greater added value than existing theories.

References Primary sources (English) UN Documents United Nations Security Council, ‘Letter dated 26 January 2018 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen mandated by Security Council resolution 2342 (2017) addressed to the President of the Security Council’, S/2018/594, 26 January 2018.

Primary sources (Persian) Khalaji, Mehdi, ‘The nuclear deal may weaken Rouhani’, Policywatch 2453, WINEP, 14 July 2015. Khamenei, Seyyed Ali, First sermon on the occasion of the death anniversary of Ali bin Musa ol-Reza (the eighth Shi’a imam), Tehran Friday Mosque, 5 February 2011, http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=10955 ———, Speech at Imam Reza Shrine, Mashhad, 21 March 2013, http://eng lish.khamenei.ir/news/1760/Leader-s-Speech-at-Imam-Ridha-s-a-s-Shrine ———, Bayanat dar didar-e madahan-e Ahl-e Bayt aleyhom assalom’, Khamenei.ir, 9 April 2015, http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id= 29415 ———, Eid-e Fetr Speech, Mosalla, Tehran, 17 July 2015, http://farsi.kha menei.ir/speech-content?id=30331 Rafsanjani, Ali-Akbar Hashemi, ‘Imam movafaq-e hezf-e marg bar Emrika budand’ [Imam Khomeini agreed to end the ‘death to America’ chants], 30 September 2013, http://hashemirafsanjani.ir/content/%D8%A7%D9% 85%D8%A7%D9%85-%D9%85%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%81%D9%82-%D8%AD% D8%B0%D9%81-%D9%85%D8%B1%DA%AF-%D8%A8%D8%B1-%D8%A2% D9%85%D8%B1%DB%8C%DA%A9%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%AF% D9%86%D8%AF-12.

Secondary Sources (English) Abdo, Geneive, ‘The new sectarianism: The Arab uprisings and the rebirth of the Shi’a-Sunni divide’, Analysis Paper 29, Brookings Institution, April 2013.

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Amirahmadi, Hooshang, Revolution and economic transition: The Iranian experience (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Bacık, Gökhan, ‘The Iranian moment and Turkey’, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, 25 May 2016. Bastani, Hossein, ‘How powerful is Rouhani in the Islamic Republic?’, Chatham House, November 2014. Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, Iran: stuck in transition (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Esfandiary, Dina & Ariane Tabatabai, Triple axis: Iran’s relations with Russia and China (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018). International Crisis Group (ICG), ‘Iran’s priorities in a turbulent Middle East’, Middle East Report no. 184, 13 April 2018. International Crisis Group (ICG), ‘Iran after the nuclear deal’, Middle East Report no. 166, 15 December 2015. Khalaji, Mehdi, ‘Yemen war heats up Iran’s anti-Saudi rhetoric’, Policywatch 2423, WINEP, 18 May 2015. Ostovar, Afshon, ‘The grand strategy of militant clients: Iran’s way of war’, Security Studies 28.1 (2019): 159–88. ———, Vanguard of the Imam: religion, politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). Parsi, Trita, Losing an enemy: Obama, Iran, and the triumph of diplomacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). Sadjadpour, Karim, ‘Iran’s unwavering support to Assad’s Syria’, CTC Sentinel 6.8 (August 2013). Terhalle, Maximilian, ‘Revolutionary power and socialization: explaining the persistence of revolutionary zeal in Iran’s foreign policy’, Security Studies 18.3 (2009): 557–86. ———, ‘Why revolutionary states yield: international sanctions, regime survival and the security dilemma. The case of the Islamic Republic of Iran’, International Politics 52.5 (2015): 594–608.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion: Iranian Grand Strategy Between Crusade and Crisis

One way to corroborate a theory is to apply it to the entire universe of cases falling within scope conditions, rather than a limited sample. Given the impracticability of large-n samples in qualitative research, an alternative is to focus on longitudinal variation for a single-country case study. This entails applying the explanatory model not only to selected issue areas or time periods but scaling it up to as broad a temporal expanse as possible for control (i.e., against self-selection biases) and degrees of freedom. Such a research strategy—especially if applied to a target country which is simultaneously susceptible to external developments, highly factionalized and persistently ideological in key aspects—would be better positioned to capture the factors of causal significance. This has been my guiding objective. In this spirit, Table 12.1 summarizes the findings for the entire period of analysis spanning 1979–2017 including the early ‘Jacobin’ decade ending in 1989, and tentatively, Rouhani’s second tenure (2017–21). Where a low perception of external threat coincides with accommodationist dominance, we see a preference for engagement and more conducive conditions for retrenchment or domestic preoccupation. Sustained diplomatic engagement marked Rafsanjani’s first two years and Khatami’s entire first term in respect of the US and Europe. Both presidencies likewise accompanied relatively higher levels of domestic

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Table 12.1 Summary of grand strategic orientations and corresponding presidencies Structural Imperatives Threat Perception Political Revisionist Preferences

Accommodationist

High: Restrictive Restrictive Revisionism Hard Expansionism (or Balancing) Subversion Ahmadinejad-2 Musavi-1 & -2 (1980s)

Low: Permissive Permissive Revisionism Soft Expansionism (Influence) Diversionary Posturing Ahmadinejad-1 Restrictive Permissive Accommodationism Accommodationism Appeasement/Bandwagoning Engagement Balancing (or Hard Retrenchment Expansionism) Rafsanjani-1 (‘89–91) Rafsanjani-1 (‘91–93) Rafsanjani-2 Khatami-1 Khatami-2 Rouhani-1 & -2

preoccupation with the focus on economic and defense rehabilitation under Rafsanjani, and sociocultural liberalization under Khatami. On the other hand, revisionist dominance under low-threat conditions privileges soft expansionism and diversionary posturing. The single instance so far which meets this criterion is Ahmadinejad’s first term, when Iran embarked on an assertive influence campaign with regard to nuclear nationalism, Iraq, and attempts at forging an international coalition for an alternative order. Given the lack of a clear external threat but the existence of a growing domestic legitimacy crisis, Ahmadinejad also indulged in largely unprovoked posturing directed against Israel and the West. Again, while posturing is not a strategy in itself, it can trigger counter-responses with significant strategic implications. When external threats are perceived as high and revisionists dominate, we see a mix of balancing and hard expansionism, as well as subversion. This was the case during the 1980s when Iran’s radicals dominated foreign policy, and again during Ahmadinejad’s second term. In the first case, amid the ‘imposed war’ and revolutionary flux, Iran treaded a tightrope between internal and external balancing by boosting its military capabilities through external arms acquisitions, at a time when it both

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lacked the capacity to generate internal power and rejected the option of depending on external allies. But having successfully reclaimed territory occupied by Saddam Hussein, Iran then pursued hard expansionism into Iraq. Spearheaded by the radicals, an ideologically based subversion also unfolded abroad in the export of the revolution and Iran’s support for Islamic causes and militias. As perceived foreign (and domestic) threats rose around the start of his second term, Ahmadinejad looked to greater internal and external balancing, notably through China, Russia, and the SCO. Only China largely responded, albeit quite by default, and despite its support for Resolution 1929. Relative weakness in material capabilities favored balancing over hard expansionism. Ahmadinejad’s second term also saw significant emphasis on astuce (subversion) as an alternative to arms and allies, notably in the form of cyber operations and covert assassination attempts abroad. Finally, under conditions of high threat and accommodationist dominance, we see a consistent emphasis on bandwagoning or appeasement, with balancing often still remaining in the rearground. During the remainder of Rafsanjani’s presidency from 1991 to 1997, Iran prioritized neutrality during the Gulf War and even allowed the US to use its airspace, maintained ongoing engagement with the West and to some degree with the Bush administration, and attempted to appease the Clinton administration through the Conoco offer. At the same time, Tehran pursued external balancing through relations with China and Russia. Tehran’s studied caution in CA/A reflected the importance of its own ties with Moscow. Even on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, only after a highly tentative engagement (with Washington) failed, and to counter its growing structurally induced isolation did Tehran notch up its backing for Palestinian extremists as a form of external balancing and deterrence. A reelected Khatami first bandwagoned (for profit) with the US over the Afghan war, and then to a limited degree over the coming Iraq war, before separately appeasing the West through nuclear negotiations with the EU3 which included voluntary concessions. If Iran indeed continued the military aspects of its nuclear program beyond 2003, then internal balancing efforts would also have been humming in the rearground at a time when appeasement took public precedence. Finally, Rouhani’s government similarly entered nuclear negotiations (prefaced by the secret Omani-mediated track) but produced an actual international agreement constraining Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. At

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the same time, Iran swung toward balancing, increasingly merging into hard expansionism in the context of the regional contestation—a separate theater of crucial strategic importance for Tehran. Second-order strategic adjustments between presidencies (dispositional) or inflection points (situational) mirrored alterations along the relevant causal pathway (see 2.4, Figs. 2 and 3) and therefore to first-order orientations. Where only perceptions of structural threat shifted, priority tended variously toward internal and/or external balancing (including its hard power expansionist corollary), bandwagoning, appeasement, and to an extent, retrenchment. Turnovers in political dominance alone rendered strategies such as engagement, soft expansionism, and subversion more probable. On only two occasions since the end of the Iran–Iraq war were there simultaneous changes to both perception of external threat and political dominance. In both cases, Rafsanjani-1 (from Restrictive Revisionism to Permissive Accommodationism) and Ahmadinejad-1 (from Restrictive Accommodationism to Permissive Revisionism), orientation, strategy, and policy all underwent dramatic adjustments. To further test the theory’s robustness, a tentative comment regarding Rouhani’s second term is useful. In May 2018, the Trump administration abandoned the JCPOA and reinstated secondary US sanctions, in a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign to persuade Iran to negotiate an improved agreement covering both nuclear and non-nuclear issues. This, in turn, provoked acute escalation in tensions in the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas from May 2019. While Trump’s measures increasingly vindicated Iran’s revisionists, president Rouhani still maintained his hand at the helm. These circumstances, corresponding to Restrictive Accommodationism, therefore ought to accompany continued emphasis on a combination of appeasement/bandwagoning and balancing, as in Rouhani’s first term. Iran waited a full year before responding to Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal. Besides the spate of foreign vessel seizures, Iran struck back in kind, and in measured fashion, to balance against and deter the looming threats, both economic and military. These attacks targeted six oil tankers, southern Gulf pipelines, a US drone, and two Saudi oil facilities, among others. Tehran also began gradually scaling back its nuclear commitments, conditioning a full reversal on the P5+1 honoring their JCPOA commitments. The US’ assassination of Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020, and then the assassination, attributed to Israel, of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran that November likely

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further weakened Tehran’s accommodationists. But despite revisionist pushback, the Rouhani government, in parallel to escalating military threats, continued advocating negotiations with the US, albeit in a multilateral setting and under conditions including the lifting of oil sanctions and a return to the JCPOA. In November 2020, Joe Biden, pledging to bring the US back into compliance with the JCPOA if Iran did likewise, won the US presidential elections, strengthening the case for Iranian diplomacy and self-restraint, at least for a while more. Had Rouhani’s domestic rivals already hijacked policymaking by this time, this would have implied a shift toward Restrictive Revisionism and consequently, toward balancing and particularly hard expansionism and subversion. And yet, even after Soleimani’s killing and the series of unexplained explosions around Iran through the summer of 2020, some of it—including the explosion in a centrifuge assembly area at the Natanz nuclear facility—very likely the fruit of sabotage, Tehran largely maintained self-restraint. Following Fakhrizadeh’s assassination and another sabotage incident, in April 2021, targeting the Natanz facility’s power grid (both blamed on Israel), Iran intensified its nuclear-related scaleback measures, but still largely avoided kinetic retaliation. At sea, only after media disclosure in March 2021 concerning a string of sabotage attacks, since 2019, by Israel against Iranian vessels ferrying oil to Syria, did Iran begin tit-for-tat retaliation against Israeli merchant shipping. With Raisi having freshly replaced Rouhani, a full-fledged revisionist presidency would not necessarily preclude talks or engagement-type strategies with the US, but these are unlikely to be the foreground emphasis. Changes in perceived threat levels and domestic factional dominance, and the strategy sets they make way for in this manner allow for falsification of the model going forward. Five policy implications emerge from this survey. First, Iran isn’t exclusively driven by ideology, factionalism, or realpolitik. Tehran’s default guiding principle for state conduct may be ideological, but this is in most cases (other than with Israel and to an extent the US) tempered to varying degrees when facing costs imposed by the real-world strategic setting. Factional differences often then ultimately and decisively sway the balance toward outcomes. This is the ‘back story’ for the relative pragmatism and compromise that we repeatedly witness. Second, while economic performance and state revenues, including those out of the public eye controlled by the IRGC and its economic interests, tend to correlate broadly with grand strategic adjustments, they

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don’t always directly explain outcomes. This is particularly the case under conditions of perceived high external threat despite ostensibly limited material means, as we saw in Rouhani’s first term. Third, regardless of factional dominance, Iran has consistently pursued balancing in response to perceived high external threats, varying only the policy emphasis assigned to balancing or alternative strategies. While it has historically prioritized internal balancing (self-reliance), the need to acquire the relevant wherewithal to attain that goal has instead necessitated growing reliance on China and Russia, which have in turn come to jointly constitute the keystone of Iranian external balancing. Fourth, external imperatives also profoundly shape domestic politics. Khatami and Rouhani’s presidencies in particular are proof that by discounting engagement and pressuring accommodationist governments, external actors, and especially the US empower the revisionists and help them outmaneuver their rivals (the opposite is likewise true). In this case, it should not surprise if engagement-type strategies cede way to greater emphasis on confrontation. Similarly, while Iran’s accommodationists generally prefer engaging with the West, they ‘look East’ if they are forced to, reflecting the revisionists’ preferences. The Supreme Leader’s authority notwithstanding, the president’s executive choice still very much matters within the ambit of high politics. Whether his policies pan out successfully is a different matter. But still, even assuming high external threat perceptions, i.e., the hard case, factional dominance makes all the difference between hard power expansionism and subversion on the one hand and appeasement and bandwagoning on the other. Fifth, while Iran may be responsive to ‘a lot of pressure’, the compensatory prospect of strategic gains or bespoke concessions, including to its status conception and national honor, raises the probability of bandwagoning or appeasement, certainly in the case of accommodationists, but also even possibly for revisionists. Additional future avenues of inquiry could include, for instance: the use of balancing strategies based on astuce (subversion) as an alternative to arms and allies, which I’ve broached to an extent; the relationship between assertive behavior and threat perceptions regardless of material means; and how Iran’s factions have exploited external developments to secure domestic political preeminence. More research on future revisionist Iranian governments, starting with Raisi’s, would also advance our understanding of any within-faction variation.

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The dynamic-integrative model of grand strategic adjustments proposed here isn’t uniquely Iranian, but it applies best to authoritariananocratic states with factional or domestic variation regarding revisionist/accommodationist approaches to the external world. However, the theoretical structure’s basic set-up lends itself to far greater generalization, requiring only that two broad tendencies discernably dominate external policy, and that political regimes possess relatively stabilized identities and institutions. Thence, the researcher need only specify the unit-level factors—the nature of ideational referents, the definition of domestic preferences, and the expected constitutive and causal effects on threat perceptions and second-order strategies. To illustrate the dynamic-integrative model’s external validity, take another two cases falling within its scope conditions: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and modern Turkey. Alongside the PRC, Turkey has become more authoritarian under Erdo˘gan, and both have through the decades evinced revisionist and accommodationist streaks visà-vis the Western-led order and their own status conceptions. Let’s briefly, pending fuller work (perhaps eventually incorporating Putin’s Russia), consider how the model explains both cases. In China’s context, external threat perceptions interacted with agent preferences as embodied in the PRC’s five paramount leaders. Much of the founding period presided over by Mao Zedong (1949–76) combined a revolutionary revisionism with periods of high perceived external threat including the Korean war, the Sino-Indian war, the Sino-Soviet fallout and the 1969 border conflict between both countries (alongside internal instability, especially during the Cultural Revolution). These correspond to Restrictive Revisionism. Accordingly, Mao’s China heavily tended toward a balancing strategy both diplomatic and at times undistinguishable from hard military expansionism, even an internal balancing entailing nuclearization and the Great Leap Forward, as well as subversion. As tensions with the USSR rose, external balancing previously against the US now shifted against Moscow, amid rapprochement with Washington. Determined to open China up, Deng Xiaoping (1977–89) inherited an external environment with unprecedentedly lower levels of perceived threat after the Mao-Nixon thaw, corresponding to Permissive Accommodationism for the most part. In line with theoretical expectations, Beijing palpably multiplied its engagement and trade interdependence with the US and the West, even as it focused on a paradigm-changing campaign of

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internal economic reforms. This domestic focus, a form of retrenchment, reflected Deng’s counsel to ‘hide your strength, bide your time’. Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) and Hu Jintao (2002–2012) largely continued with Deng’s opening and reforms and pursued China’s ‘peaceful rise’, although their perceptions of external threat varied, producing a mix of Restrictive and Permissive Accommodationism. When threat perceptions remained low, engagement with the West continued apace, particularly between 1996 and 2008. When threat perceptions spiked, engagement shifted toward a mix of appeasement, bandwagoning, and balancing, particularly vis-à-vis the US with regards to Taiwan. Finally, Xi Jinping (2012–) assumed power in a period of relatively lower perceived threat, but revived the revolutionary-ideological fervor and personality cult of Mao Zedong’s era, producing a Permissive Revisionism embodying the ‘Chinese dream’ and the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. His paramount leadership accompanied a conspicuous foreground campaign of soft expansionism. This assumed the form of the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative; soft-shaping multilateral institutions like the UN; establishing alternative international financial institutions; more responsible leadership on global issues including climate change, free-trade, and multilateralism; scientific-technological achievements such as landing on the moon’s dark side; a flood of cultural products alluding to China’s benign if indispensable rise; and Beijing’s growing foreign influence operations. To be sure, Xi’s government also intensified its military modernization and naval buildup, inaugurated China’s first overseas naval base in Djibouti, and increased its military posturing short of armed conflict in the East China Sea and South China Sea. But again, soft power took center stage in this period. As international pushback increased from the Trump administration and its allies, including over the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi’s China, with threat perceptions now on the rise, shifted toward more hard power. At home, Beijing intensified its control and surveillance in restive hotspots including Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Across the Strait, PRC air sorties increasingly probed Taiwanese airspace. And abroad, Chinese military assertiveness additionally extended to other places, including along the Indian borders. Turkey betrays a similar pattern of grand strategic conduct. From independence in 1923 through the twentieth century, Kemalist-secularist Turkey regardless of governing party thoroughly aligned itself with the West and shunned the (Arab) Middle East. The pro-status quo,

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non-interventionist stance, especially in the Middle East, derived from Atatürk’s ‘Peace at Home, Peace in the World’ (Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh). When threat perceptions were low during the interbellum period, Permissive Accommodationist Turkey engaged as much with the European powers (France and Britain) as with its neighbours including Greece and historical enemy Russia, which helped Turkey build a steel mill. The Turkish republic’s domestic nation-building project similarly absorbed much of Ankara’s attention then. When threat perceptions rose vis-à-vis Fascist Italy and revisionist Bulgaria, leading to Restrictive Accommodationism, Turkey balanced against them with the help of Britain and France, and the 1934 Balkan Pact, respectively. Turkey stayed out of World War Two, signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1941 (a form of bandwagoning/appeasement?), before bandwagoning for profit with the Allies just before Germany’s defeat. During the Cold War, Turkey cleaved close to Washington, supplied troops in the Korean War, and joined NATO in 1952 to balance against the threat posed by the USSR and communism (Restrictive Accommodationism). Despite the Cyprus problem, Ankara maintained its pro-West orientation, formally requesting accession to the European Community in 1987. Turkey likewise deployed troops supporting US efforts in the 1990–91 Gulf War, hosted US forces and Jupiter nuclear missiles on its territory, and in the 1990s, tightened relations with Israel. Since the AKP and Erdo˘gan’s rise to power from 2002 to 2003, Turkey has gradually become more Islamist-nationalist, authoritarian (again), and in some ways, revisionist. When external threat perceptions were relatively low through the 2000s (Permissive Revisionism), Erdo˘gan’s government pursued soft power expansionism in the Middle East, Balkans, Africa, and elsewhere, which some viewed as neo-Ottomanism. Helping propel this soft expansionism were robust economic growth, the overseas role ˙ of aid agencies such as TIKA, along with a relentless slew of religious and cultural exports including schools and Turkish television dramas. Posturing similarly increased against the West, and against Israel over the 2008–9 Gaza war and the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. By the time of the Arab uprisings, Turkish soft power and the pull of its prosperous Islamic democratic model had reached a peak. But then external threat perceptions rose owing to the same uprisings, particularly Syria’s civil war and the growing prospects of Syrian-Kurdish autonomy. Internally, unrest also grew, including the 2013 Gezi Park

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protests, the PKK’s renewed insurgency from 2015 and the botched 2016 coup d’état. A shift in perceived threat, leading to Restrictive Revisionism, accompanied hard military expansionism inside northern Syria after Turkey had first backed, harbored, and armed anti-Assad rebels, and subsequently in western Libya in support of Tripoli’s Islamist-leaning government. Turkey also established additional military bases abroad including in Ba’shiqa (Iraq), Qatar, and Mogadishu. As frictions with the West worsened, Erdo˘gan shunned EU accession talks (which he had initially backed to subdue Turkey’s military brass), downplayed NATO cooperation, and fell out with the US. Instead, Ankara privileged a less lopsided foreign policy through greater balancing. Turkey became SCO dialogue partner from 2012, improved ties with Russia from 2016 (albeit due to pragmatic constraints in the Syrian conflict), and consolidated relations with Qatar against Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Ankara also pursued internal balancing through the acquisition of Russia’s S-400 SAM and the planned (though subsequently aborted) co-production of a missile defense system with China. As its economy deteriorated, Turkey turned toward Chinese financial support, while Erdo˘gan fell uncharacteristically silent on China’s treatment of its Sunni-Turkic Uyghurs. With Tripoli, Erdo˘gan sought to revise Turkey’s Mediterranean maritime borders to prevent Cyprus, Israel, Greece, and Egypt from exporting gas to Europe. Ankara likewise flirted with forms of subversion, including by supporting the political rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated movements in Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia, and by exploiting the refugee crisis to coerce concessions from the EU. Considered individually, realist, liberal, and constructivist theories each have a hard time explaining the broader temporal sweep of both states’ strategic adjustments without self-selecting for issues or periods. Realism misses shifts in ideological orientation and agent preferences (e.g., political Islam in Turkey), with NCR at best treating them as intervening pathologies even when structure is frequently indeterminate. Conversely, constructivism and liberalism gloss over or play down the role of material structural effects. The theoretical alternative advanced in this work specifies not only how the causally significant pathways from all three perspectives interact with each other but also the strategic outcomes to be expected in practice. The theoretical model in its basic form is even more generalizable. Take for example Israel, where security has historically constituted the main axis

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of electoral competition, declining into two camps especially with respect to the Palestinians (Nasser’s Egypt, Iran, Hezbollah etc. being largely consensus issues). The Palestinian cause has moreover animated much of the external threats and interstate wars facing Israel over the decades. While the ideology undergirding the Zionist nation-state project was hardly monolithic, its Labor and Revisionist Zionist variants have dominated party politics. These in turn have corresponded to the Labor and Likud parties and their various incarnations (Mapai, Alignment, Herut, etc.), particularly from 1977, when Likud’s electoral victory upended Labor’s three-decade dominance. To specify domestic preferences, Labor governments thus prefer a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians by relinquishing land, while Likud governments oppose the same, frequently allying themselves with Religious Zionists and proponents of Greater Israel. Given its positions concerning land and a two-state solution, the centrist government led by Kadima from 2006 to 2009—and even before that, when Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Kadima’s founder, began breaking with his own party line—fell alongside Labor. As the basic model suggests, structural effects interact with unit-level ideational antecedents to shape threat perceptions, including as a function of deliberate securitization, while these same ideational elements and nuances interact with agents to produce a localized variant of the accommodationist-revisionist dichotomy. Insofar as second-order strategies, Labor or Kadima governments perceiving relatively low threat sought engagement and dialogue with the Palestinians (Rabin’s government in the early 1990s, Ehud Barak’s between 1999 and 2001, and Ehud Olmert’s from 2006 to 2009), or even retrenchment (withdrawal from predetermined Palestinian areas following the Oslo Accords, and Sharon’s 2005 Gaza disengagement). The same governments perceiving high threats resorted to military measures for deterrence or retaliation (the 2006 and 2009 wars against Gaza, both under Olmert), although one might argue that high threats (terrorism and both Intifadas) also ultimately raised the urgency of land-for-peace negotiations (appeasement). Likud governments facing relatively low threats resorted to expansionism by mainly non-military means (recurring settlement expansions, and Netanyahu’s 2019 plans to annex the Jordan Valley and, after Trump’s 2020 ‘Deal of the Century’, 30 percent of the West Bank). The same governments perceiving high threats, like their accommodationist counterparts, also opted for military measures (Israel’s invasion of

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Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 against Palestinian militants, Sharon’s 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank during the Second Intifada, and Netanyahu’s wars against Gaza in 2012, 2014, and 2021). In Israel’s case then, consistent with theoretical expectations, competing political factions pursued engagement and retrenchment or expansionism under low perceived threat, while high-threat perceptions prompted both toward similar military measures and deterrence, essentially balancing or hard expansionism. The point is that with only contextual retooling, the three-level model in its basic form retains broader relevance in explaining variance as a function of structure, ideas, and agency. ∗ ∗ ∗ For the statesman, grand strategy may not necessarily be the product of any calculated or even conscious attempt at matching ends with means. For the scholar, however, the ‘creative disorder of the human adventure’ begs to be disciplined, unpacked, and recomposed, and no understanding of grand strategy over time is possible without examining the interaction between power, perceptions, and preferences.1 To what extent each matters is a question of empirical verification, not deductive reasoning. A state’s decision to raid or trade, compete or cooperate, is a function of both structure and agency. Ideas similarly play an indispensable role. But while they may exert direct causal effects, they still require agents to act on them, and more often than not mediate both variables, interacting with each to produce a set of discursive, social, and material conditions of probability. Ideas thus inform perceptions of structural conditions on the one hand and shape strategic culture and the contours of desired state conduct on the other. Together, these constraints and opportunities in their broadest sense constitute what Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco call the ‘operational milieu’ of political decisions and state action.2 An a priori insistence on individual levels of analysis impoverishes our understanding of highly complex sociopolitical processes. The dynamicintegrative model presented in this book incorporates all three levels of analysis, but neither claims to exhaust the range of specific causes of adjustment within each level nor denies the possible existence of 1 Cited in Almond and Genco 1977, 517. 2 Ibid., 492–3.

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invisible confounders. What it hopes to do, however, is to demonstrate the problems with IR’s persisting interparadigmatic debates, and perhaps to find greater pragmatic common ground within the materialistideationalist, structure-agent, positivist-interpretivist, and nomotheticideographic debate dichotomies. Ultimately, structure, ideas, and agents are necessary conditions in any given case because they reflect an enduring, synchronous process of contestation over material power in the international realm, over perceptions in the ideational realm, and over political preferences in the domestic realm. All three in turn share the distinction of emanating from the caprice of human volition. ∗ ∗ ∗

Reference Secondary Source (English) Almond, Gabriel A. & Stephen J. Genco, ‘Clouds, clocks, and the study of politics’, World Politics 29 (1977): 489–522.

References

Primary Sources (English) US Government Documents Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Intelligence Assessment, ‘Seizing the day: Iran’s response to the Persian Gulf Crisis’, November 1990, https://www. cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000266045.pdf. ———, Intelligence Assessment, ‘Soviet-Iranian relations after Khomeini’, 23 June 1989, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_000060 2666.pdf. ———, Intelligence Report (NESA 97-10003CX), ‘Iranian activity in Central Asia and the Caucasus’, February 1997, https://www.cia.gov/library/readin groom/docs/DOC_0001429024.pdf. ———, Memo (GI M 84-10077C), ‘China’s arms trade with Iran’, April 1984, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T 00287R001200100001-9.pdf. ———, Memo (GI M 85-10180), ‘UN mediation of the Iran-Iraq War: tilting toward Iran yields little progress’, 3 July 1985, https://www.cia.gov/library/ readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T01058R000304690001-4.pdf. ———, Memo, ‘An evaluation of DI [Directorate of Intelligence] reporting on Iran’s acceptance of a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War’, 17 August 1988, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP 90G01353R001200090002-2.pdf. ———, Memo, ‘Iran: response to Soviet disunion’, September 1991, https:// www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000602681.pdf.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1

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Index

A Abdi, Abbas, 184 Abdullah II, King of Jordan, 214 Achaemenid (dynasty), 59, 97, 212, 246 Adamov, Yevgeny, 147 Additional Protocol (AP), 188, 189, 191, 193, 207, 209, 251 Afghanistan/Kabul, 1, 4, 39, 81, 108, 146, 157, 158, 179–185, 187, 192, 194, 195, 215, 218, 232, 234, 253, 283 Aghazadeh, Gholam-Reza, 190, 210 Ahmadinejad, Mahmud, 6, 39, 76, 77, 79–82, 199, 201–210, 215–217, 220–224, 226, 227, 229, 231, 233–236, 243–249, 251, 253–255, 258, 259, 263, 265–269, 273, 275, 279–281, 291, 293, 298, 304, 305 Alawites, Syrian, 283 Albright, Madeleine, 171, 172, 194 Algeria, 3, 145, 222 Algiers Accord, 133

Aliyev, Heydar, 156 Allawi, Iyad, 213, 219 Amano, Yukiya, 249 al-Ameri, Hadi, 215, 287 Amir-Abdollahian, Hossein, 278 Appeasement (strategy), 31, 34, 36, 37, 78, 81, 92, 130, 152, 167, 179, 192, 196, 200, 259, 291, 306, 310, 311 Arab League, 291 Arab Uprisings, ‘Arab spring’, 39, 53, 263, 265, 279, 280, 290, 291, 311 Arak (heavy-water reactor), 187, 190, 208, 211, 272, 294 Araki, Mohammad-Ali, 132 Araqchi, Abbas, 216, 292, 294 Ardebili, Abdolkarim Musavi, 139 Aref, Mohammad-Reza, 266, 268 Argentina/Buenos Aires, 119, 223–225 Armenia/Yerevan, 1, 4, 59, 144, 153–156, 160

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Lim, Power, Perception, and Politics in the Making of Iranian Grand Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04390-1

341

342

INDEX

Artesh (Iran’s regular armed forces), 101, 284 Asa’eb Ahl al-Haqq (AAH), 216, 287 Ashton, Catherine, 251 Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), 230, 233 al-Assad, Bashar, 265, 283 al-Assad, Hafez, 280 Assembly of Experts, 71, 77, 96, 97, 202, 204, 268 Astana process, 283 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 311 Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), 190, 210, 248, 249, 251, 271 Atoms for Peace Program, 118 ‘Axis of Evil’, 183, 184, 195, 228 ‘Axis of Resistance’, 200, 265, 280, 281 Azari-Qomi, Ahmad, 74, 139 Azerbaijan/Baku, 1, 4, 109, 144, 153–158, 160, 180, 256, 257 Azeri (ethnic group), 59, 153–156 B Badr (Corps/Brigade/Organization), 89, 213–216, 287 Bahonar, Mohammad-Reza, 216 Bahrain/Manama, 4, 60, 90, 134, 138, 264, 265, 280, 291, 295 Baker, James, 138, 141, 159, 200 Bakhtiar, Shahpour, 105, 138 Balancing (strategy), 31, 34, 36, 37, 78, 82, 88, 92, 152, 167, 192, 196, 200, 212, 244, 256, 258, 259, 264, 291, 308, 310 external balancing, 26, 33, 34, 37, 80, 144, 146, 147, 152, 161, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 304–306, 308, 309 internal balancing, 26, 33, 34, 37, 80, 88, 122, 152, 194, 235,

252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 304–306, 308, 309, 312 Bandwagoning (strategy), 3, 31, 36–38, 81, 92, 130, 152, 167, 179, 192, 196, 200, 259, 291, 306, 310 bandwagoning for profit, 36, 81, 311 Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan, 87, 88, 92, 202 Ban, Ki-moon, 282 Barak, Ehud, 200, 249, 313 al-Bashir, Omar, 224 Basij, 76, 174, 201–203, 246, 255, 275, 283 Bazaaris (Iran’s traditional merchantry), 99, 131, 206 Bazargan, Mehdi, 87, 92 Beheshti, Mohammad, 117 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 310 Besharati, Ali-Mohammad, 131 Biden, Joe, 278, 307 Bin Salman, Muhammad, 288 Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), 222 Bolivia, 222, 223 Bonyads (parastatal charitable foundations), 77, 277, 278 Brahimi, Lakhdar, 181 Brazil/Brasilia, 113, 114, 119, 223–225, 250, 259 Britain/London, 63, 91, 105–108, 144, 189, 205, 212, 286, 311 Burns, William, 248, 270 Bushehr (nuclear power plant), 106, 118, 119, 147, 227 Bush, George H.W., 78, 109, 110, 134, 135, 161 Bush, George W., 78, 111, 121, 135, 141, 160, 180, 183, 184, 186, 194, 195, 208, 216, 217, 228, 232, 305

INDEX

C Caspian Sea, 144, 147, 159, 226 Caucasus/Transcaucasia, 4, 58, 59, 146, 153, 286, 290 Central Asia, 4, 58, 59, 146, 148, 152, 153, 157, 159, 180, 232, 254 ‘Chain murders’, the, 174, 175 ‘Chalice of poison’, 91 Chavez, Hugo, 222, 223 Chechnya, 146, 151 Cheney, Dick, 180, 186 Chernomyrdin, Viktor, 147, 226 China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), 229 China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), 229, 273 China, People’s Republic of (PRC)/Beijing, 113, 116, 119, 148–152, 161, 228, 230, 231, 258, 309, 310 Chizari, Mohsen, 281 Churchill, Winston, 18 Clausewitz, Carl von, 11 Clinton, Bill, 139–141, 147, 160, 161, 171–173, 180, 305 Coalition of Islamic Iran Developers (E’telaf-e Abadgaran-e Iran-e Eslami), 201 Cold War, 5, 14, 39, 51, 57, 63, 129, 146, 150, 152, 160, 180, 311 Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), 254 Combatant Clerics Association (Majma’-ye Rouhaniyun-e Mobarez), 75, 130 Communism, communist, 63, 73, 108, 144, 153, 311 Comoros, 224, 259, 291 Composite Index of National Capability (CINC), 50, 52, 53, 57

343

Conoco Inc., 140 Constructivism, constructivist, 1, 6, 7, 15, 16, 25, 31, 91, 196, 300, 312 Correa, Rafael, 222 Council of the Islamic Revolution, 73, 87, 139 Counterfactuals, 38 Coup of August 1991, Moscow, 144, 153 COVID-19 pandemic, 310 ‘Critical dialogue’, 107, 121, 138 Crocker, Ryan, 182, 217 Cuba/Havana, 222, 225 Cyber, 4, 57, 255, 259, 305 D Damascus Declaration, 137, 141 Danaie-Far, Hassan, 217 Danesh-Ja’afari, Davud, 244 Daqduq, Ali Musa, 216 da Silva, Lula, 250 Da’wa Islamiyya (Islamic Call) Party, 213 de Cuéllar, Javier Pérez, 110, 134 Dehnamaki, Mas’ud, 132 Democratic peace theory, 15 Deng, Xiaoping, 148, 309, 310 Deterrence, 31, 34, 122, 144, 161, 293, 297, 305, 313, 314 ‘Deviant current’ (jaryan-e enherafi), 246 ‘Dialogue among civilizations’, 79, 169, 170, 176, 180 Diversionary posturing (strategy), 35, 36, 82, 200, 207, 234–236, 243, 258, 304 Djibouti, 225, 291, 310 Dobbins, James, 182–184, 192 Dorri-Najafabadi, Qorban-Ali, 174 Dual Containment, 139, 141, 150, 171, 183

344

INDEX

Dubai, 103, 185 Dumas, Roland, 106 E Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), 158, 159, 233 Ecuador, 222, 223, 225 Egypt, 3, 51, 52, 134, 138, 222, 264, 265, 290, 291, 295, 312, 313 ElBaradei, Mohamed, 190, 206, 210, 215, 217, 248–250 Elçibey, Abülfez, 155, 156 Engagement (strategy), 32, 34, 35, 37, 95, 102, 121, 130, 144, 176, 179, 306–308 Erdo˘gan, Recep Tayyip, 207, 250, 289, 290, 309, 311, 312 Eshkevari, Hasan Yousefi, 168 Etemad, Akbar, 117 EU3, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 196, 204–208, 212, 228, 234–237, 266, 293, 305 Expansionism (strategy), 3, 32, 34, 192 expansionist, 24, 82, 221, 222, 295, 306 hard expansionism, 26, 34, 38, 80, 82, 88, 91, 92, 95, 196, 244, 258, 259, 264, 304–307, 314 soft expansionism, 37, 79, 111, 200, 212, 219, 220, 224, 234, 235, 243, 252, 255, 258, 304, 306, 310, 311 Expediency Council, 70, 73, 75, 96, 175, 181, 185, 202, 246, 266, 282 F al-Faisal, Prince Saud, 134 Fakhrizadeh, Mohsen, 190, 306, 307 Fallahian, Ali, 132

Fatemiyun Brigade, 283 Financial Action Task Force (FATF), 273 First Gulf War, 39, 180 Firuzabadi, Hassan, 101, 275 Five-Year Plan, 111, 112, 114, 131 Fordow (fuel enrichment plant), 211, 227, 233, 243, 249–251, 258, 271 Forward defense, 33, 120, 297–299 France/Paris, 18, 52, 68, 90, 91, 105–108, 138, 140, 181, 186, 189, 229, 233, 248, 273, 311

G Gambia, 224 Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), 226 Georgia/Tbilisi, 144, 155, 209, 226, 257 Germany, 24, 63, 66, 81, 90, 105–107, 119, 138, 158, 189, 230, 233, 311 Ghaffari, Hadi, 132 Gharazi, Mohammad, 266 Golestan, Treaty of, 63, 69, 144 Golpayegani, Mohammad Mohammadi, 288 Golpayegani, Mohammad-Reza Hashemi, 131 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 108, 109, 144, 145, 153, 157 Gore, Al, 147 ‘Grand bargain’, the, 7, 186, 189, 190, 192–196, 205, 293 Grand strategy, 1, 6–8, 11–18, 29, 50, 53, 57, 68, 72, 77–79, 98, 116, 121, 129, 212, 217, 293, 314 Green Movement, 245, 257, 264

INDEX

Guardian Council, 70, 74, 77, 97, 130, 139, 168, 175, 201, 245, 266, 269 Guldimann, Tim, 186, 187 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 103, 104, 121, 122, 134, 138, 155, 160, 177, 185, 222, 265, 280, 289

H Haddad-Adel, Gholam-Ali, 201, 266 Hadi, Abdrabbo Mansur, 288 al-Haeri, Kazem, 283 Hajjarian, Saeed, 168, 174 Hamas, 120, 141, 200, 289 Hamedani, Hossein, 283, 286 al-Hariri, Rafiq, 200 Hashemi, Mehdi, 89, 90 Hashemi-Shahrudi, Mahmud, 220 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 183 ‘Heroic flexibility’ (narmesh-e qahremanane), 270, 274, 276, 291 Hezbollah, 89, 90, 105, 110, 120, 132, 143, 174, 200, 216, 224, 256, 257, 280, 281, 283–286, 289, 291, 313 Hitler, Adolf, 16, 18, 24, 311 Houthis, 120, 288, 289, 298 Hu, Jintao, 310 Hussein, Saddam, 63, 88, 90, 133, 180, 305

I Idealpolitik, 27 Ilkhanid (dynasty), 148 India/New Delhi, 51, 52, 57, 113, 119, 150, 205, 207, 225, 231–234, 252, 253, 255, 257, 295

345

Innenpolitik, 14, 15, 25, 27, 32, 39, 196 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 118, 119, 188–190, 207–211, 215, 217, 225, 233, 236, 248–251, 256, 259, 272, 275, 294 Intifada, 200, 314 Iran-Contra affair, 88, 90, 91 Iranian nationalism, nationalist, 58, 62, 170, 246 Iran-Iraq war eight-year war, 5, 63, 76, 95, 98, 101, 111, 114, 120, 134, 135, 148, 212, 213 ‘holy defense’, 64, 283 ‘imposed war’, 64, 109, 304 Iran, Islamic Republic of/Tehran, 1–7, 39, 50–54, 57, 59–67, 69–72, 76, 77, 79–82, 87–92, 95–100, 102–123, 129, 130, 132–161, 167–177, 179–196, 199–237, 243–246, 248–260, 263–265, 267–295, 297–300, 304–308, 313 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), 140, 150, 171 Iraq/Baghdad, 3, 4, 8, 39, 51, 52, 60, 63–65, 79, 81, 88, 89, 91, 92, 95, 98, 103–106, 108, 112, 114–116, 133–137, 139, 141–143, 146, 149, 171, 179, 180, 183–188, 191, 192, 195, 200, 201, 212–222, 234–237, 283–287, 289–291, 295, 297, 298, 304, 305, 312 ‘Islamic Awakening’, 264, 279, 285, 295 Islamic democracy (mardomsalari-ye eslami), 168 Islamic Republican Party (IRP), 73, 75, 87, 117, 246

346

INDEX

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Khatam ol-Anbia, 101, 276 Qods Force, 101, 120, 156, 183, 217, 257, 279, 281–283, 285, 286, 290 Saberin special forces, 285 Islamic State, the, 207, 284–287, 298 Israel/Jerusalem, 3, 5, 7, 8, 51, 52, 57, 82, 88, 89, 105, 110, 112, 114–117, 132, 139, 141–144, 152, 157, 161, 172, 174, 183, 186, 193, 200, 205–207, 212, 217, 232, 249, 255–257, 263, 264, 278, 280, 286, 288, 291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 304, 306, 307, 311–314 Italy, 91, 107, 233, 253, 273, 311

J al-Ja’afari, Ibrahim, 213 Ja’afari, Mohammad-Ali, 274, 275, 288, 289 Jabr, Bayan, 287 Jahangiri, Es’haq, 273 Jalili, Saeed, 114, 209, 248, 251, 266, 267, 299, 300 Jannati, Ahmad, 77, 139, 269 Japan/Tokyo, 90, 99, 107, 183, 230 Javadi-Amoli, Abdollah, 108 Jiang, Zemin, 152, 228, 310 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), 269, 271, 272, 278, 279, 292–295, 306, 307 Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), 271, 274, 293 Jordan, 134, 214, 222, 289 al-Jubeir, Adel, 290 Justice and Equality Party (AKP), 289, 311

K Kadivar, Mohsen, 168, 174 Karbaschi, Gholam-Hossein, 175 Kargozaran (party), 76, 168, 175 Karine-A (incident), 183, 194 Karrubi, Mehdi, 74, 97, 104, 130, 136, 137, 170, 175, 202, 245, 246 Kata’eb Hezbollah (KH), 215, 287 Kazakhstan, 4, 119, 210, 253 Kazemi-Qomi, Hassan, 217 Kerry, John, 269, 275, 282 Khaji, Ali-Asghar, 270 Khalilzad, Zalmay, 184, 187 Khalkhali, Sadeq, 97, 130, 136 Khamenei, Ali Hosseini, 39, 40, 59, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 87, 96, 97, 101, 102, 105, 106, 110, 111, 114, 117, 130–132, 135–137, 139–141, 149, 161, 169, 170, 174, 175, 180–182, 184–186, 189–191, 193, 194, 196, 203–205, 208, 211, 217, 220, 235, 244–250, 259, 260, 264–266, 269, 270, 273–276, 278, 281, 285, 287, 288, 291, 293, 299, 300 Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 118, 119 Kharrazi, Kamal, 137, 140, 155, 172, 186, 244 Kharrazi, Sadeq, 186 Khatami, Mohammad, 39, 76, 79, 81, 82, 131, 167–177, 179–190, 192–196, 200, 201, 203–207, 214, 221, 222, 226, 228, 231, 232, 234–236, 245, 246, 253, 266, 293, 303–305, 308 Khaz’ali, Qais, 216 Khobar (Towers incident), 140, 172 Khoi, Abolqasem, 220 Khomeini, Hassan, 268

INDEX

Khomeini, Ruhollah Musavi, 28, 38, 39, 62, 63, 69–72, 75, 76, 88–91, 95–97, 99–102, 105, 107–110, 117, 122, 129, 136, 141, 144, 145, 148, 168, 174, 221, 234, 264, 298 Khorasani, Saeed Raja’i, 105, 139 Kohl, Helmut, 111 Kordan, Ali, 244 Kozyrev, Andrei, 146 Kuwait, 4, 52, 90, 103, 104, 133, 134, 136, 149, 280, 291 Kyrgyzstan, 180, 226, 253 L Labor (party), 142, 313 Larijani, Ali, 131, 202, 206, 207, 209, 217, 222, 244, 268, 270, 281 Larijani, Mohammad-Javad, 109, 137, 183 Lebanon/Beirut, 60, 89, 105, 107, 109, 111, 121, 134, 142, 200, 218, 222, 250, 280, 282, 284, 290, 291, 314 Liberalism, liberalist, 7, 14, 25, 91, 196, 312 neo-liberalism, 14 Libya/Tripoli, 3, 88, 115, 145, 264, 312 Liddell Hart, Basil, 11, 120 Likud (party), 142, 143, 313 Li, Peng, 149 ‘Look East’ (policy), 221, 222, 231, 233, 252, 253, 308 M Madrid Conference (October 1991), 141 Mahdi, the, 60, 61, 63, 204, 207, 247, 256

347

Mahsuli, Sadeq, 245 Makarem-Shirazi, Naser, 286 Maleki, Abbas, 69, 155, 181, 221 al-Maliki, Nuri, 214, 216–219, 287 Mansuri, Javad, 231 Mao, Zedong, 148, 309, 310 Marja, 96, 132, 220 Marja’iyyat (Source of Emulation), 61, 63, 131 Marja’-ye Taqlid, 61, 213 Masjedi, Iraj, 217 Maslahat (regime expediency or interest), 70 Mavi Marmara (incident), 311 Mazaheri, Tahmasb, 244 Medvedev, Dmitry, 212, 226, 227, 252, 253 Mehralizadeh, Mohsen, 202 Mesbah-Yazdi, Mohammad-Taqi, 77, 269 Meshkini, Ali, 74 Mikhailov, Viktor, 147 Militant Clergy Society (Jame’-ye Rouhaniyat-e Mobarez), 75, 130 Ministry of Defense and Armed Force Logistics (MODAFL), 101, 114 Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), 132, 174, 190 Mitterrand, François, 138 Mohajerani, Ata’ollah, 110, 117, 132, 175 Mohebian, Amir, 141 Mohtashamipur, Ali-Akbar, 89, 97, 104, 110, 122, 130, 141 Moin, Mostafa, 131, 202 Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), 73, 105, 183, 185, 186, 195 Moniz, Ernest, 271 Monotheism and Justice Front (Jebhe-ye Towhid va Edalat ), 247 Montazeri, Hossein-Ali, 89, 246 Morales, Evo, 222

348

INDEX

Morgenthau, Hans, 16, 30, 49, 68 Morocco, 134, 289 Morsi, Mohammad, 265 Moslehi, Heidar, 247 Mossadeq, Mohammad, 63, 205 Motahhari, Ali, 268 Mottaki, Manouchehr, 216, 221, 251 al-Muhandis, Abu Mahdi, 216, 287 Musavi, Mir-Hossein, 38, 59, 74, 75, 87, 122, 168, 245, 246, 260 Muslim Brotherhood, 264, 290, 312 Mutalibov, Ayaz, 155

N Nackaerts, Herman, 251 Nagorno-Karabakh, 155, 156 Naqdi, Mohammad-Reza, 275 Nasrallah, Hassan, 120, 142, 285 Natanz (fuel enrichment plant), 187, 188, 190, 207, 209–211, 235, 249, 271, 307 Nateq-Nuri, Ali-Akbar, 130, 139, 168, 169, 173, 177, 196 National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), 183, 187 National Defense Forces (Syrian), 283 National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), 159 Neo-Ottomanism, 311 Netanyahu, Binyamin, 143, 172, 313, 314 ‘New World Order’, 78, 129, 145, 224 Nicaragua, 222, 223 al-Nimr, Sheikh Nimr Baqir, 290 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 91, 222, 225, 233, 265 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 146, 226, 254, 311, 312 Northern Alliance (Afghanistan), 182

North Korea/Pyongyang, 88, 113, 115, 116, 145, 148, 183, 205, 249 Nuclear negotiations, 1, 77, 81, 187, 193, 236, 248, 250, 264, 269, 270, 274, 298, 305 Nurbakhsh, Mohsen, 131 Nurgaliyev, Bolat, 255 Nuri, Abdollah, 131, 153, 175 O Obama, Barack, 78, 210–212, 227, 250, 255, 259, 260, 269, 270, 274, 287, 292, 299 Oman, 4, 134 Operation Desert Saber, 133 Operation Desert Shield, 133 Operation Desert Storm, 133 Operation Enduring Freedom, 181, 182 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 186 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 90, 105 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 4, 54, 103, 104, 226, 233, 254 Ortega, Daniel, 222 Oslo Accords, 142, 313 Peace Process, the, 141–144, 170 Özal, Turgut, 157 P P5+1, 205, 208, 211, 248, 250, 251, 258, 259, 271, 274, 277, 288, 294, 306 Pakistan/Islamabad, 4, 51, 53, 57, 113, 118, 119, 145, 150, 152, 153, 157, 158, 161, 167, 180, 199, 205, 210, 230, 232, 243, 252, 253, 255, 283, 295

INDEX

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 142 Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), 120, 141 Palestinian(s), 137, 139, 141–144, 161, 172, 186, 200, 203, 206, 222, 291, 305, 313, 314 Pan-Islamism, pan-Islamist, 1, 63, 170, 265 Pan-Turkism, 157 Pan-Turanism, 157 Parliament (Iranian), 71, 95, 97, 112, 129, 136, 202, 207, 250, 268, 298 Majles, 70, 71, 87, 88, 96, 108, 109, 130, 132, 168, 175, 176, 185, 201, 203, 244, 247, 251, 266, 268, 270 Parthian (dynasty), 59, 148, 212 Permissive Accommodationism, 2, 37, 95, 121, 167, 176, 306, 309, 310 Permissive Revisionism, 3, 36, 199, 234, 306, 310, 311 Persia, 60–62, 144, 155, 213 Persian Gulf, 4, 66, 100, 103, 104, 113, 134, 136, 137, 151, 159, 171, 180, 185, 187, 212, 217, 229, 254, 290, 298, 306 Strait of Hormuz, 138 Petraeus, David, 218 Plan and Budget Organization, 96 Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), 287 al-Hashd ash-Sha’abi, 287 Possible military dimensions (PMD), 190, 210, 243, 249, 271 Project AMAD, 190 SPND, 190 Purmohammadi, Mostafa, 244 Putin, Vladimir, 225–227, 253, 309

349

Q Qa’ani, Esma’il, 279, 281 Qaboos ibn Sa’id, Sultan of Oman, 269 Al-Qaeda, 120, 180–183, 186, 187, 284 Qajar (dynasty), 59, 61, 63, 144 Qalibaf, Mohammad-Baqer, 202, 266, 267 Qatar/Doha, 4, 134, 138, 222, 226, 256, 289–291, 312 Qi, Huaiyuan, 149 R Rabin, Yitzhak, 142, 313 Rafiqdust, Mohsen, 132 Rafsanjani, Ali-Akbar Hashemi, 39–41, 73, 75, 76, 79–81, 87, 88, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99–111, 114–123, 129–145, 148–150, 153–161, 168, 169, 171, 173, 175–177, 185, 199, 202, 204, 213, 221, 231, 235–237, 246, 266, 268, 274, 279, 282, 303–305 Rahim-Mashaei, Esfandyar, 246, 247, 266 Rahmani-Fazli, Abdol-Reza, 268 Rahnavard, Zahra, 246 Raisi, Ebrahim, 299, 307, 308 Raja’i, Mohammad-Ali, 202 Rajavi, Mas’ud, 105 Rakhmon, Emomali, 156 Rao, Narasimha, 231 Realism, realist classical, 23, 50 defensive neo-, 14, 23 neo-, 14, 16, 17, 19, 68 neoclassical (NCR), 2, 6, 8, 16–21, 23–26, 31, 50, 91, 92, 122, 161, 176, 177, 196, 236, 300, 312

350

INDEX

offensive neo-, 14 Realpolitik, 27, 143, 161, 307 Restrictive Accommodationism, 2, 37, 129, 160, 179, 192, 263, 291, 306, 311 Restrictive Revisionism, 2, 37, 88, 243, 257, 258, 306, 307, 309, 312 Retrenchment (strategy), 32, 35, 95, 121, 130, 176, 179, 306 Revisionism, revisionist, 1, 2, 23, 24, 30–32, 34–37, 40, 66, 67, 72, 78–82, 87, 95, 111, 161, 173, 177, 194, 196, 201, 203, 204, 212, 220, 221, 234–236, 243, 247, 255, 258, 259, 268, 273, 279, 282, 288, 291, 295, 298, 299, 304, 306–309, 311 Rezaei, Mohsen, 88, 91, 116, 136, 148, 174, 181, 202, 216, 245, 246, 266 Rice, Condoleezza, 217 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 18 Rouhani, Hassan, 8, 39, 41, 77, 81, 104, 145, 190–193, 205, 206, 215, 221, 228, 233, 263, 266–270, 272–279, 282, 283, 286, 288, 290–292, 295, 298–300, 303, 305–308 Rumsfeld, Donald, 186 Rushdie, Salman, 107, 108, 110, 122, 138, 172 Russia, 1, 4, 51, 63, 80, 108, 113, 115, 119, 130, 144–147, 150–152, 154, 156, 157, 159–161, 180, 188, 190, 207, 209, 211, 221, 225–228, 230, 234, 244, 248, 250–253, 255, 257, 258, 284, 299, 305, 308, 309, 311, 312 Kremlin, 108, 146, 147, 154, 226

Moscow, 91, 108, 109, 113, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154, 156, 159, 161, 207, 212, 225–227, 258, 284, 305, 309 Russian Federation, 145 Rutskoy, Alexander, 145 S al-Sabah, Sheikh Sabah, 136, 280 al-Sadr, Muqtada, 213, 214 Safavid (dynasty), 59, 60 Safeguards Agreement, 188, 189, 211 Salami, Hossein, 264, 275, 297 Saleh, Ali Abdullah, 288 Salehi, Ali-Akbar, 248, 249, 251, 269, 271 Sambi, Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed, 224 Sanaei, Hassan, 138 Sassanian (dynasty), 59, 148, 212 Satellite launch vehicle (SLV), 210, 249 Saudi Arabia/Riyadh, 3, 4, 51, 53, 57, 82, 90, 103–106, 112, 113, 115, 134, 136, 140, 152, 157, 161, 172, 187, 222, 230, 232, 263, 264, 280, 288–291, 295, 297, 312 Schweller, Randall, 14, 17, 20, 23, 24, 30, 32–34, 36, 81 Securitization, 22, 25, 28, 313 Security Council Resolution 1929, 225, 250, 257, 294, 305 Security Council Resolution 598, 91, 108, 133, 135, 149 Security Council, UN, 52, 65, 147, 189, 209, 225, 253 Self-reliance, 80, 81, 99, 113, 121, 160, 252, 308 Senegal, 224 September 11, 9/11, 39, 51, 57, 151, 179–182, 184, 187, 192, 208

INDEX

Setad-e Ejra-ye Ferman-e Hazrat-e Emam (Setad), 276 Shabestari, Mohammad Mojtahed, 168 Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, 28, 54, 61–64, 74, 101, 105, 117, 118, 148 Shamir, Yitzhak, 142 Shamkhani, Ali, 118, 190, 275, 288, 297 ‘Shamoon’ (virus), 256 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 233, 244, 253–255, 258, 305, 312 Shariatmadari, Hossein, 228, 288 Sharon, Ariel, 200, 313, 314 Shateri, Hassan, 282 al-Sheibani, Abu Mustafa, 216 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 108 ‘Shi’a crescent’, 289 Shi’ism, 60–62, 66, 76, 157, 213, 220, 280 Shi’a, 53, 60–64, 79, 98, 120, 133, 143, 153, 156, 181, 185, 213–216, 218–220, 231, 235, 264, 265, 270, 283–286, 288–290, 295 Shi’ite, 1, 60–62, 67, 70, 89, 97, 132, 133, 138, 154, 204, 214, 215, 280, 283, 284 Sinopec, 229 Sistani, Ali, 213, 220, 286, 287 Soft power, 35, 36, 50, 79, 123, 201, 234, 265, 295, 310, 311 Sohrabi, Esma’il, 148, 204 Solana, Javier, 209, 236, 251 Soleimani, Qassem, 217, 218, 281, 284–287, 290, 299, 306, 307 Somalia/Mogadishu, 291, 312 Sorush, Abdolkarim, 168, 170 Soviet Union (USSR), 24, 39, 51, 63, 89, 108, 109, 113, 129, 130,

351

141, 144–146, 150, 153–155, 160, 309, 311 Stalin, Joseph, 16, 18, 103, 226 Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, 244 Strategic culture, 6, 25, 28, 314 ‘Stuxnet’ (virus), 250, 255, 257, 259 Subversion/astuce (strategy), 32, 34, 37, 80, 88, 92, 95, 192, 196, 212, 244, 256, 257, 259, 305, 308, 309 Sudan, 224, 289, 291 Sunni, Sunnism, 60, 61, 134, 157, 159, 181, 213, 215, 216, 232, 264, 282, 284, 285, 288, 291 Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), 89, 213–215 Supreme Leader, 40, 41, 59, 71, 75, 77, 87, 96, 97, 101, 102, 108, 136, 161, 168, 170, 175, 181, 194, 196, 205, 211, 214, 220, 235, 245–247, 265–267, 269, 270, 275, 277, 285, 286, 291, 299, 300, 308 Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), 71, 96, 100, 104, 120, 135, 140, 156, 173, 182, 189, 190, 205–207, 222, 266, 270, 275, 288, 297 Switzerland, 119, 208 Syria/Damascus, 51, 52, 60, 81, 88, 89, 115, 120, 138, 142, 145, 200, 216, 223, 225, 249, 265, 280–287, 289, 290, 295, 297–299, 307, 311, 312 T Ta’eb, Mehdi, 281 Taiwan, 149, 152, 310 Tajikistan/Dushanbe, 153, 154, 156, 157, 253

352

INDEX

Tajzadeh, Mostafa, 175 Takht-Ravanchi, Majid, 270 Talabani, Jalal, 218 Taliban, 158, 160, 180–182, 187, 192, 193, 232 Tavakkoli, Ahmad, 180, 196 Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), 118, 248–250 Tilly, Charles, 98 Torkan, Akbar, 101, 116 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), 152, 188, 189, 206, 208, 234, 236 Trump, Donald, 306, 310, 313 Tudeh (party), 73, 144 Tunisia, 134, 264, 312 Turkey/Ankara, 3, 4, 8, 51, 53, 57, 114, 142, 153, 155–161, 167, 171, 199, 207, 225, 230, 243, 250, 259, 263, 289, 297, 309–312 Turkmenchay, Treaty of, 63, 69, 144, 188 Turkmenistan/Ashgabat, 4, 144, 153, 158, 159, 171

Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurisconsult), 61–63, 70, 168, 279 Velayati, Ali-Akbar, 74, 90, 104, 108, 110, 134, 144, 154, 185, 188, 264, 266 Venezuela/Caracas, 4, 222–225

W Waltz, Kenneth, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23, 32, 49, 68 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), 107, 116, 120, 121, 139, 187, 200 Welti, Philippe, 208 Wendt, Alexander, 15, 16, 20, 22, 58, 65, 67, 68 Westoxification (gharbzadegi), 64, 170 World Trade Organization (WTO), 100, 189

X Xi, Jinping, 310 Xinjiang, 149, 151, 310

U Ukraine, 113, 226 United Arab Emirates (UAE)/Abu Dhabi, 4, 106, 134, 230, 288, 291, 312 United Principlists’ Front (Jebhe-ye Mottahed-e Osulgerayan), 244 Uyghur(s), 149, 151, 312 Uzbekistan/Tashkent, 158, 180, 253, 254

Y Yang, Shangkun, 149 Yazdi, Mehdi Haeri, 168 Yazdi, Mohammad, 77, 269 Yeltsin, Boris, 145–147, 225 Yemen/Sana’a, 81, 120, 264, 288–290, 298 Younesi, Ali, 286, 290

V Vaezi, Mahmud, 139 Vahidi, Ahmad, 120, 217, 253 Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 231

Z Zakani, Ali-Reza, 290 Zanganeh, Bizhan Namdar, 276 Zarghami, Ezzatollah, 275

INDEX

Zarif, Mohammad-Javad, 182–184, 186, 268, 272, 274, 275, 279, 280, 282, 292

Zeinabiyun Brigade, 283 Zhang, Jinfu, 148 Zionism, Zionist, 136, 142, 313

353