NEAR the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, his inner circle twice debated whether diplomacy or American air strikes were the best way to stop Middle Eastern foes from building a nuclear bomb. In both debates, involving Syria and Iran respectively, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, argued that Mr Bush could afford to try talking first without sacrificing his credibility. “I suspect no one in the world doubts this administration’s willingness to use force,” Mr Gates told Mr Bush in 2007, with more than a touch of understatement.

Now Iran is again causing angst in Washington. Barack Obama faces acute, bipartisan scepticism in Congress, after his envoys joined other world powers in brokering an interim nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic. This is due to take effect on January 20th, easing international sanctions in exchange for slowing Iran’s nuclear work, and buying time for a more comprehensive deal. At the time of writing 59 of 100 senators say they back a proposal to hold extra sanctions over Iran’s head, despite warnings from Mr Obama that if Congress votes for new sanctions Iran may abandon the talks. That means Senate sceptics are not far from the two-thirds majority they need to override Mr Obama’s threat of a veto. (The Republican-controlled House of Representatives strongly backs tougher sanctions, either because members think the Iranians are bluffing about walking out, or because their favoured Iran strategy involves regime change.) Team Obama has let rip, asserting that passing new sanctions—even ones whose bite is suspended—will wreck talks, shatter international unity over Iran and trigger a “march toward war”. A National Security Council staffer said that if some members of Congress want military action against Iran, “they should be upfront with the American public and say so.”

Some of the forces at work have changed little since 2007. Friends such as Israel and allies such as Saudi Arabia still believe that Iran is a rogue power that will always break nuclear promises. Many members of Congress sincerely loathe Iran’s regime, partly because it sponsors terrorism and tortures dissidents, but also, perhaps, because of a sense that Iran bested America in the battle for influence in post-Saddam Iraq. If the Iranian government of President Hassan Rohani presents a smiling face to the world, many American lawmakers see that as a trick or as a sign that existing tough sanctions have worked, making it imperative to keep a boot on the regime’s neck, while reminding Iran that fresh cheating will be punished.

Another constant is domestic politics, especially in a mid-term election year. An influential pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been lobbying members of Congress to keep the pressure on Iran. So have members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (often known by the Persian acronym MEK), a group with a violent past whose opposition to the Iranian regime has nonetheless earned it allies in Congress. Lastly, cynicism remains a lodestar. Democratic leaders in the Senate are not rushing to put plans for extra sanctions to a vote, and insiders say that suits some senators very well. For such opportunists, co-sponsoring a sanctions bill that goes nowhere is an ideal outcome: it avoids hard foreign-policy trade-offs, while warding off attack ads that call them soft on Iran.

Yet at least one big thing is new: a widespread belief, certainly among Republicans, that Mr Obama is in exactly the opposite position to Mr Bush. Plenty of people in the world doubt his willingness to use force, even to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb on his watch. If Congress is willing to risk scuppering talks with Iran at this early stage, a big part of the explanation is that Mr Obama is suffering a crisis of presidential credibility. That crisis dates back, most acutely, to his failure to secure congressional approval for promised strikes on Syria for using chemical weapons. Put bluntly, Washington critics think Mr Obama talks endlessly and wields only sticks small enough to be delivered by drone.

Putin and Assad take him seriously

Obama supporters inside and outside government offer two big counter-arguments about credibility. First, they offer a different interpretation of what happened over Syria last year. At the very moment that Washington was focused on Mr Obama’s apparent weakness, they say, the people who counted—Presidents Bashar Assad of Syria and Vladimir Putin of Russia—found talk of American strikes credible enough—and frightening enough—to dismantle Syria’s chemical arsenal.

Second, it is argued, when such allies as the Saudis or Israelis talk about American credibility, they often mean that they want American troops to fight and die to advance their own foreign- policy interests. In their bleakest moods, American officials accuse the Gulf monarchies of being willing to hold the coats of the last American soldiers to fall on their behalf, but not much more.

In public, Israel and the Gulf monarchies say their fear is that a nuclear deal with Iran cannot work. In private, Obama-backers suggest, such Middle Eastern allies are almost as frightened of the opposite outcome: that a nuclear accord might work, paving the way for Iran to resume its pre-revolutionary role as a Shia regional power and a counterweight to the influence of the mostly-Sunni Gulf monarchies. There are few signs of Congress pondering these questions very hard. “There aren’t five senators who have really thought through what it means for the geopolitical balance of power, if we do reach a [nuclear] deal,” growls a senior figure on Capitol Hill.

Much simpler for Congress to cover its back while planning for failure. Overall, Mr Obama’s handling of foreign policy is far from flawless: his approach to Syria is a mess, for instance. But with Iran he is right to try talking, not least because international unity has probably peaked. He could do with more help at home—but is unlikely to get it.

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The Economist replies to the MEK’s fallacious letter:

Nibras Kadhimi, a scholar at the Hudson Institute who is a respected analyst of Iraqi affairs, has testified that the MEK was Saddam Hussein’s main force in recapturing the towns of Kifri and Kalar and their surrounding villages, as well as parts of Kirkuk, from the Iraqis rebelling against Saddam in 1991. There are many such documented testimonies in this regard.

Professor Raymond Tanter, a former member of the American National Security Council, wrote a paper in which he states: “Following their expulsion from Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1980s, the MEK allied with Saddam Hussein and, in exchange for providing domestic security operations against Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, Saddam gave the MEK millions of dollars, protection, and bases along the Iranian border from which the MEK could launch their frequent attacks against the clerical regime.” The same allegation is made again in the US State Department’s “Patterns of Global Terrorism” published in 2002.

Wilfred Buchta, in his book “Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic”, states that the MEK received some $80m a month from Saddam between 1982 and 1990. One of Saddam’s senior generals, who had a hand in suppressing the uprisings, also stated that the MEK received $7m a month after 1990.

A New York Times correspondent in Iraq, Elizabeth Rubin, who visited Camp Ashraf, the MEK’s base in Iraq, and wrote an exhaustively researched article on it published on July 13th 2003, quoted Mariam Rajavi making the statement denied in the letter (published above) from the MEK’s supporters. She also wrote: “Everyone I spoke to—Iraq intelligence officers, Kurdish commanders and human rights groups—said that in 1991 Hussein used the Mujahideen and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Kurdish uprisings in the north and the Shia uprisings in the south.”

In her book ”Why does the west forget?”, Baroness Nicholson includes further testimony of the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq, lending weight to the array of allegations against the MEK cited above. This was based on interviews she conducted during many visits to Iraq in the past 20 years.

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The need for a patronised inner coterie: Iraq taught us that magnitude of destruction has to be immense. Muammar Qaddafi’s rhetoric suggests he understands this and is willing to follow through. This will depend on the willingness of the army to follow his directives. Saddam did not have the army, but he did have a series of concentric circles of supporters loyal to him because of the patronage he extended them (special-forces units and tribes). He had tied their interests to his survival so successfully that they could not risk defecting. In the same way that Mr. Qaddafi has turned to foreign mercenaries, he could also rely on his own foreign legion, the Mojahid[in]-e-Khalq organisation whose divisions were used to fight both against the Kurds and the Shia down south (Mariam Rajavi, one of the group’s leaders, famously said "take the Kurds under your tanks and save your bullets for the Islamic Guard").

The need for a scapegoat. Iraqis in 1991, even the Shia, did not trust Iran. According to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi academic in his book, "Cruelty and Silence", agents from the Iraqi state began to post pictures of Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, across the south. This allowed Saddam to frame the uprising as one orchestrated by Iran, not disgruntled Iraqis with real grievance against the regime. This idea gained traction and was key to maintaining support among the "White Provinces", the mainly Sunni areas to the north and west of the country that feared that an Iranian-style regime would replace Saddam, and that the new system would be inherently hostile to their community. These provinces remained loyal and formed the mainstay of Saddam’s support base throughout the uprising.

Supporters of the monarchy in Bahrain are painting the unrest as a Shia uprising to try to retain support of the country’s Sunni community (despite leading Sunni opposition MPs, including Munira Fakhro of Wa’ad, coming out in support of the protest movements). Similar tactics, but with an ethnic dimension, have been used in Jordan; King Abdullah sacked the Palestinian-born prime minister and replaced him with a Jordanian replacement. Part of the reason for the move is likely to play on the Palestinian/Jordanian rift within society and to shore up his Jordanian support base who are uneasy about Palestinian representation in the government.

The will to maintain power vs. the desire to pander to international public opinion: Libya went through years of sanctions and was an international pariah for decades. Mr Qaddafi would probably like to nurture friendly ties with Europe and the wider international community, but he will not do this at the expense of his own survival. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former president, crumbled under international pressure. This was part of the reason he could not use overwhelming force to maintain his grip (the apparent defection of the army played a part too). Mr. Qaddafi, like Saddam Hussein, probably cares less about external pressure because the damage has been done. He may feel he can go it alone, as he has in the past.

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Baroness Nicholson: It is for Iraq’s democratically elected government to fulfil its obligations under national and international law

SIR – Your article on the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, also known as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organisation (MKO), was an accurate account of their past activities (“Where will they all go?”, April 11th). I was therefore surprised to read the letter from Lord Corbett attacking The Economist (May 2nd).
 
The Iraqi government has announced on a number of occasions that it has no intention of forcing the MKO members in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, to leave for Iran or to go to any other country. In fact, it is my understanding that 1,015 people out of the 3,400 people in the camp hold residence permits for different countries, many of them in the European Union. In addition, some 2,000 inhabitants have registered with the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees in the hope of being transferred to other countries ready to accept them.

For several years the Iraqi government has been working closely with UNHCR in order for this to happen. We in Europe, however, are not accepting these people, despite repeated requests by the Iraqi government. Why?

Most of Camp Ashraf’s inhabitants received military training under Saddam Hussein’s regime and took part with his Presidential Guard and other Iraqi security forces in crushing the Iraqi people’s uprising after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. There is ample evidence that the MKO harmed the Iraqi people when the Iraqi army refused to carry out the killings that Hussein required. Many families of the victims in Iraq cannot forget this. The Iraqi constitution does not permit the presence of groups such as the MKO on its soil. You also mentioned allegations of a bizarre and disturbing cult of personality that the MKO inculcates into all its members.

It is for Iraq’s democratically elected government to fulfil its obligations under national and international law, which it is doing in respect of Camp Ashraf, and not to heed the voices that would promote a group that has committed atrocities against its people.

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, MEP
House of Lords
London

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13688130

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“IT WAS one of the strangest places I’d ever seen,” says one of the few Farsi-speaking Westerners to have spent weeks in Camp Ashraf, 65km (40 miles) north-east of Baghdad, where some 3,400 Iranian dissidents are hunkered down and are now threatened with expulsion from Iraq, perhaps even back to Iran. It was “like a spiffy midsized town in Iran”, with parks, offices and buildings—but no children. It was “sterile, soulless and sad”. Nearly two decades ago, families living in the camp were “dissolved”, couples were forcibly divorced, and their children sent away, many of them to live with supporters living in the West, to be brought up in the faith of a movement widely described by independent observers as a cult.

For the past six years, the Americans have protected the camp, whose raison d’être is generally opposed by the surrounding Iraqi communities and by most Iranians, whether or not they are for or against the clerical regime in Tehran. But as American troops prepare to go home, the Iraqi government, which wants cosy ties with Iran, now says the camp must be closed and its inhabitants dispersed, probably back to Iran, where they would face an uncertain future, to put it mildly.

The group is variously known as the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) or the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organisation (abbreviated as both MEK and MKO). Founded in 1965 as a youthful underground opposition to Iran’s Shah, it was usually described as “Islamic Marxist”. When the Shah fell it at first backed Ayatollah Khomeini but soon fell out with him, embarking on a campaign of violence and bombings which, on a single occasion, is reckoned to have killed 70 civilians, including several senior clerics; the withered arm of Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was a result of that bomb. The group’s political umbrella is called the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The PMOI’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, fled to France in 1981 but he and his followers, many of them women, relocated in 1986 to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein gave them a big base at Camp Ashraf, which is thought to be around 20km in circumference. Saddam abundantly supplied the PMOI with Brazilian and British tanks (captured from Iran during the war of 1980-1988) and Russian armoured personnel carriers, among other arms. In return, the PMOI made attacks on Iran itself, which is why Iranians of all stripes tend to regard the group as traitors. It is also said to have spearheaded Saddam’s attacks on rebellious Iraqi Kurds and Shias in 1991, after the first Gulf war, a charge it strongly denies.

Follow my leader

No less controversially, the PMOI is widely reviled by human-rights groups for nurturing a messianic cult of personality around Mr Rajavi and his wife, Maryam, and for enforcing a totalitarian discipline on its adherents. Several defectors testify, in the words of one of them, to a “constant bombardment of indoctrination” and a requirement to submit utterly and unquestioningly to the cause. No sources of news are allowed without the PMOI’s say-so. According to one defector, around 50 members who rebelled were sent to Saddam’s prison in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.

Members are completely cut off from contact with their families. When the above-mentioned Farsi-speaking Westerner, who visited Ashraf in 2004, enabled wavering group members to talk to their families in Iran by satellite telephone, some of their parents refused to believe it was their children, for they had been told by the PMOI that they were dead.

No one is sure whether Mr Rajavi is alive but most think not; he has not been heard of since the American invasion of 2003. His wife, known as “the president-elect”, travels the world, soliciting support from a wide range of sympathisers, including some in the American Congress, the European Parliament and the British House of Lords. No one is sure who really controls the PMOI in Camp Ashraf. It is thought that nearly 400 residents have voluntarily returned to Iran, where they are said to have been treated adequately so far. But who can really tell? Several hundred more are seeking refugee status elsewhere. A few dozen have—or rather had—passports to Western countries, some of which have verified their bona fides.

In the past year, the European Parliament and Britain’s courts have removed the label of “terrorist” from the PMOI, mainly on the ground that the group says it has disavowed violence, is not known to have carried out any acts of terror since, at the latest, 2002, and surrendered its weapons (at any rate, its heavier ones) at Camp Ashraf after the American invasion. This has irritated several national governments, especially the British and French ones, which think the PMOI is a nasty nuisance and its presence on their soil bad for relations with both Iraq and Iran.

The outfit is still officially deemed a terrorist organisation in the United States but has a fierce lobby there too, backed by a mix of neoconservatives and leftists, that accepts at face value the group’s insistence that it is a secular and democratic movement with mass support in Iran and a real chance of eventually displacing the mullahs’ regime. Its lobby in Europe is much exercised by recent statements of Muwafaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, who makes it plain he wants the camp disbanded and its people sent abroad, mostly to Iran, whose rulers have become more vociferous in calling its fellow reigning Shias in Baghdad to send them back.

The PMOI has a sophisticated network of ardent supporters. Without a doubt, its voice of despairing outrage will rise to a squeal if the Americans give way to Iraqi and Iranian demands to cut the movement loose. But it may happen.

The Economist print edition

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13447429

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