Oral evidence: UK policy towards Iran, HC 904Tuesday 21 January 2014
Oral evidence, 21 January 2014.
Witness
Professor Ali Ansari, Director, Institute for Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews, gave evidence.
Chair
I welcome our second witness this afternoon, Professor Ali Ansari, Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. Thank you, Professor Ansari, for coming back. Is there anything you want to say by way of an opening statement? I have a general question.
Professor Ansari
No, no, you fire away.
Chair
What has Britain got to gain from a good relationship with Iran?
Professor Ansari
The potential of a change in the direction of relations and the potential for positive developments could be quite dramatic. Britain has always had interests in Iran. We know that Anglo-Iranian relations have not always been terribly positive, but they have not necessarily been quite as disastrous as some of the naysayers would like us to think. I certainly think that the Russian relationship was probably worse in many respects, and yet they have managed to surmount their history, so it is possible for Britain, too, but of course Britain carries a particular inheritance. Given the situation in the Middle East at the moment, having relatively constructive, shall we say, if not positive, relations with Iran would be pretty important in terms of being able basically to have some influence, not only as regards Afghanistan and Iraq, but central Asia and the broader Persian Gulf region. I think Iran is an important player and is likely to continue to be. Its main problem has been the nature of its governance, which has always hampered it, but if it got its Government and politics and economics right, it would definitely be the engine room of the Middle East.
Chair
How good are we in the UK at reading Iran? How do we compare now with the past?
Professor Ansari
In the past there has been an enormous resource base in not only the Foreign Office but the numerous companies that have had origins in Iran. Also, there was Britain’s interest in India; British India was really Persian-speaking before it was English-speaking. There were cultural inroads into that sort of Persian mindset and Iranian outlook and attitudes; that has, for obvious reasons, been dissipated in the past 50 or so years. There is still a good and growing set of expertise. As someone who promotes Iranian and Persianate studies around the UK, I would obviously like to say that it could always be better, and that we could always do with a little more investment in those sorts of areas, but it is certainly not as bad as it was. As for reading Iran, prediction is always difficult, as I know. It is a question of making judgments about where we think the country is going. Its politics are quite opaque, so it is always going to be quite difficult to see exactly where the lay of the land is. On the whole, however, I would say that the reading and the mixture of opinions and views has not been as egregious as it could have been, certainly. There were periods in the 1990s where things were going probably much—I would not want to say “much worse,” but the readings were certainly not as good as they could have been. That really reflected the fact that many of the old hands at the Foreign Office were retiring, and in the absence of an embassy in Tehran, there were really no new people coming up to take those positions. I think we saw the consequences of that during the period when Khatami was President. Measures were then taken to make up for that deficiency.
Chair
Up until that period when the embassy was shut in 2011, how did the Iranians see us? Were we a big player in Tehran, or just one of the boys?
Professor Ansari
As one former ambassador always said to me, Iran is the only country where the British empire still exists. They are actually quite convinced that you run the show. There are antipathies and animosities. I have written about this issue and looked at it in some detail. It is very interesting to see this, in a way, dichotomous perception. On the one hand, they have this deep antipathy towards all things English. They always say English, by the way—they say “Inglisi” rather than “British.” Being north of the border helps, in certain respects. The fact is that they have this sort of wariness of the cunningness of the Brits. At the same time—this is very interesting to see—that wariness is matched with a deep respect for what they consider to be a British way of doing things. You can see that. I always cite the fact that Britain is still one of the leading destinations for Iranians to travel to and be educated in or whatever. The current President has a doctorate, of sorts, from Glasgow Caledonian university. That was very much promoted in his campaign literature. This is the thing: you think on the one hand that they might think it is terrible that he has had this experience in Britain, but on the other hand, it was promoted very much as a positive that he had this experience in Britain. At least one Iranian academic said to me on a visit, “All our problems started with the seizure of the British embassy in 2011.” I said, “Do you think it’s all of them? I would have thought that perhaps other things might have led to it.” He said, “Anyway, it’s okay now, because we have a British President.” I have given up negotiating or discussing these things. It is interesting, because he thinks that because he was in Glasgow, that basically means that—
Chair
Or an Inglisi President.
Professor Ansari
Yes, that’s right. It is an interesting relationship. I would really caution against people who say that it is almost wholly antithetical. There is a powerful mythology that revolves around the overthrow of Mossadeq. Clearly, overthrowing a democratically elected Prime Minister was probably the lowest point of Anglo-Iranian relations. On the other hand, the relationship is much more complex than that and has seen lots of ups and downs. If you look at Iranian attitudes to Britain, they are much more mixed and in many ways very positive—much more positive than people would think.
Mr Baron
Professor, do you think we have underestimated, in the West, in trying to understand how the country works, the extent to which there are multiple centres of authority in Iran, and the need for nuance and greater understanding about where the power base lies? Let us take the nuclear negotiations at the moment. What is your assessment about who is making the day-to-day decisions, and what does that tell us about these negotiations, going forward?
Professor Ansari
I do not think we have, necessarily. I would very much agree with you that we need to have a much fuller and richer understanding of the political hinterland, certainly, and the social hinterland in Iran. I think that those who work on Iran are fully aware of this subtlety and these nuances. I think that sometimes it is quite difficult to get these out to a wider public. Sometimes it is more difficult to get it out to those who are of the journalistic profession, who may sometimes like to see things in rather more simplistic tones. I think, in the current negotiations, we have to start at the top and say that Ayatollah Khamenei has given a certain amount of blessing for these to go ahead. What he has done is basically, in my view, certainly given Rouhani and the Foreign Ministry in this respect—Zarif and others—a certain amount of rope to get on with it, but he has also covered himself quite well, because if they fail, he will be able to cut them loose. The point is, there is a number of different power centres that are negotiating and waiting, actually, for Rouhani and others to fail. You also have to see Rouhani himself as someone who has a foot, in some ways, in either camp. We have this discussion: here is—I always find the descriptions of Rouhani interesting—a very charming, articulate, interesting gentleman. He is also somewhat opaque in his politics. I mean, his championing of liberal and progressive ideas in the June election was a bit of a novelty for many Iranians; they had not really seen that in him before. None the less, he did it, and did it rather well. He was helped by the fact that Jalili, his main competitor, was, in a sense, completely incomprehensible to most people. There is, in a sense, a view that not only simplifies the power politics in Iran, but simplifies Rouhani as an individual and says, “This man is someone who can do wondrous things and can achieve great things, and basically has a political view that is very clear.” Actually, it has been quite difficult, sometimes, to pin down exactly what his political leanings are. I remember, when I did most of my work and fieldwork in Iran—certainly, during the reform period of Khatami—[Interruption.] Just as it was getting good.
Chair
I apologise, Professor. This is democracy at work. The sitting is suspended. If there is one vote, can everyone be back here by 10 past, and if there are two votes, by 20 past? Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House. On resuming—
Chair
Professor Ansari, thank you very much for your patience. We are only two minutes late getting back.
Professor Ansari
I was in mid-flow, I think.
Mr Baron
I do not think you had finished answering the question.
Professor Ansari
I was basically trying to say that on the one hand, I absolutely agree with you that there has not been enough nuanced and detailed understanding of the politics and history of the country. I would probably emphasise, in some parts, the history of the country, because I think that has been in many ways neglected. That is a pity, because Britain has traditionally been in a very strong position to understand that historical legacy. Also, as I said, that simplification is detrimental to any positive understanding of the future, and not only when it comes to the general lay of the land. We tend to focus or fixate on individuals—I think Rouhani is one—and see them in much more simplistic political colours than perhaps they have.
Mr Baron
Can I develop that even further, while we are talking about a simplistic approach and focusing on one individual? Everybody is focused on the change in the presidential leadership, the elections and so on, and Rouhani definitely has a different approach from his predecessor Ahmadinejad. To what extent is his support grounded in the electorate as a whole? What we would like to know as a Committee is: what strength does he have in his position? What support does he have? Is it simply a case of the Supreme Leader—I suppose the clue is in the title—giving him some slack and seeing what happens? Would it be as simple as cutting him loose? Or is there real popular demand for change that we perhaps underestimate?
Professor Ansari
If you want to look at Rouhani’s election victory, there are a number of factors that feed into that. One of them has to be the fact that the Supreme Leader was reconciled to the fact that he would win in any modestly free vote. But there are two figures in the background that we have tended to neglect. One of them is Khatami himself, and the other one is Rafsanjani. Both of them put a lot of weight behind Rouhani, and brought their constituencies with them. My reading of the situation is that Rouhani himself does not have the sort of social base that the other two have. Rafsanjani has a very powerful following in many elements of the bureaucracy in the country. He is widely respected in many parts of the Government. Khatami is the one who really has the reformists’ heart and mind, if I can put it that way, and the populism on the street. The unfortunate thing is that since Rouhani’s election in June, both these individuals have been quite badly—I do not want to say hammered, but certainly Khatami has effectively been disowned. They could not even find the courage to invite Khatami to the inauguration; they did not think it was worth the risk. Rafsanjani, for two or three months, played a much more prominent role and made a number of speeches and very interesting comments, but he has since come under more and more attack. If you look at the constellation of Iranian politics as a negotiation in some ways—I am probably guilty of simplifying to some extent as well, of course—between Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Khatami, I would have to say, in the last two to three months, you are seeing Khamenei reasserting himself in quite an aggressive way, and doing it with the support of the Revolutionary Guards and others. Rouhani has made a lot of promises. One of the reasons why I was genuinely surprised that he won is that the promises he made in his election were extraordinary. They were way beyond almost anything that people had expected. I personally felt there was absolutely no way he could achieve them. He would not be able to fulfil those promises. The truth of the matter is that among the big promises he made was the release of all these political prisoners, a much desecuritised atmosphere, improved human rights and this, that and the other. A generous interpretation would say that at the moment, it is work in progress. I do not think he has made a huge amount of progress on these particular things. The Government focused more on the foreign policy aspect than the domestic.
Mr Baron
Can I push you further, Professor? Again, we have talked about individuals. Can I return to my original question? To what extent, perhaps, should we give Rouhani more credit than we are doing at the moment? Is he perhaps reflecting a bit of a shift in Iranian public thinking on this issue? How well grounded is he? To what extent does he reflect the wishes of his people? On one hand, we are told that they are absolutely tired and fed up with sanctions, but on the other hand, we hear experts say, “Actually, this is a matter of national pride, and sanctions have had only a marginal effect.”
Professor Ansari
I am of the view that—this goes back to the view about Khatami’s support during the election, and his backing Rouhani and bringing the constituency with him. Khatami said very clearly ahead of the election—“This is not the time for sulking.” The big worry was lack of turnout and poor turnout. He basically encouraged his followers— if the majority of Iranians, certainly by my reading, are given an opportunity to express their preferences, their preferences are basically for a normalisation of relations with the West. One of the things that Rouhani has promised for instance, which is symbolic but is testament to this mood, is that there will be direct flights between Tehran and New York. Frankly, that is the least of their concerns in many ways, but clearly this is something that he thinks will garner a certain amount of support. I think that yes, Rouhani reflected that. He understood and could see after 2009 and the huge uprising that followed that you do not want to go through another fiasco like that. There had to be someone who could reflect that popular sentiment. If you looked at the crowds coming out, even in the last election, it was quite striking that, despite the repression that had occurred—let’s not have any illusions about it—people were quite courageous in the chanting that was going on in the two weeks up to—
Mr Baron
Very briefly, though, Professor, can I press you again, perhaps in a different way? If Rouhani were to be replaced or cut loose, as you put it, and the reformists were to lose the day and hard-liners were to come back in—one can go back to the 2005 example—would there be a backlash on the streets?
Professor Ansari
Yes. The short answer is that that is one of the things they worried about. I tend to view the repression that took place in the last four years as fairly systematic. Some people have argued that the regime is worried about a popular uprising. I am not so confident that people would be that willing to rush out, but the fear is certainly there. We have to marry this to the state of the economy, which is in an extremely parlous state. If Rouhani’s promise is not at least even partially fulfilled, then I think their worry is that you are going to see a certain amount of backlash on the streets. I think that is certainly on the cards.
Sandra Osborne
I think you have more or less answered my questions about the fact that Rouhani was elected, which was quite surprising. What about those groups who boycotted the elections for a more liberal regime? Where are they coming from?
Professor Ansari
Well, interestingly a lot of the more progressive and liberal elements in society did back Rouhani on the promise that he would provide political reform. If you are looking at where the criticisms are coming now, he is facing twin pressures: one from hard-liners who think that his deal with the West is wholly imbalanced. The other from the very people you mention, who are saying, “Where are all these political reforms that you promised us?” The argument has been that we need to deal with the economics first, and some of them have bought into that argument. But certainly there is a group of people from what you would call the progressive political wing in Iranian politics, which Khartami in many ways represents or reflects—not entirely, by any stretch of the imagination—who expected a good deal more to come out of the election and will wait for a finite time for some of these things to be delivered. A key element, of course, is the release of Mousavi and Karroubi. They are not the only ones—they are the people who have been highlighted—but the fact that it was made such a central plank of the election campaign and the fact that this has been pushed into the long grass is something that people are a little frustrated about. But, at the same time, as long as there is some momentum on nuclear, sanctions relief and so on, he has something to offer them, if not exactly what they wanted.
Sandra Osborne
When the Committee in the previous Parliament did a report on Iran, there was quite a lot of movement in relation to women’s human rights and, particularly, tackling violence against women. What has been said about that, if anything?
Professor Ansari
Well, again Rouhani made a lot of promises in this respect. When he appointed his Cabinet, there were not any women in it and he was brought to task for that. He has appointed a number of people. I think he has actually appointed one as a vice-president for environmental affairs; she was also vice-president under Khartami. And the spokeswoman at the Foreign Ministry is obviously a woman who has been brought in. There is a view that this is a little bit tokenistic: obviously, he is trying to respond to a general unhappiness within the populous—over 50% of whom are women—who are unhappy with the fact that he has not delivered on some of the things that he said he would. But it is certainly there. I think society in Iran has a way of agitating for its own demands and, whatever the Government does, you will see that some of the religious strictures that are more common in the Arab parts of the Gulf are being challenged on a daily basis on the Persian side of the Gulf.
Sir Menzies Campbell
How would Rouhani define success for Iran? And how would you define success for Iran?
Professor Ansari
I have said that the election brought in three strands of thought as to what might be accepted as success, and a lot of it has to do with what people perceive to be the problems. There are those who see the problem purely as a matter of sanctions and if we get sanctions lifted or alleviated will say, “That is it, we have scored what we needed to do and nothing else needs to be done.” There are others, who probably form the bulk of the centrists and the Rafsanjani crowd, who say that this is much more fundamentally economic and that Iran needs major economic restructuring, to bring in foreign investment, and so on and so forth, which will lead in time to political change. Then there is a third group, with which I am probably most sympathetic, who say that what needs to be done is much more of a root-and-branch reform of the system, which would involve a degree of political reform. For me, looking at Iran with a historical gaze, we have been facing the problem of political reform and the rule of law in Iran for the better part of a century. It has been a long time coming. If you look at the writing of Iranians, they have been arguing very heavily that if you want to get a country back on its feet you need to have a constitution that is adhered to, a rule of law that is obeyed, and so on. These are ambitious targets, I grant you. I would not want to say that we are necessarily going to see them happen overnight, but for me success—if you are looking at Iran being put on a stable footing and there being success, welfare and a good standard of living for its people—would be something on a broader scale than we are currently seeing. My fear at the moment is about the promises that have been made. Rouhani and his Ministers have made two comments that I think are slightly unfortunate. He said that the interim agreement represents the abject surrender of America to Iran, and so on. Someone also said, “The iceberg of sanctions has now begun to melt.” Well, if you look at the view from the other side, that is not at all where we are at. In order to satisfy the anxieties in society at large, they are portraying the interim agreement as the beginning of the end, with Iran being on the verge of normalisation—which I think is what Iranians want, and it is what I would like to see as a success. They are a long way from that.
Sir Menzies Campbell
As you mentioned the Americans—you may have heard these questions asked previously of Robert Cooper—may I ask you about the extent to which the United States put down red lines? Do you think that has been advantageous or disadvantageous? Have the red lines been advantageous or disadvantageous for the United Kingdom, and indeed for the others that made up the EU 3?
Professor Ansari
If you look at the early period of the negotiations in 2003 to 2005, I think they were definitely disadvantageous. The elephant in the room was the fact that the Bush Administration was constantly tweaking the negotiations from the back. It was a very poor back-seat driver in some ways. In many ways, there has been a convergence, in part because the Ahmadinejad Administration did a fantastic job of unifying almost everyone against Iran’s objectives. Now, of course, one of Rouhani’s problems is that he cannot simply turn back the clock to the situation before Ahmadinejad. He has inherited a much more difficult situation. The Americans are in some ways probably being more flexible than some of the Europeans at the moment, but it is a matter of tactical rather than strategic differences.
Sir Menzies Campbell
Would the flexibility that you now attribute to the United States have been of help earlier in trying to achieve the interim agreement or something similar?
Professor Ansari
I have written about this. If you look back to the earlier period of negotiations, I don’t think there is any doubt that the attempts to reach an agreement between 2003 and 2005 were—I wouldn’t want to lay all the blame here, because there is plenty of blame to go around—not helped by the red lines. I wouldn’t even call them red lines; the Americans just kept shifting the goalposts. Every time an agreement was reached they wanted something else, so it became very difficult indeed.
Sir Menzies Campbell
I asked Robert Cooper to imagine that he was a betting man and to give us an answer to that, but let me ask you this. If you were a senior member of White House staff and the President came and said, “How can we improve and develop trust between the United States and Iran?”, what three things might you tell him?
Professor Ansari
I wish I had been primed with that question beforehand, because I would have thought of three profound answers. The first thing I would say is, “Get your history right.” Particularly when we go back in the history of US-Iran relations, there has been far too much simplistic assessment and interpretation of what was going on. There are both pros and cons, by the way. I wouldn’t want to put it all one way, but there is an element of seeing things in a political, far too short-term way. I think you have to see things in a much more strategic, long-term way to see where the strategic interests of the United States lie. Be aware of your history and of the long view, but also be aware of the culture of politics in Iran—if I can put it that way. We see this in both directions, but far too often comments have been made that have gone down badly and tripped things up. People in the White House and other places sometimes do not really understand the consequences of what they have said. That is basically it. If I had a little more time to think, I am sure that I could think of something much more interesting.
Sir Menzies Campbell
That’s fine. This is not a viva. [Laughter.]
Mark Hendrick
Professor Ansari, to what extent do you feel that UK policy in the past has basically done what it could to follow US policy, rather than take a more independent view?
Professor Ansari
It depends on the institutions that you are talking about. If you talk to the Foreign Office and the State Department, you might find that they actually had quite similar views on many things, but neither could get their views felt in either Downing street or the White House. Different aspects of government were sometimes more in tune than we think and would have approached things in different ways to other parts. There have certainly been times when I would have liked to see Britain take a more independent line. There were certainly times during the Bush Administration when Britain should have taken a more independent line, but they did not for various reasons. By and large, however, you have to say that the strategic view has not been that different. The goal has not been that different. I think disagreements have arisen on the means of achieving those goals. There were certainly differences of approach over the past decade.
Mark Hendrick
It is interesting, because you mentioned earlier that they have a British person in Rouhani—
Professor Ansari
I didn’t say that; they said that.
Mark Hendrick
Yes. Looking at American history going back to Carter, the US has clearly had a very different relationship with Iran than we have. Do you not feel that maybe the Iranian embassy siege and the legacy of the Carter Administration has perhaps stayed with them for a lot longer and made them a lot more hostile towards the US than us? At what point do you think that our thinking fell more into line perhaps more with Europeans than with the United States?
Professor Ansari
There is history and mythology. It is quite true that the hostage crisis has had a profound effect on the way in which Americans have viewed Iran, in the same way that other experiences have had quite different impacts on British views of Iran and vice versa. We ought to remember, however, that in 1984 Reagan authorised unofficial contact, which blew up in the Iran-Contra crisis. I always say to both American and Iranian colleagues that this notion of a 34-year war between the United States and Iran is actually fictitious. When things got really bad was actually during the Clinton Administration, because Clinton starting imposing a certain number of executive orders in terms of sanctions. When Rafsanjani originally offered an oil contract to Conoco, it was Clinton who came in and made sure that it was not allowed to go through. What I am saying is that the relationship is probably a good deal more nuanced—to go back to that overused word—than perhaps we imagine. There are certainly hawks in America who view this as some form of war with Iran and there are a certain number of hawks in Iran who think the same, but you will also find that there are many in Iran and in the United States who do not actually follow that particular narrative and who understand that, while we have problems, which I do not want to trivialise, they are not irresolvable. I do not think that the current situation has just been one big misunderstanding, for example. There are serious issues between the countries and between Europe and Iran. However, the Americans have a particular experience, and that needs to be accounted for. The Iranians also need to acknowledge that.
Mark Hendrick
Obviously, we are fairly in tune with Europeans outside of the UK now. Historically, do you think that France and Germany were more disposed towards good relations with Iran?
Professor Ansari
Germany probably was, but not France; I would not put France in that category. I think France has had a very mixed relationship with Iran. It tends to have a much more Arabic bent, I should say, to its foreign policy—towards north Africa and the Arab world. I know that the Iranians find that quite frustrating and of course if you looked at the impact of the Geneva agreement that wasn’t—when Laurent Fabius went and apparently intervened—the commentary in the Iranian press was, in some ways, quite a relief to the Anglo-Americans. It made a change. The Germans have certainly had more constructive relations in the long term, and also the Italians, the Spanish and the others, but of course that is because they don’t necessarily have that historical legacy.
Mark Hendrick
One thing you did say was that you felt the US was more flexible than the Europeans. What brings you to say that?
Professor Ansari
These things change, in fairly rapid time, but if you look at the desire and the enthusiasm of the Obama White House to get a deal, the speed at which they were moving probably took some of the Europeans by surprise. The Obama White House—let us be very specific about it—has shown a little bit more flexibility and probably caught the Europeans by surprise. But again, I would not see these as major differences at all; I would see them as quite subtle differences. However, I think that in the first Geneva agreement, and the reason why the French and perhaps also the British did what they did —although the British didn’t say much, so the French stepped up in that sense—there was an anxiety that things were moving quicker than people had anticipated.
Mr Baron
Although Foreign Office Ministers will never admit it at the Dispatch Box, I think there is a growing realisation that mistakes have been made by both sides in this relationship, going back however long you want to go back. You only have to go back 10 years to remember the “axis of evil” speech in reply to approaches by Iran; that is one example. But the Iranians have made many mistakes as well. That is now becoming more accepted, but to what extent do you think that lesson has been learned—particularly by the Americans, who not so long ago were certainly more intransigent than we were in their approach to Iran? Or is this just a transitory phase? Are we going to fall back to the old rhetoric and allow our relationships to be defined by American hostility to Iran?
Professor Ansari
It is interesting, because you can draw some quite interesting new images of Iran and the United States in this respect. You are saying, “How flexible can we be?” and you have a very hard-line Parliament in Iran, and you have the hawkish elements in Iran who are waiting for this to fail and to go back to normal. And you can see in the United States there are elements in Congress, and others, who are quite keen to wait for this to fail, or to encourage it to fail, or whatever. I suppose one of the reasons I would argue that the Americans are being a little more flexible is because I think they have realised that the intransigence wasn’t working; the intransigence was just becoming too difficult. So I suppose that one could say that when I say, “flexibility”, I am putting it in the context that there was a lack of any flexibility at all in some ways, and that they had settled into this nice—“complacency” is the wrong term, but basically they had a vested interest in the status quo. Let’s put it that way. Now, they are showing a degree of flexibility. I suppose what I am anxious about if I was to comment—going back to the comment by Sir Menzies, and to your comment again—is that in compensating for their past mistakes, they over-simplify the present. That is the problem. What we do is say, “Ach, it was all a great misunderstanding. We got it all wrong. Mea culpa. Obviously, everything is lovely,” and so on. No—the real lesson that has to be learned is that, actually, it is the simplification that is wrong. That worries me in the sense that people suddenly emerge and say, “Ach, the last 30 years”—or the last 50 years, or the last 10 years—“we got it all wrong, because all those people somehow missed things, whereas we are coming with a fresh face and we have suddenly realised that it is all marvellous.” The fact is that you are actually setting yourself up for another fall if you do that. That is the real lesson that needs to be learned. It is to look at it, going back, with that historical context and with that political hinterland. It is not all about nuclear. I know we are focused on nuclear, but open your vision and look at what is happening on the sidelines. See who is saying what to whom, how things are working out, what pressures are on Rouhani, what he is doing on another level, and see how that politics feeds into the nuclear negotiations, or vice versa. That way I think you will have a better chance of success in the long term. It is all very good having an interim agreement, but I am very wary of the handshake on the White House lawn. When did they have the handshake on the White House lawn for the Arab-Israeli peace process? It is all great to have this wonderful, triumphant sort of result, but the last thing I want to see is this going on interminably as we wait for the final result, because people haven’t actually learnt the lessons that we need to learn.
Mike Gapes
Can I take you back to the discussion we had with Robert Cooper about Iran as a negotiator? In William Hague’s words, Mr Zarif is “a tough negotiator, but he is very constructive.” Is this negotiation about a process where we know what the final outcome is going to be, or is it actually unclear where it will end up and could the negotiation completely fail?
Professor Ansari
There are different groups in Iran arguing for different things. If you are looking at Zarif or others, they are acutely aware that they cannot go back with a final deal that the Supreme Leader and others will simply reject out of hand. There is an anxiety there. First, it is good to have a long negotiation, because it shows that you worked for it. Rouhani said that we could get this done in three months or six months, and so on and so forth, but the trouble with it being easy and quick is that it makes it sound as if the last 10 years of pain and suffering were absolutely pointless. As long as you are really fighting every corner, it looks as if this is something much more serious that was worth the pain. I know that people in Iran are beginning to question what the point of all this was over the past 10 years and what they have been doing. There are some things that they have managed to take away, one of them being the ability to enrich uranium, if they are allowed, ultimately in Iran. That is in some ways a major concession. Part of it is a negotiating tactic that the Iranians use, which is basically to wear you down until you say yes, but the other thing is a certain anxiety about what people will say. There is a fear of giving too much away, because what will happen to you when you get home? There is that element. That has always been a hindrance in many ways. Ignoring the nuclear negotiations, even business negotiations with Western companies in the 1990s were tortuous, for the very reason that nobody wanted to appear to give away too much to a Western company—even though, frankly, it would have been in the mutual interest to get a really good oil or gas deal set up in the 1990s.
Mike Gapes
The joint plan of action owes a great deal to a shift in the US approach that you alluded to. Who actually made the running in the discussions—was it the Americans or the Iranians?
Professor Ansari
I am interested by this idea that there were secret negotiations in Oman beforehand. I have to say to people raising this that it does make a little bit of a mockery of the election in June, but there is this idea that the lay of the land and what they were thinking of doing had been sketched out. There was clearly a shift. To be perfectly honest, right from 2009 the Obama Administration have been saying, “We are open to some sort of negotiation or some sort of opening.” It is just that, obviously, the election crisis in Iran that year put paid to all that. It is a rare occasion—this is why a lot of people have been very hopeful and optimistic about it—when we have had that sort of marginal area, where both the Iranians and Americans have been willing to sit down and engage in a very serious way. It also helps, by the way, that Zarif and the others all speak English very well. Negotiations are much easier when everyone is speaking the same language.
Mike Gapes
Has this also led to any change in Iranian behaviour on other issues, for example, the number of public executions or the harassment of religious minorities such as the Baha’is or Jewish people?
Professor Ansari
This is the concern, and this goes back to what I was saying—I have written about this as well—because in a sense Rouhani has been allowed to play reformist abroad but conservative at home. The problem is, quite shockingly, that according to the announcements that have come through, I think Iran has executed more people this year than certainly in previous years, and may have surpassed China—this will need to be checked, I have to say—in absolute terms, not in per capita terms, if I may put that way. That is a different image, and something that we are not hearing enough about. To go back to what I said earlier, the domestic situation, to be generous about it, is work in progress. The progress has not been huge, and I can talk about that if you wish, in terms of civil rights and the other things that Rouhani said that he was going to address. Domestically, and on the elements of human rights and other issues, there has not been the progress that people would have liked to have seen.
Chair
On the joint plan of action, and I am sure that you have had a good look at it, can you see any flaws, weaknesses or loopholes in it?
Professor Ansari
The first thing I did was to look at the Persian translation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then I looked at the European Union’s translation, because I always say that you are going to trip up where something is lost in translation. I have to say that the European translation was pretty good. The one that was slightly different was the American version, because the State Department issued pointers, which were slightly different, and that had to do with some aspects of the lifting of sanctions on insurance. The European and Iranian translations were pretty good, and they reflected each other rather well. In that sense, for me, I think the agreement is a good one, and I agree with others about that. It does not represent the abject surrender of the United States to Iran by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is an interim agreement, and I do not think that it represents historic or tectonic shifts, or anything like that. We would do much better by just playing it more low key and letting the negotiators get on with the main task at hand. My main worry was that something would be lost in translation, and on that point I can assure you that, in this case, the translation was a fairly good reflection of the text.
Chair
Do you think that Western negotiators should be confident that the Iranians will stand by it?
Professor Ansari
In this case, yes. The current situation is more conducive to an agreement than it ever was simply because the economic situation in Iran is probably worse than I thought, although I have got my reservations about the final agreement, which will probably take longer to reach than the six months that has been suggested. Even last year, when I came to give testimony, one of the reasons that I did not think that a political change, or shall we say a shift at the very least, would come as quickly as it did was that in many ways I underestimated the depth of the economic malaise that is hitting the country.
Chair
Because of sanctions?
Professor Ansari
Partly, but I have always said that sanctions have been the salt rubbed into a self-inflicted wound, and it is a self-inflicted wound. I have to say that, as for the management of the economy in the past 10 years, a figure that is perhaps the most shocking and that most Iranians get very upset about, but it is one that they issued actually, was that Ahmadinejad was the beneficiary of 40% of the total oil revenue earned by Iran since 1908.
Chair
Good God.
Professor Ansari
People are saying, “Where is it?” Well, we know where it is; it is being spent on Lamborghinis and other things in Tehran. But the point is to have a situation like that and still find the Government bankrupt is absurd. That tells you that whatever sanctions had happened, if you had had a Government in Iran that had managed its finances in a better way, they would have had reserves now that would have seen them through this tough time. The reason why they are in deep, deep trouble is that Ahmadinejad—and this was reported by a number of Ministers who have come in, bearing it in mind that new Governments always try to rubbish their predecessors’ competence, but in this case it was probably justified—had simply not planned for the sort of sanctions regime that was coming in. They did not take seriously the oil embargo that the Europeans imposed in July 2012, and they had not invested in the future of the country. Therefore, at the moment, the situation is dire, and those serious economists in Iran understand that it will be years, not months, before the situation improves.
Chair
We could get to a situation where after six months, we get there and there is not much happening, and the hawks will be calling for the re-imposition of the sanctions that were lifted. Do you think that that would be a mistake?
Professor Ansari
I tend to agree with the premise of the White House and many others in the United States that, in important questions of foreign policy negotiation, you have to give your negotiators the free hand they need to negotiate. I think Congress wanting to impose a trip wire has more to do with the domestic political environment in the United States than anything else and the antipathy of Congress towards Mr Obama. None the less, in important situations like this, I would give the President and his foreign policy team the ability to negotiate. Of course, if things do not work out, as people say, Congress can in six months or a year quite easily come and change the narrative.
Mike Gapes
Going back to the foreign policy question that I touched on earlier, do you regard the Iranians as rational in their foreign policy, or are they, as in the words of another academic—you might know the quote—“defensive, paranoid, narcissistic”?
Professor Ansari
That doesn’t mean that they are not rational. Going back to the American view and others, I would say that an element of ideology affects all our policies. I would say that the Iranians are rational, but I would say that the goals, ambitions and ideological parameters under which they operate are perhaps different. If you look, going back to John Baron’s comment earlier, at what Iranians want, Iranians want basically very similar things to what ordinary people want. They do not have that paranoia that some of their leadership, I regret to say, do. This is what Rouhani and his election are trying to reflect, but it is certainly true, and I think this is the problem, that the hard-line leadership in Iran have a very limited understanding of the outside world. I will put it that way. I do not think they are as—shall we say?—well travelled and well read as perhaps they should be. That is not unique to Iran, by the way; I would not want to say that. None the less, when we ask why it is that they take certain positions, it is because they have a particular world view that is shaped by certain experiences that has not necessarily been as cosmopolitan as it could be.
Mike Gapes
Given the civil war in Syria and Iran’s key relationship with the Assad regime and with Hezbollah, what is your take on the issue about Iranian participation in Geneva II and what has happened in the past few days?
Professor Ansari
I think, in an ideal world, they should be there.
Mike Gapes
Without preconditions?
Professor Ansari
Well, that is the problem. The problem is that the invitation was not handled very well, and it should have been clear. If we believe Ban Ki-moon, of course, he said that he did get oral assurances from them that they would agree to the conditions of Geneva I, and then they reneged on them publicly.
Mike Gapes
Did he get assurances from people who could not actually deliver.
Professor Ansari
That is possibly what it is, yes.
Mike Gapes
The Foreign Ministry are not the decisive body, and it had to be cleared up the line somewhere else?
Professor Ansari
I think possibly what had happened was—I do not know this for a fact—that he had talked to the Foreign Ministry, the Foreign Ministry said, “Yes, yes, of course. We agree to these. Let’s go to this meeting,” and then it was countermanded somewhere else in the system and they disagreed. That has turned into a bit of a mess. It is a bit of a litmus test on how much things are changing in Iran, of course, because what we are basically seeing is that Khamenei has allowed Rouhani a certain amount of latitude on a very specific issue. Syria remains an ideological raison d’être for the regime and certainly for the Revolutionary Guard, and it is a good example of where that world view has become a little bit restraining. They basically said, “We have invested heavily in this. We will back Assad to the hilt.” Many people I know in Iran think that Iran’s involvement in Syria is a mistake and a waste of time—up to a point, but not to the point that they are getting involved in it. It is, in a sense, turning into their own Vietnam.
Mike Gapes
Is that likely to have any knock-on, long-term consequence for this relationship on the nuclear issue, or is the nuclear issue and the sanctions a separate box that can carry on regardless of difficulties on Syria?
Professor Ansari
A certain amount of progress can be made on the nuclear issue, but my view is—I think it goes back to Sir Menzies’ question on what I consider to be success—that success is something along the lines of the grand bargain that was touted in 2003. Unfortunately, it was then rejected by some elements in the United States, but a grand bargain is one where all outstanding issues are, in a sense, settled. It will take time, but it is something that needs to be done, if Iran is to reap the benefit of all this. There are some in Iran who think that a solution to the nuclear problem will mean that everything will be normal, but it will not, for the very reasons that you raise. There are widespread issues in the region, including Iran’s relations with Saudi, its relations with the Gulf states, its relations with Syria and its relations with Turkey. There are all sorts of things that need to be handled. My view is that there are people—certainly Rafsanjani and others—who are aware of that, but Khamenei is not interested. Not at the moment, anyway.
Mark Hendrick
This relates to the latter points. If Syria was not happening, do you still feel that you would have got this interim agreement? It might be in both sides’ interests while Syria is going on to get this agreement because, for example, Obama cannot do anything about Syria, but an agreement with Iran looks like a result. Similarly, Iran wants to carry on doing what it is doing in Syria, but to look a bit conciliatory, it wants the agreement as well. The agreement suits both sides, but it is like both sides are taking their eyes off what is happening in Syria. Is this agreement a bit of a fig leaf for what is going on in Syria? The interim agreement does not necessarily mean that there will be a final agreement.
Professor Ansari
Iran or the US, from whichever perspective you are looking at, is really the holy grail for either side in some ways. A succession of US presidents would like to have a relationship with Iran that predates those they had in 1979. There are a good many Iranians who would like to be the ones to say, “We solved this problem,” although they are not necessarily at the highest levels in Iran. Certainly from the American side, if you look at Obama’s election in 2008 to 2009 and his approaches to Khamenei well before anything broke out in the Arab spring or Syria or whatever, they would have been amenable to some sort of negotiation and some sort of negotiated settlement. It reflected far more the American fatigue, in a sense, with its interventions in the Middle East that, frankly, have not been entirely successful. That might be the best way of putting it. The thing is that they wanted to find alternative means of getting to the solution. The impetus was perhaps that they got some sort of agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons. Therefore, it was seen to work, and we will carry on the momentum and see if we can get something on Iran’s nuclear programme separately. It provides a certain amount of foreign policy success, but it will probably be longer and harder than some in the White House have considered.
Mark Hendrick
You said it from the US side. What about looking at it from the Iranian side?
Professor Ansari
The Iranians are being driven mostly—at the higher echelons with Khamenei and the others—by sanctions relief. It is the economy. There are many people in Iran, although not necessarily in power, who see it as a necessity to have some sort of relationship with the United States—you don’t have to love them, but you should have relations with them. I have to say that the Russians might have something to say about it, but there is a bit of the great game going on there. Strictly speaking, in the upper echelons, Syria and so on are all continuing conflicts, but what they are really focused on is at least moving that potential for conflict over the nuclear issue on to a different track, getting some sanctions relief and getting the economy back on a level footing. That is what is driving them. I do not think that it is really driven by aspirations to have better relations overall with the United States—unfortunately, I should say.
Chair
Professor Ansari, thank you very much indeed. That was excellent, which is only what I have come to expect from someone from the alumni of Royal Russell School in my constituency. Thank you very much. Oral evidence: UK policy towards Iran, HC 904 2