Gary Sick, "A Stealth Engagement of Iran?": Tergiversations

"Tergiversation," according to Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tergiversation):

1. evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement: equivocation

In an article entitled "Frustrated US rambles on Iran: Gary Sick" (http://presstv.com/detail/223089.html), Iran's Press TV refers us to an article written by Gary Sick, entitled "A Stealth Engagement of Iran?" (http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/01/17/stealth-engagement-iran), which was published by The World Policy Institute. Yes, it is of course significant that Iran has chosen to highlight this opinion piece.

In his article, Gary Sick, "an adjunct professor of Middle East politics at Columbia's School of International & Public Affairs" and "the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis," observes recent "tergiversations in U.S. policy pronouncements": Both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have coupled denunciations and threats over Iran's ongoing efforts to attain nuclear weapons with calls for renewed negotiations and avoidance of any armed conflict. Sick ponders whether these conflicting declarations reflect "pure chaos and incompetence in the White House," or whether the White House is engaged in a highly sophisticated attempt to manage three problems:

• Congress, which in an election year, has maneuvered Obama into signing the Defense Authorization Bill with the latest sanctions rider, amounting, according to Sick, to "a tacit declaration of war."
• Obama's desire to avoid war and return to negotiations.
• Netanyahu's threats "to strike unilaterally if necessary" and to use those threats "to keep the situation at a constant crisis pitch, while pressing for the most extreme sanctions."

According to Sick, "if you throw enough anti-Iran dust in the air, you may defuse any concerted attack—figuratively or otherwise."

So is there chaos in the White House, or, is there indeed a master plan to talk through both sides of your mouth in order to preseve the status quo?

Indeed, there has been much doublespeak emerging from the Obama White House (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2011/12/iran-and-obama-administration.html), and Obama, the Procrastinator-in-Chief, would prefer to avoid a conflagration. However, Obama will also do anything and everything to be re-elected, and this single consideration will determine Obama's policy toward Iran over the coming months. The short-term effect of an increase in the price of oil on the U.S. economy and the receptiveness of the US electorate to bellicose statements issued by Romney and Gingrich, painting Obama as a patsy, are all being monitored by the West Wing.

One final observation: Sick's conjecture that the leak, alleging that Mossad personnel, pretending to be CIA agents, recruited Iranian dissidents, was linked to cancellation of Austere Challenge, a joint US/Israeli anti-missile exercise scheduled for April, is not grounded in reality.

New York Times: "Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions"

A New York Times article by Scott Shane, entitled "Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-adversaries-said-to-step-up-covert-actions.html?hp), assesses the assassination of Iranian scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. The article concludes:

"Gary Sick, a specialist on Iran at Columbia, said he believed that the covert campaign, combined with sanctions, would not persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear work.

'It’s important to turn around and ask how the U.S. would feel if our revenue was being cut off, our scientists were being killed and we were under cyberattack,' Mr. Sick said. 'Would we give in, or would we double down? I think we’d fight back, and Iran will, too.'"

The article does not mention that Gary Sick also sits on the Emeritus Board of Human Rights Watch (see: http://www.hrw.org/node/76172), which has been assailed by its founder, Robert Bernstein, for its obsessive attempts "to turn Israel into a pariah state" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2009/10/human-rights-watch-assailed-by-founder.html).

Sick asks how the US would feel if its revenue was being cut off, its scientists were being killed and it was under cyberattack; however, there is no comparing Iran with the US, and this has been the basic underlying shortcoming of Obama foreign policy. Iranian decision making is not grounded in Western values or considerations.

According to PressTV http://www.presstv.ir/detail/220580.html), Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has responded to the assassination by declaring:

"'The desperate and criminal assassination of educated intellectual Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan…added another black page to the heavy records of crime and savageness of the terrorism-centered Zionist regime [of Israel] and its sympathizers in the White House and the West, which lays claim to human rights advocacy,' the IRGC said in a statement on Wednesday.

The statement, however, stressed that the Iranian nation's determination to strengthen its superb regional position and elevate its scientific ranking in the world would not be weakened by threats or terrorist attacks."

In fact, Iran's "superb regional position" has never been weaker, following the recent steep decline in the value of the rial. The Iranian rial has lost more than a third of its value in the past three months, and as noted by The Times of India (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-10/telecom/30611449_1_farsi-iranian-rial-text-messages):

"Mobile phone text messages containing the word 'dollar' and a website showing real-time exchange rates were blocked on Tuesday in Iran.

. . . .

On Tuesday, the rial was fetching 17,230 against the dollar on the open market. That was close to the record low of 17,800 it hit on January 2.

Iranian officials insist the rial's decline has nothing to do directly with the Western sanctions, the toughest of which have yet to come into effect.

But some said Iranian residents were psychologically spooked by the sanctions squeeze and the prospect that the situation would worsen still."

The emerging reality is that Iran will soon no longer be able to bankroll Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, or to supply Assad with support to quell the rebellion in Syria.

Iran will fight back? Not when it's crumbling from within.