Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure
By Karen DeYoung
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A04
The United States should construct a combination of incentives and
pressure
to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier op****tunities to begin a
useful
dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.
"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit
down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a
discussion,
then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be
completely
the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."
In the meantime, Gates told a meeting of the Academy of American
Diplomacy,
a group of retired diplomats, "my personal view would be we ought to look
for ways outside of government to open up the channels and get more of a
flow of people back and forth." Noting that "a fair number" of Iranians
regularly visit the United States, he said, "We ought to increase the flow
the other way . . . of Americans" visiting Iran.
"I think that may be the one opening that creates some space," Gates said.
The Bush administration has said it will talk with Iran, and consider
lifting economic and other sanctions, only if Iran ends a uranium
enrichment
program the administration maintains is intended to produce nuclear
weapons,
a charge Iran denies. Although the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Baghdad
met three times last year for discussions on Iraq, Iran has refused to
continue that dialogue.
Others, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who is running for
president,
have said that talks with Iran on a range of issues might be useful.
Gates publicly favored engagement with Iran before taking his current job
in
late 2006. In 2004, he co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations re****t
titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach." At the time, he explained
yesterday,
"we were looking at a different Iran in many respects" under
then-President
Mohammad Khatami. Tehran's role in Iraq was "fairly ambivalent," he said.
"They were doing some things that were not helpful, but they were also
doing
some things that were helpful."
"One of the things that I think historians will have to take a look at is
whether there was a missed op****tunity at that time," Gates said. Khatami
was replaced in 2005 by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Gates was also a member of the bipartisan 2006 Iraq Study Group, which
advocated reaching out to Iran. He resigned from the group when President
Bush nominated him as defense secretary in November that year; the re****t
was published on Dec. 6, the day of his confirmation.
The administration charges that Iran is now deeply engaged in training and
arming ****ite militias fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. In his remarks
yesterday, Gates said evidence to that effect is "very unambiguous."
But, he said, "I sort of sign up" with New York Times columnist Thomas L.
Friedman, who wrote yesterday that the "right question" for the United
States is not whether to talk with Iran but "whether we have leverage or
don't have leverage."
"When you have leverage, talk," Friedman advised. "When you don't have
leverage, get some -- by creating economic, diplomatic or military
incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or
frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent
vis-à-vis Iran."
A number of senior U.S. military officials have emphasized the need for
robust diplomacy toward Iran, while not ruling out the use of force. "I'm
a
big believer in resolving this diplomatically, economically and
politically," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said in a recent interview with The Wa****ngton Post. "The military aspect
of
this, which I think is a very im****tant part of the equation and must stay
on the table," Mullen said, is an option of "last resort."
Gates said yesterday that the U.S. military remained "stretched" by
deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, although he said that all service
branches had met their recruitment and retention goals last month. "There
is
no doubt that . . . we would be very hard-pressed to fight another major
conventional war right now," he said. "But where would we sensibly do
that,
anyway?"
Future conflicts, Gates said, will be asymmetric. "Other countries are not
going to come at us in a conventional war."
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