The Iran war dance: one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back

U.S. disbands unit created to pressure Iran and Syria

By: Farah Stockman

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration has dismantled a special committee that was established last year to coordinate aggressive actions against Iran and Syria, according to State Department officials.

The committee, the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group, met weekly throughout much of 2006 to coordinate actions such as curtailing Iran's access to credit and banking institutions, organizing the sale of military equipment to Iran's neighbors and supporting forces that oppose the two regimes.

State Department and White House officials said the dissolution of the group was simply a bureaucratic reorganization, but many analysts saw it as evidence of a softening in the U.S. strategy toward the two countries. It comes as the Bush administration has embarked on a significant new effort to hold high-level meetings with Iran and Syria.

The group had become the focus for administration critics who feared that it was plotting covert actions that could escalate into a military conflict with Iran or Syria. The air of secrecy surrounding the group when it was established in March 2006, coupled with the fact that it was modeled after a similar special committee on Iraq, contributed to those suspicions.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said the group was shut down because of a widespread public perception that it was designed to enact regime change. State Department officials have said the focus of the Iran-Syria group was persuading the two regimes to change their behavior, not toppling them.

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Nicholas Burns, the State Department's under secretary for political affairs, revealed in a written statement to a senator in the past week that the group was disbanded in March in "favor of a more standard process" of coordinating between the White House, the State Department, Defense Department and intelligence agencies. Burns's statement came in a written response to questions submitted by Senator Robert Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat.

Shortly before the Iran-Syria group was shut down, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched a major initiative to engage Iran and Syria in a regional effort to stabilize Iraq, reversing longstanding U.S. policy against high-level contact with the countries.

For years, the Bush administration has shunned meetings with Syria. The administration cited concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions and accused both nations of supporting militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Diplomatic ties between the United States and Iran were cut off following the 1979 Iranian revolution.

But Rice met this month with Syria's foreign minister in Egypt, the first such high-level meeting between the two countries since 2004, and on Monday, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, is scheduled to meet his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad.

Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, said he did not think it was a coincidence that the Iran-Syria group was disbanded at the same time the State Department began its diplomatic outreach.

"I think the rationale for that group was promoting regime change, and Rice is going in a much different direction from that," Katzman said. "The regime-change school within the administration has really gotten quite a bit weaker."

Trita Parsi, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University who also heads the National Iranian American Council, said he also sees the dismantling of the Iran-Syria group as evidence of a change in Washington's stance toward Iran and Syria. But he said that it is too early to tell how significantly U.S. policy has shifted.

"At this stage, these are just initial steps towards diplomacy," Parsi said. "I think we have entered a stage in which the people who were favoring regime change are not strong enough to conduct policy but they are still strong enough to undermine policy. It is too early to count them out entirely."

Despite the group's dismantlement and the new diplomacy, aggressive actions against Iran and Syria are widely expected to continue. ABC News reported in the past week that President George W. Bush had given the CIA permission to try to destabilize Iran's government with a "coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions." According to ABC News, the covert action was championed by Elliot Abrams, the deputy national security adviser, who was a co-chairman of the Iran-Syria group.

Burns, who oversees the State Department's Iran policies, wrote in the May/June issue of The Boston Review that both threats and rewards are needed in dealing with Iran.

He heralded tough actions, including what he called a "whisper campaign" that has caused a string of banks and countries to cut off financial dealings with Iran.

Burns also championed recent U.S. military maneuvers in the Gulf as putting increased pressure on Iran. Another major war-games exercise by the U.S. Navy began Thursday.

Burns said it was important to show Iranians that the Gulf, crucial for shipping oil to the world, was "not an Iranian lake."

But in the same article, Burns also urged Americans to prepare for the eventual resumption of diplomatic relations with Iran, which he described as inevitable.

In a statement rarely made by U.S. diplomats, Burns wrote that "there is going to come a point - we hope in our lifetimes - when we are talking to Iran again."

Original article posted here.