Rise of the ‘Iran Lobby’

Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran  

The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) was founded by Abbas Edafat, an adjunct professor at Sharif University in Tehran, and a group of “Iranian and non-Iranian academics, students and professionals of different  political and ideological persuasions”  at a meeting in London in December 2005.⁷¹  The U.S. branch was established in early 2006 under the leadership of Rostam Pourzal, whose profile notes that he advocates direct and sustained dialogue without pre-conditions between Iran and the United States. Pourzal visits Iran regularly.⁷²

CASMII describes itself as a campaign organization whose purpose is to oppose all forms of international pressure on Iran and identifies lobbying and public advocacy as its chosen means to disseminate its views. It is difficult to find information about the CASMII official leadership structure on its website, but what is there shows a pre- dominance of Persian names.⁷³  There is also some overlap between CASMII and NIAC. For instance, Alexander Patico, a founder  of NIAC, a member of its board of directors until 2008 and currently a member of its advisory board, serves on CASMII’s board of directors. Daniel Pourkesali is listed as a member of the CASMII International Steering Committee and is also an active member of NIAC.

A perusal of articles posted on the website is more illuminating, however. Found there are pieces by Trita Parsi and articles featuring interviews with regime apologists such as the Iranian-born Carnegie Endowment analyst, Karim Sadjadpour. Typical of Sajadpour’s pro-Tehran regime advocacy is an October 2008 Carnegie Policy Brief that he authored, entitled “Foreign Policy for the Next President.” In it, Sadjadpour opines that the “relevant question is not whether to talk to Iran but how to talk to Iran” His advice is simply to ignore those pesky areas of conflict in the U.S.-Iran relationship, such as Iran’s nuclear weapons program and Israel.⁷⁴ NIAC returns the favor by carrying on its website a number of pieces that feature Sadjadpour calling for more engagement with Iran.

Center for a New American Security

Another relatively new organization on the Washington think tank scene that has weighed in with policy recommendations on Iran for the Obama administration is the Center for a New American Security, established in February 2007. Prior to her appointment as the Obama administration’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Susan Rice was among CNAS’s impressive board of directors. Dr. Rice also formerly served as a Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, whose sympathies for rapprochement with Tehran have been addressed previously.

Among the policy experts tapped to contribute to the CNAS Iran report are names notable as much for their linkages to other individuals and groups affiliated with the Washington Iran Lobby as for their policy recommendations seeking dialogue with Tehran.

In September 2008, CNAS produced a report intended specifically for the next U.S. administration, although the Obama victory was still some six weeks in the future at its publication. Entitled “Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options,” the report boasts a clutch of Iran and U.S. foreign affairs experts among its authors: James N. Miller, Christine Parthemore, Kurt M. Campbell, Dennis Ross, Suzanne Maloney, Ashton B. Carter, Vali Nasr, and Richard N. Haas.

Of these, one deserves a closer focus here: Dr. Vali Nasr (a.k.a. Dr. Sayeed Vali Reza Nasr), is a former professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.  He served as professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University prior to his recent designation as a senior advisor to President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.  Born in Iran but raised in Scotland and the United States after his family’s departure from Iran in 1979, Nasr is the son of Iranian-American scholar Professor Sayeed Hossein Nasr, with whom he has authored several texts on Shia doctrine and philosophy. His 2006 book, The Shia Revival, is a study of the intra-Islamic split between Sunnis and Shiites. Glowing book reviews from Georgetown’s John Esposito and Karen Armstrong can be found on the dust jacket.

Nasr’s chapter in the CNAS report is entitled, “The Implications of Military Confrontation with Iran,” and catalogues in some detail the likely response of the Iranian regime to a military attack by the United States. Nasr emphasizes that Iran possesses substantial, if largely asymmetrical, means of causing damage to U.S. interests in retaliation for any such attack.⁷⁵  This conclusion leaves the impression that a strike on Iran – either to target its nuclear weapons infrastructure or to attempt regime change – is extremely ill-advised. That assessment is also in keeping with the extensive record of Nasr’s other publications, congressional committee testimony and White House briefings in which he maintains that Iran is already too powerful a regional actor for the United States even to consider taking on because of its control over Iraqi Shiite terror militias and its Lebanese Hizballah proxy. According to Nasr, the best course for future U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran is one of accommodation with the mullahs’ regime – even if, and especially after, it achieves nuclear weapons status.

Tehran revealed its favorable view of Dr. Nasr in a glowing October 2006 article that appeared on the regime-controlled online news outlet Baztab. The piece notes Dr. Nasr’s esteemed family connections, his glittering academic credentials and also details his valued association as an expert advisor for the U.S. Department of State and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Baztab also  approvingly characterized  Dr. Nasr’s views on U.S.-Iran relations, which call for diplomacy, negotiations and a renewed political relationship.⁷⁶

In keeping with themes favored by regime-controlled media such as Baztab, Dr. Nasr is featured elsewhere on the news site as co-author with Council on Foreign Relations Iran scholar Ray Takeyh of an opinion piece that criticizes what they call the United States’ “policy of coercion” towards Iran, while advocating instead a “policy of engagement.”  Implausibly, the two also claim that Iran “… abandoned the goal of exporting its revolution to its Persian Gulf neighbors at the end of [the] 1980s and has since acted as a status-quo power.” Their bottom line might have been penned in Tehran: “the United States should propose dialogue without conditions with the aim of normalizing relations.”⁷⁷