Absent any egregious Iranian action or statement (what Washington navel-gazing has obfuscated is the fact that neither the Supreme Leader nor the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps nor the Iranian parliament has yet clearly and formally endorsed the deal), the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; i.e., the Iran deal, will come into force.
President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and their fellow travelers have depicted Iran as a normal state, beholden to normal political forces and not ideologically committed to enmity with the West. Alas, this is naïve: It ignores the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the founding statutes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and, for that matter, the more recent statements of the Supreme Leader and senior Iranian military commanders.
Article 3 of the Constitution, for example, declares the goals of the regime to be both “the expansion and strengthening of Islamic brotherhood and public cooperation among all the people” and “unsparing support to the oppressed of the world.” Article 154 calls for “support of the just struggles of the oppressed against the arrogant in every corner of the globe.” Obama and Kerry may consider the U.S. Constitution more a guide to working around rather than a sacrosanct framework, but there is no indication that the Iranian leadership looks upon the ideological prerogatives enshrined Islamic Republic’s constitution with the same indifference. Revolutionary Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini defined “the repressed” as anyone living under a system other than Iran’s. “The United States can’t do a damned thing; we will export our revolution to the world,” became his mantra and, subsequently, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps slogan. On July 25, 1981, the Revolutionary Guard’s newspaper Payam-e Enghelab defined the two main tasks of the Guards as “the principle of jihad” and defense of the supreme leader’s government.
At various points in the past, Western diplomats have held out great hopes that the Islamic Republic would come in from the cold. There was the optimism of 1989: Khomeini had died, the Iran-Iraq War was over, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had assumed the presidency. Likewise, Mohammad Khatami’s call for a “Dialogue of Civilizations” sparked a huge expectation that rapprochement might be around the corner. Then, in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. and Iranian diplomats—including Mohammad Javad Zarif—struck an agreement not to interfere and perhaps even passively cooperate.
At each moment of optimism, however, elements within Iran sponsored terrorism. In 1989, Iranian elements assassinated a Kurdish delegation during peace talks in Vienna, Austria. Likewise, in 1992—shortly after German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel announced his intent to launch a “critical engagement” with Iran, Iranian assassins gunned down a Kurdish delegation at a Berlin restaurant, again there for peace talks. In 1994, Rafsanjani signed off on the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There was the Khobar Towers attack in 1996. Under Khatami, the Iranian leadership broke its Geneva commitment to keep the Revolutionary Guards and the Iraqi militias it trained at bay. Subsequently, there was the seizure of the British sailors and the smuggling of weaponry to the Taliban.
All these episodes have two characteristics in common: First, Western diplomats sought to exculpate the Iranian leadership by suggesting Iranian terrorism was actually carried out by rogue elements and second, the Iranian government subsequently promoted the perpetrators.
I’ve detailed these incidents, and this pattern, here, and how the Iranian government seeks to maintain plausible deniability. For example seldom does the Supreme Leader give a direct order. Rather, he suggests what should not be done, giving commanders in the field free rein to interpret between the lines. The end result, however, is there is seldom the sort of smoking gun detectable by the U.S. intelligence community, than there would be with regard to the chain of command in other countries. In addition, U.S. diplomats and the White House often change the goal posts of standards of proof in order to exculpate Iran. This is a dangerous trend, for accepting the excuse of rogue behavior is also to accept that the negotiators have no sway over the elements within the Iranian system most prone to cheating.
Regardless, it is safe to assume that the Islamic Republic will once again engage in terrorism against Western and/or other civilian targets, especially given the influx of money destined for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and various Iranian proxy groups. If past is precedent, then U.S. diplomats will be loath to attribute any terrorism to the Iranian central government. As Congress votes on the Iran deal, accordingly, it is essential that those voting in support of the deal also make clear that they will not tolerate from the White House or State Department any willingness to exculpate Tehran should any element of the Iranian government or military, or group funded by the Iranian government or military, engage in terrorism. There is no rogue action in Iran; there is only the projection of plausible deniability meant to bypass accountability. That must stop. Neither Democrats nor Republicans should allow Iranian accountability for terrorism to become yet another partisan football.
