Samii, William Analyst, Center for Naval Analyses, Iran
Mr. Samii talks about concerns by the United States about the level of involvement Iranian officials have in insurgent activity in Iraq. The Center for Naval Analyses is a federally funded research center that does work for several federal agencies including the Navy and Defense Department.
http://usnwc.edu/press/review/2006/winter/art3-w06.htmTHE IRANIAN NUCLEAR ISSUE AND INFORMAL NETWORKS
Abbas William Samii
Naval War College Review, Winter 2006, Vol. 59, No. 1
ran’s policies,” secretary of state–designate Condoleezza Rice said during her January 2005 confirmation hearing, “are about 180 degrees antithetical to our own interests at this point.” Rice mentioned Iran’s nuclear pursuits as a specific area of concern. Arguably, trying to bomb Iran into a stance more in line with our own will not work, and Tehran has repeatedly refused to enter into direct public negotiations with Washington on this or other subjects. Iranian officials have traditionally said that they require a nuclear capacity because the country’s oil resources are finite. They insist that they want to use nuclear energy for electricity generation to maximize oil exports and increase hard currency earnings. An additional issue is national pride—some Iranian commentators declare that nuclear power is a right. The country has developed its nuclear capabilities independently, they argue, and Western (and specifically American) concerns about the issue mask an effort to delay Iran’s development. Washington believes Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability as well; Iranian officials deny this vehemently. In any case, the ultimate objective of Iranian nuclear pursuits—weapons or energy—is not the focus of this article. The assumption here is that possession of any nuclear capability by Iran is undesirable.
This article offers social network analysis as a potential solution to the problem of a nuclear Iran. Political scientists use this methodology to understand relationships between individuals and organizations; it has been applied in the business world and in counterterrorism to identify key actors and predict their future actions and positions. Use of this methodology by the U.S. Army—creating “link diagrams” of blood and tribal relations—resulted in the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.1
There exists in Iran a set of informal networks that are in important ways more influential than the formal policy-making structure. This system of networks includes quasi-official and state-affiliated institutions that are not legally identified but answer only to the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Less structured networks in Iran are based on religious status and education, political affiliation, kinship, military service, and wealth. This article represents an effort to identify these networks, examines the factors that hold them together, and briefly discusses, for contextual reasons, their historical backgrounds.2
The ability of informal networks to influence Iran’s apparently small and restricted nuclear policy elite is unclear. However, the dangers of a nuclear Iran would be too great to ignore or dismiss this approach. This article therefore highlights members of the country’s policy elite and their positions on the nuclear issue in the hope that this knowledge may provide a means by which the United States can persuade Iran to change its seemingly intractable stance. Short of that ideal, analysis of social networks sheds light on how outsiders can get information about, understand, and influence Iranian politics.
INFORMAL NETWORKS IN IRAN
.....
http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0604/0604_4.htmSyria and Iran: An Enduring Axis
by Abbas William Samii
Abbas William Samii is the Iran analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he authors the weekly Iran Report. The author of numerous scholarly articles, contributions to edited collections, reviews, and newspaper articles, Samii's most recent piece is The Iranian Nuclear Issue and Informal Networks, Naval War College Review, v. 59, n. 1 (Winter 2006). Views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RFE/RL.
Over the past quarter century, Syria and Iran have forged one of most enduring regional alignments in the Middle East. The "special relationship," as Syrian officials call it,<1> began evolving at a time when both countries were experiencing unprecedented isolation - not unlike their predicament today. As Damascus and Tehran confront an increasingly united international community, their relationship is growing stronger than ever.
Background
The Syrian-Iranian special relationship can be traced back to the late Imam Musa Sadr, the Iranian-born head of the Shiite Supreme Council in Lebanon, who became a "confidant, political ally, and friend" of then-Syrian President Hafez Assad in the early 1970s.<2> Although Assad was decidedly secular, his Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and its experience in Syria before the 1963 Baathist coup was not unlike that of Lebanon's impoverished Shiites. In 1973, Sadr issued a fatwa declaring Alawites to be part of the Shiite Muslim community, helping Assad weather a political crisis over the Syrian constitution's requirement that the president be a Muslim and boost his legitimacy among a Sunni majority population accustomed to thinking of Alawites as heretics. In return, Sadr's Amal militia received decisive Syrian patronage during the civil war.
Sadr introduced Assad to prominent Iranian dissidents who would later occupy high-ranking positions in the Islamic Republic, such as Ebrahim Yazdi (foreign minister), Sadeq Ghotbzadeh (foreign minister), and Mustafa Chamran (defense minister).<3> Assad offered political asylum to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when he was expelled from Iraq in 1978 (he opted for Paris instead). When Khomeini returned to Tehran in triumph the following year, Assad effusively praised the revolution. Although often portrayed as quintessentially realpolitik, the strategic logic driving Syria's policy was rooted in its deep isolation in the Arab world, which had a clear sectarian dimension. The Assad regime was fighting a Sunni Islamist insurgency covertly aided by three Sunni regimes (Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt) who were openly denouncing Alawite political supremacy in Syria.
The seminal moment in the special relationship came in 1980, when Iraq invaded the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. While other major Arab governments supported Baghdad, the Assad regime publicly denounced the invasion and exchanged high-level diplomatic visits with Tehran. As the war dragged on, the Syrians provided Iran with critical military hardware (particularly artillery and antiaircraft weapons) and allowed Iranian aircraft to refuel in Syrian territory before making return flights home. In April 1982, Syria closed its border with Iraq and shut down an Iraqi oil pipeline through its territory, in exchange for subsidized oil imports from Iran and trade concessions that gave Syrian companies a highly lucrative export market. The two important Shiite shrines of Zeinab and Ruqayyah (the sister and daughter of the third Shiite imam) in Syria drew tens of thousands of Iranian tourists every year, mostly war widows on trips financed by Iran's Martyrs Foundation.
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