In the growing campaign to push for U.S. military intervention in Iran, Patrick Clawson, the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), has emerged as a key public voice, appearing in congressional hearings and numerous press reports billed as an expert on the Middle East and on Bush administration policies.
Formerly an economist with the rightist Foreign Policy Research Institute as well as with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Clawson argues that efforts to push a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program are interpreted by Tehran as a sign of weakness. In an interview with New Yorker magazine, Clawson said that he fears that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in." Arguing that the United States has "to be ready to deal with the crisis if it escalates," Clawson opined that sabotage efforts like "industrial accidents" might be an attractive method of intervention. In case these efforts fail to get the desired result, however, the administration should be prepared for a wider war, especially "given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec" (New Yorker, April 17, 2006).
In a statement delivered at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on March 2, 2006, Clawson argued that the United States should consider regime-change strategies. "So long as Iran has an Islamic Republic, it will have a nuclear weapons program, at least clandestinely. The key issue therefore is: How long will the present Iranian regime last? . At the same time that it concentrates on the nuclear issue, the United States has an important interest-both strategic and moral-in supporting Iran's pro-democratic forces. It would be a grave setback to Washington's reform agenda in the region if the United States were perceived to have abandoned Iran's beleaguered pro-democratic forces by making a deal with hardline autocrats to secure U.S. geostrategic interests. On top of which, the reigning mullahs would almost certainly cheat on any such a deal, as they did during the Iran-contra affair when they released some hostages only to take others. The only sure route is the best moral route: supporting Iranian democrats with what modest aid Washington can provide, such as increased television, radio, and internet broadcasts."
In the meantime, Clawson argued, the United States should beef up defensive security measures around Iran, which "could increase the likelihood that Iran will back down, because they would show Iran that its security will be worse off due to its hardline stance on nuclear matters." He added that one option might be "to sell Arab states in the Persian Gulf more advanced anti-missile systems and air defense systems. Raising doubts in the minds of Iranian decision makers about the country's ability to reliably deliver its nuclear weapons could make their use prohibitively risky for Tehran in all but the direst of circumstances. Another step would be to assist Israel to deploy more Arrow counter-missile batteries and to develop more sophisticated follow-on versions of the Arrow."
More recently, in prepared testimony for the House Armed Services Committee's June 8, 2006 hearing on U.S. policy options toward Iran, Clawson stressed deterrence and containment of Tehran. He wrote: "The United States will almost certainly have to deter and contain Iran for the foreseeable future-almost like the Cold War on a small scale. Perhaps a diplomatic breakthrough can be achieved, but if so deterrence and containment will almost certainly have played a role in making that possible. Perhaps the United States will decide that at the end of the day it must live with a nuclear-ready Iran, in which case deterrence and containment of the threat will be essential. Perhaps preemption of Iran's nuclear program will be necessary, but in that case, deterrence and containment will be needed to limit Iranian reactions after the preemption. Because almost any policy option will entail deterrence and containment as an element, the United States should increase its actions to deter and contain Iran without waiting for further diplomatic developments."
Unlike many of his neoconservative counterparts, who would prefer that the United States didn't even acknowledge the current Iranian regime, Clawson calls for offering a number of incentives to Tehran, including " confidence- and security-building measures and arms control measures that would provide gains for both Iran and the West, similar to the way such steps reduced tensions between the old Warsaw Pact and NATO during the Cold War" (San Diego Union Tribune, April 30, 2006). However, he is deeply skeptical that any form of cooperation with the regime will produce results. When discussing what he sees as the likely failure of diplomacy, Clawson frequently resorts to citing a statement from Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who in an interview with Newsweek early this year said: "Diplomacy is not just talking. Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules through conviction. If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but sometimes you have to do it" (Newsweek, January 23, 2006).
Clawson is a prolific writer whose articles and op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, among numerous other journals and press outlets. He has also teamed up with various other defense hawks and neoconservatives to produce monographs on Iranian policy. In 2005, he co-edited with Henry Sokolski (an advocate of hardline weapons and counterproliferation policies who was formerly based at the National Institute for Public Policy) the volume Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran, which was published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Also in 2005, he coauthored Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos with Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former staff adviser for Iran and Iraq in the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
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Affiliations
Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Deputy Director for Research
Middle East Quarterly: Senior Editor
Foreign Policy Research Institute: Former Senior Economist
National Defense University: Former Research Professor
World Bank: Former Economist
International Monetary Fund: Former Economist
Orbis: Former Editor
Education
Oberlin College: BA
New School for Social Research: PhD
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