America Likes Cheap Oil, but Not Iran's Stand on Nukes or Their Funding of Terrorism
CAFFERTY: This week, for a moment at least, some new hope in easing nuclear tensions with Iran. But should nukes be our main concern? Where as the countries perpensity for funding terrorism around the globe with greater threat. For all the U.S. state department calls Iran the world's, quote, most active sponsor of terrorism, unquote. Joining us now is Patrick Clawson; he is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Patrick nice to see you.</s>PATRICK CLAWSON, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Thanks for having me.</s>CAFFERTY: Short of a military strike realislitically is there any way for western powers to get Ahmadinejad to quit this nuclear research, uranium enrichment? He is playing us like a violin, it seems to me.</s>CLAWSON: We've actually been pressing him quietly, pressing Iran quietly. The Treasury Department, in particular, has been urging banks to be much tougher in enforcing rules about clandestine money transfers, and that has led the two largest Swiss banks and one large British bank to quit business in Iran, that is having an effect on the Iranian economy.</s>SERWER: Hey Patrick I'm going to ask you a very simple question. But to me, this seems to get lost so often. What does the government of Iran want?</s>CLAWSON: Prestige and influence. They want to change the situation in the Persian Gulf so that Iran will be, in the future, regarded as the big power that everybody listens to and pays attention to and takes into account their opinions.</s>WESTHOVEN: Do you feel like the -- the White House, of course, going and talking to a lot of other world powers, that's a change for them. Does that kind of collective force, does that really make this a more powerful negotiation discussion, confrontation?</s>CLAWSON: Indeed. And, also, it makes it much easier for us to press Iran when it's not just the U.S. Treasury Department that's telling European banks, hey, you ought to enforce these rules more strictly, but also the European governments telling their own banks, listen, we've got rules here. Let's apply them just as strictly as we can.</s>CAFFERTY: When the United States agreed to this package of incentives, along with some other governments that are trying to negotiate this thing down to less of a crisis than it is, there was some suggestion that it was more than a prelude to go into the U.N., that there was no chance that the government of Iran was going to buy into this and going to the U.N. and applying for sanctions. You say this guy wants prestige, he wants power, he wants recognition and he wants the nuclear bomb. The sanctions didn't work so well with Saddam Hussein. Is this the right approach with Iran?</s>CLAWSON: Well, if the world's powers stand together, that will be real different than the Iraq situation. And at least so far, the Iranian leaders, the ones who have real power, unlike the president, who is usually just a loud mouth, the real powers have been pretty cautious. They don't like the west. They want a low-level confrontation with the west, not a hot confrontation.</s>SERWER: Patrick, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Bob Baer, the CIA agent who wrote "See No Evil," which the movie "Syriana" was based on. And he basically lays the blame for terrorist acts all across the world over the past several decades on the feet of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. Do you buy that?</s>CLAWSON: Well the Revolutionary Guards have certainly had their finger in every terrorist pie. I would just say they're usually not the cook, however. That is, they may be adding a couple of ingredients, but much of that terrorism would have taken place even without them. They've helped make it more deadly, yes. But they haven't been the principle cause for it, no.</s>WESTHOVEN: I wanted to ask you a little bit about the economics here. Both either sanctions and, you know, punishments or sweeteners. It seems in looking over some of the comments you made that you think neither of these could really work. Is there anything we could do on the economic side to prevent more of a military coalition?</s>CLAWSON: Well on the economic side, we can contribute to an effort that's probably going to have to primarily be on the security side. We're primarily going to have to press the Iranians through things like deterrence, and containment, the sort of things we did in the cold war on the security front. But the economic measures can help. They're not going to be enough by themselves, but they can leave the Iranian business community to go to the government and say, look, your policies are very dangerous and why don't you back off on this confrontation?</s>CAFFERTY: What happened to the conventional wisdom that was around, more so, a year or two ago than it seems to be now, that there's a youth movement inside Iran that's unhappy with those running the place, that they are more sympathetic to western ideas, western democracy and that perhaps Iran might see a change of regime from within. Is that still a viable option?</s>CLAWSON: All that is still true. However, the youth have discovered that there's a small minority that have got the guns and who are ready to kill, and that those people have not yet given up their revolutionary values. At some point, however, this formula of ruling through the small number of people who have got guns, that's not going to work over the long run with most of the people against you.</s>SERWER: All right. We're going to have to leave it at that. Valuable insights from Patrick Clawson, he is the deputy director of research at the Washington Institute. Thank you for coming on the program.</s>CLAWSON: Thank you.</s>SERWER: Coming up after the break, the game of the name. American Airlines has its brand all over this year's NBA finals. See if that's giving AMR any altitude on Wall Street. Also ahead, off sides and out of bounds, find out why a big global cash cow, like soccer, never caught fire here. And you've got company if you're sending e-mails at work. Chances are, your employer is reading what you write. Stick around for our "Brain Storm" segment.