B4
B
KLMNO
In Iran, our double agent lived for a single cause
spy from B1
however, did vouch for Kahlili’s role as a spy. “I can’t confirm every jot and tittle in the book, but he did have a relationship with U.S. intelligence,” the official said. I spoke with Kahlili’s lawyer, too, who told me that the book was “submitted for prepublication review” at a certain un- named U.S. government agency and that this agency confirmed that Kahlili did have an operational relationship. Even- tually, I found one of Kahlili’s former case officers, who described him as “legit” and “a very brave guy.” And finally I talked with Kahlili him-
self. He was using a Darth Vader-style voice modulator, which seemed a little silly since he was calling from California. But I guess ex-spies are entitled to their paranoia, not to mention their publicity stunts. He offered more details that re- inforced the integrity of the book. What truly makes this story believable is the character of the narrator. Kahlili is a kind of upper-middle-class Iranian Ev- eryman. He begins the story as a beer-
drinking, girl-chasing Iranian student in America during the late 1970s. He is drawn into the radical cause via the stu- dent movement, embraces his Muslim faith and returns home just after the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah and in- stalled Ayatollah Khomeini. He describes a “brief, shining moment” under Kho- meini’s banner that felt to him like “the beginning of a Persian Renaissance.” Kahlili’s companions on this revolu-
tionary journey are two childhood friends, whom he calls “Naser” and “Ka- zem.” They are all swept up by the ayatol- lah’s fervor, but Naser and Kazem are op- posing poles on which the story turns. Naser is a secular, idealistic fellow, and he moves toward the leftist organization known as the Mujaheddin, which be- comes a bitter antagonist of the regime. Kazem is a deeply religious man who joins the Revolutionary Guard and rises steadily in its intelligence operations, pulling the author with him. The crisis comes when Naser and his
younger sister are arrested, brutally tor- tured and finally killed. Kahlili is honest
enough to see that this is a perversion of the revolutionary ideals he has been fighting for — and he swears revenge. He takes it in a way that only a very brave person would dare, by contacting the CIA during a trip to America and offering to spy for the United States. One of the strengths of this book is that
it makes the author’s decision to betray his country — or, more properly, the peo- ple who are running it — seem like a mor- ally correct and laudable action. Indeed, people in the Iranian operations division at the CIA should welcome “A Time to Be- tray” as a virtual recruitment poster. Kahlili meets a series of smart and sensi- tive case officers; he’s given a code name (in the book it’s “Wally,” which has a ludi- crous ring, but maybe it was real); he’s taught secret writing and other trade- craft to disguise his communications as ordinary letters; and then he’s sent back into Iran as a CIA spy. I won’t spoil the book by telling how the story evolves, but it’s a good espio- nage yarn. I have no idea what Kahlili left out in the telling, but his putative intelli-
gence reports, which he prints in italics, seem incredibly squishy. If that’s all the poop he provided, no wonder others in the agency didn’t hear about him. One detail that is entirely credible is
how little the CIA seems to know about what’s going on inside Iran. Talking with his first case officer, “Steve,” the Iranian observes: “I didn’t realize until Steve started debriefing me how uninformed the U.S. was about the ayatollah’s activ- ities in the Middle East.” The agency doesn’t seem to have known about the scope of the Guard’s activities or the ex- tent of its contacts with the Soviets, for example.
At one point in the mid-1980s, Kahlili worries that Iranian intelligence opera- tives are wise to his encoded postal mes- sages. The book should have mentioned that by the late 1980s, the Iranians had noticed similar letters going to postal ad- dresses in Europe, and a whole network of spies was rolled up, with disastrous consequences. The Iranians certainly know that history, as do some readers of American newspapers, which have re-
ported the mail screw-up in detail; so, I’m sure, does Kahlili. Leaving it out of this book weakens its authority. As the tale progresses, we realize we are reading not so much a spy story as a national tragedy. The passionate ideal- ism and yearning for democracy that gave birth to the Iranian revolution are perverted, year by year. Kahlili’s disgust and remorse compelled him to take ac- tion, but America mostly sat on its hands. “The West needs to do something,” he tells one of his case officers in the mid-’80s. “If we allow the Guards to go unchecked, the consequences could be devastating for the region — and the world.”
Kahlili had that right, and a lot of other things as well. After finishing this book, this reader recalled a line from Arthur Miller’s play, “After the Fall,” which asked: “Why is betrayal the only truth that sticks?” I wish we could be more cer- tain about the details in this story, but even so, the basic message sticks hard and true.
ignatiusd@washpost.com
SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 2010
The Cold War is over. So why all the nukes?
by David E. Hoffman
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
Last fall, President Obama hosted a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York. Administration officials have reportedly discussed offering their own peace plan.
Don’t just send a plan to the Mideast. Send Obama.
by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz
M
ore than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that con- trolled Israel’s only outlet to
the Red Sea, declared that he would rath- er have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eter- nal and undivided capital of Israel, is con- veying an updated version of Dayan’s cre- do — that he would rather have all of Je- rusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem. This is unfortunate, because a compre- hensive peace agreement is in the inter- est of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resent- ment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objec- tives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel’s future, greater even than an Irani- an bomb. And an agreement is in the in- terest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of state- hood. However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal, as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historical- ly significant setting can generate the po- litical and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat’s courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades agoaccomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David ac- cords between Israel and Egypt. Similarly, President Obama should
travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ra- mallah to call upon both sides to negoti- ate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusa- lem’s Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of his Cairo
speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace. Such an effort would play to Obama’s
strengths: He personalizes politics and seeks to exploit rhetoric and dramatic settings to shatter impasses, project a compelling vision of the future and in- fuse confidence in his audience. The basic outlines of a durable and comprehensive peace plan that Obama could propose are known to all: First, a solution to the refugee problem
involving compensation and resettle- ment in the Palestinian state but not in Israel. This is a bitter pill for the Palestin- ians, but Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.
Second, genuine sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of each state, and some international arrangement for the Old City. This is a bitter pill for the Israelis, for it means accepting that the Arab neigh- borhoods of East Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine. Third, a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.
And fourth, a demilitarized Palestinian
state with U.S. or NATO troops along the Jordan River to provide Israel greater se- curity. Most of these parameters have been endorsed in the Arab peace plan of 2002 and by the Quartet. And the essential ele- ments have also been embraced by Barak and another former Israeli prime min- ister, Ehud Olmert. For the Israelis, who are skeptical about the willingness of the Palestinians and Arabs to make peace with them, such a bold initiative by Obama would provide a dramatic demonstration of the pros- pects for real peace, making it easier for Israel’s political leadership to make the necessary compromises. For the Palestinians, it would provide political cover to accept a resolution pre- cluding the return of any appreciable number of refugees to Israel. Palestinian leaders surely know that no peace agree- ment will be possible without forgoing what many of their people have come to regard as a sacred principle: the right of return. The leadership can only make such a shift in the context of an overall pact that creates a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital — and that is supported by other Arab coun- tries. For the Arabs, it would legitimize their
own diplomatic initiative, embodied in the peace plan put forward by the Arab League eight years ago. Moreover, their support for Obama in the effort would be a vital contribution to the resolution of the conflict. Finally, for Obama himself, such a move would be a diplomatic and political tri- umph. Bringing Arab leaders and the Quartet with him to Jerusalem and Ra- mallah to endorse his plan would be seen as a powerful example of leadership in coping with the protracted conflict. Since it is inconceivable that the Israeli govern- ment would refuse Obama’s offer to bring Arab leaders and the Quartet to its capital, most of the American friends of Israel could be expected to welcome the move as well.
Of course, the proposal could be reject- ed out of hand. If the Israelis or the Pales- tinians refuse to accept this basic formula as the point of departure for negotiations, the Obama administration must be pre- pared to pursue its initiative by different means — it cannot be caught flat-footed, as it was when Netanyahu rejected Oba- ma’s demands for a settlement freeze and the Arabs evaded his proposals for confi- dence-building initiatives. Accordingly, the administration must
convey to the parties that if the offer is re- jected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council’s en- dorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party. Fortunately, public opinion polls in Is-
rael have indicated that while most Is- raelis would like to keep a united Jerusa- lem, they would rather have peace with- out all of Jerusalem than a united Jerusalem without peace. Similarly, al- though the Palestinians are divided and the extremists of Hamas control the Gaza Strip, the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution, and their leadership in Ramallah is publicly committed to such an outcome. It is time, though almost too late, for all
parties — Israelis, Palestinians, Amer- icans — to make a historic decision to turn the two-state solution into a two- state reality. But for that to happen, Oba- ma must pursue a far-sighted strategy with historic audacity.
Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman from New York, is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.
Cold War, he worked on all the major weapons systems, and part of his job was to keep track of the vast complex of Soviet submarines and sea-launched strategic missiles. He maintained re- markably precise records, written by hand in his notebooks and often accom- panied by schematic drawings that re- flected his training as an aviation and missile designer. Katayev’s archive, which I examined while researching a book on the end of the Cold War, reveals how the Soviet Union stumbled into excess upon excess in the arms race. Once, Katayev record- ed a visit with the directors of two facto- ries building submarine-launched mis- siles. When he suggested that they were wasting money manufacturing weap- ons no one would use, the factory bosses objected. “The order for missiles is giv- en, it is included in the plan, funds are given, and so we make them,” Katayev recalled of their reply. “And the way these missiles are used by the military — this is not our problem.” The overkill that Katayev identified
V
grew out of a Cold War mind-set forged during a tense, long confrontation. To- day, that arms race has ended, and the number of nuclear weapons in the world has fallen from more than 60,000 at the peak to about 23,000 today, of which 95 percent are still in the United States and Russia. Yet we have not shed the mind-set of overkill. Even with the signing of the new strategic arms accord
italy Katayev was a man who lived by his pencil. A staffer in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party dur- ing the last two decades of the
U.S. allies and partners, and may not be conducive to maintaining a stable, long- term strategic relationship, especially as nuclear forces are significantly re- duced.” In other words, we can’t go lower without Russia going lower, too. So we remain higher than we need to. What’s behind this calculus is the old
Cold War idea of counterforce: Our war- fighters have to be prepared not just to threaten Russian cities but to target their numerous strategic forces. We find ourselves in a time warp. In an age when our countries are not adversaries, we cling to an old concept because the oth- er side does as well. The nuclear posture review stated that the United States and Russia “still retain many more nuclear weapons than they need for deterrence.” In a paper last year, the Federation of American Scientists called for scrap- ping counterforce and adopting a new “minimal deterrence” mission that would make retaliation after nuclear at- tack the sole purpose of nuclear weap- ons. This would naturally lead to far fewer warheads than the Prague treaty allows. Obama, despite his calls for a nu- clear-free world, has not gone that far. The question “how much is enough?” has echoed through the decades. If the purpose of nuclear weapons is deter- rence, it may be impossible to answer definitively, and the disagreements are wide. But in the latest issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly, three Air Force think- ers offer a surprising estimate. James Wood Forsyth Jr., Col. B. Chance Saltz- man (chief of the Air Force Strategic Plans and Policy Division) and Gary Schaub Jr. conclude that “America’s se- curity can rest easily” on a compara- tively small nuclear force. The United States, they write, could
“draw down its nuclear arsenal to a rela- tively small number of survivable, reli- able weapons dispersed among missile silos, submarines, and airplanes.” They said such a force might number only 311 nuclear weapons. They point out that China has already moved to a minimum deterrence strategy with an estimated 400 warheads, and 200 deployed. By contrast, even with their new trea-
THE U.S. NAVY LAUNCHES A TRIDENT II, D-5 MISSILE IN THIS 1989 PHOTO BY PHIL SANDLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Even with the new treaty, the United States and Russia are still stewards of large piles of nuclear warheads.
last week, we are still left with excess — thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons that do not make us any safer. The agreement signed in Prague on
Thursday by President Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia sets a ceiling of 1,550 nuclear warheads for each country by 2017. Obama’s nu- clear posture review, released last week, all but acknowledged that this number of warheads remains high only to keep the U.S. arsenal approximately the same size as Russia’s. The document declared that “the need for strict numerical par- ity between the two countries is no lon- ger as compelling as it was during the Cold War,” but it warned that “large dis- parities in nuclear capabilities could raise concerns on both sides and among
ty, the United States and Russia are still stewards of large piles of nuclear war- heads. The agreement does not cover 2,500 tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons still hanging around (500 held by the United States, including 200 de- ployed in Europe, and about 2,000 in Russia, most in storage but several hun- dred deployed.) Nor does the treaty re- strain the additional estimated 2,500 warheads contained in the “hedge,” or reserve, maintained by the United States. And there are another 4,500 U.S. warheads awaiting dismantlement. Obama has promised to move on all of these fronts — in the future. Once during an internal Kremlin de-
bate over missiles, Katayev implored a deputy chief of the General Staff to real- ize that the Soviet Union had overdone it. “Unbeknownst to everybody,” Ka- tayev insisted, “the time has arrived when the accumulation of nuclear weapons has outgrown its own level of safety and when it reached the zone where both our own nuclear weapons and those of the Americans have turned from being a means of deterrence into an instrument of increased danger.” It has been a quarter-century since
Katayev made that case. This week, as world leaders gather in Washington for a summit on nuclear security, they must realize that today’s threats are far more diffuse than in the past, and far less like- ly to be deterred by nuclear weapons. Without the burdens of the Cold War to hold us back, we are terribly tardy in cleaning up its legacy of nuclear over- kill.
hoffmand@washpost.com
David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor of The Washington Post and the author of “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.”
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