[Mb-civic] Rice Asks for $75 Million to Increase Pressure on Iran - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Rice Asks for $75 Million to Increase Pressure on Iran

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 16, 2006; A01

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress yesterday to provide 
$75 million in emergency funding to step up pressure on the Iranian 
government, including expanding radio and television broadcasts into 
Iran and promoting internal opposition to the rule of religious leaders.

The request would substantially boost the money devoted to confronting 
Iran -- only $10 million is budgeted to support dissidents in 2006 -- 
and signals a new effort by the Bush administration to persuade other 
nations to join the United States in a coalition to bolster Iranian 
activists, halt Iran's funding of terrorism and stem its nuclear 
ambitions, State Department officials said.

"The United States will actively confront the policies of this Iranian 
regime, and at the same time we are going to work to support the 
aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom in their own country," 
Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing on the 
administration's foreign affairs budget.

Iranian officials announced this week that they have begun enriching 
uranium, a step that appears likely to ensure that the country's nuclear 
program will be discussed by the U.N. Security Council next month. But 
U.S. officials despair that any action by the council will be slow and 
deliberate, so yesterday's effort appears to be part of a sustained 
campaign to enlist other countries to act against Iran even sooner.

Rice will travel to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates 
next week in part to discuss the "strategic challenge to the world 
represented by the Iranian regime," the State Department said. Another 
senior official, Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns, also will discuss 
Iran next week with his counterparts in the Group of Eight 
industrialized nations. Officials will also seek to coordinate strategy 
on Iran with NATO members.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who has called for $100 million to promote 
democracy in Iran, applauded the initiative as the "absolutely right 
move at this point in time." Although some Iranian activists have 
criticized the administration for moving too slowly to support them, 
Brownback said the administration had been "very methodical" in fighting 
terrorism. "The first step was Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now you're 
seeing an increasing focus on Iran."

But Martin S. Indyk, a Clinton administration official who now heads the 
Saban Center on Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said 
the democratic forces the administration wants to support have failed in 
the past to take on the clerics and have little basis of support -- and 
would be tainted by U.S. aid. "It's hard to see how $75 million makes a 
dent in that political reality," Indyk said.

The Clinton administration, under pressure from Congress, tried to 
assist such groups in the 1990s, Indyk said, but Iran interpreted the 
effort as an attempt to overthrow the government and responded by 
funding a series of terrorist attacks in Israel.

Rice told lawmakers that because the Iranians have begun enriching 
uranium, "they have crossed a point where they are in open defiance of 
the international community." Rice said the United States has a "menu of 
options" available to punish Iran, adding: "You will see us trying to 
walk a fine line in actions we take."

Under the proposed supplemental request for the fiscal 2006 budget, the 
administration would use $50 million of the new funds to significantly 
increase Farsi broadcasts into Iran, mainly satellite television 
broadcasting by the federal government and broadcasts of the U.S.-funded 
Radio Farda, to build the capacity to broadcast 24 hours a day, seven 
days a week.

An additional $15 million would go to Iranian labor unions, human rights 
activists and other groups, generally via nongovernmental organizations 
and democracy groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy. The 
administration has already budgeted $10 million for such activity but is 
only just beginning to spend the $3.5 million appropriated in 2005 for 
this purpose.

Officials said $5 million will be used to foster Iranian student 
exchanges -- which have plummeted since the 1979 Iranian Revolution -- 
and another $5 million will be aimed at reaching the Iranian public 
through the Internet and building independent Farsi television and radio 
stations.

State Department officials, briefing reporters about the plan on the 
condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging Rice, said they saw an 
opportunity to enlist support against Iran because of intemperate 
statements by Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that have 
called for the elimination of Israel and expressed doubt about the 
Holocaust.

The United States has no relations with Tehran, but one official said 
the United States hopes to capitalize on the "disturbing trend of 
Iranian diplomacy" since Ahmadinejad's election, including the refusal 
to continue negotiations on the nuclear program. He said the 
administration would press countries that have ties to "begin to think 
what they can do to push back against what has been a radical series of 
proposals out of the government of Iran."

The officials sidestepped questions about whether the administration is 
seeking "regime change." One official said the United States is pursuing 
a "hard-headed" diplomatic track in which it hopes the policies of Iran 
will change and "people who support democracy" will be strengthened. A 
second official cited the 1980 uprising in Poland by the Solidarity 
labor movement, which toppled the communist government, as a model for 
the kind of movement the administration hopes to foster.

The officials acknowledged that aiding activists and dissidents in Iran 
may be difficult and could expose them to retribution, so they said the 
aid will probably be provided without much fanfare.

At the hearing, Rice won bipartisan praise for her handling of 
negotiations on Iran's nuclear programs, but lawmakers from both parties 
raised objections to the overall thrust of the administration's Middle 
East policy. At one point, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) blamed the 
administration for the victory of Hamas in last month's Palestinian 
legislative elections. "The whole year, 2005, nothing was done, 
opportunities missed, and now we have a very, very disastrous situation 
of a terrorist organization winning an election," Chafee asserted.

Rice acknowledged the victory of Hamas is "a difficult moment" in the 
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but she said it was due to a backlash 
against the ruling party, not a failure of U.S. policy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021500672.html
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