Rice Asks for $75 Million to Increase Pressure on Iran- Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021500672.html
Rice Asks for $75 Million to Increase Pressure on Iran
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff WriterThursday, 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.
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