Could Iran live without Assad?

This blog series analyzes the most important Iran news events of the past week and provides an outlook of the regime’s strategic calculus.

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s high-profile meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on November 23 has triggered speculation that the two sides are weighing some serious policy choices about Syria. The key question, as always, is the fate of Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

There is no doubt that Putin’s visit to Iran was of major import. The Supreme Leader’s foreign policy adviser Alai Akbar Velayati claimed that the Russian president’s meeting with Khamenei was the most important in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, explaining that Putin agreed that “no type of agreement [on Syria] would occur…without coordinating with Iran.”

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (R) speaks with Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top adviser on international affairs, in Damascus, Syria. Photo released Nov 29, 2015. REUTERS/SANA/Handout via Reuters.

Iranian coordination will almost certainly support the Syrian regime. When Velayati met with President Assad on November 29, he noted that Iran “will not accept any peace plan that has not been approved by the Syrian government and nation.” Iran maintains a firm red line that the Syrian president should not be forced to relinquish power, and must be allowed to stand for any election during a transition process. President Assad would have a good chance of winning any vote held in the coming months, due to the regime’s demographic manipulation of territory under its control and the displacement of nearly half the Syrian population. There is no doubt Iran will fight hard for this option.

But what if Moscow forced Tehran to accept Assad’s departure as part of a negotiated settlement? This is frankly a terrifying prospect for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders who manage the Syria portfolio.

Tehran would need a candidate acceptable to a number of key constituencies within the Syrian regime, including the army, the intelligence services, the minorities at the core of the Syrian state, and the remaining Sunni community that still back the president. At present, Assad is arguably the only candidate suitable for all these constituencies. Any other compromise candidate is unlikely to be able to unify diverse constituencies and avoid paralyzing infighting.

Assad has faced the risk of assassination since the civil war began in 2011, and Tehran has undoubtedly considered alternatives. What would Iran accept for a Syria without Assad?

• Someone from Assad’s inner circle. On the surface this would be the preferred course of action. The problem is who. The paranoid Baathist regime in Damascus is not designed to groom successors. Rather, since the onset of the civil war it has focused on eliminating potential rivals. Some Iranian leaders have even admitted there is no one else viable at the top, despite their frustration with Assad’s leadership. Regardless, such an individual would likely be wholly unacceptable to the Syrian opposition groups and their Arab and Turkish backers.

• Compromise candidate from one of the country’s minorities. Another leader from Assad’s own Alawite community, or possibly even a Christian or Druze, would be attractive to most world powers, including Russia. But despite its close alliance with Assad, Iran has few inroads with Syria’s other minorities, and struggles to work with Syria’s other powerful (and nationalistic) Alawite families.

• Sunni Syrian Army officer. This is another option that could appeal to the Russians. It is hard to see how either the Iranians or the Alawite elites would trust such an individual, however.

• Collective ‘junta’ system. One possibility is decentralizing power to a group of army officers representing each of the major Syrian communities. This only works, though, if Iran has assurance it can dominate the group’s decision-making.

• Bet everything on the “Iranianization” of Syria. The IRGC transformed the Syrian military by mobilizing over 150,000 local militia personnel to augment, and at times supplant, the ever-weakening Syrian army. Iran has also created an unprecedented integrated fighting force of IRGC, Lebanese Hezbollah, Syrian forces, and foreign Shia militia units from around the region. Tehran may hope it has made enough progress in the past few years that whoever is named “president” will be beholden to a security apparatus that largely answers to the IRGC.

None of these options beat Assad, however.

Moscow’s new interventionist Middle East policies are a potentially profound geopolitical shift in Iran’s favor. However, they also create an uncomfortable fear that a political decision on Syria will ultimately be driven by Russia, perhaps at the expense of key Iranian interests.

Tehran usually bets on multiple horses and is probably already laying the groundwork for an aligned post-Assad Syria, as difficult as it may be to achieve. If there is a Plan B for Iran, it probably incorporates elements from many of the five options above:

• Continue the fight on the ground to improve the Syrian regime’s position.

• Work with Russia to find candidates that have support from the army and the Alawite community.

• Prevent the emergence of any leader too popular or strong to potentially push Iran out of Syria later.

• Ensure Iran retains a veto over the transition process either directly or implicitly through threats of sabotaging any deal out of Vienna.

• Above all, focus on the continued building of a new Iranianized military and intelligence “deep state” in Syria that guarantees freedom of movement for the IRGC and Hezbollah and long-term resistance to Western, Saudi, or Israeli power.

Remolding Syria from a secular Baathist Arab state to a more Iranian-style government has always been Iran’s long game. But there remains for Khamenei an even scarier prospect than Russia caving on Assad: A Russia not very keen on an Iran-driven Syria Plan B.

J. Matthew McInnis is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This report was produced in cooperation with the Iran Team of the Critical Threats Project. It analyzes the most important Iran news events of the past week and provides an outlook of the regime’s strategic calculus.

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Opportunity, inequality, and bridging the wealth gap: Brooks on WCNC’s ‘FlashPOINT’

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The Temptation of Intelligence Politicization to Support Diplomacy

Good diplomacy goes hand-in-hand with good intelligence. Just as courtroom lawyers never ask a question to which they do not already know the answer, so too should politicians and diplomats avoid negotiating with enemies without first understanding what they bring to the table and what they seek to conceal. Because rogue regimes are among America’s most opaque and dangerous adversaries, a breakthrough in relations can define a President’s legacy and make diplomats’ careers. Too often, the temptation to succeed can be overwhelming. When intelligence clashes with political and diplomatic goals, the sanctity of intelligence often loses: seldom do Presidents want their diplomatic initiatives to be the sacrifice.

The corruption of intelligence can occur in many ways. Analysts can allow personal biases to intrude on assessments, officials can change definitions or interpretations about what is licit or illicit, and decisions about what to include in assessments let alone the President’s Daily Brief, can, by inclusion or omission, impact decisionmaking. But, to what end does intelligence politicization occur? While popular imagination suggests that administrations twist intelligence to make the case for war—take, for example, the Gulf of Tonkin incident or allegations that President George W. Bush or Vice President Richard B. Cheney politicized intelligence prior to the second Iraq War—the reality is largely the opposite. When administrations seek to bring rogues in from the cold, diplomats, politicians, and even intelligence analysts themselves will often twist intelligence in order to support diplomatic goals and to reconcile with an enemy, even when that adversary has not changed its character.

Read the PDF.

Read the full report.

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Preserving school choice in the Pelican State

On Nov. 21, Louisianans elected West Point graduate and state legislator John Bel Edwards as governor, the first Democratic to win statewide office there since 2008. Edwards is a critic of charter schools and the statewide voucher program, a stance that helped him earn an endorsement from the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. This is a marked departure from the policies of his predecessor Gov. Bobby Jindal, a two-term Republican who put Louisiana on the national school choice map.

While Democrats across the country see Edwards’ victory as a hopeful sign for the 2016 presidential election, school choice advocates are rightfully concerned about the future of choice in the Pelican State.

Regardless of the election’s results, Jindal’s tenure created some lasting policies that will make completely thwarting parental choice efforts in Louisiana a herculean feat. Here are a few things Pelican State voters, parents, educators, and elected officials should keep in mind as Edwards begins to design an education agenda for when he assumes office on Jan. 11.

Private school choice programs are tough to unhinge. Louisiana parents have received public funds to pay for private, mostly Catholic school education for over half a decade. Currently, Louisiana is one of four states (the others being Arizona, Ohio and Wisconsin) with at least four private parental choice programs on the books.

Louisiana’s four programs offer several options for families: The Elementary and Secondary School Tuition Deduction program is the largest of the four. The legislature created it in 2008 and at least 106,549 parents deducted educational expenses such as private school tuition, textbooks and uniforms in 2012. The Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program was enacted in 2008 for low-income students enrolled in low-performing public schools in New Orleans. In 2012, the legislature renamed it the Louisiana Scholarship Program and expanded it statewide.

The School Choice Program for Certain Students with Exceptionalities began in 2010 to support students with an Individualized Education Plan. The Tuition Donation Rebate Program was created in 2012 and offers tax relief to individuals who give money to a student tuition organization, which in turn awards a scholarship to low-income students.

Louisiana is unique among the four states because it enacted all its choice programs between 2008 and 2015 (the others began in the 1990s) and its programs benefit the most families (approximately 114,000 combined). While student achievement data about the effectiveness of the programs are mixed, parental satisfaction remains high. For many families, private school choice has opened new doors of opportunity for their children. And now that racially diverse, low- and middle-class parents are accustomed to having these four options, it will be tough politically for a new governor to take them away.

Parental choice through charter schools is also here to stay. Louisiana enacted a charter school law in 1995, and approximately 60,000 students statewide attended a charter school in 2014-15. New Orleans has the largest charter school market in the U.S., with 93 percent of its students enrolled in charter schools. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Louisiana’s charter law is ranked second out of 43 laws nationwide.

What accounts for this? According to the alliance, “Louisiana’s law does not cap public charter school growth, includes multiple authorizers, provides a fair amount of autonomy and accountability, and provides relatively equitable operational and categorical funding to charters.” And voters elected a reform-focused majority to the state board of education in 2015.

At the same time, then-Rep. Edwards sponsored House Bill 21, which would prohibit the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from approving a charter school located in a school district rated “A” or “B,” but would allow the state board to convert a preexisting public school into a charter school if it received a “F” letter grade. Whether the bill is considered an accountability measure or an anti-reform initiative is in the eye of the beholder. But if Gov.-elect Edwards thinks of curtailing the charter movement, he should look at what happened to New York City Mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio when he tried to curtail the growth of charter schools in the nation’s largest public school district. As I have covered previously, an estimated 18,500 families, children, educators and charter school employees gathered in Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn in October to rally in support of charter schools.

So the election of a Democratic governor does not necessarily mean the end of parental choice. The election of Janet Napolitano in 2003 as the second Democratic governor of Arizona since 1988 did not result in the abolishment of the state’s tax credit program. In fact, Napolitano expanded it.

Likewise, when Wisconsin voters elected Democrat Jim Doyle as governor in 2004, it was seen as a “signal” to teacher unions that the end of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was near. However, Doyle signed a law in 2006 that raised the program’s student enrollment cap from 15,000 to 22,500. In 2007, Ohio voters elected Ted Strickland as governor, making him the second Democrat to hold the office since the mid-1980s. During Strickland’s term, student enrollment in Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program increased from 734 to 1,978 students and enrollment in the Education Choice Scholarship Program expanded from 3,169 to 13,733 students.

Regarding charter schools, there was some growth during the tenure of each Democratic governor. In the end, parental choice programs did not close their doors when states shifted from Republicans to Democrats.

School choice programs are different than other reform fads because they engender deep buy-in from parents and create unique coalitions. Once these programs build up these constituencies, even when the political winds change, existing programs are likely to be preserved.

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Taxing times for GOP candidates

Most polls suggest that voters care little about taxes. A recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll found that 6% of voters who leaned Republican and 4% who leaned Democrat, ranked taxes as the most important issue to their vote. A Pew Research Center Poll ranked tax reform low in the list of priorities for Congress, well below dealing with terrorism, the economy and jobs. A Gallup poll that asked voters to rank the biggest problems facing the nation did not even list taxes as a separate issue. Yet, tax policy has been a central theme in the 2016 Presidential election. Many leading Presidential candidates, particularly Republican candidates like Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, have announced detailed tax plans aimed at a comprehensive tax reform. This is a losing strategy.

First, most voters don’t think taxes are a priority so discussions of tax reform are unlikely to sway their vote–debating jobs and the economy might. Second, Republican candidates’ tax plans often involve cuts in tax rates on top earners which alienates the candidates further from the average voter, even if the tax cuts could potentially improve economic growth. So for Republican candidates, there is no upside in releasing a detailed tax plan at this stage. Instead, the focus should be on jobs and the economy.

Why do few voters care about taxes?

The latest data from the Tax Foundation finds that the bottom 50% of the population paid 2.78% of all federal income taxes while the top 10% paid nearly 70% of all federal income taxes. So it is not surprising that discussions of tax reform appeal to only a small fraction of the population. In fact, a new report from Pew Research Center shows that 54% of those surveyed said they think they paid the right amount in taxes, considering what they receive from the federal government. Therefore, when candidates discuss plans for tax reform, most voters correctly assume that their tax bill is unlikely to change. If anything, since many candidates have espoused the expansion of tax credit programs that usually benefit low to middle income households, their tax burden is likely to decrease.

Tax reform takes time

Tax reform requires a lot of time, thought and effort. When President George W. Bush’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform was given the task of devising a revenue neutral tax reform of the Federal Income Revenue Code, it took a team of economists and policymakers nearly a year to come up with a proposal. They held 12 public meetings in five states and D.C.. The panel developed two plans for broad-based reform, a simplified income tax and business cash-flow tax. However, the Commission received no support from the Bush Administration or Congress and nothing much came of its proposals. Similarly, earlier last year, then Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, former Congressman Dave Camp announced a comprehensive tax reform plan that would overhaul the nation’s tax code and that took three years of work. Yet despite the sweeping changes proposed and general positive reception, his proposal has not gained much traction in Congress. This experience suggests that aiming to come up with a comprehensive tax reform plan that would do well with voters and Congress so early in the electoral cycle is unlikely.

Not simply about top tax rates

In comparing the candidates’ tax plans, it is pretty clear that the big differences lie in how they would tax incomes of top earners. While Democratic proposals typically call for hiking taxes on capital gains income or estates, Republican proposals tend to call for lowered top marginal tax rates on personal income, capital gains and dividend income, and estates. There are pros and cons of undertaking either action. While raising taxes on top earners may result in higher revenues in the short-run and lower deficits, it is also likely that the revenue gains may be overstated because of the nature of the compensation package of top earners, as I have written earlier. Moreover, it may be costly to have really high taxes on personal incomes since it distorts incentives for work, saving and investment. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Republican proposals have been criticized and scored as adding to deficits, even though they boost incentives to work and invest.

However, tax reform is not just about raising or lowering tax rates, but about the larger goal of achieving high rates of growth while at the same time addressing social inequities. As MIT economist Jim Poterba pointed out at a recent conference at the Tax Policy Center, persistent slow growth in the U.S. may demand pro-growth reform which could include lower taxes on capital income, but at the same time, the concern about income inequality makes it more difficult to expect that reductions in capital taxes or taxes on top earners would be acceptable. Tax reform is likely to be a long, complicated and challenging process involving multiple trade-offs of tax cuts with tax hikes, promoting economic growth while reducing social inequity. A process that involves many compromises, requires time, a lot of deliberations, bipartisan support and give-and-take in Congress.

Given the reality of tax reform (in the short-run) candidates benefit most from focusing on the issues that are of immediate concern to voters, such as the economy and jobs, and leaving more meaningful discussions of tax reform for the future.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seem to understand that having “no specific proposal” on many tax policy items is often better than aiming to come up with a comprehensive tax reform plan this early in the race.

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Puerto Rico needs an emergency financial control board

In a testimony today at 10:00am before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, AEI scholar Alex J. Pollock discusses Puerto Rico’s need for an emergency financial control board.

Congress should promptly create an Emergency Financial Control Board to assume oversight and control of the financial operations of the government of Puerto Rico, as Congress successfully did in 1995 with Washington, DC; as New York State, with federal encouragement, successfully did with the insolvent and defaulting New York City in 1975; and as the State of Michigan did with the appointment of an Emergency Manager for the insolvent City of Detroit in 2013. Such Boards have also been used [with success] in Cleveland (1980), Philadelphia (1991), and Springfield, Massachusetts (2004)…

 

Under the United States Constitution, Congress has sovereignty over territories and the clear authority to create such a Control Board. In my opinion, with Puerto Rico’s severe and longstanding financial problems, Congress also has the responsibility to do so.

Read his full testimony, “An Emergency Financial Control Board for Puerto Rico.”

To arrange an interview with Alex J. Pollock, or for other media requests, please contact AEI Media Services at mediaservices@aei.org or 202-862-5829.

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An emergency financial control board for Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT: Congress should promptly create an Emergency Financial Control Board to assume oversight and control of the financial operations of the government of Puerto Rico, as Congress successfully did in 1995 with Washington, DC; as New York State, with federal encouragement, successfully did with the insolvent and defaulting New York City in 1975; and as the State of Michigan did with the appointment of an Emergency Manager for the insolvent City of Detroit in 2013. Such Boards have also been used [with success] in Cleveland (1980), Philadelphia (1991), and Springfield, Massachusetts (2004).

Under the United States Constitution, Congress has sovereignty over territories and the clear authority to create such a Control Board. In my opinion, with Puerto Rico’s severe and longstanding financial problems, Congress also has the responsibility to do so.

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2016 Data Point: Enthusiasm and campaign 2016

Voter turnout is always important in presidential campaigns, and one way to measure it is to ask voters how enthusiastic they are about voting in the election. In a new poll from Quinnipiac University, 52 percent of Republican registered voters, compared to 25 percent of Democratic registered voters, said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in the 2016 presidential election next year. Thirty-five percent of the Republicans said their level of enthusiasm was about the same. Forty-nine percent of Democrats gave that response. We are still nearly a year away from next year’s election, and these responses will probably change as we get closer. At this early stage, however, the GOP is generating greater excitement among its base.

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Q&A: Falsified or substandard? Assessing price and non-price signals of drug quality

Editor’s Note: The following is a Q&A with Roger Bate, Ginger Zhe Jin and Aparna Mathur, the authors of the recently published article “Falsified or Substandard? Assessing Price and Non-Price Signals of Drug Quality.” To access the full article, click here.

1. How does your research differentiate between substandard and falsified drugs?

Falsified products by definition are being passed off as the original product. Unlike a falsified watch or handbag, where the buyer is often complicit in the trade (for instance, no one thinks a $20 Rolex is real), people buying falsified medicines are unaware of their nature. As a result it makes sense for counterfeiters to sell their fakes at roughly the same price as the legitimate version – to sell lower would provide a signal that it is not what it claims to be. Whereas there are often cheaper versions of medicine on the market and hence those selling substandards are to some degree demonstrating their products are cheaper and perhaps of lower quality – they in effect are segmenting the market based on quality. As a result it is to be expected that substandard medicines are cheaper than the generics on the market, while falsified products are the same as the generics on the market.

2. How do local drug registrations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Stringent Regulatory Authorities (SRA) differ when inspecting drugs for lower-income countries? How do these differing levels of inspection affect the falsified and substandard drug industry?

Most pharmaceutical regulators (including SRAs) rely heavily on the laboratory reports provided by the companies requesting registration of a particular product. In this sense an SRA can just as easily be fooled by fraudulent activity (e.g. faking of test results by a legal manufacturer) as an emerging market regulator. However, SRAs do far more extensive site visits to monitor production standards and hence find more flaws this way than either WHO or local regulators. WHO inspections are generally considered to be competent and similar to SRA inspections, but are less frequent – once approval is given by WHO, unacceptable production techniques are less likely to be discovered due to lack of follow up. Local regulators generally have less competence and budgets to undertake oversight. As a result SRA approved products are likely to be the best, closely followed by WHO approved products. And this is what we found. When it comes to preventing falsified products, pharmaceutical regulators play an important part, but most of the job is done by customs, police and other local and international agencies, and here emerging markets are also less well served.

3. Your research shows that substandard drugs are consistently priced lower than falsified drugs. What economic considerations would explain this result?

Falsified products by definition are being passed off as the original product. Unlike a falsified watch or handbag, where the buyer is often complicit in the trade (for instance, no one thinks a $20 Rolex is real), people buying falsified medicines are unaware of their nature. As a result it makes sense for counterfeiters to sell their fakes at roughly the same price as the legitimate version – to sell lower would provide a signal that it is not what it claims to be. Whereas there are often cheaper versions of medicine on the market and hence those selling substandards are to some degree demonstrating their products are cheaper and perhaps of lower quality – they in effect are segmenting the market based on quality. As a result it is to be expected that substandard medicines are cheaper than the generics on the market, while falsified products are the same as the generics on the market.

4. What are the implications of your research for consumers?

Consumers should always look at what they buy in case the pills are crumbling or the packaging looks fake. But our main finding suggests that those buying at the cheaper end of the market are more likely to risk buying a substandard product and those buying at a normal price still face a risk of buying a falsified product.

5. What are the managerial implications of your research?

Regulators should conduct market surveillance at the cheaper end of the market since this is where substandards are more likely to be found, and they should work with other agencies to spot falsified products on the market. Manufacturers of high-quality products should also work with regulators to fight against falsified and substandard drugs, as they mimic good products and will harm the reputation of legitimate manufacturers.

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Politics, rhetoric and the Planned Parenthood killings

Jim Pouillon was murdered in 2009 by a man who objected to the anti-abortion pamphlet he was distributing. Press coverage was scant, but some pro-choice groups, to their credit, denounced the murder. The New York Times didn’t run articles suggesting that over-the-top pro-choice rhetoric — likening pro-lifers to the Taliban, accusing them of seeking to oppress women, urging a crackdown on their ability to protest abortion — had set the stage for the murder.

Pro-lifers refrained from suggesting that pro-choice groups bore responsibility for the murder. (I’m not aware of any exceptions to this generalization.) That was to their credit: The suggestion would have been obscene.

Pro-choicers have been less restrained in the wake of the recent murder of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. They intend to turn the killings “into a political moment they say will put abortion opponents on the defensive.” The Washington Post, which didn’t cover Pouillon’s murder, is reporting sympathetically on claims that the rhetoric of mainstream pro-lifers is to blame for the killings. Reporters are challenging pro-life politicians about the murders, which also didn’t happen in the Pouillon case. The governor of Colorado says that “inflammatory rhetoric” from pro-lifers played a role.

Why might these cases have inspired such different reactions? It can’t be that anti-abortion violence is a frequent occurrence, and thus fits into a larger story: It is only slightly more common than pro-abortion violence against adults, which is to say not very common at all.

I suspect the press is crediting the pro-choice spin on these killings because most journalists are themselves pro-choice and inclined to see pro-lifers as extremists. And so reporters who would consider it unfair to blame cop-killings on the rhetoric of some Black Lives Matter activists don’t have the same sympathetic reflex when pro-lifers are in the dock.

Pro-lifers have decried the killings in Colorado, and complained that they’re being smeared. But it has to be admitted that political rhetoric — all political activism, for that matter — can inspire violence. Many pro-lifers say that abortion is an evil on par with slavery. And some deranged people may try to play the part of John Brown in that analogy. Thankfully, such people are exceedingly rare.

When violence is committed in the name of a political movement, its responsible members have a duty to condemn it and to seek to root it out of their ranks — two things that pro-lifers have done. Do members of a movement have a duty to restrain their words for fear that madmen will commit outrages based on them? I think the answer is that political activists should refrain from saying anything more inflammatory than needed to make their case against the injustice that moves them — not so much from fear of the deranged as from love of their fellow citizens. The reason Hillary Clinton should stop saying that peaceful, run-of-the-mill pro-lifers are like terrorists is not that she’s likely to inspire violence; it’s that saying it makes our political debates even nastier and dumber than they already are.

Pro-life rhetoric isn’t the real issue for pro-choicers anyway. The bedrock pro-life view — which, if you haven’t figured it out already, I share — is that abortion is the unjust killing of living human beings. Any expression of that view, any political action taken to advance it, is going to offend many pro-choicers, and could lead some people to violent acts. Pro-choicers who want pro-lifers to stop saying that abortion kills unborn children aren’t objecting to the pro-life movement’s rhetoric; they’re objecting to its existence.

And they’re trying to score political points by associating the vast majority of pro-lifers with a tiny violent fringe. What should, but will not, give them pause is the example of the man who died trying to defend the victims in Colorado. Few people — pro-life, pro-choice or in between — are as courageous as Officer Garrett Swasey. But if you want an example of pro-life principles in action during this crime, look at him and not his killer.

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