THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 311, November 25, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
TEHRAN IS THE OBSTACLE TO U.S.-IRAN TALKS
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE COMING OBAMA PRESIDENCY & UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAN -- ENTHUSIASM
IN WASHINGTON ABOUT THE PROSPECTS FOR RENEWED ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE U.S.A. & IRAN -- THE TENDENCY OF
MANY DIPLOMATS TO PRIVILEGE ADVOCACY OVER ANALYSIS & ASSOCIATE DIPLOMACY WITH DEMOCRATS --
LIBERAL INTERNATIONALIST MYTHS & IDEOLOGICAL BLIND SPOTS -- THE GREAT GAP BETWEEN RHETORIC & REALITY
FULL STORY:
Barack Hussein Obama's election as President of the U.S.A. has sparked enthusiasm in Washington about the prospects
for renewed engagement between the United States and Iran. On November 20, 2008, a group of former diplomats,
bloggers, and academics released a statement that declared:
"We are not forced to choose between a coercive
strategy that has clearly failed and a military option
that has very little chance of success. There is
another way, one far more likely to succeed: Open
the door to direct, unconditional, and
comprehensive negotiations at the senior
diplomatic level."
Unfortunately, as has become too common in Washington, these officials privilege advocacy over analysis.
It is a myth that the United States has boycotted diplomacy with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Indeed, the past three
decades are littered with failed diplomacy. Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran to disrupt attempts by the
Carter administration to normalize relations. While the Iran-Contra Affair is remembered in Washington for the Reagan
administration's misguided attempt to bypass Congress, its origin lies in national security adviser Robert McFarlane's
desire to open doors to the Iranians. George H.W. Bush signaled a readiness to negotiate with Iran on August 4, 1989,
the day after Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani took office, only to have Iranian authorities slam it shut.
Ironically, given the tendency today to associate diplomacy with the Democrats, it was the Clinton administration that
was least open to engagement with Iran. Twice in 1995 and again in 1997, Clinton issued executive orders to limit trade
with and investment in Iran. In 1996, he made the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act a pillar of his policy. Nevertheless, toward the
end of his term, Clinton authorized Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to meet her Iranian counterpart. Elaborate
preparations were made at the United Nations, but the Iranian Foreign Minister stood Albright up.
Despite the demonization of George W. Bush, the current President has been more open to diplomacy with the Islamic
Republic than any president since Jimmy Carter. In 2001 and 2002, U.S. and Iranian diplomats met to discuss Afghanistan
and, the next year, Iranian UN Ambassador Mohammad Javad-Zarif met senior U.S. officials Zalmay Khalilzad and Ryan
Crocker in Geneva.
Indeed, Bush has found himself besieged from all sides. Proponents of diplomacy condemn Bush for the moral clarity
inherent in the January, 2002, "axis of evil" speech and argue that the President's State of the Union statements
sidetracked diplomacy. Some say Bush missed a Grand Bargain opportunity in 2003, but, as even pro-engagement
officials acknowledge, this is a myth that resulted from wrongly ascribing Iranian authorship to an attention-seeking
Swiss diplomat's wish. Meanwhile, those with less tolerance for Iran's support of terrorism, its violent opposition to the
Middle East peace process and its nuclear-weapons ambitions condemn Bush for pursuing a policy of rapprochement
they say is at odds with his rhetoric.
This gap between rhetoric and reality is the defining feature of Bush's approach toward Iran. On May 31, 2006, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. diplomats would meet with their Iranian counterparts if Tehran suspended uranium
enrichment. Two years later, she directed a senior U.S. official to sit down with his Iranian counterpart and offer a
generous incentive package, even though Iran remained defiant. Meanwhile, Crocker, now the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq,
has met his Iranian counterpart more than a half-dozen times.
Alas, engagement is no magic formula. First, it takes two to tango. What Carter, Bush the elder, Clinton, and Bush the
younger learned -- but their domestic critics have not -- is that the impediment to engagement lies not in Washington, but
in Tehran. The day after Rice offered Iran an end to its isolation, Ahmadinejad dismissed Rice's offer as "a propaganda
move." When Undersecretary of State William Burns sat down with his Iranian counterpart in Geneva in July, 2008,
Mohammad Ja'afi Assadi, Commander of Iranian Republican Guards Corps ground forces, quipped that Washington's
desperation showed that "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated." On
October 12, 2008, Iranian Vice President Mehdi Kalhor said: "As U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and
continue their support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. are off the agenda."
Why not drop preconditions and engage -- as the National Iranian American Council, the Islamic republic's de facto
lobby in Washington, recommends? There are several reasons. First, the demand for a cessation of Iran's uranium
enrichment program is not Washington's, but the UN Security Council's. To waive it would not only reaffirm the worst
U.S. unilateralism and precondition the outcome of negotiations, but also obviate the possibility that any future UN
resolution would mean anything to Tehran.
Second, embracing Tehran now would enable President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to claim, ahead of elections in his country,
that his strategy succeeded, where his predecessors' failed.
And, lastly, as Obama will learn when he assumes the Office of President, Iranian officials often approach diplomacy
insincerely. As Abdollah Ramezanzadeh explained in June, 2008, looking back on nuclear developments during the
Khatami administration: "We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert
policy, which was continuation of the activities."
If all diplomacy required were Washington's good intentions, the world would be a magical place. It is ironic that some
U.S. diplomats trust the Islamic Republic more than many Iranians themselves do.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing analysis by Dr. Rubin was originally presented over Radio Free Erope / Radio Liberty and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/2013)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
November 25, 2008
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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