Just the beginning
by Michael
Rubin
Bitterlemons International
April 30, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2128/just-the-beginning
President Barack Obama has made outreach to the Islamic
Republic of Iran a foreign policy centerpiece of his administration. At
his inauguration, he promised that if US adversaries would unclench their
fists the United States would extend a hand. Then, in his first major
television interview, he told al-Arabiya satellite TV, "It is important
for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our
differences are, but [also] where there are potential avenues for
progress. And we will over the next several months be laying out our
general framework and approach."
He has. US diplomats have sought out their Iranian
counterparts at international forums and agreed to meet Iranian officials
without precondition. On March 20, Obama released a Nowruz greeting in
which, without precedent, he declared, "The United States wants the
Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of
nations," implicitly recognizing the current government as the legitimate
representative of the Iranian people.
Obama believes in born-again diplomacy -- that whether with
Iran, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, North Korea or Russia it is
possible to forget the past and start anew. Alas, the world does not
revolve around Obama nor has the reason for the poor state of US-Iran
relations been simply lack of past effort.
Every US president has sought rapprochement with the Islamic
Republic. US diplomats remained in Tehran throughout the revolution, first
by choice and later, of course, as hostages. It is ironic that President
Jimmy Carter's desire to engage sparked the embassy seizure, as Iranian
radicals responded to the perceived threat of rapprochement symbolized by
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's handshake with Prime
Minister Mehdi Bazargan by storming the compound to disrupt that process.
Nevertheless, Carter allowed the Islamic Republic to retain its embassy in
Washington for five more months, hoping to keep open a possibility for
dialogue.
The Reagan administration also sought relations, even
sending former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane to Tehran.
Speaking at the University of Tehran on December 9, 2008, former President
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ridiculed the attempt, recalling how,
"McFarlane came here and our authorities were not willing to talk to him.
Only our second and third rate authorities talked to him." McFarlane
returned empty-handed.
Twenty years ago, there was again hope for change. The
Iran-Iraq war had ended, Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini was dead and Hashemi
Rafsanjani, lauded as a pragmatist in the West, won the presidency. "I
don't want to...think that the status quo has to go on forever," President
George H.W. Bush told a press conference shortly after his
inauguration.
President Bill Clinton, too, reached out to the Islamic
Republic, even authorizing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to engage
her Iranian counterpart in a one-on-one meeting, an opportunity lost when
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, shortly before the rendezvous, ordered
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi not to show.
And despite President George W. Bush branding Tehran as part
of the Axis of Evil -- a mild comment compared to near daily Iranian calls
for America's demise -- there was greater engagement with Tehran under
Bush than under any administration since Carter's. Alas, whether in Iraq
or Afghanistan, the White House discovered that Iranian diplomats either
did not speak for the Revolutionary Guards or did not keep their
promises.
So where does this leave Obama? There is an unfortunate
dynamic in Washington in which new administrations fault predecessors
rather than adversaries for failure to engage productively. No matter what
their preconceptions before entering the Oval Office, however, all
presidents discover they are powerless to resolve differences with Tehran
when Iran's leadership does not desire it. Hence, while the presidents or
foreign ministers of countries like Bolivia, Eritrea and Senegal, let
alone Hamas leaders, receive audiences with the Supreme Leader, the
Iranian leadership refuses to allow US diplomats even to set foot in
Tehran. And while journalists and academics applaud Obama's overtures,
they too often ignore the Iranian response, for example Khamenei's Apr.
15, 2009 speech at Imam Hossein University where he declared, "The
recommendation to return to the global order is the same as capitulating
to the bullying powers and accepting the unjust world order."
The Islamic Republic is an ideological entity. It roots
sovereignty not in the will of its citizens but upon the notion that the
supreme leader acts as a place holder for the Hidden Imam. As a system it
has failed. Iran's economy is in tatters and the regime preserves power
through the ever more pervasive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
To deflect responsibility for failure, it pays to have an
enemy to rally masses around the flag. Iran's leadership has determined
that the United States -- the "Great Satan" -- is it. Meaningful
rapprochement would mean the regime's demise. Rather than work to improve
relations with the US, therefore, Iranian authorities, either directly or
by proxy, impose ever more obstacles. Alas, Ahmadinezhad's recent speech
at Geneva and the arrest of Roxanna Saberi are just the beginning.
Michael
Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a
resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate
School.
Related Topics: Iran, US policy Michael
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