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On Apr. 9, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's atomic
energy agency, announced that the Islamic Republic had installed 7,000
centrifuges in its Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The announcement
came one day after the U.S. State Department announced it would engage
Iran directly in multilateral nuclear talks.
Proponents of engagement with Tehran say dialogue provides
the only way forward. Iran's progress over the past eight years, they say,
is a testament to the failure of Bush administration strategy. President
Barack Obama, for example, in his Mar. 21 address to the Iranian
government and people, declared that diplomacy "will not be advanced by
threats. We seek engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual
respect."
Thus our president fulfills a pattern in which new
administrations place blame for the failure of diplomacy on predecessors
rather than on adversaries. The Islamic Republic is not a passive actor,
however. Quite the opposite: While President Obama plays checkers, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei plays chess. The enrichment milestone is a
testament both to Tehran's pro-active strategy and to Washington's refusal
to recognize it.
Iran's nuclear program dates back to 1989, when the Russian
government agreed to complete the reactor at Bushehr. It was a year of
optimism in the West: The Iran-Iraq War ended the summer before and, with
the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, leadership passed to
Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both
considered moderates.
At the beginning of the year, George H.W. Bush offered an
olive branch to Tehran, declaring in his inaugural address, "Good will
begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on." The
mood grew more euphoric in Europe. In 1992, the German government, ever
eager for new business opportunities and arguing that trade could moderate
the Islamic Republic, launched its own engagement initiative.
It didn't work. While U.S. and European policy makers draw
distinctions between reformers and hard-liners in the Islamic Republic,
the difference between the two is style, not substance. Both remain
committed to Iran's nuclear program. Former Iranian President Mohammad
Khatami, for example, called for a Dialogue of Civilizations. The European
Union (EU) took the bait and, between 2000 and 2005, nearly tripled trade
with Iran.
It was a ruse. Iranian officials were as insincere as
European diplomats were greedy, gullible or both. Iranian officials now
acknowledge that Tehran invested the benefits reaped into its nuclear
program.
On June 14, 2008, for example, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Mr.
Khatami's spokesman, debated advisers to current Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad at the University of Gila in northern Iran. Mr. Ramezanzadeh
criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for his defiant rhetoric, and counseled him to
accept the Khatami approach: "We should prove to the entire world that we
want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other
activities," Mr. Ramezanzadeh said. The purpose of dialogue, he argued
further, was not to compromise, but to build confidence and avoid
sanctions. "We had an overt policy, which was one of negotiation and
confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the
activities," he said.
The strategy was successful. While today U.S. and European
officials laud Mr. Khatami as a peacemaker, it was on his watch that Iran
built and operated covertly its Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and, at
least until 2003, a nuclear weapons program as well.
Iran's responsiveness to diplomacy is a mirage. After two
years of talks following exposure of its Natanz facility, Tehran finally
acquiesced to a temporary enrichment suspension, a move which Secretary of
State Colin Powell called "a little bit of progress," and the EU
hailed.
But, just last Sunday, Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief nuclear
negotiator at the time, acknowledged his government's insincerity. The
Iranian leadership agreed to suspension, he explained in an interview with
the government-run news Web site, Aftab News, "to counter global consensus
against Iran," adding, "We did not accept suspension in construction of
centrifuges and continued the effort. . . . We needed a greater number."
What diplomats considered progress, Iranian engineers understood to be an
opportunity to expand their program.
In his March 24 press conference, Mr. Obama said, "I'm a big
believer in persistence." Making the same mistake repeatedly, however, is
neither wise nor realism; it is arrogant, naïve and dangerous.
When Mr. Obama declared on April 5 that "All countries can
access peaceful nuclear energy," the state-run daily newspaper Resalat
responded with a front page headline, "The United States capitulates to
the nuclear goals of Iran." With Washington embracing dialogue without
accountability and Tehran embracing diplomacy without sincerity, it
appears the Iranian government is right.
Michael Rubin
is editor of the Middle East
Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.
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