What policy will the Obama administration pursue towards Iran? Will they support freedom or will they try negotiations to get a deal on the nuclear issue? Excellent piece by Mariam Memarsadeghi and Akbar Atri, who I am lucky to call my real-life friends, in The Washington Post. Bottom line: Obama has shown what democracy can do. He should use his immense popularity to boost freedom aborad – let’s bring real change to Teheran as well.
Obama’s popularity gives him the power and credibility to press the Iranian regime, not to mention dictatorships in Russia, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and elsewhere, to respect human rights and democratize. Yet some in Washington have urged Obama to abandon talk and programs in support of the Iranian people in exchange for piecemeal progress on the nuclear issue. With Tehran continuing to make progress on a weapon, it is tempting to look past the Iranian people’s hopes for freedom and instead focus on the seemingly more imperative issue. But this would be a mistake. In fact, the regime would want nothing different.
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Those in power in Iran are responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East, not to mention in Buenos Aires, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. They are fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy and its ensuing individual rights. They still imprison the young for having parties and listening to music and stone women to death for extramarital sex. In the name of God, they persecute religious minorities and imprison mullahs who speak of freedom. They still chant “death to America” at the official sermon every Friday and force children to do the same as part of the school curriculum. Drug addiction is common among large swaths of society. The regime’s oil-rich apparatus is rotted by extremes of corruption and unaccountability. Like communist totalitarian regimes of the past, it seeks to maintain a facade of revolutionary idealism for the outside — particularly for the liberation-hungry Arab world — while its people endure the bitter realities of life under an ideological state.
The so called new line towards Tehran can at first glimpse appear to be a desperate attempt by an un-experienced commander in chief and naturally we ask ourselves: What is the meaning of spending all the political capital build up the last 30 years by pressuring and isolating Tehran? Is the Obama approach founded in the euphoria of a new Camelot, a final populist gesture to bring forth the dawning of the decline of US deterrence? Is the era of great power wars to return because of the American people’s craving for populism? Potentially, but not necessarily, we could answer. Perhaps state department approves the new stretched hand from the Oval Office towards Tehran, because the Iranians are already on their knees economically and isolated politically thus seeing the writing on the wall in terms of the Non Proliferation Treaty regime, hence ready to change their cause. Maybe, but several questions need to be addressed in this respect.
Indeed, we can see a lot of similarities between the new administration in Washington and the last time a Bush left office. Change and hope is proclaimed to be coming to the structural level of US politics. We may think, oh, no, not again, let’s not have another clumsy beginner, spending political capital in a popularity rush where the leader seems to believe he can change the organizational structure of an old federal political form. According to the rhetoric from Obama, the federal government is to upgrade the whole country and on paper it makes a lot of sense to force states to comply with the demands of globalization, but will it sell well in the states? Is the political capital inherent in the new presidential mandate already spent? What about foreign policy? Is Obama going to use foreign policy to make results at home? It smells like something we have encountered before. The distribution of political capital does not always make sense to the immediate understanding. Is the foreign policy of the stretched hand another moment of splurging political capital? Internally, Obama must spend the full amount of his mandate, but what about foreign policy, is he perhaps playing his trumps too fast?
Concerning Iran, the multilateral/great power approach developed by the Bush administration managed to put Tehran under considerable pressure by deploying at two legged strategy. One leg of this effort was the focus on mobilizing political unity in the UN Security Council (1696, 1737) to establish the implementation of a sanctions regime in reference to AIEA. This was by and large effective. The other leg of this strategy consisted of playing out a good cop/bad cop scenario in which Germany, U.K., and France tried to wave a carrot while Washington held the big stick, with the compliance of Russia and China to support this effort through the first leg. Despite the rhetoric from Tehran, this strategy had effect, isolating Iran on the multinational as well as on the great power level of global politics. Whether Iran is still technically a regional power is less important in this framework, since in geo-strategic terms Iran is completely surrounded on all levels of interaction. This does not mean that Iran could not become a stabilizing player, hence be constructive towards US fears and wants in the region. The question is of course how Tehran defines its national interest forming the question: If Tehran reaches for the stretched hand of Washington, what do they actually have to offer, and if the answer to this question is nothing, does the stretched hand from Washington then actually spend the political capital accumulated through the Reagan, Clinton and Bush regimes? Or, is this political capital, actually well spend by such maneuver, since the Iranian reluctance to participate in negotiations is thus laid open in the international society, legitimizing the current sanctions regime, hence de facto accumulating more pressure on Tehran?
At least two questions pose themselves in this regard. Is Tehran’s will to isolate itself not already obvious? What can be gained by further isolating Iran? Does Khamenei already feel the pressure? Can another populist president gain a new momentum of legitimacy in Iran? What is the reading of the political situation in Iran immanent to the change of tactics towards Tehran? Another question is to the history of negotiation with Persians. Have commencing negotiations with the Iranian regime ever given any result but the negotiations themselves and who does that benefit? Who is the policy of the stretched hand actually targeting? What is the concrete objective? Does this policy simply buy Tehran time to finish a nuclear weapon? These questions amount to a particular question concerning notion of a changed approach to Iran. What is the pressure under which the incitement for the Iranians to participate in negotiations is to be sustained? – Deeper multilateral sanctions? If an Iranian nuclear weapon is indeed immanent within the coming 2 years, then, as a last option, should Israel be allowed to intervene and if so, what route shall their planes take to the target if not over Iraq?
Perhaps trying to talk to Tehran does make sense, but what can actually be achieved? Tehran may have a lot of things to offer in the region from our perspective, but are the Iranians capable of delivering anything substantial? How can we be sure Khamenei has the power to negotiate? This is a dangerous game indeed and one would probably feel a lot better with somebody in the White House with substantial experience in foreign policy. As more and more of the old Clinton become visible, the deja vu of the catastrophe of the 90´ies and their causes will keep popping up in the minds of intellectuals and find substance in populist expressions. To many people the events of the 90´ies are not properly consumed and formed into knowledge of our present. In the big picture, this is the danger of a populist regime in Washington. History will judge harshly if the international political capital of US deterrence and unity of the Security Council, slowly build up under Bush gets spend in a popularity shopping spree. Obama is already popular. That is not his problem for another four years. Now efficacy is the issue. Making unpopular decisions is not the problem in itself. The problem is keeping on making the necessary decisions, whether popular or not. It may sound good to stretch your hand towards Iran in the spirit of dialogue and renewed possibilities. What is missing are concrete answers to make sense of the rhetoric of a stretched hand. We know that Tehran can talk for ever. But is there a concrete incentive to dialogue in Iran? If so, we must remember how this incentive was brought about and the political capital already invested in bringing the Iranians to the brink of actual negotiations. Is that capital simply spilled, it would be a waste and encourage other rogue regimes to play games with Washington putting further pressure on the White House. Of course, we prefer the pressure to be distributed the other way around, especially, with a new unproven man in office.
Good questions indeed, Kondrup! May I add one more? Is the outstretched hand an attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential elections in Iran? To show the Iranians that they have something to gain if they choose a more concilliatory president than Amejinejad?