Like it or not, the Trump Administration will have to pay attention to Iran. The President’s predecessors, beginning in 1979, have taken multiple paths, usually with few results beyond frustration. Unable to ignore the Islamic Republic, they tried containment, regime change, and engagement. Nothing much worked, and – with a few exceptions – little changed as the two countries remained camped on opposite sides of an abyss trading threats, insults, and accusations.
Even those decades of futility, however, have provided lessons to be learned and suggest a path for the new administration.
FIRST, we should ask ourselves, what are our goals? What do we want to achieve in this relationship? We can begin by doing what President Richard Nixon did when he traveled to China in 1972. He made two columns on a yellow pad titled, “What We Want” and “What They Want.” If we have no goals, then we have no way to measure the success of our actions and will end up taking steps with no visible purpose beyond making us feel good.
When someone suggests, for example, designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization or suggests supporting this or that dissident group, we should ask, “What does that accomplish? Does it bring us closer to our policy goals? Of course if we have no goals, then the questions (and the actions) are irrelevant.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
As Lewis Carroll pointed out in Alice in Wonderland, if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will get you there.
SECOND, in defining goals, we should avoid moralizing, hysteria, histrionics, and fantasies. They achieve nothing except self-satisfaction. A writer in “The National Interest,” for example, recently urged us to cut off “Iran’s poisonous tentacles.” Too many of our military colleagues are infatuated with the word “malign” when describing Iran. Others drone on about Iranian “behavior” as though Iranians were a collection of unruly children. Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s “putting Iran on notice” announcement recalls Dean Wormer’s “Double Secret Probation” in the 1978 film Animal House. Saying that Iran’s goal is to recreate a “new Persian Empire” is just silly and discredits the speaker by demonstrating his or her ignorance of history.
Defining goals should not be difficult. For the United States they are: an Iran that does not threaten or destabilize its neighbors, be they Arab, Turkish, or Israeli; an Iran that does not sponsor terrorist operations; an Iran that respects freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf; an Iran that does not pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements; and an Iran that adheres to international standards of human rights and does not mistreat its people, particularly its women and its intellectuals.
For Iran, the overriding goal is survival of the Islamic Republic’s system and preventing its overthrow by internal or external challengers. Other goals include: stopping the growth of hostile, militant anti-Shia and anti-Iranian movements in neighboring countries, particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia; and checking the centrifugal forces in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Iranian society which threaten – with or without foreign encouragement – to tear the country apart. Both Washington and Tehran share the goal of avoiding an armed conflict of uncertain duration and with unforeseeable results.
THIRD, we should not delude ourselves. Iran and the United States are unlikely to be friends for a long time. Past grievances of both sides – Iran’s support of terrorism against Americans, its holding of American diplomats against all national, international and religious norms, and America’s support for Saddam’s Iraq in the 1980s and the killing of hundreds of Iranians on a civilian airliner in 1988 – continue to fester and feed mistrust. Despite President George H.W. Bush’s words in 1989, in the case of Iran, goodwill does not beget goodwill. It begets questions and suspicion that the other side is “up to something.” We should not make the easy assumption that if we are nice to them, they will be nice to us. There is too much destructive history for such a policy to work. An Iranian official once put it very simply to my students, “Our foreign policy is based on opposition to you.”
Nor should we be blinded by our distaste for Iran’s theocracy or its appalling human rights record. There are many things to admire about Iran and its magnificent people and culture; but the Islamic Republic is not one of them. We should remain wary, however, of self-proclaimed champions of Iranian human rights and democracy. Not all these individuals and groups are what they pretend to be, nor do they enjoy the domestic support that they claim. Some have a dubious past and an even more dubious present, despite a remarkable ability to buy the endorsement of foreign enthusiasts. We should remember the lessons of Iran-contra, when the Reagan presidency almost collapsed because it listened to a siren song about (non-existent) Iranian anti-Communists and moderates.
FINALLY, we should be realistic about what threats and pressure can accomplish. Iran has faced American sanctions and denunciations for over 35 years. It has learned how to deal with them. To a declared enemy, the Iranians know well how to respond. They have had lots of practice. If our purpose, however, is to create doubt and confusion and to discredit the anti-American rhetoric emanating from Tehran, we are better served by backing off threats and speaking instead about “mutual interest” and “mutual respect.” Such language does not fit the standard Islamic Republic narrative about America as “world arrogance” and leaves Tehran floundering in search of a response.
In international relations, “toughness” is usually overrated. The Huns were tough indeed, and who remembers them today except for their talents at rape and pillage? Far more valuable are brainpower, patience, and tenacity, all of which – when combined with a set of clear goals – will help us work through a relationship that destroyed one American presidency (Jimmy Carter’s), almost destroyed a second (Ronald Reagan’s), and has frustrated American administrations for almost 40 years.
