WORLD VIEW:'YOU CHANGE and we shall change as well. . . Changes must be real. . . Regarding our vital issues, we are not sentimental. We do not make decisions based on emotion. We make decisions through calculation."
The tone of realism in Ayatollah Khamenei’s response to President Obama’s New Year message on Iran is more hopeful than much of the international media’s account of his speech allows. Far from a rebuff to a friendly offer of better relations with the United States, this was a straightforward statement of Iran’s bargaining position contained in a catalogue of its complaints about US snobbery, hegemony and interference in its affairs.
Together the two statements are a remarkable opening to what could be as significant an international reconciliation as the US-China one in the early 1970s. Obama’s decision to address his message to the Islamic Republic of Iran implies a recognition of its 1979 revolution and an abandonment of the Bush administration’s policy of regime change. He invited the Iranians to unclench their fist and Khamenei has spelled out the approach needed if that is to be achieved.
Many aspects of contemporary international relations could be transformed if this project is successful. But it will take time and there are major vested interests and policy obstacles to be overcome along the way.
It helps to examine major aspects of their region as seen by the Iranian leadership to understand what is at stake. They have a real stake in a stable neighbouring Afghanistan, for example. Its conflicts empower Sunni Arab and Islamic opponents of Shia Iran – especially al-Qaeda. The Afghan drug trade runs through Iran and has devastated many of its people.
The enveloping crisis drawing in Pakistan to the Afghan conflict intensifies these threats, as is recognised in yesterday’s strategy announced in Washington. Obama is imposing tighter conditionality on both governments as he increases troop levels in Afghanistan. He wants to draw in neighbouring states, including Iran, Russia, China, India and central Asian states, to a contact group to deal with the issue.
Iranian officials are to attend a forthcoming conference on Afghanistan, beginning this game of entente. Richard Holbrooke has openly expressed the need for Iranian involvement in dealing with the region. Its leaders believe greater US military involvement in the region, in addition to Iraq, emphasises their vulnerability to nuclear threat from Pakistan, India, Israel as well as from US naval vessels in the Iranian Sea and Persian Gulf.
In that perspective their nuclear enrichment programme could make strategic sense if it is directed towards nuclear weapons. In fact that is denied and there is no definitive evidence that it is their primary objective. Rather is it a possible offshoot of enrichment – a “Japan option”. For all its oil wealth, Iran is severely short of energy and wishes to preserve its natural resources for future generations, beyond the current market volatility. The nuclear programme is a popular affirmation of sovereignty, not necessarily the expression of an expansionist Islamic agenda, as it is commonly framed in the US and Israeli media.
Seen thus, the policy of “bigger carrots and bigger sticks” advocated by senior members of the Obama administration such as Dennis Ross, his top Iran official, looks self-defeating. Stronger sanctions following on a failure to engage politically could make this a much more hostile confrontation.
Khamenei warned Obama against this outcome, including by relying on Israeli advice and interests in developing his policy. This is a critical factor. Obama’s initiative cuts right across Israel’s strategy of demonising Iran as an inherently expansionist and subversive power, bent on destroying Israel if it acquires nuclear weapons, along with its allies Hizbullah and Hamas.
The influential New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who has written sympathetically on Iran, puts it like this: “Obama’s new policies of Middle East diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling off of US-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.”
The prospective new Israeli government led by Binyamin Netanyahu, now with Labor Party participation, can be expected to oppose a US opening to Iran strenuously through its powerful lobby groups in Washington. Their strength was demonstrated recently when Charles Freeman, a diplomat critical of Israel, withdrew his nomination to the national intelligence team. Observers ask whether Obama will have the courage for such a necessary confrontation in the interests of an opening to Iran. He may have to choose between them and will not want to do so in the middle of the economic crisis.
But pressure of events in Afghanistan and Pakistan may force his hand. And as Henry Siegman (a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and now a sharp critic of Israeli policy) puts it in Ha’aretz, it may be best to confront a right-wing Israeli government to drive home the minimal demands for a stop to West Bank settlements and a viable contiguous Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem that still form the only basis for peace. So far Hillary Clinton has held to the orthodox West Bank first and Fatah only policy. That is criticised by influential groups of Washington realists who say it cannot deliver peace and that the pragmatic wings of Hamas and Iran must be engaged in direct negotiations. Growing numbers of more liberal US Jews support such a change.