The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  The dual-track approach gave Bush a punitive course of action short of war that could also placate other stakeholders in the dispute, such as Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Israel. They all wanted reassurance that the United States would not accept Iran going nuclear and would take tough action to stop that outcome. Sanctions were also conveniently both low-risk and low-cost. They could bite hard without sparking a shooting war. And Iran would bear all the pain, with America not needing to spend money or risk a single soldier’s life.

  The problem with sanctions is that they are just too convenient. They are what you do when you cannot or will not do anything else. They offer a good feeling that a crisis is being handled, but in reality they are blunt instruments with a questionable track record.26 When they work, they hurt the economy and state institutions of the country they target—along with its civilian populace—but do they reshape the bad policy behaviors that cause them to be applied in the first place? Sanctions impoverished Iraq and cost the lives of vulnerable Iraqis (including tens of thousands of children), but Saddam Hussein stayed in power and remained a hazard. Indeed, it could be argued that sanctions boomeranged on the United States because the Iraq that U.S. forces conquered and were then responsible for putting back on its feet had been left such a basket case.

  Sanctions are not likely to work in the case of Iran either. The reasons Iran craves nuclear status run too deep for it to be swayed by economic pressure. And indeed, there is reason to worry that U.S. pressure is only convincing Iran it needs nuclear deterrence in order to protect itself from that very pressure. When Bush was president, Iran’s rulers were certain that regime change was the U.S. goal and reasoned that an Islamic Republic shorn of its nuclear program would be that much more vulnerable.

  Iranians are not easy to negotiate with. This is a nation whose complex psyche is reflected in its art. Think of the dazzlingly detailed miniature paintings or the spectacularly ornate Persian carpets they have produced for centuries, and you can grasp that Iranians are patient and fantastically complicated. The Western expectation of quick, straightforward deal making has met with frustration when it comes to Iran. I remember a conversation in 2006 with Jack Straw, who was then Britain’s foreign secretary, about his time talking to Iran. He said,

  People think North Koreans are difficult to negotiate with. Let me tell you, your countrymen [Iranians] are the most difficult people to negotiate with. Imagine buying a car. You negotiate for a whole month over the price and terms of the deal. You reach an agreement and go to pick up the car. You see it has no tires. “But the tires were not part of the discussion,” the seller says. “We negotiated over the car.” You have to start all over again, now wondering whether you have to worry about the metal rim, screws, or any other unknown part of the car. That should give you a sense of what talking to Iran looks like.

  Diplomacy with Iran was always going to be long and hard. Iranians are hard bargainers, tenacious and unlikely to budge unless they are under pressure. Diplomacy with Iran will be like doing business with the North Vietnamese at the end of the Vietnam War—they too were dogged, difficult, and appeared likely to bend only under pressure. And yet in the end there was a road to a deal with the North Vietnamese—it just needed American persistence and a clearheaded strategy for managing the process.

  The problem with the dual-track policy with Iran was that in practice it relied on a single track: economic pressure.27 It failed because it deviated from the goal of using coercion to bring Iran to the negotiating table. The United States started to look to pressure to do the job on its own.28 The Bush administration was never interested in diplomacy. It left it to Germany, France, and Britain to sit down with Iran for talks—but Washington would hold a veto over the outcome. Nor was Washington interested in resolving all outstanding issues, improving relations, and resolving the nuclear problem in that context. The Bush administration wanted Iran to surrender. The United States said that it would talk to Iran only if Iran first gave up its nuclear program—we would accept Iran running a civilian nuclear program provided all enrichment activities took place outside Iran. In other words, diplomacy will follow only after its intended result has already been achieved.

  Initially there was hope that Europe could persuade Iran to change course. A visit to Tehran by three European foreign ministers in 2004 led to a two-month suspension of nuclear enrichment, which President Chirac thought was “exemplary of how problems can be resolved by European diplomacy.”29 But those early positive steps led nowhere.30 Washington stuck to its position that Iran would have to abandon its nuclear program in its entirety—no enrichment activity whatsoever—before any further discussions could happen.

  Inside Iran, hard-liners argued that the temporary suspension had been misconstrued as weakness and had only emboldened the United States to pressure Iran into total surrender. This view fit a prevalent narrative in Tehran that the West views any Iranian concession as weakness and therefore grows more aggressive.31 Iran’s rulers thought sanctions were intended to weaken Iran militarily and change the regime. The best response was to get tough and even belligerent—which escalated violence in Iraq. As Khamenei told his advisers, “The West is like a dog, if you back away it will lunge at you, but if you charge, then it will back away.”32 Little wonder, then, that more sanctions only made Iran more recalcitrant.

  Iran’s rulers thought that hard-charging Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would make the West back off when he took over the presidency from the more pliable reformist Mohammad Khatami in 2005. But Ahmadinejad’s menacing rhetoric and shows of defiance only hardened U.S. attitudes in turn. What Khamenei did not know was that American policy makers also thought they would get a reaction from Tehran only if they were menacing to the point of threatening Khamenei’s grip on power. “He moves only if you hold a gun to his head,” a senior administration official told me.

  Washington responded to Ahmadinejad’s defiance by tightening the economic noose. Iran and the United States found themselves in an uneasy standoff, with American pressure only inviting greater Iranian obduracy.

  Ironically, no Iranian leader more badly wanted a deal with the United States than did Ahmadinejad, and yet none failed more miserably in wooing America to the table. Ahmadinejad was following his own dual-track policy. He hoped his vitriol, denying the Holocaust, taunting Israel, and rallying resistance to America would make him too important to ignore—the adversary that America had to talk to. But his plan backfired. He made himself a pariah, the leader whom everyone was determined to ignore. Ahmadinejad broke the taboo against communicating directly with an American president, writing first to Bush, then to Obama to congratulate him on winning the 2008 election. Neither one responded. Above all, Ahmadinejad supported deal making over the nuclear issue, first in Geneva with the United States and its European allies in 2009, and then with Brazil and Turkey in 2010. Those deals failed to take hold and he got no credit for trying to get them through.

  The Bush administration blamed the failure of its dual-track approach on Russia and China, which stood in the way of UN sanctions against Iran. But in reality the problem was that pressure was not tied to real diplomacy. Pressure had become an end in itself.

  During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised to break this logjam, to engage Iran in earnest—a new approach based on mutual respect that could produce a diplomatic breakthrough. Iran would be a symbolic corrective to Bush’s approach to addressing international crises, which was heavy on pressure and light on diplomacy. At first glance, it may look as if Obama did just that, or at least tried to. But look closer and it becomes hard to conclude that Obama’s approach was much of a departure from Bush’s. In fact, it was Bush’s policy in a “new and improved” version. Obama tweaked the dual-track approach. He tried his hand at diplomacy, but only to get to the sanctions track faster, and to make sanctions more effective. Engagement was a cover for a coercive campaign of sabotage, economic pressure, and cyberwarfare. It was Bush’s policy with more teeth.

&
nbsp; The most obvious indicators of continuity were the people Obama chose to run his Iran policy. Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat who had the final say at the White House on all things related to Iran until December 2011, was a firm advocate of the dual-track policy. Iran interpreted his appointment to that job as an ominous sign that Obama was not serious about diplomacy. And Iranians were not the only ones who took notice. A senior adviser to Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan asked me why Obama had chosen him. Before I could answer he said, “We are disappointed. You judge a man [Obama] by his advisers.”

  Another clear signal was Obama’s decision to keep Stuart Levy, Bush’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, at the Treasury Department. Levy had led a highly effective campaign to rally financial institutions across the globe to stop doing business with Iran.33 This additional layer of sanctions augmented economic pressure on Iran. Levy continued to tighten the noose even as Obama was getting ready to reach out to Iran. As my Turkish friend put it: same people, same policy.

  Where Bush had failed—and where Obama succeeded—was in the task of securing international support for sanctions. To that end Obama said that the United States was ready to talk to Iran (Bush had sent the Europeans to do the talking and then report back), and he sweetened the pot by adding that suspension of enrichment was no longer a precondition, but instead a desired outcome. But in practice it was the same old policy of pressure, pressure, and more pressure.

  Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf emirates were unhappy with Obama’s approach. They feared that Iran would use talks to weaken Western resolve while nuclear work went forward—“talk and enrich,” so to speak. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted Obama to stick to the zero-enrichment precondition, set a strict deadline allowing at most a few months for diplomacy to work, and adopt stiff sanctions (even before talks got under way).

  Saudi Arabia and the UAE, meanwhile, leaned heavily on Obama. The first time Obama went to Saudi Arabia, in early June 2009, he expected to speak with King Abdullah about the Arab-Israeli issue, but instead had to listen to an hour-long monologue on Iran. The Saudi ruler famously advised America to “cut off the snake’s head” with military strikes. Top UAE officials, according to one surprised European foreign minister I spoke to, went even further by suggesting that tactical nuclear weapons might be used to penetrate the Fordo site hidden deep inside a mountain outside the city of Qom. “The region would be set back,” they reportedly said, “but in the long run it would be better for everybody.” They clearly did not want the United States to talk to Iran. That would run the risk of a breakthrough that would have shifted the strategic balance in the region decisively in Iran’s favor. That was why Arab leader after Arab leader warned Washington not to trust anything the Iranians might say. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak told former senator George Mitchell that he was not opposed to the United States talking to Iran so long as “you do not believe a word they say.”34

  America’s Arab allies would rather see a U.S.-Iran war than a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. The Persian Gulf states in particular are afraid of the latter. They also dislike the scenario of regime change in Tehran (too much uncertainty) and prefer a permanent U.S. commitment to defend them. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it after hearing another earful on Iran from King Abdullah, the Saudis were eager to “fight Iran to the last American.”35 So they kept doing their best to nudge America toward war.

  Whatever the Arabs’ discomfiture, however, Obama was determined to explore the possibility of an opening with Iran. Two months after his inauguration came the New Year, Nowrouz, a pre-Islamic Persian celebration that marks the start of spring and is considered an especially auspicious time for friendly visits, house cleaning, and new beginnings generally. Obama took to YouTube on March 20, 2009, with a prepared message in which he warmly and positively addressed himself directly to the Iranian people. More important still, he wrote two letters directly to Khamenei (while opting not to answer Ahmadinejad’s letter congratulating him on becoming president). Khamenei’s reply was hardly what Obama had hoped for; it listed Iranian grievances and lambasted American policies, not just toward Iran but toward the entire Muslim world. The significance, however, lay not in what Khamenei said but in his answering at all.

  Whatever positive momentum might have come from this soon dissipated when Iranian politics took an unexpected turn later that same spring. Washington was hoping that the 2009 presidential race in Iran would produce a fresh face untainted by Holocaust denial or calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. This would be a figure whom an American president might engage without paying a huge cost at home (Obama’s fear of a domestic backlash had been a major reason why he ignored Ahmadinejad’s letter). But the elections produced a June surprise. When Ahmadinejad was announced as the landslide winner, millions of Iranians poured into the streets to protest, asking, “Where is my vote?” The regime was caught off guard. For a time, it looked as if the theocracy might actually fall.36 But then, just as quickly, the tide turned. Sensing the immediacy of mortal danger, the regime lashed out at the protesters with massive brutality that checked their momentum and ensured its survival.

  When the dust settled, everything had changed. Gone was any pretense that the ruling elite could claim popular support and legitimacy. Gone also was Ahmadinejad’s cocky attitude. The emperor had no clothes; Iran’s rulers were now every bit as vulnerable as any Third World dictator. In the rulers’ eyes, engagement with the United States now seemed even more suspect. Better not to engage at all than to risk having any more weakness revealed under the pressure of dealings with Washington.

  Washington understood that the moment for diplomacy had gone up in smoke amid the tumult on the streets of Tehran. “They are now going to get themselves into a hard place,” remarked State’s man on Iran policy, Dennis Ross, as we watched the violent crackdown on television. “It will be very difficult dealing with them.”

  It was also difficult for Obama to engage a government that was busy brutalizing its young people, whose brave and technologically savvy calls for freedom had captured hearts and minds around the world and shown that it was possible to imagine a better, post-Islamist future for the Middle East. Critics both right and left goaded the administration to help the Green Movement topple the Iranian theocracy. But Obama, in what would become his signature reaction to the Arab Spring, was cautious. Moreover, the U.S. government had been surprised by events. By the time Washington got its head around what was going on, the Islamic Republic had weathered the worst of the protests. Getting into a tussle with Iran’s rulers over a protest movement that was losing steam would be pointless. Nuclear talks remained the main thing, and the Islamic Republic, like it or not, remained the interlocutor. Any additional sanctions that might be applied, moreover, should be held as cards for use in nuclear talks. America’s priority was Iran’s nuclear program, not democracy.

  In October 2009, officials of the shaken but still-standing Islamic Republic finally sat down with American and European diplomats in Geneva to discuss the nuclear issue. There was hope that the much-anticipated meeting would produce a breakthrough around a new concept: “the swap.” The idea had first been floated as a confidence-building measure. Iran was in need of nuclear fuel pads (built with uranium enriched to 20 percent) that the Tehran Research Reactor could use to produce medical isotopes.37 Would Iran be willing not to further enrich its low-enriched uranium (enriched to no more than 3 to 5 percent) and instead send its stockpile to some third country in exchange for readymade fuel pads?

  The White House saw the swap as a clever way of “resetting” Iran’s nuclear program while talks went on (Iran would give up its enriched uranium and would have to start over to get back to the same stockpile).38 But the swap would mean that the international community would be accepting Iran’s right to enrich uranium to 3 to 5 percent, a concession to Iran.

  In Geneva, the United States proposed a trade. The Iranians would ship 1.2 tons of low-enriche
d uranium (about 80 percent of their stockpile) to Russia for further enrichment and then to a third country (France was the likely candidate) for further processing into fuel pads. There were details to work out: Would Iran send all low-enriched uranium at once? And how long would it take to get it back as fuel pads?

  But a deal would be a win-win. Iran’s ability to build a bomb would ship out along with its low-enriched uranium stockpile—thereby creating more time for negotiations over intrusive inspections and the signing of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol—yet Iran would get acknowledgment of its right to enrich as well as a nice stack of handy fuel pads. Trust would mount, and diplomacy would gain momentum.

  Iranians were suspicious. They did not want France involved. French president Nicolas Sarkozy was advocating zero enrichment and was to the right of Obama on Iran. But in the end they decided to go with the deal—at least in Geneva; details to be settled later.39 At one point, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said that he had to make a call. He left the room, then came back and gave a tentative thumbs-up.40 It is not clear if Khamenei was on board, but Ahmadinejad was clearly supportive. He wanted to be the one to open up to the United States—that would have helped his political position after the reelection debacle.

  Back in Tehran, worry set in immediately that this could be a ruse to get Iran to give up its low-enriched uranium, after which the United States and Europe would renege on their part of the bargain and cost Iran a lot of uranium and enrichment time. Were they missing something? Did the United States have something up its sleeve? What if they signed on to this deal and that became the legal basis to constrain their nuclear activities beyond current NPT and IAEA mandates? And even if this was a good deal, Ahmadinejad’s rivals hardly wanted him to get credit for the breakthrough. An unholy alliance of hard-liners and reformists came out against the swap idea. They said Iran could not trust America and its European allies and should not become dependent on Russia for its enrichment needs. Iran had spent billions mastering enrichment and should not give that up. Iran said that it would agree to the deal only if the swap happened simultaneously—the offer in Geneva was that Iran would receive fuel pads two years after it handed over its stockpile.