Seven Bad Assumptions We Make About Iran
By Trita Parsi, The Nation. Posted November 5, 2007.
Seven assumptions we need to rethink in order to create a better
foreign policy regarding Iran.
Iran will be the top foreign policy challenge for the United States in
the coming years. The Bush Administration's policy (insistence on zero
enrichment of uranium, regime change and isolation of Iran) and the
policy of the radicals around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (unlimited
civilian nuclear capability, selective inspections and replacing the
United States as the region's dominant power) have set the two
countries on a collision course. Yet the mere retirement of George W.
Bush's neocons or Ahmadinejad's radicals may not be sufficient to
avoid the disaster of war.
The ill-informed foreign policy debate on Iran contributes to a
paradigm of enmity between the United States and Iran, which limits
the foreign policy options of future U.S. administrations to various
forms of confrontation while excluding more constructive approaches.
These policies of collision are in no small part born of the erroneous
assumptions we adopted about Iran back in the days when we could
afford to ignore that country. But as America sinks deeper into the
Iraqi quicksand, remaining in the dark about the realities of Iran and
the actual policies of its decision-makers is no longer an option.
A successful policy on Iran must begin by reassessing some basic
assumptions:
1. Iran is ripe for regime change.
Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they
are not going anywhere anytime soon. (A distinction obviously needs to
be made here between the electoral survival of the Ahmadinejad
government and the survival of the system as a whole.) The Iranian
people certainly deserve a better government -- one that provides
Iran's youthful population with a better economic future and respects
human rights -- but the current choice Iranians face is not between
Islamic tyranny and democratic freedom. It is between chaos and
stability. The increased tensions with the United States over the past
year have only strengthened the government's hold on power by limiting
the space for prodemocracy activists (much as the 9/11 attacks paved
the way for the passing of the Patriot Act and the weakening of
Americans' civil rights). Whatever we think of the clergy in Tehran,
we cannot afford wishful thinking about their imminent departure.
2. Iran is irrational and cannot be deterred.
Not true. Iran's foreign policy behavior is highly problematic for the
United States, but a careful study of Iran's actions -- not just its
rhetoric -- reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering
toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a
pre-eminent power in the Middle East. Iran often conceals its real
objectives behind layers of ideological rhetoric, with the aim of
confusing potential enemies and making its policies more attractive to
the Muslim nations it seeks to lead. At times it even simulates
irrationality as an instrument of deterrence, the calculation being
that enemies will be more reluctant to attack Iran if Tehran's
response can't be predicted and won't follow a straight cost-benefit
analysis. (Richard Nixon used the same strategy during the cold war,
in what he called the "madman theory"; he sought to deter the Soviets
by making them think he was slightly mad and unpredictable.) In
reality, the United States -- and Israel -- have a long history of
deterring Iran. During the Lebanon war of 2006, Israel signaled
Tehran's leaders that it would retaliate against Iran if Hezbollah
struck Tel Aviv with long-distance missiles. Tehran got the message.
Despite many promises by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to
hit Israel if the Jewish state continued the bombardment of Lebanon,
Iran prevented Hezbollah from using its long-range missiles.
Deterrence worked, and an uncontrollable escalation of the war was
avoided.
3. Iran is inherently anti-American.
Not quite. To Iran anti-Americanism is a means, not an end. Iran
believes that its size and power position it to play a major role in
regional affairs. This aspiration, however, clashes with America's aim
of isolating and containing Iran. As long as public opinion in the
Middle East remains largely critical of the United States, and as long
as Washington continues to seek a regional order based on excluding
Iran, Iran will likely play on anti-Americanism to make Washington's
policy of exclusion as costly as possible and to rally existing
anti-American sentiment around Iranian objectives. But if the
strategic environment in the region changes -- with a different
relationship between Tehran and Washington as a result -- the utility
of anti-Americanism will fade away.
More worthy of reading: http://www.alternet.org/audits/66847/
Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Triangle -- The Secret
Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" (Yale University
Press, 2007).
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