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vol.32:2 summer 2008

U.S. Policy Toward Iran:

Missed Opportunities

and Paths Forward In the opening weeks of 2007, the turbulent politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared to be reaching a tipping point. 1

For the first time

since his surprise victory in Iran's 2005 presidential election, radical hard- liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad found himself on the ropes at home and on the defensive across the region, thanks to a stinging defeat in the country's December 2006 elections and the unanimous United Nations Security Council decision to sanction Iran over its nuclear program. Together with new American efforts to ratchet up pressure on Tehran - including the dispatch of two battle carriers to the Persian Gulf, the seizure of Iranian agents in Iraq, and a campaign to constrict Tehran's access to the interna- tional economy - U.S. policy finally seemed to be having an impact on Iran. Regime insiders stepped up criticism of Ahmadinejad's provocative approach, and mounting public frustration with the president's policies began to spill into the streets and onto university campuses. American officials were careful to avoid triumphalism, but their rhetoric revealed a heady sense that the tide had turned and that, finally, a coordinated American campaign to pressure Tehran was beginning to succeed. "There was a period of time over the autumn [of 2006] when a lot of people in the press and academic experts, even some people in

Suzanne Maloney

is senior fellow at the saban center for middle east policy at the brookings institution. she served on the u.s. department of state policy planning staff from 2005 to 2007. she has advised exxon mobil corporation on middle east affairs, and she directed a task force for the council on foreign relations on u.s. policy toward iran. she received her ph.d. in 2000 from the fletcher school. the fletcher forum of world affairs vol.32:2 summer 2008 26
government, were saying the Iranians seem to be doing very well," Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the George W. Bush administration's point person on Iran, said in February 2007. "And yet what happened over the last six or seven weeks?" he continued. "[A]ll of a sudden in the middle of February the Iranians are not doing so well, the Iranians are now questioning their own strategy, and I think that is what is interesting and hopeful about this diplomatic process." 2

Over the ensuing

months, Washington continued to turn up the heat on Tehran through a second set of UN sanctions and new U.S. measures to restrict the regime's access to the international financial system. The United States also touted its stepped-up security dialogue with Iran's neighbors in the Gulf and new- found efforts to promote peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians as further efforts to isolate Iran. Fast forward, and what Burns and others saw as a turning point seems to have been a mirage. The Bush administration's carefully crafted strat- egy for countering Tehran is in a profound state of disarray. International support for escalating sanctions has softened considerably, in no small part thanks to the release of an American

National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)

asserting that Tehran had shelved its efforts to design a nuclear weapon in 2003.
3

Ahmadinejad gloated that the

report signified "a clear surrender" by

Washington,

4 and U.S. expectations of a united front across the region in op- position to Iran have foundered. The leading Arab states are working assid- uously to co-opt Tehran, whereas the peace process is in disarray. Once again, Iran seems to be "doing very well," to borrow Burns' formulation: expanding its capacity to enrich uranium at a furious pace 5 and remaining as deeply engaged as ever in Iraq and the other regional zones of conflict. On a broad level, the failure of the Bush approach to achieve its aims reflects the complexity and intractability of the threat posed by Iran, which has frustrated American officials from both sides of the political aisle for nearly 30 years. However, the failure is also the product of several years of disastrous diplomacy toward Iran and the broader Middle East, informed by a set of mistaken assumptions by the Bush administration. Understanding where we have miscalculated - and more importantly why we have miscal culated - is important to ensuring that we avoid repeating or perpetuating

Fast forward, and what

Burns and others saw as

a turning point seems to have been a mirage. The

Bush administration's

carefully crafted strategy for countering Tehran is in a profound state of disarray. 27
vol.32:2 summer 2008 flawed policies. Whoever succeeds President Bush in January 2009 will have to contend with Iran, both as a legitimate threat to American interests and also as an opportunity for creative statesmanship. With a clear appreciation for the factors that have stymied U.S. policy to date, the next U.S. adminis tration should be prepared to outline a new way forward on Iran.

OPPORTUNITIES LOST

When considering the Bush administration's policy toward Iran in retrospect, it is evident that several episodes offered critical junctures for decisively addressing the longstanding antagonism between Washington and Tehran. Such a reckoning never transpired, largely as a result of a series of miscalculations by the Bush administration about Iran's internal dynam- ics and the regional environment. These miscalculations will be explored below; however, at the outset of this discussion, two important caveats must be emphasized. First, examining Washington's missteps on Iran should not suggest that responsibility for the perpetuation of the bilateral estrangement and the intensification of the Iranian challenge rests solely on the shoulders of the Bush administration or Washington at large. Iran has proven to be a surprisingly persistent dilemma for American foreign policy, and U.S. presidents from both sides of the political spectrum have struggled to de vise policies that redirect Iran and its influence in a constructive fashion. Even under the comparatively forward-leaning leadership of President Mohammad Khatami, Tehran did not respond in reciprocal fashion to U.S. overtures, such as the extraordinary speech by then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright in which she expressed regret for past American poli cies and announced the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iranian caviar, carpets, and pistachios. 6 Such a context provides a relevant backdrop for the Bush administration's obstinacy on Iran and should temper the tendency to at tribute the failure exclusively to Washington's flawed strategy. It is also important to counter any implication that U.S. policy bears responsibility for the unfortunate trends that have overtaken Iranian poli- tics over the past several years. While it is true that greater progress toward rapprochement might have enabled Khatami and the reformists to extend their popular mandate, Iran's internal power struggle has largely been gov- erned by self-generated dynamics with only the most indirect relationship to its foreign policy. We could not have saved the reform movement from its slow-moving ejection from the frontlines of Iranian politics; Iranian hardliners deserve full credit for that, along with a series of miscalculations

U.S. P O L I C Y T O W A R D I R A N: M I S S E D O P P O R T U N I T I E S A N D P A T H S F O R W A R D

the fletcher forum of world affairs vol.32:2 summer 2008 28
by the reformists themselves. Nor is it likely that any American policy truly can transform the dynamics of political life in Iran today. Ultimately, given our troubled historical relationship and our limited constructive leverage today, the United States tends to have only the most limited capacity to ad- vance the cause of moderation within Iran, and a powerful, if inadvertent, capacity for helping out the hardliners. Nonetheless, with the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear that the Bush administration's miscalculations - based in part on a wholesale misread- ing of Iran's internal political dynamics - forfeited perhaps the best op- portunity in recent history to generate real momentum on Iran. The legacy of these missteps and mistaken assump- tions continues to shape American diplomacy toward Iran, undermining

U.S. efforts to draw Tehran into nego-

tiations over its nuclear program.

The central flaw in the Bush ap-

proach to Iran concerns the adminis- tration's conviction that Iran's Islamic system was on the verge of collapse or revolutionary upheaval. This expecta- tion reflected a rashly optimistic in- terpretation of Iran's ongoing internal turmoil, bolstered by a combination of wishful thinking and residual dis- trust of self-proclaimed Iranian moderates among the Bush administration's key players. Moreover, in the aftermath of September 11, anticipating and even advancing the demise of the Iranian regime became subsumed within the two overarching mandates of Bush's Middle East policy: the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the promotion of democracy across the re- gion under the rubric of the administration's broader "Freedom Agenda." 7 In this way, the assumption of Tehran's internal vulnerability and the pre- sumption of its leadership's fundamental illegitimacy quickly became an article of faith for American policy. These underlying miscalculations set the stage for a series of ill-con- ceived tactics and disastrous decisions, beginning most dramatically with the inclusion of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" in the President's January

2002 State of the Union address.

8

Prompted by U.S. outrage at alleged

Iranian arms shipments to Palestinian militants, the bellicose tone and metaphoric linkage with Iraq and North Korea sparked a furious reaction within Iran, where hyperbolic rhetoric toward Washington has long been a ...it is clear that the

Bush administration's

miscalculations - based in part on a wholesale misreading of Iran's internal political dynamics - forfeited perhaps the best opportunity in recent history to generate real momentum on Iran. 29
vol.32:2 summer 2008 standard part of the Islamic Republic's political discourse. The immediate reaction was a decision by Tehran to suspend its dialogue with Washington over Afghanistan, a central component of a quiet, but critical, dimension of burgeoning cooperation between the two adversaries. Over the long term, Iranian political figures later reported that the speech provided an unexpected windfall for hardliners, helping to strengthen their position and undermine the credibility of reformists, whose popular mandate was inherently linked with their perceived preference for improving relations with Washington. 9 Washington also began deploying its bully pulpit more frequently and aggressively in hopes of helping to inspire domestic opposition to the Iranian regime. In a July 2002 statement marking the anniversary of student demonstrations that had rocked Iran three years earlier, the White House lamented the fact that Iranians' "voices are not being listened to by the un elected people who are the real rulers" and promised that "[a]s Iran's people move towards a future defined by greater freedom, they will have no better friend" than Washington. 10

The administration used this episode to signal

its rejection of the faltering reform movement and its shift toward a strategy focused on galvanizing popular opposition to the regime as a whole. As one U.S. official said at the time, the statement reflected "a conscious decision to associate with the aspirations of Iranian people. We will not play, if you like, the factional politics of reform versus hard line." 11

Zalmay Khalilzad,

then-Senior Director at the National Security Council, described the new approach as "dual track" in its twin focus on pressuring the regime and supporting the Iranian people. "U.S. policy is not to impose change on Iran but to support the Iranian people in their quest to decide their own destiny," Khalilzad said in August 2002. "Our policy is not about Khatami or Khamenei, reform or hard line; it is about supporting those who want freedom, human rights, democracy, and economic and educational oppor tunity for themselves and their fellow countrymen and women." 12 In tandem with the refusal to engage with the regime, Washington began seeking new means to expedite political change inside the country. The administration's early efforts were mostly comic fumbling, including the Pentagon's public flirtation with a reviled opposition group on the U.S. terrorist list and the renewal of contacts with a discredited figure from the Iran-Contra episode. 13

Having used the White House bully pulpit to

reach out to the Iranian people to little effect, the administration - with eager support from both parties in the Congress - also embraced a high- profile effort to support opponents of the Iranian regime. The centerpiece of this policy was the February 2006 announcement of a $75 million fund

U.S. P O L I C Y T O W A R D I R A N: M I S S E D O P P O R T U N I T I E S A N D P A T H S F O R W A R D

the fletcher forum of world affairs vol.32:2 summer 2008 30
to promote democracy in Iran. 14quotesdbs_dbs19.pdfusesText_25

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