An unusual fear is gripping the Arab world, namely that nuclear diplomacy may yet bring Iran and the US into a close regional embrace. This may seem comical, given the legacy of mistrust separating the two nations. Yet, this concern among Arab rulers, fuelled by progress towards a final agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme, may have some justification in history. The US has never been able to pursue arms control without delusion and has always insisted on sanctifying its negotiating partners, conjuring up moderates and searching for common ground. The challenge for Washington today is to defy its history and reach a nuclear agreement with Iran while negating the Islamic Republic’s regional ambitions.
During the heydays of detente in the 1970s, nuclear accords between the US and Soviet Union were inevitably followed by commerce and diplomatic recognition. Successive US administrations were seduced by the notion that a nuclear agreement could pave the way for grander geopolitical convergence. If the thorny nuclear issues could be resolved through cool-headed dialogue, the thinking went, then why not other areas of superpower contention? This proved a fools’ errand, as the Kremlin saw no contradiction between negotiating a treaty on arms limitation and invading Afghanistan. US adversaries have always been more practical about arms control and have seldom forfeited their ideological claims for the sake of trade and reconciliation.
On the surface, the chimera of bringing Iran in from the cold could prove equally alluring. After all, the resurgence of Al Qaida argues for cooperation with an alarmed Shiite state. The US is seeking to leave its war-torn charge in Afghanistan and may yet need Tehran’s assistance for such a withdrawal. Perhaps once the two sides have agreed on the nuclear file, they could move towards a larger canvass of cooperation. These sober strategic arguments are seemingly buttressed by the rise of pragmatists led by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. As such, a concerted US effort at engagement may foster Iranian moderation in its foreign policy as well as strengthen the forces of progressive change domestically.
Like their Soviet predecessors, the guardians of Iranian theocracy are far less sentimental than Americans about their diplomacy. Whatever confidence-building measures Iranian diplomats may be negotiating in Geneva, supreme leader Ali Khamenei insisted as recently as late last November that Iran was “challenging the influence of America in the region and extending its own influence”. In Khamenei’s telling, the US is a crestfallen imperial power unable to impose discipline on a recalcitrant Middle East. It is not his burden to salvage the wreckage of the US, but merely to fill the vacuums left by its abdication.
The key actors defining Iran’s regional policy are not its urbane diplomats mingling with their western counterparts in Geneva, but the Revolutionary Guard Corps, particularly the famed Quds Force. For the force’s commander, Qasim Sulaimani, the struggle to evict the US from the Middle East began in Iraq, as Sulaimani proclaimed in September. The struggle has moved on to Syria. The survival and success of the Bashar Al Assad dynasty is now a central element of Iran’s foreign policy.
A troubling sign
The US task remains imposing stringent limits on Iran’s nuclear programme through negotiations while restraining Tehran’s regional ambitions through pressure. This latter goal will require mending America’s battered alliances in the Middle East. Strategic dialogues and arms sales can go only so far. The US cannot reclaim its allies’ confidence without being an active player in the Syria saga. To be sure, Syria’s opposition is fragmented and the rise of Islamist radicals is a troubling sign, but many are still committed to displacing Al Assad and taming Islamist militancy — and they are worthy of western embrace and support. As long as the US exempts itself from this conflict, its other pledges ring hollow to a sceptical Arab audience. Too often tensions between the US and Iran have been attributed to technical disagreements over the scope of Tehran’s nuclear programme. For decades, diplomats have struggled to define just the right balance between centrifuges and sanctions relief. Those negotiations have taken place while Iran’s presidency has changed hands from reformers to hardliners and now, finally, to pragmatists. At the core this conflict is ideological: Iran does not want America to succeed and America should not want Tehran to prevail. Iran’s assault on the Arab order will define the parameters of Middle East politics for some time to come. The first step towards a sensible Iran policy is to dispense with the illusion of detente that too often accompanies arms-control diplomacy.
— Washington Post
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
