Grabbing Obama's Ear on Iran

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election congratulations to Barack Obama – the first from the Islamic republic to a newly elected U.S. president since the overthrow of the Shah – hint that even Tehran’s conservatives may be ready to accept U.S. concerns as part of "an approach based on justice and respect." But our own conservatives at home are mounting a fierce campaign to foreclose any change in approach.

The president-elect needs to keep his options open.

The drive to rein in Senator Obama’s promise to redirect American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf had started even before the polls opened. Mr. Obama’s rivals for his party’s nomination had furiously challenged his refusal to set preconditions for talks with Iran and other bête noire regimes of the Bush years. They backpedaled when they discovered that an uncompromising stance had no traction with war-weary voters.

So now the effort to deflect Mr. Obama from undercutting George Bush’s policy has moved into Washington policy salons. Campaigners of both parties for a nuclear-free Iran have warned of the dangers of dialogue.

A bipartisan task force headed by two former senators, Indiana Republican Daniel Coats and Virginia Democrat Charles Robb, has perhaps drawn the most attention. With its ties to the American Enterprise Institute, the task force report bears an unmistakable neoconservative imprint, which would not normally be thought to be a pressure point on a new Democratic administration.

But the task force included Dennis Ross, the able Bush-Clinton Middle East negotiator who joined the Obama foreign policy circle this summer, suggesting its recommendations may find sympathetic ears inside the Obama transition team. Its rollout in classic Washington establishment fashion, complete with a Post opinion article, underscored the seriousness of its challenge.

The Coats-Robb report dismisses the prospects for a “grand bargain” between the United States and Iran – the approach advocated by former National Security Council staffers like Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett. Indeed, the task force flatly denies that Tehran proposed such a settlement in 2003.

Believing that "the Islamic Republic is vulnerable to pressure," the task force offers, as a historical model to emulate, the elder Bush’s "willingness to engage in talks" regarding Iraq before the Kuwait war. Those talks, notably, were with other countries -- not with Iraq. The fact that those talks culminated in a major war does not trouble a task force that agrees "a military strike is a feasible option."

It is hard to see this "bipartisan" blueprint as attractive to newly empowered Democrats. After the Iraq experience, there will be considerable pushback against the claim that "the only permanent resolution may be regime change." An effort during the summer to deliver congressional endorsement of a naval blockade of Iranian ports – a key proposal of the Coats task force -- aroused intense opposition among antiwar Democrats and was quietly scuttled.

Israeli media reported in mid-October that Israel’s security establishment--expecting an Obama administration to initiate direct talks with Tehran—would press hard “to condition any talks between the West and Iran on halting uranium enrichment.” Such preconditions, of course, have been precisely the Bush administration’s line, and the barren results have, if anything, eroded Israel’s position in the region.

Other voices in Washington have been making the case for a much more vigorous pursuit of engagement. Five former secretaries of State told a George Washington University forum in September that the new administration needed direct engagement to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, James Baker’s Iraq Study Group two years ago urged "diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions."

Former under secretary of State Thomas Pickering, perhaps America’s most respected career diplomat, declared at a Century Foundation roundtable in October that “it’s critically important that we find a way to open conversations…with the Iranians directly without preconditions” and “do all [we] can to deal with the center of Israeli concern, which is the Iranian nuclear program.”

The elder Bush’s U.N. representative urges the new administration to consider responding to the Iranian interest in direct flights to the United States. Others suggest inviting Iranian support for mulilateral provision of security for oil traffic in the Persian Gulf, or an incidents-at-sea agreement with Iran as a confidence-building (and war-avoidance) measure.

Such a change in approach would appear to be consistent with the president-elect’s hopes. Tehran’s congratulations to the president-elect suggest a dialogue leading to a negotiated package just might succeed. Just as he has been careful to keep open the option of military response to aggressive Iranian military action, Mr. Obama needs to avoid being locked into bankrupt policies of confrontation of the past.

Comments

[BiBiJon]

Thank you for an informative article. Unfortunately, however, it comes off as a tale of the kind hearted mom stopping a raging dad from administering (further) corporal punishment.

Iran is a keystone in a region that has more in it than just Iraq & Afghanistan. Iran is the 8-lane highway of shared ethnicities, cultures and languages linking it to India, Russia, China, etc.
Would you please explain why it is smart for Iranians to countenance anything further than a polite handshake. It has been a very long 30 years.

http://www.bibijon.org/iranimage/

[Sally McMillan]

Way to go, Jeff. Now is the time for Obama supporters to make their voices heard. We voted for change, but there are too many Washington people trying to take us back to the same old foreign policy. No to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and no to the other hardliners on the Middle East and war and empire. Let's try something new like Obama promised: dialogue and respect.

[Jeff Laurenti]

Bibi Jon asks "why it is smart for Iranians to countenance anything further than a polite handshake," which--if I understand his point correctly--is the question Tehran conservatives ask: Why should we want to re-establish relations with the US, allow its diplomats ("spies") back onto our territory, etc.? The answer, I think, is that it does not serve Iranians well to be in a constant state of tension and risk of confrontation with the United States. Their country is isolated in the region and globally (as its humiliatingly large defeat in a General Assembly vote challenging Japan for a Security Council seat demonstrated at the U.N. last month), and normalization with the U.S. would allow them to be players again and not just spoilers. It would also entail a moderation of Tehran's truculent rejectionism, which is why conservatives may still prefer to continue on the current course. (We perhaps have a similar mindset on the American Right as well.)

Sally McMillan voices a concern I hear from many people who had been grassroots workers for Obama since last year--that the Washington establishment may yet thwart the American public's demand for "change." Saying novenas....

[Fabrice Pierre]

Jeff, Has Obama ever replied to that congratulatory letter sent from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Wouldn't that be the first step to a dialogue? Thanks for another solid analysis.

[Jeff Laurenti]

To Fabrice Pierre: There has been no announcement of any reply by the President-elect, though Mr. Obama had stated that he was working on a suitable response. Apparently there has been a mini-campaign urging him not to dignify the letter with a reply.

[Norma Lee Nichols-Mahdavi]

As ans American who once upon the Shah's time lived in Iran(married to an Iranian) and who after 35 years returned to Iran and found myself in a virtual time warp, and as a socilogist who speaks the language,the meaning,not just the words, there is only one way to move ahead,and that is to respect and communicate with the country and its people. They own a nationalisim and self-pride which need only be recognized.