Dancing with the Devil. Michael Rubin
While diplomats often embrace the notion of quiet diplomacy, the contrast between Iran’s public and private postures is instructive. Rogues may express moderation publicly, but when push comes to shove, they remain rogues. Rafsanjani spoke publicly of pragmatism, and he found no shortage of useful idiots to accept his public statements uncritically.87 Privately, he revived Iran’s covert nuclear program and played a crucial role in ordering the assassinations of dissidents.
Bush was more cautious than many of diplomacy’s cheerleaders in Congress who suggested that the United States offer unilateral concessions.88 Still, Bush’s engagement was not without cost. It was after Bush began his proxy talks with Tehran that Iranian officials supplied terrorists in Europe with weaponry to target Western interests, and also formed a hit squad to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.89 Such actions show that engagement did nothing to ameliorate Iran’s rogue behavior and may actually have made it worse. Only after he fell out of favor with his own regime did Rafsanjani acknowledge that he had responded to American goodwill with bad, on the orders of Khamenei.90
Just as Iraq’s invasion of Iran forced Khomeini to resolve the first hostage crisis, it was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 that would spark a resolution of the second. Although Iranian officials had begun to negotiate more seriously in February 1990, and even had their proxy terrorist groups release two American hostages, it was not a change of heart about their revolutionary principles that made the difference. Instead, it was the fact that the United States, by defeating Saddam Hussein’s army, had achieved in one hundred hours what Iran could not do in eight years. Hezbollah quickly began releasing its Western hostages, and the last American hostage was on his way home weeks before Christmas. Sometimes, the best-intentioned and most careful diplomacy is ineffectual without a demonstration of military might.
It is possible that Bush would have pressed his advantage had he won re-election, but the electorate’s anxiety about the economy changed the plot, and Bush retired to Maine. If there was going to be any resolution to the Iran problem, it would have to come on Bill Clinton’s watch.
Clinton’s Containment
President Clinton inherited a cold peace. Bilateral relations remained frozen. As much as the Oslo Accords raised hope for Arab-Israeli peace, Tehran’s attempts to disrupt the peace process focused increasing attention on Iranian terror sponsorship.91 It was in this context that Martin Indyk, Clinton’s lead Middle East advisor on the National Security Council, unveiled the dual containment policy. Because the Iranian and Iraqi regimes were both inimical to the United States, Clinton would isolate both. Still, the White House kept a foot in the door even as it promised to slam it on Iran. “We do not seek confrontation but we will not normalize relations with Iran until and unless Iran’s policies change across the board,” Indyk said. He welcomed dialogue. “We are willing to listen to what Iran has to say, provided that this comes through authoritative channels,” he explained. The Clinton administration had at least learned from Carter’s and Reagan’s mistakes.92
Iran was not interested in dialogue, though. As Tehran’s terror sponsorship and nuclear program accelerated, Clinton ratcheted up sanctions. He issued two executive orders in 1995, the first targeting Iran’s oil industry, and the second banning most American trade with and investment in Iran.93 The following year, he signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which empowered the United States to act against private companies investing in Iran, much to the annoyance of European states, where many of the targeted companies were based. In 1997, Clinton tightened financial restrictions to close loopholes in which companies exported American goods to Iran through third countries.94
The diplomacy-first crowd balked. “There seems little justification for the treatment the United States currently accords Iran because of its nuclear program,” argued Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, both former national security advisors. They proposed swapping sanctions with incentives and even suggested offering preferential trade to Iran.95 The idea of flipping rogues with trade may sound good in theory, but there is very little precedent to suggest that it has a basis in reality. Proponents of a moneyed embrace often cite China, but ignore the fact that China remains a one-party dictatorship whose military advances are increasingly challenging the United States. For all of America’s diplomatic efforts, it has simply become a wealthier, more threatening dictatorship.
Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997 provided hope to diplomacy’s proponents. Upon taking office, Khatami announced, “We are in favor of a dialogue between civilizations and a détente in our relations with the outside world.”96 To encourage Khatami, Clinton chose not to respond to evidence of Iranian complicity in the attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen American servicemen in June 1996.97 Accountability became a casualty of hope.
Proponents of dialogue were euphoric. Gary Sick, a Carter aide, described Khatami as “a reformer with an outspoken commitment to civil society, social justice, the rule of law and expanded freedom.” He added, “Khatami’s stated goals are consistent with our interests, and there are cost-free gestures we can take to acknowledge the changed political climate and to encourage more of the same.”98 This, of course, was nonsense. In his previous incarnation as minister of culture, Khatami had censored hundreds of books. He also remained committed to anti-Israel terrorism and to Iran’s nuclear program.
Khatami’s call for dialogue led to a proliferation of study group reports, each urging Washington to engage Tehran with few if any preconditions. Most of these reports were naïve. The Atlantic Council, for example, recommended that Clinton might partially lift trade restrictions as “a key gesture of good faith.”99 Many Iran experts subordinated analysis to advocacy and refused to recognize Khatami’s inability or unwillingness to change Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or its terror sponsorship.100
Clinton, for his part, jumped at the chance to bring Iran in from the cold. This was the stuff of which legacies were made. The secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, sent a letter to Khatami expressing a desire for dialogue. Khatami did not reply directly, but American officials interpreted subsequent statements to signal his willingness to engage.101 In December 1997, for example, he expressed “great respect” for the “great people of the United States” and called for “a thoughtful dialogue.”102 In an interview with CNN in January 1998, he asserted, “Not only do we not harbor any ill wishes for the American people, but in fact we consider them to be a great nation.” He then outlined his desire for a “dialogue of civilizations.”103
It was music to Clinton’s ears. Secretary Albright “welcomed” Khatami’s call and, to show good faith, she streamlined visa procedures and offered to facilitate academic and cultural exchange.104
Rapprochement floundered, however; for despite Khatami’s lofty rhetoric, Iranian officials refused to talk. Martin Indyk and two colleagues sought to meet the foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, after his speech at the Asia Society, but as soon as Kharrazi realized the American officials were waiting for him, he left.105 If America hoped to talk, Iranian thinking went, it should first “pay the right price,” which in effect was capitulation to all Iranian demands.106 The Iranian government hinted that they would not engage in dialogue so long as sanctions and trade bans remained in place.107 Hardline papers equated “talks and relations” with “compromise and surrender.”108 Khamenei was blunt: “We shall not show any flexibility . . . and we shall not relent.” As for Khatami’s idea of dialogue, the Supreme Leader clarified that “the phrase dialogue among civilizations does not mean holding talks with representatives of foreign states.”109
Clinton refused to lift sanctions preventing investment in Iran’s oil infrastructure and trade restrictions on dual-use goods. While Scowcroft criticized his obstinacy, the president’s caution was prudent. Years later, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the Khatami government spokesman, acknowledged Tehran’s insincerity. “We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building,” he explained, “and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities.”110 The influential Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi elaborated in his memoirs: