Dancing with the Devil. Michael Rubin
guilty as accessories. More importantly, the court also concluded that a committee headed by the Supreme Leader and including Rafsanjani, Fallahian, and Ali Akbar Velayati, the foreign minister, had ordered the hit.134
After the verdict was read, Rafsanjani threatened Germany, swearing, “They are going to suffer for it.” The head of a pro-government vigilante group threatened to blow up the German embassy.135 The European Union suspended its critical dialogue and all EU members with the exception of Greece withdrew their ambassadors from Tehran.136 Kinkel, the German foreign minister, refused to admit defeat. “We must not break off all contact with Iran, not least because we on our part have clear demands to make,” he said.137
Italy’s prime minister, Romano Prodi, took that advice to heart and sent a trade delegation to Tehran, defying the European suspension of relations with Iran. Two months later, a consortium led by the French company Total signed a $2 billion agreement to develop Iran’s oil resources. Tehran considered the deal a “moral victory” and celebrated the European slight to America.138 For all Europe’s talk about unity in foreign policy, there was always at least one European state that would break the consensus in order to profit from Iranian trade.
When critics noted that the policy of critical dialogue had not improved Iran’s human rights outlook, Kinkel said that it brought Iran into compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations, a claim which in hindsight was naïve.139 Khatami’s election breathed new life into Europe’s negotiation attempts, just as it did the American efforts. “We believe that you need to talk to people if you are to influence them,” Kinkel reasoned. “If you are to influence Iran, you need to talk to them on the points where there is disagreement.”140 Like American proponents of engagement, Kinkel could never accept that dialogue might fail. Perhaps, however, he understood the perception of failure surrounding his critical dialogue initiative, for he rebranded it “comprehensive dialogue.”
The Mykonos verdict was, for all intents and purposes, forgotten while the Iranian leaders who ordered the hit at the heart of Germany remained in their posts. The expansion of relations continued unabated, even after the European Parliament reported that Khatami’s election, contrary to expectations, “did not bring about substantial democratic and political change.”141 Trade increased as political freedoms in Iran diminished.
European officials claimed their strategy was working even as the Iranian regime pushed ahead with its covert nuclear program.142 Despite the IAEA’s finding that Iran had been developing a centrifuge uranium enrichment program for eighteen years and a laser enrichment program for twelve years, Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, corralled his European Union colleagues into giving Tehran another chance.143 The more Iran’s nuclear development progressed, the more desperate the European Union grew to engage. Indeed, in the face of Iranian cheating, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain, the so-called EU3, stated that the European Union was prepared to defy U.S. pressure to isolate Tehran, continue its dialogue with Iranian authorities, and perhaps even enhance trade and access to technology.144 So long as the Iranian regime promised to talk, European officials assumed that their strategy was effective. By making empty promises, Iranian leaders played Europe like a fiddle.
On October 21, 2003, the EU3 foreign ministers visited Tehran. They returned with an Iranian promise to suspend uranium enrichment, detail its nuclear program, list its suppliers, and sign and ratify the IAEA’s additional protocol.145 The day after the Europeans claimed victory, Iranian authorities began to backtrack. “As long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial, it will continue, and whenever we don’t want it, we will end it,” said Hassan Rouhani, the head of Iran’s negotiating team.146 Years later, Rouhani bragged that he used diplomacy with the West to run out the clock to Iranian nuclear capability. “When I was entrusted with this portfolio, we had no production in Isfahan,” he noted. By the time negotiations broke off, Iran had completed not only its uranium enrichment facility, but also a heavy-water plant in Arak that could produce plutonium. Rouhani bluntly said that Tehran had offered talks to European leaders as a way of delaying UN sanctions. “The Islamic Republic acted very wisely in my view and did not allow the United States to succeed,” he crowed.147
The European Union, however, believed their diplomacy had succeeded. When Tehran signed the Additional Protocol on December 18, 2003, European diplomats and the IAEA were ecstatic. “It’s a beginning of a mainstreaming of Iran with Europe,” one official said. Just as important to European officials, they believed they had proved the American approach wrong.148
European triumphalism was too quick. Iran signed the Additional Protocol, but refused to ratify it. Here, the devil is in the details. The IAEA enacted the Additional Protocol to close loopholes that had enabled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to develop a sophisticated covert nuclear program despite eleven clean bills of health. To entice states to sign the Additional Protocol, the IAEA offered enhanced access to nuclear technology. Once they ratified the agreement, they allowed the IAEA to conduct more robust and intrusive inspections. By signing but refusing to ratify, the Iranian government grabbed all the carrots and ignored the sticks.
Nor did it turn out that the European concept of enrichment suspension accorded with Iran’s understanding. The Iranian government argued that agreement to suspend uranium enrichment did not mean agreement to suspend all “enrichment-related activities.” Iranian authorities continued secretly importing nuclear equipment, even though there would have been no reason for secrecy if the equipment were for civilian purposes as they claimed when caught red-handed. It is probable that with George W. Bush in the White House, the Iranians realized they might face consequences more serious than chiding by European diplomats.149 Only then did Rouhani agree to a full suspension.150 Soon, however, Iran reneged on its pledge. It was typical rogue behavior. For every one step forward, Iran took two steps back. Western officials marked forward progress with concessions, and they met backsliding with a click of the tongue. Diplomats focused only on the next deal and not the bigger picture.
Meanwhile, the regime’s nuclear defiance and human rights abuses both worsened. By 2004, Iranian hardline factions had rebounded. European engagement never correlated to reform. It had no impact on Iranian domestic politics except to hurt the reformists. Europeans declined to re-examine their policy: if reconciliation failed, the problem was not diplomacy but rather some outside force. Instead of blaming itself for naïveté, or blaming Iran for its insincerity, the European Union blamed the United States.151 The mantra of diplomacy had become so strong that European leaders were unwilling to consider the possibility that offering carrots may not work.
An Axis of Evil?
Although conventional wisdom condemns Bush as hostile to diplomacy, he embraced diplomacy with the Islamic Republic more than any president since Jimmy Carter. When Bush took office, President Khatami’s charm offensive was still going strong. “I want to say that the nation of Iran has no problem with the people and the nation of America,” Khatami told the UN, even as he complained about American policy.152
When Palestinians, Egyptians, and Syrians celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, ordinary Iranians held candlelight vigils. Pro-engagement politicians like Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, seized upon the show of solidarity as evidence that Iran was ripe for diplomacy after more than three decades of enmity.153 Never mind that the 9/11 hijackers had received Iranian assistance.154 More important, while the Iranian people mourned, Iran’s leaders gloated. Mehdi Karrubi, a reformist politician, blamed “Zionists in Israel” for the attacks, and the state-controlled press promoted wild conspiracy theories.155 According to Kayhan, widely seen as the voice of the Supreme Leader, “The super-terrorist had a taste of its own bitter medicine.”156
Like many U.S. politicians, Biden assumed that he could triumph over Iranian recalcitrance with his powers of persuasion. “I am prepared to receive members of the Iranian Majlis whenever its members would like to visit. If Iranian parliamentarians believe that’s too sensitive, I’m prepared to meet them elsewhere,” he told the American Iranian Council, adding, “We must