Dancing with the Devil. Michael Rubin
If Ahmadinejad was Iran’s “most ardent advocate” of direct diplomacy, he would soon meet his match in Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator. Voters hoping for reform propelled Rouhani to a first-round victory in the elections of June 2013. Many American proponents of engagement saw Rouhani as a man with whom they could deal, and Rouhani did not disappoint. Shortly before his visit to the United Nations in September 2013, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post urging world leaders “to make the most of the mandate for prudent engagement that my people have given me and to respond genuinely to my government’s efforts to engage in constructive dialogue.”258
When he arrived in New York, the press treated Rouhani like a rock star. The Iranian president demurred on a direct meeting, so Obama settled for a phone conversation, after which he reported triumphantly:
Just now, I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. I reiterated to President Rouhani what I said in New York—while there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward, and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution. . . . The very fact that this was the first communication between an American and Iranian President since 1979 underscores the deep mistrust between our countries, but it also indicates the prospect of moving beyond that difficult history. I do believe that there is a basis for a resolution. Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. President Rouhani has indicated that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons.259
Although the fatwa, or religious declaration, that Obama cited has been the subject of diplomatic banter, it does not appear to exist. It is not listed in the Supreme Leader’s list of fatwas, and Iranian officials who mention it are not consistent on the text or even the date of issue. In his eagerness for a deal, Obama simply put trust before verify.
Some context for Rouhani’s assurances could have been provided by a speech he gave in 2005 to clerics in Mashhad, titled “Iran’s Measures Rob the Americans of Foresight.” Here, Rouhani endorsed a strategy of unpredictability and misdirection. “An important factor in the defeat of the plots of the enemies of Islam and the victory of the Islamic revolution was the principle of surprise,” he explained. “We always had another plan, which was both victorious and unpredictable for them as to exactly what direction we might take.”260 Obama assumed the best, never considering what, if anything, might have led Rouhani to a change of heart.
Obama used his press conference after the telephone call to celebrate a new opportunity, while Rouhani assured his domestic audience that he had not changed his position at all.261 The Western press reported that Rouhani was prepared to shutter the underground nuclear facility at Fordo, but Rouhani’s cabinet flatly ruled it out.262 The same held true for the Supreme Leader. While Western officials interpreted Khamenei’s talk of the need for “heroic flexibility” as a sign that he endorsed Rouhani’s outreach, the Supreme Leader’s advisors and aides explained that he had approved only a change in tactics, not in policy.263 Because so many Western reporters cherry-picked the facts, Western officials began to base their policies on a false perception of Iranian flexibility.
That may have been Rouhani’s goal all along. In his first television interview as president, Rouhani had announced that Iran’s economy had shrunk 5.4 percent over the previous year.264 Soon after he returned home from his appearance at the United Nations, the State Department dutifully requested that Congress delay new sanctions and roll back those already in place, in order to encourage diplomacy.265 It released more than $7 billion in frozen Iranian assets, which, together with new investment, may have won Tehran a windfall in excess of $20 billion. That cash infusion may have been Tehran’s priority, but for the United States to fulfill the Iranian agenda before talks even began did not make their success more likely.
Negotiations continued through much of 2014, but American negotiators responded to every Iranian red line by diluting demands and increasing concessions in order to keep the Iranian team at the table. For example, American diplomats now appear willing to allow an expiration date on intrusive inspections and to accept an enrichment program far beyond what a civilian nuclear program would need. In response, the Iranian government blocked IAEA investigation into its nuclear trigger work, an activity clearly connected with a nuclear bomb.266 Khamenei, meanwhile, tweeted out a series of eleven Iranian red lines, most of which related to key American concerns.267 From the Iranian perspective, the willingness of the United States to keep diluting its demands was a sign of weakness. Thus, “Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era,” crowed Ali Yunesi, a Rouhani advisor and former intelligence minister.268
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“Cultivation of goodwill for goodwill’s sake is a waste of effort,”269 advised Bruce Laingen, the senior U.S. diplomat in Tehran, just weeks before the hostage crisis. More than three decades after Iran’s revolution, diplomacy has failed to resolve disputes between the United States and the Islamic Republic, let alone restore trust. Quite the contrary, the American rush to talk has backfired, reinforcing Iranian radicalism and recalcitrance at the expense of American national interest. It is telling that the three U.S. administrations that pushed most persistently for diplomatic engagement—those of Carter, George W. Bush, and Obama—suffered the greatest Iranian violence as a reward for their efforts.
Under Carter, an ill-conceived handshake and a willingness to take military action off the table transformed a hiccup at the embassy into a 444-day standoff. Persistent diplomacy empowered radicals. Under George W. Bush, the gap between rhetoric and policy reality was huge. Once Iranian leaders saw they would suffer no ill consequences for their defiance and, indeed, might even profit from it, Iran’s nuclear program expanded rapidly and Iranian forces grew increasingly bold in their confrontations with American troops in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the track record of his predecessors and the statements of Iranian leaders, Obama pursued diplomacy with a vigor unseen since the Carter years. The Iranian leadership responded with disdain. For the first time in thirty years, the regime plotted an assassination in the heart of America. Human rights abuses multiplied in Iran.270 The Iranian nuclear program progressed to the verge of weapons capability.
Debate remained fierce about why engagement with Iran failed. Many proponents of engagement said that Washington, at best, was equally at fault with Tehran; more often, they blamed America. After the exposure of Iran’s bungled attack on Washington, D.C., a senior American official suggested that American aggressiveness explained Iran’s inclination to lash out.271 This, of course, is nonsense: whereas anti-American incitement is a staple of weekly Friday prayers in Iran, no American president, diplomat, or congressman has ever led crowds in anti-Iranian chants. George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech may be an exception to the rule, though he drew a sharp distinction between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic. The disproportionate American focus on that single utterance reflects the American tendency to self-flagellate rather than recognize the rogue’s responsibility for diplomacy’s failure.
Diplomats counseling engagement with Iran too often assume that they and the Iranians share a common objective. They are wrong. Western officials see diplomacy as a process of compromise and conflict resolution. Iranian leaders, on the other hand, view it from a Manichaean perspective. As Kayhan explained it, “The power struggle in the region has only two sides: Iran and America.”272
Successive Iranian officials have bragged that America plays checkers while Iran plays chess. They have boasted about how Tehran deceives the West with diplomacy. For the ayatollahs, diplomacy is a tactic to divide the international community, pocket concessions, and hold off sanctions or military strikes. “Without violating any international laws or the nonproliferation treaty, we have managed to bypass the red lines the West created for us,” bragged Hamidreza Taraghi, an advisor to the Supreme Leader.273 The cycles of embracing and disengaging from talks have stymied the West for more than thirty years. That the State Department continues to grasp at Iran’s proffered straws demonstrates a lack of strategic review within American diplomatic circles.
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