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US/IRAN: Necessity Is the Mother of Negotiation

Analysis by Omid Memarian*

BERKELEY, California, May 30 2008 (IPS) - Republican presidential aspirant John McCain's recent criticism of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama's foreign policy platform exposes contradictions with the George W. Bush administration's own actions.

Bush and McCain have dismissed Obama's willingness to talk directly with U.S. adversaries like Iran as "negotiation with terrorists and radicals", even though the Bush administration itself has repeatedly talked with "enemies" like Libya, North Korea, and Iran on various occasions throughout Bush's presidency.

Talking to adversaries is not unprecedented in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. has successfully resolved tough situations before through this tactic, most notably during the Cold War, and Senator Obama seems to believe it can work again.

In the case of Iran, however, the U.S. is reluctant. During the past two years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered to hold direct talks with the Iranian government only on the precondition that Iran halts its uranium enrichment programme. Iran's government cannot do this, for it would diminish its stature in the eyes of the Iranian people.

But critics of the administration's stance say there are many reasons why the U.S. should consider direct talks with Tehran. Iran has helped the U.S. pursue its foreign policy aims in the past. It was Iran that paved the way for the United States to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan and help President Hamid Karzai's government reconstruct the country in 2002. Iran also did not oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

During the past year, Iranians have participated in three rounds of talks with the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. They are currently preparing for another round of talks in the coming months to discuss further discuss security issues in Iraq.

It appears the major obstacle to initiating direct talks with Iran is the uneasiness brought on by talking to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose controversial remarks about Israel and the Holocaust have given him an infamous international reputation. But Ahmadinejad is not the man with whom the U.S. should talk.

In the complicated Iranian political system, it is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who makes major foreign policy decisions. Khamenei allowed Iranian diplomats to talk with Washington about ousting the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ahmadinejad's power in Iran's politics has been over-exaggerated in the West, particularly in the United States.

In recent months, Ahmadinejad has been criticised by major Iranian political figures over his economic policies, which have pushed the inflation rate to an unprecedented 25 percent. In Iran's recent parliamentary elections, Ahmadinejad's radical allies failed to gain the majority in parliament before the moderate conservatives.

Ali Larijani, Iran's former national security secretary and head of the nuclear negotiating team with the EU, who was chosen as the speaker of Iran's Parliament last week, is a moderate politician with close ties to Khamenei.

Larijani left his previous post to protest Ahmadinejad's defiance over the nuclear programme. He now is shaping up to become a major thorn in Ahmadinejad's side ahead of next year's presidential elections, undermining Ahmadinejad's populist image and giving his rivals ammunition to blame him for the country's economic woes.

The question now is why should Iran talk to the U.S. when it is enjoying growing regional influence and benefitting from the high price of oil? To answer this question one needs to understand Iranian political psychology.

Under the shah, prior to the 1979 Revolution, Iran tried to keep its balance, staying close to the United States and Israel and distancing itself from the Arab countries that had historically been its rivals. After the revolution and in the aftermath of the hostage crisis, Iranian leaders reversed this policy. They drifted away from the United States and Western countries and tried to engage with Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia.

Now, the Arab countries, fearful of Iran's increasing power, have sided with the United States and are threatening Iran's national security by buying billions of dollars of weapons to deter Tehran's hegemony in the region.

Many Arab analysts believe that despite Tehran's harsh rhetoric toward Israel, Iran's nuclear strategy is targeted primarily at other Arab countries. The recent remarks by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal that, "Iran is backing what happened in Lebanon, a coup… and it will affect its relations with all Arab countries, even the Islamic ones," shows the depth of this increasing animosity between Iran and its Arab neighbours.

Between the United States and Arab countries, Iran has lost on both sides. While Iran's historical struggle with Arab countries is too deep to be healed in a short time, Iranian leaders know that in order to deter potential Arab aggression, negotiation with the United States is necessary.

Additionally, Iran's fragile economy, which suffers from the fifth highest inflation rate in the world, is the result of a series of sanctions and marginalisation by the global economy. This has negated the benefits of rising oil prices. For a country in which 69 percent of the population is under 30, and 20 percent of the urban population is unemployed, negotiation with the United States is not a matter of ideology but of bread and butter.

While Washington appears to be leaning toward negotiations with Iran, nobody wants to give President Ahmadinejad a free ticket to use for his second term. In the long run, whether Ahmadinejad is re-elected or not, the United States should be talking to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The rapid raise of oil prices, the inefficiency of U.S.-led sanctions against Iran's economy, and the improbability of another military attack by the U.S. against Iran indicate that the Bush administration's policies toward Tehran have failed.

Given this situation, the idea of genuine negotiations with Iran – in other words negotiations with no preconditions – is becoming more and more acceptable in Washington.

*Omid Memarian is a peace fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch's highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award. His blog can be read at http://omidmemarian.blogspot.com.