Till a few years ago, it was difficult even to imagine that a diplomatic solution would be found to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Iran and the West, particularly the United States, had been on a collision course for decades. This animosity reached its zenith under U.S. President George W. Bush who launched a global campaign to impose crippling sanctions against the Islamic Republic aimed at strangulating its economy. In it was also a threat to bomb the country to “stop it making nuclear weapons”. On its part, Iran took advantage of the crises triggered by U.S. interventions in West Asia to expand its regional influence as a hedge.
Stanly Johny From those bitter days, the U.S.-Iran relationship has undergone major changes within a relatively short span of time. And, the nuclear deal wouldn’t have been clinched unless such a transformation had taken place in bilateral ties. So, what triggered both nations to change their approaches to each other that set the stage for a multilateral deal on one of the most complex crises in West Asia?
Of course, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani deserve credit. From the very early days of his presidency, and when compared with the hostility towards Iran advocated by his predecessor, Mr. Obama had taken a pragmatic view of the nuclear stand-off. The Obama administration continued with the sanctions, while at the same time signalling his readiness to engage with the Islamic Republic. Tehran responded positively to this outreach, leading both sides to hold secret negotiations in early 2013, in Oman, an understated American Gulf ally that has good ties with Iran. The election of the moderate Rouhani as Iran’s President in August 2013 breathed new life into the diplomatic process. But historical enmities do not always get resolved only by the commitment of leaders. While leaders’ vision and resolve are an imperative, their efforts should be pushed by other factors, notably political, economic and geopolitical, for comprehensive solutions to deep-rooted crises. In the case of Iran, there was a confluence of such factors that were in favour of a peaceful solution.
The doctrine that backfired Mr. Rouhani is not the first Iranian President who expressed a willingness to engage with the West. In 1995, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani had offered a $1-billion oil deal to an American company, in an apparent readiness to engage with the U.S. economically, but U.S. President Bill Clinton scuttled the deal. Reformist Mohammed Khatami, who was President during 1997-2005, had called for dialogue between the peoples of the U.S. and Iran. The Clinton administration welcomed this, and U.S. State Secretary Madeleine Albright even “reiterated our [the U.S.’s] willingness to engage in officially authorized discussions with Iran.” In the early years of the Bush presidency, both Iran and the U.S. seemed to be on a new path of cooperation. And, after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., Iran had even assisted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and participated in international efforts to establish a new Afghan government.
“ While the nuclear deal between Iran and the West has removed one of the major obstacles in real rapprochement, resistance from conservative opponents on the one hand and Israel and Saudi Arabia on the other could end up being the spoilers. ”
It was a chance for a rapprochement. But the Bush administration, perhaps driven by its neoconservative doctrine of “reshaping the Middle East” through the use of force, abandoned the path of cooperation and instead lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as being the ‘Axis of Evil’. Mr. Bush’s strategy was to bomb Iran, oust the Mullahs from power, and turn the country into another client state that would benefit American corporations economically and would not pose any strategic threats to Israel. But this plan never took off as the U.S. got bogged down in the mess in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Obama became President at a particular juncture of American history. The country was in the midst of an economic crisis; its people were tired of the wars the previous administration fought, and from a strategic point of view, American power was in steady decline. Its so-called leadership of the world was in a state of disarray. There was also a vibrant anti-war movement in the U.S. These factors forced the Obama administration to recalibrate the country’s foreign policy. There was also a realisation in the administration that one more full-scale war in West Asia would be even more disastrous for the region. [Robert Gates, Mr. Obama’s former Defence Secretary, once said that any future Defence Secretary who advises the President to send troops to Asia “should get his head examined”].
The administration faced daunting challenges in Asia: stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan; neutralising terror groups operating from within the region and dealing with Iran, all without risking one more major war. The way ahead was to open the door of diplomacy for Iran. This is because Iran is a spoiler regional power, as the University of South Florida’s Mohsen M. Milani puts it; one that is insufficiently powerful to shape West Asia to its own liking, but sufficiently powerful to make it costly for the U.S. to achieve its own goals. So, the Obama administration chose to engage with Iran, hoping to bring the spoiler power to the table of stability.
Obama- Khamenei correspondence Since the revolution, the two key driving forces of Iran’s foreign policy were the survival of the Islamic Republic and anti-Americanism. But the Iranian leadership, particularly the conservatives, consider these two as interconnected forces. It was Khatami who tried to separate one from the other and link up the Islamic Republic’s survival with a constructive engagement with the outside world. But Khatami’s efforts collapsed as the U.S. failed to reciprocate.
George W. Bush’s anti-Iranism only helped reinforce the view in Tehran that the U.S. continued to be a threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic and that Iran, as a countermove, would continue to destabilise American interests in West Asia. Mr. Obama tried to disrupt this narrative by writing a letter directly to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, immediately after he assumed office in which he expressed an interest in nuclear cooperation. Khamenei wrote a letter back, as officials from either side later revealed, but it mostly blamed the Americans for their past in trying to destabilise Iran. Still, the fact that Iran’s supreme cleric wrote a letter to an American President was itself something new. Neither Khamenei nor his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had ever directly communicated with the U.S. since the 1979 revolution. So, the correspondence between Mr. Obama and Khamenei was viewed in Washington as a signal for a go-ahead in nuclear talks.
The cleric’s choice But the decision in Iran to get into direct talks with the U.S. was taken much later, and it was triggered by a silent reformist movement that gradually gained prominence in Tehran. Reformists were very active in Tehran’s power corridors when Khatami was the President, but they couldn’t bring in any meaningful measures those years because of resistance from the conservatives. The mass protests that broke out after the controversial re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 were a moment of reckoning for the elite in Tehran. Though Khamenei endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory over Green movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, the unprecedented protests had already turned the tables. In two years, streets in the Arab world witnessed scenes of protests against dictatorships, sending alarm bells ringing across the region. Iran was particularly vulnerable as the country’s economy was in a bad shape following the sanctions. Public resentment against Mr. Ahmadinejad was overflowing. On the regional front as well, Iran’s sphere of influence was on the wane after the rise of the Islamic State (IS) and the civil war in Syria. Khamenei had to make a choice: either continue the same conservative (foreign and domestic) policies and risk public anger (which in Egypt and Tunisia proved fatal for even well-entrenched regimes), or adapt to new realities, engage with the outside world and explore ways to unfreeze the country’s real potential. He chose the latter, displaying a degree of statesmanship on the issue.
Convergence of interests Besides the internal dynamics, the new geopolitical realities in Asia also played a crucial role in bringing the U.S. and Iran together. For example, the U.S. shares more strategic interests with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other Asian country. Take the case of Iraq, a country that the Americans helped destroy. Several key cities in the northwest are in the hands of IS. If Baghdad falls, it would be a setback for both American and Iranian interests in West Asia. America doesn’t want to send ground troops to Iraq and its aerial campaign alone can’t defeat IS. It needs allies on the ground, and the battle for Tikrit in Iraq has shown that American warplanes and Iranian-trained Shia militias can coordinate in attacking IS. In Afghanistan, both sides have coordinated once in taking on the Taliban. The Revolutionary Guards had worked with U.S. special forces in the 2001 war. Iran would not like to see the Taliban returning to power in its neighbouring country, which would not only be a strategic blow, but also be a direct threat to millions of Afghan Shias. The U.S., which has withdrawn most troops from Afghanistan, now wants Iran’s help in stabilising the country.
So the stage is set for greater cooperation. And the deal on the nuclear issue has removed one of the major obstacles in real rapprochement. What next? The U.S. would like Iran to no longer be a spoiler power and instead play a stabilising role in West Asia, suited to its interests. On the other hand, before effecting any structural change in its foreign policy orientation, Iran would seek strategic assurance from Washington that it would not return to anti-Iranism. But the road ahead is not easy. There are conservative opponents on both sides to such a rapprochement. Besides, two of the U.S.’s key allies in the region — Israel and Saudi Arabia — would resist any attempt to bring Iran into the diplomatic mainstream. Will the U.S. be able to withstand their pressure and build a new arena for partnership with Iran? Or will the Iranians, with the sanctions removed and economically empowered, ditch the U.S. and go to the Russians? Only time will tell.
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
