Last week, Barack Obama recorded a video message for “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. The fact that the message contains little more then boilerplate niceties doesn’t make it any less remarkable, particularly coming from an office whose previous occupant seemed to think that the Islamic Republic was a member of a super-villain like league of evil doers. The response from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was encouraging, reasonable and very similar to another message from Iran that came eleven years ago.
In early January of 1998 the recently elected Iranian President Mohammed Khatami sat down for a highly publicized interview with CNN’s Christian Amanpour. The interview was billed as a public opening by a reform minded leader, and held the promise that after almost twenty years of unremitting hostility relations between Iran and America might begin to improve. The transcript of the interview makes for fascinating reading and it amply demonstrates just how little has changed in the intervening time.
Amanpour asks about Iran’s nuclear program; Khatami replies that Iran is a party of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its facilities are routinely inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Amanpour asks about Israel and the then promising peace process; Khatami responds by saying that Iran did not believe that the current peace process would work (boy were they right) but that they were in favor of an accord on which both sides could agree. Khatami also pointed out that it is still the official policy of the American government to overthrow his government, and that is hardly a friendly stance.
Neither country is a villain, nor a dew eyed innocent; rather both are antagonists who have heaped a lot of shit on each other over the years. (Americans would be wise to remember that the history of Iran did not begin in 1979; we’ve been screwing with them almost non-stop since World War II.) Khatami was, in effect, offering to set aside hyperbole and bombast and speak of concrete differences where real progress and substantial agreement were possible. It was a promising moment that went nowhere, not because any of it was wrong or because of any fundamental differences between Iran and America, but because ten days later Monica Lewinsky became a household name.
Flash forward almost four years and the US and Iran were very quietly cooperating in Afghanistan against the Taliban, an outfit which the government of Iran has long despised. After that, secret diplomacy (via) was undertaken to explore the possibility of a thaw in relations. Though the details remain murky it appears that such proposals were rejected out of hand by Bush the Younger. Apparently he and his brain trust couldn’t fathom the idea of actually talking to the Iranian government when it would obviously be so much easier to wait a year or two and then launch a regime changing attack from a pacified, democratic and stable Iraq.
Instead of marching swiftly to Tehran though, Bush the Younger and the limitlessly foolish neoconservatives who ran his foreign policy got bogged down in Iraq for six years. Sadly for them, but happily for everyone else on the planet, their term expired before they could launch the airstrikes they had convinced themselves would cause the popular Iranian government to crumble from within. That brings us up to the present time and a situation that is at least somewhat similar to the one that existed when Amanpour sat down with Khatami: the United States and the Islamic Republic share a great deal of mutual animosity, but have very little in the way of actual fundamental disputes.
Oh sure, we don’t want them to get the bomb, but our latest intelligence says they aren’t even trying to build one. Besides, the primary reason they’d want one is to keep us from trying to topple their government; if we publicly gave up that insane notion they probably wouldn’t feel the need in the first place. Even Israel is basically a red herring in this equation. We like Israel and they don’t, but Iran is no more a threat to Israel than Indonesia, Pakistan or any other large, heavily Islamic country that has no physical access to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or any other part of the Jewish state. It’s also worth remembering that the United States is already on very friendly terms with a number of governments that outright loathe Israel, most prominently Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. On the other side of the ledger is a long list of shared opponents, starting with al-Qaeda and those pesky Taliban.
The biggest barrier to improved relations at the moment is probably current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ugly reputation in the West (which is mostly, but not entirely, deserved). And while the Iranian presidency isn’t an overly powerful position within the Islamic Republic, if he’s re-elected in June it would make an opening with Iran considerably more politically costly and difficult for Obama. It may not make things impossibly difficult, but it would certainly be easier to sell an opening with Iran the Country than one with Ahmadinejad the Nutcase. At the moment the election is still very much in doubt, but Ahmadinejad is popular when he stands up to foreign bullies so it behooves us to act friendly between now and June.
Whatever happens, if there is one lesson to be learned from the previous two attempts to reconcile the United States and the Islamic Republic it is that things can go awry quickly. It would be better for all involved if this one didn’t.
