What If Obama Was Like Nixon?

One day, President Richard Nixon, a deceitful and dishonest man, decided to make peace with one of the most implacable enemies of the United States: China. This was during the Cold War. Mao’s China had vowed to humiliate the American paper tiger at least as much as the USSR did, and the Great Helmsman, as they called the Chinese president, accepted the challenge with a joyful heart – through war with the nationalist and rebellious isle of Taiwan, Washington’s biggest ally in the region; through acts of piracy and subversion all over Asia; and through anti-American propaganda at home.

Richard Nixon did well. He had built his career on fanatical anti-communism. His party, the Republicans, was considered to be the most intransigent of the Cold War. Nixon hated anything that betrayed a sign of weakness to the opposition. In brief, when the 37th president of the United States went to Beijing in February 1972, he betrayed his “milieu,” his party, his political family, the dominant strategy in Washington, the Pentagon and the State Department.

But he won everything. He isolated the USSR. He undoubtedly facilitated America’s exit from Vietnam. The slow normalization of relations between China and the United States opened up a new political and economic era in Beijing. Asia was transformed, and so was the world.

40 years later, the 43rd U.S. president, Barack Obama, an open and honest man, has a huge strategic problem – Iran is poised to acquire the capacity to create nuclear weapons.

The Islamic Republic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejects the United States — the Great Satan has replaced the paper tiger. Iran seeks to dominate its neighbors; on the inside, it martyrs its own people; on the outside, it supports extremist parties. In brief, it is destabilizing the Middle East and, at least on two fronts, its leaders wish that the winds of history have stricken Israel from the map.

The prospect of this regime acquiring nuclear weapons feeds the White House’s nightmares. The Obama administration thinks that the Arabs will not leave the nuclear arms monopoly to the two non-Arab states in the region, Israel and Iran. If Tehran were to access nuclear weapons, the Saudis would follow, and maybe Egypt would as well — in brief, nothing is very reassuring.

Strangely, the dozens of nuclear warheads, as real as they are, that Pakistan possesses worries Washington less than an Iranian bomb that is yet to be built. However, Pakistan is a fickle state, the military establishment in Islamabad supports jihadist movements and local public opinion readily demonstrates the country’s hatred of the United States. On the other hand, Iran is a very old state whose inhabitants are surely among the most pro-American in the region.

In the case of Iran, Barack Obama faces a particular limitation: the threat of Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic. If Israel acts, it is uncertain whether Iran’s response — and there will be a response — will result in prolonged confrontations — but Washington doesn’t even want to take that risk. Such an operation could force the United States into a war, at the very moment when it is emerging from Iraq and Afghanistan. The American public is tired of adventures on Middle Eastern soil.

The UN Security Council — including China and Russia — has accused Iran of violating the non-proliferation treaty, to which it is a signatory. Friends of the Islamic Republic, the Chinese and the Russians, are equally worried. With the United States, Germany, France and Great Britain, they form the Group of Six that has worked for years to give Iran a seat at the negotiating table. Without success: three new meetings, in May and June, produced nothing. The Six have unanimously concluded that the Islamic Republic is not budging.

Iran pays dearly for this intransigence: it is subject to brutal economic sanctions. It has nevertheless mustered support for its nuclear program. It has acquired a large number of centrifuges and stepped up its capacity to enrich uranium; however, it has buried its laboratories in the mountains. Israel claims that Iran’s facilities are soon likely to be free from any risk of bombardment.

44 senators, Democrats and Republicans, wrote to Mr. Obama to tell him that his Iranian policy is a failure: the negotiations continue, the centrifuges turn – the two parties are playing to the death. Tehran estimates that Obama will not make concessions before the presidential elections in November, but that he will be more flexible if he is reelected. Washington thinks that putting a new embargo in place on Iranian oil in July — at the request of Americans and Europeans — will drive Iran to a compromise. Pretty risky for both sides.

In Tehran, the regime plays the part with credibility. It has made nuclear arms a national cause. It can only retreat in exchange for substantial concessions.

In Washington, the president has not left any margin for maneuvering. His policy, he says loud and clear, doesn’t encompass containing a nuclear Iran; instead, it will prevent Tehran from making a bomb by any means, including by force if it must. Mr. Obama is in the worst of situations: He thinks that war would be a catastrophe, but he still might be forced into it.

The Nixonian precedent can offer an emergency exit in the form of an ambitious compromise. In exchange for stopping its military program, Iran would obtain normal relations with the United States — which has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since 1979. Such an offer would surely tempt at least part of the regime. For Washington, it would be all to the good. Normal relations with Iran is one of the conditions for peace in the Middle East, on all fronts. Mr. Obama should consider a trip to Tehran.