The Cost of the West's Mistakes

Recently there have been signals transmitted from the other side of the ocean, signals containing a mixture of threat and surrender! Of course I’m not intending to name this mixture a contradiction, as the element that would contradict threat is not surrender, but the world of politics has been upside-down in the United States for quite a while! So upside-down that Rice is not supporting McCain following President Bush! Instead she has named Obama the savior of the U.S. The subject becomes interesting here, yet the story continues…

Who defines the foreign policies of the U.S.? Mr. President? Or the senators whose financial and sexual scandals become headline news once in a while? Does the Congress have any influence here? Can a Congress with a fixed number of senators that only change in favor of the Democratic or Republican parties be the center of power in Washington? Are the American military forces effective here? Are you kidding?! Maybe you have forgotten the chess game that Bush played with Colin Powell. It may sound ridiculous, but figures like Wesley Clark, John Kerry and even McCain belong more to history than to being a politician in their own country!

The CIA and the Pentagon are also two variables dependent on the changing politicians. Everyone knows that the policies of Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld were obviously different and its witness is the current situation of the Pentagon, which is struggling between the two policies of staying in Iraq and leaving the Middle East.

But ignoring all this, we should open another account for the think tanks in the United States; this idea was first introduced in the U.S. during WWII, and it refers to the special spaces where military strategists came together to discuss. After a while this name inherited a wider meaning, and today the think tanks and their role in the domestic and foreign politics of the U.S. has significantly increased. There are something around 2000 think tanks in the U.S.; around 25% of them are independent and the rest are mostly linked to academic institutions. These think tanks are quite different in terms of effectiveness and their fields of operation but even so, their general operating structure remains the same. Preparing general and special reports, defining strategies to influence the congress, organizing conferences and professional workshops are a few of their roles in the U.S.

The RAND research institute with more than a thousand personnel and an annual budget of over 100 million dollars is one of the most active think tanks working specifically on military and foreign affairs issues. Recently this institute has published an interesting 128-page report mentioning points in Iran – U.S. relations, naming Iran one of the most democratic nations of the Middle East, with a legitimate regime not threatened by danger or coup; if Iran’s nuclear facilities were to be bombed, there will be a wide response from the Iranian people in support of their regime’s retaliation. The U.S. should step down of its support for regime change in Iran and should come in contact with Iran’s current regime with open eyes for quite a long time.

There are usually two types of policy changes towards other nations in the U.S. The first one involves short-term and low-cost changes that are based on different tactics and behaviors; we can see examples of this type in the short-term policy changes towards Libya and North Korea. The second type consists of long-term and costly changes. In these types of changes, the behavior of politicians is a function of the fixed routine the strategists and the think tanks have created, most of them agreeing on a certain issue.

It seems that in a not-so-distant future, the relationship with Tehran would bond the Democrats and the Conservative Republicans together. At least this is what we can conclude from the RAND report.

It seems that politicians from both parties have encountered their same problem again, being unable to ask the question itself. Meanwhile, neither Bush Junior’s thesis of war with terrorism or Jimmy Carter’s thesis of human rights opens a door in front of both parties, and the only solution will be a new thesis based on accepting Iran’s power.

Before creating such a thesis (which is inevitable for the U.S.), it is a necessary first step for the foreign policy decision makers and the politicians to understand the language of Iran. After the Geneva talks, the West has unintentionally entered a phase of strategic involvement with Iran. And this happened at a time where neither the E.U. or the U.S. were ready to enter this phase.

Iran’s bright presence in the first round of Geneva talks acted as a powerful catalyst that threw the West into strategic games with Tehran. It is clear that the West entered this game in an unbalanced and unnatural state, and as a result it can’t align itself with the white and red lines in this game. Though Tehran will never pay the price of this training, it will still try to hurt its weak opponent less.

You can imagine the West as a manic person that is one moment in deep grief and one moment in extreme happiness. The U.S. and the three European countries talk of the next round of sanctions for one day and cancel their deadlines the next. Rice speaks about supporting the opposition of the Islamic regime one day and changes all her theories of regime change in Islamic countries the next. The Europeans, on the other side, warn the U.S of any actions against Iran from one side, and on the other side take steps to irritate Iran.

Since the West will have to pay for its mistakes, we can’t account them on the West’s art of diplomacy with Iran. The West not only is in trouble in all aspects of its strategy towards Iran, but it also hasn’t yet gained the strength required to analyze Tehran’s strategies and give proper response to them.

Recently some sources are warning of a new round of sanctions against Iran, and this is at a time when the West has experienced that the sanctions are useless against the Iranian people and the Iranian government. Any new sanctions would show the West’s lack of strategy against the powerful Iran. Repeating a mistake has roots in lack of basic theories and principles, a law which is also valid in Iran–U.S. relations. On the other side there’s Tehran; before wanting to become an action maker in the Iran–West relations it is learning to show proper reactions to their smiles and anger: If the West is to show its anger against us, we’re ready to answer with our military and missile power, but if they listen to their wise politicians and deploy their smile strategy, then we haven’t closed the door to negotiation with the 3+3 countries. Iran–West relations are clear from Tehran’s side: the Islamic Iran is aggressively ready to react to any of the smile or anger strategies in its foreign policy. And that’s why Iran had a better position in the talks with Europeans and the U.S.