Iran's Velvet Diplomacy

They bear the names of Muhammad’s grandsons, Hussein and Hassan, who represent two different styles of dealing with an enemy. Hussein, nicknamed the “Prince of Warriors,” threw himself into a suicide battle for the Caliphate and was killed in an ambush in Karbala, Iraq, in the year 608; Hassan, seeing that he could not bring down Muawiya Umayyad’s powerful army, opted to hand over power instead.

Hussein Obama and Hassan Rouhani have decided to declare a suspension of hostilities, avoiding a battle that would be the mother of all wars. Naming Iran 25 times in his address to the United Nations, Obama will score the greatest achievement of his foreign policy if he proves successful in his bid to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club.

The leaders of the two countries last met 36 years ago, when Jimmy Carter told the shah that Iran under his leadership was “an island of stability.” In the meantime, the earth was shaking beneath the dictator’s indifferent feet and a democratic revolution — later hijacked and aborted — put an end to 2,500 years of monarchic rule just a year later.

The anecdotal element is that it was not the Islamic Republic that severed relations with the U.S., but the other way around. The rupture took place when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was occupied in protest at Washington’s decision to shelter the shah and his family, who had fled Iran carrying suitcases loaded with money and jewels.

Enmity with the U.S. is not intrinsic to the Islamic Republic. Even subsequent (to the hostage crisis), politicians from both nations continued to coordinate their strategies, as the following examples illustrate: Iran’s failure to release the American hostages, at the request of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, in order to prevent Carter’s re-election in 1980; the “Irangate”* scandal; Lt. Col. Robert MacFarlane’s visit to Tehran in 1987 to request military bases for spying on the USSR during Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s tenure as president and actual head of state; Iran’s cooperation with the Bush administration to bring down Saddam Hussein and the Taliban; and the subsequent establishment of client governments in both countries. The latest example of this strategic coordination was the sending of American U.N. representative Jeffrey Feltman to Iran to negotiate on Syria.

Nevertheless, so many years of “Death to America” and laying all of Iran’s ills at Washington’s door have turned the Iranian authorities into victims of their own rhetoric, to the extent that it is now difficult for them to re-establish relations with the “Great Satan,” as a confused and radical populace looks on and shows its indignation by hurling shoes at Rouhani’s delegation on its return from New York. It is just as well there was no photo opportunity with Obama!

The 68th U.N. General Assembly will go down in history for allowing a final opportunity to find a political solution to the nuclear conflict between Iran and the major world powers.

Hassan Rouhani, with the full backing of Khamenei, demonstrated that the era of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy was at an end: Smiling and polite, he attended the session accompanied by the Jewish-Iranian member of parliament and condemned the Nazis’ crimes against the Jewish people.

The fact that the Israeli delegation was alone in its decision to boycott the assembly during Rouhani’s speech only demonstrates the keen interest of all the other countries in what the new Iranian president had to say. Rouhani’s soft policy has placed Netanyahu, who must be missing Ahmadinejad, in an awkward position.

President Obama said two things here that the Islamic Republic wanted to hear:

1. He is “not looking for regime change.”

2. He respects Iran’s right to have access to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

It was the first time in years that Obama neither threatened Iran, nor mentioned the accursed phrase, “All options are on the table.”

Background to the Change

The United States’ motives:

– Negotiation with Tehran is cheaper than a suicide war or accepting a nuclear Iran.

– Public opinion in the United States and Israel is against a war on Iranian soil.

– If two of America’s staunchest allies, Great Britain and Germany, refused to join in a military attack against al-Assad, they will probably refuse to join in a military attack on Iran — and that is a pill too big to swallow.

– The fiscal cliff and the lack of finances for a new conflict of such a magnitude.

– The United States needs the Islamic Republic in order to both pacify and further its policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Iran’s motives:

– The sanctions that are strangling its economy to by now unsustainable limits and low oil prices. Petropolitics make clear the direct effect of the negative correlation between price fluctuations and the supply of crude oil on a country’s domestic and foreign policy, and thereby on the quality of its politico-economic democracy. The greater a country’s petrodollar wealth, the more its leadership enjoys independence of power over the will of its citizens. The last eight years have seen Ahmadinejad’s government collect revenue from oil greater than the sum of all the revenue received over the previous 100 years without any improvement in living standards for the Iranian people. Today, the Islamic Republic cannot ignore the will of the people.

– Fear of a social uprising greater than that of 2005 and this time because of economic conditions, not for political and civil rights reasons.

– An isolationism impossible to withstand because of U.N. sanctions and a broad united front against Iran worldwide, stemming from their Turkish, Jewish and Arabic neighbors as well as supposed “allies” like China and Russia, who voted in favor of sanctions in the Security Council.

– The pressure against Syria, Iran’s only ally in the region.

– In contrast to previous years, Iran today feels strong enough to be able to defend itself without the need to resort to nuclear weapons.

– Iran needs to reach an agreement with Washington before Obama leaves the White House in 2016.

– If Iran has any pretensions to becoming a power in the region, it will only be able to do so with the United States as an ally, in the same way as Turkey or Israel.

The benefits to Tehran of abandoning its nuclear program:

– Security guarantees that it will not be attacked by the United States-Israel.

– The lifting of economic and financial sanctions.

– The right to employ nuclear energy in conditions respectful of Iran’s sovereignty, in other words, to be permitted to enrich uranium on Iranian soil.

What the U.S. requires of Iran:

– Proof that the Iranian nuclear program has solely peaceful purposes.

– Iran must abandon support for Bashar al-Assad.

Obstacles in Their Way

Both leaders face fierce opposition inside and outside their own borders.

The Iranian president has against him: The judiciary, parliament and a broad, uncoordinated network of publications, groups and institutions with diverse interests, like the “Principlists”: a fundamentalist, multidimensional elite who oppose any change to the status quo and wave the flag of traditional values in the war against the “Great Satan.” From Iran, these hardliners ensured that even a “casual” encounter between Obama and Rouhani in the hallways of the U.N. could not take place. Also against Rouhani are certain sections of the all-powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who have rejected Rouhani’s offer to maintain their economic influence in exchange for their not interfering in politics; they are mistrustful of Washington’s intentions and have no intention of abandoning al-Assad, believing that Syria is of key strategic importance to Iran and that such a maneuver would be a submission to the empire’s demands. Then there are the traders who have made their fortunes out of the black market created by economic sanctions, making millions from sky-high commission charges on U.S. dollar exchange, thanks to the boycott imposed on Iran’s financial sector by the United Nations and the United States. Finally, the “anti-Western” groups — civilians and paramilitaries with strong economic links to power — created by the Islamic Republic itself to instill a state of constant terror in the citizenry and accuse its opponents of being CIA agents. Some, still active in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are those responsible for the perpetration of the “chain murders” of 100 intellectuals and politicians in an effort to undermine the government of reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

Equally dangerous is the ambiguous stance of Ayatollah Khamenei, who could easily withdraw support for Rouhani and remove him from power if efforts to lift sanctions prove unsuccessful, or if Khamenei feels himself threatened by the close relations between Rouhani and Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Moreover, the United States has linked the Iranian nuclear question with that of Syria, and the Iranian people’s hopes for a peaceful solution have been raised since Rouhani came to power. Against this background, Rouhani has warned the United States of the transitory nature of this opportunity.

For his part, Obama must do the following: Put an end to the mistrust created by his country’s military aggressions in the Middle East; neutralize pressure from the Republicans, the Arabs and Israel, who look on with irritation as the military option against the ayatollahs loses momentum; and impose his will on Netanyahu, who is demanding that Iran must not be permitted to militarize its nuclear capacity, while Obama’s objective is the prevention of “nuclear weapons.” There is no “double standard” here; rather, Tel Aviv’s stance seems illogical given that Israel would be the main beneficiary of a rapprochement between the United States and Iran, with the attendant disarmament of Iran and the end of Iranian support for Israel’s enemies in the region.

Warmongers in both countries will try to bring down any agreement, producing films like “Not Without My Daughter” and “Argo,” storming embassies or engineering provocations from Syria or elsewhere.

The annual celebration to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the American Embassy, Nov. 4, draws near. It is the perfect opportunity for the Khamenei-Rouhani duo to demonstrate their goodwill by turning the traditional demonstrations — choruses of “Death to America” and ritual burning of American flags outside the former embassy — into round table discussions, television talk shows, conferences, etc., explaining the country’s new policy.

Rouhani needs to link the détente in foreign policy to reforms at home by lifting Internet censorship, authorizing the operation of labor unions and political parties, suspending the monstrous death penalty which takes the life of several people every day, stopping harassment of the population for refusing to wear the invented Islamic vestments, etc. — and thus widen his social base. For the moment, he has released a number of political prisoners, readmitted dozens of previously expelled students and professors, and announced free treatment costs for “special” patients. These are a handful of lukewarm gestures, but they are positive.

There may have been no photo of Rouhani and Obama together, but we might just see John Kerry — whose son-in-law is an Iranian doctor — on the streets of Tehran.

For the sake of world peace, may this olive branch not be spurned.

*Editor’s note: Irangate is another name for the Iran-Contra affair.