Iran: Recent Developments and Implications for U.S. Policy (House Foreign Affairs Committee)

MichaelRubin.org/Pundicity ^ | July 22, 2009 | Michael Rubin

[nuconvert]

Michael Rubin testifies at House Foreign Affairs Committee

(excerpt)

Secretary Clinton is correct to note the challenges the Islamic Republic poses, but is incorrect to blame her predecessors rather than the Islamic Republic itself for the failure of diplomacy. It is a myth that the United States has not engaged Iran. Every administration since Jimmy Carter's has engaged the Islamic Republic. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan criticized the Carter administration's diplomacy toward Iran but then, faced with his own Iranian-instigated hostage crisis, also sought to offer incentives. During his inaugural address, George H.W. Bush extended an olive branch to Iran. "Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on," he declared. Days later, he clarified, "I don't want to…think that the status quo has to go on forever. There was a period of time when we had excellent relations with Iran." Bush offered an olive branch with the promise of better relations upon the release of the hostages, but refused to make concessions or offer incentives, even as prominent foreign policy voices like Rep. Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, urged him "to send some kind of gesture." The Supreme Leader dismissed Bush's initiative, however. "Iran does not need America," he told Tehran radio.

(excerpt)

Despite the demonization of George W. Bush, Bush was more open to diplomacy with the Islamic republic than any president since Carter. In 2001 and 2002, U.S. and Iranian diplomats met to discuss Afghanistan and, the next year, Iranian UN Ambassador Mohammad Javad-Zarif met senior U.S. officials Zalmay Khalilzad and Ryan Crocker in Geneva.

(excerpt) Some say Bush missed a Grand Bargain opportunity in 2003, but, as even pro-engagement officials like former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledge, this to be a myth that resulted from wrongly ascribing Iranian authorship to an attention-seeking Swiss diplomat's personal initiative.

(excerpt)

Of course, diplomacy is the strategy of first resort. It always has been. Unfortunately, it does not always succeed. Alas, engagement has shown itself to no magic formula for three reasons. First, it takes two to tango. What Carter, Bush the elder, Clinton, and Bush the younger learned -- but their domestic critics have not -- is that the impediment to engagement lies not in Washington but in Tehran. The day after Rice offered Iran an end to its isolation, Ahmadinejad dismissed Rice's offer as "a propaganda move." When Undersecretary of State William Burns sat down with his Iranian counterpart in Geneva in July 2008, Mohammad Ja'afi Assadi, commander of Iranian Republican Guards Corps ground forces, quipped that Washington's desperation showed that "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated." On October 12, 2008, Vice President Mehdi Kalhor said: "As U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and continue their support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. are off the agenda."

Second, for diplomacy to be effective, the target government must empower its diplomats to negotiate over contested issues and then abide by agreements reached. Unfortunately, the Iranian nuclear program appears more the purview of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Office of the Supreme Leader rather than the Iranian Foreign Minister. Neither the IRGC nor the Supreme Leader have expressed willingness to negotiate.

Third, the Obama administration appears intent to sequence policies. Comprehensive strategies, however, fit into the DIME paradigm, and have not only diplomatic, but also informational, military, and economic components. Absent any effort to lay the groundwork either for containment or deterrence – both military strategies -- Washington is signaling to its allies that the U.S. commitment to protect them is empty.

(excerpt)

The danger is apparent. Should Israeli officials believe that the West will stand aside as Iran achieves nuclear capability and that a nuclear Islamic Republic poses an existential threat to the Jewish state, they may conclude that they have no choice but to launch a preemptive military strike--an event that could quickly lead to a regional conflagration from which the United States would have difficulty remaining aloof, regardless of the White House's intentions.

[wolfcreek]

“It is a myth that the United States has not engaged Iran”

Guess our idea of *engaged* is a little different from theirs?