It's Past Time to Sit Down with Iran
By Eli Lewine
Published by the Topeka Capital-Journal on September 21, 2007
The drumbeat for American action against Iran has steadily grown over the past year. The latest call to arms came during congressional testimony on the situation in Iraq by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, both of whom reported that Iran is interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq and making the situation there worse.
Iran's alleged meddling in Iraq, combined with its reluctance to reveal openly the details of its nuclear program, has created a sense of unease about Tehran's intentions. As one of the strongest powers in the Middle East, Iran's actions will play a large role in the future of the region. If the United States is to have any hope of helping to establish peace in the greater Middle East, it must immediately initiate robust and direct negotiations with Iran.
Washington and Tehran have been estranged diplomatically for over 50 years. Bad blood still exists from the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iran's first democratic elected government, and from the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, when dozens of innocent Americans were taken hostage. Our regional interests have rarely intersected in any significant fashion, with one notable exception being the Al Qaida terrorist threat after 9/11.
Some hawkish policymakers in the United States have called for a military attack against Iran, arguing that pinpoint aerial strikes would disable Iran's growing nuclear program in one swift maneuver and send a message that any suspected nuclear weapons activity or meddling in Iraq will not be tolerated.
History, however, has shown how ineffective such tactics would be. Repeated military interventions by major Western powers in the Middle East have yet to produce even a semblance of long-term stability. Instead, these interventions have bred fear and resentment of the West throughout the Muslim world.
Any attack against Iran would be viewed as unprovoked aggression and, short of a full-scale ground invasion, would do little to permanently stop Iran's nuclear progress. A full-scale invasion of Iran, however, is a logistical impossibility given the already overextended state of American military forces, who are juggling simultaneous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Pro-American moderate Iranians would turn against the United States in response to an attack on their homeland.
Tensions between Iraq and Iran have been recently intensifying. Kurds in the far northeastern corner of Iraq have endured several weeks of rocket and artillery attacks reportedly emanating from Iran. The besieged Kurds and Iraqi officials have demanded that Iran cease the attacks, but Iranian officials have denied the accusations and claim that they have only been attacking Kurdish guerrillas who are making raids into Iranian territory.
So far, these border attacks have burned acres of orchards, killed livestock, destroyed homes, and driven about 2,500 Kurds from their villages. Given the protracted violence of the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s - a conflict in which the United States ironically supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq - this latest round of violence is dredging up some very bad memories in northeastern Iraq.
When questioned by Congress on September 10 and 11, Ambassador Crocker stated that recent attempts by the United States to negotiate directly with Iran have made little progress. But the Bush administration seems to be using its inability to participate in fruitful negotiations with Iran - which are, not surprisingly, proving difficult to conjure out of thin air following 30 years of mutual hostility - to justify its policy of refusing to reach out to Iraq's neighbors to help stabilize the situation in that war-torn country.
Negotiations can only succeed when they are part of a fuller strategic process, not simply tacked on as a fig leaf to shield the Bush administration from criticism of its overly militaristic approach in the Middle East. In order for diplomacy to be effective, the United States must invest the full weight of its resources and know-how. So far, the United States has only applied sanctions, worked through United Nations resolutions, and allowed the Europeans to take the lead in discussions with the Iranians.
While these are all sound supplementary strategies, they do not substitute for what is desperately needed: direct talks between Iran and the United States. If the United States neglects its international leadership responsibilities and the Bush administration continues its current adversarial policy towards Iran, we should not expect any improvement in the current situation and things may get much worse.
Eli Lewine is a researcher at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.