Revisiting The Grand Bargain
The New America Foundation is hosting an interesting event today on U.S.-Iranian relations. The topic will be on reforming American policy and fostering a "Grand Bargain" approach in dealing with the Islamic republic. In short, the idea goes as follows: Both nations sit down, throw everything on the table, sort out concessions and, ideally, reach a pact on each other’s respective grievances.
I'm very skeptical of such an approach, mostly because it has been tried (and failed) in the past. The leadership cabal in Tehran and Qom has never really figured out what such an arrangement might look like--their position is often unyielding and unforgiving of past grievances. Same goes for the American diplomatic community, which has its own lingering animosities towards Iran.
Nonetheless, it should be an interesting discussion. If you're in or around the Washington, DC area you should go check it out. The event begins at Noon EST, but for those of you who can't make it, we've embedded the live event stream below:
Update: They've moved on to the Q&A session. Nothing terribly novel here. I appreciate the sentiment from both of the esteemed speakers, but there seemed to be a little bit of historical revisionism going on here. Every American president--including George W. Bush--has made their fair share of overtures to post-revolutionary Iran. George Bush, Sr. did so openly in his inaugural address to the nation. Presidents Reagan and Clinton both viewed a comprehensive resolution with Iran as the preferable diplomatic track. In most cases, it was not the United States that failed to live up to their end of the negotiations.
Mr. and Mrs. Leverett agree that a "fundamental reorientation" is necessary to achieve peace with the Iranians, with Nixon and China as the working model for how this could be done. There are a lot of problems with this model, but first and foremost it disregards the ideological furor that's infused in the Iranian political and societal makeup. For the ruling class in Tehran and Qom to strike a "grand bargain" would be the equivalent of signing away their own claim to power. Even when the two nations worked together to map the invasion of Afghanistan, President Khatami needed--at least publicly--to denounce the operation as another example of American imperialism.
Shorter me: Iran's Islamic ideologues--who happen to comprise the bulk of the regime's ruling class--need our hawks to rationalize their very existence.
The very core of the Velayat-e faqih principle is that Islamic government is the only way to preserve a pure state on earth; free from the West's subversive and deviant influences. Those who would claim the mantle of Jurist in Iran need confrontation with the West in order to justify their terrorist support abroad. Hence, you get a prisoner's dilemma of sorts: Offer the Iranian leadership security, and you ask them to undercut their own power. While the idea may be nice, why would they agree to such a thing?
The speakers rejected incremental rapprochement with Iran, but neglected to address the feasibility of an all-encompassing deal. Repeatedly, on an issue by issue basis, Iran has rejected very reasonable and multilateral proposals from the world community to address their nuclear proliferation (which stands in defiance of multiple UN resolutions). The Luers-Pickering-Walsh initiative, for example, would've provided the Iranians with domestic refining capabilities through a nuclear consortium. This proposal was rejected, and similar proposals have repeatedly been rejected. If Iran can't meet the world community on nuclear proliferation--an issue that has garnered them world scrutiny and condemnation--where can they? What evidence is there that a "grand bargain" could be reached?
Furthermore, nuclear proliferation is an incredibly popular issue in Iran. With a presidential race rapidly approaching there, it seems highly unlikely to me that such a deal could be reached and actually produce substantive concessions from the Iranians. Nevermind the victor of next month's U.S. election. Both Ahmadinejad and all of his likely opponents--such as Majlis Speaker Larijani--support the program wholeheartedly. Their problems with Ahmadinejad are based more on style than substance.
Sadly, this lecture seemed to have more to do with failed American policy than it did the failures on the part of the Iranians. A "grand bargain" would require mutual concessions, and we've seen no evidence that the Iranians are prepared to meet us half way on that. The Islamic republic does have legitimate grievances with the United States, but the latter has approached relations between the two states with a much higher level of seriousness and maturity. Until that changes, I think incremental talks--highly focused on mutual security interests in Iraq, for example--are the only option we have with Iran.
