NEW YORK: While talking to an Iranian official in Tehran earlier this year, he reminded me of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fondness for comparing the relationship between the United States and Iran to that between a wolf and a lamb. But the official went on to add his own twist, “Nearly 30 years have passed, and we are not that lamb anymore, and maybe the US is not the same wolf it once was. His point was that Iran no longer feels the deep inequality with the US that it did in the past, and that it may be time to try engagement.
Over the past three decades, five American presidents have struggled to figure out what to do about Iran. All five failed. As US President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers assess their foreign-policy priorities, they will encounter the immediate challenge of addressing Iran’s nuclear program and the country’s growing strategic importance in the Middle East and South Asia.
They will need quickly to face up to the reality that in order to pursue US interests in the region, including stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, the current standoff with Iran cannot continue, and that a greater degree of cooperation is unavoidable. If they do not want to repeat the failures of past administrations, they will be well advised to do what none of Obama’s predecessors have tried.
They should make a strategic decision to engage Iran – without any pre-conditions – in discussions on a broad range of issues of significance to both sides. During his candidacy, Obama said of Iran that, “For us not to be in a conversation with them doesn’t make sense. Now, he has the opportunity to follow through.
Such an approach does not mean having Obama sit down with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad anytime soon. A great deal of preparatory work will be required first. This can be carried out by a small team, which would hammer out the details of a mutually acceptable framework for a wide-ranging and unconditional dialogue that enables both governments to produce some modest initial successes, and gradually build the confidence and trust required to imagine solutions to larger problems. The process could include appointing a US envoy to Iran. Ultimately, direct dialogue at the highest levels should be a key objective.
This will not be easy. At the heart of the American-Iranian conflict is a deep mistrust about each nation’s readiness to tolerate the presence of the other on the world stage. Each nation feels that it has been humiliated and demonized by the other. What is needed is a process that rebuilds trust and communication so that the give-and-take of negotiation is perceived as serving mutual interests rather than serving up insults to national dignity or identity.
Although it is far from an exact precedent, the historic 1972 Shanghai Communiqué signed by China and the US, which allowed both governments to “agree to disagree on many issues while committing themselves to dialogue at the highest levels, offers a promising model. This far-sighted framework’s effectiveness has been well proven over time.
Dialogue with Iran will inevitably be frustrating and difficult, but it offers the only way to lay out possible grounds for constructive engagement and to devise a strategy for heading off a potentially disastrous confrontation. Dialogue focused on Iran’s nuclear program or on Iraq alone will not work. Instead, the full range of issues that are significant to US-Iran relationship must be on the table.
Such an approach will require that each side exercise broad restraint and live with the ambiguity of working with a strong adversary to manage profound differences. Distrust will continue, signals will be confused, setbacks will be frequent, but the results could well lead over time to greater mutual understanding and a learned capacity to work on some of the most pressing problems, just as the US learned to do with the Soviet Union and China.
Direct diplomatic and strategic engagement between the US and Iran at the highest levels is a proposition yet to be tested. By pursuing this route after he takes office, Obama will force Iran to make a choice: does it want to be a state that is fully integrated into the global economy, or does it want to be an “ideology with rogue status? It is time that the world found out.
Suzanne DiMaggiois Director of the Asian Social Issues Program at the Asia Society and former Vice President of Global Policy Programs at the United Nations Association of the USA. This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Project Syndicate, www.project-syndicate.org.
