The Realist

Roger Cohen lays out what a grand bargain with Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei might look like:

Khamenei sees his primary task as safeguarding a revolution whose core values include independence, cultural and scientific self-sufficiency, the global revitalization of Islam as a guiding body of law, and social justice. He believes America demands “submission and surrender to its hegemony.”

Given these convictions, the United States must embark on a visionary change of direction. Obama must assure Khamenei that not only has America abandoned the goal of regime change, it sees Iran as a central player in regional stability. That deals with the independence obsession.

Unfortunately, no-one can deny that Iran is a “central player in regional stability” because it insists on making itself relevant to every conflict in the region by playing a destabilizing role.  Iran has legitimate security interests in its neighbours Iraq and Afghanistan which must be addressed – as special envoy Holbrooke acknowledged recently – but there is a big difference between these legitimate interests and its wanton aggression-by-proxy against Israel.  Along with the nuclear issue, this is the most important factor in U.S.-Iran relations, and it is clear they have very different ideas about what being a “central player in regional stability” means.  The U.S. thinks it means not undermining stability in Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon and Iraq.  Iran thinks it means doing so.  It’s not clear where the common ground is supposed to be, short of the U.S. abandoning its other allies – many of whom stood in the right camp despite significant domestic opposition and terrorist attack - and rewarding Tehran for its aggression.

Obama must abandon military threats to Iran’s nuclear program in favor of an approach recognizing the country’s inevitable mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle, while securing verifiable conditions that ensure such mastery is not diverted to bomb manufacturing. That addresses Iran’s intellectual pride (as well as the fact that the neighborhood includes the nuclear-armed powers of Israel, Pakistan and India).

This course of action would lead to Iran getting a bomb anyway and even Cohen must know that.  He has become so obsessed with the idea that all Tehran wants is to be loved that he has lost sight of the strategic dimension – Iran doesn’t just want a nuke because of “intellectual pride”, it wants one because it knows that this means the rest of the world will have to pay attention to the interests of its narrow theocracy.  History shows that when you have the bomb, Uncle Sam is briefly angry and then accepts you as a major player on the world scene.  Concessions follow – and it is these concrete concessions that matter.  And “verifiable conditions” on a country’s nuclear programme have never stopped anyone getting the bomb, and are impossible to implement.  They are a smokescreen behind which a regime buys time.

He must redirect U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine to make Hamas-Fatah reconciliation a core American objective, recognize that the “terrorist” label is an inadequate description of the broad movements that are Hamas and Hezbollah and end the Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy that sabotages a two-state solution. This would allow Khamenei to claim that his demands for Palestinian justice — as the self-styled leader of the world’s Muslims — have been heard.

In return, Iran must accept the two-state solution backed by the Arab League (Khamenei has said “the fate of Palestine should be determined by the Palestinian people”). It must reciprocate American movement on Hamas and Hezbollah by ending its military, but not political, support for them.

Demonstrating a profound misunderstanding both of Hamas and Iran, Cohen is suggesting that the U.S. recognize Hamas as a legitimate party in return for Hamas ceasing  to exist as it currently does.  This is not a deal that is likely to sound good in either Tehran or Gaza City.  The whole problem with Hamas and Iran is that they are not committed to a two-state solution in the first place, and it is baffling to think that they would suddenly become so just because the Great Satan recognized them as legitimate negotiating partners – their whole raison d’etre is opposition to the U.S. and Israel, not the desire to be accommodated by them.  It is they who cling to the extreme end of the spectrum, not the U.S. – and whenever they wish to come in from the cold, they are quite welcome to do so.  But rewarding their aggression will only encourage more aggression, not moderation.

Furthermore, if Iran were to cease to arm Hamas then it would lose one of its most successful propaganda instruments, one which has exponentially increased its popularity across the region and undermined the moderate Arab regimes that it despises.  To abandon concrete support for these movements in return for U.S. recognition of their legitimacy would be a stark betrayal of the values to which the Islamic Republic is committed – imagine the gnashing of teeth across the region as Israeli jets pound Hamas while Tehran sends no support because it has cut a deal with the Great Satan.  This is, quite simply, not going to happen.

It must back U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. It must improve its poor human-rights record. And, to show goodwill, it must hit the pause button on the centrifuges once high-level talks with America begin.

And why would it want to do this?

Khamenei is not irrational. Social justice is the fourth pillar of the revolution. He has said, “What Islam pursues is economic development and prosperity for all social strata.” Yet Iran is a profoundly unequal society. With oil prices at around $35 a barrel, that won’t change without creating more wealth in ways that only engagement with the West can bring.

If Khamenei’s primary interest was social justice, then he could have abandoned the nuclear programme long ago and devoted his efforts to internal development.  The option of engaging the West is open to him and always has been, and yet he has consistently eschewed it.  The truth is that the regime that sent millions to their deaths in a pointless war against Iraq cares little for its people, and much more about exporting the Islamic revolution across the region.  Like Benazir Bhutto’s father, they have said “we will eat grass, but we will have the bomb”.  Khamenei has already demonstrated where his priorities lie, and they are in sharp opposition to our own.  The only question is who will be forced to compromise first.