US-Iranian diplomacy

Historian Gareth Porter has been keeping close track of US diplomacy with Iraq and Iran. In A 'Grand Bargain' with Iran TomPaine.com 11/17/06, he looks at the prospects for a genuine improvement in US relations with Iran:

The grand bargain approach [encompassing a wide range of issues] is unlikely to gain acceptance of the political and foreign policy elite as long as it clings to an unrealistic understanding of the power relationship between the United States and Iran. The precondition for a new diplomatic policy toward Iran and Iraq, therefore, is the acceptance of the reality that the United States does not have the power to impose a solution on Iran but must make major concessions to Iranian interests in order to achieve it own interests.

Porter reminds us of the seemingly very promising diplomatic initiative by Iran to the US in the spring of 2003, which was spurned by the Cheney-Bush administration.

From the Iranian side, the administration's goal of "regime change" in Iran is a central problem. From the American side:

The main source of resistance to a grand bargain is the illusion that the United States can still rely on coercion—through sanctions and the threat of force—to get Iran to give up the nuclear option. The Bush administration is not alone in being guided by that illusion. It was also the fundamental premise of the 2004 Gates-Brzezinski report, which observed that the United States could engage Iran more successfully than it had in the previous 25 years because "the U.S. military intervention along Iran’s flanks in both Afghanistan and Iraq has changed the geopolitical landscape in the region."

It is also argued that Iran is now so overconfident, because of the U.S. debacle in Iraq, it is no longer afraid of U.S. attack and therefore has no motivation to reach a broad compromise with the United States. But that objection assumes that the only Iranian reason for offering concessions to the United States is fear of attack. In fact, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei opposed negotiations with the United States in the 1990s because he felt that Iran was too weak to defend its interests adequately in such negotiations. ...

Iran’s leadership is motivated to “haggle” with the United States not primarily because it is afraid of the United States, but because it needs the United States help to fulfill two ambitions: to be integrated fully into the global economic system, and to take it place as a legitimate regional power in the Middle East. That gives the United States strong bargaining leverage with Iran, but it is not the power to compel Iran to do something that it believes is not in its interests.

The administration's preferred approach to diplomacy is to tell Iran, along with Syria and other countries deemed hostile, what they should do and then expect them to do it. Negotiation itself has been seen as a reward to the other party and often as a sign of "appeasement".

Also, imperial arrogance dies hard. Porter observes, "The belief that the United States should be able to prevail in a confrontation with a third-rate power like Iran still runs deep in Washington."

Here's a clue: Iran is in far better shape to resist militarily than Iraq was when we invaded that country in March 2003.

Additional comments on the subject from Simon Jenkins in Why stop the Great Satan? He's driving himself to hell Guardian 11/15/06:

Bush and Blair are men in a hurry, and such men lose wars. If there is a game plan in Tehran it will be to play Iraq long. Why stop the Great Satan when he is driving himself to hell in a handcart? If London and Washington really want help in this part of the world they must start from diplomatic ground zero. They will have to stop the holier-than-thou name-calling and the pretence that they hold any cards. They will have to realise that this war has lost them all leverage in the region. They can insult and sanction and threaten. But there is nothing left for them to "do" but leave. They are no longer the subject of that mighty verb, only its painful object.