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Middle East Quarterly

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JUNE 1998 • VOLUME V: NUMBER 2

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Next Steps with Iran: A Debate

Middle East Quarterly
June 1998

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President Khatami's call in his CNN interview on January 7, 1998, for "dialogue and understanding between two nations" has renewed the now decades-old debate concerning U.S. relations with Iran. To sort through the options, the Middle East Quarterly sponsored a discussion of this question in Washington on March 18, 1998. Patrick Clawson is director for research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Geoffrey Kemp is director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center. Edward Shirley is the pseudonym of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, now an independent analyst. Kenneth Timmerman is publisher of The Iran Brief. Daniel Pipes moderated the discussion.

IRAN AS A DANGER

Middle East Quarterly: In a recent interview, Senator Sam Brownback, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, said that "Iran today presents the most clear and present danger in the whole world" to the United States.¹ Do you agree?

Kenneth Timmerman: Terrorism and violent opposition to the Middle East peace process indicate a clear intent on the part of the Iranian leadership to see itself as an ideological counterpart and adversary to the United States. Even President Khatami has joined the call from Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i and from Revolutionary Guards commanders, calling for the United States to withdraw from the Persian Gulf—presumably to make way for Iranian hegemony. Add to that the development of a long-range ballistic missile program—very far advanced with Russian help—and a nuclear weapons research, and you have a very, very serious threat.

Patrick Clawson: It's hard to describe Iran as the greatest threat to the United States when Iraq clearly has more immediate and more aggressive intentions. But the Islamic Republic presents an ideological threat that cannot be taken lightly. And it has shown a willingness to engage in activities in countries as far-flung as Bosnia and Lebanon, quite possibly sponsoring attacks in Argentina, and stalking American diplomats in Tajikistan. These activities represent a wider range of terrorist threats to the United States than seen from other state sponsors.

MEQ: You agree with Senator Brownback, then?

Clawson: I would phrase it differently: Iran is unique in terms of the potential danger, the geographical range, and the types of terrorist activities it sponsors.

Geoffrey Kemp: How can anyone believe the Islamic Republic poses a greater threat to the United States than Russia or China? We're talking about a hypothetical threat years out. Under those circumstances you could construct a worst-case analysis. But I could construct a worst-case analysis for Russia or China that is infinitely more frightening from an American point of view.

Edward Shirley: Iran's a problem, and depending upon the issue, it can be a serious problem, but it is under no circumstances the major threat to the United States in the world today. That is an exaggeration.

Turning Iran into the leading threat to the United States, by the way, makes the day for some clerics in Tehran and Qom, men who otherwise have so little to look forward to. That type of statement makes them feel good.

MEQ: Many in Iran aspire to just that status?

Shirley: Oh, absolutely. If they can get an undeserved compliment, they'll take it very quickly and even say thank you.

MEQ: How does Iran threaten American interests?

Timmerman: Through terrorism and the undermining of moderate governments supportive of the United States. The regime has a clear track record of opposing Western interests and other regimes that are pro-Western wherever they may be around the world. It has been publicly involved in trying to subvert a whole slew of neighboring regimes, most recently in Bahrain and Pakistan, where the Iranian government is involved in stirring up sectarian violence. In contrast, the Iranians have been quite cooperative with the Russians by not getting involved in certain conflicts—Chechnya comes to mind—and cooperating in other areas, such as Tajikistan.

Kemp: We need to be more careful about using the term Iranian terrorism. Some elements in Iran will be more than happy to engage in acts of terror against Americans, particularly if Khatami's rapprochement appears to be working; but others will not. One also has to distinguish between various types of terrorism. It's one thing to organize tactical operations, another to provide an umbrella resource for other countries' terrorists or other groups' terrorists—such as providing passports, access to embassies.

Clawson: Exactly. That is why the targeting, tagging, and following of American diplomats by officials of the Iranian government that took place in Bosnia and Tajikistan in fall 1997, after Khatami's election, is so disturbing. It crosses precisely the line that Geoff is drawing.

Timmerman: There's an overwhelming record of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism in the past fifteen years. The list of Iranian sponsored terrorist attacks is many pages long.

Shirley: The Islamic revolution in Iran has passed into its Thermidor phase. Iranians have grown tired of the colorless revolutionary order that has so little in common with their culture. Persia is an immensely nuanced and contradictory land, where ugliness and beauty, good and evil, profound faith and ribald disbelief had coexisted in a relatively tolerant balance for ages. The Islamic revolution tried to destroy this balance, to remake ideologically the Iranian man and woman by imposing on them a rather inflexible religious identity that denied them any joy in their abundant human foibles, peccadilloes, and sins.

We are now watching faithful revolutionaries—and I would include Khatami among them—try to, in a sense, escape from the revolution. They are desperately trying to find some compromise between those beliefs that propelled them into revolution and the realization that these beliefs are at war with so much that they cherish in Persian life.

Iran's is a dying revolution, if not a dead revolution, and dying revolutions can always be dangerous. Even when the medieval Shi‘i dynasty of the Fatimids was nearly finished in Egypt, it was still sending out troublesome missionaries, a branch of whom became the Assassins. The Iranians could quite conceivably engage in new nefarious activities—particularly terrorist activities, which are always good bang for the buck.

DETERRENCE

MEQ: How credible is American deterrence?

Timmerman: What deterrence? There is a problem with U.S. credibility. Take the June 1996 attack against U.S. forces at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed nineteen servicemen. There is much to suggest the Iranians were behind it, but neither the U.S. or Saudi governments have taken retaliatory measures. On the contrary, the Saudis have engaged in a rapprochement with Tehran, something we seem to favor. Likewise, the Islamic Republic has paid no price for its involvement in bombings in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for its repeated efforts to undermine the government of Kuwait during the 1980s, or for its involvement with the Shi‘a of eastern Saudi Arabia.

Shirley: We're not going to take retaliatory actions against Iran unless intercept material exists and we would know by now if it did exist for Khobar Towers. If we do have intercepts, then retaliation would be called for. Barring intercepts, it's inconceivable that any U.S. administration would countenance a reprisal. If they choose to engage in terrorist activity, it's a serious problem. But it's by no means unmanageable.

Clawson: You're missing the point. The Iranians have a remarkable ability to use ambiguity and to structure situations so that there will not be clear-cut evidence of their involvement. Even when they clearly are responsible, they structure the situation so that we might decide against attacking them.

REACH OUT, CONTAIN, OR ROLLBACK?

MEQ: What should the ultimate goal of U.S. policy be?

Timmerman: We're dealing with a regime so inimical to Western interests it cannot be rehabilitated. We should seek democratic change that would replace the ruling clerical minority with a government representative of the Iranian people.

Clawson: That's too much. Let's continue doing what we're doing—impede the Iranian government's ability to acquire more lethal means to carry out what seems to be its rather nasty intentions.

Shirley: This containment approach that you, Patrick, more than anyone else has developed is valid; but it assumes the muscle and the will to execute it. In fact, the United States has not exercised that muscle and will over recent years. Containment of Iran is eroding.

Timmerman: We need to define the basic goals of U.S. policy. Geoffrey Kemp sees an Iranian regime we can eventually deal with and with which we have strategic interests in common. I hold that this is an inimical regime that will pass up no opportunity to threaten and undermine U.S. interests around the world. We should send a message to the Iranian people that the United States will support their thirst for freedom and democracy.

We are witnessing today an extraordinary phenomenon: the Iranian people have lost their fear, just as they did in 1978-79, when they rose up against the Shah. They dared vote against the regime in last year's presidential elections; but the candidate they voted for, President Khatami, has so far been unable to deliver on the people's aspirations. Given all that is going on under the surface within Iranian society, the worst thing we could do is to legitimize the regime by dealing with it and allowing commerce to go on. We must reach out to the Iranian people instead, and hold high the torch of democracy and freedom.

CONTINUE DUAL CONTAINMENT?

MEQ: Is dual containment still an appropriate policy?

Kemp: The time has come to rethink it, perhaps replacing it with what the people at the Council on Foreign Relations call "differentiated containment." We should use Iran to strengthen our hand toward Saddam Husayn.

Timmerman: I cannot think of a more disastrous approach. Balance of power was our policy in the 1980s, when both Iran and Iraq were far more powerful and had much larger conventional forces than today. The Iran-Iraq war and Desert Storm had the benefit of dramatically eroding the military power of both countries. Today they have roughly one third the forces they had in 1980-81, at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. We no longer need to balance them against each other. We can have a separate policy for them and no longer use one to balance the other.

Clawson: As with the Soviet Union, we can have short-term and long-term goals. Détente did not preclude many of us from hoping that the Soviet Union would fall from the weight of its own internal inconsistencies and problems; at the same time, that was not something we actively pursued at every moment. With the Iranian government, we could have a dialogue even as we make clear that we think it's the wrong system and should be replaced.

My objection to "differentiated containment," or the balance of power approach, is that it will not work. There have been some situations around the world where it has been very appropriate, especially playing the China card against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But not Iran, for our allies would note the closer relationship with Iran and would see this as a precedent for Iraq. French and Gulf officials have bluntly expressed to me that if the United States eases up on Iran sanctions, that's one down, one to go.

Kemp: Those criticisms have to be taken very seriously. But the alternative—Ken's approach—is a relentless dual containment that treats both regimes as pariahs. Problem is, no one agrees with us. And unless you can find allies, this administration is simply not going to do what you want it to.

MEQ: It needs international support?

Kemp: If the GCC states were fully behind us it would help greatly. If the Europeans would change their policies—as appeared might be the case for six weeks a year ago after last year's Mykonos Restaurant case decision . . .

Timmerman: That was not a serious rethinking.

Kemp: Part of the reason they did not seriously rethink was our low-level, ineffective effort to get them to change. We sent Peter Tarnoff to Europe during his last moments in the State Department, rather than Thomas Pickering.

Shirley: The Europeans do have serious philosophical differences with us, but they are profoundly motivated by commerce. The French and Germans frankly don't care if expatriate Iranians are murdered on their territory. When Shahpour Bakhtiar—an honored soldier in the French army in World War II—was assassinated, it hurt. A lot of people in the DST [Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire], the French internal security service, and in the French army were furious. But within a very short period of time that was pushed off. Short of bombs going off again on the Rue de Rennes, it's almost impossible to imagine what might induce a different French behavior.

Kemp: The French and Germans differ. The Mykonos trial was a seminal event in German politics. The report of the trial is about to come out in its entirety and that will once again raise the German issue to the high decibel level in Tehran.

OFFICIAL DIALOGUE

MEQ: Who's responsible, Washington or Tehran, for the fact that there is no government-to-government dialogue between the two?

Shirley: Tehran. If the Iranians would send a positive signal, we would be there at lightening speed, like a puppy to water. If the Iranians are so stupid as to offer to open diplomatic relations, we should by all means take it.

Kemp: I'm in favor of both cultural and official dialogue. The Khatami strategy announced on CNN permits the former but not the latter, and I suspect there will be nothing official any time soon. We've made several very serious efforts in the past five years to start a formal dialogue with the Iranians but they will not formally meet with us until such time as they believe there is a level playing field.

MEQ: What do you mean by a level playing field?

Kemp: I spent six days in Tehran in late February and found time and again the Iranians stressing that if they enter an official dialogue with Americans, it won't be a dialogue but a monologue. We will come in (rather like Mr. Netanyahu dealing with Arafat), with a list of things they have got to do differently, starting with weapons of mass destruction and the peace process. They're simply not prepared for that. They don't accept it when they're told that this is an unfair view of American policy and that the U.S. is willing to have an open agenda and allow the Iranians to raise their grievances.

The Iranians are very paranoid about sitting down with American officials in a bilateral official dialogue. However, Karl Inderfurth [the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs] has already met with his Iranian counterparts at the U.N. in a multilateral setting where there are common interests on some issues. That's maybe the route to go.

Timmerman: It is incredibly dangerous for this regime to engage in any type of dialogue that could be seen as undermining anti-Americanism, a basic tenet of the revolution. Remove anti-Americanism and you leave very little by way of revolutionary credentials for the Iranian regime to stand on. Confidence-building measures—domesticating the Great Satan, if you will—will spell the end of the regime.

Clawson: I quite agree that we're not going to see an official dialogue but am more optimistic about easing tensions. The Iranians have backed off from some of the more in-your-face actions. I'm terribly encouraged by the actions of the Iranians in the last two weeks to shut down Iraqi oil smuggling through Iranian territories. Here was a situation where U.S. ships—the so-called multilateral intervention force in the Gulf—were frequently confronting Iranian Revolutionary Guards who protected those smugglers. By effectively shutting that operation down, the Iranians removed a potential flashpoint. We should take every opportunity for multilateral opportunities and do everything we can to take actions that are helpful for Iran in areas of common interest.

Also, we should make extremely clear that we're very open to official dialogue and that we want to find ways to make it actually happen.

TRACK-TWO DIPLOMACY

MEQ: For the first time in nineteen years, the American flag was flown in Iran on February 17, 1998—and not burnt or trampled on; in fact, the audience at a wrestling match on that date apparently gave Old Glory a rousing ovation, stronger than for any other foreign flag. Is this a significant development?

Timmerman: It proves the point we seem all to agree on: the minute the United States returns to Tehran with any kind of official presence, even if only a sports team, it is a magnet. The Iranian regime understands that, so it will be very interesting to follow developments in the upcoming sports matches to see how far they allow us to be present.

Kemp: If Americans are such a threat, why do the Iranians take the risk of hosting U.S. visitors? Because they're now more willing to engage in unofficial—or track-two—diplomacy and tone down the anti-American rhetoric. The Iranian leadership understands that it cannot tear up all the mantras laid down by Ayatollah Khomeini overnight; to deal with the Great Satan indirectly, however, they have to continue to pressure the little Satan (Israel) and maintain the fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

Related Topics: Iran

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