Diplomacy will not yield results

  Joshua Muravchik

The Obama administration will surely talk directly with representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So did the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Carter administrations. These talks will produce nothing, however, just as those earlier efforts did (and as the talks conducted by the EU-3 this decade and the EU's diplomatic outreach to Tehran in the 1990s, called "Critical Dialogue", which was sweetened with material incentives to Iran, did).

Why am I so sure? The idea that two countries that are at odds can lay to rest their dispute by talking and resolving their misunderstandings is a myth. I cannot think of a single case in which this has happened. Can anyone name one?

Yes, enemies do sometimes reconcile, as did Egypt and Israel, the United States and the People's Republic of China and the United States and the Soviet Union. But in none of these cases did the crucial breakthrough come as a result of conversations between the parties. Rather, in each case, dictatorial rulers first decided to undertake a drastic shift in policy. After that, negotiations served to work out the details.

President Anwar Sadat decided to end Egypt's conflict with Israel. Then he proved he meant it by traveling to Jerusalem. Then a treaty was hammered out at Camp David. Similarly, Mao Zedong and Chou Enlai decided that the USSR was China's most threatening enemy and so they decided to draw closer to the US. Secret negotiations with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, capped off by a painstakingly choreographed visit to China by President Richard Nixon, formalized the new policy. As for the ending of the Cold War, the various summits and negotiations were secondary. What was decisive was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's decision that the USSR should no longer see itself as the enemy of the "capitalist" world.

Throughout the Cold War there were voices in the West arguing that if only we would talk more with Soviet rulers we could settle our differences. In practice, every US president--Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush--met with Soviet heads of government. Not one of those meetings yielded beneficial results, and a few, notably Kennedy's, which emboldened the Communists to erect the Berlin Wall, and Nixon's, which ceded nuclear supremacy to the Kremlin, were downright harmful.

The Cold War was symmetrical in that each side tried to best the other. But it was not symmetrical in origins. Revolutionary ideology drove the Soviet Union to seek global supremacy. When the US grasped this in 1947-8, it fought back. Thus, the enmity did not result from "misunderstanding" but just the opposite. Virtually the moment Gorbachev decided to end the USSR's struggle against the West, the "war" ended. There had never been any desire for hostility on the western side.

Much the same is true in the current clash between Iran and the US. The US has no designs against Iran and no desire for conflict. Iran, however, has ambitions to spread the "global Islamic revolution" and dominate the Persian Gulf. Toward these ends, it seeks nuclear weapons. The US resists these ambitions in order to defend itself and its allies. Iran has an official slogan, "death to America", posted on walls and chanted at Friday "prayers". No one in America chants "death to Iran".

If Iran relinquished its ambitions for regional dominance and global revolution, and sought only to develop its economy, enhance the lives of its people and live in peace, the conflict with the US would be over automatically. Negotiations at that point would be easy and largely technical: how many consulates to open here and there, the modalities of renewed commerce, etc. When Iran's leaders are ready for such a change in course, there are a thousand ways they can let Washington know, ranging from secret diplomatic channels to speeches splashed across newspaper headlines. (Sadat revealed his new direction in a speech to parliament and a television interview.)

If there were something Iran wanted from the US for which it was willing to trade away its imperial and revolutionary ambitions, it would have made that known long ago. Until Iran abandons those goals, no diplomatic acrobatics will narrow the gap between the two countries any more than did the negotiations between Washington and Tokyo in the 1930s that ended on the day of Pearl Harbor. Then, the US opposed Japan's ambitions to create a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", i.e., a regional empire much like the one Tehran dreams of today.

Eventually the US and Iran will be reconciled. This will happen not as a result of diplomacy but in one of three ways: a change of heart by Iranian rulers, replacement of the Iranian regime, or in the way that the US and Japan finally became friends.- Published 4/12/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org

Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is the author of "The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East".