by Amir Taheri
The third model for engaging Iran is the Clinton model. Beating his own drum, Bill Clinton has rejected the threat of force and called for “engaging” Iran. This is how he put it in a recent speech: “Anytime somebody said in my presidency, ‘If you don’t do this, people will think you’re weak,’ I always asked the same question for eight years: ‘Can we kill ’em tomorrow?’ If we can kill ’em tomorrow, then we’re not weak.” Clinton’s pseudo-Socratic method of either/or-ing issues out of existence is too well known to merit an exposé. This time, however, Clinton did not ask enough questions. For example, he might have asked: What if by refusing to kill some of them today we are forced to kill many more of them tomorrow? Also: What if, once assured that we are not going to kill them today, they regroup and come to kill us in larger numbers?
Clinton did not reveal that in 1999 he offered the mullahs “a grand bargain” under which the Islamic Republic would be recognized as the “regional power” in exchange for lip service to U.S. “interests in the Middle East.” As advance payment for the “bargain,” as we have already noted, Clinton apologized for “all the wrongs that my country and culture have done” to Iran, whatever that was supposed to mean. The “bargain,” had it not been vetoed by the Supreme Guide in Tehran, might have secured Clinton the nobel Peace Prize he coveted, but it would have sharpened the Khomeinists’ appetite for exporting revolution.
The fourth model for engaging Iran is that of nixon in China: a U.S. president taking the trouble of traveling to Beijing for direct and unconditional talks with adversaries. This model is based on the myth that it was Kissinger’s “deft diplomacy” and Realpolitik that made nixon-in-China possible. Facts, however, show a different picture. To start with, they show that the dramatic trip was made possible because China, and not the United States, had changed. It is often forgotten that the initiative that eventually led to the visit came from China, through Pakistan and Iran under the shah. By 1970, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution—a moment of madness that had wrecked the Chinese economy and pushed the nation to the brink of famine—had run out of steam. Its principal orchestrator, Marshall Lin Biao, had died in a mysterious plane crash. The “Gang of Four,” including Mao Zedong’s wife and the powerful mayor of Shanghai, Yao Wen-yuan, had been neutralized by the pragmatists led by Zhou Enlai. At the same time, China, having suffered a series of military defeats at the hands of the Soviets along the Usuri River, found itself exposed and vulnerable, caught between two superpowers acting as enemies. China needed to normalize relations with the United States to counterbalance the Soviet threat and end its isolation in Asia. It took a number of measures to show goodwill towards the United States. It all but stopped support for anti-Western rebels in several places, including the Sultanate of Oman and Angola. It also reduced support for north Vietnam and indicated readiness to help broker a deal to end the war in Indochina. Beijing also dropped its longstanding demand that the United States break all ties with Taiwan and allow it to “return to the motherland,” presumably by force. In other words, China had met most of the American “preconditions” as the price of direct talks.
The Khomeinist regime, precisely because it bases its legitimacy as a revolutionary power on the teachings of Islam, something it does not fully control in doctrinal terms, cannot abandon its radical pretensions as easily as did the Maoists in Beijing, who “owned” their ideology and could alter it at will. Mao could have the last word on Maoism. But no Iranian Supreme Guide could pretend to have the last word on Islam. The most zealous of Islamists would always find someone even more zealous. And since Islam’s ultimate ambition is to rule the world, the only debate within it would be about ways of achieving that goal, not about its legitimacy.
Despite later attempts at waffling, Obama not only wants the United States to drop its preconditions—including, for example, that the Islamic Republic stop arming groups that kill Americans in Iraq—but also ignores demands made by the Un Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Instead, he has promised a number of goodies to the Islamic Republic even before Tehran has agreed to play ball. This kind of diplomacy reminds one of “Crazy Eddie,” a character from American television advertising a few years ago. Shouting at the top of his lungs, Crazy Eddie would start by offering something for sale, usually a gadget of doubtful utility, at a ridiculously low price. Having presumably attracted the viewers’ attention, he would announce that he was also offering a “free gift” for every item purchased. Shouting “and this is not all,” Crazy Eddie would then proceed to add “free gift” to “free gift” until one needed a wheelbarrow to carry all the gadgets he was giving away for the purchase of a single item.
Contrary to Obama’s claim, the Bush administration had been trying to “engage” the Islamic Republic at least since May 2006 when the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, issued a solemn statement trying to tantalize the Khomeinists with a range of Crazy Eddie-style goodies. Ms. Rice’s bag of treats included security guarantees, help to modernize Iran’s energy industry, an offer of high-speed Internet technology, membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and upgrading Iran’s derelict air transport fleet. Contrary to Obama’s claim, these goodies were offered with no strings attached. Ms. Rice did not even demand that the Islamic Republic stop arming terror units that were killing American troops in Iraq. Ahmadinejad, however, refused to bite. He did not want those things, or anything in particular; he wanted everything and was sure he would get it.
However, it was the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, who came closest to the Crazy Eddie image. “The package of incentives includes active international support to build state-of-the-art light-water power reactors and access to reliable nuclear fuel,” the ambassador promised in 2008. Iran would also receive spare parts for its aging U.S.-made jetliners, credit facilities through the World Bank, membership of the WTO, and a lifting of the ban on Iranian exports to the United States. But as Crazy Eddie used to say, that was not all. Later, Khalilzad offered other free gifts in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal. “We call on Iran to engage in constructive negotiations over the future of the nuclear program,” the ambassador wrote. “Such negotiations, if successful, would have profound benefits for Iran and the Iranian people. The message from the U.S. to the people of Iran is that America respects your great country. We want Iran to be a full partner in the international community.” Having piled on the presents, Khalilzad threw in the clincher: “If Iran respects its international obligations, it will have no better friend than the United States of America.”
The trouble with all this is that the diplomats and their political masters ignore the fact that the “Crazy Eddie” technique does not work when one is dealing with “Martyr Hussein,” the central figure in the Khomeinist mythology.
The ideal Khomeinist model is Hussein bin Ali, the third imam of Shiism, who was “martyred” in Karbala, Iraq, on the tenth day of the lunar month of Muharram (known as Ashrua) in 680. Hussein broke a compromise that his elder brother had reached with the Umayyid caliph in Damascus and marched into Iraq to raise an army to capture the caliphate. Very soon, however, it became clear that he lacked popular support and the material resources required for a major campaign. He ended up with only seventy-two companions and their womenfolk and children.
Caliph Yazid tried Crazy Eddie salesmanship by seeking to persuade Martyr Hussein to accept a range of “free gifts” in exchange for a compromise. Martyr Hussein was not after free gifts, however. He did not want to be given anything. He preferred to take what he wanted, which meant everything, and then to kill the caliph as well. He believed that Allah himself had given him a mission to capture the caliphate, conquer the world, and hoist the banner of Islam on every rooftop. Failing that, his mission was to kill as many of the “impious” as he could before securing his own martyr status. To the Shiites, as former president Khatami has said, Hussein is “the Perfect Man, the Ideal Man,” an “eternal model for all of us, in every aspect of our li
ves.” One of the most popular slogans of the Khomeinist movement is: “Every city is Karbala! Every day is Ashura!” Khomeinists tell people that Hussein regarded death as sweeter than “giving an inch.”
Western politicians who don’t believe in anything cannot imagine that others might believe in something so bizarre as the cult of Hussein.
The Islamic Republic resents being treated like a naughty boy who is promised goodies in exchange for better behavior. Ahmadinejad, seeing himself as a messianic figure with a world mission from the Hidden Imam, feels insulted when Westerners try to tempt him with membership of the WTO. General Muhammad-Ali Jaafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has poured scorn on the West’s Crazy Eddie approach. “Our revolution has not yet ended,” he told fellow officers in January 2008. “Our Imam did not limit the movement of the Islamic Revolution to this country, but drew greater horizons. Our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government and the rule of the Lord of the Time [the Hidden Imam].”
The current radical leadership in Tehran is determined to change the future of mankind. Only Crazy Eddie would think that Ahmadinejad and Jaafari could be bribed with spare parts for Boeings or “state of the art power stations.” The concept of khod-kafai (autarchy or self-reliance) is a central plank of Ahmadinejad’s vision. It was in the name of khod-kafai that he ordered the resumption of uranium enrichment three years ago.
Khalilzad’s biggest “free gift” was the prospect of Iran and the United States becoming “the best of friends.” But this is exactly what the mullahs, led by Khomeini, revolted against in 1979. The mullahs and their Communist allies hated the shah precisely because he had made Iran and the United States best friends. The Khomeinists raided the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took its diplomats hostage in 1979 to break ties with Washington. Over the past twenty-eight years, the Islamic Republic has occasionally flirted with the idea of “revolution in one country,” most recently under Khatami, who engaged in secret talks with the Clinton administration. But the regime has always reverted to the concept of “permanent revolution.”
Obama might think that in calling for talks with Ahmadinejad he has come up with a great new idea. The fact is that every U.S. administration has talked to the Islamic Republic and has gotten little for the effort. Carter negotiated with the mullahs but failed to obtain the release of the hostages in time to help his re-election. Reagan negotiated with and supplied arms to the Islamic Republic. He even invited Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi to tour the White House, and he sent Khomeini an autographed Bible and a kosher cake shaped like a key. All he got in return was suicide attacks against U.S. positions in Lebanon. Perhaps the most generous offer made to the Islamic Republic came in 1989 from the first President George Bush. Two weeks before his inauguration, he offered to wipe the slate clean and deal directly with the Islamic Republic as a major regional power. The answer he got came from Khamenehi, then president of the Islamic Republic:
You have nothing to say to us! We object. We do not agree to relationship with you! We are not prepared to establish relations with powerful world-devourers such as you! The Iranian nation has no need of the United States; nor is the Iranian nation afraid of the United States. . . . It is up to us to set conditions, and reject your behavior, your oppression [of other nations] and your intervention in so many parts of the world.1
Most recently, Washington and Tehran held direct talks in 2002 in Bonn, Germany, and in 2006 in Baghdad. The outcome was an intensification of Khomeinist mischief-making in Iraq.
Others who talked to the Islamic Republic fared no better. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, longtime West German foreign minister, built his career around the hope of bringing the Islamic Republic into the mainstream. He invented the phrase “critical dialogue”—which in practice meant a joint Iranian-European bad-mouthing of the United States. Most recently, Jack Straw, during his tenure as the British foreign secretary, visited Tehran more frequently than Washington, but failed to obtain a single concession. Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan have been talking to Iran to determine the status of the Caspian Sea for fifteen years, without getting anywhere. Turkey has held talks with Iran since 1989 on Turkish-Kurdish rebels and the Turkish branch of Hezballah, also to no avail. In every case, the Islamic Republic has interpreted the readiness of an adversary to talk as a sign of weakness and, as a result, has hardened its position. Kuwait has been negotiating the demarcation of its water borders with the Islamic Republic since 1980—so far with no results. The United Arab Emirates has been seeking direct talks with the Islamic Republic concerning a dispute over three tiny islands in the Persian Gulf, again with no results. negotiation is possible and could prove productive only if those engaged in it recognize each other’s equal worth, at least implicitly. The Islamic Republic cannot do that for any possible negotiating partner. The reason is that it regards itself as not only the world’s number-one power but absolutely the only legitimate power on earth, because it represents the only “true version of pure Muhammadan Islam.” The infidel powers’ very existence is a bonus to them, until the Hidden Imam returns and puts them all to the sword. As for countries that profess Islam, most are viewed as guilty of having “modified” Islam and are open to the charge of Iltiqat (dilution). As for countries such as Kuwait and the UAE, they are “mere midgets”; in fact, Ahmadinejad has described the oil-rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf as “gas stations, not real countries.”
As the last of the revolutionary regimes, the Islamic Republic thinks its ideals should not be sacrificed at the altar of mundane diplomatic considerations. At the same time, rivalries among the Khomeinists prevent each faction from adopting a policy of compromise whether at home or abroad. Because the overthrow of the shah came with unexpected ease, the vast majority of the new regime’s personnel had no time to secure a “revolutionary biography.” They have tried to acquire one after the fact by talking and behaving in the most radical way possible.
Each group within the establishment is constantly watching rivals for the slightest sign of lacking in revolutionary zeal. no Khomeinist leader would be seen making the slightest concessions to an outsider without risking political demise. The regime’s history is full of officials who committed political suicide by trying to play by international rules. Khomeinist diplomacy is designed to seek total triumph for the Islamic Republic and total surrender from its negotiating partners on all issues. Anyone following the official media in Tehran would soon learn that the leadership could not conceive of a “win-win” situation: It must always win and its negotiating partners must always lose.
When Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of the American hostages in 1980, he said he had done so as a gesture of Islamic generosity towards their families, not because of months of talks with Washington. He released them when he no longer needed them—Carter had lost the election and had been “punished” for brokering the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel. Khomeini recognized no laws outside Islam as interpreted by himself. Here is how he put it: “All international laws are the product of the syphilitic minds of a handful of idiots. And Islam has obliterated all of them. [Islam] recognizes no law except its own laws anywhere in the world. . . . Because they are [of] Divine [origin] Islamic laws are eternally fixed and unchangeable.”2
Since 1979, the real question with regard to Iran has been simple: Should the world kowtow to the Khomeinist regime or should the Khomeinist regime accept the global rules of the game? The Tehran leadership has repeatedly made clear that it will not, indeed cannot, play by any rules except those fixed by itself. Despite periodic claims by self-styled Iran experts that the Khomeinist revolution has entered its Thermidor and, given encouragement, would opt for normalization, there are no signs that Iran has freed itself of the hysteria caused by the upheavals of 1979. Ahmadinejad makes no secret of his ambition to drive the United States out of the Middle East, replacing America’s influence with Iran’s in the name of the Khomeinist revolution. He is likely
to interpret the “Crazy Eddie” tactics of the West as a sign of weakness and a vindication of his claim that “punching them in the face” is more productive than shaking their hands.
The International Atomic Energy Agency referred the Islamic Republic to the Un Security Council because Tehran had violated its obligations under the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. The council found Tehran guilty as charged and yet stopped short of decreeing effective punitive measures. A mere rap on the knuckles could not persuade Ahmadinejad to abandon his self-set mission to save the world from American domination. “Free gifts” would only encourage him in his belief that the tougher he gets the more concessions he will receive.
The real issue is who will shape the future of the Middle East—the United States or the Islamic Republic, or, as some naïve souls hope, both in partnership. What the United States needs is an open, honest, and exhaustive debate on what to do with a regime that claims a mission to drive the Western democracies out of the Middle East, wipe Israel off the map, create an Islamic superpower, and conquer the world for “the Only True Faith.” Calling for talks is just cheap talk. It is important to say what the proposed talks should be about. In the meantime, talk of “constructive engagement” is sure to encourage Ahmadinejad’s intransigence. Why should he slow down, let alone stop, when there are no bumps on the road? Even the craftiest of diplomats cannot bring Crazy Eddie and Martyr Hussein together.