by Ray Takeyh
A BIBLE, A CAKE, AND MISSILES
The resolution of the hostage crisis did not alter the established pattern of U.S.–Iranian relations. Tehran continued on its path of defiance and hostility to America, while the Reagan administration embraced a punitive policy of coercion and containment. From the bombing of American marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 to Washington’s attempt to internationalize its economic sanctions against Iran, the two countries seemed locked in an enduring pattern of animosity. In a sense, Iran’s radical posture created a self-generating and self-sustaining momentum of antagonism. Given the centrality of the Middle East to America’s security concerns, the United States was not about to abandon the region to Iran’s ideological enterprise. Indeed, the more mischievous Iran became, the more Washington grew determined to sustain its allies and bolster its presence. It would be America’s policy to continually inflict setbacks and defeats on Iran as a lesson to its ruling elite and to those in the region attracted by the theocracy’s intransigence.
At times, America’s obsession with negating Iran’s influence would lead it to make common cause with unsavory allies, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Reagan administration did much to prop up the Iraqi regime, which it increasingly saw as a bulwark against Iran’s revolution. Through the provision of economic assistance and sensitive battlefield intelligence, Washington tilted in favor of Iraq during its war against Iran. Even more egregious was America’s indifference to Saddam’s employment of chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and soldiers.31 All the aspects of Saddam’s behavior that the two Bush administrations would later find so objectionable, such as aggression against neighboring states and the use of weapons of mass destruction, the Reagan team not only tolerated but implicitly encouraged. Blinded by its suspicion of Iran, Washington essentially ignored its own rhetoric, principles, and self-interest in cultivating the genocidal Saddam Hussein.32
The pattern of recrimination and suspicion seemed to have been broken by the infamous Iran-Contra Affair, an unsavory deal between Washington and Tehran to trade arms for American hostages held in Lebanon—and then funnel Iranian money to Nicaragua where it would fund the Contra rebels fighting the Marxist government there.33 Once the plot was revealed, many in the Reagan administration defended their conduct by stressing that the entire enterprise was motivated by a desire to bolster the power of the moderates within the Iranian clerical hierarchy.34 Despite various congressional investigations and published memoirs, there is still much about the Iran-Contra Affair that eludes the average analyst. Was the United States government discerning enough to differentiate among the bewildering factions within Iran and determine who the moderates were? How could the transfer of arms to Iran buttress the power of such moderates? Was Khomeini, with his well-honed anti-American instincts, prepared to dispense with his ideology and embark on a new relationship with the United States? And, of course, what were the lasting ramifications of one of the most dramatic failures in U.S. diplomacy toward Iran?
Although the Islamic Republic’s approach to Israel will be examined later, it is important here to note that to an extent the origins of the Iran-Contra Affair are mired in the complex web of Iranian-Israeli relations. The war between Iran and Iraq offered the Israeli state a unique set of opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, the assumption of power by a theocratic regime determined to strengthen Islamic forces battling Israel confronted Jerusalem with a pronounced threat. On the other hand, by the early 1980s the Israelis still defined Iraq as their greater enemy. The Ba’athist regime, with its quest to lead the Arab world, had embraced a stridently anti-Israeli posture and was busy mobilizing the region against the Jewish state. Moreover, Iraq had emerged as the leader of the Arab bloc that was seeking to isolate Egypt subsequent to Anwar al-Sadat’s acceptance of the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel. For Israeli officials, who hoped that the peace treaty with Egypt would lead to similar compacts with other Arab states, Iraq’s conduct was particularly disturbing. Saddam’s unpredictable rule and his quest for nuclear arms (which in 1981 led to a successful Israeli preemptive strike on Iraq’s atomic installations) were seen as a more immediate threat than the theocratic regime in Iran. For Israel, the idea of assisting Iran in a war that was preoccupying Saddam and draining his treasury was not entirely unwelcome.35
Beyond the issue of Iraq, there has always been a strain in Israeli foreign policy that has sought to craft relations with the “outer ring” of the Middle East, namely, the non-Arab powers of Turkey and Iran. Given these countries’ own tense and problematic relations with the Arab world, the possibility of establishing an alignment among the region’s non-Arab states has long intrigued Israeli politicians. The establishment of such ties could enable Jerusalem to escape its isolation and even pressure the recalcitrant Arab regimes into accepting its legitimacy. In a peculiar manner, this argument discounted the intensity of the clerical regime’s anti-Zionist convictions, since Khomeini was not about to suppress his disdain for a state he had spent much of his life castigating.36
Nowhere is the amorality of politics more pronounced than in the Middle East. Under the banner “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Jerusalem began selling arms to Iran soon after Iraq’s invasion.37 The Israelis saw much to commend a policy that prolonged the war, exhausted Saddam’s resources, and diverted Iran’s attention. However, given that much of Israeli military arsenal was furnished by the United States, they could not sell such arms to a third party without American permission. Thus, the continuation of Israeli policy was contingent on American approbation, even complicity. Israeli officials would do much to entangle the United States in their dealings with Iran and were critical in brokering the arms-for-hostages deal.
Adding to this complex brew was the reality of southern Lebanon in the early 1980s. The raging civil war among Lebanon’s different religious groups had destroyed one of the most progressive societies in the Middle East. A number of American missionaries, journalists, and academics were caught in the cross-fire of Lebanese animosities and were taken hostage by Iran’s Shiite client, the Hezbollah. The fate of these hostages proved a heavy burden for President Ronald Reagan, who was genuinely anguished about their continued captivity. The distressed president persisted in pressuring his intelligence operatives and policy advisers to liberate the hostages, and he could not fathom why a superpower was incapable of freeing a handful of its citizens in southern Lebanon. In the meantime, developments in Iran were also making the trading of hostages for U.S. arms possible.
By the mid-1980s, Iran was in shambles; its stalemated war with Iraq was not only draining its economy but also disenchanting its once-revolutionary masses. Saddam’s war machine was inflicting heavy damage on the Iranian populace and the country’s military, leading to fears within the clerical regime of popular discontent, even a coup. Given Khomeini’s absolute determination to pursue the war, Iran required weapons and spare parts that could only be obtained from the United States, and the perennially pragmatic Rafsanjani and his allies were now the key Iranian officials searching for American arms. A bewildering cast of Israeli officials, unscrupulous middlemen, cunning mullahs, and gullible U.S. functionaries would now come together to craft a deal that would meet Reagan’s desire to free the hostages and Iran’s quest for weapons. Perhaps only in the Middle East could such disparate events involving covert Israeli-Iranian arms dealings, hostage taking in southern Lebanon, and an American president’s anguish over his countrymen’s captivity fit seamlessly into the same narrative.
The comical aspects of the operation mirror its intellectual misconceptions. The former national security adviser, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, arrived in Tehran with a cake and a Bible signed by Reagan as a gesture of goodwill, hoping to meet the moderates he had come to empower. McFarlane was relegated into seeing second-tier foreign ministry officials and quickly dismissed. In the meantime, as shipments of sophisticated American weapons arrived in Tehran, particularly the antitank TOW missiles (Tube-launched
Optical-tracking Wire-guided), a few of the hostages were released, but this led to more being captured since they were proving a valuable commodity of exchange for the mullahs.
The different parties involved in the deal had varying motives. Israel was merely sustaining its existing policy of aiding Iran in its war against its more immediate enemy, Iraq. Reagan was in a desperate search for release of the hostages and evidently acquiesced to an arrangement that contradicted his own administration’s policy of prohibiting arms to Iran. A few American officials, such as McFarlane, seemed to hope that the arms deal would pave the way for a more normalized relationship with Tehran. However, yet another group of officials involved in the deal, such as the unscrupulous National Security Council aide Oliver North, were enchanted not so much by the prospect of reconciling with Iran, but by aiding the Contra rebels waging war against the Marxist Nicaraguan government. It was not long before North and his boss, national security adviser John Poindexter, were diverting the profits from the arms sales to the rebels in contravention of congressional mandates. Given such differing ambitions and the unsavory nature of so many of the actors involved, it was inevitable that the arms deal would end in scandal.
Were there moderates in Iran willing to normalize relations with the United States if only they obtained a cache of arms? To be sure, the Islamic Republic had factions and divisions of opinion on foreign policy issues. The more pragmatic politicians such as Rafsanjani bemoaned the Islamic Republic’s self-imposed and debilitating isolation, and stressed that Iran’s economic quandaries required developing links with international markets.38 This was pragmatism born out of compulsion, as Iran could not wage war or deal with its economic burdens and growing population with strained international relations. However, it would be a misreading of the domestic situation to suggest that such pragmatic redefinition of interests constituted ascendance of a moderate faction willing and able to normalize relations with the United States.
The many U.S. officials who pressed the idea of theocratic moderates also failed to appreciate that Ayatollah Khomeini was still the central actor in Iran’s decision-making process. For Khomeini to achieve his goal of toppling Saddam, his forces required weapons that only the United States could provide. Thus his willingness to trade arms for hostages was not so much a desire to begin a new relationship with the United States but an appreciation that his maximalist war aims necessitated a retreat on the issue of America. America still remained the “Great Satan,” but one with an arsenal that could be used against the more immediate danger of Saddam. In the end, it was not so much the rise of the moderates but the requirements of a desperate regime waging a costly war that governed Tehran’s approach to the arms deal.
The Iran-Contra Affair continues to exercise a subtle yet perceptible influence on U.S. policy. The primary imperative of politics is caution, which has usually translated into unimaginative and banal policies. It is easy to be derisive of McFarlane and the other American officials who arrived in Tehran with their Bible and cake. At every step of the way, the Reagan administration made the wrong calculation and substituted its flawed impressions for reasoned analysis. However, if there is to be a solution to the U.S.–Iran imbroglio, it will require imagination and a propensity to think outside the box. After the Iran-Contra Affair came to light, ending many careers and blemishing an entire administration’s reputation, not too many American officials were willing to assume risks and move forward with provocative ideas. The foreign policy establishment was to remain firmly and instinctively in its enclosed box when it came to the issue of Iran.
An even more dramatic legacy of Iran-Contra is the discrediting of the concept of moderate Iranians. Even after Khomeini’s death, successive U.S. administrations mired in the so-called lessons of the Iran-Contra Affair would dismiss the notion of Iranian pragmatism. This would prove particularly tragic when Muhammad Khatami arrived in power in 1997 and was initially ignored by the Clinton administration as just another Iranian politician with mere soothing words. As we have seen, there were moderates in Iran during the 1980s who may even have been interested in forging a different relationship with the United States. But the ponderous shadow of Khomeini stifled all such initiatives. For many Americans that shadow has never lifted.
Subsequent to the revelations of a deal that contradicted so many of the administration’s public pronouncements, official declarations, and wars on terrorism, Washington grew determined to prove its resolution and toughness. There would be more tilts toward Iraq and further attempts to contain and isolate the Islamic Republic. Such policies were viewed not just as strategically necessary but politically convenient. As a result of the Iran-Contra Affair, the paradigm of hostility and recrimination that initially guided the Reagan administration remained intact. It was too politically costly and bureaucratically hazardous to consider alternative approaches to Iran.
The Iran-Contra Affair also had implications for the Islamic Republic’s internal factional politics. While high-profile congressional investigations and sensationalist press accounts characterized the American reaction to the deal, a quieter but just as serious struggle took place within the Islamic Republic’s corridors of power. The sensitivity of trading with the “Great Satan” provoked its own uproar in Tehran. After all, as the Bazargan episode reveals, dealing with the Americans does not usually contribute to political longevity in the Islamic Republic. The sordid affair first came to public knowledge when an Iranian extremist faction leaked it to a Lebanese newspaper. The hard-line parliament even called for an investigation to “determine which authorities and officials decided to establish links with Washington.”39 The pragmatists, such as Rafsanjani, were now in the militants’ crosshairs for their duplicitous stance toward America. The pandemonium ended when Khomeini personally intervened and admonished the parliamentarians, “You should not create schism. This is contrary to Islam.”40 It was only through Khomeini’s intervention that Rafsanjani and the pragmatists were saved.
After Khomeini’s death, Rafsanjani and his allies assumed greater power, but their increased stature did not diminish their anxiety about dealing with America. The hard-liners, led by the new Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, would watch carefully and be ready to obstruct any enterprising attempts to reach out to the “Great Satan.” The ideologically vulnerable Rafsanjani would at times entertain ideas about new relations with America, but mindful of his past and cautious of his power, would quickly recoil when meeting resistance from the Right. In a sense, the Iran-Contra Affair became part of the theocracy’s vicious factional politics, militating against moderation toward the United States.
Two decades later, the ghost of Iran-Contra still haunts Washington and Tehran. Though there would be occasional shifts to reduce animosities, both parties were too aware of their past failings to move decisively forward. In both countries, politicians proved too feckless and bureaucracies too cautious for bold initiatives. And it would be such circumspection that would undermine one of the rare opportunities to fundamentally realign U.S.–Iranian relations.
DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS
It is customary, even conventional, to assess President Muhammad Khatami’s tenure as an utter failure. To be sure, Khatami did not achieve his lofty ambition of creating an Islamic democracy, a regime that would seamlessly amalgamate religious convictions and pluralistic precepts. In the realm of foreign policy, however, Khatami’s achievements were considerable—he fundamentally altered Iran’s international orientation. In a dramatic twist, a president often castigated for his lack of courage managed to compel an influential segment of the conservative bloc to support a variety of his progressive foreign policy initiatives.
In formulating his strategy, Khatami perceived a clear nexus between domestic liberalization and international relations. Addressing a gathering of Islamic states in 1997, the new president emphasized that a government whose legitimacy was based on popular mandate would “recognize the right of other nations to self-determination and access to the
necessary means for honorable living.”41 Foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi echoed this theme, claiming, “We hope with the international reaction to the large turnout in the elections, we will see a major change in Iran’s relations with the regional nations and the entire world.”42 In essence, a regime seeking to democratize its governing order would pursue a responsible foreign policy predicated on cooperation and interdependence, conceding the sovereignty of its neighbors, the norms of the international system, and the need for dialogue. The president’s policy was a clear repudiation of Khomeini’s divisive diplomacy, as it implicitly recognized that Iran’s predicament was its own fault. A policy of confrontation and spreading the revolution through terror had succeeded only in marginalizing Iran in the Middle East and the larger international community.
Soon after his election, Iran’s intellectual president stunned both his domestic and international audiences by stressing that Iran’s mission was no longer the export of its revolution and the destabilization of its neighborhood. “Foreign policy does not mean guns and rifles, but utilizing all legitimate means to convince others,” declared Khatami.43 Along these lines, the new president emphasized that “any country that recognizes our independence and does not have an aggressive policy toward us can be our friend.”44 Such gestures became the foundation of Khatami’s “Dialogue of Civilizations” proposal, which called for intellectuals, artists, writers, and politicians from different countries to get together and address the commonalities of their seemingly disparate cultures. Gone were the days of incendiary rhetoric and calls for preservation of Iran’s Islamic identity through confrontation with sinister global forces.45