In March 1995, Clinton signed an executive order banning investment by American firms in the Iranian oil industry. In May, he went further and signed a second order banning all trade with Iran. In the following year, he signed into law the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA). The law, principally the brainchild of Senator Alphonse D’Amato of New York, penalized any country that invested more than $40 million (later lowered to $20 million) in Iran’s or Libya’s energy industry. ILSA was never strictly enforced. The law allowed for a presidential waiver, which Clinton often used; it probably was illegal under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and European and other states bristled at the suggestion that America would dictate trade policy to them. However, ILSA was indicative of the hardening mood in Washington.
Iran hardened its position, too. It intensified obstruction of the Arab-Israeli peace process, increased its support for Hizbollah, and began to support two other Palestinian rejectionist groups, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Hizbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, and in February 1996 Hamas and PIJ carried out four bombings in Israel in nine days, killing 59 Israelis. The bombings had a direct impact on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, which had progressed rapidly under the direction of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres. In November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by one of his own countrymen, and elections in the spring were contested by Peres, who had succeeded Rabin, and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, a strong critic of the agreements already reached between Israel and the Palestinians. The bombings ensured Peres’s defeat.
In June 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and wounded 372 others at the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia. There were claims of Iranian complicity in the bombing. Hopes for better ties between the two countries were, for the moment at least, buried beneath the rubble.
Nevertheless, the election of Mohammad Khatami as Iran’s president in 1997 offered a new opportunity for a rapprochement between the two countries. Khatami came to office as a reformer. He moved quickly to improve relations with Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi crown prince indicated trust in Khatami’s intentions by attending the Islamic summit in Tehran in December 1997. At the summit, Khatami assured the PLO leader Yasser Arafat that Iran would abide by any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was acceptable to the Palestinian people. Since Arafat was already committed to a two-state solution, this was a far cry from Iran’s call for the destruction of Israel. In January 1998, in an interview on CNN, Khatami called for a dialogue between the people of Iran and the people of the United States to remove the “wall of mistrust” between them, and for an exchange of writers, artists, journalists, academics, and tourists. It seemed fairly clear that he saw these exchanges as preliminaries to an eventual dialogue between the two governments.
President Clinton responded cautiously but enthusiastically. He encouraged an American wrestling team to participate in a tournament in Iran, and the American athletes were warmly received. In a series of steps over the next four years, the United States eased visa restrictions on Iranians; facilitated visits by Iranian academics, artists, and tourists; added the MEK, the Iranian opposition movement based in Iraq, to the list of outlawed terrorist groups; eased sanctions to allow the purchase by Iran of medicines and humanitarian supplies as well as spare parts for Iran’s aging fleet of Boeing aircraft; and allowed the import of Iranian pistachios, carpets, and caviar. These were small steps, but intended to signal a readiness to do more.
Clinton also reached out to the Iranians directly. He sent a message via the Swiss that the United States was ready for direct talks on all relevant issues. In May 1998, Vice President Gore handed a message from Clinton for Khatami to Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia expressing a desire for better relations and direct discussions. In April of the following year Clinton added remarks to a dinner speech at the White House recognizing Iranian grievances against the West going back many decades. In June 1999, two high-ranking administration officials handed a letter from Clinton for Khatami to Sultan Qaboos of Oman. It stressed the American desire for better relations with Iran, but cited the possible involvement of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanese Hizbollah in the Khobar Towers bombing as an obstacle. It was important that this matter be cleared up first, the message said. The letter was delivered to Khatami in Tehran. The reply came a few days later, not from Khatami but in a statement by a government spokesman, denying any Iranian involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing.
In a June 1998 speech, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had already invited Iran to join the United States in drawing up “a road map leading to normal relations.” In a major speech in March 2000, she renewed this offer and, in a gesture thought to be important to the Iranians, expressed regret for the American role in the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. But the speech also noted that in Iran “control over the military, courts, and police remain in unelected hands.” That sentence caused offense to Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei. He replied three days later, again not directly but in a public speech, and his response was uniformly negative. Once again, an attempt to reach out had failed.
The Clinton-Khatami years had presented the most promising opportunity since the 1979 revolution for dialogue between Iran and the United States. Both Clinton and Khatami were eager for an understanding; and both, in word and action, sought to open the door for talks. But Khatami was almost certainly prevented from taking up Clinton’s advances by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who had deep reservations about the utility for Iran of negotiations with the United States. America was the stronger power, and he did not want to negotiate from a position of weakness. He knew that in negotiations he would have to compromise on issues central to his regional policy, such as Iran’s unflinching hostility to the state of Israel. He believed that Iran’s search for regional and Islamic leadership and its claim to be the one country that dared stand up to the United States would be jeopardized if Iran sat at the negotiating table with America. He relied on powerful constituencies in Iran, including the Revolutionary Guards and the security services, that opposed a rapprochement with the United States.
President Clinton could not make the “grand gesture”—for example, the lifting of sanctions—that might have strengthened Khatami’s hand at home until Iranian policy on key issues, such as opposition to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process or support for groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas, changed. Yet Khatami could not act unilaterally on these key issues or soften Iran’s opposition to Israel and support for Israel’s enemies because they had become pillars of Iran’s foreign policy. The Clinton-Khatami years offered glimpses of tantalizing possibilities but tragically devolved into a stark reminder of the serious obstacles to an Iranian-American understanding.
THE BARREN YEARS: BUSH II
These obstacles only multiplied during the presidency of George W. Bush. The new administration came to office believing that, as the world’s sole superpower, it could set the international agenda and need pay little heed to governments that disagreed with America’s policies and priorities. This view became entrenched after 9/11 and America’s overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The administration saw no need to compromise with countries like Iran and Syria that pursued policies in the Middle East opposed to U.S. interests. In Iran, President Khatami was much weaker than he had been during the Clinton years and his reform movement was in retreat. His successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected president in 2005, adopted a populist style at home and a confrontational style abroad, which exacerbated long-standing issues between Tehran and Washington. The American invasion of Iraq and the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein found Iran and the United States competing for influence in that country.
Mistrust of Iran and a disregard for serious negotiations with Tehran characterized the attitude of the administration. This was illustrated during Bush’s first term by the response to an Iranian proposal for what some observers described as a “grand bargain”
between the two countries. In May 2003, using the Swiss as intermediaries, Iran submitted in writing a proposal for comprehensive talks on all outstanding issues. In exchange for recognition of Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region and an end to U.S. sanctions and attempts to isolate Iran, the Islamic Republic expressed readiness to discuss its nuclear program, its policy in Iraq, its support for rejectionist Palestinian groups, and possible recognition of Israel within its 1967 borders. The Bush administration, however, did not give the initiative serious consideration or respond to it, and as a result no effort was made to test Iran’s sincerity in making these proposals. Other attempts by Iran to initiate bilateral talks in 2005 and 2006 were also rebuffed.
Initially, prospects for improved relations looked promising. The so-called six-plus-two talks on Afghanistan, initiated in 1997 among Afghanistan’s six immediate neighbors and representatives of the United States and the European community, continued under the Bush administration; and Iranian and American representatives met regularly around the same table. In 2001, these talks evolved into one-on-one talks, and representatives of Iran and the United States continued to meet in Paris and Geneva until 2003. Iran quietly assisted the American war in Afghanistan and was instrumental in helping the United States put together an interim government to run the country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Eager to see Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iran raised no objection when the United States invaded Iraq in the following year.
But perennial problems soon resurfaced. In January 2002, the Israelis captured a ship, the Karine A, which they said was carrying Iranian arms for the Palestinian Authority. The Iranians denied any connection, but the Bush administration saw the incident as evidence that Iran was continuing to play the spoiler in the Middle East. In his State of the Union address later that month, President Bush included Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, in what he described as “an axis of evil.” His remarks undercut moderates in Tehran who had argued that cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan would be reciprocated by Washington.
Iraq proved a particularly contentious issue. Iran believed it had legitimate security interests in Iraq, but after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the United States saw no reason to accommodate Iran or to allow it any role in Iraq. This exclusion proved impossible to accomplish. Iran had its hands on many levers of influence in Iraq. The two countries shared a long and porous border. More than half the Iraqi population were Shi’ites, with ties to their coreligionists in Iran. Many of the senior Shi’ite clergy in Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, were of Iranian origin. Iran had supported the Iraqi opposition during the years when the United States was supporting Saddam Hussein. Iran’s protégés were now in power. Iranian agents and officials could meld easily into the local population; trucks and buses moved in large numbers across the border; each month, tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims visited the shrines in Najaf and Karbala.
As order broke down and chaos ensued in postwar Iraq, Iran sent in agents, funded Iraqi political parties and militias, built schools and roads, and invested in social welfare projects. The United States and Iran were soon locked in a struggle for power and influence in Iraq. Before long, Washington was blaming Iran for the mayhem in Iraq, including roadside bombings and attacks on American troops. These allegations could not be independently verified; but Iran, fearing American intentions and the consolidation of an American military presence in Iraq, supported various Iraqi militia groups, including those hostile to the United States.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions emerged as another major source of friction. By 2002, it was obvious that Iran’s nuclear program had progressed further than previously assumed. Beginning in 2003, Britain, France, and Germany, representing the European Union (and later joined by Russia and China), entered into negotiations with Iran, hoping to induce Iran to give up uranium enrichment (and a possible weapons program) in exchange for a range of incentives, including expanded trade and diplomatic ties, a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, and consultation on regional security issues. For two years, the Bush administration remained dismissive of these negotiations and kept its distance from them, expecting they would fail. In March 2005, mired in Iraq and finally persuaded that it had to come on board if the Europeans were to have any chance of success, the Bush administration changed course, and offered Iran small incentives if it gave up uranium enrichment. It agreed to allow Iran to purchase spare parts for its aircraft and to end obstruction of Iran’s application to join the World Trade Organization. In May 2006, Secretary Condoleezza Rice announced with much fanfare Washington’s endorsement of the incentives the Europeans had offered Iran and her readiness to participate personally in the negotiations with Iran.
These offers proved unpersuasive to the Iranians. Tehran continued to insist on Iran’s right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. The incentives were deemed inadequate and vague. The United States continued to hint at the possibility of the use of force against the Islamic Republic. In regard to Iran, the president repeatedly said, “All options are on the table.” This threat, taken to mean air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, created uncertainty about ultimate American intentions and only deepened Iranian skepticism about the utility of talks.
The administration’s “democracy promotion” program further exacerbated tensions between the two countries. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, having discovered no nuclear weapons in Iraq—the original reason for invading the country—the administration increasingly cited democratization in Iraq and sweeping democratization across the Middle East as a rationale for the war. “Democracy promotion” became a pillar in the administration’s Iran policy as well. In 2005, the State Department announced the allocation of funds to this end, and invited applications from groups and individuals working to advance democracy in Iran. The amounts—$3 million to $10 million—were modest. But the State Department asked Congress for $75 million for democracy promotion in Iran the next year; Congress offered up to $66 million. In 2008, Congress voted a further $60 million for democracy promotion in Iran.
The program was ill conceived from its inception; it probably ended up harming rather than helping Iran’s democracy advocates. A large share of the money paid for expanded Persian-language broadcasts to Iran, but money also went to Iranian dissident groups in the United States; the lack of transparency regarding the recipients only fed Iranian suspicions. The Tehran government cracked down more severely on intellectuals, political activists, and NGOs—the very people the democracy fund was presumably intended to assist—accusing them of accepting American financial help to undermine the government. The Bush administration said it sought to change Iranian behavior rather than its regime, but senior officials, including the president, often blurred the lines by seeming to call on the Iranian people to change or overthrow their own government. In his January 2005 inaugural address, President Bush said, “America will…support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world,” and, directly addressing the Iranian people, added, “As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.” On the eve of the Iranian presidential elections in June, he issued a statement noting that “today Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world,” and said that an “unelected few” held power in Iran through “an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.”
There was not the remotest possibility that any significant NGO, publication, association, or political organization in Iran would risk accepting American government money, anyway. Shirin Ebadi noted that the democracy fund had “created immense problems for Iranian reformists, democratic groups, and human rights activists” and had made it “more difficult for the more moderate factions in Iran’s power hierarchy to argue for an accommodation with the West.” Echoing the same views, the dissident journalist Emadeddin Baghi described a policy of promoting regime change by trying to give money to diss
idents as “neither wise nor morally justifiable.” At the Wilson Center, almost every speaker from Iran criticized the “democracy promotion” funding as ineffective and unwelcome to Iran’s political activists and NGOs. These criticisms fell on deaf ears in Washington.
When I returned to Iran in December 2006, I did not realize I was walking into the heart of a storm. It was fueled by long-standing animosity between Tehran and Washington, an ineffective and ultimately harmful program of democracy promotion that contributed to my detention and that of many others, and an iron determination by Iran’s security services to squash all American plans regarding the Islamic Republic.
7.
THE ARREST
ON MAY 2, THE LULL finally ended. Ja’fari called and invited me to “cooperate.” The Islamic Republic is compassionate and pardons those who cooperate, he said. What they wanted from me was not the “old stuff’ but “the plan,” “the program” for the future, alluding to what the Intelligence Ministry still clearly believed was an American blueprint for regime change in Iran, about which they presumed I had inside information. When I told him I had expected him to call with the good news that I could go home, he replied, “I didn’t call for good news. I was asked to pass on a message so that there should be no grounds for complaint.”
On May 7, Ja’fari called the house several times while I was out. Mutti said he sounded irritable and was upset when he could not find me, banging the phone down on the last occasion. He finally reached me in the afternoon and summoned me to the Intelligence Ministry the next day at nine a.m.
That evening I went to dinner at a friend’s house, and when I returned home, Mutti was awake and excited. A friend whose contacts we thought good had called and left a message for me. “Tell her it is all over; she will be going home soon.” We received a similar prognosis from a second contact. The next day’s “interview” would be the last, he said. But I continued to feel uneasy. “I think they will take me in,” I e-mailed Shaul, who insisted I was being overly pessimistic. If they had wanted to arrest you, he reassured me, they had had ample opportunity to do so. I tried to share his certainty, but my gut instinct told me otherwise. Shaul was my tower of strength; he had always protected me. I knew he would do everything in his power to get me out of this predicament, but now he was far away. “Look after Haleh,” I e-mailed Shaul. “Give her a lot of love and support. We had a wonderful life together.” The tone of farewell in the message reflected my deepest misgivings.
My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran Page 13