23 May 1997
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

The Iranian-American Confrontation

Editor's note: We are withholding the name of the author of this story.

With Iranians voting today in the hardest-fought presidential election since the 1979 revolution, this is an opportune moment to rethink U.S. policy toward the Islamic republic. Ever since the revolution, U.S. officials have wrestled with the problem of how to deal with a government that substitutes terrorism for statecraft and anti-Americanism for faith.

Believing that "carrots" wouldn't work with Iran's clerics, both Republican and Democratic administrations have resorted to America's preferred "stick": unilateral economic sanctions. Last year the Clinton White House took the policy to its endpoint. In an effort to cripple Iran's energy sector and set an example that Iran's European and Asian trading partners couldn't ignore, Washington banned U.S. companies from the Iranian market and threatened foreign companies that invested in the Islamic republic's energy sector with secondary boycotts.

Iran's principal commercial partners were unpersuaded and unintimidated. The State Department had hoped that our allies would get tough on Iran because of the recent German court ruling holding Tehran culpable for the murder of Iranian Kurdish dissidents on German soil. Yet the European Union on April 29 approved the return of its ambassadors, withdrawn from Tehran earlier in April. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel candidly stated, "You cannot reproach us for following our economic interests."

The Americans, suprisingly, weren't reproachful in their response. The Iranians were. They refused to accept the German ambassador's return. Tehran had been offended by the court's ruling and the EU ambassadors' withdrawal. Fond of trashing diplomatic etiquette and annoying even their friends, the Iranians won't pay for their behavior: With or without its ambassador, Bonn will indulge Tehran.

Within Acceptable Limits

The Europeans find the clerical regime distasteful, often ugly, but within acceptable Third World limits. Given European, Russian and Asian unwillingness to cooperate with sanctions, how can the U.S. oblige Tehran to change its roguish behavior? Should Washington try its own "critical dialogue" instead?

To state the obvious: There is no point in an embargo that has the consistency of Swiss cheese. Holding the moral high ground is worthless unless one has the artillery to punish. As Jahangir Amuzegar has written in Foreign Affairs, the Iranians have learned to live with unilateral U.S. sanctions. They may not prosper, but they survive. And the clerics need only survive to pay for many of the things that Washington finds most objectionable. Terrorism is effective and cheap, two reasons why Iranians use it. The U.S. would have to choke the ruling clergy awfully tight--impossible, as long as Iran is freely selling oil--to dissuade them from killing dissidents who challenge their authority.

Iranian support to the forces aligned against the Arab-Israeli peace process is also, relatively speaking, nickel-and-dime stuff. An oil-producing state can always find $10 million or $20 million for clandestine subventions to Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Hezbollah. The Hezbollah, Iran's only revolutionary progeny, are particularly dear to many clerics' hearts. Could sanctions ever be sufficiently punishing for the ruling clergy to forsake front-line Muslim militants? Not likely. And how effective can anti-Iranian sanctions be if Syria, the Hezbollah's landlord and guardian angel, goes unpunished?

Washington needs to play off American strengths against Iranian weaknesses more effectively. With unilateral sanctions slowly eroding U.S. prestige and relevancy, Washington must devise an alternative means of dealing with the mullahs. That means Washington must look inside the Islamic republic.

Washington could retain the sanctions that have retarded the growth of Iran's nuclear industry and have prevented it from building chemical and biological weapons.

Since the revolution, Iranians have lost far more than they have won. Dreams of a new, vibrant and powerful Islamic order have vanished for all but a few. The vast majority of Iranians, particularly young men, would rather go on a picnic or watch an American movie or soap opera than listen to some true-believing cleric preach against the West. The Islamic revolution in Iran is dead, murdered by its own success in joining church and state. The problems of Third World life--poverty, pollution, public services in disarray, a collapsing educational system, systemic corruption, high birth rates and unemployment--have weakened the clerical regime. The particular nature of revolutionary Islam--its hostility to the color and poetry that have animated the Iranian soul for millennia--has made the faithful morose and bored. The revolution promised a better life on earth as well as in heaven, and Iranians old enough to remember prerevolutionary days know bitterly how far they have fallen. Those too young to remember, now a majority in Iran, simply exaggerate the decline.

The revolution's failure has done wonders for the image of the U.S. The culture and civilization of the "Great Satan" are more seductive today than in the 1970s. On television, in the press and atop the pulpit, Iran's revolutionaries rail against the tahajom-e farangi, America's cultural aggression. They know well that radical Islam and American culture cannot coexist. They fear America's vividness, individuality, rapacious curiosity and, perhaps most of all, its explicit, highly feminine and feminist sexuality.

If Washington wants to punish the ruling clergy for its nefarious activity at home and abroad, then the U.S. should draw as close as it can to the Islamic republic. If its leaders are foolish enough to let Americans in, then let them dance with the devil. U.S. investment in Iran would undermine cherished tenets and myths of the revolution. Far more than the Soviets ever did, revolutionary Iranians define themselves in opposition to us. It is culturally obtuse for any official in the Clinton administration to argue that commercial engagement with Beijing will eventually lead to a freer, better-behaved China and to deny the effectiveness of the same principle in Iran. Indeed, however much American businessmen incrementally advance freedom in China, they will advance the cause much farther in Iran. In China, an American is one among many devils; in Iran, he is without rival.

Washington could retain the sanctions that have retarded the growth of Iran's nuclear industry and have prevented it from building chemical and biological weapons. Even the Europeans and the Japanese appear to have applied effective restrictions on proliferation-related trade. With Washington no longer threatening to drag Iran's trading partners into court, the U.S. might find its allies especially cooperative in fortifying sanctions against Iran's military industries. Neither Paris nor Bonn wants to see again CNN reports about its equipment ending up on the wrong side in any future Gulf War.

With U.S. businessmen busy in Iran, American diplomats could assess the telling details of U.S.-Iranian trade. Who are the Iranian power brokers behind the big contracts that will draw every Iranian's attention? With time and good information, the U.S. could wisely send and receive official feelers on points of mutual interest. If U.S. leaders are astute, they will temporarily leave aside the question of Iranian terrorism and focus first on Iraq and Central Asia, easily the two most important U.S.-Iranian concerns.

Fear of Saddam

Iranians fear Saddam Hussein more than Americans do. He started the Iran-Iraq War, and the Iraqi army remains far more powerful than the Iranian armed forces. Like Washington, Tehran wants Saddam caged and eventually ousted. Washington can use the Saddam issue as both carrot and stick with Tehran.

In Central Asia, American and Iranian interests also coalesce. The U.S. must ensure that the Central Asian states, and their oil and natural gas wealth, stay free of Russian power. The quickest and most practicable way to deliver this oil and gas to foreign markets is through Iran. Reintegrating Central Asia's Muslims, the most literate and secularized in the Muslim world, into the Middle East is also a good idea. Ever culturally arrogant, the Iranians don't believe they have any reason to fear the Central Asians; in 10 years time and with significant commercial ties, they might learn otherwise.

The Iranian-American confrontation is still, probably, years from being over. The U.S. has the choice, however, to alter how we clash and who wins. The Iranians have been willing for some time to do business with the U.S. Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's outgoing president, wanted major Conoco and Boeing deals. Washington should now stand aside and let the business emissaries of the "Great Satan" give the Iranians what they want--and much more.

The author of this article, a former Iranian specialist in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, visited Iran during the winter of 1994-95. His identity is being withheld due to concerns about possible reprisal. His book, "Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey Into Revolutionary Iran" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), written under the pseudonym of Edward G. Shirley, will be out in June.

Home |  About Us |  Resources |  Press Releases |  Federal Activity & Legislation
State & Local Activity |  NFTC Lawsuit |  Contact Us |  Site Index

.