Understanding Iran’s Nuclear Policy (Ramazani)

Our local paper today features another of Professor R.K. Ramazani’s opinion essays, this time focusing on Washington’s chronic misreading of Iran’s negotiating nuclear strategy, its decision-making process, the urgent need for direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran, and the high mutual gains that could be had from such a process.
Now an Emeritus Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, Ramazani has for over fifty years – a half century – written extensively on Iranian foreign policy. As the blurb at the essay notes, his major book credits include The United States and Iran, The Foreign Policy of Iran, 1500-1941, Iran¹s Foreign Policy, 1941-1975, and Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East.
As such, he’s been called the Dean of Iranian Foreign Policy Studies, and I (Scott) happen to be fortunate to refer to him as my longstanding mentor. I published a biographical sketch of Ramazani several years ago, yet it’s already out-of-date, as the Professor remains a very active scholar. Today’s essay draws in part from his own interviews with Iranian decision-makers. May its reach be far.
Here’s my quick take of the essay’s main points:

1. The Bush Adminisration admits it doesn’t understand Iran, even as it presses for sanctions while claiming that it wants to find a peaceful resolution to the present impasse:

“In a discussion of U.S. policy on Iran at the Council of Foreign Relations on Oct. 11, R. Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, admitted, “there is a lack of clarity in general about our ability to fully comprehend the motivations of that government and its intentions for the future.”

But that hasn’t stopped leaders from both US parties from assuming the worst. Yet according to WaPo columnist David Ignatius,

“Bush is serious about finding a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis, and he is looking hard for ways to make connections between America and Iran.”

As I wrote here in this blog last June, “something’s changed” in the Bush Administration towards Iran — on its good days. That was before the neocons – and certain Democrats runnning for President – ambushed the Bush Administration for daring to try something different on Iran.
2. Iran’s complex, yet understandable decision-making process:

“The Iranian political system is a paradoxical mix of semi-theocratic and quasi-democratic principles and institutions. The system abounds in competing power centers. Its domestic and foreign policies are shaped by a shifting balance between hardliners and pragmatists in these centers…. As did Khomeini, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, sets the general guidelines of Iranian foreign policy and must navigate among these groups and lead them toward consensus with his ultimate approval.”

Put differently, Ahmadinejad is but one of many players in Iran, one spoke in a complex wheel.
Former US Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger once bitterly quipped that, “the only Iranian moderate is a dead Iranian.” While that may still be the standard refrain among the most dogmatic of the Iranian opposition groups and their neocon allies, it’s also “dead” wrong and dangerous.
3. The counterproductive results international sanctions against Iran would produce:

“The misreading of Iran’s nuclear aspirations extends to the UN Security Council. Among sanctions presently being considered by the Council’s five permanent members and Germany, one would bar Iranian students from studying nuclear physics in foreign universities. That proposal would enrage Iranian students, who across the country see themselves as heirs to Persia’s ancient glory and a culture of resistance to foreign domination, and who believe that their country has the right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium. And that student outrage would play into the hands of hardliners who do not believe in a negotiated compromise.”

This same dynamic helped contribute to the election of President Ahmadinejad. At precisely the wrong moment, Bush blatantly interfered in last year’s Iranian Presidential elections. Bush’s condemnation of their entire system were played incessantly on Iranian TV – and had the all too predictable result of “gifting” the election to the most hardline candidate available.
Ironically, today’s WaPo carries a report suggesting that even economic sanctions against Iran are being held up by concerns that the Bush Administration can’t be trusted – that it might take any UN sanctions move against Iran as an eventual green light to use military force on Iran.
Naturally, the “regime change” neocons – like Patrick Clawson of WINEP – are unhappy. They want “all options left on the table;” They want the UN to give the US a de facto blank check. Those days are over; Ambassador Bolton knows it – even as he denies that’s what he wants.
4. Iran’s nuclear policy goals:

“First, it aims to deter the threat of American military action against Iran; second, to reduce the Iranian economy’s excessive dependence on crude oil through access to nuclear energy for electricity and economic development; and third, to pressure the United States to engage in direct and unconditional negotiations.”

On point two, the logic isn’t that hard to fathom. If you don’t have to consume so much oil at home, at severely subsidized rates, then you have more to sell abroad. In turn, you earn more capital abroad to invest at home. Same logic applies to Iran’s cutting edge geothermal and wind power programs.
5. The “Grand Bargain” Potential

“Direct negotiations between Iran and the United States are needed as soon as possible….
If the United States agrees to talks, Iran has suggested it is prepared to put all outstanding issues on the table: its nuclear program, US concerns about Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, Iran’s concern about regional security, and cooperation against global terrorism, in return for US lifting unilateral sanctions, and its agreement to refrain from destabilizing the Islamic Republic of Iran….
If the United States and Iran can resolve the near-term issue of uranium enrichment, the opportunities for expanded connections and a constructive, cooperative long-term relationship that could lead to the resolution of other issues of regional and global concern would improve exponentially.”

This is the grand bargain that reportedly has been on or under the table for several years It’s also the same “grand barbain” that Secretary of Rice has so emphatically denied that the US does not seek.
Why not?
What’s wrong with negotiating with Iran – about everything that matters to us, and to them? It seems to me that Rice has become a prisoner of her own rhetoric, particularly her lines about not wanting to do anything that might “legitimize” the Iranian regime – a curious stance for our country’s chief negotiator.
But one doesn’t have to be a hard-nosed political realist to realize that one can criticize the external and internal policies of one’s adversary while at the same time talking to that country.
They call it “diplomacy.”
Today, reports are again surfacing about the US and Iran talking about Iraq. Nice start.
Get on with it.