What's next for U.S. foreign policy on Iran?

Mon, 06/15/2009 - 9:04am

As you can tell from my last post, I think here's an excellent chance that the status quo persists in Iran, with a small chance that the entire edifice crumbles in the wake of a social movement unafraid of security forces.  What does this mean for U.S. foreign policy towards Iran? Here's a dirty little secret -- this might actually be the best possible outcome for the Obama administration. 

Well, not for the next few days. The administration is going to have to tap-dance for the next few days in order to avoid the Schylla of a "Chicken Kiev" moment and the Charybdis of going all in with the reformers only to see them crushed. 

After that, then what? Well, I think the only way the reformers win is with Khamenei going down, which would mean a genuine regime change, which is a game-changer. A new Iranian regime is not going to give up its nuclear program lightly, but I do suspect that negotiations with a reformist regime would be pretty fruitful. 

What if, as I suspect, the current regime keeps its grip on power?  Well, the Obama administration still has a stronger hand to play.  Here's why: 

1)  Tehran's influence in the region is going to ebb. Iran's power in the Middle East in recent years has emanated from a mix of hard power (nuke progam, oil, support of Hebollah) and soft power (Ahmadinejad's economic populism, ranting against corrupt Arab elites, and general pugnaciouness towards Israel).  Regardless of the result now, the election has killed their soft power in the region.  This doesn't mean that Iran's influence disappears -- see all the hard power stuff.  Still, with each passing day of protests, Ahmadinejad looks more like a bully than a leader of a transnational social movement. 

2)  Multilateral coordination just got easier.  Just as with North Korea, it gets ever easier for the United States to create a united front among its allies and other great powers when dealing with Iran going forward.  The reaction in the West has been pretty uniform on the election results.  When the nuclear negotiations break down -- and they will break down -- it should be easier to coordinate both the security and foreign policy responses.

3)  No more two-level games for Iran. If Mousavi had won outright, the Obama administration would have been in a serious bind on the nonproliferation question. The president of Iran doesn't control the nuclear program; the supreme leader controls it. With Mousavi as the public face of Iran, however, it would have been tougher for the Obama administration to describe Iran as unyielding when it refused to make any serious concessions on its nuclear program.  Furthermore, Mousavi could always ask the Obama administration to back off on the nuclear question because of hardliner resistance back home. That gambit won't play, now.

This doesn't mean that nuclear negotiations will go swimmingly -- I expect they will fail.  What it does mean, however, is that the rest of the world will be hard-placed to blame the end of the negotiations on the Obama administration.  Iran is going to look like the intransigent actor from here on in. 

Just to be clear:  I'm not saying that this outcome is a great one for the United States.  Washington has a weak hand to play.  My point is that, compared to the counterfactual of an Iran with Mousavi as its public face and Khamenei remaining the true leader, this is somewhat preferrable. The "pleasing illusions" of clerical power in Iran have now been stripped bare.

Daniel W. Drezner | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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Too Soon

by Zathras on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 1:27pm

Though I'm reasonably confident about Dan's second conclusion, I think it's too early to tell overall what the past week's events mean for American policy toward Iran.

I've written elsewhere that the emergence of a significant number of Iranians seriously disaffected with the regime should open significant opportunities for intelligence-gathering by the United States and allied powers. That's a good thing -- making all allowances for the risk of relying on intelligence from sources reporting things they wish were true -- because American policy for many years has been hobbled by our relative ignorance of how and why things get decided within the Iranian government. That government's reason for being has been hostility to the United States; domestic political problems it has made for itself can open doors for us.

If I'm right about this, though, it only means that the United States will have a better tool to help shape policy going forward. It doesn't say anything about what our policy ought to be. I don't think we know enough yet to make that determination. It makes a difference whether the apparently rigged vote count in Iran was a product of the clerical leadership's contempt for a former ally turned political opponent or of genuine fear that Mousavi's election might represent the kind of threat that Khatami's election as president back in the 1990s did not. If Khamenei or the security services (or both) did see Mousavi as a mortal threat, it makes a difference what they thought he was a threat to. Khamenei's position? The economic interests of the Revolutionary Guards? A nuclear program that the security services are trying to use as Pakistan's did, to produce an Iranian nuclear arsenal, about which Mousavi (while supportive of Iranian nuclear power) is perceived to be ambivalent? Or something else?

It appears that someone in Iran was surprised about something. No one tries to fix an election he expects to win -- but it's unclear that this election was one Ahmadinejad would have lost had the vote been counted honestly. There are probably facts out there that explain this conundrum. We just don't know what they are yet.

It sounds preposterous: You as an American should be more humble

by Kenneth Sorensen on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 2:13pm

After all the wrongs that your country has done towards Iran. Son't forget that the revolution in 1979 was partly a protest against British and American interference in Iranians affairs, although people in the 'West' tends to focus on the religious , fundamentalist aspect. And your country supported Saddams Iraq in the 1980'ties and provided him with Satellite images and poison gas. Yhis is not something Iranians can easily forget.

And in the 1990'tuies you allowed a dual-loyalty individual, Martin Indyk, to set up the disatrous 'dual-containment'- scheme, that required the US to keep troops in Saudi Arabia, despite promises given to the anxious King Fahd, that they would be withdrawn after Saddams expulsion from Kuwait. This was part of the motivation behind the 9/11 attacks. So you see, throughout American policies, have been very shortsighted - being devised by dual-loyalty individuals with links to Israel. They have screwed up national interests of The United States of America, and your recent utterings on this site do not sound particularly clever and groundbrakingly new, but they do bear a resemblance to the aforementioned policies, that has costed everyone so deerly, not least the 400.000 iraqie and Iranian children that lost their lives during the containment.

This seems more like an

by Brett on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 2:32am

This seems more like an effort by security forces loyal to Ahmadinejad to steal the election - the Pasradan and Mullahs have tended to be much more subtle at rigging elections in the past. This, on the other hand, was extremely clumsy.

In any case, my opinion is that we should officially say nothing other than "this is an Iranian internal affair, and we're not butting into it." It may be hard to do - the US government has a tendency to think that it should be sticking its nose into every problem - but they ought to do it.

And your country supported Saddams Iraq in the 1980'ties and provided him with Satellite images and poison gas. Yhis is not something Iranians can easily forget.

So? We preserved the balance of power in the Middle East, and in any case, why should we have shown any leniency to the Iranians? The fuckers had just taken our embassy people hostage for more than a year, in blatant violation of international law and long-standing rules of diplomacy.

despite promises given to the anxious King Fahd, that they would be withdrawn after Saddams expulsion from Kuwait.

The Saudi King actually asked for those troops back several times in the 1990s when Saddam Hussein started acting belligerent again (like when he moved a bunch of his troops near the border with Kuwait).