America's Century of Regime Change

March 2007

An interview with Stephen Kinzer

This month marks the four-year anniversary of the calamitous U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Democrats in Congress, most having voted to authorize the invasion, are divided over how, and how soon, to withdraw troops. In a BBC World News interview, Congressman Jack Murtha summed up the many ways the war has gone wrong, and argued that troops should be called home immediately. He alluded first to the skewed intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war, and went on to declare that Iraq marks "the first time the U.S. has gone to war against a sovereign nation without provocation."

In Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change, Stephen Kinzer shows that the Congressman is wrong. Overthrow traces the art of the preemptive war back to the end of the nineteenth century. Hawaii, Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq: It's a long list. Though the justifications varied, archetypally it was the same war again and again. A threat to U.S. corporate interests was disguised to the press (and then trumpeted to the public) as an act of humanitarian grace, paired with a move to protect American lives. The most important thread has been that, time and again, the imminent danger said to be facing the U.S. was simply a lie.

A former reporter for the New York Times, Kinzer writes, “The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not an isolated episode. It was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons. Like each of these operations, the 'regime change' in Iraq seemed for a time—a very short time—to have worked. It is now clear, however, that this operation has had terrible unintended consequences. So have most of the other coups, revolutions, and invasions that the United States has mounted to depose governments it feared or mistrusted.” Indeed, Kinzer shows that overthrows consistently fail long-term.

In Iraq the failure has become clear. Marred from the outset by myopic planning and vacillating rationales, the invasion has sparked a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites that some have argued will rage on for years. The war will cost American taxpayers a trillion dollars by the end of 2007. The toll on military families will emerge beside the ongoing strain on the U.S. budget, which will drain money from schools, health care overhauls, and other domestic programs such as securing ports, cities, borders, and coastlines. The toll on Iraqi civilians will rise too; at present rates of killing, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will have died in the conflict—perhaps as many as a million, according to Lancet. And the war could easily spread to other corners of the region, pitting Sunnis against Shiites across the Middle East and beyond.

Kinzer also shows that in case after case yesterday's strategic ally is today's reviled enemy. Until they recognize this, Democrats like Murtha won’t be able to understand the enormity of the tragedy or its likelihood of happening again. Especially if, as Kinzer shows, American politicians continue to conflate American interests with the profiteering of American corporations.

Overthrow came out in paperback on February 6.

—Joel Whitney

Guernica: Your book traces a long tradition of preemptive regime change in United States foreign policy. Is there much difference between what we've seen in Iraq and the thirteen prior examples you examine in your book?

Stephen Kinzer: In telling the story of each of these 14 times that the U.S. overthrew a foreign government, I asked three questions about each episode. First, what happened? How did we overthrow the government of this country? Secondly, why did we do it? And third, from the perspective of history, from the perspective of today, what has been the long-term effect of these interventions? I studied these overthrows of foreign governments not as isolated unrelated incidents but as part of a long continuum. By doing that you begin to pick out certain patterns. You also begin to realize that it's wrong to think of our invasion of Iraq as a great departure in American history.

The first thing that happens is a foreign government begins to bother, harass, restrict, regulate or nationalize some big foreign company. Usually an American company. That's what starts the trouble.

Guernica: Tell me about that pattern. For instance, who are some of the recurring players?

Stephen Kinzer: The first thing that happens is a foreign government begins to bother or harass or restrict or regulate or nationalize some big foreign company. Usually an American company. That's what starts the trouble. If governments do not become nationalist and do not try to control their own natural resources they do not even come into the crosshairs of American leaders. The directors of these companies, outraged at attempts of some foreign government to regulate them, come to the White House and complain. That's the first phase.

The second phase is what happens to the intervention process while it's in the White House. American leaders do not intervene in foreign countries in order to protect foreign companies. They transform the motivation from an economic one to one that they call political or geo-strategic. They allow themselves to become convinced that any government that would be bothering, harassing, restricting or taxing an American company must be anti-American, anti-capitalist, evil, repressive, and probably the tool of some outside interest that's trying to subvert American power in the world. That's the way the motivation morphs in the political process.

It then morphs one more time when American leaders have to explain to American citizens and others around the world why we carried out a particular intervention. At that point, we usually do not use the economic or even the political motivations to explain our actions. Instead, we say that we are intervening out of charity, that we are doing it to help an oppressed people who are being brutalized by an evil regime. This rationale works very well in the United States for two reasons. First of all, because Americans are compassionate people. We truly hate the idea that people in other areas are suffering. We want to help them. And the second aspect of our character that allows us to embrace this argument is that we're actually very innocent and naive and in many cases ignorant about history and culture. This leads us to believe that anything we want to do is also possible. Generations of American leaders have played on this sense of American exceptionalism—the sense that the United States has a gift to give to the rest of the world in order to justify interventions abroad that have actually been planned for very different reasons.

The president we overthrew in Guatemala, the prime minister we overthrew in Iran, and the president we overthrew in Chile all came to power through strictly democratic means.

Guernica: Let's talk about the role that the media plays—which must hit even closer to home for you, having worked at the New York Times for more than twenty years. How has this role changed from the days of the Spanish-American war and William Randolph Hearst, to the Cold War, then to our current climate with the war on terror?

Stephen Kinzer: In many ways, the role of the media is the same as it has been during the entire regime-change era. Our press, like the press in many countries, acts like a cheerleader to our government rather than a critical observer. This is especially true when it comes to foreign interventions. It has proven very difficult for the press to distance itself from administration efforts to promote intervention. The press in the United States tends to think of itself as being on the same team with the government. That means that when government leaders conclude that intervention in a foreign country is justified, the press rarely criticizes it. In fact, the press has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for many of our foreign interventions.

Guernica: For instance?

Stephen Kinzer: The Spanish-American war in 1898 is a great example. Spain had been the colonizing power in Cuba for a century. It was not until the summer of 1898, however, that the American press decided to begin portraying Spanish rule over Cuba as sort of the most evil, bestial, brutal regime imaginable. As always, the American press has to find a single individual to use as a demon. In this case it couldn’t use the King of Spain, because he was a twelve-year-old boy. It couldn’t use the regent because that was the King’s mother; she was an Austrian princess, so she wouldn’t serve either. As a result, the American press began to focus its attention on the Spanish commander in Cuba whom it began to characterize as full of bloodlust and dedicated to brutal repression in Cuba.

This press campaign in the U.S., which greatly boosted circulation for American newspapers, reached a peak when the American battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor. Huge headlines around the U.S., particularly in the Hearst press, described this as an outrage committed by the Spanish: “Maine was destroyed by an enemy’s infernal machine,” was a typical headline. Hearst papers even had a big drawing on the front page describing how the Spanish placed their mine against our ship, and wound up killing two hundred of our sailors. It was not until 75 years later that the U.S. Navy convened a board of inquiry under Admiral Haiman Rickover that concluded that the Spanish had nothing to do with that explosion. It was caused by an accident within the ship.

Nonetheless, at that time it served as a great motivating factor. So you had two strands of press coverage; first of all there’s the background, that there’s a brutal, bestial evil regime tyrannizing a freedom-loving people; and then secondly that there was a particular episode, a particular aspect of this regime that was not only oppressing its own people but was threatening the United States. This is the very same thing we saw more than a century later in Iraq. First, there were a number of stories about the unspeakable brutality of the Iraqi regime, which we had only just discovered conveniently right at this moment. And finally the allegations that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq served to galvanize the American people, just as the destruction of the Maine did in 1898. It turned out not to be true that the Spanish blew up the Maine; it turned out not to be true that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But by the time those facts became clear the intervention had already been carried out.

Guernica: But most of the interventions during the Cold War were covert. Isn't the press just as in the dark as the public when all of this happens covertly?

Stephen Kinzer: Not quite. In the case of Guatemala, the United Fruit Company hired a very prominent public relations man to create—

Guernica: Sigmund Freud’s nephew, right?

Stephen Kinzer: Freud’s nephew. His job was to create what he described as a campaign of pitiless publicity depicting the Guatemalan government not as the reformist democracy that it actually was but as a brutal Marxist tyranny and a tool of the Soviet Union. That press campaign included paying for [junkets] by a number of American reporters who wound up writing a number of terrifying stories about what was going on in Guatemala, all of which were based on propaganda from the United Fruit Company. There was the case of one American reporter, a reporter for the New York Times, who stumbled on what was really happening in Guatemala. The CIA, through contacts with the New York Times, quickly arranged for him to be withdrawn.

There have been other cases like this in the history of American intervention. The key factor, however, is always that a press campaign is launched to soften up the American public in order to create a climate in which any attack on a particular regime is thought of as a blow for freedom. That’s what happened in Guatemala. A democratic regime was described inaccurately in the American press as a communist one. And the military tyranny that followed the government we overthrew was portrayed in the U.S. as just the opposite of the oppressive dictatorship that it was.

Guernica: And this happened in Chile and Iran as well; these men were not at all how the U.S. [government and press] characterized them, according to your book?

Stephen Kinzer: Actually, the president we overthrew in Guatemala, the prime minister we overthrew in Iran, and the president we overthrew in Chile all came to power through strictly democratic means. All would have left office at the end of their terms. And probably been replaced by more conservative figures. Instead, we replaced them with regimes whose leaders despised everything the United States stands for. Those were victories for the United States only in the narrowest sense.

In the U.S. he was portrayed as crafty, Machiavellian, and sometimes as a person who either was pro-communist or who was so weak that he might fall and leave room for communists. Actually, he was a convinced democrat, who despised Marxism and all leftist ideas.

Guernica: How do the long-term consequences look from the twenty-twenty hindsight of history?

Stephen Kinzer: In most cases, these operations have brought far more pain than liberation. They’ve not only cast whole regions of the world into poverty and instability but have greatly undermined American national security. It used to be that it took years and decades for the negative effects of these operations to become clear. Now, as we see in Iraq a revolution in technology and communications, the ill effects become clear much more quickly.

It used to take much longer.

Take Iran as an example. In 1953, we overthrew the government of Iran. We placed the Shah back on his throne. He ruled with increasing oppression for 25 years. His repression caused the explosion of the late 1970s, which we call the Islamic revolution. That revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American clerics, who began their rule by sanctioning the taking of American diplomats hostage, and then spent the next 25 years working intensely and sometimes very violently to undermine American interests all over the world. Now, we are confronting a major crisis with Iran, regarding its nuclear ambitions. This crisis would never have emerged. And, in fact, that religious regime would never have come to power in Iran had we not intervened in 1953 to push Iran off the path of democracy.

Guernica: You’re saying that the current crisis in Iran that we’ve been trying to deal with is the direct result, not an indirect side effect, of our own policies?

Stephen Kinzer: Absolutely! We would never have had to deal with this crisis or even this group of religious fanatics in the Iranian government if we had allowed the parliamentary democracy that was beginning to flower in Iran in the early 1950s to thrive and find its own path. Instead, we were so horrified that that government nationalized its oil industry that we mistook it for an enemy of the United States and set Iran on the path that has brought it to the very sad state it is at today.

Guernica: The prime minister of Iran whom the U.S. overthrew, Mossadegh—you create a very colorful character in him in your book. Tell me a little about him.

Stephen Kinzer: Mossadegh was the most formidable leader Iran had ever produced. He was a highly educated aristocrat, the first Iranian to earn a doctorate in law from a European university. He came to power when the winds of nationalism were sweeping across Asia, Africa and Latin America. In Iran, nationalism meant taking control of the oil industry. Iran was a country that had a huge source of wealth, but it was controlled by a foreign company. It was Prime Minister Mossadegh, with the unanimous approval of the Iranian parliament, who moved for the nationalization of the oil industry. Mossadegh was a very colorful figure. He was the man of the year on the cover of Time magazine at the beginning of 1952, beating out Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. That was a correct choice by Time, because in the early 50s he was one of the most important figures in the world. No leader of a poor country had ever challenged the rich countries in the world as boldly as he did. In the U.S., he was portrayed as crafty, Machiavellian, and sometimes as a person who either was pro-communist or who was so weak that he might fall and leave room for communists. Actually, he was a convinced democrat, who despised Marxism and all leftist ideas. In fact, it was his commitment to democracy, his insistence on allowing newspapers to function freely and free speech to flourish, that gave the CIA the tools that it needed to overthrow him.

Guernica: You write also that he was often ill or tired, and would receive visitors in bed—and was prone to crying in public…

Stephen Kinzer: Yes, he had some personal traits which made him easy to ridicule in the West. He would sometimes faint dead away in the Iranian parliament while giving one of his passionate speeches about the suffering of the Iranian people. Tears would well in his eyes and he would begin actually to weep as he began speaking of the injustice that his nation faced. In the outside world, these were thought of as weak characteristics, perhaps suggesting that Mossadegh was unbalanced. In fact, they served in Iran only to endear him to his people. Most Iranians took them as signs of how profoundly he shared the suffering of his people.

Guernica: And Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala was equally committed to the democratic process—elected fairly—but was also planning to nationalize Guatemalan industries.

Stephen Kinzer: Arbenz was a somewhat different case. He was a much younger man and I think he was intrigued by Marxist ideas, which Mossadegh definitely was not. He faced a very similar challenge from the one that faced Mossadegh. That challenge was a miserably poor country with a great resource that was a source of huge national income that could be used for development. The source of income in Guatemala was agricultural land, in particular banana growing. The United Fruit Company was the dominant economic and political force in Guatemala, [and it was] trying to respond to the demands of ordinary Guatemalans, when that country was under democratic rule.

The Guatemalan Congress passed a land reform law, under which any foreign company that owned large amounts of unused land would have to sell it to the Guatemalan government. That affected United Fruit which had half a million acres of the best, most fertile land in Guatemala that it was not using. This was just land that it was holding for some future eventuality. Under the Land Reform Act, United Fruit had to sell that land to the government, and—even more outrageous to the company—the Guatemalan government announced that it would pay for this land the amount that the United Fruit Company had itself declared as its value on its past year's tax return.

This naturally sent the company into apoplexy, and they said that, of course, no one puts the real value on those tax returns and the real value would be something like ten times what they had declared. But the Guatemalan government insisted on paying what the company itself had declared, which sent the company off to Washington to complain, and that led to Arbenz's overthrow.

Guernica: With these recurring characters and families that come up, your book almost reads like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. John Foster Dulles seemed like he was cast as the villain—though there were definitely others.

The Soviets did not even know that Guatemala existed. And made no attempts to contact, much less influence, the Guatemalan government.

Stephen Kinzer: Dulles was a very important figure in the history of American regime change. I try to explore or uncover the reasons that led him toward this. Dulles had been the most successful and highest paid corporate lawyer in the United States. He represented almost every giant American multinational corporation, including United Fruit. By the time he became Secretary of State, he had come to identify the interests of the U.S. almost exclusively with the interests of U.S. corporations. He didn't see any other important role for U.S. foreign policy. Dulles was also a militant anti-communist who opposed negotiation with any communists on any subject. He was against summit conferences between Soviet and American leaders. He opposed all cultural exchanges with communist countries. He fought for years to be sure that American reporters would not be able to go to China. He thought that any agreement with any communist power on any subject was a defeat.

Guernica: You write that he played an active role in Arbenz's overthrow in Guatemala by just blatantly recasting Arbenz as a communist?

Stephen Kinzer: Yes, and later we discovered that there was no truth to this. The Soviets did not even know that Guatemala existed. And made no attempts to contact, much less influence, the Guatemalan government. Nonetheless, this would have been unthinkable to Dulles. He just assumed that nationalist efforts to retake control of resources were part of a giant communist plot. The other aspect of Dulles's character that made him so perfect for the regime change era was his very deep Christian faith and his belief that the world was locked into a struggle between Christian-capitalist countries and others that were evil and repressive. He truly believed that the U.S. was a gift to the world that God had created—

Guernica: You mean that's not true?

Stephen Kinzer: It depends on who you ask. Overlay this [corporate incentive] with the strong religious background that the United States has and the religiosity that many of our leaders have felt, and you find an argument, if not to persuade yourself, at least to persuade many other people that this is an obligation that has fallen on the U.S.

Guernica: The regime change, policeman role?

Stephen Kinzer: Yes. The argument is that providence has blessed us with so much freedom and prosperity and so many other lavish gifts that we have not only the right but perhaps even the God-given obligation to go out into the world and share our good fortune with other people, including those who may not realize how much they want our influence.

Guernica: I interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali last month. She has argued that Islam is unable to build or sustain democratic institutions. It sounds like your book is making a similar claim about American government, particularly when it comes under the influence of powerful corporations.

Guernica: Iran had an established democracy in the Muslim Middle East in the middle of the century and this was going to be the model for Western-style democracy, even more so perhaps than Turkey. [The US] crushed an experiment that might have been profoundly important in the Middle East. What happened is on the historical record. The US put the Shah back on the Peacock throne; he ruled with increasing repression for twenty-five years; his repression led to the Islamic revolution of the late 1970s; that revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American clerics who spent the last quarter century working very violently to undermine American and Western interests all over the world. That religious regime might never have come to power and this nuclear crisis we're facing with Iran might never have emerged had we allowed Iran to flower into a democracy. What is not on record—and is more speculative—is what might the other path have been if we had allowed Iran to develop as its people wished and to take control of its natural resource—oil. We might have had a thriving democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East all these fifty years. And I can hardly wrap my mind around how the Middle East might have looked had we done so.

Guernica: What would a more appropriate U.S. foreign policy look like, in your view?

Stephen Kinzer: I'd like to see at least two principles try to replace the hyper-militarism that seems to characterize much of American foreign policy. One would be multilateralism. In an ideal world, the United Nations would bless international interventions. In the real world, the UN is not constituted to do that and does not seem able to reform itself into an institution that can do that. But perhaps we could at least seek the approval of our own friends. If we could persuade our closest allies, represented by those that are in NATO, that our decision about a hostile regime is correct, then I would have more confidence that it is correct. I don't think it's right that any one country should be able to make the decision that another country is so dangerous to the world order that it must be crushed. In practice, when one country does that, it can often come down to three or four people in a room making that decision. I'd like to see us move away from that toward at least a consultation with the allies with whom we confronted many world crises successfully for the last half-century. The other thing I guess I would like to see infuse American foreign policy is more serious assessment of our national interest. I don't have any problem with the United States acting on behalf of its own interests. That's what big powers do; that's what all countries do. I would just like to see us analyze in a serious way what really is in our interest. Let's not take such a short-term view of success and failure. Sometimes we intervene in foreign countries in ways that seem successful, at first. In the end, however, we wind up with unpredicted consequences that make us regret those operations.

Guernica: Is there any sign, given the catastrophe that has been our Iraq intervention, that the regime-change era is coming to a close?

Stephen Kinzer: It's certainly true that the amount of time that has to pass between the seeming success of an intervention and the reality of its long-term failure is now very much compressed. It used to take decades or even generations before the ill effects of our interventions were clear. Now, partly due to this explosion in new technology, it's a period much shorter than that. I do think that the debacle in Iraq may lead to a reluctance, at least for a time, on the part of Americans, to endorse foreign interventions. I think there will be less of a sense that the United States is invincible and that it can accomplish all of its goals simply because it is the United States. It's possible that this very traumatic experience may teach Americans that there are some things in the world that we don't like that nonetheless we can't do anything about. If it results in a return to a more pragmatic and realistic view of the world and a retreat from the messianic idea that the United States has found the single truth about how countries should be governed and that we need to export it, I think then that maybe something positive can come out of this terrible experience.

Support for Regime Change Falls to 15% in U.S.

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

March 15, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Few Americans believe their federal government should become engaged in "regime change" operations, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. Only 15 per cent of respondents believe the United States should try to change a dictatorship to a democracy where it can, down 12 points since April 2004.

In his January 2005 inauguration speech, U.S. president George W. Bush said: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

In October 2006, Bush justified his decision to launch the coalition effort in Iraq, declaring, "This country of ours must take threats seriously before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein was a threat; the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. And now the fundamental question is, does this country have the wherewithal and the perseverance to help this young democracy flourish in the heart of the Middle East? I will tell you, it’s important to defeat the enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at home."

Yesterday, Australian Labor Party (ALP) foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s decision to join the coalition effort, declaring, "This action has seriously undermined the United Nations (UN) as an organization. (...) By supporting the Guantanamo detention regime, the (current Australian) government has demonstrated its blind loyalty to the United States has been placed above its defence of the right of a citizen to due process."

Polling Data

Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy where it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries’ affairs?

	Mar. 2007	Feb. 2005	Apr. 2004
Change	15%	18%	27%
Stay out	69%	66%	59%
Depends	11%	11%	10%
Not sure	6%	5%	4%

Source: The New York Times / CBS News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,362 American adults, conducted from Mar. 7 to Mar. 11, 2007. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Neoconservative Eliot Cohen's new position at the State Department Signals Iran Regime Change

Monday March 5, 2007 07:38 EST

Neoconservative Eliot Cohen's new position at the State Department

On Friday, Condoleezza Rice announced that Eliot Cohen has been chosen to be the new Counselor of the State Department. It is not hyperbole to say that Cohen is as extremist a neoconservative and warmonger as it gets. Even The New York Sun's Eli Lake -- in an article claiming that Cohen's replacement of Philip Zelikow signals a more militaristic approach for the administration -- points out that Cohen " intellectually is neoconservative" and that "he was an early supporter of the military intervention in Iraq and came out against recommendations from the Iraq Study Group in December to launch negotiations with Iraq's neighbors," i.e., Iran and Syria -- especially Iran.

But Cohen's record is far more extremist than just that. In a November, 2001 Wall St. Journal Op-Ed, Cohen criticized the attempts up to that point to name "The new War" -- all the names chosen were far too limiting and unglorious. Rejecting all the possibilities, Cohen insisted that "a less palatable but more accurate name is World War IV." Even back then, look at what was on Cohen's mind:

Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles there just one campaign. . . . First, if one front in this war is the contest for free and moderate governance in the Muslim world, the U.S. should throw its weight behind pro-Western and anticlerical forces there. The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran. . . . The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government, however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden.

Cohen's second priority -- after Iran -- was changing the government of Iraq, and he showcased what would be the false war-justifying propaganda before Don Rumsfeld, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz began the process of feeding it to the President:

The U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction.

Cohen was most worried that Afghanistan would be the only real Churchillian war we would fight, rather than getting on with World War IV in all its glory: "if after the Afghan campaign ends, the government lapses into a covert war of intelligence-gathering, arrests, and the odd explosion in a terrorist training camp, it will be a sign that it would rather avoid calling things by their true name."

Over the next several years, Cohen became one of the most militant advocates of expanded regional war in the Middle East. A 2003 Asia Times article by Ahmad Faruqui called him "the most influential neoconservative in academe":

Cohen refers to the war against terrorism by a chilling name: World War IV (citing the Cold War as the third world war). . . . Cohen claims that America is on the good side in this war, just like it has been in all prior world wars, and the enemy is militant Islam, not some abstract concept of "terrorism".

Cohen argues that the US should throw its weight behind pro-Western and anticlerical forces in the Muslim world, beginning with the overthrow of the theocratic state in Iran and its replacement by a "moderate or secular" government. After September 11 he was one of the first neoconservatives to call for an attack on Iraq, even though there was no credible evidence linking Iraq with the attacks on the US or al-Qaeda.

It likely goes without saying by now that the reason Iraq was so quickly at the forefront of Cohen's mind in the aftermath of 9/11 was because invading Iraq and changing its government was long one of Cohen's dreams, and the 9/11 attacks became the pretext dressed up as the "justification" for Cohen's dream to come true.

This continues to be the most astounding, significant, and alarming trend -- as the recognition grows even in Beltway elite media circles that the people who designed and sold the Iraq war to the American public are completely untrustworthy and discredited figures, they are exactly the ones who continue to exert the most influence, by far, on the President, and their influence seems only to be growing. Here is a question which Tim Russert asked Lindsay Graham this weekend -- a question that is three years overdue but nonetheless welcome -- after Graham kept insisting that Americans give the Great Surge Plan " a chance" to succeed:

MR. RUSSERT: But many Americans will say that those who supported the war are saying, "Trust us, see this through," the same people who said, "There are weapons of mass destruction. General Shinseki's wrong, we don't need hundreds of thousands of troops. We will be greeted as liberators."

SEN. GRAHAM: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: "The cost of the war," according to Lawrence Lindsey, "won't be more than $200 billion."

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: "There won't be any sectarian violence." All those judgments were wrong. Why should the American people continue to believe in those same people who had so many misjudgments leading up [to] and executing the war?

The premise of Russert's question is exactly right, and it is one of the most crucial propositions to emphasize -- "Why should the American people continue to believe in those same people who had so many misjudgments leading up to and executing the war?" They should not, of course. And we know exactly who "those same people" are. Eliot Cohen is not just one of them, but he is one of their leaders. He has been wrong about everything. If he had his way, we would have far more wars than we have already.

The Cohen appointment is clearly another instance where neoconservatives place a watchdog in potential trouble spots in the government to ensure that diplomats do not stray by trying to facilitate rapproachments between the U.S. and the countries on the neoconservative War hit list. In that regard, behold the head-patting reaction to the Cohen appointment from one of the country's most radical Iran obsessives:

Michael Ledeen, a former government official and conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Cohen's appointment was good news.

"You want your leaders to hear disagreements," he said. "You don't want monotonous conformity."

Unlike the more political neoconservatives, who are very careful about what they say and go to great lengths to conceal their ultimate goals, Cohen has been an academic and thus more explicit about the theoretical underpinnings of his worldview. In a 1998 essay in (fittingly enough) The New Republic, Cohen called for the U.S. to build up and modernize its military capabilities faster and more aggressively, and to "justify" that plan, he laid out his neoconservative vision of the role of the United States in the world:

Another way to put it is that the United States needs an imperial strategy. Defense planners could never admit it openly, of course, and most would feel uncomfortable with the idea, but that is, in fact, what the United States at the end of the twentieth century is--a global empire.

Talk of "cooperative security" masks the reality that in any serious military confrontation, the central question is whom the United States asks to cooperate. . . . One cannot separate the so-called "soft power" of the United States--the global dominance of its culture, beginning with its language--from its military strength.

Rock fans around the world listen in English; so do fighter pilots. The same information technologies that make the Internet a decidedly American phenomenon provide the nervous systems of American military power. Free trade rests on common consent, to be sure, but would it exist absent America's military dominance?

Even Cohen recognized what a profound departure from America's founding principles it is to call for America to dominate the world as The Great Imperial Power:

The United States is today by far the most powerful state on the planet. If it chooses to remain so, citizen and soldier alike must brace themselves for the occasional imperial fiasco. More important, they will have to accept the uncomfortable notion that they are wielding military power in a way that is historically unusual for a country that has long viewed empires with proper republican suspicion. America's strategic vision will thus have to peer inward, as well as out, if we are to play our new role in the world successfully.

These are the radical principles laid out unabashedly by the Bush State Department's new Counselor, which are the same principles still driving the administration. We are in the middle of World War IV. We have numerous countries against whom we must wage war. The highest strategic priority is to change the government of Iran, with whom we can never negotiate. And the ultimate goal is to rule the world with our military force as the Supreme Imperial Power.

That is the neoconservative vision at its core. And the untold damage it has wreaked on our country has not diminished their influence in any way in this administration. They are still in control, particularly in the area they care about most -- the Middle East. And they have dealt with their greatest fear -- war-avoidance with Iran prior to regime change -- by installing one of their very own extremists to scrutinize and check the State Department.

This is really the debate America needs most, but is also the one we are furthest away from being able to conduct -- is the goal of the U.S. really to maintain and expand imperial world domination? The dangers to our country from that pursuit are grave and obvious. They are precisely the ones about which, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dwight Eisenhower most urgently warned, and Jefferson similarly emphasized continuously that the most important obligation a country has is to avoid war except when the nation's security is directly attacked.

But that, more than anything, accounts for the current predicament of America. We have ceased adhering in these matters to the principles of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower, and have instead become a nation of Dick Cheneys, Victor Davis Hansons, Richard Perles, and Eliot Cohens.

These are -- to use Russert's phrase -- "those same people" who caused the Iraq disaster and have their sights set on further damage still. They do not want to avoid war at all, but instead believe that it's glorious and elegant and empowering. They want to ensure a state of Permenant War, complete with all of the internal constrictions of liberty which wars inevitably entail, because they view the United States not as a republic, but as an empire which -- in order to fulfill all sorts of agendas -- can, should and must rule the world with superior military force. There is a temptation to dismiss "those same people" as irrelevant extremists, but as Cohen's Friday-announced appointment reflects, they are anything but irrelevant.

UPDATE: Over at This Modern World, Jonathan Schwarz cites an anecdote from Gen. Wesley Clark which reflects both the radicalism and (one must never forget) the sheer ineptitude that has driven this administration's Cohenesque War project from the start.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Iran: Détente, Not Regime Change

If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away anytime soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente. In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations. Thus armed with the prospect of a new relationship with the United States, the pragmatists would be in a position to sideline the radicals in Tehran and try to tip the balance of power in their own favor.
---

February 27, 2007
Iran: Détente, Not Regime Change

By Ray Takeyh

A RISING STAR

Over five years after the Bush administration vowed to transform the Middle East, the region is indeed profoundly different. Washington's misadventures in Iraq, the humbling of Israeli power in Lebanon, the rise of the once-marginalized Shiites, and the ascendance of Islamist parties have pushed the Middle East to the brink of chaos.

In the midst of the mess stands the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its regime has not only survived the U.S. onslaught but also managed to enhance Iran's influence in the region. Iran now lies at the center of the Middle East's major problems -- from the civil wars unfolding in Iraq and Lebanon to the security challenge of the Persian Gulf -- and it is hard to imagine any of them being resolved without Tehran's cooperation. Meanwhile, Tehran's power is being steadily enhanced by its nuclear program, which progresses unhindered despite regular protests from the international community.

This last development has put Washington in a bind. Ever since the revolution that toppled the shah in 1979, the United States has pursued a series of incoherent policies toward Tehran. At various points, it has tried to topple the regime -- even, on occasion, threatening military action. At others, it has sought to hold talks on a limited set of issues. Throughout, it has worked to box in Iran and to limit its influence in the region. But none of these approaches has worked, especially not containment, which is still the strategy of choice in the Iran policy debate.

If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away anytime soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente. In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations. Thus armed with the prospect of a new relationship with the United States, the pragmatists would be in a position to sideline the radicals in Tehran and try to tip the balance of power in their own favor. The sooner Washington recognizes these truths and finally normalizes relations with its most enduring Middle Eastern foe, the better.

NO GOOD OPTIONS

When discussing Iran, President George W. Bush commonly insists that "all options are on the table" -- a not-so-subtle reminder that Washington might use force against Tehran if all else fails. This threat overlooks the fact that the United States has no realistic military option against Iran. To protect its nuclear facilities from possible U.S. strikes, Iran has dispersed them throughout the country and placed them deep underground. Any U.S. attack would thus have to overcome both intelligence-related challenges (how to find the sites) and thorny logistical ones (how to hit them). (As the Iraq debacle has shown, U.S. intelligence is not always as reliable as it should be.) And even a successful military attack would not end the mullahs' nuclear ambitions; it would only motivate them to rebuild the destroyed facilities, and to do so with even less regard for Iran's treaty obligations.

What about holding a conditional dialogue, like the one proposed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? In May 2006, Rice seemed to take a major step forward when she announced that the United States would be willing to participate in multilateral talks with Iran over the nuclear question if Iran suspended its uranium-enrichment activities. But the statement miscast the dispute between the United States and Iran as a simple problem of disarmament. In fact, the political and strategic differences between the two countries run much deeper -- and require a far more comprehensive approach.

Given these unpalatable realities, many U.S. policymakers have begun to gravitate toward what they see as the least objectionable option: containment. Their hope is that the systematic application of diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions will counter Tehran's nefarious designs in the short term and eventually usher in a new Iranian government more democratic and more amenable to U.S. interests.

The idea of containing Iran is not new; in one form or another, it has been the de facto policy of the United States since the inception of the Islamic Republic, and it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. Yet to endorse it in good conscience today, one must answer important questions: Can a state that projects its influence through indirect means, such as supporting terrorism, financing proxies, and associating with foreign Shiite parties, truly be contained? Will other states in the region be willing to help the United States isolate Iran?

Were Washington to rationally consider its alternatives, it would quickly realize that the answer to these questions is no. But U.S. policy has long been dominated by a visceral suspicion of Tehran. During the heady days that followed the 1979 revolution, Iran's Islamist rage appeared awesome and dangerously expansive. The ruling clerical elite viewed Iran's borders as relics of a discredited past and seemed committed to exporting the revolution. The regional order, however, proved more durable than the mullahs had expected, and most of Iran's revolutionary dreams perished on the battlefields of Iraq in the 1980s. The costly war with Baghdad forced the clerical elite to realize the limits of its power and the impracticality of its ambitions. Tehran persisted with its universalist rhetoric, but its foreign policy became quite pragmatic. Still, a perception of Iran as a destabilizing force congealed in the U.S. imagination and has endured ever since, even though Iran stopped being a revisionist state long ago and has now become a medium-sized power seeking regional preeminence. Containment, in other words, ceased to be appropriate a while back because Iran stopped being a revolutionary state bent on forcibly exporting its model of government.

In fact, containment never worked -- and it has even less of a chance of working in the future. Its failures have been well documented in yearly reports by the State Department, which detail Iran's ongoing support for terrorism and warn of advances in its nuclear program. Sanctions and other forms of U.S. pressure have failed to prevent Iranian misbehavior. Worse, the Bush administration has taken steps recently that make containment an even less effective policy. Washington's ill-advised invasion of Iraq has benefited Iran by empowering local Shiite parties sympathetic to Tehran. Long gone are the days when a powerful, Sunni-dominated Iraq could function as a counterweight to Shiite power in Iran. Iraq's Shiites are hardly homogeneous, but the leading Shiite parties in power in Baghdad -- Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- have intimate ties to Tehran. This does not mean that Iraq's new leaders are willing to subordinate their interests to those of Iran, but they are unlikely to confront the Islamic Republic at the behest of Washington.

Nor is any other country in the Middle East likely to stand up to Iran today. A long tradition of purchasing security from the British Empire and then from the United States historically offered the Arab sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf a degree of independence vis-á-vis their powerful Persian neighbor. But the Bush administration's impetuous behavior and its inability to pacify Iraq have shattered local confidence in U.S. capabilities. Widespread anti-Americanism has made it harder for governments in the region to cooperate with Washington or to allow U.S. forces on their soil. The United States may be able to keep offshore naval forces and modest bases in reliable states such as Kuwait, but it is unlikely to have a significant presence in the region, as it is too unpopular with the masses and seems too erratic to the elites. Many Persian Gulf states now have more confidence in Iran's motivations than in the United States' destabilizing designs. And so as Iran's power increases, the local sheikdoms are likely to opt for accommodating Tehran rather than confronting it.

The international community has also seemed relatively indifferent to Iran's actions. Over the past year, the Bush administration has scored a number of procedural points against Tehran: for example, at Washington's insistence, the UN Security Council has censured Iran and urged suspension of its nuclear program. Despite such symbolic successes, however, few great powers now support the imposition of strenuous sanctions on the Islamic Republic. This is not because the French are pusillanimous or the Russians are unprincipled but because Washington's allies do not agree that Iran poses a major and urgent threat. For them, Iran's nuclear ambitions and even its penchant for terrorism are disturbing but manageable challenges that can be addressed without resorting to military force or coercive economic measures. During the early days of the Cold War, the United States was able to garner support for containing the Soviet Union because most of its European partners were as concerned about the Soviets as it was. Not so with Iran today; with the exception of Israel, few of the United States' friends seem very worried.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

In order to develop a smarter Iran policy, U.S. leaders must first accept certain distasteful facts -- such as Iran's ascendance as a regional power and the endurance of its regime -- and then ask how these can be accommodated. Despite its incendiary rhetoric and flamboyant claims, the Islamic Republic is not Nazi Germany. It is an opportunistic power seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood without recourse to war. Acknowledging that Iran is a rising power, the United States should open talks with a view to creating a framework to regulate Iran's influence, displaying a willingness to coexist with Iran while limiting its excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of détente.

As far-fetched as this call may seem, the United States does have experience dealing with seemingly intractable powers. In the late 1960s, as the U.S. presence in Asia was waning, China began to flex its muscles in its neighborhood. President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, did not respond by denying the reality of Chinese power. They started talking to Beijing, soon winning China's assistance in ending the Vietnam War and in stabilizing East Asia. Similarly, the Nixon administration's détente policy toward the Soviet Union succeeded not only in averting conflict with Moscow but also in gaining its cooperation on critical arms control issues.

It is not entirely clear whether Iran would be as willing a negotiating partner today as China and the Soviet Union once were. But there is reason to hope so. Recent developments in the Middle East and Iran's own internal convulsions have placed Tehran at a critical juncture: Iran's emergence as the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf means that Tehran might finally alter its relationship with its great nemesis; it must move toward either coexistence or confrontation with the United States.

Throughout previous attempts at negotiations with Washington, the Iranian government had favored comprehensive talks over discussions of a single issue. In its latest response to the joint offer by the United States and the European Union last summer, Tehran stressed its readiness for "long-term cooperation in security, economic and political and energy areas in order to achieve sustainable security in the region and long-term energy security." It also argued that "to resolve the issue at hand in a sustainable manner, there would be no alternative except to recognize and remove the underlying roots and causes that have led the two sides to the current complicated position."

Getting past this "complicated position" may require Washington to pay closer attention to recent changes in Tehran. Iran's need for a foreign policy better adapted to changes in the Middle East, the regime's perennial factionalism, and, perhaps most significant, the rise of a new generation of leaders in Tehran have sparked important internal debates within the regime. If the United States plays its cards right, it could become an important arbiter in those deliberations.

Westerners tend to see Iran's domestic politics as a contest between hard-liners and pragmatists. Jockeying by the former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with the periodic ebbs and flows of the reform movement, have long preoccupied foreigners hoping to nudge Iranian politics toward democratization. But these observers have failed to realize that the old model of liberals versus conservatives no longer holds. The Iranian regime is in the process of transforming itself, under the influence of a rising group of young conservatives. The elders of the revolution still retain ultimate authority, but they are increasingly reacting to initiatives launched by their more assertive disciples. There no longer is a main fault line running between the left and the right; today, fissures in Tehran run between the old and the young -- and among the young of the new right.

Unlike their predecessors during 1980s, these new leaders -- even the provocative Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- have refrained from denouncing and plotting the overthrow of the monarchies of the Persian Gulf and the pro-Western regimes in Egypt and Jordan; they are more concerned with these states' external relations than with their internal composition. They have also refrained from exporting the Iranian Revolution to the fertile grounds of Iraq. Anticipating opposition to such attempts from senior Iraqi Shiite clerics and politicians, Iranian officials have preferred to focus on more practical concerns. Although they want a sympathetic and accommodating neighbor, they have no illusions that Iraqi Shiites would yield to Tehran's mandates. They continue to support Shiite parties in Iraq not because they wish to install an Iranian puppet or proxy there but because they hope to prevent the rise of another hostile Sunni-dominated regime.

This is not to suggest that the new right is not seeking meaningful changes in Iran's international relations. But the debates gripping Tehran today focus on how the regime can consolidate its sphere of influence and best exploit its status as an emerging regional hegemon. The displacement of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Saddam Hussein, as well as the United States' entanglement in Iraq, have led callow reactionaries in Iran to perceive unique opportunities for their country's ascendance. Iran now sees itself as the indispensable nation in the Middle East.

DIVIDED WE STAND

As is customary for any leading faction in Iranian politics, however, the new right is itself fractured. And one of the matters that divide it is whether Iran's interests are best served by coexisting with the United States or by defying it. On one end of the spectrum are the radicals, whose most prominent exponent is President Ahmadinejad but who also include individuals in other critical posts, such as Morteza Rezai, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, and Mojtaba Hashemi Samareh, the deputy minister of the interior. Drawing their strength from the Revolutionary Guards (particularly its intelligence apparatus), the Basij paramilitary force, and groups such as the Alliance of the Developers of Islamic Iran and the Islamic Association of Engineers, the radicals cannot be easily ignored. Although many senior members of the clergy dismiss Ahmadinejad's religious pretensions, he has won the support of a narrow segment of the clerical class, especially the archreactionary Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a spiritual guide to many young reactionaries.

The formative political experience of many of these radicals was not the 1979 revolution but the war against Iraq in the 1980s, which left them disdainful of the United States and the international community and obsessed with self-reliance. According to these veterans, the war showed that Iran's interests cannot be safeguarded by adhering to international treaties or appealing to Western opinion. In particular, Ahmadinejad and his allies see the United States as "the Great Satan," a source of cultural contamination and a rapacious capitalist power that exploits indigenous resources. In their view, the United States has caused all of Iran's misfortunes, from the shah's regime to the country's invasion by Iraq under Saddam. But they also see the United States as a declining power. General Hussein Salami, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said in March 2006, "We have assessed the ultimate power of global arrogance, and on this basis there is nothing to worry about."

Despite his deep religious convictions, Ahmadinejad is not a messianist seeking to usher in a new world order; he is a canny manipulator trying to rouse public indignation in a chaotic neighborhood. He understands that the carnage in Iraq, the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the inability of Arab rulers to stand up to Washington have created intense anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and that there is growing popular hunger for a leader willing to stand up to Israel and the United States. And he very much wants to be that leader. To that end, he has used incendiary rhetoric about the Holocaust and Israel, support for Hezbollah, and appeals to Muslim solidarity to overcome sectarian divides, turning his Shiite Persian country into an object of admiration even for Sunni Arabs.

Understandably, too, Ahmadinejad and his allies view the acquisition of nuclear weapons as critical to consolidating Iran's position and helping the country eclipse U.S. influence in the region -- a prize worth suffering pain and sanctions to achieve. Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi has declared that task a "great divine test," and the newspaper Kayhan, a mouthpiece of the extreme right, has argued that the "knowledge and ability to make nuclear weapons" are "necessary in preparation for the next phase" on "the future battlefield." Given their distrust of Washington, the hard-liners assume that the United States' objections to their nuclear ambitions have less to do with countering proliferation than with exploiting the issue to enlist the support of U.S. allies against Iran. As Ahmadinejad has put it, "If this problem is resolved, then [the Americans] will bring up the issue of human rights. If the human rights issue is resolved, then they will probably bring up the issue of animal rights."

Ahmadinejad's antics have succeeded in turning him into an object of international attention over the last two years, making it easy for outside observers to overlook the emergence of another important camp within Iran's new right. This group, while also conservative, tends to stress Iranian nationalism over Islamic identity and pragmatism over ideology. Among the leaders of the group are Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council; Abbas Mohtaj, the commander of Iran's navy; and Ezzatollah Zarghami, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting -- all nationalists who, like the radicals, were shaped by the Iran-Iraq War but who drew different conclusions from it. During the 1990s, as reformers took over many of Iran's state institutions, these conservatives retreated into research centers, particularly Imam Hussein University, to reassess Iran's international relations. Judging by their writings and speeches, they seem to have concluded both that the end of the Cold War and Iran's unique geographic location made it a natural regional power and that Iran's progress had been thwarted by the regime's ideological excesses and its unnecessarily hostile approach to the West. The only way for Iran to realize its potential, they argued, was for it to behave more judiciously, and that meant limiting some expressions of its influence, acceding to certain international norms, and negotiating mutually acceptable compacts with its adversaries. In the last two years, many members of this pragmatic faction have risen to influence within the Supreme National Security Council, the intelligence community, and the military. Using their links to traditional clerical networks and their intimate ties to the supreme leader, they are trying to wrest control of Iran's international relations from the militants. The real significance of Iran's municipal elections in December 2006, in which Ahmadinejad's camp scored disappointing results, lay not so much in the revival of the reform movement as in the fact that many younger conservatives who are uneasy about Ahmadinejad's policies did well.

Nothing divides the two groups of the new right more than their attitude toward the United States. The pragmatists argue that Iran's predominance cannot be guaranteed without a more rational relationship with Washington. In an interview in late 2005, Larijani said, "We may be sure that the Americans are our enemies," but "working with the enemy is part of the work of politics." He added, "The strategy of curbing and reducing disruptions and normalizing relations is itself beneficial in the long term." Like the hawks, Larijani and his allies argue that the U.S. presence in the Middle East is bound to diminish, but, unlike the hawks, they worry that it could continue to block Tehran's resurgence. In their view, smoothing relations with the United States would pave the way for Iran to increase its influence in the region.

The moderates agree with the radicals that to enhance its influence Iran needs a nuclear weapons capability. As the deputy head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Hosseinitash, has noted, "The nuclear program is an opportunity for us to make endeavors to acquire a strategic position and consolidate our national identity." But the moderates also believe in restraint. They advocate continued adherence to Iran's obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and stress the importance of offering confidence-building measures to the international community. They hope that by improving Tehran's relationship with Washington they can assuage U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear development without having to abandon the program.

Hovering over this debate is the indecisive supreme leader, who so far has tentatively supported the pragmatists' drive for negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, Khamenei, a stern ideologue suspicious of the United States, seems to endorse Ahmadinejad's fiery denunciations of the West and his assertive Islamism. Khamenei has deficient religious credentials -- his lack of erudition places him at a disadvantage in the hierarchical clerical estate -- and that weakness has forced him to rely on reactionary elements to bolster his power; it would be difficult for him to rein in the determined Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Khamenei's relationship with the hard-liners has always been uneasy, as they have doubted his resolution during times of crisis. In order to survive the treacherous politics of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei has balanced different factions without unduly empowering any one of them.

So far, the pragmatists have managed to nudge Khamenei toward accepting potential negotiations with the United States over issues of mutual concern. But Iran's political landscape is changing rapidly. The United States' declining fortunes in Iraq, Hezbollah's touted victory against Israel last summer, and the success of Ahmadinejad's defiant nuclear diplomacy seem to prove right those who call for confrontation. The supreme leader, who is generally prone to indecision, now seems disinclined to settle the internal debates in Tehran in a conclusive manner.

THE UNITED WAY

The most effective way for Washington to resolve this uncertainty in its favor would be to practice more imaginative diplomacy. That would require more than a policy shift; it would require a paradigm shift. Guided by the notion of containment, U.S. policymakers have long seen the normalization of relations as the end result of a long process of negotiations. But with a new policy of engagement, normalization would have to be the starting point of talks; it would then facilitate discussions on issues such as nuclear weapons and terrorism. A strategy that seeks to create a web of mutually reinforcing security and economic arrangements has the best chance of tying Iran to the status quo in the region. In essence, a new situation would be created in which Tehran's relationship with Washington would be more valuable to the regime than either its ties to Hezbollah or its pursuit of nuclear arms.

To provoke such a change, Washington must strengthen the hands of the pragmatists in Tehran by offering Iran relief from sanctions and diplomatic relations. Washington's recognition of Iran's regional status and deepened economic ties with the West might finally enable the pragmatists to push Khamenei to marginalize the radicals who insist that only confrontation with the United States can allow Iran to achieve its national objectives.

As the United States reconsiders its Iran policy, it should dispense with the notion of offering Tehran security guarantees. It is conventional, even routine, in Washington policy circles to suggest that the Iran conundrum can be resolved only if the Bush administration pledges not to attack Iran. This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Islamic Republic perceives its power and its place in the Middle East today. The guardians of the theocratic regime do not fear the United States; they do not relate to the international community from a position of strategic vulnerability. Tehran now seeks not assurances against U.S. military strikes but an acknowledgment of its status and influence.

The United States does need to make important changes to its approach to Iran, however, in terms of both substance and style. Given the theocratic nature of the Iranian regime and its paranoia, Washington will have to adapt its rhetoric. U.S. officials can no longer denounce Iran as an "outpost of tyranny" or the "central banker of terrorism" in one breath and propose negotiations in the next. Like all regimes born of revolution, Tehran insists that the international community not just recognize its interests but also legitimize its power. Iran's theocrats are in no way unique; remember that for decades the Soviets demanded that the United States officially acknowledge postwar demarcations of Eastern Europe. A new U.S. policy toward Iran will have to officially recognize the authority of the Islamic Republic.

In this spirit, Washington must abandon its hopeless policy of regime change, including its paltry award of $75 million to Iranian exiles and for broadcasts into Iran. For one thing, such idealism is misplaced. Unlike Eastern Europe in the 1980s, Iran simply does not have a cohesive opposition movement willing to take direction and funding from the United States. For another, calls for regime change are counterproductive. Washington's fulminations and its provision of aid to the (nonexistent) democratic opposition have convinced many Iranian hard-liners that Washington's offer to negotiate is an attempt to undermine the regime in Tehran. Thus, any effort by moderates to engage with the United States is routinely denounced as a concession to the Great Satan's subversive ploys. Iran will certainly change, but on its own terms and at its own pace. The United States has an interest in promoting a more tolerant government in Tehran, but it will not help itself by broadcasting tall tales from Iranian exiles or with Bush's appeals to an indifferent Iranian populace. Integrating Iran into the world economy and global society would do far more to accelerate its democratic transformation.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The best way toward an effective, engaged relationship with Iran is for Washington to open direct negotiations on issues of critical importance, along four separate tracks. Since the purpose of the talks would be to normalize relations, the first track should deal with setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets. Holding out meaningful incentives such as these would go a long way toward facilitating productive discussions on more difficult issues and would likely enhance goodwill toward the United States among the Iranian public.

Given the progress of Iran's nuclear program, this issue deserves priority in second-track talks. The notion that the Islamic Republic will follow the Libyan model and completely dismantle its nuclear infrastructure is not tenable. The task of negotiators working on this issue would be to devise measures that Tehran could take to win back the trust of the international community, such as submitting to a rigorous inspection regime to show that its nuclear program is not being diverted for military purposes. Iran should be granted its NPT rights to develop a limited capability to enrich uranium; in turn, however, it should have to submit to verification procedures such as snap inspections, allow the permanent presence of personnel from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and make full disclosures about its previous activities. Iran's ultimate goal may be to produce nuclear weapons. But the case of Iraq demonstrates that an exacting verification process backed by the international community can obstruct such ambitions.

Negotiations on a third track should focus on Iraq. In light of the Baker-Hamilton report, many Washington policymakers and pundits have been busy offering reasons why Iran will not be helpful. But many of these arguments are fallacious. The first myth is the notion that Tehran would prefer to see U.S. troops remain and die in Iraq since mounting casualties will deter the United States from embarking on another misadventure. In fact, after nearly four years of an inconclusive war, Iranian officials believe that the United States' imperial ambitions have been sufficiently deflated -- that the giant requires no further bleeding. The second myth holds that gaining Iran's cooperation would require shelving UN sanctions against its nuclear program. But such reasoning presupposes that there is a robust UN process that needs to be retarded, which is inaccurate. And unlike their U.S. counterparts, Iranian leaders perceive little connection between their Iraq policy and their nuclear policy. The prevailing consensus within Tehran today is that the U.S. occupation in Iraq prevents measurable political progress there and that the only way Iraq can be stabilized is by gradually removing U.S. forces.

Whatever the perceptions and motivations of Tehran, its influence in Iraq makes it an indispensable partner. Although Iran has been busy enhancing the fortunes of its Iraqi Shiite allies and arming their militias, and Washington has responded with recriminations, the two governments have many objectives in common. Tehran, like Washington, is interested in defusing the ongoing civil war and maintaining Iraq's unity. The Iranian ruling elite also appreciates that the most suitable way to realize its aims is through elections, which are bound to further empower the majority Shiite community. A functioning Iraqi state would facilitate the departure of U.S. forces, neutralize the insurgency, and incorporate moderate Sunnis into the governing order -- all goals that serve the interests of both Iran and the United States.

Instead of bemoaning Iran's influence in Iraq, U.S. policymakers should focus on the challenge of managing that power constructively. Once Iran's legitimate influence is recognized and a framework for harmonizing the two countries' policies is established, it may be easier for Washington to make demands of Tehran. Washington would be in a better position to pressure Tehran, for example, to temper the Iraqi Shiites' secessionist tendencies and rein in recalcitrant actors such as the Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Moreover, Iran today is one of Iraq's largest trading partners. The United States should further facilitate such trade because it helps stabilize southern Iraq. The sooner Washington realizes that Tehran can play a useful role in Iraq, the sooner it may be able to prevent the fragmentation of Iraq and the further destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

The fourth -- and thorniest -- set of negotiations would have to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which Tehran has steadfastly opposed, often by supporting terrorism. Tehran's antagonism toward Israel is based on its Islamist ideology, which denies the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise. Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas gives Tehran a voice in an area beyond its military reach. With Hezbollah emerging triumphant and more popular than ever from its conflict with Israel last summer, Iran's resolution has stiffened further. Washington will need to change that posture. If Iran and the United States attempt to normalize their relationship, then, for the first time, Tehran's belligerence toward Israel could lead to its losing real benefits.

A careful look at Iran's history reveals that its behavior can change for the better. In the 1990s, for instance, the right incentives persuaded Tehran to stop assassinating Iranian dissidents in Europe and supporting certain terrorist activities in the Persian Gulf. In 1997, a German court convicted Iranian government agents of murdering Kurdish opposition leaders in a restaurant in Berlin five years earlier, leading European governments to withdraw their emissaries from Tehran and impose restrictions on trade. The Islamic Republic quickly abandoned the practice of targeting dissidents in exile. In a similar vein, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states agreed to normalize relations with Iran in the 1990s only if it stopped supporting radical elements within these states. In this case, too, the strategic advantages of détente convinced Tehran to change its ways.

Washington should apply those lessons now. As the United States and Iran attempt to resolve their differences, a natural momentum is likely to push Tehran away from its opposition to the Middle East peace process and its reliance on terrorism. That shift should be helped along with diplomatic and economic inducements. The point would be not to persuade Tehran to abandon Hezbollah, for example, but to pressure Tehran so that it, in turn, can persuade Hezbollah to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics and stop attacking Israel.

For nearly three decades, high emotions and irresponsible rhetoric have obstructed the development of a rational relationship between the United States and Iran. Too often, pragmatism has been sacrificed at the altar of ideology, and common interests have been obscured by convoluted historical grievances. Today, however, there exists in Iran at least one powerful faction -- the pragmatists among the new right -- willing to consider accommodation with Washington. Should Washington reciprocate by devising a comprehensive strategy of détente, it might be possible for Iran and the United States to finally overcome their mutual hostility.

A new paradigm cannot preclude tension, or even conflict, but it could persuade Tehran that its interests would be best served if it voluntarily restrained its radical tendencies. Iran will remain a problem for the United States for the foreseeable future; the question is how best to manage its complexities and contradictions. An offer by the United States to normalize relations and start talks on all outstanding issues between the two states would give Iran a chance to choose whether it wants to be a nation defending legitimate imperatives or one guided by self-defeating delusions. And for the first time in decades, there is an indication that Iran may opt for the former.

Ray Takeyh is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic".

Foreign Affairs

February 27, 2007

Iran: Détente, Not Regime Change

By Ray Takeyh

A RISING STAR

Over five years after the Bush administration vowed to transform the Middle East, the region is indeed profoundly different. Washington's misadventures in Iraq, the humbling of Israeli power in Lebanon, the rise of the once-marginalized Shiites, and the ascendance of Islamist parties have pushed the Middle East to the brink of chaos.

In the midst of the mess stands the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its regime has not only survived the U.S. onslaught but also managed to enhance Iran's influence in the region. Iran now lies at the center of the Middle East's major problems -- from the civil wars unfolding in Iraq and Lebanon to the security challenge of the Persian Gulf -- and it is hard to imagine any of them being resolved without Tehran's cooperation. Meanwhile, Tehran's power is being steadily enhanced by its nuclear program, which progresses unhindered despite regular protests from the international community.

This last development has put Washington in a bind. Ever since the revolution that toppled the shah in 1979, the United States has pursued a series of incoherent policies toward Tehran. At various points, it has tried to topple the regime -- even, on occasion, threatening military action. At others, it has sought to hold talks on a limited set of issues. Throughout, it has worked to box in Iran and to limit its influence in the region. But none of these approaches has worked, especially not containment, which is still the strategy of choice in the Iran policy debate.

If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away anytime soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente. In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations. Thus armed with the prospect of a new relationship with the United States, the pragmatists would be in a position to sideline the radicals in Tehran and try to tip the balance of power in their own favor. The sooner Washington recognizes these truths and finally normalizes relations with its most enduring Middle Eastern foe, the better.

NO GOOD OPTIONS

When discussing Iran, President George W. Bush commonly insists that "all options are on the table" -- a not-so-subtle reminder that Washington might use force against Tehran if all else fails. This threat overlooks the fact that the United States has no realistic military option against Iran. To protect its nuclear facilities from possible U.S. strikes, Iran has dispersed them throughout the country and placed them deep underground. Any U.S. attack would thus have to overcome both intelligence-related challenges (how to find the sites) and thorny logistical ones (how to hit them). (As the Iraq debacle has shown, U.S. intelligence is not always as reliable as it should be.) And even a successful military attack would not end the mullahs' nuclear ambitions; it would only motivate them to rebuild the destroyed facilities, and to do so with even less regard for Iran's treaty obligations.

What about holding a conditional dialogue, like the one proposed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? In May 2006, Rice seemed to take a major step forward when she announced that the United States would be willing to participate in multilateral talks with Iran over the nuclear question if Iran suspended its uranium-enrichment activities. But the statement miscast the dispute between the United States and Iran as a simple problem of disarmament. In fact, the political and strategic differences between the two countries run much deeper -- and require a far more comprehensive approach.

Given these unpalatable realities, many U.S. policymakers have begun to gravitate toward what they see as the least objectionable option: containment. Their hope is that the systematic application of diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions will counter Tehran's nefarious designs in the short term and eventually usher in a new Iranian government more democratic and more amenable to U.S. interests.

The idea of containing Iran is not new; in one form or another, it has been the de facto policy of the United States since the inception of the Islamic Republic, and it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. Yet to endorse it in good conscience today, one must answer important questions: Can a state that projects its influence through indirect means, such as supporting terrorism, financing proxies, and associating with foreign Shiite parties, truly be contained? Will other states in the region be willing to help the United States isolate Iran?

Were Washington to rationally consider its alternatives, it would quickly realize that the answer to these questions is no. But U.S. policy has long been dominated by a visceral suspicion of Tehran. During the heady days that followed the 1979 revolution, Iran's Islamist rage appeared awesome and dangerously expansive. The ruling clerical elite viewed Iran's borders as relics of a discredited past and seemed committed to exporting the revolution. The regional order, however, proved more durable than the mullahs had expected, and most of Iran's revolutionary dreams perished on the battlefields of Iraq in the 1980s. The costly war with Baghdad forced the clerical elite to realize the limits of its power and the impracticality of its ambitions. Tehran persisted with its universalist rhetoric, but its foreign policy became quite pragmatic. Still, a perception of Iran as a destabilizing force congealed in the U.S. imagination and has endured ever since, even though Iran stopped being a revisionist state long ago and has now become a medium-sized power seeking regional preeminence. Containment, in other words, ceased to be appropriate a while back because Iran stopped being a revolutionary state bent on forcibly exporting its model of government.

In fact, containment never worked -- and it has even less of a chance of working in the future. Its failures have been well documented in yearly reports by the State Department, which detail Iran's ongoing support for terrorism and warn of advances in its nuclear program. Sanctions and other forms of U.S. pressure have failed to prevent Iranian misbehavior. Worse, the Bush administration has taken steps recently that make containment an even less effective policy. Washington's ill-advised invasion of Iraq has benefited Iran by empowering local Shiite parties sympathetic to Tehran. Long gone are the days when a powerful, Sunni-dominated Iraq could function as a counterweight to Shiite power in Iran. Iraq's Shiites are hardly homogeneous, but the leading Shiite parties in power in Baghdad -- Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- have intimate ties to Tehran. This does not mean that Iraq's new leaders are willing to subordinate their interests to those of Iran, but they are unlikely to confront the Islamic Republic at the behest of Washington.

Nor is any other country in the Middle East likely to stand up to Iran today. A long tradition of purchasing security from the British Empire and then from the United States historically offered the Arab sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf a degree of independence vis-á-vis their powerful Persian neighbor. But the Bush administration's impetuous behavior and its inability to pacify Iraq have shattered local confidence in U.S. capabilities. Widespread anti-Americanism has made it harder for governments in the region to cooperate with Washington or to allow U.S. forces on their soil. The United States may be able to keep offshore naval forces and modest bases in reliable states such as Kuwait, but it is unlikely to have a significant presence in the region, as it is too unpopular with the masses and seems too erratic to the elites. Many Persian Gulf states now have more confidence in Iran's motivations than in the United States' destabilizing designs. And so as Iran's power increases, the local sheikdoms are likely to opt for accommodating Tehran rather than confronting it.

The international community has also seemed relatively indifferent to Iran's actions. Over the past year, the Bush administration has scored a number of procedural points against Tehran: for example, at Washington's insistence, the UN Security Council has censured Iran and urged suspension of its nuclear program. Despite such symbolic successes, however, few great powers now support the imposition of strenuous sanctions on the Islamic Republic. This is not because the French are pusillanimous or the Russians are unprincipled but because Washington's allies do not agree that Iran poses a major and urgent threat. For them, Iran's nuclear ambitions and even its penchant for terrorism are disturbing but manageable challenges that can be addressed without resorting to military force or coercive economic measures. During the early days of the Cold War, the United States was able to garner support for containing the Soviet Union because most of its European partners were as concerned about the Soviets as it was. Not so with Iran today; with the exception of Israel, few of the United States' friends seem very worried.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

In order to develop a smarter Iran policy, U.S. leaders must first accept certain distasteful facts -- such as Iran's ascendance as a regional power and the endurance of its regime -- and then ask how these can be accommodated. Despite its incendiary rhetoric and flamboyant claims, the Islamic Republic is not Nazi Germany. It is an opportunistic power seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood without recourse to war. Acknowledging that Iran is a rising power, the United States should open talks with a view to creating a framework to regulate Iran's influence, displaying a willingness to coexist with Iran while limiting its excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of détente.

As far-fetched as this call may seem, the United States does have experience dealing with seemingly intractable powers. In the late 1960s, as the U.S. presence in Asia was waning, China began to flex its muscles in its neighborhood. President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, did not respond by denying the reality of Chinese power. They started talking to Beijing, soon winning China's assistance in ending the Vietnam War and in stabilizing East Asia. Similarly, the Nixon administration's détente policy toward the Soviet Union succeeded not only in averting conflict with Moscow but also in gaining its cooperation on critical arms control issues.

It is not entirely clear whether Iran would be as willing a negotiating partner today as China and the Soviet Union once were. But there is reason to hope so. Recent developments in the Middle East and Iran's own internal convulsions have placed Tehran at a critical juncture: Iran's emergence as the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf means that Tehran might finally alter its relationship with its great nemesis; it must move toward either coexistence or confrontation with the United States.

Throughout previous attempts at negotiations with Washington, the Iranian government had favored comprehensive talks over discussions of a single issue. In its latest response to the joint offer by the United States and the European Union last summer, Tehran stressed its readiness for "long-term cooperation in security, economic and political and energy areas in order to achieve sustainable security in the region and long-term energy security." It also argued that "to resolve the issue at hand in a sustainable manner, there would be no alternative except to recognize and remove the underlying roots and causes that have led the two sides to the current complicated position."

Getting past this "complicated position" may require Washington to pay closer attention to recent changes in Tehran. Iran's need for a foreign policy better adapted to changes in the Middle East, the regime's perennial factionalism, and, perhaps most significant, the rise of a new generation of leaders in Tehran have sparked important internal debates within the regime. If the United States plays its cards right, it could become an important arbiter in those deliberations.

Westerners tend to see Iran's domestic politics as a contest between hard-liners and pragmatists. Jockeying by the former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with the periodic ebbs and flows of the reform movement, have long preoccupied foreigners hoping to nudge Iranian politics toward democratization. But these observers have failed to realize that the old model of liberals versus conservatives no longer holds. The Iranian regime is in the process of transforming itself, under the influence of a rising group of young conservatives. The elders of the revolution still retain ultimate authority, but they are increasingly reacting to initiatives launched by their more assertive disciples. There no longer is a main fault line running between the left and the right; today, fissures in Tehran run between the old and the young -- and among the young of the new right.

Unlike their predecessors during 1980s, these new leaders -- even the provocative Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- have refrained from denouncing and plotting the overthrow of the monarchies of the Persian Gulf and the pro-Western regimes in Egypt and Jordan; they are more concerned with these states' external relations than with their internal composition. They have also refrained from exporting the Iranian Revolution to the fertile grounds of Iraq. Anticipating opposition to such attempts from senior Iraqi Shiite clerics and politicians, Iranian officials have preferred to focus on more practical concerns. Although they want a sympathetic and accommodating neighbor, they have no illusions that Iraqi Shiites would yield to Tehran's mandates. They continue to support Shiite parties in Iraq not because they wish to install an Iranian puppet or proxy there but because they hope to prevent the rise of another hostile Sunni-dominated regime.

This is not to suggest that the new right is not seeking meaningful changes in Iran's international relations. But the debates gripping Tehran today focus on how the regime can consolidate its sphere of influence and best exploit its status as an emerging regional hegemon. The displacement of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Saddam Hussein, as well as the United States' entanglement in Iraq, have led callow reactionaries in Iran to perceive unique opportunities for their country's ascendance. Iran now sees itself as the indispensable nation in the Middle East.

DIVIDED WE STAND

As is customary for any leading faction in Iranian politics, however, the new right is itself fractured. And one of the matters that divide it is whether Iran's interests are best served by coexisting with the United States or by defying it. On one end of the spectrum are the radicals, whose most prominent exponent is President Ahmadinejad but who also include individuals in other critical posts, such as Morteza Rezai, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, and Mojtaba Hashemi Samareh, the deputy minister of the interior. Drawing their strength from the Revolutionary Guards (particularly its intelligence apparatus), the Basij paramilitary force, and groups such as the Alliance of the Developers of Islamic Iran and the Islamic Association of Engineers, the radicals cannot be easily ignored. Although many senior members of the clergy dismiss Ahmadinejad's religious pretensions, he has won the support of a narrow segment of the clerical class, especially the archreactionary Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a spiritual guide to many young reactionaries.

The formative political experience of many of these radicals was not the 1979 revolution but the war against Iraq in the 1980s, which left them disdainful of the United States and the international community and obsessed with self-reliance. According to these veterans, the war showed that Iran's interests cannot be safeguarded by adhering to international treaties or appealing to Western opinion. In particular, Ahmadinejad and his allies see the United States as "the Great Satan," a source of cultural contamination and a rapacious capitalist power that exploits indigenous resources. In their view, the United States has caused all of Iran's misfortunes, from the shah's regime to the country's invasion by Iraq under Saddam. But they also see the United States as a declining power. General Hussein Salami, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said in March 2006, "We have assessed the ultimate power of global arrogance, and on this basis there is nothing to worry about."

Despite his deep religious convictions, Ahmadinejad is not a messianist seeking to usher in a new world order; he is a canny manipulator trying to rouse public indignation in a chaotic neighborhood. He understands that the carnage in Iraq, the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the inability of Arab rulers to stand up to Washington have created intense anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and that there is growing popular hunger for a leader willing to stand up to Israel and the United States. And he very much wants to be that leader. To that end, he has used incendiary rhetoric about the Holocaust and Israel, support for Hezbollah, and appeals to Muslim solidarity to overcome sectarian divides, turning his Shiite Persian country into an object of admiration even for Sunni Arabs.

Understandably, too, Ahmadinejad and his allies view the acquisition of nuclear weapons as critical to consolidating Iran's position and helping the country eclipse U.S. influence in the region -- a prize worth suffering pain and sanctions to achieve. Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi has declared that task a "great divine test," and the newspaper Kayhan, a mouthpiece of the extreme right, has argued that the "knowledge and ability to make nuclear weapons" are "necessary in preparation for the next phase" on "the future battlefield." Given their distrust of Washington, the hard-liners assume that the United States' objections to their nuclear ambitions have less to do with countering proliferation than with exploiting the issue to enlist the support of U.S. allies against Iran. As Ahmadinejad has put it, "If this problem is resolved, then [the Americans] will bring up the issue of human rights. If the human rights issue is resolved, then they will probably bring up the issue of animal rights."

Ahmadinejad's antics have succeeded in turning him into an object of international attention over the last two years, making it easy for outside observers to overlook the emergence of another important camp within Iran's new right. This group, while also conservative, tends to stress Iranian nationalism over Islamic identity and pragmatism over ideology. Among the leaders of the group are Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council; Abbas Mohtaj, the commander of Iran's navy; and Ezzatollah Zarghami, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting -- all nationalists who, like the radicals, were shaped by the Iran-Iraq War but who drew different conclusions from it. During the 1990s, as reformers took over many of Iran's state institutions, these conservatives retreated into research centers, particularly Imam Hussein University, to reassess Iran's international relations. Judging by their writings and speeches, they seem to have concluded both that the end of the Cold War and Iran's unique geographic location made it a natural regional power and that Iran's progress had been thwarted by the regime's ideological excesses and its unnecessarily hostile approach to the West. The only way for Iran to realize its potential, they argued, was for it to behave more judiciously, and that meant limiting some expressions of its influence, acceding to certain international norms, and negotiating mutually acceptable compacts with its adversaries. In the last two years, many members of this pragmatic faction have risen to influence within the Supreme National Security Council, the intelligence community, and the military. Using their links to traditional clerical networks and their intimate ties to the supreme leader, they are trying to wrest control of Iran's international relations from the militants. The real significance of Iran's municipal elections in December 2006, in which Ahmadinejad's camp scored disappointing results, lay not so much in the revival of the reform movement as in the fact that many younger conservatives who are uneasy about Ahmadinejad's policies did well.

Nothing divides the two groups of the new right more than their attitude toward the United States. The pragmatists argue that Iran's predominance cannot be guaranteed without a more rational relationship with Washington. In an interview in late 2005, Larijani said, "We may be sure that the Americans are our enemies," but "working with the enemy is part of the work of politics." He added, "The strategy of curbing and reducing disruptions and normalizing relations is itself beneficial in the long term." Like the hawks, Larijani and his allies argue that the U.S. presence in the Middle East is bound to diminish, but, unlike the hawks, they worry that it could continue to block Tehran's resurgence. In their view, smoothing relations with the United States would pave the way for Iran to increase its influence in the region.

The moderates agree with the radicals that to enhance its influence Iran needs a nuclear weapons capability. As the deputy head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Hosseinitash, has noted, "The nuclear program is an opportunity for us to make endeavors to acquire a strategic position and consolidate our national identity." But the moderates also believe in restraint. They advocate continued adherence to Iran's obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and stress the importance of offering confidence-building measures to the international community. They hope that by improving Tehran's relationship with Washington they can assuage U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear development without having to abandon the program.

Hovering over this debate is the indecisive supreme leader, who so far has tentatively supported the pragmatists' drive for negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, Khamenei, a stern ideologue suspicious of the United States, seems to endorse Ahmadinejad's fiery denunciations of the West and his assertive Islamism. Khamenei has deficient religious credentials -- his lack of erudition places him at a disadvantage in the hierarchical clerical estate -- and that weakness has forced him to rely on reactionary elements to bolster his power; it would be difficult for him to rein in the determined Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Khamenei's relationship with the hard-liners has always been uneasy, as they have doubted his resolution during times of crisis. In order to survive the treacherous politics of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei has balanced different factions without unduly empowering any one of them.

So far, the pragmatists have managed to nudge Khamenei toward accepting potential negotiations with the United States over issues of mutual concern. But Iran's political landscape is changing rapidly. The United States' declining fortunes in Iraq, Hezbollah's touted victory against Israel last summer, and the success of Ahmadinejad's defiant nuclear diplomacy seem to prove right those who call for confrontation. The supreme leader, who is generally prone to indecision, now seems disinclined to settle the internal debates in Tehran in a conclusive manner.

THE UNITED WAY

The most effective way for Washington to resolve this uncertainty in its favor would be to practice more imaginative diplomacy. That would require more than a policy shift; it would require a paradigm shift. Guided by the notion of containment, U.S. policymakers have long seen the normalization of relations as the end result of a long process of negotiations. But with a new policy of engagement, normalization would have to be the starting point of talks; it would then facilitate discussions on issues such as nuclear weapons and terrorism. A strategy that seeks to create a web of mutually reinforcing security and economic arrangements has the best chance of tying Iran to the status quo in the region. In essence, a new situation would be created in which Tehran's relationship with Washington would be more valuable to the regime than either its ties to Hezbollah or its pursuit of nuclear arms.

To provoke such a change, Washington must strengthen the hands of the pragmatists in Tehran by offering Iran relief from sanctions and diplomatic relations. Washington's recognition of Iran's regional status and deepened economic ties with the West might finally enable the pragmatists to push Khamenei to marginalize the radicals who insist that only confrontation with the United States can allow Iran to achieve its national objectives.

As the United States reconsiders its Iran policy, it should dispense with the notion of offering Tehran security guarantees. It is conventional, even routine, in Washington policy circles to suggest that the Iran conundrum can be resolved only if the Bush administration pledges not to attack Iran. This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Islamic Republic perceives its power and its place in the Middle East today. The guardians of the theocratic regime do not fear the United States; they do not relate to the international community from a position of strategic vulnerability. Tehran now seeks not assurances against U.S. military strikes but an acknowledgment of its status and influence.

The United States does need to make important changes to its approach to Iran, however, in terms of both substance and style. Given the theocratic nature of the Iranian regime and its paranoia, Washington will have to adapt its rhetoric. U.S. officials can no longer denounce Iran as an "outpost of tyranny" or the "central banker of terrorism" in one breath and propose negotiations in the next. Like all regimes born of revolution, Tehran insists that the international community not just recognize its interests but also legitimize its power. Iran's theocrats are in no way unique; remember that for decades the Soviets demanded that the United States officially acknowledge postwar demarcations of Eastern Europe. A new U.S. policy toward Iran will have to officially recognize the authority of the Islamic Republic.

In this spirit, Washington must abandon its hopeless policy of regime change, including its paltry award of $75 million to Iranian exiles and for broadcasts into Iran. For one thing, such idealism is misplaced. Unlike Eastern Europe in the 1980s, Iran simply does not have a cohesive opposition movement willing to take direction and funding from the United States. For another, calls for regime change are counterproductive. Washington's fulminations and its provision of aid to the (nonexistent) democratic opposition have convinced many Iranian hard-liners that Washington's offer to negotiate is an attempt to undermine the regime in Tehran. Thus, any effort by moderates to engage with the United States is routinely denounced as a concession to the Great Satan's subversive ploys. Iran will certainly change, but on its own terms and at its own pace. The United States has an interest in promoting a more tolerant government in Tehran, but it will not help itself by broadcasting tall tales from Iranian exiles or with Bush's appeals to an indifferent Iranian populace. Integrating Iran into the world economy and global society would do far more to accelerate its democratic transformation.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The best way toward an effective, engaged relationship with Iran is for Washington to open direct negotiations on issues of critical importance, along four separate tracks. Since the purpose of the talks would be to normalize relations, the first track should deal with setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets. Holding out meaningful incentives such as these would go a long way toward facilitating productive discussions on more difficult issues and would likely enhance goodwill toward the United States among the Iranian public.

Given the progress of Iran's nuclear program, this issue deserves priority in second-track talks. The notion that the Islamic Republic will follow the Libyan model and completely dismantle its nuclear infrastructure is not tenable. The task of negotiators working on this issue would be to devise measures that Tehran could take to win back the trust of the international community, such as submitting to a rigorous inspection regime to show that its nuclear program is not being diverted for military purposes. Iran should be granted its NPT rights to develop a limited capability to enrich uranium; in turn, however, it should have to submit to verification procedures such as snap inspections, allow the permanent presence of personnel from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and make full disclosures about its previous activities. Iran's ultimate goal may be to produce nuclear weapons. But the case of Iraq demonstrates that an exacting verification process backed by the international community can obstruct such ambitions.

Negotiations on a third track should focus on Iraq. In light of the Baker-Hamilton report, many Washington policymakers and pundits have been busy offering reasons why Iran will not be helpful. But many of these arguments are fallacious. The first myth is the notion that Tehran would prefer to see U.S. troops remain and die in Iraq since mounting casualties will deter the United States from embarking on another misadventure. In fact, after nearly four years of an inconclusive war, Iranian officials believe that the United States' imperial ambitions have been sufficiently deflated -- that the giant requires no further bleeding. The second myth holds that gaining Iran's cooperation would require shelving UN sanctions against its nuclear program. But such reasoning presupposes that there is a robust UN process that needs to be retarded, which is inaccurate. And unlike their U.S. counterparts, Iranian leaders perceive little connection between their Iraq policy and their nuclear policy. The prevailing consensus within Tehran today is that the U.S. occupation in Iraq prevents measurable political progress there and that the only way Iraq can be stabilized is by gradually removing U.S. forces.

Whatever the perceptions and motivations of Tehran, its influence in Iraq makes it an indispensable partner. Although Iran has been busy enhancing the fortunes of its Iraqi Shiite allies and arming their militias, and Washington has responded with recriminations, the two governments have many objectives in common. Tehran, like Washington, is interested in defusing the ongoing civil war and maintaining Iraq's unity. The Iranian ruling elite also appreciates that the most suitable way to realize its aims is through elections, which are bound to further empower the majority Shiite community. A functioning Iraqi state would facilitate the departure of U.S. forces, neutralize the insurgency, and incorporate moderate Sunnis into the governing order -- all goals that serve the interests of both Iran and the United States.

Instead of bemoaning Iran's influence in Iraq, U.S. policymakers should focus on the challenge of managing that power constructively. Once Iran's legitimate influence is recognized and a framework for harmonizing the two countries' policies is established, it may be easier for Washington to make demands of Tehran. Washington would be in a better position to pressure Tehran, for example, to temper the Iraqi Shiites' secessionist tendencies and rein in recalcitrant actors such as the Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Moreover, Iran today is one of Iraq's largest trading partners. The United States should further facilitate such trade because it helps stabilize southern Iraq. The sooner Washington realizes that Tehran can play a useful role in Iraq, the sooner it may be able to prevent the fragmentation of Iraq and the further destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

The fourth -- and thorniest -- set of negotiations would have to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which Tehran has steadfastly opposed, often by supporting terrorism. Tehran's antagonism toward Israel is based on its Islamist ideology, which denies the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise. Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas gives Tehran a voice in an area beyond its military reach. With Hezbollah emerging triumphant and more popular than ever from its conflict with Israel last summer, Iran's resolution has stiffened further. Washington will need to change that posture. If Iran and the United States attempt to normalize their relationship, then, for the first time, Tehran's belligerence toward Israel could lead to its losing real benefits.

A careful look at Iran's history reveals that its behavior can change for the better. In the 1990s, for instance, the right incentives persuaded Tehran to stop assassinating Iranian dissidents in Europe and supporting certain terrorist activities in the Persian Gulf. In 1997, a German court convicted Iranian government agents of murdering Kurdish opposition leaders in a restaurant in Berlin five years earlier, leading European governments to withdraw their emissaries from Tehran and impose restrictions on trade. The Islamic Republic quickly abandoned the practice of targeting dissidents in exile. In a similar vein, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states agreed to normalize relations with Iran in the 1990s only if it stopped supporting radical elements within these states. In this case, too, the strategic advantages of détente convinced Tehran to change its ways.

Washington should apply those lessons now. As the United States and Iran attempt to resolve their differences, a natural momentum is likely to push Tehran away from its opposition to the Middle East peace process and its reliance on terrorism. That shift should be helped along with diplomatic and economic inducements. The point would be not to persuade Tehran to abandon Hezbollah, for example, but to pressure Tehran so that it, in turn, can persuade Hezbollah to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics and stop attacking Israel.

For nearly three decades, high emotions and irresponsible rhetoric have obstructed the development of a rational relationship between the United States and Iran. Too often, pragmatism has been sacrificed at the altar of ideology, and common interests have been obscured by convoluted historical grievances. Today, however, there exists in Iran at least one powerful faction -- the pragmatists among the new right -- willing to consider accommodation with Washington. Should Washington reciprocate by devising a comprehensive strategy of détente, it might be possible for Iran and the United States to finally overcome their mutual hostility.

A new paradigm cannot preclude tension, or even conflict, but it could persuade Tehran that its interests would be best served if it voluntarily restrained its radical tendencies. Iran will remain a problem for the United States for the foreseeable future; the question is how best to manage its complexities and contradictions. An offer by the United States to normalize relations and start talks on all outstanding issues between the two states would give Iran a chance to choose whether it wants to be a nation defending legitimate imperatives or one guided by self-defeating delusions. And for the first time in decades, there is an indication that Iran may opt for the former.

Ray Takeyh is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic".

Foreign Affairs