[Marxism] Long article on Iran

[Louis Proyect]

(This is posted in its entirety because it is only available to NY 
Review of Books subscribers. In the guise of a book review, it explores 
the possibilities of rapprochement with Iran.)

NY Review, Volume 56, Number 1 · January 15, 2009
The Iran Mystery Case
By Max Rodenbeck

BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THIS ARTICLE
Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US, and the Twisted Path to 
Confrontation
by Barbara Slavin

St. Martin's, 258 pp., $24.95
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the 
United States
by Trita Parsi
Yale University Press, 361 pp., $28.00; $17.00 (paper)

Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran's Radical Leader
by Kasra Naji
University of California Press, 298 pp., $24.95

Reading Khamenei: The World View of Iran's Most Powerful Leader
by Karim Sadjadpour
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 35 pp., available at 
www.carnegieendowment.org

The Struggle for Iran
by Christopher de Bellaigue
New York Review Books, 230 pp., $22.95

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
by Hooman Majd
Doubleday, 272 pp., $24.95

     The governance of religion and morals and resurgence of Islamic 
values is that heightened peak to which the defiled hands of those given 
to debauchery and whims does not reach, and which the diplomacy of gold 
and might fails to entrap.

     —Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, from a speech 
quoted in his Web site biography at www.leader.ir

Throughout the Bush years in Washington, the issue of what to do about 
Iran was often reduced to a question of whether or not to talk to the 
Iranian regime. Those who insisted on silence saw Iran starkly as a 
"state sponsor of terrorism," controlled by fanatics grimly bent on 
making atom bombs. Only the threat of force, they claimed, could 
persuade Iran to change its ways or, better yet, to change its nature as 
an Islamic republic. An opposing camp declared that America would be 
wiser to accept Iran as a regional power and to encourage pragmatic 
elements within its leadership. Their hope was to build trust through 
diplomacy so that Iran would not feel the need for a nuclear deterrent. 
The ideal outcome would be a Grand Bargain based on the common interest 
of forging a more secure Middle East.

By last spring, the argument between these camps had escalated to the 
point where some conservatives, including President Bush and the 
Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, insinuated that Barack 
Obama's declared willingness to talk to Iran amounted to "appeasement," 
a term loaded with the shame of Britain's capitulation to Hitler at 
Munich. Although the US Treasury has recently tightened economic 
sanctions on Iran, such shrillness has now subsided. In its waning 
months the Bush administration has broken with its previous policy by 
sending William Burns, a senior State Department official, to multiparty 
talks on the Iranian nuclear issue. It has even made preliminary plans 
to open a "US interests section," or low-level diplomatic office, within 
the Swiss embassy in the Iranian capital, Tehran—an initiative that is 
typically a first step toward restoring normal relations. US officials 
are also understood to have counseled Israel, the country that feels 
most threatened by the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, to refrain from 
preemptive action.

These moves have come partly in response to expert advice, much of which 
warns that the military option is too risky: air strikes cannot 
guarantee to stop Iran from getting the bomb, yet would likely ignite a 
cataclysmic regional backlash, particularly in Iraq. The fragility of 
the global economy has cooled tempers, too, since any threat to oil 
supplies from the Persian Gulf could destroy chances of a recovery. 
Bitter experience has also shown that shunning Iran, and brandishing 
sticks without accommodating legitimate Iranian concerns, have merely 
served to entrench Tehran's own hard-liners. Not only has Iran defiantly 
accelerated its nuclear program, it has also made embarrassing strategic 
inroads, via such ideological allies as Hezbollah and Hamas, against 
American interests in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq.

The Democrats' crushing electoral sweep in November has made likely a 
further shift toward engagement, although the incoming team has added 
caveats to Barack Obama's declared preference for diplomacy, such as 
saying that any meetings with Iranian leaders would have to be well 
prepared and timely, reiterating that it would be "unacceptable" for 
Iran to go nuclear, and insisting that the military option remains "on 
the table." Meanwhile, the more bellicose parts of America's foreign 
policy establishment appear to be regrouping so as to maintain subtler, 
less overtly partisan pressure against "appeasement." Even relative 
hawks such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft now say that diplomacy 
must be given a chance, if only to build international legitimacy for 
eventual, stronger US action.

In other words, there is a growing consensus among both conservative and 
liberal policy analysts in Washington around a strategy of robust 
engagement with Iran. It is not yet clear how ambitious this approach 
will be—whether the objective is simply to stop Iran from building a 
bomb or to aim for the elusive Grand Bargain covering such issues as 
Gulf security, the future of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Arab–Israeli 
peace. It is certain that Iran will prove to be an extremely difficult 
negotiating partner, if indeed it is willing to put its cards on the 
table. But at least a stronger effort will be made to coax, cajole, and 
persuade Iran's leadership that it has much to gain through compromise, 
and much to lose without it.

Troublingly, however, there remains at both ends of the Iran policy 
spectrum a certain vagueness about exactly whom America might be 
engaging. This is not merely a confusion about whom to address within 
the Iranian regime's complex hierarchy. It extends to a broader lack of 
clarity about where these people come from, what shapes their views, 
what they really fear, and what they really want. This vagueness entails 
a danger that the underlying assumptions on which future policy will be 
based could prove inaccurate or misleading. Often, in the past, it has 
been precisely such misapprehensions that have undermined attempts at 
rapprochement, or perhaps more accurately, enabled saboteurs in both 
countries to undermine them.

In her lucid and enlightening account of Iranian–American relations, 
Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, Barbara Slavin, a longtime diplomatic 
correspondent for USA Today who recently became a managing editor of The 
Washington Times and has long been one of the most astute American 
reporters on Iran, chronicles a sad litany of missed opportunities for 
improved relations, most of them derailed by the ill-timed intervention 
of hard-liners on either side. This could even be described as the 
defining dynamic of the troubled relationship. In both countries, 
opponents of rapprochement have seized on any hint of hostility to score 
points against domestic political rivals by raising the tone of 
nationalist rhetoric. Alternatively, they have brushed off friendly 
signals as evidence of weakness, and as proof that only hardball tactics 
produce results. This does not mean that the achievement of an 
American–Iranian détente would have been certain had such opportunities 
been pursued, but rather that the delicate machinery needed to produce 
such a result was never properly constructed, and so never set in motion.

A typical example of this occurred in 2002, when the popular, reformist 
administration of President Mohammad Khatami sorely needed some friendly 
signal from America to counter its increasingly aggressive conservative 
critics. But instead of being rewarded for its condemnation of the 
September 11 attacks or its vital assistance in ousting the Taliban from 
Afghanistan—Iran supported the Northern Alliance and provided 
intelligence to US forces about Taliban forces—Iran found itself 
melodramatically branded by George Bush, in a State of the Union speech, 
as a member of an "axis of evil." The sudden, sharp escalation of 
rhetoric shocked Iranians profoundly, leaving proponents of warmer ties 
dangerously exposed. This logical result was apparently unanticipated in 
Washington. Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, 
admitted as much. "What is funny about it is that [the phrase] didn't 
really catch my eye," she told Barbara Slavin, in a stunning admission 
of diplomatic insensitivity.

Chastened, but still keen to improve relations, Iranian diplomats put 
out feelers at the time of the Iraq invasion some months later, only to 
be rebuffed again. Neoconservatives within the Bush administration, it 
seems, were convinced that the blitzkrieg in Iraq would frighten 
neighboring Iran into submission, with no need for diplomacy. "We don't 
speak to evil" was the blunt retort from Vice President Dick Cheney, 
supported by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when presented with 
Iranian proposals for broad negotiations that would address Iran's 
nuclear program, Iraq, and Iranian-supported groups such as Hamas and 
Hezbollah, in exchange for full diplomatic recognition and an end to US 
economic sanctions. As Trita Parsi recounts in his meticulously 
researched book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, 
Iran, and the United States, the brusque rejection prompted not an 
Iranian surrender, but a circling of wagons by revolutionary 
hard-liners, who subsequently made a determined push to purge the 
relative liberals who had prospered under Khatami, thus putting an end 
to hopes for internal reform, let alone for a broader accommodation with 
the US.

Needless to say, for its part revolutionary Iran has proven even more 
inept at judging the Great Satan's moods and responses. The 
extraordinary obtuseness of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's current 
president, in questioning the historical reality of the Holocaust is a 
case in point. Such antics are, understandably, seen by Americans in the 
context of more overtly provocative acts, beginning with the 1979–1980 
hostage crisis, extending through such ugly policies as the 
assassination of dissidents, and including Iran's association with 
groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which official America deems 
terrorist. And while the chant of "Death to America" may no longer 
resonate much with ordinary Iranians, it has remained a touchstone for 
politicians, a reflexive reaffirmation of revolutionary values, rather 
as the blasting of communism was for American politicians during the 
cold war.

Yet in the American case, tin-eared diplomacy cannot be explained away 
as the product of sheer ignorance or as a matter of ritual adherence to 
a strident ideology. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has been 
the subject of intense American scrutiny. A simple search under "Iran 
Politics" at Amazon.com produces nearly four thousand titles, evidence 
not only of a national fascination with one of the very few countries 
still to proclaim opposition to American power, but also of the abiding 
interest that Iranian émigrés, who number nearly 400,000 in the United 
States, take in their homeland.

Sadly, much of America's intellectual output on the subject of Iran, and 
particularly since the eruption of the nuclear issue, has been marked by 
panic-mongering cant. Some of this is generated by disgruntled exiles, 
including many linked to royalist and leftist parties that have as 
little resonance inside Iran as did the well-heeled Iraqi expatriates 
who lobbied for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and some by a chorus of 
foreign policy "experts" in Washington, many of them familiar as 
cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, such as the columnist Max Boot, 
the former CIA head James Woolsey, and the right-wing scholar Michael 
Ledeen. "IS THE WORLD READY FOR NUCLEAR JIHAD?" shrieks the back cover 
of one typical product, Showdown With Nuclear Iran, a book coauthored by 
Jerome Corsi, a serial ranter whose muck-splattering "biography" of 
Barack Obama won brief notoriety this fall.

Wiser minds have also been at work, and the past year's crop of serious 
and useful books about Iran has been unusually rich. Barbara Slavin's 
look at Iranian–American relations should be indispensable to 
policymakers, as should Trita Parsi's seminal work, which argues, 
persuasively, that America's aims in the Middle East will continue to be 
thwarted until it addresses more pragmatically the core underlying 
problem of Israeli–Iranian rivalry.[1]

Kasra Naji, a seasoned Iranian journalist, has written a critical and 
revealing biography of Iran's controversial president. Tracing his rise 
through the revolutionary nomenclatura, Naji explains the shadowy links 
that tie Ahmadinejad to an inner network of radical conservatives. The 
President's popularity has now eroded to the point that he may well fail 
to secure a second term in next summer's elections, but Naji's 
description of Iran's quirky political mechanics remains essential to 
understanding how the clash between the country's theocratic and 
democratic tendencies, with the former increasingly dominant, can still 
produce unexpected results.

The more enigmatic, far more powerful figure of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 
the Islamic Republic's sixty-nine-year-old Supreme Leader, is the 
subject of an extremely timely and thorough, albeit concise, 
investigation by Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment 
for International Peace. Sadjadpour observes that Khamenei's contempt 
for America has proven to be "remarkably consistent and enduring" 
throughout a career that has spanned two terms as president of the 
Islamic Republic (1981–1989), followed by nearly two decades as Supreme 
Leader. Yet he also notes that Khamenei has shown flexibility at times. 
"The day that relations with America prove beneficial to the Iranian 
nation I will be the first to approve of that," declared the Supreme 
Leader earlier this year.

For a broader and deeper exploration of contemporary Iran, Christopher 
de Bellaigue's The Struggle for Iran offers both fine sensibility and a 
keen critical eye. A fluent Farsi speaker and frequent contributor to 
these pages, de Bellaigue experienced firsthand both the heady rise of 
the reformists under Khatami and their subsequent, depressing fall. His 
collection of essays, though observed over several years, illuminates 
his subject all the more because its eclectic parts reflect the kind of 
slow, subtle shifts in mood that instant reporting inevitably fails to 
capture. Three years before Ahmadinejad's surprise electoral triumph in 
2005, de Bellaigue judged presciently that

     unless reformers can muster allies in the conservative 
establishment, or find new ways to bring public pressure on it, Iran 
seems fated to an unyielding form of Islamic rule.

More lighthearted but equally profound in insight is Hooman Majd's 
delightfully unclassifiable book, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Part 
travelogue, part reminiscence, and shifting between bemusement, grudging 
respect, and despair, this digressive essay in cultural interpretation 
reflects the unique perspective of a thoroughly cosmopolitan Westerner 
who also happens to be the grandson of a turbaned senior cleric. While 
blithely exposing hypocrisies and paradoxes, Majd does not spare the 
Islamic Republic's critics, either. Happening on a gaggle of New Yorkers 
demonstrating against a visit by Ahmadinejad, he discovers that at least 
one has been lured from the Bowery Mission with the promise of $15 and a 
T-shirt.

This book is a vital antidote to both the wishful thinking of exiles who 
declare the Islamic Revolution's inevitable doom and to the exaggerated 
alarm of those who see it as an existential threat to the world order. 
It also provides some very American clues to understanding the Iranian 
experience. "It is in some ways as if evangelical Christians had had 
their way in the White House, in Congress, in state governments, on the 
Supreme Court, and in the schools for a generation," Majd writes. 
"Perhaps not a perfect analogy, for America is far more diverse than 
Iran and the majority probably less religious, but an analogy of sorts 
nonetheless."

Given the legacy of mistrust and the range of prickly issues that 
separate America and Iran, the Obama administration faces immense 
obstacles in trying to steer toward less troubled waters. But at least 
some excellent charts are at hand for gaining a better fix on Iran's 
tides, reefs, and shoals.

Persia's many empires, starting with the Achaemenid dynasty in the sixth 
century BC, have come and gone. Its modern avatar seems far removed from 
the benign overlordship for which ancient Persia was known, although 
behind the Islamic Republic's drearily monochrome façade the country 
remains an amalgam of tribes, ethnicities, and faiths, spread across a 
continental range of climates and topographies. Yet there does linger 
something haughtily imperial in the Iranian worldview. It is an attitude 
that should be familiar to present-day Americans, or to Britons of 
recent generations: a certain defiant insularity, combined with a sense 
of national entitlement to respect as a great and morally superior power.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Even in its reduced state, Iran looks 
out over a wider sphere that includes numerous kinsmen. Links of 
language tie it closely to speakers of Dari (a form of Persian that is 
the main language of Afghanistan) and Tajik, as well as more distantly 
to Pashtuns, Kurds, Baluchis, and even Ossetians. The state religion of 
the Islamic Republic, the Jaafari or Twelver form of Shiism professed by 
nine out of ten Iranians, happens also to be the majority faith in 
neighboring Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Bahrain. Twelver Shia minorities in 
Lebanon, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Pakistan also regard 
Iran as a pole of their religious identity. And then there is the wider 
Muslim world: it is overwhelmingly Sunni in sectarian terms and so 
rejects the claim of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to the 
supplementary title of Commander of the Muslims. Yet Muslims admire Iran 
both as a wellspring of Islamic civilization and as a unique political 
experiment.

There are other reasons for the self-importance of Iran's rulers. They 
hold what may be the world's second-largest reserves of both liquid oil 
and natural gas. For Europe this makes Iran a potential counterweight to 
Vladimir Putin's Russia, which currently, to Europe's considerable 
anxiety, supplies most of the continent's imported gas. Asian countries, 
particularly the booming giants India and China, also thirst for Iran's 
poorly exploited hydrocarbons. So does America, yet the global 
superpower's main contribution to inflating the Iranian ego has been the 
chorus of Bush administration officials, right-wing think tanks, and, 
most recently, a "bipartisan" panel,[2] all proclaiming the Islamic 
Republic to be the most significant single threat to America's interests.

The revolutionary regime can cause trouble, as when it attempts, quite 
successfully, to thwart American ambitions in places such as Lebanon and 
Iraq, where it has been able to exert influence through its ties to 
several of the leading Shiite parties and clerics and through its 
financial support for Shiite holy sites. Or when it threatens to seal 
the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow bottleneck through which vast volumes 
of oil pour forth from the Persian Gulf. The very real possibility of 
Iran achieving nuclear status is cited as a terrible peril, too. Fearful 
of the bombast of Iranian leaders who have said that the Jewish state 
will be "erased from the pages of history" and of Iran's development of 
long-range missiles that could reach Israeli cities, Israelis have 
raised the specter of a new Holocaust. Others fear an accelerated arms 
race in the region, with powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt 
rushing to balance Iran's strength with their own nuclear weapons. Much 
cited is the possibility that Iranian nuclear weapons could be acquired 
by foreign terrorists.

Yet for all its bluster Iran remains a strategic featherweight. In the 
event of any real conflict, the Islamic Republic would prove decisively 
outmatched. A glance at the map of forces arrayed around the region, 
which includes not merely a ring of US bases and facilities in nearly 
every neighboring country, but also such nearby, nuclear-armed powers as 
India, Israel, Pakistan, and Russia, suffices to make clear Iran's 
strategic isolation. The country is also poor, starved of foreign 
investment, clumsily managed, and wholly dependent on energy exports. 
Its universities are good but far from outstanding, and Iran has 
suffered a crippling, two- generation-long drain of much of its best talent.

It is notable, too, that until the Bush administration opened unexpected 
opportunities for Iran to do so, the Islamic Republic had proved 
remarkably incapable of extending its political or ideological 
influence, except perhaps among Shia Lebanese and the Iraqi Shiites with 
whom it continues to have relations. As Christopher de Bellaigue notes:

     The revolutionaries found it hard to sell a political philosophy 
that is based on Shia exclusiveness and informed, despite Iran's claims 
to be advocating supranational ideas, by Persian chauvinism.

Indeed, it is precisely the mismatch between revolutionary Iran's 
vaulting ambitions and its modest achievements that underpins other 
important aspects of its leaders' behavior. In attempting to explain why 
their theodemocratic experiment has failed to produce either worldly or 
spiritual greatness, the mullahs and militants who are currently 
ascendant harp repeatedly on two perceived causes, one internal, the 
other external.

The first excuse is that the Islamic project remains incomplete because 
it has been insufficiently revolutionary. This, as Kasra Naji reminds us 
in his biography of Ahmadinejad, is a standard trope for regimes 
suffering from public disenchantment. Much as Stalin, Mao, or Castro 
sought to reinvigorate their aging revolutions with varied, often brutal 
forms of mass mobilization, Iran's true believers have tried to recharge 
theirs. Hence we find Ahmadinejad promising voters before his election 
somehow to extract every policy, project, and method "from the heart of 
Islam." "If we return to the culture of Islam," de Bellaigue quotes him 
as saying, "you'll see tomorrow what kind of heaven this place becomes."

Predictably, along with the heightened rhetoric came increased attention 
to revolutionary symbols such as "Islamic" dress, a silencing of dissent 
that included a fierce clampdown on the press and sweeping purges of 
personnel, and a reconcentration of power in the hands of a trusted 
"vanguard." The Revolutionary Guards, or Sepah, the parallel military 
force created at the time of the revolution to counterbalance the 
national army, came to function, in the words of Hooman Majd, rather as 
an Iranian version of the École Nationale d'Administration, the school 
that supplies France's managerial caste. Barbara Slavin estimates that 
during Ahmadinejad's term, Sepah alumni have come to fill half the 
cabinet, two thirds of the provincial governorships, a third of 
parliamentary seats, and much of the top management in the religious 
foundations, or bonyads, that control a giant slice of Iran's economy.[3]

Ahmadinejad also reintroduced an element of class animosity that harked 
back to the 1980s. His modest style, rumpled suits, shaggy haircuts, and 
preference for his own house over a grand official residence served as a 
reprimand to political rivals guilty of backsliding from revolutionary 
austerity. Hooman Majd tells the amusing tale of seeking out the 
President's chief press adviser and finding the important official, 
after some effort, in a dingy unmarked office wearing plastic sandals. 
Conversely, he discovers that the rich, hedonistic Iranians who bemoan 
such things from behind high walls seem to resent their leaders less 
because of their policies than because of their lowly origins.

The alternative excuse for the Islamic Republic's failings is that 
foreign enemies are to blame. Because they are fearful that Iran's 
Islamic model will emerge triumphant over ideologies such as capitalism 
or socialism, the sermon-like argument goes, foreign governments have 
plotted at every turn to undermine the Islamic regime. It is Iran's 
noble fate to struggle for justice against such global tyranny, just as 
the Iranian people fought to overthrow their Shah. In particular, and to 
an exaggerated extent, Iran's revolutionaries have actually come to 
define themselves by their opposition to America, which they see as the 
force of international arrogance that personifies worldly injustice.

Religious imagery infuses such ideas. "Shias are always Davids," says 
Hooman Majd, using the oft-cited biblical tale mentioned in the Koran.

     To them, there is no Goliath today greater than the United States. 
The Ayatollahs and all their little Davids are determined to stand up to 
it whenever necessary, whenever the cause is just, and to never lose, 
even if, or maybe because, they can't win outright.

In a typical speech quoted by Sadjadpour, Ayatollah Khamenei asserts 
that what America expects from Iran is nothing less than submission and 
surrender to its hegemony. "This is the real motive for US claims 
regarding weapons of mass destruction, human rights or democracy," the 
Supreme Leader adds.

Sadly, recent history provides plenty of reinforcement for this 
self-image as the perpetual underdog. True, Iran avoided outright 
colonization by the West, unlike most of its neighbors. Yet Britain and 
America did conspire, in the 1950s, to overthrow the liberal, 
nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstate the Shah, 
mainly in order to secure better terms for Iranian oil.[4] (Ironically, 
the coup plotters' allies included senior mullahs who disliked the 
liberals' secular tendencies.) America and its many allies also, 
shamefully, supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the appalling carnage 
of its 1980–1988 war against the Islamic Republic, one of whose many 
ugly chapters included the shooting down of a scheduled civilian Iranian 
airliner by the US Navy.

Understandably, many Iranians saw the war as a cynical attempt to bleed 
their revolution dry. In fact, its main results were to provide 
nationalist cover to Ayatollah Khomeini as he went about crushing 
internal opposition to his Islamist project; to enshrine the Islamic 
revolution within a national myth of martyrdom; and to generate the 
embittered class of veterans, united by memories of wartime sacrifice 
and camaraderie, that gave rise to such figures as Ahmadinejad.

Even so, the xenophobia of the revolutionary elite does seem to verge on 
the pathological. Hooman Majd notes with some amusement that one of 
Ahmadinejad's closest advisers, Mojtaba Hashemi-Samareh, actually wrote 
a guidebook for Iranian diplomats titled The Psychology of the Infidels. 
It advises, among other things, that representatives of the Islamic 
Republic should never wear lace-up shoes or sharply creased trousers, 
since these might be taken as telltale signs of their having neglected 
prayers. The removal of dozens of experienced ambassadors under 
Ahmadinejad, and their replacement with firmer ideologues, may have been 
the work of Hashemi-Samareh. This would go some way to explaining why 
Iran's hectoring style of diplomacy over the past few years has won so 
few friends.

We cannot know to what degree such a figure as Ayatollah Khamenei shares 
this mix of extreme paranoia regarding the outside world and quiet dread 
that the Iranian masses no longer believe in the revolution's utopian 
promise. Yet it is highly likely that such insecurities contribute to 
his regime's tenacious determination to master the uranium enrichment 
process needed to build a bomb.

To a foreign observer, Iran's pursuit of a costly nuclear program can 
only be seen as quixotic or threatening, considering such factors as the 
country's vast but underexploited conventional energy supplies, its 
record of hiding atomic research, its development of long-range 
missiles, and its expansion of the program into uranium enrichment with 
the excuse that this will make Iran energy-independent, even though the 
country has limited uranium reserves and no functioning reactors to 
consume the enriched fuel. But to Iran's revolutionary elite the nuclear 
program has come to be seen as crucial for its symbolism far more than 
for its practical utility. In their view, it addresses internal and 
external troubles at once.

The nuclear breakthrough is meant to inspire jaded citizens, providing 
much-needed proof of Iran's return to glory, as well as evidence that 
technology and theocracy, Islam and modernity, can fruitfully coexist. 
Official propaganda, referring to statements by Ayatollah Khamenei that 
abjure use of atomic weapons by Muslims, insists that the program is 
purely aimed at producing nuclear energy for Iran's civilian needs. 
Ordinary Iranians may be skeptical of this, but even so demand to know 
why their ancient and proud country should be denied atomic bombs, if 
such dangerous parvenus as Israel and Pakistan can have them.

As for the foreign menace, Iran's nuclear prowess is meant to announce 
its reemergence as a power to be reckoned with. This does not 
necessitate actual building and deployment of weapons, but merely 
showing the ability to do so. Obviously, because they profess peaceful 
intent, Iran's leaders have not articulated a military rationale for a 
weapons program. To the outside observer, however, it seems clear that 
should Iran develop nuclear weapons, they could only serve as a 
deterrent rather than as offensive weapons, since their use would invite 
annihilation.

The scenario of Iran passing nukes to terrorists sounds fanciful, too. 
Its ayatollahs are certain to remain sharply at odds with the Sunni 
jihadists who abhor Shiism. And much as Iran's leaders dote on 
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite party's own pragmatic commanders are well 
aware that any Iranian gift of nonconventional weapons would invite 
their instant ostracism from Lebanese politics, let alone the full 
destructive wrath of Israel.

In other words, the nuclear project is most likely conceived not so much 
as a means for projecting power as it is part of a strategy for regime 
survival. Trying simply to prise this toy from Iran's leadership, then, 
is likely to prove futile. The current alternative, of piling on trade 
sanctions that make clear to ordinary Iranians their diplomatic 
isolation, as well as the burdensome cost of pursuing the nuclear 
option, is not much better. Iran's more extreme elements thrive on such 
punishment, while those worst affected are private businessmen whom many 
Iranians regard as sharks and profiteers anyway.

The fact is that despite the weariness of many Iranians with their 
regime, the combination of innate nationalism, political fatigue, and 
fears for personal livelihoods have rendered the Iranian public 
relatively quiescent. In the view of Hooman Majd:

     the Ayatollahs may from time to time silence dissent at home, they 
may rule autocratically and with their infuriating manners they may 
annoy and even repulse many in the West, but they rule for now with the 
confidence that they do not face a population that seeks to overthrow them.

To deal with such leaders will require diplomatic skills of the highest 
order, including understanding, careful coordination with allies, and, 
above all, patience. Current trends within Iran, although difficult to 
read, suggest a slight swing of the power pendulum away from 
hard-liners. Elections last year to the council that will eventually 
choose a Supreme Leader to succeed Ayatollah Khamenei produced a 
centrist majority. President Ahmadinejad faces growing challenges from 
both conservative pragmatists and reformers, and may not survive beyond 
next June's elections. Yet even should the ebullient radical remain in 
office, some analysts assert that he would be better placed to make 
diplomatic concessions than a more conciliatory politician, who would be 
exposed to attacks from the nationalist right.

Inklings of a more positive American– Iranian dialogue are already 
emerging over Iraq. Following initial, fierce resistance to any deal 
that would legitimize a continued US military presence, Iran has proved 
surprisingly supportive now that Iraq's government has ratified a 
status-of-forces agreement. This reflects not only relief that America 
is committed to eventual withdrawal, but also tacit recognition that 
Washington and Tehran share some common strategic goals in Iraq, such as 
reducing the level of violence, strengthening state institutions, 
curbing Kurdish separatist ambitions, and preserving a semblance of 
democracy in which the Shiite majority is likely to remain dominant.

Issues such as Iran's opposition to American peacemaking efforts in the 
Arab–Israeli conflict, defining an Iranian role in Gulf security that is 
acceptable to its smaller neighbors, and Iran's nuclear program, could 
each prove far trickier. Useful quid pro quos do exist for all these 
questions, but arranging for exchanges of concessions by multiple 
parties, in a sequence that enhances mutual confidence, is no easy task. 
While a large-scale agreement on all the issues is obviously unlikely, 
it would still be wise for American policymakers to keep the big picture 
in mind, and to focus on the positive allure of a region-wide peace 
rather than to fret over lurking dangers.[5]

The key task will be to prove to the Iranians that the potential rewards 
for releasing Iran from its current dilemma are immense. To a purely 
rational observer this might seem easy, when we consider the country's 
enormous, unrealized economic and human potential, and its lack of real, 
as opposed to largely imaginary, enemies. But Iran's clerical rulers, 
whose job it is to chase demons, will surely find devils in every 
detail. The biggest of all may prove to be one spotted by Christopher de 
Bellaigue. "It is clear that Iran's leaders are trying to stem the tide 
of history," he says, "which tends, sooner or later, to submerge 
inflexible ideologies and their autocratic proponents."

—December 17, 2008