The next administration is not only going to face a huge deficit, a shattered economy and precarious banking system, it also has to struggle just to avoid drowning in Iraq, Afghanistan and the region. This brings Iran front and center in either an Obama or McCain administration's future foreign policy. To better understand the current US-Iran policy and the reality facing the next administration, I had a phone conversation with Vali Nasr.
Mr. Nasr is among the foremost experts on Iran. He is the author of The Shia Revival, Democracy in Iran, and The Islamic Leviathan. He is a Professor of international politics at Tufts University and has taught at the Naval Postgraduate School, Stanford University, and University of California, San Diego to name a few. In addition to guest appearances on the Charlie Rose Show, Mr. Nasr's work regularly appears in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and International Herald Tribune.
SM: What is the current US Policy towards Iran and what are the goals, drivers and benefits of this policy?
VN: The current US policy has been particularly in the last year and half has been very narrowly focused on the issue of Iran's nuclear program and getting Iran to suspend its nuclear program. There has been other arenas of interaction over Lebanon, particularly over Iraq, but the focus of the US policy has been very narrowly to get Iran to stop enrichment. It has used a combination of escalation of sanctions on Iran using the vehicle of the United Nations and it has also supported Europeans carrying out discussions over this issue, and very recently, the US agreed to shake up the diplomatic side, the European side by allowing a senior state department official to sit in on the European meetings with the Iranians. Beyond that the US has not really adopted a new policy that would transform the nature of US-Iran relations or put the discussions on a completely new direction.
SM: What is the current US policy for the region, and has that been clearly articulated to and understood by the region?
VN: The Bush administration started with very ambitious policy for the region, which is to transform it completely and bring democracy to eradicate radicalism, and it believes that by changing the regimes in the region and by changing the mentality of the region, through changing its politics, all the problems in the region would go away and it looked at the Iraq War essentially as a catalyst, that it would go in Iraq, that it would pull out on an archetypal Arab authoritarian regime and that there would be democracy in Iraq, and Iraq would transform the region. But when that failed, particularly in 2006-2007, it looked like Iraq was going in a very bad direction, the US policy became largely that of management, which is try to contain to the best of its abilities the conflicts in the region, try to contain the fallouts from Iraq. So the US basically began to try to manage the Iraq War and then tried to manage the Iranian nuclear program and tried to contain any kind of a fallout from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. The one thing US did try to proactively to become much more engaged in the Arab-Israeli issue, but that also had the quality of being part of a mismanagement strategy, mainly they lead by becoming more engaged in the Arab-Israeli issue, it would be able to get greater support from Arab governments in the region in dealing with Iran and in dealing with Iraq. But there is no longer a grand strategizing for the Middle East in the Bush administration; it is mainly a strategy of containing the many fires that are burning in the region and hoping that it can stay ahead of the crisis in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
SM: What are Iran's regional policies and goals and to what extent does Iran need US?
VN: Iran has benefited from the wars the United States fought in the Middle East between 2001 and 2003 - the Afghanistan and the Iraq Wars. Because the regimes that were hostile to Iran in Afghanistan and Iraq were brought down, Iraqi military, which was always a competition for Iran, was eliminated, and Iran saw much more room for expansionism, and then it saw that the United States that was mired in conflict in Iraq was not capable of containing Iran and also the American public was not likely to support another war. And therefore the Iranians became much more aggressive, and Iran saw itself as being more influential in the region than has been the case before the Iraq War and it has been trying to consolidate the gains it has made. So the Iranians are trying to play a role in Lebanon, in Arab-Israeli issue and see themselves as region of power and don't see any reason why they should back off of their nuclear program, which they see as both a guarantor and an emblem, if you would, for the new Iranian regional influence.
The problem is that United States still is a hindrance to Iranian ambitions because the US has an enormous amount of military footprint in the region; it has troops all around Iran, from Azerbaijan to Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf to Iraq. In some of the territories like in Iraq where Iran has the ambition of being a major player, the United States is obviously standing in its way. So in some ways Iran still has to solve the America problem that it faces. But by in large the Iranian strategy for the region is much more coherent, namely that Iran wants to keep all the influence that it has gathered since 2003, and it wants to build on it, it wants to consolidate it, and it wants to do so without ending up in a direct confrontation with United States.
SM: Given Pakistan is another bordering country with Iran and a nuclear power is Iran worried about a Pakistan conflict much the same way Iraq was used in the dual containment policy?
VN: The Iranians have worries about Pakistan; mostly that chaos in Pakistan would ultimately be not good for Iran. But for Iran, the border with Pakistan has never been a strategic concern; Pakistan has never invaded Iran like Iraq did. And even when Pakistan went nuclear in the 1970s, it was not a strategic threat to Iran. Iran has never viewed Pakistan has a hostile country. They don't have disputed borders, they don't have disputed territories. They don't have a history of conflict between them. Iranians worry about Afghanistan a lot more, because Afghanistan could potentially be a much more direct conflict between Iran's client and the Taliban forces and that can potentially impact economy in western Iran, bring in many more refugees to Iran, as it did during the Afghan War. It is much more of a concern. But not Pakistan itself, and Pakistan so far has not served as a base of operations for the United States against Iran in a major way. So I think the Iranians have concerns about Pakistan but neither the concerns nor the opportunities are on the scale that they have in Iraq.
SM: To the extent there is an Iran policy, has the Iran policy meeting its goals if yes or no in what form?
VN: There is a US policy, which is how to get Iran to suspend its enrichment. But it's facing problems. Number one, it's not working. Number two, it's probably a too narrow of a policy. The United States is focused only on getting Iran to stop enrichment, whereas Iran is not interested in just solving a nuclear issue, but it's interested in solving its problem with the United States as a whole. And therefore in other words, for the Iranians, it's much more of a problem of the relationships between the two countries, whereas for the United States, it is only a matter of getting Iran to stop its nuclear program.
I think the problem for the United States is the following: One is that Iran does not take the United States sticks very seriously, it doesn't really believe that war is imminent or that war can bring decisive results for the United States, and it doesn't think that sanctions are sufficiently biting to force Iran to buckle and give in on the nuclear issue.
The second problem is that the United States' carrots to Iran are not sufficiently enticing. In other words, the Iranians don't look at the membership in WTO or what the United States has so far offered the Europeans as really sufficiently enticing for them to give up. In other words, what the Iranians want is regime stability, regime security guarantees from the United States a path to normalization of relations, confirmation of their status in the region and their influence in the region. None of those things are on the table. In fact, if they gave up on their enrichment tomorrow morning, they will be as vulnerable as they were before.
The third problem is that the United States is not really interested in a diplomatic process with Iran; it's interested in a silver bullet solution. In other words, in a single meeting, the results of which would be suspension of Iranian nuclear program, whereas the Iranians would probably be more persuaded if the US policy would stay on a credible, diplomatic engagement with Iran, which is not the case. And finally, the Bush administration has become much more serious about experimenting with new ways of approaching Iran very late in the day, and therefore there is a question as to whether the Iranians take a lame duck administration serious enough, trust it enough or whether they would gamble on the fact that a new administration would not be able to have its team in place for at least another 120 days after it comes into office, and therefore the Iranians have at least another six months before they need to be serious about a new American policy, so why bite into an American policy now when they have six months to wait, and then their hand may be much stronger.
SM: Speaking of the next administration. Have either candidate signaled a change of course with the current policy and what are the contrasts?
VN: Right now it's very difficult to see what might be the outlines of a new administration's policy because I think neither candidate has really elaborated on what is their long run Middle East strategy, how do they see US objectives in the region, and therefore whether Iran fits in that larger picture. There are discussions of how they may do present things differently, but you know, you would not have a picture of what their strategic vision is until you have the new foreign policy team take shape and begin to think about these issues seriously. But you know, there is no question ultimately Iran is a very big player in the Middle East, it is essential to all of the burning issues facing the United States. In other words, Iran is a very big player in the Caucasus, with the Georgia issue. Iran is a very big player in Iraq. Iran is a big player in Afghanistan. And Iran matters in Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli issues as well. There is no way that the new administration can think seriously about the Middle East without thinking seriously about Iran itself. And therefore, the Iran question is likely to be there, but perhaps the new administration would be compelled not to think of Iran very narrowly on only the nuclear issue, but think of Iran on more broadly in the context of US's Middle East policy.
SM: Speaking of the region. In regards to future of Afghanistan and resurgence of Taliban, does US need Iran's cooperation, in what form, and does the failed all-eggs-in-Musharraf basket policy affect that dynamic?
VN: To answer your second question first, the United States, the Bush administration's major mistake was that it really never had a Pakistan policy. Its entire Pakistan policy was one man - General Musharraf. It never had a Plan B. And when it found out that A, Musharraf was very weak and likely to fall, and B, that Musharraf had never really cooperated fully and that Pakistan was still to some extent supporting the Taliban and was tolerant of extremists in its northwest frontier, the administration really has no other strategy, had no strategy. It still doesn't have a strategy with Pakistan. It really doesn't know how to manage the change of leadership in Pakistan. It doesn't know how to bring the Pakistanis back to a point of cooperation. So we're seeing a complete breakdown where the two countries are now actually shooting at one another along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And so you know I think this whole emphasis on Musharraf as opposed to having a Pakistan strategy is probably one of the single biggest strategic failures of the Bush administration in one of the most important theaters of conflict.
Now to the other point, Iran was very important to the smooth transition from the Taliban to the Karzai regime. Iranians, for a very long time been involved in Afghanistan knew that terrain, most of the anti-Taliban northern alliance forces were clients of Iran. And when the United States dismantled the Taliban, the Iranians were very important in putting together the coalition that took over power. And without that cooperation, it would have been much more rough sailing in Afghanistan. I mean you know if in Afghanistan the Bush administration had a very different philosophy than in Iraq. In Afghanistan the United States understood that the region matters to Afghanistan. And that only a government can work in Afghanistan that has the support and buy-in of its neighbors of other vested interests. And in fact those vested interests have assets and leverages that can benefit the American agenda. The Bonn conference engaged the region and Iran was an important part of that. In Iraq, the United States' policy that it didn't need the region, the region has no positive contributions to Iraq, and that the United States neither follow the policy that would have the vested interest of the neighbors nor did it actually try to take advantage of the assets and influences that the neighbors had.
Now the question becomes: how would the next administration see Afghanistan. Would it see it the way the Bush administration saw Afghanistan, or would it see it the way the Bush administration saw Iraq. In other words, would the United States understand that Afghanistan is located in a region, its neighbors are important to its future. They have vested interests, they have influences, they have agendas, and unless America's and NATO's policy in Afghanistan has their backing and support and contribution, it will have a very uphill battle before it. And there are two important players in Afghanistan. One is Iran and one is Pakistan. The United States has difficulty right now with both of them. And in fact they have more difficulty with Pakistan than it has with Iran. A successful American policy in Afghanistan must take into account both the Pakistani position and the Iranian position. And without doing that, the United States is going to find it extremely expensive and extremely frustrating to deal with the Afghanistan problem.
SM: Since both candidates are advocating for the surge concept in Afghanistan, will surge in itself resolve the Afghanistan problem or does US still need the support of Iran and Pakistan?
VN: The surge concept in Iraq has only worked so far. In other words, it has brought certain stability in Iraq, but it has not solved the Iraq problem. It hasn't provided the final solution to Iraq. The final solution to Iraq ultimately will have to deal with the neighbors with interest in Iraq, from Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, they all have to support and play a positive role in Iraq. And anyway you know the surge was a fairly expensive endeavor if it was seen to be a solution for Iraq on its own. If we were to avoid a similarly expensive endeavor in Afghanistan, we should go down a different path. And the discussion currently about surge in troops in Afghanistan, by in large it's driven from the example of Iraq, and it's driven by sort of the domestic political debates in America. The surge in Afghanistan may provide a certain degree of security, but it will not address the question of how do you stabilize the Afghan state and how you make that stability self-sustaining if the two countries, the two most important countries that are involved in Afghanistan, that were involved for two decades before the United States arrived don't have a vested interest in safe-building in Afghanistan and do not support the process. So you know the sooner we have the regional outlook in Afghanistan, the more successful the surge of troops will be and probably the surge of troops in Afghanistan will end up not being as expensive and as sizable as it's seen in Iraq.
SM: Is it too soon to declare victory in the post-surge Iraq, what are the critical remaining challenges and in what areas US needs or benefits from Iran's cooperation?
VN: You know the surge has only provided a seize fire in Iraq. The surge has not finished the job of safe-building in Iraq. And there are obviously many issues still to be solved. There is still no real national reconciliation in Iraq. There's no power sharing. Iraqi state still is not functioning properly. It is not clear how Iraq would solve the problem of integrating the many militias in the name of the awakening groups into its national army when it has a viable functioning national army. The surge is a very effective short-run seize fire strategy that has worked, but the surge by itself will not produce a Iraqi state that can function without a large amount of US troops and a large amount of US money pour into it. That would require a lot more than the surge. And that would be much faster and much less expensive if it has the cooperation of the region around Iraq.
And even in Iraq today there are many issues that could ultimately derail the gains that have been made under the surge if the region begins to see outcomes in Iraq not to its advantage. For instance, you have regular tension between the Kurds and their Arab neighbors in northern Iraq. And Turkey is extremely nervous about the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. Turkey's concerns are addressed potentially a conflict up in northern Iraq could produce a new cycle of violence and could bring Syria, Iran and Turkey in a new way into Iraq. Southern Iraq has been quiet, but still there are many issues of governance have not been resolved, and for those issues of governance and legitimacy and functioning economies in southern Iraq to work, it is better to have Iran on the right side of those issues rather than on the wrong side of those issues. So you know where we go from here still depends a lot on the region and Iraq. I mean after all Iraq is not an island, it's not situated in cyberspace. It is a country with borders and with connections and with economic ties with neighbors whose vital interests are at stake in Iraq. They will seek to protect their vital interests and if the US strategy is completely oblivious to what other people's vital interests are, it's likely to encounter resistance from them.
SM: What are the contrasts between McCain and Obama on their future strategy with Iraq?
VN: Beyond what they speak. I don't know. I mean I think a lot of the discussions domestically right now is only about the surge and the troop numbers, but I think ultimately say in the next two, three years, whether Iraq can be taken off the radar of politics really depends on not just solving military and securities in Iraq, but solving the larger political and economic issues in Iraq, which requires a very different kind of debate than the media, the public figures, nobody's doing that in America right now.
SM: What impact will Russia, especially should current trends remain, have in US-Iran relationship?
VN: It is possible to conceive of a negotiation process that can begin, that might not immediately change the tenor of the relations between the two countries, but move it in the direction that could be more positive down the road. The United States and Iran have had no engagement whatsoever in the open. They talked about Afghanistan, but it was in secret. The discussions they've had in Iran are not really talk. They're not diplomatic engagements. They're complaint sessions where the ambassadors would meet and coming with charge sheets and accuse one another of various things. They were not constructive discussions. The United States has engaged with constructive discussions with adversaries in the past, including with North Korea during the Clinton and Bush administrations. If there were to be a serious engagement with Iran, it clearly would change the tenor of this discussion. In other words that the current impasse that the US-Iran relations are in is a product of not only things that they disagree on or areas that they have had conflicts over, but is also a function of absence of any kind of direct negotiations. So I think it is conceivable to see that the US may become much more directly involved than in the nuclear talk, may talk to Iran about issues such as Afghanistan and the likes, and once there is direct discussions, then that would put their relationship on a different footing.
SM: In regards to Iran negotiations, you often hear about negotiations only with leverage. Are there realistic leverages for the future administration?
VN: Leverage is a subjective criterion here. I mean there are times that United States has had a strong hand and there are times that its leverage has been lacking in talking to Iran. But the United States if by its own definition if nuclear issue is on a fast track in terms of the threat it poses on the United States, and the US needs to solve this in the short run, potentially the United States cannot wait for leverage. And it would have to deal with the circumstances that it confronts. It is in Iraq, it is facing a surge in war in Afghanistan, it has limitations in its ability to threaten Iran militarily. It faces an American public that is war wary and now with the financial crisis may not be that keen in new foreign policy adventure. But you know that is the circumstance that the US is confronting, and I think you have to think in terms of diplomatic negotiations, in terms of a game-changer, not necessarily as something that would solve things immediately. You consider the issue of leverage much more if you think you're going to go to a set of negotiation and come out with immediate result, and therefore you need to begin to talk with the objective of intimidating your other party to sign on to terms that you're putting before them. But you can also think of talks as a way of making an impact that doesn't advantage you, but it advantages your adversary. The current impact advantages Iran, not the United States, that's at least the way the American administration and the American politicians have defined it. Now if the current impasse is not good for us, it's good for them. If that's the case, anything that can change the game, can change the dynamic, can change the calculus potentially can have advantages for the United States. And I think in that context, leverage is not as important as throwing Iranian off their game and forcing new circumstances on them where the rules of the game would be different. I think Iran for a very long time has got used to the fact that the United States will not talk to it, will not get serious about talking, and at the same time cannot do much militarily either, so all of the Iranian calculations are based on this reality, and shaking this reality up I think would be to America's advantage.
SM: With Iran's nuclear enrichment issue becoming the focal point of US-Iran foreign policy and Iran viewing enrichment as its unalienable right, is there any maneuvering space for either administration?
VN: Iran's nuclear issue is going to be a very difficult issue to resolve. I mean first of all, nobody should fool themselves to think that there are one or two meetings that can resolve this issue, or there are one or two incentives or threats that can solve this problem. It's going to be hard, it's going to be long, and it's not necessarily going to give the United States all the results that it wants. But the problem rests in the following issue that the United States has created an expectation for itself that Iran would readily give up or easily give up its nuclear program without a fundamental change in US-Iran relations. And the Iranians I think will not make serious concession on the nuclear issue unless they're in a completely different place with the United States. And you're not going to get into a different place with another country unless you have a track record of successful engagement that builds trust and you make baby gains along the way, and you gradually build a different relationship. So for the Iranians, any resolution to the nuclear issue would have to be the consequence or the results of successful engagement. Whereas for the United States, they want that first, and whether or not there are relations is somewhat immaterial as far as the Bush administration is concerned. They don't want the relations at all; they just want the results.
SM: In that case, are there low hanging fruits for the next administration to use to begin a progressive engagement with Iran?
VN: First of all, I think there are ways of thinking about the nuclear issue differently; there might be more wiggle room. But I think right now the gains that the new administration can make are not in the terms, but is in the structure of negotiations. For instance, much more direct participation by the United States in negotiations can provide a different dynamic than to outsource the negotiations to Europeans as Iranians don't take seriously because the Europeans cannot give Iranians what the Iranians want, only the United States can do that, and that's why they want the United States at the table. The second issue is that here are also areas of common interest between the United States and Iran where they can begin. These are like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Caucasus. Or they could have discussions over issues that they are on the same side. Both Iran and the United States don't want the Taliban resurface in Afghanistan. Both Iran and the United States support the Maliki government in Iraq. Both Iran and the United States don't like Russia carving Georgia into pieces. And if they were to have successful engagement in these areas, it builds trust that they can parlay into a better negotiating environment over to nuclear issues. But I think you know the bedrock of all these discussions is that the Bush administration was not interested in changing US-Iran relations. It just wanted Iran to give up on the nuke. Whereas the Iranians want a change in the relationship with the US. And the United States ultimately if it's serious about the Iran problem, would have to think of changing US relationship with Iran. But we're only going to get gains with Iran in the context of a different relationship. It is clear that we cannot move the ball further in the current circumstance.
SM: By spring of 2009, in time for Iran's election, the future administration will have all its key cabinets and staffers in place. What impacts will Iran's election have on US-Iran dynamics? Is there an ideal outcome?
VN: Well obviously, if Iran were to have a different president than Ahmadinejad, it would make it easier for the US president or US policy makers to deal with them. Because Ahmadinejad has a toxic image because of his public statements against Israel, against the Holocaust, against the United States, and especially provide certain opportunity that don't exist otherwise. But at the same time Ahmadinejad is better positioned to seriously engage the United States because there is nobody more hard-line than him in Iran. So there is nobody that is going to be criticizing him about being soft on American issues. So you know it's a double-edged sword. If he wins the elections, he's probably the person that is strongest in Iran politically, to seriously deal with the United States, but on the other hand the United States probably prefer a different face in Iran. At the same time, the Iran issue is part of Iran's selection cycle. In other words, the Iranians are keenly aware of the impact. Ahmadinejad will face challenges as to whether his foreign policy with the United States is the right one. And depending on who becomes the American president and what policy the American president adopts, by June, it could make relations with the United States a much more central issue in Iranian presidential elections.
SM: Is there an ideal candidate with credibility within Iran and a positive image in US that could help mend the ties?
VN: Realistically, there is not going to be a reformist as president. There's not going to be somebody like Khatami becoming president. Iran's president will be either a hard-line conservative like Ahmadinejad, or a moderate conservative like Tehran's mayor Ghalibaf, or former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani. People who are more pragmatic nevertheless are conservative. We're not going to get a reformist as president. Any new face in Tehran that is not associated directly with Ahmadinejad's rhetoric would obviously make it easier for American policy makers to engage Iran.
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