An Iran Opportunity Missed
Via Kevin Drum, we hear of what I can only describe as a complete diplomatic disaster for the United States.
What happened is this: in 2003, following shortly after our invasion of Iraq and successful conquest of Baghdad, Iran approached the U.S. through Swiss intermediaries with an offer to talk. About what, you ask? If the relevant documents are accurate, pretty much everything was on the table.
The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, with possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of negotiating road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation.
Read that again to make sure it sinks in. In the summer of 2003, Iran was willing to talk about its funding terrorists and its official policy toward Israel. And we said no. Our rationale - if you couldn't have guessed - was that we preferred to incite regime change in Iran, which we assumed was going to collapse anyway.
So here we are, three years later, none of that is on the table, and we have squandered our sudden victory in Iraq, militarily and diplomatically. Iran's position, meanwhile, is greatly strengthened. Sigh.
posted by Joshua @ 4:15 PM
5 Comments:
I was just rushing over here to post about this one myself, but you did a nicer job than I would have.
Not much to say, the news pretty much spins itself.
A perfect example of how this administration manages to fumble even the positive results of its own actions. Prying open this sort of diplomatic opening was EXACTLY the sort of thing that the invasion of Iraq was good for, and the Bush team failed to take it because their invasion of Iraq was not motivated by rational pragmatism and diplomatic calculations which motivate some of their reasonable supporters in the endevor (Tacitean, I believe) but by a childishly simple "reverse domino" ideology. This is the same faith-based foreign policy that led them to think it was okay to do about 3 minutes of planning for the post invasion period.
I'm going to go fume now.
You are correct, sir, in that I count myself as a reasonable supporter of the endeavor.
But I certainly haven't had much evidence from the administration that they are reasonable supporters of their own endeavor.
Here Iran pretty much puts a 'silver platter' offer out there - the kind of thing we've been asking them to do since 1979 - and we rebuff it! Imagine if the Iranians and Saudis had put forth a reasonable two-state solution and made the Palestinians consider it! If Iran had put pressure on the Shi'a radicals to abstain from sectarianism! It just boggles the mind to consider what sort of world we would be in today if we had just opened a dialogue with Iran. But no, no, we are infallible and sent by God to destroy regimes that do not please us. Tell me who the religious fanatics are again?
Official policies have a way of being, shall we say, flexible. Our official policy didn't prevent us from talking arms-for-hostages during the Iran-Contra business, now did it?
At the same time, Bush has made a great deal of his boldness in casting aside previous foreign policy tenets. What would have been a greater and more daring move in 2003 than changing our 'official' policy on Iran? What would have been more pro-active, considering the potential threat Iran posed (and now poses in greater fashion)?
My main gripe here is that the administration continually places image above results. In some cases, of course, image can be helpful and produce results, but image for its own sake is madness. Again, in the late spring of 2003, our image was one of surpassing military might, and that made Iran nervous. Nervous enough to consider dialogue.
A clear-thinking and results-oriented diplomacy would have said "Excellent: just what we wanted. Iran, here's what we think is reasonable." From there, we could've used those bonafides to deal with North Korea in a similar manner, all while gaining international support for our Iraq project.
But no, we decided that looking tough and refusing dialogue was more important. And it has been a disaster.
More here.
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