A Selective Partnership: Getting U.S.-Iranian Relations Right

Despite the deep political chasm that separates Iran and the United States, they have repeatedly tried to communicate. These two wary powers have made significant overtures to each other at least nine times since the end of the hostage crisis in 1981. First was the U.S.-Israeli initiative in 1985 (better known as the Iran-contra affair); most recently, in May 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a conditional offer of direct talks. In between, there were official attempts at dialogue from the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, collaboration between Tehran and Washington following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and, more recently, three high-level Iranian communications on the nuclear issue. There has also been a steady stream of unofficial "Track II" meetings between former Iranian and U.S. officials, as well as persistent but unverified rumors of covert meetings.

Although all of these efforts have failed, the very fact that so many officials in both countries have persevered, risking their careers and reputations in the process, is a testament to the importance they attach to getting U.S.-Iranian relations right. Iran and the United States are the two most consequential powers in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. It does not take a Clausewitz to recognize that the region's fate may well be determined by these two antagonists.

In his new book, Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tries to strip away some of the misconceptions about Iran that have bedeviled Western policymakers. Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic addresses the fundamental questions that plague policy officials (and ordinary citizens) in the West: Is Iran exploiting its rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to covertly build a bomb? Does Iran control terrorist attacks against Israel via its surrogates in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories? Is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with all his bluster and wild pronouncements, really in charge of his country? If not, who is? Just how do policies get made in the Islamic Republic? Takeyh wrote his book well before Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and set off a major confrontation with Israel last summer, but these events have merely highlighted the need for the wider optic that Takeyh provides.

Iran is unique. A non-Arab (and non-Arabic-speaking) state in the Middle East with its own ancient history and culture and a distinctive political style, it is the only Shiite theocracy in the world. It has both a revolutionary regime and a deeply traditional and conservative society, and its decision-making system relies on shifting coalitions among competing power centers. Iran does not yield easily to the standard tools of Western political analysis. Takeyh, a regular in Washington policy circles and himself of Iranian ancestry, sets out to demystify this conundrum for a Western audience. His book's introduction is entitled "Getting Iran Wrong," and its conclusion, "Getting Iran Right." The chapters in between examine Iran's political history and changing role in the region since the Iranian Revolution, U.S.-Iranian relations, terrorism and the relevance of 9/11 for Iran, Iran's nuclear program, the implications for Iran of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Iran's relationship with Israel.

Takeyh examines these subjects without any of the hysteria that characterizes so much of what passes for political debate about Iran (and without the jargon that often clutters the writing of Washington insiders). His tone is explanatory rather than censorious. If he has any agenda at all, it appears to be the promotion of rational pragmatism -- a stance unlikely to ingratiate him to ideologues on either the left or the right.

SEEING STRAIGHT

"From its inception," Takeyh argues, "the Islamic Republic was a state divided between competing centers of power and profoundly differing conceptions of political authority." Yet even if U.S. officials and pundits can agree that Iran today is not Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Kim Jong Il's North Korea, they seem incapable of resisting the temptation to treat Iran as a unitary, totalitarian, and implacably evil entity. Takeyh views this persistent misjudgment not as the failing of any particular administration but rather as a congenital condition that has plagued U.S. policymaking ever since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Still, even if demonizing one's adversary is a common tactic of international politics, such careless rhetoric can be costly when it produces policies that do not work.

For Takeyh, there is no question that change is coming to Iran. The country's "sophisticated and youthful populace can be neither appeased by cosmetic concessions nor silenced by threats of coercion," he writes. But he thinks change will come from Iran's internal dynamics and at its own pace. External powers eager to shape or accelerate reform must recognize, Takeyh cautions, that crude appeals for regime change undermine local proponents of transformation by making them look like imperialist lackeys; the forces of repression seize on such statements to stifle the opposition on grounds of national security.