American Policy Toward Iran: Bush and Beyond
By Peter W. Rodman

In this essay, I will offer some perspective on American policy toward Iran more broadly, including observations about the Bush administration's thinking and some speculation about the future of American policy.

I must begin by emphasizing what I know is the Bush administration's view of the value of U.S.-European cooperation. It has been a cardinal principle of Iranian policy to try to separate Europe from the United States. The fact that the U.S. and Europe have had a common policy on the nuclear issue for all these years is a source of real leverage on Iran; it is also leverage on the Russians and Chinese in the UN Security Council. This has been a success for the West.

It's even better when the U.S. and Europe are together on a strong position. Sometimes consensus comes at the price of a weak lowest-common-denominator position. But in this case, the Europeans have set red lines and drawn conclusions when the Iranians trampled on those red lines. As another speaker noted, Germany has also had a particularly important role in the financial sanctions that the U.S. Treasury has been organizing in parallel to the Security Council.

On the merits of the subject, there are two sets of issues. One is one's view of the facts; second is one's view of the policy to pursue.

Last fall's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran purported to give us the facts, but it is a highly misleading document. I have not seen the full classified NIE, but only the published "key judgments" paper. If the sentences had been rearranged it might have been a useful document, less susceptible to misleading headlines and misinterpretation. I, for one, am not at all reassured to be told that Iran could have enough fissile material to build a bomb by the end of next year - which is what the document says if you read it carefully. The problem of the Iranian bomb has not gone away.

Why does the U.S. view Iran's nuclear ambitions with such a sense of urgency? It is often said that Iran would be deterred from the actual use of such a weapon. That might be so, though with such a fanatical regime one could never be sure. During the Cold War, it was often said that "nuclear weapons make the world safe for conventional aggression." The risk is that a regime such as Iran's would be emboldened in every other area - conventional military intimidation, use of terror as a weapon, and its ideological assault on the region - and that we would be inhibited about responding. In other words, we would be deterred. Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon would be a significant shift in the geopolitical balance, and it would occur immediately once Iran was thought to have such a capability. That's why we view the prospect with such urgency.

As for American policy, let me describe what I think is a matter of bipartisan consensus in the United States and what would therefore be a matter of continuity as well as the issues on which there is some difference between the parties and on which it therefore makes a difference who wins the election.

In President Bush's State of the Union address in January 2008, he said, "We will stand by our allies, and we will defend our interests in the Persian Gulf." That was an echo of a commitment first stated by President Jimmy Carter. In the present context of fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon it represents a degree of extended deterrence. It is important for the Iranian government to know that whatever blackmail potential it hopes to gain by pursuit of a nuclear weapon, or acquisition of a nuclear weapon, would be blunted to some extent by a U.S. security umbrella over the Gulf. It is unlikely to completely nullify the geopolitical shift mentioned earlier, but it is an important factor.

It is also likely that the next administration will continue what this administration has done in accelerating defense cooperation with the Gulf Arab states to try to strengthen conventional deterrence. Our defense cooperation with the Gulf Arabs goes back many decades, through many administrations. I would add - since we're talking about non-proliferation - that another reason for our trying to strengthen conventional deterrence is to try to discourage some of these countries from going nuclear. As you know, the Saudis and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) may be flirting with this; far better that they have confidence in the U.S. and in our deterrence.

There are also, however, policy questions on which there are differences between our two parties. A Democratic administration is more likely to have faith in "dialogue" with Iran. This is a posture more like the Europeans'. Republicans are more skeptical of this, and also concerned that our Arab friends would be unnerved by it, with no corresponding benefit. A Republican administration is more likely to believe that continuing to ratchet up pressure is the more useful course. (Even the NIE attributed Iran's shift in 2003 to international pressure - which included the invasion of Iraq.) Part of the problem up to now has been that if we had a "dialogue" with Iran in present circumstances, we would be talking from a position of weakness - we seemed to be weak in Iraq, for example. Ryan Crocker's dialogue with the Iranians over Iraq issues has been worthless up to now; the Iranians have been simply exploiting our weakness and lying to us about their sharing our interest in Iraqi stability.

Iran is a revolutionary power, still in a militant phase of its revolution. Its foreign policy is ideologically driven. Indeed, I can remember an earlier Iranian regime that had a completely different view of who its friends and its enemies were. So it is not a matter of Iranian national interest; it's ideology. Iran is seeking hegemony in the Gulf; it aspires to be the leader of the Islamist radical trend in the Middle East as a whole. I doubt it can accomplish all this - the Arabs have no desire to be dominated by Iran - but that is the thrust of Iran's policy. It is insulting to them to suggest that they could be charmed out of their deeply-held convictions by a diplomatic conversation. No conversation is going to solve this problem.

This essay was written in connection with the AICGS "Security and Stability: German and American Cooperation in Times of Transition" Conference, held on February 2, 2008, which was supported by The German Marshall Fund of the United States, the AICGS Business and Economics Program, and the AICGS Foreign and Domestic Policy Program.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.