The Iranians are claiming they recently disabled an American drone aircraft. If they did so, Americans should find out how, and apply their techniques to deal with those closer to home who drone on about the “Iranian threat,” beat the war drums by suggesting military strikes and regime change, and risk dragging this country into a new military calamity in the Middle East.
Do these droners and drumbeaters never learn from history? Would they have the United States enter a new catastrophe just as we are extricating ourselves – with great difficulty – from two bloody, costly, and unproductive misadventures in Iran’s neighborhood?
To all appearances American drumbeaters are no smarter than Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who, in 1980, thought that a weakened and divided Iran would fall easily to his better-armed and better-organized forces. Instead his attack united Iranians – even those who detested the prevailing holy fascism – behind defending the homeland. In that sense, Hussein also helped the authorities in Tehran to suppress all domestic dissent and consolidate power under the most authoritarian and intolerant of ideologies.
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Just because a war with Iran is foolish, however, does not mean it will not happen. Several discredited former American officials such as former ambassador to the UN John Bolton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are essentially calling for one. While it is tempting to dismiss the current rhetoric as hot air intended to score political points, its sheer volume and frequency is worrying. Nine years ago, in the case of Iraq, a similar flood of rhetoric, fear mongering, and distortion overwhelmed good judgment, and led America on a course that defied common sense. It could happen again, this time in a way that could make Iraq look easy.
US officials – particularly the president – who have the difficult task of dealing with Iran should ignore the recent cacophony of war talk, and keep in mind the following:
• Iran is chiefly a threat to itself. Its diplomacy has been inept, featuring charm offensives alternating with making gratuitous enemies. It has few friends in its region, beyond tiny, Christian Armenia. Unlike most of its neighbors, it is not Arab, Turkish, or Sunni Muslim, and thus lacks a ready entree into regional affairs. Its support of President Bashir al-Assad’s regime in Syria, while understandable from a strategic point of view, has won it few friends in the region.
• The priority of those in power in Tehran is their own political survival. When that is at stake, they can become remarkably flexible (or brutal). As a former Iranian official once put it, regarding the Iran-Iraq war: They don’t care how many young people die in the Iraqi swamps. But they are not going to commit political suicide.
• The Islamic Republic wants the US to over-react to its posturing. Provoking us to do and say something stupid is the national sport. Iranian bellicose statements about closing the Strait of Hormuz and the recent officially sanctioned attack on the British Embassy are signs of weakness, not strength. America and its allies should not swallow the bait. The best response to Iranian bravado and claims of this or that achievement is a collective yawn.
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• The Iranians may or may not be working toward a nuclear weapon. We should make a cold calculation, however, about just what such a weapon will do for them. It certainly does not solve their economic problems, nor does it silence opposition protesters in Tehran or ethnic separatists in Baluchestan, Kordestan, or elsewhere. Nor does a nuclear weapon help the Islamic Republic counter what it claims is the main threat to its survival: a covert war of “soft overthrow” waged by its traditional enemies in the West.
• America should not paint itself into a rhetorical corner. American presidents have said that a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable”. So, presumably, is a nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, or North Korea. The Berlin wall was also unacceptable. In all these cases, however, Americans remained smart and did not become captive to their own rhetoric.
For 30 years, America’s dealings with Iran have been difficult and frustrating. Attempts to break the existing downward spiral of insults, accusations, and threats have foundered on mistrust and sometimes on just bad timing. When President Obama – at the beginning of his administration – offered Iran engagement based on mutual respect (something the Iranians have always claimed they wanted), Tehran seemed unwilling or unable to respond.
In May 2010, when Iran seemed ready to accept the same nuclear fuel deal it had rejected seven months earlier, the process of building consensus for a UN Security Council sanctions resolution had become irreversible.
Despite setbacks, the US should not give up on the effort to end over three decades of futility with Iran. Otherwise Americans risk stumbling into another armed conflict with unpredictable and disastrous consequences. Americans should keep their heads on their shoulders and apply the classic tools of statecraft: patience, firmness, persistence, open-mindedness, and a readiness to listen.
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Above all Americans must keep their poise, and ignore the droners – even the loudest ones – who would stampede their country into yet another Middle East fiasco.
L. Bruce Laingen was chief of mission and John Limbert was political officer at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Both were detained in Iran for 14 months.
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