There’s an air of expectation in Vienna among journalists, analysts, and diplomats; many of whom believe an Iran deal is tantalizingly close, if not imminent. While this may be the most public frenzy of optimism, it’s not the first time diplomats believed the United States and Iran were on the verge of a breakthrough, only to have the Supreme Leader throw cold water on their hopes and order Iranian officials to walk away.
The first time was in 1989, when, after a decade of revolutionary turmoil and war, it finally looked like the stars might align into an opportunity for rapprochement. When George H.W. Bush entered office, Iranian-backed terrorists held nine Americans hostages in Lebanon. As a former diplomat, however, Bush preferred diplomacy. His inaugural speech was actually quite similar in tone to Barack Obama’s two decades later. Like Obama, Bush used his big speech to offer Iran an olive branch. “There are today Americans who are held against their will,” Bush declared, adding, “Assistance can be shown here, and will be long remembered. Goodwill begets goodwill. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.” And just like Obama repeated his offer in his fist television interview as president, Bush also reaffirmed his desire to improve relations over subsequent days. “I don’t want to… think that the status quo has to go on forever,” he said. “There was a period of time when we had excellent relations with Iran.”
Khomeini wasn’t interested. “Iran does not need America,” he declared. Unlike Obama today, Bush took no for an answer and waited for the Iranian leadership to change its mind. He didn’t need to wait long. Just six months into Bush’s term, Khomeini died, and Ali Khamenei, the titular president, became the new Supreme Leader. Just as today, journalists and diplomats succumbed to a lot of wishful thinking. Many described Khamenei as a moderate. Then, on August 3, 1989, Rafsanjani became president. Speaking the next day, Rafsanjani suggested that “reasonable, prudent solutions” could free the hostages, and privately he told Pakistani intermediaries that U.S. gestures might grease the process. Bush said Rafsanjani’s statement “offers hope” and State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler suggested her belief that “Iran is genuinely engaged.” Hassan Rouhani, today Iran’s president, was the powerful chairman of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, a body setting policy and answering to the Supreme Leader.
Bush’s willingness to engage was real. He issued a National Security Directive declaring that the United States should prepare for “a normal relationship with Iran on the basis of strict reciprocity,” and he asked UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar to serve as an intermediary between National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Rafsanjani. Pérez de Cuéllar, in turn, appointed Giandomenico Picco, an Italian and a career UN bureaucrat, to be his representative.
Picco flew to Tehran and met Rafsanjani, who dismissed the idea of dialogue let alone compromise out-of-hand: to talk would be to admit culpability in the hostage seizures. The juxtaposition between Iran’s public and private postures is instructive. Rogues can embrace moderation publicly, but when push comes to shove, they remain rogues.
Rafsanjani’s strategy was effective; just as Rouhani today, he found no shortage of useful idiots to embrace his public statements uncritically. While Rafsanjani spoke publicly of pragmatism, privately he revived Iran’s covert nuclear program and played a crucial role in ordering the assassinations of dissidents, including Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou, murdered 26 years ago today in Vienna.
Bush was more cautious than many of diplomacy’s cheerleaders in Congress who suggested the United States offer unilateral concessions. Still, Bush’s engagement was not without cost. It was after Bush began talks with Tehran that Iranian officials not only supplied terrorists in Europe with weaponry to target Western interests but also dispatched a hit squad to kill Salman Rushdie. Engagement did nothing to ameliorate Iran’s rogue behavior, and may instead have made it worse. Only after he fell out of favor did Rafsanjani acknowledge that he responded to American goodwill with bad, on the orders of Khamenei.
It was déjà vu all over again during the Clinton administration. In 1997, Khatami stunned both Iran and the outside world by triumphing in the Islamic Republic’s elections. Upon taking office, he declared, “We are in favor of a dialogue between civilizations and a détente in our relations with the outside world.”
Proponents of dialogue were euphoric. Clinton jumped at the chance to bring Iran in from the cold. This was, after all, the stuff of which legacies were made. He suppressed the FBI’s report on the Khobar Towers bombing (which fingered Iran). Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sent a letter to Khatami seeking dialogue. Khatami did not write back, but American officials read the tea leaves to suggest willingness to engage. In December 1997, for example, he expressed “great respect” for the “great people of the United States,” and called for “a thoughtful dialogue.” He left the “Death to America” declarations to others and called instead for a “dialogue of civilizations.”
Rapprochement floundered, however, because, despite Khatami’s lofty rhetoric, Iranian officials were less than sincere. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk and two colleagues sought to meet Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi after his speech at the Asia Society, but as soon as Kharrazi realized the American officials were waiting to meet him, he left. If America hoped to talk, Iranian thinking went, it should first “pay the right price” which, in effect, was capitulation to all Iranian demands. The only thing that has changed since has been the White House’s willingness to oblige. Just as he does today, Khamenei was blunt. “We shall not show any flexibility…and we shall not relent,” he declared on August 16, 1999. As for Khatami’s idea of dialogue, he clarified, “the phrase dialogue among civilizations does not mean holding talks with representatives of foreign states.” Proponents of dialogue would not take no for an answer, though. When the State Department proposed sending a consular officer to Tehran, the Iranian government not only refused, but characterized its rebuff as a “diplomatic blow” to the Americans.
Albright then apologized for the American role in the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, and announced a package of unilateral American concessions: ending the import ban on Persian rugs, pistachios and caviar, three of Iran’s most lucrative non-oil industries; a relaxation of visa restrictions; and progress on releasing assets frozen during the hostage crisis.
As always, the Iranians hinted they would react positively. Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran’s ambassador at the United Nations, said that Iran would be “prepared to adopt proportionate and positive measures in return.” But no Iranian good will was forthcoming. Quite the contrary: Only July 27 2000, Khamenei declared negotiations, let alone rapprochement, with Washington to be “an insult and treason to the Iranian people.” Khatami explained that the United States had simply not offered enough to merit a response, enough of an excuse to get the pro-engagement crowd in the United States to self-flagellate, to blame Washington rather than Tehran for the lack of progress. Ultimately, Albright’s concessions did more harm than good. Foreign Minister Kemal Kharrazi seized upon Albright’s “confessions” about the 1953 coup with a demand both for further apologies and reparations. This was ironic considering the conservative clergy actually supported the coup against Mosaddeq, whom the considered too close to the communists. Rather than talk further, he stood Albright up during an elaborately planned and stag-managed one-on-one meeting at the United Nations.
Iran and the United States may soon come to a deal, especially as Secretary of State John Kerry signals a willingness to collapse on almost every U.S. redline. But, perhaps it’s time to recognize that the willingness of Iranian and American officials to talk is neither new nor historic. The problem has not been a willingness to dialogue, but rather the Iranian government’s tendency to favor the process of talks over their fruition.
