Independence without Freedom: Iran's Foreign Policy

Afterword

[ 353 ] afterword A better American understanding of Iran’s foreign-policy behavior is necessary because the United States has to deal with Iran, whether monarchical or revolutionary republic and whether the American administration is Republican or Democratic. The Obama administration has said no to the opponents of talks with Iran, and there is no doubt that any other administration will do the same, because it is in the national interest of the United States to do so. In the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu, “Know your enemy.” But talking without adequate understanding is like diving without knowing how to swim. Among the many reasons for America’s poor understanding of Iran, two can be briefly mentioned. First, for decades the traditional power realists dominated the study of international politics and foreign policy; during that time, in the international scholar Annette Baker Fox’s words, a “stereotype of the small states was that of a helpless pawn in world politics.” Since no one believes today that Iran, among other small states, is a helpless pawn, this view has clearly proven to be misguided. Second, the lack of a better understanding continues in Washington in particular, partly because, according to William R. Polk, a leading scholar and practitioner of Middle East diplomacy, the United States uses the “fatally flawed” war-game theory and the National Intelligence Estimate to predict Iranian behavior. I believe, however, that the problem significantly reflects the American inattention to history. About half a century ago I called attention to the fact that in Iranian culture “the past is ever present” and that reality was, and still is, vital to a better understanding of Iran’s foreign-policy behavior. In contrast, in our American culture the past is never present. For example, we tend to dismiss a viewpoint opposed to our own by saying, “That is history!” How well former secretary of state Madeleine Albright understood the importance of understanding the history and culture of other nations. In an address in 2000 to U.S. diplomats and other officials she said that “cultural factors are utterly inseparable from foreign policy,” and “the more we know and understand about cultures of those with whom we interact, the more successful our policy will be.” Hassan Rouhani’s surprise landslide victory in Iran’s recent elections astounded Iranians, Americans, and much of the world. In his victory speech, he claimed he would travel the road to “moderation” and pursue a policy of “freedom ” for the Iranian people. Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, during his presidency in 1989–97, sought little conflict with the West and offered the people of Iran a degree of economic freedom. Mohammad Khatami, who took the presidency [ 354 ] Afterword in 1997–2005, made room for detente with the world and promised a modicum of individual liberty and freedom of speech. But neither one succeeded. They both aspired to combine spirituality and pragmatism in their domestic and foreign policy, but this ran against the most fundamental problem of the Iranian Constitution of 1979: Was the right of the people given the highest priority or the right of the faqih? Rouhani might aspire to combine spirituality and pragmatism , but like his predecessor, he will be entangled in the endemic and unresolved problem of choosing between the right of the people and the right of the faqih. I have tried, therefore, during my entire career to explain what seems to drive Iranian foreign-policy decisions by trying to place them in the deeper context of what I call Iran’s “diplomatic culture,” defined as those values, norms, mores, institutions, modes of thinking, and ways of acting that have developed over centuries, have survived change, and continue to shape Iran’s foreign policy making. Here are some of them in a nutshell. Identity. The Iranian sense of national identity is rooted in a millennial heritage of survival through the rise and fall of four empires and the existence of the Iranian nation-state in modern times. Of all foreign invasions of Iran over thousands of years, only the Arab invasion added an enduring new dimension, Islam, to the Iranian people’s sense of Persian identity. Nevertheless, since the Iranians were converted to Shii Islam they have maintained their distinction from the Arab and most other Muslims of the world, who adhere to Sunni Islam. By contrast, for example, the Egyptians became both Arab and Sunni Muslim after the Arab invasion. Independence. The concept of political independence came to...