Iran and America, A missed chance?

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Iran and America
Missed chance?

Oct 25th 2007
From The Economist print edition
A lost opportunity before Tehran's neocons took over

INSTEAD of slipping into war, could America and Iran negotiate a detente in the Middle East? In her clear and readable primer on Iran and its relations with America, Barbara Slavin, a writer for USA Today (and previously for The Economist) recounts how such a breakthrough may have been missed after the attacks of September 11th 2001.

United briefly by their dislike of the Taliban, Iran and America found common cause in Afghanistan. Their diplomats held more than a dozen quiet meetings in Geneva and Paris. In May 2003 the Iranians sent the Americans a blueprint for comprehensive negotiations, the aim of which would be to end the long mutual animosity. But, writes Ms Slavin, this offer never received any serious consideration by the Bush administration.

Whether this was the waste of a golden opportunity nobody may ever be sure. But the stark conclusion of all of these three books is that a rapprochement has become much less likely since the election in 2005 of Iran's egregious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signalled the ascendancy of an Iranian group of “neoconservatives” far more ideological even than their American namesakes.

Although the workings of Iran's quasi-democracy are notoriously opaque, Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri do a clear job of charting the rise of these neocons. They see the explanation of Mr Ahmadinejad's victory not only in his appealing message of economic populism but also in the active connivance of an increasingly militarised state bureaucracy that feared for the survival of the Islamic revolution under the political reformists whose electoral victory of 1997 had inspired so much hope in the West.

With the reformists pushed to the margins, say the authors, real political competition inside Iran no longer takes place between reformists and conservatives but only inside the conservative camp, between the neocons and an old guard of more cautious conservatives. Their chief battleground is Iran's underperforming economy, but thanks in part to Mr Ahmadinejad's rising tide of threats against Israel, domestic politics are also moulded by Iran's relations with the outside world, and especially with America.

Trita Parsi's book offers an interesting take on that relationship. He suggests that events in the Middle East are determined largely by the machinations of three parties: America, Iran and Israel. Israel, he argues, is a diligent and effective shaper of American attitudes to Iran. For the present, Israel's policymakers are less afraid of a putative Iranian nuclear bomb than they are of a rapprochement between Iran and America, which would undermine Israel's own position as America's chief strategic partner in the region. This provocative thesis may overstate Israel's heft in Washington and understate its fear of Iran's nuclear ambitions. But it is hard to grumble with Mr Parsi's conclusion that detente between America and Iran, of the sort that might have come about in 2003, would in fact make both Israel and the Middle East as a whole very much safer.

Book details

Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation
By Barbara Slavin

St Martin's Press; 272 pages; $24.95

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Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives: The Politics of Tehran's Silent Revolution
By Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri

I.B. Tauris; 224 pages; $45 and £20

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Amazon.co.uk

Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
By Trita Parsi

Yale University Press; 361 pages; $28 and £18.99

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Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk