There is an understandable restlessness in the foreign policy community to the effect that the hard-line U.S. strategy of "containing" Iran is in need of revision. The policy has failed, the argument runs; in the meantime, it is harming relations with allies and other important American interests. So it's time to shift course and, among other things, try for a "dialogue" with Iran. There are hints that the Administration is tempted in this direction.
This restlessness, while understandable, is misplaced. It is difficult to see what Iran has done lately to deserve such a bouquet. Tehran is still the "premier state sponsor of international terrorism" (according to the State Department's own terrorism report), and some evidence even points to an Iranian hand in the deadly bombings of U.S. military facilities in Saudi Arabia in November of last year and this past June. Hezbollah in Lebanon (an Iranian protege) helped topple Shimon Peres's government in Israel by its terrorism last spring; Iran also is accused of involvement in the assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia in June 1995 and in recent Islamist agitation in Bahrain. The fatwa (death sentence) against British novelist Salman Rushdie is still outstanding. Meanwhile, Iran continues its clandestine pursuit of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons while purchasing North Korean ballistic missiles to deliver them. Iran's ideological thrust remains a destabilizing force in the entire Middle East.
The holes in the present U.S. policy are there for all to see. Most discouraging is the weak cooperation we are getting from Europe and Japan (let alone Russia and China) in our effort to restrain Iran's military, economic, and technological buildup. Our allies are reacting angrily to the recent U.S. sanctions legislation (D'Amato-Gilman) that penalizes companies doing business with Iran. There is also an interesting new geopolitical wrinkle: Newly independent Central Asian countries such as Azerbaijan, in whose survival we have a strategic stake, are struggling to escape dominance by Russia as well as Iran; they need outlets to get their energy resources to market, and our attempt to quarantine Iran puts them in a bind. The complete absence of U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran, moreover, seems artificial: We had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union through most of the period we were also "containing" it.
But these are questions of tactics. If the Europeans and Japanese were really willing to tighten the screws on Iran in a serious way, we might have something to discuss with them about a more coordinated approach. But at bottom they simply resist the idea of limiting their trade, and thus any easing of U.S. pressures on them is likely to be only a U.S. retreat, with little compensating gain. The plight of the Central Asians is a genuine dilemma, but there may be ways to help them without collapsing our Iran policy (and there are pipeline options that bypass both Russia and Iran).
As for "dialogue," a diplomatic contact in itself would not be the end of the world. But its benefit is also vastly overrated. The United States and Iran oppose each other because they understand each other all too well; it is the height of naivete to think it's all just a "failure of communication." On the downside, a high-level U.S.-Iranian diplomatic contact would be a dramatic event capturing the headlines; in the present environment it would be universally interpreted as a collapse of the American policy under international pressure. (This could be mitigated, in theory, if accompanied by a redoubling of all other U.S. pressures on Iran -- including vigorous enforcement of D'Amato-Gilman. But it's doubtful that this Administration could pull this off.)
Whatever the tactics, the present strategy still seems the best available. Call it "containment," or whatever, it is a strategy of maximizing pressures on a militantly hostile regime -- weakening it to the extent possible, keeping it off balance, compounding all its problems. It's a long-term policy. And it's having an effect. Iran's economy, depressed by low oil prices, is seriously squeezed by the slowdown of new international lending (blocked by the U.S.). The value of Iran's currency -- as is the volume of its arms import. Dissension in the country has reached such proportions that even analysts unsympathetic to U.S. policy have questioned the long-term survival of the Islamic revolutionary regime. (There was rioting in western Iran all last week.) The Europeans and Japanese are in fact cooperating quietly with us in restricting weapons sales and transfers of the most advanced technology, as well as new credits. All this looks like vindication of the U.S. strategy.
The alternative policies urged (or implied, since not all critics of "containment" are explicit about their recommendations) are incoherent. What would relieving Iran of pressures accomplish? What is the evidence that this leniency would change the regime's behavior or its deeply held ideological convictions, and not just give it greater freedom of action to continue doing what it eagerly seeks to do (i.e., undermine Western positions in the region)? How do we know that a conciliatory turn wouldn't just be taken in Tehran as vindication of its present radical line? There is more wishful thinking here than evidence or analysis.
This is the optimistic rationale, for example, of the European Union's policy of "critical dialogue" with Iran -- in which Europe conducts normal commerce with Iran in the hope of moderating its behavior. Last April, a troika of EU foreign ministers visited Tehran hoping to obtain an official statement from the Islamic Republic condemning terrorism; they came home empty-handed. The farcical level that this policy can reach is most evident in Germany: In 1993 Iran's Minister of Intelligence and Security was welcomed in Bonn as a state guest; in 1996, he is the subject of an arrest warrant from a German court in connection with terrorist murders in Berlin, and the mullahs are now threatening a fatwa against the German prosecutors. Is this the brilliant policy we are to emulate?
It's a mystery to me where the impatience is really coming from. The present U.S. policy is clearly more of a burden on Iran than on the United States. Why are we so restless? "Containment" of the Soviet Union, in George Kennan's classic 1947 exposition, called for patience above all. A shift in Administration policy is also likely to trigger a reaction in Congress, where the majority sentiment is that the law should be enforced and given a chance to work. After all, the displeasure of our allies comes not from their conviction that the new sanctions won't have an economic effect, but from a fear that they will: European companies are now more wary of doing business in Iran. We should keep our cool.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter W. Rodman, a former White House and State Department official, is Director of National Security Programs at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. Mr. Rodman also serves as a member of FDI's board.