A hard-liner could see Tehran's desperate offer as a sign that the mullahs respond only to force. But history doesn't bear out that view. Again and again, Parsi shows, the U.S. has failed to respond to positive steps taken by the Iranian regime, instead hoping to smash or pressure Tehran into submission, or simply sideline it.
In 1992, the U.S. missed a major opportunity at the Madrid Mideast peace conference, when Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was pursuing a policy of détente with the United States. Rafsanjani had declared that Iran would agree to any Israeli-Palestinian solution acceptable to the Palestinians. But the U.S. decided to freeze Iran out of the process and didn't invite it. "Washington failed to pick up on Iran's readiness because of the image of Iran as an inherently anti-American nation, formed by a decade of tensions between the two countries," Parsi writes.
The snub, along with Washington's insistence on maintaining some of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to check Iran, and its refusal to accept that Iran had a legitimate security role in the region, killed Rafsanjani's détente overture. It also strengthened extremists, who argued that Washington's rebuff showed that no matter what Iran did, it would never receive any concessions in return. Afterward, Iran began to support rejectionist Palestinian groups like Hamas for the first time.
Iran's unique position as a non-Arab, Shiite-majority state in the heart of the Middle East, and its tense relations with "moderate" Sunni Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have forced it into a complicated tactical dance, which Americans have completely misread. Parsi argues that Iran's extreme anti-Israeli rhetoric and support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are driven more by strategic objectives than by ideology. They are an attempt to play to the Arab street, which is the only way Iran can overcome the political enmity of Arab leaders, as well as an attempt to gain regional clout in the only way open to it. Despite its support for the terrorist groups, Iran has almost always avoided taking actions against Israel that would jeopardize its geopolitical goals. Its bark has been worse than its bite.
"When one scratches the surface, even Iran's President Ahmadinejad's venomous outbursts against Israel turn out to have strategic motivations," Parsi writes. For example, Ahmadinejad and his fellow hard-liners defended his questioning of the Holocaust as a way of broadening the debate over Iran's nuclear policies to include Israel, strengthening Iran's bargaining position. More moderate Iranians vigorously disagreed with Ahmadinejad's speech and urged him not to raise inflammatory subjects such as Israel's right to exist or the Holocaust, saying they would turn the West against Iran. One reformist newspaper, which Ahmadinejad later closed, blasted his Holocaust denial. "What was conspicuously absent from the internal debate in Tehran, however, was the ideological motivations and factors that Iran publicly invoked to justify its stance on Israel," Parsi writes. "Neither the honor of Islam nor the suffering of the Palestinian people figured in the deliberations. Rather, both the terms of the debate and its outcome were of a purely strategic nature." Parsi notes that Iran's supreme jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei, forbade all Iranian officials to repeat the Holocaust denials, and Ahmadinejad subsequently softened his stand.
The Iranian-Israeli confrontation is a struggle over power, not ideology, Parsi argues. "The current enmity between the two states has more to do with the shift in the balance of power in the Middle East after the Cold War and the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War than it does with the Islamic Revolution of 1979." Iran and Israel both seek dominance in a disordered region that lacks a defined hierarchy; they employ ideology only as a means to achieve that goal.
As he recounts the Byzantine and ever-shifting relations between the three countries, Parsi portrays Israel and Iran as odd mirrors of each other. Both exist outside the Arab world and are disdainful of that world. They share a long and complicated history of wheeling and dealing, friendship and betrayal. Iran still has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel, which is protected by a fatwa issued by Khomeini himself. Israel repeatedly tried to strike up an alliance with Iran as part of its so-called periphery doctrine, which saw ties with non-Arab countries like Iran, Turkey and India as strategically necessary to counter Israel's Arab enemies. Ironically, Israel and the Israel lobby in the U.S. urged Washington to ignore Iran's anti-Israel rhetoric in the 1980s.
Today, however, both countries "seem to calculate -- or miscalculate -- that portraying their struggle in ideological and apocalyptic terms will provide each with a critical edge in their efforts to define the order of the Middle East to their own benefit," Parsi writes. The "mad mullahs" argument pushed by Israel and Israel's U.S. lobby has prevailed, and it drives U.S. policy to this day -- the NIE notwithstanding. But Parsi argues that the costs of clinging to this policy are becoming intolerably high, with saber rattling on all sides getting louder.
Although war is now extremely unlikely, the U.S. still faces a momentous decision: How should it deal with Iran? Parsi argues that the three approaches the U.S. has tried or considered -- regime change, containment and invasion -- have all failed. A change to a secular regime, even if it happened, would probably not change the underlying power struggle between Israel and Iran. Containment, the attempt to keep Iran boxed in and weakened, has also failed, as Israel's disastrous 2006 war in Lebanon demonstrated. A military solution is off the books now and in any case would not be worth the costs.
The only policy that will work, and which has never been pursued, is giving Iran a seat at the table by accepting its legitimate interests in the region -- what Parsi calls "regional integration and collective security." This approach, he maintains, would break the standoff between Iran and the West, as well as between Iran and its Arab neighbors. Indeed, it could even help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It is the geopolitical imbalance in the region that renders that conflict all the more unsolvable," Parsi writes. "Unless the underlying conflicts in the region are addressed, any process seeking to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute will be subject to geopolitical rivalries."
Some respected Israeli analysts share Parsi's view. Parsi quotes Israel's former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami as saying that "Iran is not driven by an obsession to destroy Israel, but by its determination to preserve its regime ... The answer to the Iranian threat is a policy of detente, which would change the Iranian elite's pattern of conduct." Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar'el takes the same view, arguing in a piece titled "They Stole the Threat From Us" that "Iran is indeed deceptive, but it is not crazy. It operates according to a systematic political and diplomatic rationale."
And, of course, the NIE itself, which represents the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, expressed this view. "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Teheran's decisions are judged by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs," the NIE report said.
But the dominant view of Iran, in both Israel and the United States, continues to be that it is a mad regime bent on destroying Israel. Haaretz reporter Shmuel Rosner wrote that "observers from the right and left have told Haaretz that the report released a week ago on Iran halting its nuclear program will have no impact on U.S. public opinion or its effect will erode."
America has legitimate differences with Iran, not just concerning Tehran's hostility to Israel and its support for terrorist groups, but its appalling human rights record. Détente will not be easy to achieve. But as the U.S. tries to figure out how to get out of the Iraq quagmire, broker a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace and ensure regional stability, sooner or later we're going to have to talk to Iran.
About the writer
Gary Kamiya is a writer at large for Salon.
Related Stories
The GOP's Iran option is off the table
Rudy Giuliani was counting on Iran as a weapon of mass distraction in the '08 race. But the flailing Republican right has just been disarmed.
An Iran bombshell for Bush
The White House knew months ago about Iran's stalled nuclear program. But Bush and Cheney have kept up the war rhetoric.
Bush's real lie about Iran
Despite recent claims otherwise, the White House has rebuffed negotiations with Iran at every turn -- a major strategic blunder.
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)