In
early May 2003, just after American troops had triumphantly swept up
the Tigris-Euphrates and taken Baghdad, an extraordinary message was
delivered to Washington via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. It came as
a two-page fax, on plain paper. Now known as the “Grand
Bargain,” this proposal had the apparent support of all the
major actors in Iran’s government of then-President Muhammad
Khatami. Although the proposed deal offered to settle all disputes
between Iran and the United States, the Bush Administration dismissed
it with contempt. Not only did American officials refuse to receive
the message; they even scolded the Swiss ambassador in Tehran for
having forwarded it to Washington.
At the time Bush rejected the offer, it seemed nothing could be
gained from talking with Teheran. The United States was sated with
hubris. American troops had just toppled the statue of Saddam
Hussain, who himself would soon be captured and ultimately hanged.
Just days earlier, George Bush had swaggered aboard the S.S. Abraham
Lincoln to give his infamous “Mission Accomplished”
speech. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was reportedly on the run,
while neo-cons in Washington, flushed with these victories, were
already eying Iran as the next domino to fall to America’s
grand plan of unilateral regime-changes in the region. As Bill
Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinsky stated in their 2004 report to the
Council on Foreign relations, Why talk with the Iranians when we’ve
got them hemmed in on both their eastern and western flanks?
Today,
however, with some six million Iraqis either killed or exiled as a
result of the war, with the country’s infrastructure destroyed,
and with no end in sight to America’s five-year debacle in
Iraq, the world is a very different place. Here at home, war-fatigue
has set in, and the economy is dangerously weak. Nonetheless,
neither proponents nor opponents of the war — including presidential
aspirants — have offered ideas on how American might end its Iraq
adventure. This, then, might be an appropriate time to revisit
Tehran’s offer.
Since
most Americans are unfamiliar with the Grand Bargain, which the
mainstream media ignored it when it was made, we can begin by asking
what it proposed to do. For their own part, Iran offered to make no
attempts to obtain nuclear arms and to accept much tighter controls
by the IAEA in exchange for access to nuclear technology. They
offered to stop supporting Hamas and Hizbullah in Palestine and
Lebanon respectively. They offered to cooperate with Iraq in all
matters dealing with that country’s security. And crucially, they
offered not only to recognize the state of Israel, but also to accept
a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Quite obviously, the
offer contradicted Bush’s claim, which was made then as it
still is today, that Iran is committed to sponsoring terrorism and to
seeing the destruction of Israel.
For
its part, the U.S. would fully normalize its relations with Iran, end
its sanctions on the country imposed at the time of Iran’s
Revolution in 1979, cooperate on a wide range of issues dealing with
technology transfers, and recognize Iran’s security concerns.
That would mean ceasing to characterize Iran as an “axis of
evil” or a “terrorist” state. It also meant ending
threats to attack their country. And finally, America would take
action against the Mujahidin-i Khalq in Iraq, a group of hold-overs
from the days of the Iranian Revolution who had never accepted the
Islamic Republic and are determined to undo the revolution by
overthrowing Iran’s current regime.
Read the Rest of the Grand Bargain After the Flip...
A.
Iran and Nuclear Weapons
Should
something like the Grand Bargain of May 2003 ever be revived, a range
of issues would have to be addressed. Of these, the matter of Iran’s
alleged nuclear weapons program is the one we hear the most about.
It is also the easiest to clarify and dispense with, for Iran has no
nuclear weapons program. IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei has
repeatedly stated as much, most recently on Oct. 28, 2007. This
finding was confirmed early last December by America’s National
Intelligence Estimate, which stated that such a program had been
dropped five years ago – coincidently, about the same time that
Iran made its offer of a Grand Bargain. Not only have Iran’s
leaders publicly forsworn any quest for nuclear weapons for
themselves; they have gone further and proposed that the entire
Middle East be nuclear-free. But of course a nuclear-free Middle
East would involve dismantling Israel’s nuclear weapons
program. And given America’s acquiescence to Israel having its
own nuclear weapons program, and given, too, Israel’s
insistence that it shall forever be the only nuclear power in the
Middle East, this could be a sticky point. If and when it is raised,
however, Iran is already on board for a nuclear-free Middle East.
Furthermore,
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — which Iran has signed, unlike
Israel — guarantees to any signatory the right to develop nuclear
energy for civilian purposes. This is something Iran not only says
it is doing. It is something it must do in order to satisfy its own
energy needs while it sells abroad its primary source of foreign
exchange, namely, its oil and gas resources. In short, the matter of
nuclear weapons is a non-issue as far as Iran is concerned. But the
fact that we keep hearing about it suggests that it serves to
disguise some other issue.
B.
Iran and Israel
The
issue of Iran’s relations with Israel is more complicated,
though by no means beyond the realm of negotiation. For this to
happen, however, all three countries – the United States,
Israel, and Iran – would have to surmount their respective
internal politics and focus on their long-term strategic concerns,
which lie in mutual guarantees of regional security. Here it is the
American media, together with the hysterical rantings by Israeli
politicians, that appear to be the major impediments. Just listen to
the rhetoric of Israel’s leaders.
Here’s
former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu: in Sept. 2006:
“Ahmadinejad could be more dangerous than Adolf Hitler.”
Then in December of that year: “It’s now 1939, and Iran
is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”
And then a month later: “Iran’s nuclear program is aimed
at genocide of the Jews.”
Here’s
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in April 2006: “Ahmadinejad
is a psychopath whose declarations resemble those of Adolf Hitler.
Iran’s ambitions threatened not just Israel but all of Western
civilization.” And then a month later: “Iran is just a
few months away from acquiring the ability to build an atomic bomb.”
Just
last October President Shimon Peres surpassed both Netanyahu
and Olmert by comparing Ahmadinejad with both Joe Stalin and
Adolf Hitler, adding, “We must not ignore Iran’s aspiration to
become a religious, extremist Persian empire that would rule the
entire Mideast. The Iranian leader is publicly calling for Israel’s
destruction and investing billions of dollars in developing
long-range missiles with the clear intent of loading them with
nuclear warheads."
Although
such rantings were initiated by supposedly responsible Israeli
politicians, they are now echoed by America’s highest leaders.
We all recall how Condi Rice and Pres. Bush, in the run-up for their
war in Iraq, frightened us with their lurid images of smoking guns
and mushroom clouds. Just last October Bush stated, “If Iran
got nuclear arms, it could lead to World War III. We’ve got a
leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel.”
In
short, the caricature of Pres. Ahmadinejad as a latter-day Adolf
Hitler bent on “wiping Israel off the map” is now
thoroughly ingrained in the minds of the American and Israeli
leadership – if not, indeed, in the collective psyches of the
American and Israeli people. But such a caricature is not only
dangerous, but false. What the Iranian president actually
called for, if one reads the original Persian text, was the end of
the regime that is currently occupying Jerusalem. He never
mentioned a map, the state of Israel, Jews, or the people of Israel.
What he called for, quite simply, was regime-change — an idea that
should have resonated with George Bush, who after all has called for
regime change in Tehran.
Nonetheless, the idea that the Iranians wish to wipe Israel off the
map, although a mistranslation from the original Persian, clearly
recalls the Holocaust and hence resonates deeply with Israelis. But
this issue, like the nuclear one, is not at all beyond the realm of
sorting out. After all, adolescents call one another names all the
time, yet they eventually mature. Among adults, calling people names
— be it "mad mullah", "axis of evil," Adolf
Hitler, or whatever — is almost always a symptom of some deeper
issue, which we need to track down.
C.
Iran and Iraq
The
third consideration that any renewal of Iran’s Grand Bargain would
have to take into account is Iran’s complicated relations with
Iraq. We can start by glancing at a map and noting the enormous
border shared by the two countries. Like any sovereign nation-state,
Iran naturally wants stable neighbors on its borders. Over the
course of the past five years, this concern has dictated Iran’s
notably pragmatic and cool-headed policies vis-à-vis both
Afghanistan to its east and Iraq to its west. After all, these
countries are to Iran what Canada and Mexico are to the US. Iran
will always reside next door to Iraq. What is more, for the past
several centuries Iran has never waged a war of aggression against
any of its neighbors. It has no history of coveting Iraqi
territory.
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussain, moreover, the centuries-old
Sunni dominance in Iraq has ended, perhaps for good. Inasmuch as
Shi`is comprise some 60% of Iraq’s population, it was
inevitable that Shi`is would rise to power in any sort of democratic
system that would replace Saddam. And this is exactly what has
happened, thanks to considerable expenditure of American treasure and
blood. Indeed, the two major parties in Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki’s government – the Islamic Supreme Council of
Iraq and the Da`wa party – both have intimate ties with Iran,
inasmuch as many of their leaders took refuge in Iran during Saddam’s
brutal regime. The most important spiritual head of Iraqi Shi`is,
Grand Ayatollah Sistani, is himself from Iran. Even despite the long
and bitter Iran-Iraq War, which was launched by Saddam with the
urging of Henry Kissinger, the Iraqi government has found a natural
ally in Iran, the only country in the world actually ruled by Shi`is.
As a result, despite what the Americans or Israelis might wish to
believe to be the case, Iran holds more influence in Iraq than does
any other country. This is the stubborn, hard fact with which
Americans and Israelis must come to terms.
In
practical terms, this means that the most likely way the Americans
will ever extricate itself from its Iraq debacle, and perhaps the
only way, is with Iran’s help. Since the downfall of Saddam,
Iran has skillfully supported nearly all of Iraq’s important
players, most significantly the two major Shi`i factions, Nuri
al-Maliki’s government and his rival to the south, Moqtada
al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. The Iraqi government’s recent
invasion of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra in late March
and early April revealed beyond any doubt the extent of Iran’s
influence across the entire political spectrum within Iraq. While
al-Maliki’s government and his American handlers initiated the
invasion of Basra, it was Iranian mediators who brokered a ceasefire
between the government and Moqtada’s Mahdi Army. Agents of
al-Maliki’s government went to Tehran to negotiate the deal
with Iranian officials there, and to Qum to negotiate directly with
Moqtada, who has been living there for at least the past six months.
Clearly, the Iranians are the one party that both warring factions
can trust and are willing to talk to. Yet the man mainly responsible
for brokering the accord between Iraq’s most important Shi`
factions — General Qasim Sulaimani, head of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard — is designated a terrorist by the US
Government.
Nothing
more dramatically captured Iran’s enormous influence in Iraq,
in contrast to America’s, than the spectacle of Pres.
Ahmadinejad’s public visit to Baghdad several months ago.
Whereas Iran’s President rode in a motorcade in broad daylight
from the airport through downtown Baghdad to meet with Iraqi leaders,
high-ranking American officials have to sneak into the country in the
dead of night, unannounced, so concerned for their own security that
they won’t even stay in the heavily protected Green Zone.
It
is clear that a secure Iran that does not feel threatened by the US
or by Israel could do a lot more of exactly what it has already
proven it can do, which is, to help stabilize Iraq. And this, in
turn, could facilitate an orderly and dignified withdrawal of US
troops from Iraq. That is the essential and all-important carrot
that Iran could now offer the Americans in a renewed Grand Bargain,
which it could not have offered in the original Grand Bargain five
years ago. Therefore, instead of resisting Iran’s
extraordinary influence in Iraq, Americans should welcome it as their
best bet for ever getting out of the hopeless mess they themselves
have created.
D.
Iran and America
Another
dimension of any renewed Grand Bargain is Iran’s relations with
America itself. Ever since the Hostage Crisis of 1979-80, which so
traumatized Americans, the US government has been absolutely obsessed
with Iran. Saber-rattling is now routine, even among presidential
candidates. While Hillary Clinton promises to “oliberate”
Iran if it attacks Israel (which it has never threatened), John
McCain sings a little ditty, “Bomb, bomb, bomb – bomb,
bomb Iran” to a Beach Boys tune. But despite all the
demonizing, recent history has proven that reason can prevail.
Bilateral negotiations between the two countries can work, and
already have. In 2001 Iran helped the US defeat the Taliban in
Afghanistan. They did this for the simple reason that, as a
sovereign country governed by stodgy conservatives, Iran is unwilling
to tolerate a bunch of radical fanatics on its eastern border. They
also played a central role in writing Afghanistan’s new
Constitution, which sounds more like the behavior of sober lawyers
than of raving lunatics.
What
is more, despite America’s rejection of the Grand Bargain,
despite the Bush administration’s demonization of Iran and
Iranians, and despite America’s long history of intervening in
Iran’s internal affairs – most notably in 1953 when we
overthrew Iran’s democratically-elected government and imposed
a dictator on them – despite all of that, and despite the
Iranian government’s own demonization of America, the amazing
fact is that the Iranian people probably have
greater affection and admiration for the American people than do most
other peoples anywhere in the world. This is deeply ironic, given
our own media’s demonization of Iran. Yet it also provides us
with a huge opportunity for exploring a revived Grand Bargain.
But
there is still another good reason for the US to embrace a renewed
Grand Bargain at this time. We have all heard the famous joke,
namely: the Iraq War is over, and Iran won. If the Iranians already
hold so much influence in the region, and if they truly have already
won America’s war in Iraq, one might then ask what motive they
would have for pursuing a renewed Grand Bargain with us. The answer
is simple: like any regime, and especially like any revolutionary
regime, Iran craves international recognition and legitimacy.
Such regimes want and need a renewed connection with the
international community that revolutions inevitably sever. And
importantly, only Washington can offer Tehran this valuable
carrot. Diminished though it is as a result of its Iraq
adventure, only Washington has the international clout, the military
credibility, and the economic might to bring about a meaningful
re-integration of Iran into the international community.
So,
as a result, we stand at an historic juncture that is rich with
possibilities for imaginative diplomacy. On the one hand,
a) Iran – and perhaps only Iran — can help
rescue America from its tragic debacle in Iraq by creating the
stability that will allow the US to exit in a dignified and
orderly way. Iran can also once again help America suppress a revived Taliban in Afghanistan. But at the same time, and here’s the other side of the equation,
b) America – and only America — can assist in Iran’s re-integration into the international community.
This
is the historic quid pro quo on which a renewed Grand Bargain
can, and must, build. Whoever wins the 2008 presidential election
could break the current log-jam by going straight to Tehran, or by
appointing a new Secretary of State to do so, with a view to showing
that talking with leading Iranians is not only possible, but
productive. Obviously, this requires imagination and courage, but it
can be done.
There
are, of course, impediments that we would have to overcome in order
for this conceptual and diplomatic breakthrough to occur, namely, (a)
the lack of candid discussion respecting the origins of both 9/11 and
the war. (b) America’s continuing trauma over the Iranian Revolution,
and (c) Iran’s continued support of Palestinians who live under
Israeli occupation.
The
muzzling of discourse over both 9/11 and Iraq
Although
Rev. Jeremiah White was recently slammed for suggesting that 9/11
resulted from American actions, he was of course merely stating the
obvious. For it is historically axiomatic that where there is
occupation, there is resistance. After all, al-Qaida was established
with a view primarily to overthrowing the Saudi regime, owing to that
regime’s corruption and to its collusion with its American
defenders and clients. Getting American military bases out of Arabia
was one of al-Qaida’s primary objectives, which suggests why 15
of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.
There
is an even greater silence surrounding the Iraq War and its original
causes. It is astounding that the current war, launched on the
pretext of eradicating WMD’s that didn’t exist, is
attributed to a failure of intelligence. But this was no
failure; it was a spectacular success. The Office of Special Plans,
created in the Defense Department in Sept. 2002 by Paul Wolfowitz and
Douglas Feith under the direction of Donald Rumsfeld, managed to
subvert the entire intelligence gathering apparatus in its goal of
persuading the American people that Saddam posed a dangerous threat
that had to be eliminated. Subverting or bypassing the intelligence
establishment with a view to frightening the public into war was the
precise aim of that office. “Fixing facts around policy,”
was how American officials described their aims to the British
Cabinet. “Stovepiping” is what it’s called in the
intelligence community. And it worked. Colin Powell knowingly
presented fabricated evidence to the UN, while Condi Rice scared the
wits out of us by speaking of mushroom clouds. How can that be
construed as a failure?
Of
course, the true purpose of the war had to be concealed from the
Congress and the people. But this, too, was a success. Even before
Bush came into power in 2000, a group of neocons and Zionists had
urged the overthrow of Saddam for the purpose of enhancing Isrrael’s
security. Later, when they rose to power in Bush’s government,
those same people put those plans into effect, enabled by the climate
of fear and hysteria generated by the attacks of September 11, 2001.
To their credit, Israeli officials have publicly and candidly
expressed their gratitude for America’s efforts. Just the
other day (April 16) Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “We are
benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers
and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” These
events, he added, had “swung American public opinion in our
favor.”
Although
Israelis might be candid in acknowledging what this war was about,
and who benefited form it, Americans still live in the fog of
silence. After all, if supporters of the war acknowledged
that the war was waged primarily to enhance the security of a foreign
country, they would be open to the charge of treason. Conversely,
if opponents were to charge that the war is waged primarily to
enhance the security of a foreign country – namely, Israel –
they, in turn, would be open to the charge of anti-Semitism. As a
result, neither supporters nor opponents of the war can mention the
war’s central raison d’etre for fear of being
labeled either traitors or anti-Semites. The result: we continue to
wage an open-ended war whose origins and aims cannot be publicly
discussed.
And
now, the same quarters that urged us to invade Iraq and overthrow
Saddam Hussain — the state of Israel and many of its supporters in
this country – are clamoring for war with Iran. As a
precondition for a renewed Grand Bargain with Iran, then, the State
Department would have to recover re-affirm a foreign policy that puts
America’s own interests above those of any other country.
Legacy of Iran’s 1979 Revolution
The
second precondition for reviving the Grand Bargain would be to reject
obedience as the goal US foreign policy – with coercion as the
means to that policy — and to replace these with principles of
mutual respect, mutual obligations, and mutual security. This would
mean extending official recognition to Iran’s government, which
in turn would require an acknowledgement of what Iran’s
Revolution of 1979-80 was all about. This will be difficult, since
that revolution was in fact about overthrowing a dictator that the
Americans themselves had installed back in 1953. That was when the
government of Pres. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles deposed the democratically elected government of Prime
Minister Muhammad Mossadegh, mainly because the latter had the
audacity to nationalize Iran’s oil, on the assumption –
unacceptable to the Americans and the British at the time –
that Iran’s oil belonged to the people of Iran. So Mossadegh
had to go, and an America-friendly Shah was brought to power.
Ever
since 1979, American governments have demonized Iran for having the
impudence to overthrow a dictator that we had installed over them —
in short, for defying America’s will. But to apply nineteenth
century norms of international politics to twenty-first century
realities is out-dated. Punishing disorderly children who misbehave
may have been the way things worked back in the days of European
colonialism, but the rest of the world has got over that. Obviously,
there can be no renewed Grand Bargain with Iran unless and until this
sort of neo-colonial mind-set has been rejected.
Iran’s support of Palestinians.
The
third and perhaps thorniest obstacle to negotiating a renewed Grand
Bargain with Iran is the fact that of all the governments in the
world, that of Iran has been the most vocal in expressing its support
for the plight of the Palestinian people. As is well known,
Palestinians have had to endure unspeakable suffering as their land
has been systematically seized and occupied by Israeli settlers,
their flocks of animals poisoned, and their homes bulldozed as a form
of collective punishment – all with the tacit support of the
Israeli and American governments. For sixty years, objections
voiced and resolutions passed in the United Nations have remained
ineffectual. On the other hand, the government of the Islamic
Republic, alone among nations, has not only voiced its objection to
this, but has extended material support to the resistance. Back when
Palestinians looked to Saddam Hussain for political support,
neo-conservatives and Zionists in this country argued that Saddam
would have to go. Now that Palestinians look to Iran for such
support, the same clamor is aimed at the Islamic Republic.
But
despite these very serious impediments, a revived Grand Bargain is
possible. If America were to come to terms with why it has been
waging war in Iraq for the past five years, if it would abandon its
out-dated neocolonial habit of demanding obedience from other
countries, and if it would join Iran in recognizing the legitimate
rights of the Palestinian people, a renewed Grand Bargain with Iran
could be achieved. And that, in turn, could lead directly to an exit
from the Iraq quagmire.
It
is true that these all seem distant prospects. But the world has
changed dramatically since Pres. Bush launched Operation Iraqi
Freedom. Although Bush clearly has no intention of leaving Iraq, the
political and economic realities facing the next President will
demand some hard thinking. It won’t do simply to recite
feel-good mantras before we go to bed at night, such as “God
Bless America,” “Stay the Course,” “Support
the Troops,” or “The Surge is Working” – not when
Americans continue to return from Iraq in coffins, or when gasoline
prices soar to 5 or 10 dollars a gallon. Eventually, Americans will
reach the sober realization that their only practical ticket out of
Iraq is waiting for them in Tehran. Sooner or later, that fact will
take root in our collective consciousness. And the sooner, the
better.
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