THE IRAN DEAL:
The significance of the
accord goes far beyond the nuclear issue.
In 1981, I stood at the foot of
the plane that flew the 52 Americans held hostage 444 days in Iran to freedom
in Algiers. They were all pasty-faced and captive-weary as they disembarked
into the cold January night. It was after midnight. Tehran had delayed their
departure until after Jimmy Carter was out of office, one final slap at the
president who had propped up the last shah until the end and later welcomed him
into the United States.
Weeks of tough negotiations in
Algiers to free the hostages had been complicated because Iranians and
Americans did not meet face-to-face. They mediated (in three languages) through
the Algerians.
So the recent talks in Geneva
between Iran and the world’s six major powers produced far more than a
long-elusive deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear program. The new diplomacy also
produced real human contact. U.S. and Iranian diplomats have spent more time
together over the past three months than in the entire three decades since the
American Embassy takeover. They are learning how to talk to each other all over
again—often in the same language. Geneva laid the cornerstone to defuse 34
years of both overt and covert confrontation over a host of other issues
too. The interaction may even help end the Iran jinx that has tainted or
tormented all six American presidents since the 1979 revolution.
The hostage crisis cost Jimmy
Carter a second term. The Reagan administration was shamed by clumsy secret
diplomacy during the Iran-Contra scandal, which was initiated to free a new set
of American hostages in Beirut but which ended up with the indictment or
dismissal of top White House officials. The first Bush administration’s stab at
Arab-Israeli diplomacy, centered on the 1991 Madrid peace conference, was
matched by deepening ties between Iran and Palestinian rejectionists.
The Clinton administration
considered military retaliation against Iran after the 1996 attack on a U.S.
Air Force facility in Khobar, Saudi Arabia killed 19 Americans and injured
another 350. A Shiite group with Iran ties was suspected. The second Bush
administration’s “axis of evil” language sabotaged collaboration in Afghanistan
after the Taliban’s ouster in 2001, while the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions
inadvertently strengthened Tehran’s hand by toppling its two biggest regional
rivals.
In contrast, Secretary of State
John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif were photographed laughing
together across the negotiating table in Geneva. In the wee hours of November
24, they shook hands—more than just politely—after signing an agreement opening
the way for six months of even more intensive contact. No one noted that Kerry
wore a (bright red) tie, but Zarif didn’t, in deference to the revolutionary
dress code banning ties as symbols of Western influence—the kind of colorful
anecdote once trotted out to underscore deep differences.
Debate will rage from Capitol Hill
to the Persian Gulf over specifics of the interim deal. Many both at home and
abroad are dissatisfied. Some may try to scuttle it. The volume will almost
certainly go up as diplomacy intensifies.
But the reality is that Iran’s
nuclear program is now too advanced to either bomb or sanction totally out of
business. A deal should have happened a decade ago when Iran had less than 200
centrifuges to enrich uranium, the fuel for both peaceful nuclear energy and
the world’s deadliest weapon. Now it has near 19,000. Both sides were too
stubborn back then.
The conventional wisdom claims
Iran came to the negotiating table under pressure from unparalleled economic
sanctions. True. But the unacknowledged truth is that the outside world also
went into diplomacy under pressure from Iran’s growing capabilities. Otherwise,
the world’s six major powers could have just kept squeezing the Islamic
Republic. Tehran also now has nuclear knowledge that can’t be bombed out of
existence.
So, ultimately, even a military
strike would require diplomacy to prevent Tehran from rebuilding. The core
issue is as much Iran’s long-term calculations as its capabilities.
Diplomacy is not only about preventing
war. It’s also about healing. President Nixon’s diplomacy ended 30 years of
deadly tensions with China, which included Beijing’s arming, aiding and sending
troops to North Vietnam. President Clinton resumed relations with a reunited
Vietnam 20 years after the United States lost more than 58,000 lives in a war
to keep the Communists from consuming the south.
The sprawling American Embassy
compound in Tehran is not likely to reopen anytime soon. But in pushing for a
nuclear deal, Geneva started the long and painful healing that could eventually
alter Tehran’s calculations—not only about its nuclear program.
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