The Iranian government has been quite optimistic about seeing substantial policy shifts in the United States' relations with Iran under President Barack Obama. Obama as well as members of his foreign policy team – including Hilary Clinton and Denis Ross – have stated that Iran would be the upcoming administration's main diplomatic priority.
While the Obama team as thus far resisted going beyond the discourse of the “nuclear threat” or “no option is off the table” rhetoric, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iranian officials have adopted a position of wait-and-see, refraining from any confrontational statements.
Is Change Really on the Way?
Obama-Iran relations did not start on the best foot when just after his election, Obama ignored a letter of congratulation sent by Ahmadinejad. We can only imagine the indignation and virulent op-ed pieces in American newspapers if the role had been reversed and a foreign president-elect had ignored a letter of goodwill from an US President. A simple but polite response from Obama would have made miracles in Iranian public opinion and would have spread the belief that indeed, change was on the way in US-Iran relations, which a vast majority of Iran's young population want to see improved.
Also, talks about Dennis Ross, a former Clinton adviser with well-known pro-Israel sympathies, becoming Obama's Iran envoy have probably raised a few skeptic eyebrows in Tehran. Instead of bringing change, Obama seemed to be on exactly the same path than his predecessor in regards to Iran.
However, a recent report from the Guardian newspaper alleges that Washington is finally preparing a letter to Tehran as a first step toward direct talks and signs point toward a possible meeting between US Vice President Joe Biden and a “very high-ranking personality” from Iran at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy next weekend. Thus, Obama may have decided that Biden was a better choice than Ross for making “first contact”. (See M K Bhadrakumar's Asia Times Online article “Biden may hold unclenched Iranian hand”)
Bush Administration officials have had contacts with Iranian counterparts but always in the context of one-issue summits, like Iraq's security or on the outskirts of IAEA meetings. Bush vehemently refused to put all issues on the table and link Iran's nuclear program with its sense of insecurity – first from Saddam Hussein's regime, then from surrounding US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – or to put it into a wider regional context, which would have undoubtedly raised the question of Israel's own nuclear arsenal and it's refusal – unlike Iran – to allow international monitoring.
New Geopolitical Realities
But even if Obama would have been predisposed to walk into Bush's steps, he would still be confronted to a very different geopolitical reality in the Middle East, with a coming US withdrawal from Iraq and a far more complicated and unstable situation in Afghanistan. Also, Bush's strategy of divide-and-rule in the region, trying to pit Sunni against Shiite and Arab against Persian with the complicity of countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and at the benefit of Israel's dominant position is now in tatters in the aftermath of the latter's war on Gaza.
Fear mongering by authoritarian Arab regimes about the "threat" of the formation of an Iran-dominated “Shiite Crescent” over the Middle East seem rather hollow in the midst of Gaza's ruins. The destruction of Gaza has created a context – from which Iran fully knows how to benefit – in which no country could now risk being seen as furthering US or Israeli geopolitical designs without suffering a severe back-lash from its own population.
Obama's Afghanistan Challenge
Just like Bush shyly engaged Iran on Iraq's security, leading some observers to believe that a diplomatic breakthrough could have been possible, engaging Iran over Afghanistan could now prove to be a productive first step that would please both sides. On Washington's side, this selective contact would not prove to risky in the eyes of pro-Israel interest groups that fear Iran's growing influence in the Middle East and the consequences of the United States acknowledging or legitimizing this fact by engaging Iran on issues related to Lebanon or the Palestinians.
From Tehran's point of view, to have a role in Afghanistan's security would give it an opportunity to voice its concerns over arming Pashtun counter-insurgency militias as well as any accommodation of the Taliban in Kabul. Iran would also have a critically important role in any internal dialog and political reconciliation process due to its positive image and deep influence in northern and central Afghanistan. Iranian territory could also prove a very convenient supply line for NATO troops as an alternative to the unreliable Pakistani route or the long and costly Russia-Central Asian one.
Vincent Gagnon-Lefebvre - I am an freelance writer from Quebec currently living between there and Laos. I just graduated from Université Laval in Quebec City ...
