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Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the United States has pursued a series of failed policies toward Iran. It has variously sought to topple the regime, threatened military action and proposed strictly limited dialogue--all with an eye toward boxing Tehran in and limiting its influence in the region. This strategy of "containment" continues to dominate U.S. policy.
President George W. Bush repeatedly insists that "all options are on the table"--a not-so-subtle reminder that Washington might yet use force to halt Tehran's nuclear program. Yet realistically, the United States has no military option. Iran has dispersed many nuclear facilities and hardened others. Even if U.S. forces could find and destroy those targets--quality intelligence is a serious hurdle--they could be rebuilt relatively quickly. The bottom line: Washington must accept certain distasteful facts--beginning with Iran's ascendance as a regional power and the staying power of its regime. It should open talks with Iran, not in order to limit its growing power--an impossibility--but with a view toward regulating it and curbing potential excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of détente, just as it did in the past with such seemingly intractable enemies as China and the Soviet Union.
Could Tehran ultimately prove to be as willing a negotiating partner as Beijing and Moscow once were? There are reasons to hope so. One is Iran's emergence as the largest and most militarily powerful state in the Persian Gulf. That very fact will force Tehran to choose between coexistence and confrontation with the United States. For all its hot rhetoric, Iran is no Nazi Germany; by and large, its leaders are tactical opportunists. They seek to avoid war. Furthermore, the Iranian regime is undergoing a transformation of its own. This internal divide is not as commonly thought: moderate reformers versus conservative fundamentalists. No, the real fissure is generational. The elders of the 1979 revolution retain ultimate authority--but they are increasingly challenged by a rising cohort of younger conservatives, eager to abandon failed policies of the past.
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This emerging group looks askance at the strident rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Its members tend to stress Iranian nationalism over Islamic identity, and pragmatism over ideology. The only way for Iran to realize its potential, they argue, is for it to behave more judiciously in the international arena. That means accepting certain limits on Iranian influence, acceding to certain international norms--and negotiating with the nation's adversaries. Over the past two years, members of this pragmatic faction have risen to influence within the highest ranks of government, the intelligence community and the military. Among them: the commander of the Iranian Navy, Abbas Mohtaj, and the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who has been leading Iran's negotiating team in talks with the United States and Europe.
Building on their links to traditional clerical networks and their intimate ties to the Iran's Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, these men are trying to wrest control of Iran's international relations from the most militant old-guard mullahs. The real significance of Iran's municipal elections in December 2006, in which Ahmadinejad's camp scored poorly, lay not so much in the revival of the reform movement as in the fact that many of these younger conservatives did well.
So far, the new pragmatists have managed to nudge Khameini toward accepting the idea of potential negotiations with the United States. "We may be sure that the Americans are our enemy," said Larijani in a recent speech. But he added: "Working with the enemy is part of world politics. I believe that normalizing relations would in itself be beneficial." Yet Iran's political landscape is volatile. America's declining fortunes in Iraq, Hizbullah's touted victory against Israel last summer and the success of Ahmadinejad's defiant nuclear diplomacy seem to prove right those who call for confrontation.
As it stands, Khameini, generally prone to indecision, seems disinclined to settle this internal debate. For Washington, the challenge is to resolve the uncertainty in its favor. A more imaginative policy of engagement, with normalization as the starting point of talks rather than the endpoint, might pave the way for a broader breakthrough on issues from nukes to terrorism. Armed with the prospect of a new beginning with the United States, the pragmatists might find themselves in a position to sideline Tehran's aging radicals--and usher in a more stable era of U.S.-Iran relations.
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