Iran’s Presidential election winner Hassan Rouhani, was sworn in as president of Iran on August 3 2013, he now officially replaces Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran. Ever since he won the election in June 2013 much has been made of his moderate background and how he will deal with Iran’s relations with the US. Iran-US relations are more than the presidents of both countries but have been a salient feature in Iran’s foreign policy. US-Iran relations have been a regular feature of the international situation for the last three decades. Various attempts to normalise relations as well as constant rhetoric and aggressive positions by both nations have turned US-Iran relations into a permanent drama. Whilst there is much rhetoric from both sides there are a number of key underlying factors that affect relations between both countries and gaining the upper hand over these factors is why contradictory messages come from both Washington and Tehran. In order to understand the possible direction of US-Iran relations there are a handful of issues that need to be understood.
Operation Ajax
In 1953 The US overthrew the elected government of Mohammed Mosaddeq with Britain due to the nationalisation of Iran’s oil wealth in what the CIA called Operation Ajax. This brought to power the pro-west Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who became the lynchpin for protecting Western interests in the region and ensuring the Persian Gulf region was not penetrated by the Soviet Union. He secured US and British oil interests whilst becoming increasingly authoritarian against his own people. It was under the Shah that the clerics in Iran first emerged and this was in order to unify the different factions in overthrowing him. The Shah wanted to completely change the very fabric of Iran, Iran was a traditional society where villages traded with each other closed to the main economy. What should be grown, what amount etc was decided by Shi’ah clergy, The Shah wanted to break this system. The shah’s excess and authoritarian rule fuelled what eventually became the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which saw his overthrow and the emergence of the clerical regime, which has dominated Iranian politics ever since.
Normalisation
The emergence of the clerical regime led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led to the emergence of Iran as a power in the region. With aims to dominate the region and spread its influence Khomeini’s period was dominated by the Iran-Iraq war an internal challenges by various factions vying for power. The emergence of Muhammad Khatami in 1997 led to a number of attempts to normalise relations between the US and Iran. In a BBC documentary in 2009 on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution Khatami outlined the various attempts by his administration to normalise relations between Iran and the US. Khatami outlined Iran’s sharing of intelligence with the US on targets in Afghanistan after the US led invasion. Khatami highlighted Iran’s central role to the Northern alliance taking over Kabul and the help Iran gave the US to create the new government in Kabul. Khatami said that if the US attacked the Taliban this would be in Iran’s interests. Another attempt to normalise relations in 2003 was spurned by the US. Richard Haas head of the State department said: “but we couldn’t get support from the Pentagon office or the Vice President’s office, in every case we ran up against the belief in regime change.”
On the issue of Iraq, the BBC documentary included an interview with Khatami and quoted him: “Saddam Hussein was our enemy, we wanted him destroyed, lets repeat the Afghanistan experience in Iraq, let’s make it 6 plus 6, the six countries bordering Iraq and America and the security council members and Egypt – look at Iran as a power that can solve problems rather than as a problem itself.” The US did not take this offer and Iran watched from the side-lines as America’s military machine bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age.
Before Khatami’s second term finished in 2005 a ‘Road map’ emerged from Iran to normalise relations with the US which included accepting the two state solution on Palestine and turning Hizbullah into peaceful political group. Richard Haas of the State department at the time said “I thought the paper was interesting but I was sceptical, the biggest problem in dealing with Iran at that point was uncertainty, whether the government really spoke for the government, or whether the government spoke for the power centres of the country.”
Persian Gulf
Iran and Persia before it have always been influential in the region. The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world’s largest single source of oil and gas. 25% of the world’s daily oil production, 66% of the world’s oil reserves and 35% of the world’s natural gas reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Of these Iran possesses 10% of global oil reserves, produces 5.2% of daily oil production and possesses the world’s largest gas field – South Pars. The Persian Gulf also possesses the Strait of Hormuz which is a chokepoint for global energy, 35% of all seaborne traded oil crosses the region. As Iran is one the largest nations in the region which possesses a lot of the energy, controlling Iran would mean dominance over the most strategic region of the world. President Jimmy Carter outlined the US view on the Persian Gulf in 1980: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
Iran has worked to expand its influence throughout the Middle East and developed a whole host of political plans to achieve this. Iran established Hizbullah in Lebanon in the early 1980’s and continues to extend its support through training and arms. Similarly in Palestine the Iranian regime has armed Hamas. The clerical regime deepened relations with the Alawi regime in Syria and continues to prop up the Al-Assad clan despite the uprising. Iran has also made itself the official representatives of the Shi’ah globally and has used this as a pretext to interfere in countries with significant Shi’ah populations such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Afghanistan and the other Gulf states in the Persian Gulf. Under the clerical regime Iran has extended its influence into Afghanistan in the Asian Subcontinent all the way to the Mediterranean coast covering Syria and Lebanon. Iran’s challenges in the region include Saudi Arabia and Israel – who are also attempting to spread their influence in the region. Iran also faces challenges from the world’s superpower the USA, who does not want to share the region with anyone.
US Ambitions
America’s fundamental challenge is how to deal with Iran’s ambitions and as a result US policy has regularly shifted from containment, engagement and military change. Iran’s ambitions to dominate the region directly conflict with US aims in the region and this is America’s fundamental problem with Iran. On many occasions the US has been able to use Iran to achieve its aims in the region, however many within the US political class do not trust Iran and as a result attempts to normalise relations with Iran have never been successful due to the opposition within the political class. The quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan forced America to engage with Iran as it needed to save itself in the region, after being humiliated, militarily, by the ummah. The threats of regime change by the Neoconservative administration very quickly gave way to engagement with Iran on common issues. America’s fundamental problem is how to deal with Iran, should they be engaged with in order to influence them or should they be contained as they have regional ambitions. As there is three decades of mistrust between them the US swings regularly from these positions. When President Richard Nixon worked on China in the early 1970s, he had the benefit of a broad consensus of opinion within the US political establishment. On the contrary, when it comes to Iran, this consensus does not exist.
Iran’s nuclear programme is another political plan the US is using to shape Iran’s behaviour. When Iran’s nuclear programme came to light in 2003, the US argued this was not conducive to regional peace and that Iran should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons and through negotiations the US was prepared to give Iran incentives to give up its nuclear programme. These negotiations took place originally through the EU and then the P5+1 group – the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. These talks have been constantly stalled by the US as it does not actually directly participate in them and never agrees to any of the deals reached. The US has exploited the issue to achieve many of its other aims in the Middle East, which include using Iran’s threat to gain influence of the Gulf States, who fear Iran in the region. The US also uses Iran’s development of nuclear weapons to justify its presence in the region and its continued increase in its defence budget. It should be remembered that Iran’s nuclear weapons are in order to strengthen its position in the region, once Iran has successfully enriched sufficient uranium and tested a nuclear device this will completely alter the military balance in the region, which currently Israel dominates. This is Israel’s biggest problem and the reason why it is the biggest supporter in the region for military strikes against Iran.
For the US it also achieves its interest in the region by creating a balance of power in the region through supporting different nations against each other. The US needs to contain Israeli expansion in the region, for which Iran is used, it also needs to contain Iranian ambitions for which the US uses Israel. To stem both nations the US supports Saudi Arabia, who in turn supports and provides arms to groups in the region against both nations. This ensures the US doesn’t need to militarily intervene. This also explains why the US has always been against Israel’s continued push for military strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations as this would significantly strengthen Israel.
Iran’s ambitions
Iran’s policy has shifted between not trusting the US and trying to engage with the US, in order that it is taken seriously in the region. What took place in Iraq is the best example of this. Whilst Iran was keen to take part in removing Saddam Husain, the US spurned the countries help. Within a few years America was deeply entrenched in an insurgency being led by many Shi’ah groups in the South of Iraq, which Iran established during the Saddam Husain era in order to influence Iraq. When the US began setting up its political architecture, Iran wanted to ensure it dominated this new political system as this would give it influence in Iraq. It was Iran’s patron the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), a group created in Tehran in 1982 that gathered the Shi’ah factions to join in the US constructed political system. This then allowed US forces to concentrate on the insurgency in central Iraq. Through promises of positions in government, bribes and rewards the US co-opted pro-Iran elements into its solution for Iraq. It was Sayyid Ali as-Hussayni al-Sistani, who brought Sadr, Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and da’wah factions together to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) that gained a large number of parliamentary seats in the 2005 elections. The group similarly won substantial seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections. This is how the US stemmed most of the insurgency.
Conclusions
Both countries do not trust the ambitions of each other in the region. As a result both nations undertake actions to influence the other which shifts from engagement to aggressive postures and threats of military intervention. Administrations from both nations have attempted to normalise relations but hard-line elements from both nations, who do not trust each other ensured such a strategy consistently fails.
The underlying trend with US-Iran relations is to normalise relations as the interests of both nations overlap in so many areas. Mistrust and hard-line elements in both nations have always won the day. This is the reality President Hassan Rouhani will face, whatever his personal ambitions may be.
Notes
Iran and the West, BBC documentary:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/07/090720_iran_and_the_west_1.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hHfV19kXcQ