Wrong Policy, Wrong Reason, Wrong Administration

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Israel is attempting to convince the United States that Iranian-inspired Islamic extremism and Iran's rearmament drive have become a major threat to the stability of the Middle East and the interests of the West."
—David Hoffman, Washington Post, Mar. 13, 1993.

What the U.S. did in Iran from 1953 to 1979 was unforgivable. Seeking to preserve for a few more years the international cartel that enabled Western oil companies to buy for pennies from the petroleum- producing countries barrels of oil that sold for one or two dollars each on the world market, the U.S. returned the Shah to the throne from which he had fled, and thereby strangled an incipient Iranian democracy in the cradle. Then, seeking to sell obscene quantities of arms to his country, the U.S. named the Shah its "surrogate in the Gulf," turning him into a megalomaniac who imposed a brutal tyranny on his people while his corrupt family bled his country white.

What Iran has done to the U.S. from 1979 to 1995 also is unforgivable. Exulting in their power, Iran's Islamic revolutionaries held American diplomats hostage in violation of the most basic rules of three millennia of civilized practice, and in Lebanon hired surrogates to assassinate American academics who truly understood and were helping the Middle East, hijack aircraft, hold journalists, teachers and clergymen for political ransom, assassinate political opponents, blow up U.S. and French embassies in Beirut and Kuwait, and help prolong the Lebanese civil war for a decade. Iran thereby earned the accolades of extremists and fanatics all over the globe, and the contempt of civilized nations.

The sensible thing for both sides to do would be to call it even and call off the feud. So far neither side has shown any signs of such good sense—at least not at the same time. Instead, for domestic political reasons, a weak U.S. president is seeking to show he can be tough after all by beating up on a country that has no friends.

And, also for domestic political reasons, a failed Iranian government is exploiting the renewed U.S. hostility to rally its people for one more round of useless sacrifices while it presides over the crumbling of a petroleum-based economy that should be providing its people modern educational and medical facilities and a job-producing industrial and agricultural infrastructure.

The policy of dual containment, authored by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk when he was White House Middle East adviser, makes no sense for American interests. Stability in the Gulf region, which contains more than 65 percent of the world's proven petroleum reserves, once was based upon a roughly balanced triangle consisting of Iran, with a present population of 63 million people; Iraq, with a present population of 20 million; and Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries, with a combined resident population of 24 million. The idea was that if one party got pushy, the other two would close ranks to defend themselves.

If that wasn't enough, America and its allies would come to the rescue. The British led just such a rescue of Kuwait in 1961, and were joined by Egypt and the rest of the Arab League. The U.S. led a much larger rescue operation in 1990-91, and was joined by all of its allies—Arab, Asian and Western.

By contrast, the present policy seems designed eventually to drive Iran and Iraq to come together, and to drive a wedge between them and America's Arab allies in the Gulf. Dual containment's latest twist is to maintain a strict and humiliating U.N. embargo on Iraq while initiating an equally tough but so-far unilateral U.S. embargo on Iran. It might make some sense if it would work. So far, however, it hasn't worked in Iraq, where the U.S. has the cooperation of the entire United Nations. It's therefore almost certain not to work in Iran, where the U.S. has the cooperation of none.

As the world's only remaining superpower, one might think the U.S. could persuade some of Iran's other major trading partners to come around to joining the embargo, just to stay on America's good side. That probably won't happen, however, because no one, anywhere, takes U.S. foreign policy seriously any more. Everyone knows that if something doesn't seem to be working immediately, Bill Clinton will just forget it and go on to something else. That's what he did in Bosnia, where he wanted to do the right thing and preserve some semblance of international law in Europe, but dropped the policy even before trying it out.

Iran's folly is Iran's problem. America's folly is ours!

If the U.S. wanted to spend a lot of its political credits, Bosnia, not Iran, would have been the place to do it. A fascist Serb government has gone berserk there, suppressing all domestic opposition and carrying out pogroms and ethnic cleansing against its neighbors in the heart of Europe.

If he took the lead in Bosnia, President Clinton might even be able to build on one of the few things Iran has done of which Americans approve—providing arms to Iran's Bosnian Muslim co-religionists, who happen to be the principal victims of the blatant Serb aggression. It's what our own traditional Middle East allies—Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia—presumably are doing privately, but should be doing much more publicly for the sake both of human decency and of their own political stability.

Instead, the U.S. is leading a charge in a direction that few will follow against a government that, if we just ignored it, while enlisting our allies in a continuing embargo on transfers of strategic and nuclear equipment to it, might either become more democratic all by itself—or fall victim to its own misguided policies.

Why is the U.S. leading where no one else will follow? That question was answered by the venue before which Clinton announced the crackdown on all U.S. sales to or purchases from Iran—a May 1 meeting of the World Jewish Congress.

Just as the Indyk dual-containment policy was made in Tel Aviv, so was the new crackdown on Iran. Officially it was America's response to Iran's opposition to the Oslo agreement. Unofficially it was the result of a weird devil's bargain—that if Israel would stop making overtures to Saddam Hussain, the U.S. would stop seeking "openings to Iranian moderates."

For the government of Yitzhak Rabin, it's a dazzling show of political clout. The lesson for Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, India and the whole world is that the only route to continued political or economic support from the United States is through Israel. The Rafsanjani regime, like Saddam Hussain or Hafez Al-Assad, will get this made-in-Israel message: "You want trouble with Israel? We'll show you real trouble. You want Uncle Sam off your back? Be nice to Israel and we'll show you how nice it is to have U.S. support."

The Israelis would like to resurrect their old alliance with the Iran of the Shah. It created an Israeli-Iranian iron claw around the oil-producing Arabs. Backed increasingly by American might, it convinced the Israelis that they need never make a land-for-peace settlement with the Arabs.

Eventually, of course, it led to the discrediting of the Shah, a bloodbath for his followers, and the chain of American foreign policy disasters that followed. Thanks to Bill Clinton, desperate for American Jewish political and media support in the 1996 elections, it may work again for Israel. If it does, it will have the same eventual disastrous result for the United States.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report.