[A
nuclear accord could be just what the mullahs in Tehran need to turn into
responsible actors.]
By James Traub
In 2004 I spent
a week in Tehran writing an article about
Iran’s nuclear program. What struck me most when I was there was the tension
between the country’s revolutionary ideology and its historical character: the
programmed and polemical officials who were at the same time exquisitely
polite, the drab streets thronged with the most extraordinary variety of faces
from all corners of an ancient empire. I found myself thinking what an amazing
country Iran would be if only someone could get rid of those lunatic mullahs. I
still think that. And the question I ask myself about the nuclear deal reached
last week is whether it will make the attainment of something like normalcy for
Iran more or less likely.
I know, of
course, that the great question of the day is whether the deal will prevent
Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I think it will; and on those merits, I’m
in favor of the deal. But I can’t quite believe that Iran’s nuclear capacity is
the supreme question it’s made out to be. The real issue, as Shadi Hamid of the
Brookings Institution recently noted,
is Iran’s disruptive behavior in the Middle East. The Israelis and the Saudis
are aghast that the West is prepared to lift sanctions on a country that
continues to sponsor Hezbollah and wage war against Sunnis in Iraq, Bahrain,
and Yemen. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went so far as to say that
Iran is bent on “taking over the world.”
That level of
alarmism is ludicrous, even by Netanyahu’s standards, both because Iran’s
military capacities are very modest and because its ambitions are regional, not
global. Nevertheless, Iran represents a special kind of danger to the world
because, like revolutionary France, if not like Nazi Germany, it seeks to
expand its area of control not simply as a matter of state interest but of
ideological conviction. Iran is a revolutionary force bent on upending a
regional status quo. And while France exhausted itself through perpetual
warfare, ultimately discrediting the principles of the revolution, Iran’s
leaders have largely fought through proxies, preserving their standing, as well
as the nation’s manpower. Indeed, the very fact that Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei has given his blessing to
the nuclear deal is a sign of the suppleness that has preserved the revolution
after more than 35 years.
The regime is
unlikely to destroy itself, and the Iraq War should have cured even the most
reckless soul of the belief that outside forces can institute regime change
without cataclysmic results. The question then is, what actions by outsiders —
if any — are most likely to reduce the potency of Iran’s revolutionary ideology
and thus curb its adventurous foreign policy? How, that is, can Iran come to
resemble other ambitious-but-responsible emerging powers, like India or Turkey?
Could the
nuclear deal itself begin to bring that about? In conversations I had starting
in the summer of 2009, officials in President Barack Obama’s administration
expressed the very guarded hope that a new, more respectful approach to Iran
might ultimately lead to just such an outcome. Now that Obama has gained the
nuclear deal he sought, he is careful to say, as he did to the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman,
that he has no expectations of a kinder, gentler Iran. The president has
learned quite a few painful lessons over the years about the intransigence of
America’s rivals (think of Russia in Ukraine or China in the South China Sea).
What’s more, he knows very well that both Netanyahu and many of his Persian
Gulf allies regard his Iran policy as recklessly naive. There’s no reason to
compound the problem by putting forward overly optimistic scenarios.
There are, in
fact, few grounds for optimism. As many commentators have noted,
some portion of the $100 billion to $150 billion in bank funds to be unfrozen
as sanctions are lifted will almost certainly go to the Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard or Hezbollah. Even absent that windfall, so long as Iran’s Sunni
adversaries, above all the Saudis, remain obsessed with countering Teheran’s
influence, both real and imagined, Iran can be counted on to support Shiite
groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.
In the short
run, therefore, the nuclear deal is likelier to make matters worse rather than
better, and the president may spend more of his remaining time in office
countering Iran’s aggressive moves than he will summoning its better angels, as
the New York Times‘ editorial page recently urged him to
do.
But what about
the long run? What about changes, not in the behavior of the regime but in its
ideological foundations — and thus in the balance of power between state and
society? Is it reasonable to think that the nuclear deal might help tip Iran
toward moderation? I think it is, and I imagine that Obama thinks so too, even
if you won’t catch him saying so.
Revolutions need
adversaries. The best argument for ending the decades-long sanctions on Cuba
was that inveterate American enmity had offered the Castros the perfect pretext
for preserving their autocratic rule. Normalizing relations would unleash
forces that would undermine the legitimacy of the communist regime and
strengthen liberal forces. That process has only just begun, but it holds out
far more promise of turning Cuba into a country that respects the international
order than did the policy of endless antagonism. Iran, like Cuba, has used
virulent anti-Americanism to preserve its grip over an increasingly restless
citizenry.
The mullahs can
still muster crowds to shout “Death to America,” but they aren’t as large as
they once were. Unlike Cuba, Iran has a robust and growing middle class that is
desperate to travel to and trade with the West. That class elected the moderate
Hassan Rouhani as president in 2013. And it is this aspirational class that
will ultimately be the agent of social transformation in Iran.
Of course, there
are arguments on the other side. Cuba is dead broke and needs the lifeline from
the West, whereas the nuclear deal is about to loose a cataract of revenue on
Iran. If the United States really wants to tip the balance between the
theological state and an increasingly aspirational Iranian society, therefore,
Washington should keep tightening the screws of sanctions until the citizens
rise up against their rulers — as then-President Ronald Reagan did by raising
the ante of military spending until the Soviets bankrupted themselves.
Nevertheless, that seems less likely to dislodge the mullahs from power than
the dynamic of economic freedom.
Revolutionary
societies don’t last forever; they are eventually undone by their own
contradictions. Mao gives way to Deng; Andropov to Gorbachev and then to
Yeltsin (and then, alas, to Putin). Sometimes the United States confronts such
regimes, sometimes it contains them, and sometimes it tries to furnish an exit
ramp. Until now, Washington has focused its policy toward Iran on the first two
of those options. Now it is trying the third. It’s a gamble. It is, however,
vastly preferable to the alternatives.
Image credit: AFP/Getty Images
