Source: The New Republic Online
George W. Bush repeatedly blamed Syria and Iran for inciting Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel, but, in seeking to resolve the conflict, the administration made no effort to draw the two countries into negotiations. The administration recalled its ambassador from Syria in February 2005, and it has no diplomatic relations with Iran. In the past, both countries have reached out to the United States but have been rebuffed, and the Syrian ambassador to the United States indicated during the war in Lebanon that Syria was "more than willing to engage" in talks. Indeed, when Israel wanted to talk to the Syrians, the Bush administration tried to discourage them from doing so.
The administration's refusal to talk to Syria and Iran reflects a view of diplomacy that is at odds with the practice of most other countries and of other American administrations. If countries are directly at war, diplomatic relations are out of the question. But most countries conceive of diplomacy as a means of resolving conflicts with adversaries short of war. During the cold war, for instance, the United States maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. That allowed both countries some knowledge of each other's government--through embassy-based espionage, if necessary--and also provided a ready framework for negotiations during a crisis. If the United States had not had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, it might have been impossible to prevent a nuclear war.
But conservative Republicans in the 1920s and after World War II put forth a different view of diplomacy. Establishing relations with an adversary was seen as signaling active approval of its government. Conservatives opposed recognizing the Soviet Union on these grounds, and they succeeded in pressuring the Truman administration in 1949 not to recognize China's Communist regime after it had won the civil war. Conservatives have also insisted that the United States not recognize Castro's Cuba (with a strong second from the Cuban American lobby) and post-Shah Iran (with a strong second from aipac). And, out of fear of electoral retaliation, liberals have gone along.
While the conventional practice of diplomacy has a long history of successes, the conservative practice has had an unbroken record of failure. Not recognizing China, Cuba, or Iran did not lead to the fall of these governments. Nor did it make them more pliant, as the advocates of nonrecognition promised. More important, the absence of diplomatic relations permitted crises to escalate. If the United States had had relations with China in 1950, it might have understood that sending American troops toward the Yalu River would bring the Chinese into the Korean war. American administrations would have also understood--and been able to take advantage of--the Sino-Soviet split when it occurred in the late '50s rather than almost 15 years later.
But there is no clearer example of the failure of nonrecognition policy than U.S. policy toward post-Shah Iran--and it is a failure with obvious implications today. The United States broke relations with Iran in response to the Iranian seizure of American hostages in 1979. That was to be expected. But, after the hostages were released, American policy-makers refused to acknowledge the basis of Iranian hostility to the United States. Instead, they acted as if the United States were the only aggrieved party to the dispute. And this attitude was reinforced by conservative arguments that recognizing Khomeini's Iran would grant legitimacy to the regime and impede its fall.
Iranian hostility to the United States dated back to the Central Intelligence Agency's intervention in 1953, when it engineered a coup that replaced popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had nationalized foreign oil holdings, with the unpopular Shah. Subsequently, the United States became one of the Shah's biggest boosters. It was responsible, among other things, for training his dreaded secret police. The takeover of the U.S. Embassy was triggered by the Carter administration's decision to admit the Shah to the United States for medical treatment--a decision that (however humane) reinforced perception that the United States was the "Great Satan."
After the hostages were released, the United States retained sanctions on Iran, and, in 1983, after a visit of envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad, the Reagan administration began actively supporting Iraq in its war with Iran, which Saddam Hussein had provoked in September 1980. That war cost the Iranians over a million lives. Iran would exact its own revenge in new hostages and terrorist attacks, but, after the death of Khomeini in 1989, it would make periodic attempts to restore relations between the countries. Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani would make overtures in 1991 to George H.W. Bush's administration and, in 1995, to the Clinton administration. In 1998, the new reform administration of Mohammed Khatami explicitly rejected terrorism and expressed regret for the embassy takeover and declared "an intellectual affinity with the essence of American civilization." All these overtures were ignored, although both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations avoided incendiary rhetoric against Iran.
After September 11, the Khatami government cooperated with George W. Bush's administration in Afghanistan. (Syria also helped in the battle against Al Qaeda.) But, in January 2002, Bush pronounced Iran part of an "axis of evil." That would seem to have ended any chance of rapprochement, but, in May 2003, an Iranian representative proposed to the Bush administration a comprehensive agreement that would include Iranian nuclear policy and its policy toward Israel. Still, the Bush administration ignored this proposal.
The Bush administration was never interested in negotiating with Khatami's government, but in overthrowing it. And, ironically, it may have succeeded. Bush's intransigence toward Iran's reformers probably contributed to their eclipse in Iranian politics and to the victory in the presidential election of anti-American, anti-Israel demagogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are still factions in Iran that advocate renewed relations with the United States, but, with Ahmadinejad's ascension, they are in disfavor. So the Bush administration's rejection of any diplomatic initiative toward Iran has made Iran more intransigent. And it has also robbed the United States of a potential partner in trying to stabilize Iraq.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's willingness to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear plans did suggest a departure from past policy, but Rice appears to have been rebuked when she suggested that the United States attempt to broaden its negotiations during the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah. Clearly, the administration is still committed to a policy that precludes any renewal of relations with Iran or Syria. Such a policy--like the older post-World War II policy against China--will only make things worse in the Middle East. But who can argue with an administration that out of current conflagration expected a "new Middle East" to emerge?
John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.