This Week in Iran

This week’s opening of the U.N. General Assembly was not its normal boring gabfest, but a fascinating and fast moving diplomatic event. The presence of newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who arrived with a clear agenda to move the ball forward in normalizing Iranian relations with the West, made for fascinating diplomatic drama which culminated in President Obama’s phone conversation with Rouhani.

Not only were Rouhani’s diplomatic and political skills on display, but they were accompanied by a sophisticated, adept and agile Iranian public relations campaign. (Who’d have thunk it?) The blizzard of tweets, press releases and op-ed pieces orchestrated by the Iranians was amazing to watch. Gary Sick, an Iran expert with Columbia University commented, “They’re putting stuff out faster than the naysayers can keep up. They dominate the airwaves”. Even the vaunted Israeli “hasbara” public relations machine has been caught flat footed. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has come off sounding like a grumpy old warmonger. The neo-con, and normally bellicose pundits, such as Bill Kristol, John Bolton and Charles Krauthammer have struggled to find their voice.

Even the main stream media has struggled with how to react. The most egregious example came from NBC’s Brian Williams who stated, “This is all part of a new leadership effort by Iran - suddenly claiming they don't want nuclear weapons; what they want is talks and transparency and good will. And while that would be enough to define a whole new era, skepticism is high and there's a good reason for it." This statement that this is “sudden” is patently untrue. What is seen as sudden by Williams has been the Iranian position for over a decade. When President Khatami proposed a “grand bargain” in 2003, he faced the George W. Bush administration who, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker told me, “didn’t think that it was real”. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed something similar, Obama was faced with an Iranian President whose bellicose rhetoric on Israel and the Holocaust were too politically toxic to deal with.

Now, however, we have the happy convergence of leaders whose default position is diplomacy, increasingly shared interests and a rapidly changing political environment in the Middle East. The two predominant naysayers, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have about worn out their welcome with Obama. Israel by torpedoing every effort to resolve the Palestinian situation and Saudi Arabia by underwriting al Qaeda affiliated groups throughout the region.

The Western media has portrayed Iranian ability to make the necessary concessions as the biggest obstacle. In fact, the ability of the U.S. to deal with sanctions relief is a much bigger obstacle. Iran is not going to agree to any deal that does not, at least in some measure, provide for sanctions relief. The Iran sanctions are written into U. S, law. While the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 gives the President some limited waiver authority, the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 has no such provision. Given the fact that Congressional Republicans are in no mood to give Obama a political and diplomatic victory and the spectacle of zero concern for the country’s best interests that we are now witnessing, any action is unlikely. We may, once again, miss a golden opportunity to resolve this problem peacefully. The first rule of U.S./Iranian relations, “Never walk through an open door. Instead beat your head against the wall” still applies.

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