Who’s Head Locking Who? American Diplomacy vs. Iranian Obstinance

President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - May 18, 2009.

While hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, President Barack Obama announced a soft deadline for Iran to make “serious progress” on the nuclear proliferations front.[i] “We’re not going to have talks forever.  We’re not going to create a situation in which the talks become an excuse for inaction while Iran proceeds with developing … and deploying a nuclear weapon,” declared Obama.  Both the United States and Israel have accused Tehran of developing a nuclear weapons program masked as a civil nuclear energy program – a claim that Iran vehemently denies.[ii]

The President shrewdly stopped short of hinting at a possible military strike against Iran, but he also stopped short of taking that possibility off the table.  Washington has struggled to find the key to pressuring the Iranian government, and has been even more frustrated by its unproductive intelligence gathering efforts in Iran.[iii] The truth is that the Obama administration will find it easier to criticize the Bush administration’s failed isolation of Iran, than it will be to successfully engage the enigmatic theocratic state – a state that has everything to gain and very little to lose by continuing to play hardball with Washington.  Does the new administration really believe that the threat of stiffer sanctions in 2010 will yield political benefits from Iran in 2009?  The only thing that is certain is that we have come to another pivotal moment in the history of the Middle East as the diplomatic feud between Tehran and Washington has increasingly made the region politically bi-polar.

It is actually quite difficult to tell if either nation is capable of leveraging the other.  On the one hand the United States controls Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran’s western and eastern neighbors respectively.  Despite the fact that the United States is at war on two fronts, it still possesses the most impressive arsenal in the world. Additionally, while Iran attempts to go nuclear, the United States is the world’s most formidable nuclear power, but no one knows if Tehran can be deterred in the same way Moscow was during the Cold War.

Conversely, Bush’s invasion of Iraq may prove to be the greatest blunder in American history, because it has opened up Iraq to Iranian proxies in a way that would have never been possible under Saddam Hussein. The United States has underestimated the political pragmatism of Iran over the last thirty years.  Iran has been quietly spreading its tentacles into regional affairs through its proxies such the Lebanese Hizb Allah (The Party of God), and more recently in Iraq through Da’wa (Islamic Call).[iv] Iran can of course make the stabilization of Iraq very difficult for American troops on the ground and simply outwait America’s will to continue the occupation of Iraq.

All this leads to the question of who has got whom in a regional headlock.  Does the U.S. have Iran surrounded or does Iran’s new Shia Empire, which now includes spheres of influence in Iraq and Lebanon, have the upper hand? We must remember the real reason for Mr. Netanyahu’s nervous visit to Washington.  He was here in the U.S. to lobby against Tehran. The Israeli prime minister talked with Rep. Pelosi, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and anyone else who would listen because he must realize that Israel is now geographically located beneath the new Shia Arc.

I’m no prophet, but I would wager that soft deadlines and delayed sanctions will not move the Mullahs in Tehran.  Iran will likely stay the course.

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[i] Colvin, Ross. “Obama says he wants progress with Iran by year’s end.” Reuters 18 May 2009: accessed 19 May 2009 <http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE54H4QX20090518>

[ii] Hancocks, Paula. “Netanyahu presses Congress over threat of nuclear Iran.” CNN 19 May 2009: accessed 19 May 2009 <http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/19/mideast.netanyahu.dc/index.html#cnnSTCText>

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Robert Baer, The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower (New York: Crown Publishers, 2008), 74-6.

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