Engagement Is A Force Multiplier for Pressure On Iran

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Suzanne Maloney and Ray Takeyh gave a good overview of how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been increasingly sidelined by his former backer, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They rightly note the irony that, as much as he was vilified for his offensive anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric, Ahmadinejad was one of the regime’s biggest proponents of engagement with the West (for his own purposes, of course.)

Maloney and Takeyh wrote, "A regime riven by internal conflicts, leery of its constituents, under economic duress, and surrounded by burgeoning anti-authoritarian protest movements offers its own share of pressure points — and a more creative American approach could pay dividends, as shifting alignments among Iran’s political class offer opportunities to reshape Iran’s priorities," which I think is right, but then they continued:

Washington must appreciate that it is locked in a prolonged struggle for regional influence with one of its least predictable foes. To prevail in this conflict, Washington must abandon any expectation that Tehran can be seduced or coerced to the negotiating table.

American policy should seek to maximize financial and technological constraints on the Iranian nuclear program, strengthen Iran’s opposition, exacerbate the many fissures within its political class and insulate Iran’s neighbors from its nefarious activities. The leaders of a revolution that has once again devoured its own can surely be thwarted by the United States and its allies.

Maloney and Takeyh don’t come right out and say that the offer of negotiations with Iran should be withdrawn, but they strongly suggest that engagement with the regime should be shelved. That would be a huge mistake. As I noted in a piece last month, while negotiations haven’t achieved their primary goal of a solution the Iranian nuclear issue, Obama’s Iran engagement policy has had very important secondary effects. It has strengthened the international consensus against Iran’s nuclear program, resulting in significant new sanctions, and it has contributed to internal tensions in Iran by taking the focus off the U.S. and putting it where it belongs, on the Iranian regime. In other words, the engagement track has been a force multiplier for the pressure track.

Just as the U.S. did with the USSR, we can, and should, criticize while still negotiating. It’s certainly appropriate to lower expectations over what can be achieved through negotiations, but we should resist the urge to simply throw up our hands and walk away, especially since all of the containment policy aims that the authors outline above would be enhanced by continued efforts to talk with the Iranian regime, and diminished by abandoning them.