August 11, 2013
I would love to know who the jerk is who wrote the White House’s
press statement on the occasion of the inauguration earlier this week of the
new Iranian President, Hassan Rowhani. I say this is the work of a jerk, or a
band of war-addicted zealots in Washington, DC, because it seems designed to
totally bury the opportunity that Rowhani represents to improve the wellbeing
of Iranians and resolve Western-Iranian and Arab-Iranian tensions on a variety
of important issues.
It is useful in today’s very turbulent Middle East to separate
what can be changed quickly from issues that require a longer time frame—and to
grasp the real relationship between them. So, for example, are terrorism, or
Islamic, Jewish or Christian religious fanaticism, causes of insecure states,
or consequences of them? Structural issues like terrorism, gender parity, and
environmental, economic and demographic stress require many decades to improve.
Political conflicts can be resolved more quickly, if political leadership
capabilities are available. The two most important conflicts that exacerbate
many tensions in the region are the century-old Palestinian/Arab-Israeli
conflict and the more recent Iranian-American/Western conflict.
Progress on defusing these conflicts will help to tone down many
other tensions around the region. The Iranian-American/Western conflict is the
most recent, and by far the easier one to resolve. Rowhani’s inauguration
provides a moment of change in both the substance and style of Iranian policies
at home and abroad. His recent statements have emphasized his focus on
“confidence-building, mutual respect, common interests and equal standing,” as
guiding forces for engaging with others.
So what does the Washington, DC jerkocracy offer in reply? A new
round of sanctions against Iran from the Congress, a majority of senators
asking Washington to increase sanctions and maintain a credible military
threat, and a White House statement that suggests that America’s highest
elected officials have learned nothing in the past decade—which is, by my
definition, how a jerk behaves.
I say this because the White House statement on August 4—after
appropriately congratulating the Iranian people for making their voices heard
during Iran’s election and noting that President Rowhani “recognized his
election represented a call by the Iranian people for change”—went on to use
the most powerful political pulpit in the world to repeat precisely the two
points that are most offensive to Iranians, and only those two points, without
mentioning any others.
These two comprise the last two sentences in the American
statement: “The inauguration of President Rowhani presents an opportunity for
Iran to act quickly to resolve the international community’s deep concerns over
Iran’s nuclear program. Should this new government choose to engage
substantively and seriously to meet its international obligations and find a
peaceful solution to this issue, it will find a willing partner in the United
States.”
The problem with this approach that has failed for many years is
that it is based on a series of arrogant assumptions or aggressive
preconditions that no self-respecting government in the world would accept. It
mentions substantive issues with Iran only in terms of Iran’s nuclear efforts,
without acknowledging that Iran also has security, economic, nuclear rights and
other concerns to discuss about how it is treated by the United States and
Western powers. It accuses Iran of not engaging substantively and seriously,
when the evidence shows that Iran has offered many substantive gestures (including
freezing nuclear enrichment for two years and allowing all its enrichment
facilities to be inspected by the UN), but now refuses to advance further
mainly as a response to the U.S.-Israeli-driven campaign of sanctions, threats
and cyber-attacks against it. The United States, Israel and others in the West
never waste an opportunity to threaten to use military force against Iran, but
in this context they also demand that Iran is responsible for taking the
initiative to resolve this issue peacefully.
I wonder if this is structural American official arrogance and
neo-imperial hubris repeatedly manifesting on this issue, or a more simple case
of stupidity on the part of some officials who refuse to understand that
“mutual respect” is not just a cliché that Iranians and others throw around,
but a real live operative diplomatic principle that is a vital ingredient for
success in such conflicts.
Iranians and Rowhani took the first step of moving their
national policies in a different, perhaps more fruitful, direction. Why could
the White House not simply have replied to Rowhani’s calls for respect and
equal treatment with the same magnitude of fusion between the display of new
style and substance that hold the promise for a better world for all? Why did
the White House instead reassert the aggressive ways that have only steadily
increased tensions across the entire region for the past decade or more?
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and
Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International
Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can
follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by
Agence Global