WASHINGTON - Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has long argued
that the United States and Iran need to have a dialogue with each other at
three different levels: between their executive branches, between their civil
societies and between their legislatures.
While the George W Bush administration has opposed direct contact with the
Iranian executive branch, and while its "Iran Democracy fund" has rendered
civil society exchanges more difficult, according to prominent human-rights
organizations, Tehran bears overwhelming responsibility for the failure to
initiate a parliamentarian dialogue between the two countries.
But change may be in the air. The new speaker of Iran's
parliament, the Majlis, is the former nuclear negotiator who resigned over
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's inflexible position on the nuclear file, Ali
Larijani.
The election of the former hawk, now turned relative pragmatist, has been
interpreted as a blow to Ahmadinejad and an indication that the conservative
camp in Iran is growing increasingly impatient with their hardline president.
Larijani's more flexible posture on the nuclear issue, his relatively tempered
rhetoric and his declared openness to talks with the US has fueled speculation
that if he were to successfully challenge Ahmadinejad in the March 2009
presidential elections, a significant opportunity for US-Iran diplomacy would
emerge.
But even if he were to remain the speaker of the Majlis, Larijani would enjoy
opportunities to pursue unprecedented parliamentarian diplomacy. There has been
no shortage of efforts to connect Iranian and US lawmakers. The willingness to
initiate such a dialogue - and willingness to accept the political risk it
entails - has been much stronger on the US side, however.
In September 2000, several US lawmakers attended a meeting at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York for parliamentary speakers. The purpose was to get a
chance to converse with the then speaker of the Iranian Majlis, Mehdi Karroubi,
who was in New York for the United Nations Millennium summit.
Among the US lawmakers attending the reception at the Met were New York
Democratic representatives Gary L Ackerman and Eliot L Engel, as well as
Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations. The Iranian delegation included the sole Jewish lawmaker in the
Iranian parliament. Among the many issues discussed was a US proposal to
increase formal exchanges between the two legislatures. The Iranians never gave
a firm commitment.
In October 2001, only a few weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a
few US lawmakers headed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter invited the then
Iranian ambassador to the UN, Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, to a private dinner in a
senate chamber - the first visit of a senior Iranian diplomat to the US Capitol
since the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Among the several lawmakers attending the dinner was ambassador
Nejad-Hosseinian's daughter-in-law, a US citizen. Though the Iranian diplomat
did not meet with any administration officials during his visit, the dinner
could not have taken place without the permission of the George W Bush
administration. The Iranians never reciprocated that invitation.
In August 2003, a Republican lawmaker and a senior Democratic senate staffer
participated in a "track-II" meeting in a European capital with Iranian Foreign
Ministry officials. Though the lawmaker acted independently from the Bush
administration, US officials hoped Tehran would permit an Iranian lawmaker to
attend the meeting as well to elevate it to an official parliamentary exchange.
No Iranian lawmaker attended the meeting, however.
In January 2004, the Bush administration gave the green light for a second
dinner invitation to Iran's UN ambassador to a congressional dinner in the
Capitol building, only a few doors away from the speaker's office. The
discussions with ambassador Javad Zarif centered on developments in Afghanistan
and Iraq and the need for US-Iranian cooperation, but also on a proposed trip
by congressional staff to Tehran as a prelude to a visit by members of
congress.
Though the Iranians initially were positive, and though travel preparations
were made on the US side and a group of half a dozen staffers was selected to
go on what would have been a groundbreaking visit, the Iranians withdrew their
invitation at the last minute, citing political circumstances in Iran.
US lawmakers did not cease to extend invitations to their Iranian counterparts,
however. In 2007, a senior Democratic senator arranged for Zarif to visit the
senate and meet with a dozen high-ranking lawmakers. A few months later,
several US congressmen sent an invitation via the Iranian UN mission to the
Iranian speaker of the Majlis, offering direct parliamentarian dialogue.
After a few months, Haddad Adel, the recently ousted Majlis speaker, sent a
two-page reply, mostly citing Iranian grievances with US foreign policy while
avoiding a direct response to the US invitation. Instead, the last paragraph in
the letter indicated a general openness to exchanges without making any
specific commitments.
The greater US interest in parliamentarian exchanges is partly due to the
nature of the US political system, with its independent branches. For US
lawmakers to operate outside of official US foreign policy is not uncommon, nor
has it been inconsequential. Personal diplomacy by US lawmakers has paved the
way for openings to countries like Vietnam and Libya.
Iranian lawmakers, however, don't share this trait of operating in the foreign
policy realm independently of their executive branch. In recent years in
particular, the Majlis has been in lockstep with Ahmadinejad on this issue, due
to Adel's political ties and alliance with the Iranian president. Adel's
lukewarm reaction to the US invitation to parliamentary talks was partly due to
internal Iranian rivalries: the exchanges of letters had been facilitated by
the Iranian UN mission under the leadership of Zarif - a key opponent of
Ahmadinejad.
With Larijani as the new speaker of the Majlis, the Iranian legislature is now
headed not only by a political rival of Ahmadinejad who seems eager to counter
the Iranian president, but also by someone who over the years has begun to
appreciate the utility - and necessity - of diplomacy.
Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance - The Secret
Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US, a Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on
Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Book Award, the most significant award for a
book on foreign affairs.
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