Tehran still undecided on US
vote By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
NEW YORK - With the US presidential
elections only five days away, Tehran is
preoccupied with the question of who the next Oval
Office occupant will be and what that would mean
for the future of troubled US-Iran relations.
Over the past couple of weeks the question
has gained urgency in the light of recent reports,
denied by the White House, regarding back channel
talks between Tehran and Washington and Iran's
preparedness for one on one negotiations on the
nuclear standoff.
Despite the denial, even
by President Barack Obama himself (in his third
presidential debate with his Republican rival Mitt
Romney), the story has gained enough traction on
both sides to
warrant fresh speculation
about renewed "Iran engagement" by a second Obama
administration, assuming an Obama victory. The
latter is favored by Iran's rulers, who are wary
of Romney's warmongering rhetoric on Iran and the
prospect of a greater "US hard power" approach
toward Iran under a Romney administration.
Still, not everyone is convinced that a Romney
victory is necessarily a negative development for
Iran and some Tehran pundits have pointed out that
a president Romney would for sure antagonize both
Moscow and Beijing and thus prompt a stronger
pro-Iran tilt on the part of China and Russia.
President Obama, on the other hand, has
done little to earn Iran's trust, given the
comprehensive "crippling sanctions" imposed on
Iran during the past four years, the
Obama-sanctioned cyber-warfare and his constant
reminder that the "clock is ticking" on the
nuclear issue and the window for diplomacy is
closing. Besides, history is a factor too, ie, the
fact that historically the republican
administrations have been more successful in
deal-making with Iran than the democrats.
On the other hand, according to some
Tehran political analysts, a re-elected Obama
would have a freer hand in orchestrating a
"comprehensive negotiation" with Iran that would
encompass not only the nuclear issue but also all
the other mix of issues on the US-Iran boiler
plate.
Thus, in a key interview with
IRDiplomacy, Nasser Hadian, a Tehran University
political science professor and specialist on
Iran's foreign relations, has cautioned against
the past error of selective and incremental
negotiations, arguing instead for a comprehensive
bilateral US-Iran dialogue that would seek to
resolve the outstanding issues between the two
countries. [1] Also, both Hadian and a number of
other analysts have emphasized the importance of
Iran's greater use of "soft power diplomacy" to
complement its hard power.
Soft power
diplomacy According to professor Hadian,
Iran should avoid "hawkish slogans" and rely on
"freedom and democracy, especially the release of
political prisoners" as a "deterrent value" and
express its willingness "to change some of our
behavior".
Certainly, with the Iran
presidential elections approaching next June, all
eyes are set on the question of whether reformist
challengers will be allowed to run and how open
the presidential race will be.
Iran's
rulers are keen on preventing a recurrence of the
political chaos that followed the controversial
2009 presidential elections, which was partly
attributable to the political errors of losing
candidates, who would have been ideally suited to
run again next year if they had not jumped the gun
and contested their defeat (despite the absence of
empirical evidence, as corroborated by various
outside opinion polls both before and after the
elections). Such self-inflicted wounds by the
reformist politicians will take time to heal and
next year's elections may be too soon for them.
Facing multiple national security threats
in the region, Tehran's number one priority today
is in the realm of national security and not
domestic politics, much as the two are intertwined
and the regime's stability can suffer by a growing
"voter alienation". Indeed, the problems of
"deliberative democracy" in Iran are rather
complicated and there is no magic solution to
overcome the multitude of obstacles. [2]
Still, a more vigorous attempt by Tehran's
rulers to accentuate the rule of law and
pluralistic elections will undoubtedly go a long
way in enhancing the regime's internal legitimacy
as well as its external image, particularly in a
region hit by the democratization wave of "Arab
Spring".
This does not necessarily mean a
similar "Persian Spring," however, primarily
because of the strategic errors of reformist
politicians in the last presidential round, still
haunting the political system in Iran.
Rather, this could come in the form of a
concerted effort at "politics of inclusion" that
would be reflected in a "government of national
unity" that would, in turn, enhance Iran's
regional and international standing and thus act
as further breaks on the Western-Israeli omnibus
of coercion and warfare against Iran,
complementing its hard-power strategy (for more on
this see How
Iran will fight back, Asia Times Online,
December 16, 2004).
This aside, other
elements of a new Iranian "soft power" deterrence
strategy vis-a-vis military threats include: a
friendlier approach toward Iran's Arab neighbors
in Persian Gulf, greater use of Iran's
conflict-management potential with respect to
various regional conflicts, enhanced nuclear
transparency and improved standing with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, human rights
improvements, reflected in the recent,
much-delayed move to ban death by stoning, thus
reflecting a "legal evolution" (see Iran:
A Case for legal evolution in Iran, Asia Times
Online, December 5, 2008).
Altogether,
these "smart power" moves by Iran may culminate in
a more meaningful US-Iran dialogue in the (near)
future, although much depends on Washington's
scope of willingness to transcend its "structural
conflict" with Iran and achieve a detente with the
Islamic Republic.
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