HAWAII - As the Iranian
leadership prepares to engage in negotiations with
the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council plus Germany (P5+1) over the fate of its
nuclear program, the conversation inside Iran has
moved beyond the nuclear issue, and now includes a
debate about the utility of engaging in direct
talks - even relations - with the United States.
Public discussions of relations with the
United States have historically been a taboo in
Iran. To be sure, there have always been
individuals who have brought up the idea, but they
have either been severely chastised publicly and
quickly silenced, or ignored. The current
conversation is distinguished by its breadth as
well the clear positioning of the two sides on the
issue.
On one side stand hardliners who
continue to tout the value of a
"resistance economy" - a
term coined by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -
in the face of US-led sanctions. On the other side
is a growing number of people from across the
political spectrum, including some conservatives,
who are calling for bilateral talks.
The
idea of direct talks with the United States was
openly put forth last spring by Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, former president and current chair of
the Expediency Council, in a couple of interviews.
He insisted that Iran "can now fully
negotiate with the United States based on equal
conditions and mutual respect". To be sure,
Rafsanjani conceded that the current obsession
with Iran's nuclear program is not the US's main
problem, arguing against those who "think that
Iran's problems [with the West] will be solved
through backing down on the nuclear issue".
He also argued that the current situation
of "not talking and not having relations with
America is not sustainable... The meaning of talks
is not that we capitulate to them. If they accept
our position or we accept their positions, it's
done."
Rafsanjani is no longer the lone
public voice in favor of direct talks. In fact, as
the conversation over talks with the US has picked
up, he has remained relatively quiet.
Others have stepped in. Last week, for
instance, hundreds of people filled an overcrowded
university auditorium in the small provincial
capital of Yasuj to listen to a public debate
between two former members of the parliament over
whether direct talks with the US offer an
opportunity or threat.
On the one side
stood Mostafa Kavakabian, an academic and
reformist politician, who said "whatever Islamic
Iran is wrestling with in [terms of] sanctions,
the nuclear energy issue, multiple resolutions
[against Iran] in [international] organizations,
human rights violations from the point of view of
the West, the issue of Israel and international
terrorism is the result of lack of logical
relationship... with America."
Majlis MP
Sattar Hedayatkhah, on the other hand, argued that
"relations with America under the current
conditions means backtracking from 34 years of
resistance against the demands and sanctions of
the global arrogance".
In recent weeks,
the hardline position has been articulated by
individuals such as the head of the Basij militia
forces, Mohammadreza Naqdi, who called the
sanctions a means for unlocking Iran's "latent
potential", and the leader's representative in the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, cleric Ali
Saeedi, who said that Washington's proposals for
direct talks were a ploy to trick Tehran into
"capitulating over its nuclear program".
Standing in the midst of this contentious
conversation is Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who,
as everyone acknowledges, is the ultimate
decision-maker on the issue of talks with the
United States.
In the past couple of
years, he has articulated his mistrust of the
Barack Obama administration's intentions in no
uncertain terms, and since the bungled October
2009 negotiations over the transfer of enriched
uranium out of Iran - when Iranian negotiator
Saeed Jalili met with US undersecretary of state
William Burns on the sidelines of the P5+1 meeting
- has not allowed bilateral contact at the level
of principals between Iran and the US
Yet
the concern regarding a potentially changed
position on his part has been sufficient enough
for the publication of an op-ed in the hard-line
Kayhan Daily warning against the "conspiracy" of
"worn-out revolutionaries" to force Khamenei "to
drink from the poison chalice of backing down,
abandoning his revolutionary positions, and
talking to the US".
The piece goes on to
say:
By offering wrong analyses and
relating all of the country's problems to
external sanctions, (worn-out revolutionaries)
want to make the social atmosphere inflamed and
insecure and agitate public sentiments so that
the exalted Leader is forced to give in to their
demands in order to protect the country's
interests and revolution's gains.
The
idea of drinking poison is an allusion to the
founder of the revolution Ruhollah Khomeini's
famous speech in which he grudgingly accepted the
ceasefire with Iraq in 1988 and referred to it as
a poisoned chalice from which he had to drink.
Hardliners in Iran continue to believe
that it was the moderate leaders of the time such
as Rafsanjani who convinced Khomeini to take the
bitter poison, while conveniently omitting the
fact that the current Leader Khamenei was at the
time very much on the Rafsanjani side. This time
around the suspects are "worn-out revolutionaries"
who are still operating within the system.
The hardliners face a predicament. Having
elevated Khamenei's role to the level of an
all-knowing imam-like leader, they have few
options but to remain quiet and submit to his
leadership if he makes a decision in favor of
direct talks. Hence their prior attempt to portray
any attempt at talks as capitulation at worst or
an unnecessary bitter pill at best.
In
this highly contentious context, Khamenei's
decision in favor of direct talks can only be
considered a big "if". Whether he will agree to
them eventually is not at all clear and in fact is
probably quite unlikely, unless the US position on
Iran's nuclear programme is publicly clarified to
eventually allow for an acceptable negotiated
settlement.
In other words, while Khamenei
may eventually assent to direct talks, the path to
that position is some sort of agreement on the
nuclear standoff - even if a limited one - within
the P5+1 framework and not the other way around.
The reality is that US pressures on Iran
have helped create an environment in which many
are calling for a strategic, even if incrementally
implemented, shift of direction in Iran's foreign
policy regarding the so-called "America question".
But this call for a shift can only become
dominant if there are some assurances that
corresponding, again even if incrementally
implemented, shifts are also in the works in the
US regarding its "Iran question".
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