The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

Meanwhile, the European Union (and individual European countries), the International Atomic Energy Agency and other entities have mainly focused their diplo- matic energies on countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Their collective lack of success can reasonably be ascribed to insufficient leverage, in keeping with the widespread belief that effective diplomacy between adversaries requires what is often described as “negotiating from strength.” However, such strength need not require the threat of military power. Fortunately, an alternative negotiating strategy is avail- able, built on the following premises: Both sides must believe that negotiations have a reasonable chance to suc- ceed, and that direct talks are better than any other alter- native currently available. Unless one of the parties is, in effect, prepared to surrender, this usually means that each party must believe it is negotiating from some strength. For example, by scaring Israel with a creditable mili- tary capability during the opening stages of the 1973 “War of the Crossing” (YomKippur War), and not being too dis- astrously defeated at its end, Egypt and Syria gained the confidence to feel that they could negotiate with Israel afterward. This paved the way for the successful Kissinger disengagement agreements and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty President Carter mediated three decades ago. Huffing and Puffing Can Lead to War Observers generally agree that the defeat of the Taliban, the ouster of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni- dominated Baath Party, and the bogging down of America in Iraq and Afghanistan have all bolstered Iranian confi- dence. This has unleashed the hubris of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his government has not accepted the commercial and other carrots offered by the Europeans to give up Iran’s nuclear aspirations. The Iranians correctly note that the program actually predates the 1979 fall of Shah Pahlevi, though that phase was con- ducted under considerably different circumstances. These developments have understandably led the U.S. government to seek compensating leverage elsewhere. So far, the U.S. government has sought to do this by building up naval and air power in Iran’s vicinity as a nec- essary precondition for successfully negotiating from strength (as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and oth- ers have made explicit). There have been sanctions and implied or open signals suggesting military action. In the- ory, there is nothing wrong with such an approach — if it works. But it has not. There is no indication that it will force the Iranian government to back down, however often it feigns interest in negotiations to buy time. (The frivolous argument that U.S. anti-missile defens- es are required to protect countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic from Iranian attack is patently far- fetched, and only provokes Moscow just as the U.S. is seeking Russian assistance with Iran.) The danger is that the escalation track on which sanc- tions and military threats are now riding usually leads, experience shows, beyond any bluffing to actual military action. It engages both sides in a game of chicken from which only extraordinary restraint in the face of unthink- able consequences (as, for example, in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis) forces both sides to stop, take stock and compromise. The great — and in many ways incalculable — consequences of military action against Iran have been explored elsewhere and need not be repeated here. It would be far better for the U.S. to pursue an alter- native strategy, one which also aims at negotiating from strength to match Iran’s current confidence. This approach should investigate and make explicit the various disadvantages to Iran of its current behavior, particularly as this behavior could affect when and how the U.S. departs Iraq and how it proceeds in Afghanistan. Iranian Vulnerabilities Obviously, a prime requirement in deciding whether and how to negotiate is to obtain the best possible under- standing of your adversary’s strengths and weaknesses. From Washington’s vantage point, the most important of these is a recognition that Iran’s early post-revolutionary F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7 George B. Lambrakis, Ph.D., was a State Department Foreign Service officer from 1957 to 1985. He covered the 1967 Six-Day War from the Israel desk in Washing- ton, the 1973 Arab-Israel War from London, the Leban- ese civil war as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’af- faires in Beirut, the Iranian Revolution as political coun- selor and acting deputy chief of mission from 1976 to 1979 in Tehran, and the Iranian hostage crisis, the Iraq- Iran War and the U.S. military buildup in the Middle East as regional affairs director and National Security Council coordinator for State’s Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs in the early 1980s. He now heads the international relations and diplomacy program at Schiller International University in London.