The Foreign Service Journal, March 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2015 27 A veteran FSO and authority on Iran explains what it will take for Washington to “get it right” when U.S. diplomats finally return to Tehran. BY JOHN W. L I MBERT JohnW. Limbert served as the first-ever deputy assistant secretary of State for Iran from 2009 to 2010. He is a veteran U.S. diplomat and a former official at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, where he was held captive during the Iran hostage crisis. He was ambassador to Mauritania from 2000 to 2003 and AFSA president from 2003 to 2005, among many other assignments. He is the author of Iran: At War with History (Westview Press, 1987), Shiraz in the Age of Hafez (University of Washington Press, 2004) and Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2009). NPR: Is there any scenario under which you can envision, in your final two years, opening a U.S. embassy in Tehran? I never say never; but I think these things have to go in steps. — President Barack Obama, in an interview with National Public Radio, December 2014. I n 2010, I asked the State Department’s Iran watchers, then gathered in Washington, D.C., which of them would volunteer to serve at a reopened diplomatic post in Tehran if the opportunity arose. All said they would. None of them had ever set foot in Iran; but they had looked into a new world through windows of language, film, policy argument and, most important, Iranians they had met in Dubai, Istanbul, Baku, Berlin and elsewhere. They had obviously caught the antibiotic- resistant “Iran bug,” and a fascination with the intricacies and contradictions of that country and its civilization had taken root in their systems. Sooner or later, our Foreign Service colleagues will return to Tehran. But while essential for effective service in Iran, their brains and enthusiasm cannot by themselves carry a renewed diplomatic tie. They will need support from the State Department in the form of a serious “Iranist” career track and an ability to deal with the potent ghosts that haunt both sides in the American- Iranian relationship. The Road Back to Tehran: Bugs, Ghosts and Ghostbusters FOCUS ON IRAN The (Incurable) Iran Bug The Iran watchers have encountered conflicting realities that both puzzle and attract them. Many of the Iranians they have met are highly educated and creative people, who produce brilliant films, paintings and poetry, and who sometimes turn their creativ- ity to concocting the most bizarre conspiracy theories. The result was sometimes shock, but more often fascination. The watch- ers are like people who create a Jerusalem, Mecca or Karbala in their imaginations long before there is any chance of making a pilgrimage. They have never been to Iran, but the idea of Iran has captured them. I recognized this virus, because I had caught it 45 years earlier, during Peace Corps training in Iran in the summer of 1964. At first, the beauties, subtleties and mysteries of the Persian language— despite endless drills—were a revelation. I realized that we were in for something unexpected one evening when playing Monopoly