The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

at home of appeasement and worse; both the Iranian president and the U.S. Secretary of State visit the other’s neighbors to build alliances and “counter the threat;” and both countries’ presidents fill their speeches with denun- ciations of the other country as the source of world mis- fortune. In a Downward Spiral All these recent moves and harsh rhetoric tell us that American-Iranian relations remain about where they have been for the past 28 years: locked in a downward spiral of mutual hostility and suspicion. In this spiral, each side views the other as absolute evil. Each sees every move of the other in the worst light possible, and responds accordingly. Those hostile responses provoke further antagonism from the other side, thus justifying the original accusation (“We told you they were evil!”). Hostility creates further hostility, and both sides find themselves in a stubborn cycle of provo- cation and counter-provocation. Each side assumes the other is an implacable enemy; and every action by one side proves its enmity to the other. The U.S. expects that the Islamic Republic will be antagonistic; therefore, it should move pre-emptively before Tehran can carry out some unfriendly act. Of course, the Islamic Republic expects the same of us, and will react in the same way. Each side believes it is acting defensively against hos- tile, offensive moves by the other. Aggressive rhetoric from Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad have fed this spi- ral and convinced each side that it is facing a cold-blood- ed, malicious opponent resolved to do it ill. According to this view of the world, the Islamic Republic is deter- mined to build nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and other U.S. friends in the region and to make itself (under the banner of a militant Shia ideology) the dominant power across the Middle East. As for the United States, in the reciprocal view, it cannot tolerate a defiant Islamic Republic and has decided on a policy of “regime change” — i.e., overthrow of a government it does not like. Through Warped Lenses In the midst of such exchanges, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have come to view each other through pairs of badly warped lenses. In our exchanges, mythology has replaced reality. Even those coming new to the subject are struck by the depth of ill- will and mutual suspicion. I recently asked my political science students at the U.S. Naval Academy — who had been studying U.S.-Iranian relations for only a few months — how they thought the U.S. and Iran viewed each other. They said that, based on the last 50 years of history, the U.S. saw the leaders of the Islamic Republic — and by extension many Iranians — as: • Emotional. Iran’s leaders cannot calculate their country’s national interest, and have become captives of their own rhetoric. • Devious. They have been misleading the rest of the world about their nuclear program. They will cheat and deceive if it suits their purpose — or sometimes to no apparent end. • Obsessed with the past. They are still fixated on seventh-century conflicts in Islamic history and with events of 50 or 60 years ago. • Obsessed with religion. They are attempting to establish a theocratic state in the 21st century based on a version of a seventh-century community in Arabia. They are attempting to run a modern society and economy according to archaic and misogynistic laws. • Unreliable. They cannot be trusted to keep their word. You cannot believe anything they say. • Irrational. Emotion, not reason, rules their deci- sions. Many of their actions are self-destructive. They cannot understand the consequences of their own actions or understand the workings of cause and effect. They F O C U S J U N E 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 Ambassador John W. Limbert, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, is currently distinguished professor of international affairs at the U.S. Naval Academy. His many overseas assignments include service in Iran, Iraq and Sudan, and as ambassador to Mauritania from 2000 to 2003. He was also president of AFSA from 2003 to 2005. Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1973, he taught in Iran, both as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1964- 1966) and as an English instructor at Shiraz University (1969-1972). He holds the Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award and the Award for Valor, which he received after 14 months as a hostage in Tehran, as well as AFSA’s Rivkin Award for creative dissent. He has published Iran: At War with History ( Westview Press, 1987) and Shiraz in the Age of Hafez (University of Washington Press, 2004), in addition to numerous articles on Middle Eastern subjects. This article is extracted from his upcoming book on Iranian diplomacy.