The Real Causes of America’s Troubled Relations with Iran

by Shireen Hunter     

In his speech describing America’s new approach towards Iran, Donald Trump accused it of responsibility for just about all of the ills of the Middle East and South West Asia. He went as far as accusing Iran of having supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda, sworn enemies of the Shias and Iran.

More seriously, the president refused to certify that Iran had complied with its responsibilities under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), thus opening the way for new sanctions and other pressures on Iran. It would also represent a step toward military confrontation, which might start with a direct U.S. attack on Iran or under the guise of anti-terror actions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Those who focus only on recent developments in US-Iranian relations tend to attribute the current difficulties to the Islamic Republic’s radical ideology and its destructive and destabilizing policies in the Middle East and South-West Asia. They argue that the United States had no problems with Iran before the Islamic Revolution and will have no difficulties with it in future if the current regime changes.

Clearly, the IRI’s ideological mixture of leftist notions of the 1960s and 70s and some Islamic principles as interpreted in light of those notions has been hostile to America and its regional allies. Like all revolutionary movements, until the mid- 1990s, Iran also tried to export its ideology beyond its borders.

However, in the last 25 years both Iran’s ideology and policies have undergone changes, and more moderate views, policies, and actors have emerged. Yet, during these years, every time Iran has reached out to America it has been rebuffed. The United States, by contrast, has only approached Iran when it has needed its help, such as during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and briefly after 9/11.

The question thus arises why America has not wanted to reach some form of modus vivendi with Iran. The answer lies in the dynamics of the international political system—and Iran and America’s respective places in it.

The Myth of America’s Friendship with the Shah

Those who bemoan the current state of US-Iranian relations wax nostalgic about the halcyon days of the Shah’s rule. Yet in reality, America never considered either Iran or the Shah to be an indispensable ally, like, for instance, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

For example, despite the Shah’s pleadings, America refused to sign a security treaty with Iran. It gave Iran pitiful amounts of economic aid and was ready to experiment with social and political change in Iran, while it avoided similar policies in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East. A good example is the Kennedy administration’s pressure on the Shah to implement far-reaching reforms that greatly contributed to the social and cultural upheavals that culminated in the Islamic Revolution. For its part, the Carter administration pushed a human-rights agenda that gave the wrong signal to the Iranian opposition, and thus helped the Shah’s downfall.

Even regional players, like Saudi Arabia and Israel, which now say how much they miss the Shah, became irritated with him and actively contributed to his downfall. For instance, Saudi Arabia used its oil power to undermine Iran’s economy in 1976. Israel, angry about the Shah’s efforts to reach a deal with the PLO and Syria’s Hafiz al-Assad, used its supporters in the United States to warn against the Shah’s ambitions. In the West, complaints were often heard that the Shah “has grown too big for his britches.” This is one reason why Westerners were so complaisant about events that culminated in the 1979 revolution.

This U.S. approach towards Iran has been the result of its lack of an intrinsic interest in the country. The same was true of Britain. The late Sir Denis Right, the UK’s ambassador to Iran in the 1960s, put it best by writing that Britain never considered Iran of sufficient value to colonize it. But it found Iran useful as a buffer against the competing great power, the Russian Empire. Thus, British policy towards Iran was to keep it moribund but not dead, at least not as long as the Russian threat persisted.

America essentially followed the old British approach towards Iran: keep it semi-alive so that it can put up enough resistance to the USSR until America’s more important and intrinsic interests, such as those in the Persian Gulf, were safeguarded. But Washington never wanted to turn Iran into a strong ally that one day might be capable of challenging America.

In the late 1970s nobody thought that the fall of the Shah would result in the kind of government that emerged in 1979, and especially after the fall of the Bazargan government in November 1979. Rather, most observers thought that monarchy would be replaced with a mildly nationalist, secular government that would continue reasonable relations with the West, without the Shah’s grandiose dreams: something like “Mossadegh Light.”

Iran as Middle Power

By changing the international balance of power and removing the risk of Soviet penetration, the USSR’s fall eliminated Iran’s value to the United States even as a buffer state. In fact, the fundamental shift to a US approach based on the principle of no compromise, can be traced to 1987, when Gorbachev’s reforms began. Since then, the United States has refused to accept any solution to the Iran problem that has not involved the country’s absolute capitulation. For instance, in 2003, Iran offered to put all the outstanding issues between the two countries on the table for negotiations, but the US refused.

After 2003, the American approach shifted from regime change in Iran to gradual and eventual disintegration of the country through the application of crippling sanctions. The JCPOA was designed to remove the risk of Iran going nuclear without giving it any real economic reprieve: it was just enough to keep the country moribund. Thus, it is ironic that President Trump thinks that America got a bad deal.

Ultimately, the United States is concerned with Iran’s potential to become a credible middle power. Great powers do not like middle powers. The latter generally want to be treated as allies and not clients and want their share of the spotlight. The Shah, for instance, had the temerity to want to be treated as an ally and not a lackey.

The same is true of Iran’s regional rivals. They want Iran sanctioned and militarily attacked not because Iran is threatening their security in any tangible way, but because they feel uncomfortable with a potentially powerful Iran. The discomfort extends beyond Iran’s military prowess to its cultural appeal. When the Iranian actor, Shahab Hosseini, won the best actor award in Cannes in 2016, Saudi commentators considered him even more dangerous than the dreaded Ghassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s Quds brigade.

Any government in a unified Iran, irrespective of its ideology and orientation, will want to realize the country’s potential and be treated as a legitimate regional and international player. Of course, for its part, Iran has to behave according to international norms. But if history is any guide, even when Iran has acted as a stabilizing force in the region, as it did during the 1970s with Western approval, it has been accused of imperial designs and of acting as the gendarme of the Persian Gulf.

The dilemma thus facing the United States, beyond the future viability of the JCPOA, is whether it will be prepared to seek some form of compromise and understanding with Iran, or whether it will try to settle the Iran question once and for all. The latter path, however, is very dangerous and costly, and its success is far from guaranteed. The record of America’s adventures in other parts of the region and the world is far from encouraging.

Photo: The Shah of Iran visits the Jimmy Carter White House in 1977.

Shireen Hunter

Shireen Hunter is an affiliate fellow at the Center For Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. From 2005 to 2007 she was a senior visiting fellow at the center. From 2007 to 2014, she was a visiting Professor and from 2014 to July 2019 a research professor. Before joining she was director of the Islam program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a program she had been associated since 1983. She is the author and editor of 27 books and monographs. Her latest book is Arab-Iranian Relations: Dynamics of Conflict and Accommodation, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2019.

SHOW 13 COMMENTS

13 Comments

  1. By the the imposed famine on Iran killed around 100,000 people!

  2. Another day another article by the hawkish Shireen Hunter with her selective memory on the relationship of Iran with the west which goes back to pre Mossadegh. Funny that Robert Hunter is somewhat of a better gauge on Iran and its history with the Brits and the US.

  3. To Esfandiar.
    Persia/Iran is the cradle of Civilization…..Iran was never a weak, developing country. It was occupied by Britain during WW1 – The British created an oil company that deeded all Iran oil to themselves. It occupied Iran again during WW2….War and occupation create havoc in a country….Because of Mossadegh who nationalized all Iran oil, the Brits had a cow and the rest is history. What constitute weakness? The absence of large aggressive military???
    How do you explain Iran as aspiring to become a global power? From the CIA handbooks?. The Shah was an American stooge who oppressed and murdered his own people just so that Britain and the U.S could continue stealing 80% of Iran’s oil.

  4. To my 2cents,
    Iran was and unfortunately still is a developing country. Instead of becoming south korea, we have some traits of the north. Shah paid very dearly to have been much too obedient and then rebellious. But that said, what are the mullahs? The servant of the Chinese? the recycling officer of the garbage that the Russians sell? The enriching agent of the arabs in Dubai in order to smuggle Samsung phones to Tehran and all for the sake of death to America and to Israel? Na shargi na garbi? Harchi sherkate iraniboud barchikast chode va chini jasho gerefte. Shoma chimigin.Bacheye 24 sale adam mibine to Europa ke bichare eine gedaye arab miyad mohajer beche va europaia ya emrikaya bach behech chabtar nigah konan? be in tabdil tochede iran.

  5. This is an interesting article that had to resort selective amnesia to portray the behavior of the IRI as just clumsy but surely not threatening. Missing in all of this are a laundry list of the nasty incidents committed by the Ayatollahs: The Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981; the hostage taking of Iran’s pawns in Lebanon in the 1980s; the intransigience of Khomieni to end the war with Iraq; the support Iran gives to sectarian militias in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, etc; its vulgar use of Shi’ite symbols to galvanize support in other countries and undermine their national unity; and lastly the “hidden” program to develop nuclear weapons.

    Forgotten was also regional detente in relations that came with government of Rafsanjani, where even the bombing of the Khobar Towers was overlooked as the act of radical elements. The gestures given were merely resting stations to do more. In fact, it is the behavior of IRI to aggressively pursue geo-strategic gains and then take a breath to consolidate.

    The threat of “attractive culture” cannot be taken seriously, but Hunter can wax proud of her culture without ascribing an international dimension. It is Hizbullah, Quds Brigades, Asab Al-Huq, Fatmiyoun, Zaynabyoun, etc who are wrecking havoc in the region that are the real cause of Iran’s nasty reputation.

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