The inability of the United States and Iran to sustain a meaningful dialogue over more than a third of a century has been a serious impediment to stability in the Middle East. The simmering cold war between these two states has exacerbated many existing problems, while maintaining a constant state of hostility that had the potential to burst into armed conflict with the least provocation or error.
The current opening, though far from a solution, provides the most promising opportunity in thirty-four years to resolve the core elements of this dispute. The nuclear “threat” from Iran has been hyped out of all proportion with reality. But for that very reason, it must be the starting point to any resolution of the core issues. It is essential to show that the Iranian nuclear program is manageable at modest to zero levels of risk in order to create the necessary trust to permit a reasoned discussion on other important issues. The skeptics and even the outright opponents of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement – in both countries – must be persuaded or neutralized by indisputable evidence of tangible progress on the nuclear issue.
Reduced hostility between the United States and Iran could potentially have a constructive influence on virtually every major issue in the region. The first and most obvious is Syria. Iran, for reasons based on its own recent history, opposes the existence or use of chemical weapons anywhere. As an ally of the Assad government, it is in a position, together with Russia, to keep the Syrian government on track as OPCW technicians carry out their inspections and destruction of chemical weapons facilities. Iran, also for its own reasons, wants to see an orderly transfer of power in Syria, avoiding the total breakdown of order and the takeover by radical Sunni elements. So the United States and Iran find themselves on the same page, even if their rationales may differ.
Other areas of mutual interest are control of the drug trade, stable government in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the transformation of Iran into a constructive player in the regional and international communities. On a strategic basis, the proposed American “pivot” to Asia is being impeded almost entirely by concern about U.S. ability to pressure and deter Iran. After the end of the war in Iraq, and as the Afghan war comes to an end, the mammoth U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is justified almost entirely by concern about Iran. Even the Arab-Israel dispute is not immune from Iranian rhetorical interference and support for radical Arab oppositionists.
Many of these problems are not Iranian in origin or sustenance, and a warming of U.S.-Iran relations will not necessarily solve them. However, a more businesslike relationship between these two hostile powers would open avenues for dealing with a range of regional problems that seem nearly unthinkable at present.
*Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University, a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York, and founding chair of its advisory committee on the Middle East and North Africa.
