Barack Obama now has a chance to end one of the region’s longest and most destructive quarrels (between Iran and the US), said The Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts: Obama’s campaign promise to consider talks with Iran to end 30 years of hostility is astute. It would deny Iran’s Islamist nationalists their strongest card: The invocation of the US threat to justify intrusive clerical vigilance against Western “subversion.” It would make it harder to hold out against pragmatists looking for ways to bring Iran out of its isolation.
And it would be seized on by a pro-American generation desperate to escape the suffocating strictures of a killjoy regime.
This, alone, is strong reason why the incoming US president should break the impasse. He needs to do so quickly: Before the hard-liners in Tehran have honed strategies to thwart him, before opposition asserts itself in America and before the rapid development of nuclear technology puts Iran in a position to build a nuclear weapon.
Obama needs to begin gradually. Any sudden volte-face would be trumpeted by the clerical establishment as a victory. It would be used by Ahmadinejad to widen his appeal to young voters. And it might be used to show that the defiance of world opinion and Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear research is virtually cost-free. There are many steps that Washington could take, however, that would slowly isolate the hard-liners while helping to resolve the conflicts on which they base their demagoguery.
First, Washington should return American diplomats to Tehran. None has been based there since the 444-day siege of the embassy ended in 1981, with Washington having to rely on Swiss intermediaries. Second, the US should begin technical discussions, probably in international financial forums, on releasing frozen Iranian assets and easing some of the trade embargoes. Third, Washington should continue and expand low-level talks on guaranteeing stability in Iraq.
