ABSTRACT
According to Michael Axworthy, the United States missed an opportunity for rapprochement with Iran offered by reformist president Mohammad Khatami. In early 2003, Iran proposed bilateral talks toward a “Grand Bargain” between Iran and the United States. In return for an end to US hostility and for US recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region, Iran proposed that it would cease material support to Palestinian opposition groups such as Hamas; it would pressure Hezbollah to become “a mere political organization” within Lebanon; it would accept a comprehensive, two-state peace with Israel in return for Israel’s withdrawal to pre-1967 boundaries; and it offered full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for full access to peaceful nuclear technology. However, the George W. Bush administration refused to reply to the Iranian initiative, while continuing to insist that Iran was dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terror. As Axworthy observes, Iran itself is a complex polity with numerous power centers and shades of opinion, with many countervailing currents at play. Iranians have compelling historical reasons for resentment against the West, but more than many other Middle Easterners they also have a liking for Europeans and Americans, even as they also feel misunderstood and abused by Westerners. And while some observers warn apocalyptically of a nuclear-armed Iran leading a Shiite surge in the Middle East, most Shiites show little enthusiasm for Iranian-style Islamic rule. For example, Shiites now dominate post–Saddam Hussein Iraq and are friendly to Iran, but they also see themselves as following an authority of their own, independent of Iranian Shiism. Iran may decide, and in fact may have already decided, that the capability of producing a nuclear weapon would be as desirable a deterrent as a weapon itself. If so, the Grand Bargain might indicate a sincere willingness to normalize relations with the United States in order to remove the threat of regime change and gain a stronger measure of security. Despite the hot rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s wider leadership circle is substantially the same as it was in 2003, when it authorized the Grand Bargain offer. It would behoove the United States, then, to at least attempt to resolve its issues with Iran through negotiation.
