KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Lack of understanding of the other country has been one of the major obstacles to improving the relationship, and something that the United States has repeatedly failed to understand is the Iranian desire to be treated with dignity and respect. This is something that Iranian officials have insisted on many times, and in most instances Washington has ignored them. Fixing that is not a panacea for all the problems in the relationship, but if we look back over the record of U.S.-Iranian engagement it is remarkable how much diplomatic progress can be made when the United States has been willing to show a minimum of respect for Iranian concerns and interests and how quickly otherwise productive talks collapse when Washington sends signals of disdain and contempt instead. 

For example, nascent U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan was effectively torpedoed by George W. Bush's combative rhetoric and the decision to label Iran as part of an "axis of evil" alongside one of Iran's most hated enemies. An attempt to cultivate a better relationship during the Clinton administration was derailed by Madeleine Albright's use of language that the Iranian leadership took as insulting.

By contrast, nuclear negotiations succeeded once the United States was willing to show flexibility on the question of Iran's domestic enrichment and allow Iran a face-saving compromise. When the United States has been willing to treat Iran as an equal and not as a vassal to be dictated to, it has found a receptive audience for its proposals. When it has sought to strangle Iran into submission through coercive measures, it has been met with predictable intransigence.  

The book details how the United States has been obsessed with Iran out of all proportion to the threat Iran's government poses to America. This obsession reached its apogee during the Trump years, but as the authors explain Trump's obsession was just an intensified version of the longstanding U.S. view.

Mutual obsession is another example of how narratives have shaped the relationship: "These culturally driven preferences can also be glimpsed in the obsessiveness each country exhibits towards the other." This obsessiveness creates what the authors call "the narrative trap" that repeatedly sabotages promising moments of diplomatic understanding. The fact that the successful negotiation of the JCPOA was followed almost immediately by the U.S. repudiation of the agreement and intensified economic warfare is a testament to how deeply-ingrained the pattern of hostility and mistrust is. The Biden administration's apparent inability to escape the same trap is further proof of its power.

Tweet   @brothersjudd