Trita Parsi on Tensions with Iran

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

May 30, 2019

TRITA PARSI: We are thinking if we just put in pliant governments, everything will be fine. Well, we did that in the Arab world for quite some time. And what did we end up getting? A bunch of failed states and a bunch of radicalized states. How is that in our interest? How is that in the interest of the region and the peoples?

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MARK HANNAH: My name is Mark Hanna, and I'm your host for None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. My guest today is Trita Parsi. He's the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, a behind-the-scenes look at the Obama administration's deal with the Iranian government around its nuclear weapons program. He also teaches at Georgetown University and comes to us as a former president of the National Iranian American Council. We're talking about how to bridge the divide between Iran and America and how the countries misunderstand each other. Spoiler alert: neither country is all-powerful, and we're all at the mercy of our overlords. Also, carrots and sticks means something quite different in Farsi.

HANNAH: Trita, you have Iranian background in your own life and have lived in the United States for a long time, being a fierce advocate for diplomacy between these two countries. What motivates you to take on this topic?

PARSI: Well, I think the thing that made me passionate about diplomacy between the United States and Iran was seeing how conflict really sets back the pro-democracy movement in Iran. As long as tensions between Iran and the outside world, particularly with the United States, are as intense as they have been in the past, it really made it difficult for the country to internally move toward a democratic direction.

HANNAH: Let me just interject here. How real, how robust is that pro-democracy movement in Iran?

PARSI: It is immensely robust. I mean, it is one of the few countries in the region, I would say, that actually has all of the building blocks of democracy, but unfortunately doesn't have a democracy. You know, you have to keep in mind that the pro-democracy movement in Iran goes back more than one-hundred years. In 1906, Iranians had a constitutional revolution. It was a big push to have a constitution. They adopted one that was based off of the Belgian one. There were actually Americans involved helping them back then. One of them, Howard Baskerville, actually gave his life for the cause of democracy in Iran. And he's very highly regarded in Iran. But then there's been plenty of ups and downs. And unfortunately, the United States played a very negative role later on when Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown by a CIA coup in 1953.

Interlude featuring archival audio

PARSI: As long as the tensions with the outside world have been very, very high, it has helped securitize the environment internally, which then makes democracy a lesser priority. We see the same trend everywhere, actually.

HANNAH: Can you help us understand what a typical Iranian thinks of the United States?

PARSI: Well, it would have been a different question or a different answer if you had asked me just three years ago. Today, unfortunately, with the way the Trump administration has pursued policies such as the Muslim ban, destroying the nuclear deal, and now strangulating the Iranian middle class with these sanctions, without a doubt, that soft power of the United States is taking a massive beating in Iran. But prior to this, it was quite fascinating to see that the Iranian people’s admiration of the United States, American values, and American culture was extremely high. That does not mean they were in favor of American foreign policy. On the contrary, they could be extremely critical of American foreign policy and still hold the country and its people and its culture in very high regard. And it's partly because they do so with their own country. Very patriotic, but highly critical of the regime. They can be very critical of the regime's foreign policy. But it doesn't mean they are not loving their country.

HANNAH: Both the United States and Iran seem to have an almost cartoonish idea of the other country. Do you think that's inhibiting a way forward?

PARSI: Certainly. I think that is not conducive towards resolving problems. We saw that very clearly during the Obama negotiations.

Selling it only as a nuclear deal that prevents war suddenly opened up a completely different political energy in favor of what Obama was doing. And I think ultimately that was a mistake. If there wasn't a willingness to say, look, this is a first step towards something bigger, and this is about a process of overcoming enmity and actually making peace, instead of thinking that the idea of making peace is something the public would be inherently against. But again, you know, on the Iranian side, it was the same issue—just a nuclear deal. Although, you know, Foreign Minister Zarif said this is just the floor; this is not the ceiling, indicating there could be much more later on. Khomeini himself said if the nuclear deal works out, then there can be negotiations on other issues. But they would also never go to the point of saying the U.S. and Iran should become friends.

HANNAH: Right. And had they done that, especially given what's unfolded with the Trump administration, they would have taken a domestic political hit worse than they actually did, right?

PARSI: But the proponents of diplomacy in Iran have taken massive hits in the last couple of months.

HANNAH: So were the nuclear talks criticized in Iran the same way they were criticized here in the United States?

PARSI: Yes, there's similarities and differences. When the nuclear deal was struck, people in the streets of Iran were dancing, celebrating. When Zarif returned to the airport, he couldn't get out of the airport because the masses were there cheering him.

When Kerry struck the deal and went back, first of all, no one was there to greet him at the airport. And if there were, there would have been probably Republican operatives cursing him out and accusing him of having done something very bad. Now, I feel very bad about this, that this massive diplomatic achievement got almost no credit inside the domestic political culture here.

Interlude featuring archival audio

PARSI: Contrary to this political idea that sanctions is an alternative to war, sanctions far more often lead to war. What happens when you go down the sanctions path is that you are escalating tensions. And sooner or later you lose control over this, and you end up in a military confrontation. In the case of Iran, the official narrative is that sanctions put so much pressure on Iran that the Iranians came to the table and begged for a deal. That's complete nonsense. If that were the case, and the Iranians were there to capitulate, the negotiations would have taken half an afternoon. The reason they took more than two years was because the two sides were essentially of equal strength in diplomatic terms.

HANNAH: It's often the case that regime change policies of the United States actually perversely accelerate a race toward nuclear weapons, because leaders in these countries think they need them as a deterrence against regime change. Do you think President Trump doesn't realize this, or do you think he's kind of being influenced by his advisors?

PARSI: I think several things are happening at the same time. I think Trump thinks this is a good negotiating strategy—that if he's puts a lot of pressure on them, eventually they're going to come to the table, and he's going to be able to strike a deal that is better than the previous nuclear deal. I think John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia see it very differently. They think that, yes, let's sell this to Trump as a negotiating tactic. But in reality, their aim is to make sure the sanctions eventually lead to a military confrontation. And they are essentially manipulating and outsmarting Trump at this point.

HANNAH: And John Bolton has been on record well before Trump's presidency is wanting war with Iran.

PARSI: He literally wrote the op-ed saying to bomb Iran in 2015, just three months before the nuclear deal was struck. He said in order to stop Iran's nuclear bomb, we have to bomb Iran. That was the title.

HANNAH: Do you think Israel and Saudi Arabia are calling the shots when it comes to America's foreign policy?

PARSI: Well, if you ask Netanyahu, he would say yes. He's already taking credit for a lot of these different decisions. And why is that? Because ultimately this has nothing to do with ideology and frankly has very little to do with the nuclear program. If the United States and Iran resolve their tensions, that is an acceptance that the balance of power in the region has shifted. And it's an end to the American strategy of containing or isolating Iran. That means the balance has shifted in Iran's favor and to the disfavor of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

HANNAH: And that was the explicit policy of the Obama administration, right? That they didn't want to continue isolating Iran. They wanted to maintain a balance of power in the region so they can get out of the Middle East and focus more on other parts of the world. Is that right?

PARSI: I think so. I think they may not have articulated it in those terms. But when you take a look at it, Obama recognized that the Middle East had lost a tremendous amount of strategic significance, and the U.S. was overextended there. And the only issue that could actually force him into another regional war was the Iranian nuclear issue. He felt that unless this issue gets resolved, the political pressure is going to be too strong for military action. So instead, he doubled down on actually trying to get it resolved.

HANNAH: But why would Israel oppose the Iran nuclear deal? Aren't they threatened the most by a nuclear Iran?

PARSI: I attended a Track II Session. It was a very interesting session because there were several Iranians there, including two of the nuclear negotiators. And there were several Israelis there, including one very, very senior Israeli. And at that meeting, he looked at the Iranians, and he said this was never about enrichment, meaning it was never about the nuclear issue. Israel would do everything in its power to prevent a nuclear deal, regardless of the details of the deal, if it meant that the United States would come to terms with Iran without Iran coming to terms with Israel. Even if Iran has nuclear weapons, Iran will never be able to destroy Israel's ability to destroy Iran in turn. Israel, unlike Iran, not only has nuclear weapons, but has a second strike capability. It has nuclear equipped Dolphin German-built submarines. No one knows where they are. If the Iranians were ever to be so foolish to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon, Israel would still be able to destroy Iran. It would be suicidal. So, yes, resolving the nuclear issue and making sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon—helpful. But not if it meant that the United States and Iran would become friends without Iran having to accept Israel as a de facto state and recognize Israel. Which the Iranians never have done.

HANNAH: You mentioned in the introduction of your book, which came out in 2017, that had these diplomatic negotiations between Iran and the United States not unfolded the way they did, we would be at war right now. Do you stand by that? Do you think that's true?

PARSI: That was the assessment of the Obama administration. That was the assessment of the Europeans. That was the assessment of the Russian diplomats I spoke to. I mean, the Russians have taken tremendous advantage of the tensions between the United States and Iran. Yet in these negotiations, they were tremendously helpful.

Both the Americans, the Iranians, and the Europeans were praising how constructive the Russians were. And they were doing so according to themselves, because they recognize if this led to a war, it would not be like Iraq. It would be ten times worse. It would lead to a regional military confrontation, which would be to their disadvantage.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: What do you think the effect is of this kind of polarization of U.S. politics? We have different administrations playing good cop, bad cop with one another. Is it possible that will end up generating more concessions, or does it just hurt our credibility?

PARSI: The good cop, bad cop scenario assumes the other side is coming to the table because they're under pressure. Like, OK, we're going to scare the daylights out of this country, so they move towards coming to the table or compromising. We tried that for more than a decade. It did not work. So the Trump administration has now decided to push Iran's exports of oil to zero. No one has ever tried this before, and there's good reason for it. Not only will it be very difficult, but it will create a tremendous amount of tensions. It will also potentially bring the United States and Iran toward war.

HANNAH: Can you talk about the role of oil in the Strait of Hormuz in all of this?

PARSI: The Iranians have the capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz, where forty percent of the world's oil supply is flowing through. Now, of course, it would be suicidal and counterproductive for the Iranians to do such a thing because their own oil goes through the Persian Gulf. But if their exports are already at zero, suddenly we would actually have to take that threat very seriously. And if the Iranians were to do so, the United States would probably be able to reopen it within two weeks through military action. Those two weeks will be wreaking havoc on the oil markets and create all kinds of different problems, but also potentially lead to a direct military confrontation with Iran that goes beyond opening the Strait of Hormuz. We are now closer to that scenario than ever before, particularly if the Trump administration tries to enforce this oil embargo beyond just pressuring other countries not to buy it, but by also moving military assets to the Persian Gulf and making sure Iranian oil tankers are not leaving the straits.

HANNAH: So whose interests are we advancing? Are we advancing the interests of our allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel at our own expense?

PARSI: I think we have long left a scenario in which these states are actually advancing the U.S.'s interest. And I think it's partly because we have not been able to define what our interests in the region are for some time now. I think the Saudis are pursuing their own interests quite effectively right now. We're involved in Yemen. No one knows why. I mean, in what ways are the Houthis actually such a threat to the United States that it warrants a military involvement from the U.S. side. I think if the United States were to adopt a position of restraint, it would also cause U.S. allies to be more restrained in their foreign policy. I do not believe the Saudis would have gone into Yemen and caused this mass famine and horrible, horrible humanitarian situation, had they not been confident they had the backing of the United States. And even though the Obama administration was reluctant about it, they nevertheless went along. Today, many of the Obama administration officials are very critical of the war in Yemen, and rightly so. But it started under their watch. And I think if they had had a firmer position against it, Saudis probably would never have done this. I think the Saudis wanted this war to force the United States to have an antagonistic position towards Iran on another front. And if the United States had not played along with the Saudis, the Saudis would have come back and said, “See, you are not just striking a nuclear deal with Iran. You actually are shifting alliances. Because here you have a conflict with Iran, as they had framed it. And instead of taking our side, you're taking either a neutral position or their side.” So this is not just about a nuclear deal. You actually are abandoning Saudi Arabia as an ally, and you're trying to create an alliance with the Persians.

HANNAH: It was clear what the Obama administration was trying to achieve. It wanted to preclude the possibility of a nuclear Iran. What do you think the Trump administration is trying to achieve? If you think there are war mongers in his administration, what do you think they're hoping to achieve by that war?

PARSI: I think the Trump administration is not working in unison here. I think Trump has his own objective, a fantasy in which he thinks that real estate tactics from Manhattan is applicable to geopolitics in the Middle East, and by being super tough he’s going to force the Iranians to capitulate.

I don't think that's going to work. I think his other advisers are going along and pushing for his policy precisely because they think it's not going to work, and it's going to lead to a military confrontation, or at a minimum, lead to a scenario in which the pressure causes a regime collapse in Iran. I think they can't sell regime change to Trump as much as they cannot sell a war to Trump because he's disinclined to agree with those things. Regime collapse, however, is very attractive because it means the regime collapses. But the United States is not responsible for what comes next, and as a result, doesn't have to pay the cost for it either. In fact, if nothing comes next in Iran, then that would be very much to the advantage of Israel and Saudi Arabia and UAE, because it means that Iran would be in chaos, potentially civil war. This means that Iran's power would be consumed internally instead of Iran being able to project power in the region.

HANNAH: Don't you have enough power vacuums in that part of the world?

PARSI: Not according to Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu, apparently. But I mean, when you take a look at the policy, this, to me, is the logical conclusion of where it would lead to. And it would be—in their view—to their interest, because it means the balance of power would shift away from Iran and towards them. And that's what this is ultimately about. What I think is irrational about the American posture is not just Trump. It is that we have lost any kind of sense of what the strategic value of the Middle East is. Is it as important as it was forty or so years ago? Is it worth the cost of all of this military presence the United States has there or not? Is it really serving U.S. interests, or at this point are we just doing things because we have alliances?

HANNAH: OK, so we're going to move into a little bit of a lightning round here, and we’ll give you a few seconds to answer each of these questions in a kind of pop quiz fashion. So just right off the bat, favorite Iranian food in D.C. is what?

PARSI: I would go with Amoo’s in McLean, Virginia.

HANNAH: You have ten seconds on the rope line with the next president of the United States to whisper something about Iran in their ear. What would you tell them?

PARSI: Open real negotiations and see the opportunity that lies in U.S.-Iran relations, not just with this regime, but with this society. Don't look so blindly at the regime. Look at the society behind it.

HANNAH: Biggest misconception about the Iranian people by Americans?

PARSI: Probably thinking that they're fanatical and very anti-Western, whereas in reality they're a highly educated society.

HANNAH: And will Iran have nuclear weapons thirty years from now?

PARSI: Hopefully not. But with the way that the Trump administration is going, I wouldn't rule it out.

HANNAH: What is Zoroastrianism?

PARSI: Zoroastrianism is the first monotheistic religion established in Iran—roughly 3,500 years ago. It became a massive influence both on Judaism and Christianity. And it has a very unique set of rules—only three rules: think good things, say good things, and do good things. And then it's up to you to be able to figure out what is good.

HANNAH: Favorite season in Tehran?

PARSI: I don't like Tehran. I prefer smaller cities.

HANNAH: OK. Which city in Iran is your favorite to visit?

PARSI: I would say it would probably be Shiraz.

HANNAH: OK. And your favorite season in Shiraz?

PARSI: Oh, spring.

HANNAH: Can you get me a visa to go visit or—

PARSI: I wish I could get a visa to go—

HANNAH: Well, we'll work on that together. Favorite season in Washington?

PARSI: I love the summers here. They're hot.

HANNAH: Come on. They’re brutal.

PARSI: They’re humid. Reminds me of the Persian Gulf.

HANNAH: OK. And finally, the one thing you wish the Iranian people could understand about America?

PARSI: I would say the best thing that could happen is if the Iranians better understood the complexity of the American political system. And understood, unfortunately, how little the American public tends to be involved in the policymaking here. It's very common for people to overestimate the capacity of the other side. And I think both the Iranians and the Americans do so.

HANNAH: Can you talk a little bit about the early fumbles and misunderstandings? There were some metaphors being used that they found humiliating.

PARSI: One thing in particular the Iranians found humiliating was early on, the Obama administration tried to shift away from the idea that we don't talk to the other side. They said, “We're going to pursue Iran similar to what we do with other countries, which is that we're going to be using incentives and disincentives. We're going to negotiate.” And then they said, “We're going to use carrots and sticks.” Which is an expression in American English that does not have a negative connotation. It just means to give incentives and disincentives. To the Iranians, it sounded as if Iran is a donkey, and the U.S. is going to use a carrot and a stick in order to either lure it or punish it in the direction that it wanted.

What was fascinating here, though, is that once the American side became aware that this expression translates badly into Persian, they stopped using it cold black. From that moment on, I've not seen, at least during the Obama administration, anyone in the State Department use that terminology. And I think it was indicative of their desire to create the right circumstances for diplomacy.

HANNAH: And are there any idioms on the other side that we're misinterpreting as, you know, “death to America?” When it’s actually something like, “Hey, let's negotiate more strenuously,” or something like that?

PARSI: I think a better translation of that, even though “death to America” is a literal translation, a better translation probably would be “down with America.” Now, it's still not a particularly nice expression in any way, shape, or form. It still has a negative intent, of course. But what I think most folks mean when they say that is a focus on the foreign policy of the United States, because the very same people who might say that can still express admiration for American culture and the American people. And I think it goes back to the distinction I mentioned earlier on. Having said that, I still think it would be tremendously valuable to just cancel that expression altogether and stop saying it.

HANNAH: There is a way in which the Iranian people are a lot more cosmopolitan and educated and globally aware than Americans would believe. Can you talk a little bit about that? I know The Daily Show did an episode where they sent somebody into a mall in downtown Tehran, and it showed that, you know, the Iranian people are just like us. They shop at Adidas and are not the kind of caricature we might otherwise think.

PARSI: I think the best part of that segment when The Daily Show went to Iran was when they ran into this shopkeeper who knows every American president. He can name them in order. And I think the team was very, very impressed by that. And I don't think it was necessarily a complete aberration. This is a highly educated society that takes tremendous pride in that. And I think much of their sense of hurt pride is precisely because of the image of them they find to be so inaccurate. And it's profoundly insulting to them that they are seen no different from—I don't know—the Taliban, or whatever. And it's not recognized that Iran is a country which historically has shown far more reverence, not to its generals, not to its kings even, but to its poets. You go to Iran, and most of the most important streets, et cetera, are named after their scientists and their poets.

HANNAH: How are sanctions going to hurt ordinary Iranians? Most Americans know that Persian rugs come from Iran, but they don't understand how big that is as a fraction of the economy. You know, pistachio nuts, for example, or…

PARSI: It's going to go way beyond that. Earlier on, the U.S. had sanctions on pistachios and Persian rugs, et cetera. And that has hurt those segments of society. Those are not unimportant. Now, with essentially an oil embargo, with financial sanctions that have entirely cut Iran off from the international financial system—that essentially means everything is sanctioned. Medicine is sanctioned. Yes, technically, medicine is not sanctioned because they're not on the sanctions list. But when the banks that handle the transaction of buying medicine are sanctioned, that means medicine, too, is sanctioned. And the Trump administration seems to try to intensify the pain and the insult to Iran, to the point in which the Iranians walk out of the deal, and at that point then they might really go and escalate matters further.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: So your book, Losing an Enemy, proposes that the Obama administration's nuclear talks helped to lose the intense enmity between Iran and the United States. Are we now regaining an enemy in Iran?

PARSI: The title of the book is Losing an Enemy, not “lost an enemy.” Because it wants to emphasize that it's a process. It's not a completed process. But it was also to show that it's not about the issue of the nuclear program. For many folks, for many interests, there was a greater fear of losing Iran as an enemy than the fear of Iran actually getting a nuclear weapon. The idea of the U.S. and Iran ending their enmity was the nightmare, not an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Today, we're not just gaining Iran as an enemy, we are losing allies and friends left and right, including in the region itself. I mean, the pressure we are putting on Iraq right now, which is already a fragile state, to essentially become an enemy of Iran is, I think, going to backfire. And they're going to move closer to Iran. And Iran, in turn, is going to move closer to China as a result of the strategy of the Trump administration. The real fascinating thing with what the Iranians are doing right now is they had the China option. And it seems like they have de-emphasized it. It doesn't mean they will move closer to China, but their real investment is not China. Their real investment is creating an alliance in the region in which they want Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and potentially Turkey to form a bloc. And that would fundamentally change the geopolitical game of the region. And they're doing this because they believe that ultimately they're not going to be able to rely on any of the great powers. They're going to rely on having a bloc in the region that, because of its economic and military strength, will be so powerful it cannot be pushed around.

HANNAH: Can you just take us back and give us sort of a quick history of American interventionism in and around Iran and regime change in Iran?

PARSI: There is a reason why the Iranians are so sensitive about American interference in Iran. I think for a lot of folks, you can come across as paranoid and exaggerated. But when you understand the history you realize where they're coming from, whether you think they're right or wrong. In 1953, Iran had a democratically elected prime minister. He was elected by the parliament, and the parliament was directly elected by the people. It was an embryonic democracy. But it was also a nationalist government, very similar to a lot of other countries at the time who wanted to get rid of colonizers. And in the case of Iran, it meant getting rid of the Brits, essentially taking all of Iran's oil income for themselves. The Iranians had the audacity of asking for fifty percent of their revenue from oil coming back to Iran. The Brits refused. They tried to convince the United States to take out Mossadeq. They imposed a naval blockade against Iran. The Iranians took it to the international court at The Hague and won. Then the Brits figure out there's another argument that is much more effective with the Americans: forget about the oil. Let's tell them that Mossad is perhaps not a communist now. But what if he turns communist and goes towards the Russians? And that was effective for a country that at the time, in the early stages of the Cold War, was focused on the Soviet Union more than anything else. So the United States and the Brits orchestrated a coup in Iran, reinstating the Shah. And the Shah's reign after that ended up becoming much more brutal than he had been prior to 1953. And in the eyes of many Iranians, this is where the United States loses its innocence in Iran. Prior to that, the United States was seen as an anti-colonial power. I mentioned early on that Howard Baskerville was involved in helping the Iranians get a constitutional revolution in 1906. And the Shah ended up becoming seen as the American Shah. Twenty-five or twenty-six years later, you have the Iranian revolution, which then also takes on a very anti-American component precisely because of the support the Shah was getting from the United States, perceived or real to a certain extent. Real to a certain extent. The perception was perhaps even greater than reality. That's the one case of regime change in the Middle East that in the United States in general has been seen as successful. You can imagine what the unsuccessful ones are. Successful because at least it lasted twenty-five years. But the backlash is quite clear. It very much contributed to the current state of U.S.-Iran relations.

HANNAH: Do you think this reliance on regime change is mere impulse, or are we kind of addicted to it? Why do we try this over and over again knowing it's failed in the past?

PARSI: I think part of the reason why there has been this addiction to regime change in Washington is precisely because we believe we can, because of this hubris. Other countries don't go around thinking this because they know they can't do it. But doing regime change and making sure that actually leads to a positive outcome are two completely different things, because it does involve nation-building and things of that nature that everyone would probably admit the United States is not particularly good at when it comes to the Middle East. I think this hubris is bringing the United States into all kinds of self-inflicted problems and wounds. And I'm hoping we will cease doing these things long before it becomes too late.

HANNAH: And essentially, it's anti-democratic, right? Because it negates the possibility of self-determination if you're determining a country’s future for it.

PARSI: And I think, it's also, in my view, a neglect of geopolitical realities. Just because you changed a regime in Iran does not suddenly mean the next government in Iran will actually become a client state. If it is an independent country that actually allows its own politics to bring forward a government, it will still have undeniable interests.

HANNAH: Trita Parsi, author of Losing an Enemy, thank you very much for taking time to speak with us today.

PARSI: Thank you so much for having me.

HANNAH: If you liked what you heard here on None of the Above, feel free to subscribe and visit us on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thank you for your time and attention, and thank you, Trita, for joining us.

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