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The source of Soviet Iranian conduct

By Karim Sadjadpour

For three decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has bedeviled the United States, resisting both incentives and disincentives and working all the while to foil American designs in the Middle East. If 20th-century Russia was to Winston Churchill a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, for observers of contemporary Iran, the Islamic Republic often resembles a villain inside a victim behind a veil.

Seeking to understand their mysterious foe, American analysts most commonly invoke three historical analogies to explain its character and future trajectory: Red China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The chosen metaphor pretty much dictates the proposed response, and most prescriptions for U.S. policy have come down to one of these variations: attempt to coax the Iranian regime into modernity; forget the diplomatic niceties and "pre-emptively" attack it to prevent or delay its acquisition of nuclear weapons; or contain it in hopes it will change or collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions.

After a momentous decade of watching Iran from both Tehran and Washington, interviewing hundreds of Iranians from across the political spectrum, and closely following the writings and statements of top Iranian officials, my advice for Barack Obama's administration as it came to office last year was to dispense with the historical metaphors and instead try to probe, via engagement, a seemingly facile but fundamental question: Why does Iran behave the way it does? Is Iranian foreign policy rooted in an immutable ideological opposition to the United States, or is Iran just reacting to punitive U.S. policies? To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, is Iran a nation or a cause?

I had always thought that the Islamic Republic was sui generis -- a political system unprecedented in modern times. But in the ensuing months, Iran's cynical response to Obama, followed by the massive post-election crackdowns, show trials, and forced confessions, made me think that historical analogies might shed some light on Iran after all. But which metaphor, if any, fits?

For proponents of the China comparison -- often foreign-policy realists -- the Iranian regime is fundamentally pragmatic, not ideological, and yearns for a rapprochement with the United States. Viewed through this relatively benign prism, Tehran's support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, its alliances with radical leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Ch�vez, Iraq's Moqtada al-Sadr, and Syria's Bashar al-Assad, its Holocaust denial, and its weekly jeers of "death to America" are seen as defensive reactions to a hostile United States. The analogy implies that a bold U.S. gesture, � la President Richard Nixon's famous 1972 trip to Beijing, could bring about a "grand