Iranian options: pragmatic Mullahs and America's interests.

• Author: Takeyh, Ray

MUCH HAS changed in the Middle East during the past year. Saddam's tyranny has finally been displaced, and even the most recalcitrant Arab despots are speaking the language of political reform. In the midst of these cataclysmic changes, the one state in the region whose priorities and policies appear constant is the Islamic Republic of Iran. On the surface, the clerical state seems committed to its course of confrontation with the United States and to its defiance of international norms on issues such as terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The remarkable events of the recent past, however, have had a subtle yet perceptible impact on Tehran's international orientation, opening the possibility for a new approach to the United States and the enveloping regional order. Throughout the late 1990s, despite the assumption of the presidency by the reformist Muhammad Khatami, factional politics, competing centers of power and the legacy of the revolution obstructed Iran's uneasy transition from a revisionist to a pragmatic state. Too often, national interests were sacrificed at the altar of revolutionary dogma.

However, the exigencies of the post-Iraq war period and the massive projection of U.S. power on Iran's periphery have finally shattered old taboos and engendered a new consensus behind a foreign policy of moderation. For the first time, the clerical estate is willing to reach an accommodation with the United States on a range of thorny issues--including the future of Iraq, the structure of Persian Gulf security and even nuclear weapons. Paradoxically, it took the arrival of the hawkish Bush Administration and its wars in the Middle East to finally press Tehran toward a more judicious suppression of its retrograde revolutionary impulses. Unlike previous U.S. administrations, if the Bush team seeks a meaningful diplomatic dialogue with Iran, it will soon find a relatively reasonable interlocutor.

The Arc of Iranian Foreign Policy

SINCE THE Islamic Republic's inception in 1979, Iran's international orientation has undergone a steady yet halting march toward pragmatism. For Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the republic, the export of the revolution overrode the demands of Iranian national interest and the restrictions of statecraft. The Grand Ayatollah saw himself as acting not on behalf of a state, but the entire Islamic community. He therefore felt limited compunction about interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign regional states. Iran would continuously sacrifice its tangible interests in order to foment uprisings in the Gulf sheikdoms, intensify Palestinian rejectionism and provoke unneeded confrontations with the United States. International isolation, economic hardship and a devastating eight-year war with Iraq were the sole byproducts of Khomeini's divisive diplomacy.

Khomeini's passing in 1989 inevitably led to a reassessment of Iran's foreign relations, as the task of reconstruction after the Iran-Iraq War necessitated coming to terms with the international community. However, the continued primacy of revolutionary passions prevented a fundamental break with the past. The substantive revision of Iran's orientation had to await the ascendance of moderate cleric Muhammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997. Although Khatami and his reformist allies failed to usher in a liberalized theocracy, they did set the stage for Iran's integration into the international community and generated an internal coalition dedicated to the notion that Iran could not remain beleaguered and isolated in an interconnected global order.

The reformist foreign policy focused on expansion of trade, cooperative security measures and diplomatic dialogue as a means of advancing Iran's interests and projecting its influence. Along these lines, Iran normalized relations with the Gulf states and the European Union and resisted the temptation of exporting its Islamist message to the contested lands of Central Asia. Ideological dogma and the propagation of revolutionary Islam were not only inconsistent with the reformist perspective, but also had a limited utility in the age of globalization. Khatami captured this sentiment by noting, "Foreign policy does not mean guns and rifles, but utilizing all legitimate international means to convince others."

Khatami's important accomplishments, however, were qualified. Policies on key issues such as Iran's hostility to the United States and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process continued to derive from a self-defeating ideological calculus. Confident of their ideological verities and secure in their confrontational posture, Khomeini's remaining disciples--particularly the Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei--employed their impressive institutional powers to undermine initiatives designed to lessen tensions with the "Great Satan." Beyond ideological rigidity, Iran's factional politics held foreign policy issues hostage to the domestic political stalemate. The conservatives, mindful of the enormous popular credit that reformers would reap should they succeed in normalizing ties with Washington, systematically subverted all such efforts. Through much of the late 1990s, Iran was a perplexing state whose foreign policy was driven by a contradictory mixture of revolutionary convictions and practical considerations. The Islamic Republic had reached an impasse.

The reactionary elements of the Iranian state could afford their confrontational ideology, as the benefits garnered by such militancy outweighed the costs. The American colossus was too distant, its leaders too fickle and its struggles against terrorism more symbolic than real. The Bush Administration, however, with its expansive vision for the Middle East and its military displacement of two recalcitrant regimes, has now confronted the Iranian Right with realities it can no longer ignore and responsibilities it can no longer evade. Although some within the conservative...