Countering Iran's Revolutionary Challenge by Peter Rodman

Countering Iran's Revolutionary Challenge

Opportunity 08, May 8, 2007

Peter W. Rodman, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies

Summary

Iran is a revolutionary power, still in an exuberant phase of its revolution. Geopolitically it seeks to dominate the Gulf; ideologically it challenges the legitimacy of moderate governments in the region. Indeed, Iran aspires to be the leader of Islamist radicalism in the Muslim world as a whole. Iran's conventional military buildup, its pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of the UN Security Council, and its interventions in Lebanon and Iraq not only reflect its ambitions but also explain its current self-confidence.

The nature of the regime is at the core of the challenge it poses, but the starting point of a counter-strategy is containment: that is, George Kennan's classic vision of bringing countervailing pressures to bear against a revolutionary power's external expansion until the structural contradictions within the system begin to weaken it internally.

Iran is not mainly an American problem; it is a challenge in the first instance to our allies and friends in the Middle East. Thus, the first stage in a counter-strategy is to bolster Arab allies and friends as counter-weights to Iranian power. While military cooperation with some Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, is controversial at home, tightening American links with these allies is logically the core of such a strategy. A wider strategic consensus may be emerging that would join the United States, key Arab states, and Israel against the Iranian threat. This should be nurtured. Arab countries have other options, including their own nuclear development, or appeasement of Iran. Far preferable is that they retain confidence in us as a reliable friend and protector.

One element of this policy should be an updating of the Nixon and Carter Doctrines, to declare the American stake in shielding the security of the Gulf against nuclear blackmail. This would strengthen deterrence and possibly deny Iran much of the benefit of pursuing nuclear weapons by nullifying the blackmail potential it seeks to gain.

There are serious arguments for bilateral political engagement with Iran, but there would also be serious downsides in the present context. Our Arab friends (and Israel) would be shaken by what they would see as a major reversal, if not collapse, of long-standing U.S. policy. It would have not only procedural but substantive significance, representing final U.S. acceptance of the Iranian Revolution—a card we should not play without some significant benefit in return. We need to achieve a better geopolitical and psychological balance—some deflation of the Iranians' self-confidence and bolstering of our friends' confidence in us—before going down this road.

Restoring this balance needs to include:

* some success in stabilizing Iraq
* broader use of economic pressures (as opposed to the narrowly targeted sanctions resorted to thus far)
* stepping up support of civil society in Iran, including improving the quality of U.S. official broadcasting into Iran

How we conduct ourselves in Iraq is crucial. Our friends in the Middle East view our policy in Iraq in a broader context, as a test of the credibility of the reassurances we are trying to give them over Iran. There is no way for the United States to be strong against Iran if we are weak in Iraq.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/rodman/20070508.htm