The article is a badly organized stream-of-consciousness collage written from an ossified Washingtonian narrative that offers very little, if any, fresh input on actual policy. It is really far more emblematic of the collapse of U.S. regional strategy as opposed to being a new course. And although Stephen Walt has already done a masterful job at debunking the faulty logic of the article in Foreign Policy, it is also useful to consider a few points concerning the overall U.S.-Iran relationship, for they are often either taken for granted from both critics and advocates of current U.S. policy towards Iran, or confused altogether – hence why U.S. policy towards Iran has never really succeeded.

1) The first concerns the efficacy of the dual-track approach, which is what Pollack and Takeyh claim they have advocated for. Broadly speaking, the rationale behind the dual-track approach is the following: faced with a “problem country”, the US, as a matter of policy, would apply economic and/or trade sanctions, either gradually or rapidly, to convey the message to the target country that their policies are unacceptable and need to be changed according to American objectives. At times, the U.S. laces what it deems are in its interests with the moniker of ‘global security’ or ‘the will of the international community’ – however, being a hegemon, the US usually can get few-to-several countries to back its policies, particularly with the sanctions regime. Simultaneously, the US would convey to the country being targeted with sanctions that ‘there is a way out’ – if the country would change policies, there would be vague economic inducements as a ‘reward’. Although this sounds logical from the U.S. side, rarely, if ever, does the target country view the situation in similar fashion. There are a plethora of examples – from Cuba, to Mao’s China, to the Sudan, to Saddam’s Iraq, to Burma, to Syria, and to Iran itself – that suggest that this approach rarely works, primarily because it fails to view the behavior of the target country from the latter’s vantage point. Hence, if a country is being sanctioned for funding terrorism or having a nuclear program, that country might view their own behavior (i.e. the behavior that is eliciting sanctions) as vital for their national security and thus, economic inducements would not work without an overarching political/security architecture that can address the target country’s security concerns. On Iran, the U.S. has never attempted to discuss a broad ranging security framework for the region that would include Iran, and thus this leaves the latter with no choice but to push towards nuclear capacity and to fund and sponsor sub-national groups within the region for protection.

2) The second has to do with the fallacy of the sanctions or war dichotomy, which subscribes that in lieu of actually waging a war on a certain ‘problem’ country, the US will sanction the latter in hopes of behavior change. Yet this reasoning breaks down when transferred to actual policy, as it falsely implies that sanctions can prevent war when at times they actually lead to war (e.g. Iraq, Libya, etc.). On Iran-U.S. relations, earlier this year, I mapped out why Washington’s policy towards Tehran has usually failed. One of my main points was that:

…containment [sanctions and military posturing] and the use of military force are not opposing perspectives but two faces of the same policy, viewpoints that both lie along a continuum principally rooted in hostility. Since 1979, American policy toward Iran has oscillated between these two points, usually landing somewhere in the ambiguous middle. During the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States actually intervened militarily against Iran. In the war’s aftermath, the Clinton administration employed a dual containment approach, imposing stringent trade and financial sanctions on both Iran and Iraq. Yet whatever its varying strategy — “pure” containment, the use of military force, or the ambiguous middle — American actions have failed to deter Iran from pursuing what it has deemed to be its justifiable policies, including its nuclear program.

In other words, from imposing sanctions, threatening the use of force, or actually using force, the U.S. has utilized all of these policy tools against Iran and none succeeded. Again, these are not individual separate policies, but tactical subsidiaries that comprise one overall strategy, characterized by hostility towards the said country. After 32 years of the same policy of sanctions/threats of war/intervention, one would think that the mainstream U.S. punditry would have fresh approaches, but if Pollack and Takeyh are in any way representative, the poverty of ideas is what currently reigns.

3) The third point has to do with faulty logic of applying “pressure” on a country in order to open up their political space. Usually, states democratize and gradually learn an appreciation of human rights internally when they are allotted ‘private time’ to evolve, without the complications of having a superpower threaten regime change, institute sanctions, and intervene domestically. Rarely, if ever, does a political system move towards political reform under threat of war. The aforementioned examples of Cuba, Mao’s China, the Sudan, Saddam’s Iraq, Burma, Syria, etc. – countries that have been under the sanctions regime for years – clearly indicate that outside pressure does not render democratic governments nor do they inculcate an appreciation of human rights amongst target countries. Pollack and Takeyh try to use South Africa as a template but that is a ruse and utterly dissimilar case with Iran. What happened in South Africa, namely full-blown state apartheid was normatively rejected by the brunt.  of the international community, so much so that civil societies around the world initially stopped ‘doing business’ with the apartheid regime, which gradually forced, from below, their respective governments to match their societies positions. On Iran, while its internal characteristics (i.e. politics, governance, human rights, etc.) are problematic, it is not dissimilar to the domestic contents of many other governments in the world. Thus, expecting varying governments to isolate Iran based upon the very same dynamics that exist in the former is simply unrealistic and naïve.

Moreover, democracy, as the adage goes, is not only a messy process, but also a long-drown out evolution, filled with uncertainty and always susceptible to regression. Most importantly, it is ultimately an affair between two actors: the state and its civil society. In Iran’s case, the most salient example of this was in the 1990s. While the U.S. still kept the sanctions regimen upon Iran and even stopped all Iran-U.S. trade, there was a lessening of tension between both countries (i.e. an end to the talk of regime change and virtually no interference in Iranian domestic affairs) which slowly helped the reformists to attain power in 1997. And while the tenure of the reformists was riddled with inaction and tepidness, in many aspects, the press laws, social constrictions, and the overall political space became relatively relaxed. It was only until the invasion of Afghanistan, the axis of evil premise, the Iraq imbroglio, and most consequently, the collapse of the nescient post 9/11 Iran-U.S. regional cooperation that gave way to the rise of the Iranian neo-conservatives.

4) Fourthly is the specious claim concerning the supposed “outreach” of the Obama administration to Iran.  One of the hallmarks of Pollack and Takeyh’s jumbled article is the utter confusion they possess regarding this subject:

The [Obama] administration started out, properly, by offering to repair relations through a process of engagement. When Tehran rebuffed these overtures, Washington switched over to the path of pressure…

Yet, in the next paragraph they admit that there was very little authentic engagement that differed from the Bush years:

In truth, Obama’s approach to Iran was another variant of the basic strategy embraced by the George W. Bush administration – a carrot-and-stick policy designed to create a combination of incentives and disincentives which would convince the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear program (and hopefully its support for terrorism and other anti-status quo gambits).

This last statement by Pollack and Takeyh is accurate, but why then construct a supposed ‘new’ Obama “outreach” when essentially the Bush approach never changed?

Equally disingenuous is Pollack and Takeyh’s next assertion that, “… Iran…, refus[es] to consider any limits on its nuclear program.” However, with his recent trip to the U.S., Iranian President Ahmadinejad explicitly said that given a deal with the U.S., Iran would halt enrichment at 20%. This was buttressed by the proposal of Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, that Iran would allow international inspectors full supervision over the country’s nuclear activities for the next five years – a major concession of sovereignty.

There is much more to consider regarding the contours of this complex interaction between the U.S. and Iran and equally charged critiques do exist on the Iranian side. And unfortunately, most of the much-needed nuance gets subsumed under a simplistic wrong vs. right or good vs. evil narrative that exists in both capitals. Yet, when one sums up both the failed policies that the U.S. and its punditry has pushed on Iran, along with diminishing American influence in the region, a troubled economy at home, economic and strategic challenges on the Iranian side, and the ostensive merging of key areas of interests with Iran and the U.S., one wonders how long the narrative fostered by Pollack and Takeyh will hold.

Some key quotes from the panel included Saban Center director Kenneth Pollack calling for the U.S. to hold Israel back from any “rush action” while the Middle East is in a state of turmoil:

This hasn’t been about Israel. And the most important thing for the Israelis to do is to not make it about Israel. There are a lot of things that the government of Israel could do right now that would be extraordinarily unhelpful. Unhelpful to the events playing out in the region and ultimately unhelpful to the future and security of the state of Israel.

It would be driven by the fear, the siege mentality. It’s one of our roles as the United States, and their great ally and friend, to help them through this period without taking rash action that will ultimately be to the detriment of Israel and the U.S. and to the benefit of Iran.

I think the Iranians would like nothing more than to see the Netanyahu government take a series of rash steps that would infuriate the Arab populations.

This theme — that hardliners in Iran, not to mention other Arab leaders facing citizen uprisings, will benefit from aggressive behavior on the part of Israel — was recurring during the panel’s discussion.

Pollack also addressed the argument that democratic revolutions in the Middle East can be hijacked, saying:

We need to be alive to the possibility that these revolutions can come off the rail, that there are spoilers out there who look to take advantage of it. Iran is one that is unquestionably trying to do just that. What we have to do is make it hard for Iran to do it and help our allies in Israel not become spoilers themselves.

Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, added her own warning: that the U.S. must be careful not to fall victim to Islamophobic fear-mongering as popular democracy movements sweep across the Middle East.

You are seeing at every level people who conflate the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Al Qaeda as if they were all one thing whose primary purpose is to blow us up in our supermarkets. That is the rhetoric we’re going to be confronting here in Washington.

The New York Times’s Roger Cohen emphasized that the constant predictions that Iran is on the precipice of producing a nuclear weapon (with many of the deadlines already having passed) has been highly inaccurate:

We’ve had a lot of predictions that [Iran would be producing nuclear weapons] and the fact is it hasn’t happened.

And

The Iranians have been messing around with this nuclear program for forty years! What are they doing?

The discussion about Iran tended to focus on what the democratic uprisings in Iran and elsewhere will mean for Israel and its fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The panelists admitted that Iran had lost its position on the front pages of newspapers and, as breaking news emerges from the Middle East on a daily basis, the Obama administration’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program will be diminished.

Pollack observed:

A lot of the people who previously spent all their time working on Iran, trying to craft these sanctions, trying to bring all these other countries aboard against Iran are now spending 24 or 25 hours a day doing nothing but working on Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, etc… Iran is very much on the backburner at the moment in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.