Dialogue and Conflict Resolution: Potential and Limits by Pernille Rieker & Henrik Thune

Author:Pernille Rieker & Henrik Thune [Rieker, Pernille & Thune, Henrik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Peace, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317151449
Google: Qra1CwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29513689
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

Domestic Constraints

In both Teheran and Washington, the Iranian nuclear programme has been a matter of intense contention between rivalling political groups. On many occasions, the Iranians tried to get in direct contact with the Americans, but they were not uniformly in favour of it depending on the circumstances. That changed with Hassan Rouhani, who got broad and strong support for his policies.

Under Ahmadinejad, the nuclear programme became the signal expression of sovereignty and independence, which were among the hallmarks of the Iranian revolution. He pushed the programme aggressively. However, in the autumn of 2009 Ahmadinejad appeared genuinely interested in a fuel swap deal, but came under fire from his opponents in the reformist as well as in the conservative camps. His opponents wanted to deny him the success of an agreement with the West, and they succeeded. In the turbulent aftermath of the presidential elections that year, the Iranian political system became bogged down in institutional and personal rivalries. Leaders threatened to put each other before the court, and Ahmadinejad was unable to exploit the opportunity represented by the new US President.

The USA is strongly pro-Israel, and US strategy documents have repeatedly named Iran as the number one enemy. Accepting Iran as a legitimate state with legitimate national interests, and as a regional power with a political agenda of its own, is therefore hard to swallow, especially for the US Congress. For many members of Congress, regime change in Teheran remains the key objective.

This was, in short, the political context that Obama inherited in 2009. For a while, his policy was to hold the Israelis back, buy time, impose more sanctions, make probes to test the realism of serious diplomatic engagement, and wait for the Iranians to be ready for it.

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