Why Iran Would Reject The "Grand Bargain"

The Leverett's at their site Race For Iran have long called for a "Grand Bargain" with Iran in which the U.S. would guarantee (one wonders how believable) not to touch the Iranian form of government while Iran would give up its support for "the resistance", i.e. Hizbullah and the Palestinians.

But as the Lebanese scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb writes in a recent Conflicts Forum’s monograph, such a "Grand Bargain" may not be possible, unless the U.S. completely changes its stand in the Middle East. This because a "Grand Bargain" as envisioned now would necessitate for the Islamic Republic to give up the core values of its ideological foundation, anti-imperialism and justice, and thereby render it into an empty hull.

Via the Friday Lunch Club an excerpt from the recommendable paper An Examination of the Ideological, Political and Strategic Causes of Iran’s Commitment to the Palestinian Cause (page 13/14, footnotes omitted):

[T]he Islamic Republic would most likely reject not merely the content but the very logic underlying the Leverett’s ‘Grand Bargain’ proposal, were it ever to be officially adopted by the Obama administration. The Leveretts’ recommendation that policymakers make clear their intention to “not seek a change in the nature of the Iranian regime, but rather, changes in Iranian policies that Washington considers problematic,” is self-contradictory and reductive for it ignores the reality that the nature of the Iranian political system is not merely defined by its Shiíte Islamic theocracy and liturgy but is essentially shaped by its policies, particularly the ones deemed unsavory by the US. In fact, the very policies which Washington seeks to change comprise an essential part of Iran’s self-understanding as an Islamic state. Accordingly, the Leverett proposal misidentifies Iran’s national security policy with the physical security of the regime, or its mere survival as an institutional entity, rather than with the security of the regime’s identity, or being as a “particular kind of actor” -- its “ontological security”. Thus, when Washington demands policy changes of Iran while reassuring it that it would leave its Islamic form of government intact, in so doing, it is threatening Tehran’s ontological security as a particular kind of Islamic actor.

The Islamic Republic derives its religio-political identity from Khomeini’s interpretation of Islam which conceives of it as “the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism.” This conception of Islam stands in sharp contradistinction to the apolitical “defective version” promulgated by “the servants of imperialism”, who strip Islam of its inherent “revolutionary” potential reducing it to a religion with “a few ethical principles” and “nothing to say about human life in general and the ordering of society,” thereby denying its adherents the pursuit of “freedom”.

Since the policy changes the US requires of Iran would necessitate that it abandon its struggle against imperialism and injustice, relinquish its independence and freedom as a state and end support for resistance movements defending the rights of the oppressed, compliance with these demands would effectively transform “the nature of the regime” from a genuinely Islamic one according to Khomeinist criteria, to a “defective” and hence unauthentic Islam. The nature of the regime and its policies are therefore synonymous rather than mutually exclusive categories; any fundamental change in Iranian foreign policy would render the political system un-Islamic. What is more, any fundamental changes in Iran’s foreign policy objectives, in the absence of a corresponding shift in US Middle East policy, would essentially mean that the Iranian state would have overturned its founding principles and undermined its identity and hence, itself. If Iran were to become one of America’s moderate allies in the region, the Islamic Revolution would be rendered meaningless and the Islamic Republic would defy its own raison d’étre in reverting to the pre-revolutionary identity ascribed to it by the Shah.

If this is a correct description, which I believe, the conflict between the U.S. and Iran will continue for the foreseeable future.

Source: Moon of Alabama