Contact: Meaghan Pierannunzi, USIP Press
202-429-4736; mpierannunzi@usip.org

1. Why should the United States bother thinking about Iranian-American negotiations, when, for the last three decades, the two countries’ dealings, whether open or secret, direct or indirect, have been mired in futility?

The United States and Iran should be talking because both sides will find significant common interests in so doing. Talking to Iran, hard and disagreeable as it might be, is likely to be more productive than continuing almost three decades of noisy and sometimes violent confrontation. The U.S. should have no illusions. Discussions with the Islamic Republic are unlikely in the short run to have the kind of positive outcomes the U.S. might wish for. Iran is not going to change its behavior immediately and stop all of its misdeeds in the areas of terrorism, Middle East peace, human rights, and nuclear development. Yet through serious negotiations—even with a regime it dislikes and mistrusts—the U.S. may discover areas of common interest that lurk behind walls of hostility and suspicion.

2. Why have Americans and Iranians been unable to get beyond their caricatures of each other, and admit that the denunciations, accusations, finger-pointing, and sterile rhetoric have accomplished nothing?

One answer lies in decades of two-sided mythmaking. Americans and Iranians have constructed their reciprocally negative views based on distorted versions of two recent events. In the Iranian case, the critical event was the August 1953 American-backed coup d’etat that toppled the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and restored the power of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. By so doing, the Americans did what the Russians and British had been doing for decades—frustrating Iranians’ efforts to free themselves of foreign tutelage, reverse three centuries of political decline, and take control of their country’s petroleum, its greatest source of wealth. In the American case, the formative event was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of mission staff members hostage for fourteen months in 1979-81. The nightly television images of screaming crowds and burning flags, the hysterical rhetoric, the weeping hostage family members, the threats, the refusal to negotiate, the failed rescue mission, and the Iranians’ unwillingness to recognize either accepted norms of international behavior or their own responsibilities toward persons under their protection all ensured that Americans, unable to understand such happenings, would dismiss Iranians as “crazies,” as victims of a national temper tantrum, and label them with all the negatives noted above. These two seminal events have proved a formidable barrier to building a more constructive relationship.

3. What are some of the myths and negative stereotypical traits that Americans and Iranians attribute to one another?

Based on the last thirty years of history, and our disastrous relations with the Islamic Republic, Americans often characterize Iran and Iranians as:

• Emotional. Iranians let their hearts rule their heads.

• Devious. Iranians will cheat and deceive if it suits their purpose—or sometimes even to no apparent purpose.

• Obsessed with the past. Iranians cannot put past events behind them.

• Obsessed with religion. Iranians are attempting to develop a theocratic state in the twenty-first century based on a version of Mohammed’s seventh-century community in Arabia.

• Unreliable. Iranians cannot be trusted to keep their world.

• Incomprehensible. Many Iranian actions are inexplicable.

• Vindictive. Iranians harbor grudges for decades, if not centuries.

• Fanatical. Inspired by stories of martyred saints, Iranians will embark on suicide missions.

From recent past events starting in 1953, Iranians have concluded that the American government remains determined to dominate and exploit Iran, preferably by subversion and other indirect means, but by force if necessary. Subsequent American actions (or Iranians’ perception of actions) have confirmed that image of Americans as determined to bend Iranians to their will and prepared to crush their aspirations for dignity and independence. To Iranians, Americans seem no better than Iran’s historical enemies, the British and Russians.

4. Is it important that Americans study and know Iranian history and culture in order to understand Iranians? Putting myths aside, what kind of people are the Iranians?

Americans need not be scholars in Iranian history, but they do need to be conscious of Iranian history and culture and their long-term influence. At a minimum, that consciousness will protect the Americans from being confused and surprised by seemingly incoherent and inexplicable Iranian negotiating actions.

Iranians are, like everyone else, the victims of their long history, their unique geography, and other circumstances that have shaped their political and social systems. As Iranians have almost never been able to choose their political system, they have had to adapt—with more or less sincerity—as best they could to whatever system prevailed at the time, whether it was a Turkish sultanate, a Shia empire, a military dictatorship, or a visionary and strident Islamic republic. Yet despite sudden changes in political systems, Iranians have developed distinct cultural traditions that have defied ruler, dynasty, and religion and which are unique, if not special, among nations.

Iranians are also a religious people, with Islam at the heart of Iranian politics and society for a very long time. The relationship between religion and state—what is strictly Iranian versus what is strictly Islamic—remains a complex issue and one that presents seeming contradictions and paradoxes. For example, in the society, there is continuing tension between the austerity demanded by the strict rules of religion—which frowns on music, images, and mysticism—and the realities of an Iranian cultural tradition that elevates all three. This conflict periodically comes to a head when the deepest mourning period of Shia Islam—the lunar month of Moharram—coincides with the national festival of Nowruz, the ancient holiday marking the beginning of spring and the first day of the Iranian solar year. Yet, what for some cultures might be an irreconcilable collision of traditions is, for most Iranians, an opportunity to show themselves to be loyal to both sides of their identities and to be both good Shia Muslims and good Iranians.

5. How has Iran managed to survive as a distinct nation for over twenty-five centuries, despite many foreign conquerors and foreign ideologies?

Adaptability and openness to the ways of outsiders have been keys to Iran’s survival as a distinct nation. Iranians have accepted and then mastered foreign customs by giving them a (refined) Iranian form and making them a part of an enriched Iranian culture. Iranians probably owe their survival as a people to their having adopted two “foreign” innovations: the Islamic religion, which linked Iranians to a worldwide community, and the Arabic script, which became the medium for the new Persian language in the tenth century CE.

6. What are the four case studies that form the foundation of this book?

• The Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–47, in which the Iranians—although divided among themselves and holding few cards in their hands—successfully balanced competing foreign and domestic interests and preserved their country’s independence and territorial integrity against very long odds. With limited American support, Iranians were able to negotiate occupying Soviet troops out of Iran and restore their authority over the country’s richest province.
• The oil nationalization crisis of 1951–53, in which both the British and Iranians so demonized each other that agreement became impossible. Washington attempted to mediate between its friends and originally had sympathy for the aspirations of the Iranian nationalists. Preoccupied by Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, however, the Americans eventually came to share the British view that Prime Minister Mosaddegh himself was the problem and had to go.
• The American Embassy hostage crisis of 1979–81, in which what began as a 1970s-style student demonstration and sit-in became—after a series of misjudgments on both sides—a major international crisis that brought down an American president and enabled extremists in Tehran to seize undisputed power and bring years of bloodshed and suffering on most Iranians.
• The Lebanon hostage crisis of 1985–91 in which both sides—encouraged by self-interested intermediaries—deluded themselves into unrealistic expectations. Both sides lost sight of underlying interests and focused entirely on immediate goals. When circumstances changed and credible mediators became involved, problems that had previously seemed unsolvable were eventually settled.