I appreciated Kevin Sullivan’s lengthy response to my earlier post on Iran sanctions. Sullivan and I are at odds on several points, but where we may disagree most of all is here:

The notion that the United States and the greater international community have somehow failed to reach out to the Islamic Republic in an effort to normalize relations and ease economic sanctions is totally false and unfounded.

It depends very much on what we mean by “reach out.” No one will deny that there has been a history of engaging in talks with and making gestures of goodwill to Tehran as another means of pursuing unobtainable objectives. Indeed, I never claimed otherwise in my first post. Obama is alternately praised or cursed for his “engagement” of Iran, but the administration crafted its policy of engagement with the hope that it will yield Iranian disarmament. This is something that will not happen, which is not an argument against pursuing full normalization of relations. On the contrary, recognizing the futility of trying to disarm Iran is the beginning of working to integrate Iran as a pillar of regional security. For most participants in the debate, the thought of rapprochement is unthinkable until Iran abandons nuclear weapons ambitions. As I see it, rapprochement is the only way to adapt to Iran’s eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons without setting off the regional arms race many fear and without resorting to the use of force that will trigger broader conflict and which will fail to achieve its objectives in any case.

Most of the “reaching out” in the past has been carried out through symbolic gestures and rhetorical nods. Apologizing for the U.S. role in the 1953 coup did not end or modify the policy of dual containment that the Clinton administration pursued. Sending mid-level officials to Geneva, as the Bush administration did in its second term, did not remove the threat of “pre-emptive” use of force against Iranian nuclear facilities, and it did not halt covert support for Jundullah in eastern Iran. Were an historically hostile regime to make such half-hearted, minimal gestures to Washington, very few Americans in or out of government would find them credible.

There is a similar assumption afflicting Russia policy debate, as if there has been a time in the last eighteen years when U.S. policy towards Russia was not in some important respect confrontational and provocative. The argument is much the same: we have repeatedly sought good relations with Russia to no avail. As with Iran, the examples of our goodwill towards Russia are few and not very meaningful. If we recognize this, Russian skepticism and distrust are much easier to understand. Western hawks on Russia love to cite Bush’s silly remark that he had looked into Putin’s soul, as if this kind of empty public banter meant anything to Moscow at the same moment when Bush was pushing to scrap the ABM Treaty and expand NATO to their borders over their strenuous objections. Our government makes some minimal move, and this is supposed to override all the other substantive complaints the other government has.

Even when our government does something that does address the other government’s concerns, Washington always expects unreasonably great reciprocation from the other side. Having scrapped the missile defense system in central Europe, Washington expects Russian aid in pressuring Iran, which it was never likely to do under any circumstances. In short, even when we budge on points of contention, we give an inch and expect the other state to give up a mile, and then we recoil in frustration when the other state does not respond to our efforts to “reach out.” So, yes, we have “reached out” to Tehran many times over the years, but always haltingly, inconsistently and never with any intention of accepting Iran’s core security interests. It is no surprise that this sort of engagement has yielded nothing of consequence.

P.S. I would add that most of the “international community” has no interest in pressuring Iran on this or any other matter, much less compelling it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. This is a preoccupation limited almost entirely to the U.S. and our European allies. What makes effective sanctions regimes against Iran so politically difficult to create is the broad indifference of much to the world to the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons, because most nations in the world can see quite clearly that it is nothing to them whether or not Iran has a nuclear deterrent. Rising Asian powers and emerging-market countries simply do not see Iran as a threat, so when we are talking about engaging or “reaching out” to Iran we are speaking primarily of the U.S. and our major European allies. Even most of the latter engage in significant commerce with Iran.