Tehran's Take: Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy

by Mohsen M. Milani

Iran's foreign policy is often portrayed in sensationalistic terms, but in reality it is a rational strategy meant to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic against what Tehran thinks is an existential threat posed by the United States.

Although a great deal has been written about the United States' policy toward Iran, hardly anything comprehensive has been produced about Iran's policy toward the United States. What does exist is sensationalistic coverage about Iran's nuclear ambitions and about mad mullahs driven by apocalyptic delusions and a martyr complex. That picture suggests that Iran's policy consists of a series of random hit-and-run assaults on U.S. interests and that its leaders, being irrational and undeterrable, must be ousted.

In fact, Tehran's foreign policy has its own strategic logic.

Formulated not by mad mullahs but by calculating ayatollahs, it is based on Iran's ambitions and Tehran's perception of what threatens them. Tehran's top priority is the survival of the Islamic Republic as it exists now. Tehran views the United States as an existential threat and to counter it has devised a strategy that rests on both deterrence and competition in the Middle East.

To deter any possible military actions by the United States and its allies, Iran is improving its retaliatory capabilities by developing the means to pursue asymmetric, low-intensity warfare, both inside and outside the country; modernizing its weapons; building indigenous missile and antimissile systems; and developing a nuclear program while cultivating doubts about its exact capability.

To neutralize the United States' attempts to contain it, the Iranian government is both undermining U.S. interests and increasing its own power in the vast region that stretches from the Levant and the Persian Gulf to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Although it is being careful to avoid a military confrontation with the United States, Tehran is maneuvering to prevent Washington from leading a united front against it and strategically using Iran's oil and gas resources to reward its friends. Tehran seeks to use the European Union, and particularly Russia and China, as a potential counterweight to the United States, offering them lucrative economic concessions. Iran has also created spheres of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and among the Palestinians, increasing its retaliatory capability against any possible attack on Iran. Moreover, Iranian support for Hezbollah and Islamic Hamas has given Tehran strategic depth in Israel's backyard.

The complicated nature of the U.S.-Iranian relationship is most evident in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the convergences and divergences of the two sides' interests are the clearest. Both Tehran and Washington want to keep Afghanistan stable, prevent the Taliban's resurgence, and defeat al Qaeda (which consider Shiism to be a heresy). Both want to control and possibly eliminate drug trafficking, the economic backbone of the region's terrorists and warlords. And both want to rebuild Afghanistan. Iran's heavy involvement in the reconstruction of Afghanistan has allowed it to create a sphere of economic influence in the region around Heart, which has helped stabilize the area by preventing al Qaeda and the Taliban from infiltrating it.

This quest for influence in Afghanistan pits Iran against the United States. For example, Tehran opposes the establishment of permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan, and is pressuring Kabul to distance itself from Washington to ensure that will not be able to use Afghanistan as a launching point for an attack on Iran.

In Iraq, too, the U.S. and Iran have some common goals but many more diverging ones. Iran's top strategic priority is to establish a friendly, preferably Shiite government that is sufficiently powerful to impose order but not powerful enough to pose a serious security threat to Iran, as Saddam did. Like Washington, Tehran opposes Iraq's Balkanization, partly out of fear that such fragmentation could incite secessionist movements within Iran's own ethnically rich population. And like Washington, Tehran seeks to eliminate al Qaeda in Iraq.

Iran is eager to engage in Iraq's reconstruction mainly in order to create an economic sphere of influence in the country, especially in the predominantly Shiite south where many people of Persian descent live. At the same time, Tehran is determined to keep Washington mired in Iraq, prevent it from scoring a clear victory there, and use the Iraqi territory to attack or undermine Iran.

Iranian policy toward the United States has a logic. It is driven not by a single faction or a single issue but by an institutionalized system of governance. Unless Washington understands that Tehran's U.S. policy has a rationale, it will not be able to develop a reasonable long-term strategy toward Iran. Invading the country is not a viable option. Nor are so-called surgical strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, which would most likely lead to a protracted retaliation.

The challenge for the U.S. government is to give Iran incentives to reevaluate its strategy toward the United States.

Focusing on one issue, such as Iran's nuclear ambitions, is unlikely to bear fruits for Washington. A good approach would be a strategy of full engagement, one predicated on gradually increasing economic, educational, and cultural exchanges between the two countries.

The pivotal part of this strategy should be building upon the commonalities shared by the two governments and establishing concrete institutional mechanisms to manage their remaining differences.

Washington must recognize that there is no diplomatic magic wand that can fix its "Iran problem" overnight; normalizing U.S.-Iranian relations will be a long and difficult process. Full engagement might be Washington's worst options, except for all the others.

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Tehran's Take -- Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy