Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling with the Ghosts of History

Kate Seeyle: We've got quite the overflow crowd, I guess this is not unexpected given the background to this invitation which is rather ironic. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Ambassador John Limbert today and he's here to discuss his very timely book "Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling with the Ghosts of History.” It will be on sale downstairs after the event. The book was published by USIP in 2009 clearly anticipating the Obama administration's desire to break with policy and engage Iran. Those efforts of course have been complicated by the current political situation which few anticipated. As Undersecretary William Burns said at MEI's recent annual conference on November 10, "We have before us a historic opportunity" (aside: this is relating to Iran) "but it will not last forever. It's time for Iran to decide whether it wants to focus on the past or move beyond it, whether it wants to dwell on familiar suspicions and imaginary external enemies or make a positive choice about the role it seeks to play in the world." You can find his speech about Iran on our website, by the way.

Now this is a very fortuitous occasion for us because we had originally invited Mr. Limbert to come speak in October and there was this scheduling conflict and we rescheduled today and of course in the meantime the administration had the foresight to appoint him Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran [laughter] which seems to be a position that was created for him because I think it's safe to say that there are few others in this administration or in the State Department that know as much about Iran as Ambassador Limbert. He lived there as a child, his parents served with USAID in Iran, he worked there in the Peace Corp and studied and learned Farsi there and he had the honorable distinction or the dubious honor of being in Tehran in 1979 during the hostage takeover and spent fourteen months as a hostage along with other Americans. And afterwards when he came out he received the State Department's highest award, the Distinguished Service Award as well as the Award for Valor. Ambassador Limbert later went on to have a distinguished career in the State Department serving in many fine and easy posts, Djibouti, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and finally the UAE and then as the Ambassador to Mauritania from 2000 to 2003. Your poor wife. My father got all the hardship posts as well so I know how it is.

In 2003 he was one of the first civilian officials to enter Baghdad with the Organizations of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Since his retirement from the State Department Mr. Limbert has been a distinguished professor of international affairs at the U.S. Naval Academy, he's been co-author to two other books, "Iran, At War with History" and "Shiraz in the Age of Hafiz". Now I should note that he is here today speaking not in his capacity as the DAS but in his capacity as the author of "Negotiating With Iran,” so that needs to be made clear for all of the press here who clearly want to ask him questions in his role as the DAS, but anyway, please join me in welcoming Mr. John Limbert.

John Limbert: Well thank you all for coming out today. Let me say first of all at my publisher's request I am not going to read from the book. The publisher said "if you do that, who will buy it?" so I'm not quite sure how to take that last comment but I will spare you reading from the book but I will make references to it. The story of this book and of this whole subject for me personally begins with a personal failure that happened almost exactly 30 years ago on the fourth of November 1979 when a group of very unhappy young Iranians stormed our embassy compound. They were unhappy because about two weeks before some folks in this town decided it would be a good idea to admit the deposed and ailing Shah of Iran Mohammad Reshad Pahlavi to the United States for medical treatment. Well two weeks later we found ourselves in the embassy behind a steel door on the second floor of the old chancery, the dearly beloved Henderson High, that some of you may remember. And on the other side, banging on the door, were this group of unhappy Iranians. Well it befell to me, having made one of probably the worst decisions of my foreign service career, to go out from that door - out from behind the door - to attempt, and I use this word with some trepidation, to negotiate with this crowd to see if there was something we could do and they could get them out or at least delay them because what was very clear to us already was that we were on our own. That if anything was going to be done, we had to do it.

We had made calls to the Iranian government at the time - or at least for what passed as the Iranian government- something called the provisional government of Iran, and it was very clear from that contact that there was no help coming from that direction. When I called - I think it was the Foreign Ministry - I got a secretary on the line who said "Oh, thank you it's so nice to hear from you. Those passports we sent over for visas, are those visas ready yet?" and that's what they seemed to be worried about was their visas, after all they were hedging their bets too as to which direction the politics were gonna go. Washington was clearly far away, it was three o'clock in the morning on a Sunday morning in Washington. That and that the normal resources available for Washington to help us, for example a high level call from the Secretary of State or from the Assistant Secretary Hal Sanders, wasn't available. Anyone who would have taken his call, such a call, couldn't have done anything. And anybody that could have done anything wasn't taking any calls, certainly not from American officials. So we were on our own.

No one pushed me out the door; I did it on my own. It was a terrible idea, but no one had a better one at the time. So there I was, confronting this group of very excited young Iranians and my success at this particular negotiation let's say was less than perfect. It didn't go very well. And as a result, I and fifty some of my colleagues ended up spending the next fourteen months as what the author Mark Bowden had termed "guests of the Ayatollah.” And there we were.

Well, I've looked back at that encounter, at that failure of negotiation, and often asked myself "Is there something I could have done better? What were the weaknesses in my technique? Is there some way I should have negotiated that would have had a better outcome?" Maybe just stay behind the door if that was the case, although I don't think that would have had a very good outcome. I don't have an answer, perhaps the only answer I come up with is if you're at a high stakes poker game and your hand is a pair of twos, you had better either be a very good bluffer or you should not have been at that game at all. You shouldn't even be there.

But from experience, or from that personal failure, came really what I was writing about in this book. And if I could use a prop here for a minute, you'll notice deliberately I call the book “Negotiating with Iran.” That's deliberate. I did not call it negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran, I did not call it negotiating with President Ahmadinejad, because after all, those of you here and there are many I see who are familiar with Iran, know that there is much more to Iran and much more to negotiating with Iran than the absurdities of presidential statements coming out of Tehran and the nastiness of the current system. The question in the book is not "Should we or shouldn't we?" - I mean I have my own views about that - but that to me that is not the important question. The important question is when we finally move to end what has now been a thirty year estrangement, how do we do it? How do we deal with our Iranian counterpart, whoever that counterpart is and whatever government he or she - but more likely he - happens to represent.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that by training and background, I'm a historian and my real love is Iran in the 14th century and 14th century Shiraz. And that was a time that Iran produced some of its greatest masterpieces in architecture, painting, calligraphy, and particularly in poetry. It was the time of the poet Hafez whose lyrics are not just some of the greatest masterpieces of Persian literature but the great masterpieces of world literature. So you had a creative, vibrant, artistic people living under rulers who - to put it bluntly - were thugs, fanatics, and bigots. Now that's 14th century Shiraz.

Now it may be coincidental but some people have noticed a similarity between conditions then and conditions now. But you can draw that conclusion for yourself. Now my historical bias also comes through the subtitle of the book which is "Wrestling the Ghosts of History" because my view is that when we and the Iranians are in the same room, or when we talk to each other or when we attempt to talk to each other, that there are ghosts in the room and that we need to be aware of these ghosts. And that these ghosts are numerous, they're strong, they're very powerful and they're very important. I mean there is the ghost of Premier Mossadegh, there is the ghost of our CIA activities, there is the ghost of the old oil concessions, of Mr. Darsi, for example. There are the ghosts going all the way back to the Treaty of Turkmenchay, there are good benevolent ghosts out there, there are the ghosts of Morgan Shuster, Howard Baskerville and the Shah and the embassy takeover. These ghosts are all there. And they're going to, like it or not, they're going to affect how that encounter happens. They will be in the room.

Now I looked at four case studies here and two of them actually have nothing to do with the Islamic republic, two of them come from before the Islamic Revolution, those are the Azerbaijan crisis from 1945 - 1947, the oil nationalization crisis 1952-53 and two come after the Revolution, one is the embassy hostage crisis, the second was the crisis involving the American hostages in Lebanon and involved in that of course was the whole Iran-Contra affair. And from these cases, from this history, I have attempted to distill lessons. What can we learn from these cases? What is there that can help the American negotiator dealing with his or her Iranian counterpart, whoever they are? And the issue may be not be political, it may be commercial, it may be technical, but whether the issue is a nuclear program, whether its terrorism, whether it's Afghanistan, whether it's imprisoned American citizens, what can we learn from these lessons of the past? And I've distilled it down to fourteen points - some people call this Limbert's fourteen points- some people, some journalists have called it the fourteen-step program. But I think of these as simply ideas. Here are some examples of what worked and here are some examples of what didn't work in the past and these things are not terribly profound or shocking - I think to most of you - things like choose your intermediaries with care, make sure you are talking to the right people, don't get tangled up in legalisms, be aware of the influence of history and all of these things.

But I should make also clear that this program comes with a disclaimer. It comes with no guarantees. You may do all of these things that I suggest and still make no progress. You can still fail. And why is that? Well, problem is that between our two countries - thirty years after the embassy takeover, thirty years after those events and almost thirty years after the formal break in relations - hostility and suspicion still run very deep. They run deep on both sides. And lets look at this, I'm going to look at this for a second and show you how this works, how two sides continue to look at each other and how this mutual suspicion and mutual animosity gets in the way of making any progress of getting out of the thirty year downward spiral -that's a phrase that the late Richard Kodam, University of Pittsburgh specialist used to use - he'd talk about this downward spiral of relations.

You have on one side the Iranian view, and I typify that in a famous rhetorical question that Ayatollah Khomeini once posed. When asked about relations with the United States or negotiations with the United States, his reply was "What for?" What does the wolf have to negotiate with the sheep?" In other words, we are the sheep, they are the wolf, they are not interested in reaching an equitable and fair agreement; they are interested in eating us. Or if not literally, humiliating us. And that was based on a view, his view of history. But it became a reason for, based on mistrust, became a reason for continuing estrangement. Now, interesting enough, on the American side, you find something similar. You find the view, and if you think this is dead and buried, you're wrong. I can tell you this view is alive and well. I encountered it as recently as last week. The view is that one could never have successful negotiations with Iranian leaders who do and say what the current leaders of Iran do and say. They are too fanatical, too xenophobic, too suspicious, and too untrustworthy to deal with. So, let's turn Khomeini's statement on its head, and what we get is “What do the rational have to negotiate with the crazy?” And if you detect a certain mirror imaging here, I don't think you're far off.

So, how do you get out of it? How do you get out of the downward spiral? How do you get out of the impasse? Well, in my book, I take as my starting point the wonderful advice from the 13th century poet Saadi, also a native of Shiraz. Saadi was talking about something that's very contemporary, I think, he said that "Whoever you see, in the robe of an ascetic, consider that person an ascetic and a man of virtue.” In other words, watch out for the preconception. Watch out for the negative assumption. That person may be a hypocrite, he may be untrustworthy, but until you know, consider him to be what he represents himself to be. And I was reminded of this - very interesting connection here - back in January when President Obama gave his first interview - you remember this interview he gave to Al-Arabiya - was five or six days after he was sworn in as President. And one of the things he said was "we need to put aside preconceptions and assumptions/” He wasn't talking about Iran specifically, he was talking more about Arab-Israeli issues but this certainly would apply to Iran because if you go into an encounter with Iran assuming that they, the other side, are simply too stubborn, too irrational, and too unreasonable, then I will say that you will fail and you will fail for certain. Now interesting to me, you could ask the question I ask myself "When President Obama said this in January did he know about the poetry of Saadi?" Well he might because two months later when he addressed the Iranian people on the occasion of their new year, he quoted Saadi -a different poem, a different verse - but there it was.

So, let me end this way. As you're getting out of this thirty year impasse - getting out of what I call of thirty years of futility - is going to take a paradox. A kind of mental paradox, we have to think two almost contradictory ways at the same time. We're gonna need patience and realistic expectations on one side. But on the other side we're going to need high expectations; we have to be demanding. I call it to be patient and demanding at the same time. Because on the patience side, we may have to - how would you say? - define our measures of progress in a very special way. Progress may not mean resolving a nuclear issue for example in one week. Progress may mean something much less than that, symbolic, something not said, a change of tone. A handshake, as simple as a handshake, but that- given what's gone on over the last thirty years - represents a change and could represent a positive change. This is not going to be easy, I should say. Let me quote, I think it was one of our good colleagues Ryan Crocker, when he was talking about Iraq he said "Everything takes longer than you think, everything is harder than you think, and somewhere, somehow, someone is going to come along and screw it up". Well, he was talking about Iraq, I think with Iran that probably applies three or four times. And we've seen it. We've seen it. All the way back to 1979 we had the Javits' Resolution, we had the axis of evil speech, we had rhetoric about the Holocaust, we had this fishy election and its aftermath. So there are going to be diversions, there are going to be setbacks, and when I say patience, that's where you're going to need patience.

Now on the demanding side, you have to keep your expectations high. Otherwise you fall victim to your own low expectations, to your own negative conceptions. If you go into an encounter, and I don't care whether you're dealing with Iran or anyone else - assuming that you will fail because of the failures of the other side and the shortcomings of the other side - then you will fail. It's certain. However, if you assume that success, however modestly you define it - that thing not said, that change of tone - is possible, then you may be pleasantly surprised by what you actually can achieve. Let me thank many who have helped with this project. Many of the people here in this room, have in ways maybe they are not aware of, helped a great deal with this project, and you may find their ideas shamelessly reproduced in the book. So once again thank you for your attention and I look forward to your questions.

Q&A

Kate Seeyle: Thank you very much, Ambassador Limbert. I'm sure the President has your fourteen step plan and is considering it carefully. Because we have so much media here today and so many people we'll just open up the room to questions. I think we'll do two or three at a time, in blocks of three and let's start with the media. Any questions from the media? Please state your name and affiliation.

Mina Al-Arabee, Shark al-Awsat Newspaper: I have a question resolving the issues that are outstanding between the US with Iran. Some people speak of a grand bargain and some say that we have to do it one issue at a time. How do you see it developing?

Getar Musaidi with Voice of America Persian News Network: Ambassador Limbert, at what point do you say enough is enough; it's not working?

John Limbert:: Could you clarify that question a little bit (laughter). There are many ways of reading that.

Getar Musaidi : Once you've gone through your fourteen points and you've done all your negotiations, you've been patient enough, you have set your expectations high.

Alex Beliz, London Daily Telegraph: The urgency is now the nuclear issue. I'd be interested to know how profound is Iran's ambition to have a nuclear weapon.

Questioner: Today, I am from South America. Today...

Kate Seeyle: From?

Questioner: South America.

Kate Seeyle: And your paper or...?

Questioner: [unintelligible] South America. We have Ahmadinejad in Brazil today, and I want to know if this is a message to the US that Ahmadinejad can talk to other leaders of the western hemisphere and try to enter in negotiations.

John Limbert:: Ok let me try that. Attempts, Ms. Arabee for your question, attempts at grand bargains up until now haven't worked too well. Again it's that suspicion. And the barriers of suspicion are just too high. When one side comes forward the other side had drawn back. The U.S. made what I thought was a very reasonable offer back in the 1999, 2000, last years of the Clinton administration, when Secretary Albirght talked about a road map to better relations with no preconditions and the Iranians turned it down. Most observers, non-American observers basically said the Iranians blew it. This was a good opportunity and they couldn't do it. In 2003, you had the same thing, from the other direction, I mean it's a good idea if you can get all of these issues out there, but it may be too hard to do. So maybe, maybe if at least not one at a time, dealing with them somehow individually although you can do it simultaneously. The problem has been that when we have made progress on certain issues such as we did in 2001 and early 2002 on Afghanistan or as we did in the late 90's when we were exchanging a lot of scholars and journalists and athletes and travel and tourists and travel became much easier and things became promising, up until now those efforts haven't gone anywhere. They haven't led to a lessening of tension, they haven't led to any broader engagements. But I still think that the grand bargain would be a great thing if we can do it but it may be too hard to do.

To answer VOA Persian -when is enough enough? - I think you're gonna need a lot of patience. If it's worth it, and I think from what I read and what I hear, this administration has decided that it is worth it and knows that it will take a lot of patience. Again, thirty years of suspicions, thirty years of trading insults, thirty years of name-calling sometimes going beyond rhetoric and sometimes exchanges going beyond rhetoric - that's tough to overcome. But if you thump your chest for thirty years, what do you get? You get a sore chest. So I personally think it's worth it, you need a lot of patience. When do you throw up your hands? Hypothetically there may be some point out there when that happens but I think it's going to take a lot of patience. Let me give one example that I was effected by personally, and that was the deal that former Secretary Warren Christopher - he was actually Deputy Secretary at the time - the deal that he negotiated through the Algerians - the Germans and then the Algerians - to get us out of Iran. If you read the accounts, and I talk a little bit about this in the book, but you can read much more detailed accounts that he himself and others have written. By September of 1980 the deal was done. He had met with an authoritative Iranian counterpart, Mr. Tabatabai in Germany, each side had laid out its conditions - there were no deal breakers in it - essentially the deal was ready to be made. It took from September to January of the next year, so about four months, to actually work the deal. And there were times when I understand that at least the American side was ready to throw up its hands and say "We'll never get this done" and it was the Algerian intermediaries that kept coming back and said "No, keep at it. Keep doing it.” It's a little bit like I said about your assumptions and preconceptions. If you go in with this assumption that 'This will never work' then it probably won't.

OK the question about Brazil, Mr. Ahmadinejad in Brazil, features it seems to me of the Islamic Republic since its inception has been a certain amount of diplomatic ineptitude. That very early on from the very early period they have made enemies gratuitously. People that didn't want to be their enemies but were often provoked into being enemies. As a result, they've had a hard time finding friends, which is a little surprising given all the money that they have, but there it is. And so from time to time you'll see, I've seen diplomatic charm offensives, where they'll go out and they'll say "Yes, we need to establish this kind of relationship" and "Yes, we have different systems" and all of these things but they've had up until now, seems to me they've had great - and you particularly look at their relationships with their neighbors - they've had great difficulty continuing that on a consistent basis. So they've gone back and forth between and I think it was someone who said that they have difficult making up their mind whether they are a state or a cause. And the pendulum keeps coming back and forth.

Kate Seeyle: And we have some questions from the overflow room (interruption)

Alex Beliz:: My question wasn't answered.

John Limbert:: I'm sorry, repeat it please.

Alex Beliz: What (inaudible)...nuclear ambitions.

John Limbert:: What are Iran's nuclear ambitions? I don't know. I don't have that kind of information. I do know that they seem to have framed the issue in terms of national rights and respect. So that what you are dealing with is not so much a question of the technicalities of low-enriched uranium, high-enriched uranium - which I look forward to learning about in my new job - but a question of what safeguards our national rights. What safeguards our ability to deal with the rest of the world as equals?

Kate Seeyle: Great, we'll take a couple of questions from the overflow room. And then we'll get back to the press because if people can't sit in this room they can at least get some questions asked. These are mainly dealing with domestic politics:

If the current crisis of leadership in Iran prevents the Islamic Republic from even coming to the negotiating table, what should the Obama administration do ? That's one question.

How will domestic Iranian politics impact negotiations? And do you expect the full Senate to consider the sanctions legislation that the banking committee passed in the near future and what do you think about that?

John Limbert:: Ok. Let me answer the last question first. One of the things they taught me is never comment on the work of the legislative branch. They will do what they will do. So, what do I think about it? I'll fall back on what we always say is, “ I haven't seen the details on it, so I can't talk much about it.” But in this case it happens to be true.

The issue of domestic Iranian politics, how that will impact negotiations, obviously it will - the question about can they negotiation when their domestic politics are in turmoil - that's really a question for them isn't it? For the other side. My watchword on this is that if you're going to somehow end the engagement - if you're somehow going to change the basis of the relationship, if you're going to break the downward spiral - if you wait for a good time, it will never come. It's always going to be a bad time. And you have to keep going. It may make things more difficult, you're going to hear discordant voices, but I go back again to the negotiations that got us out of Tehran back in 1980-81. The domestic political situation at that point was in turmoil. But they did strike a deal. In terms of the domestic situation itself, of course I can always fall back on the words that the analysts love to use like ‘murky’ and ‘opaque,’ but actually one thing is clear, that the system that's been in place for about 30 years where you have a ruling ‘mens club of about 25 senior people and these people include names that are familiar to most people here, people like Khomeini himself, people like Janati, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Tabasee,. And these people have been important since 1979, and have remained the core elite of the Islamic Republic as others came and went.

Two things are happening to that group. One, to quote the scholar Karim Sadjadpour, he said "their average age is deceased". They're getting old and departing the scene but more important the consensus which had existed amongst this group seems to be breaking down. Among these insiders on whose cohesion allowed the Islamic Republic to survive some horrific shocks such as the Iran-Iraq war, such as the fallen oil prices back in the 80's, such as some of the economic mismanagement that happened, that consensus seems to be breaking down. And something different is coming out of it and it's hard to tell what but it seems to be now instead of this ruling men's club who all knew each other very well - many of them were related, they were in business together, they'd gone to school together, they'd been in prison together - the system seems to be reverting to an earlier model of rule by the gun. And rule by force. And it's ironic that a lot of some of the features you see emerging now are reminiscent of what you saw under the Pahlavi's, where the base of popular support and the base even of elite support was very narrow, with the instruments of coercion in the hands of the government, they held on.

Kate Seeyle: : Well let's follow up with some questions about how to deal with this regime, Alex Vatanka, MEI: "You referred to the nasty Iranian regime. Do you see distinct approaches to the US by Khomeini and Ahmadinejad?" So i guess, different approaches by those two different fellows?

(Reading): In the wake of the flawed elections of last summer the Obama administration's response was low key to avoid claims by the Iranian regime that the unrest was US instigated. Now the reformers are calling for more open US support. Is this a good thing and what exactly should the US do?

John Limbert:: Ok. Two questions then. Do you see distinct approaches to the US by Khomeini and Ahmadinejad? Let me step back from that question. I'm not sure if it was one of the fourteen points in here but it should be. And that is, you have to be really careful as an outsider of trying to game the Iranian system. And saying, “Well, this person is on top so we'll talk to him,” or “That person is on top so it seems to be on the skid so we won't talk to that person.” That's one thing, we're just not good enough for that. I'm reminded of some advice I got when I was a Foreign Service Officer, in dealing with the US military -talk about opaque - they said never, never, second guess the military's chain of command. You'll always get yourself in trouble. Find a point of entry and use that. And in this case it might be we work through our protecting power the Swiss, maybe we work through the mission of the United Nations, maybe we meet in some other area, but really, whatever works. The important point is what delivers. And to second guess the Iranian political system is a thoroughly bad idea. Because you usually get it wrong. At least that's been our record over 30 years.

Kate Seeyle: We'll take some questions from the press, I'll start with Joyce.

Joyce Karam, Al-Hayat Newspaper: Mr. Ambassador I wanted to ask you about the regional situation in the Middle East, mainly with the increasing sectarian divide we saw in the events in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Iraq. Where does this fall in the negotiations with Iran and how much does it complicate the efforts of the Obama administration?

Balen Salah, Voice of America, Kurdish Service: Mr. Ambassador, as we have seen negotiations between Tehran and Washington, do you think the subject of human rights should be included?

Ron with Washington TV: Your talk discussed bilateral relations, however talks have been multilateral for many years- number one. Number two, there are actors that have interest in the result of the negotiations and are not part of it, namely Israel and the Arab world, so how do you factor that in as well?

Audience member: Yes, I'd also like to ask about Iran's role in the region particularly in respect to Afghanistan, both positive and negative and how does that factor into any of the negotiations or is that something that can be used in the negotiations?

John Limbert:: Ok. Lets see how we do this. The question you asked about Sunni-Shiite issues it seems to me to get back to this pendulum swing that we talked about between state and cause and which one prevailed. It's very clear to me that the priority for the Islamic Republic in the past thirty years has been its survival and it will do what needs to be done to survive. And particularly the leaders will do what they need to do to survive politically. So for example there are things out there that don't correspond directly to some ideological construct, if you look at Iran's relations with the only other Shia country in the region which is Azerbaijan, not very good. Who is its greatest friend among its neighbors? Armenia. Christian Armenia. This shows pretty much a survival instinct that goes beyond sectarian issues. Having said that, these issues are out there. I mean, the Battle of Sophene is still hot news out there, whatever happens. So these things are there but they're not always there. If you somehow rest on them, and they become your sole point of reference I think you'll be misled.

Let's see, questions about Israel, you had a question about Israel.

Ron: There are actors that are not part of the negotiations but have a huge stake in the outcome of that.

John Limbert:: Of course, of course. Everybody's interested. Everybody has a view. And I think, I'm sure the Iranians are well aware of that as well. It was interesting to me that in the last election campaign in Iran, President Ahmadinejad into for pretty heavy criticisms from Iranians because of his rhetoric and particularly his rhetoric aimed against Israel. It seemed to be, people seemed to be saying "sir, that's not helpful. You are not serving the interests of our country very well. This is provocative. This is needlessly provocative and you are going to get us into conflict that we don't need." So, of course others are interested, and others see this, but again, I would be careful about making sort of rigid categories, and say, well, "that Arabs will never agree with the Persians and the Turks will never agree with the Iranians,” I think we're seeing in the area a much more complicated picture. And one thing, another piece of advice, I think it's one of my fourteen points, is that in any encounter you can't lecture. One of the things we probably should be careful of doing is lecturing the Iranians about what their interests are. They know what their interests are. Our misreading of their interests in the past has gotten us into serious trouble. Now if that applies to the Iranians I think it applies across the board as well.

Audience Member: Should human rights be included in that issue?

John Limbert:: Of course. It obviously, I mean I speak as someone who's connections to Iran go back forty-five years and more as a scholar, as a teacher, as a researcher, as a husband, as a son-in-law, brother-in-law, and it’s clear the Iranians deserve better than they have in terms of government. For a long time they have deserved better than they have. They deserve a government that treats them decently. Should it be a matter for negotiations? Of course. Should it be the only matter of negotiation? I don't think so. I think there are other issues. I hope that we are smart enough to deal with more than one issue at a time and I think we are.

Kate Seeyle: Did you want to follow up on your question?

Audience member : (Inaudible)… It's about Iran's role in the region, particularly Afghanistan and how that would play into negotiations.

John Limbert:: Ok. Let me, as I've often done today- and maybe you can see sometimes my bias as a historian coming through here - I'm going to step back from that. Because Iran does have a very specific view of its role in the region - and one that certainly others should be aware of and we should be aware of, and I call it a combination of grandeur and grievance. Iran at one time was a superpower. And the monuments of that are all over the Iranian plateau, I mean you can see the Backtrians in Afghanistan bringing tribute to the great king. You can see the Syrians, the Phoneticians, the Egyptians, all paying tribute to the great king. You can see another great king receiving the surrender of the Roman Empire. I mean this is a big deal. And Iran was a big deal.

Unfortunately for the last 300 years there hasn't been a lot of glory but there's been a lot of grievance. And so you have these sort of two things playing out in the political culture of – “Yes, we once were a great superpower of the region - but for the last three hundred years others have chopped away at it so that if you look at what the British took, what the Russians took, and all of these ancient areas, the caucuses, central Asia, part of Afghanistan were once ours.” Now does that mean they want to reconquer it and set up a new Persian empire? I don't think so. But it's out there. And that I think is what you're dealing with. I'll say finally in Persian there's a nice expression if someone has been gone for a long time and you see him, very often you'll say to him "Oh, were you in Kandahar?" Meaning, you were on the moon. And that is often the way it's viewed. I don't want to get into it now because I'm really not so authoritative on the subject but the way the Iranians and Afghans look at each other is probably the subject of a whole other book.

Kate Seeyle: Can you take another question?

John Limbert:: Sure.

Kate Seeyle: Are we in Washington permanently the victims of a lack of historical perspective?

John Limbert:: [laughter] God forbid.

Kate Seeyle: What is the relevance of Ahmadinejad’s stated belief that the hidden imam is on the threshold of reappearing?

And a question here about sanctions...this is a long one. Many politicians believe in sanctions, what is your opinion?

John Limbert:: Okay. On sanctions, you know in theory, these things should work. I mean it's a meaning of pressure but we've had sanctions - US sanctions- on Iran for 30 years, and haven't seen them do much. But what they have done I think, whatever their economic effect, the Iranians don't like being singled out. It offends I think a sense of self-worth and self-esteem. They don't like being put in the same boat as North Korea or Libya or Sudan. So the effect of sanctions I think is less a direct economic one and more a psychological one. It was interesting to me that in 2003 when the Iranians put forth their grand - so called grand bargain proposal, or at least what's refuted to be their grand bargain proposal because now people debate over just what this was - but at the head of the list of what they wanted was removal of sanctions. So clearly whatever its economic importance was and it feeds back into this sense of self-worth and grandeur.

Lets see, what was the other one? Oh, lack of historical perspective in Washington? That will come as no surprise I think to any of you. Americans are often accused of being a-historical, of not remembering history. Iranians might be accused of having too much history, of not forgetting it. But certainly what put me and my colleagues into the coup in 1979 was exactly that. I can I still remember the accounts of the deliberations at the White House in October when President Carter learned that the Shah was sick and his advisers all said to him "You should admit him. He's been an ally for twenty -five years and more.” And so, finally Secretary Vance - I believe it was Secretary Vance - who had been opposed to admitting the Shah for a long time said "Well, if we do this, we have to tell the Iranians that we’re doing this only for humane reasons and he's coming only medical treatment." Now. What's the problem with that? No Iranian over the age of three would believe it given the history. Because there is an example to me of where you missed the ghost. The ghost was in the room and you didn't see it and someone in that room I think should have said "Mr. President, with all due respect, no one - given the history of our relationship over the last 25, 30 years - no one is going to believe you.”

And by the way, I'll tell you a story - I had a chance to test that theory about a year and a half ago I was on a panel in New York at Columbia with none other but Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi who was the Foreign Minister of the provisional government at the time and he was the one that Ambassador Langdon had to go to on the 20 or 21st of October to deliver this particular message about medical treatment. And Dr. Yazdi was a PhD from the United States - I think he was a something in the medical field, not a physician but in medical treatment - lived for a long time in the West. I asked him, "Dr. Yazdi, when Ambassador Langdon told you about the Shah's condition and his being admitted only for medical treatment what was your reaction?" and he said “I didn't believe it for a minute.” So yeah, history matters. And it matters sometimes in strange ways. It isn't that you have to know who were the Saffarids and who were the Samaneens and these people but be aware that those ghosts are in the room and they will affect what happens.

Kate Seeyle: You had a question about the hidden imam there.

John Limbert:: Oh, well I'm really not a specialist on... Oh, the question is "what the relevance of Ahmadinejad's statement that the hidden imam is on the threshold of reappearance?” I have to beg off that one. I'm not a specialist in Shia theology of - what is it called? - Eschatology. I don't think I would read this as an apocalyptic statement. Didn't we have a Secretary of the Interior a few years ago that said, "Why bother planting trees? Because the end of the world is coming and it won't matter?” You know, this is an idea, its a very strong idea that the hidden imam is alive, is in hiding, and will return not necessarily at the end of the world, and this is sort of unclear to me. But as I understand it, it's not necessarily the end of the world but it's to establish justice in the world and to reclaim the usurped rights of the house of the prophet. That is why he is returning. So I would be very careful about saying “Well, all they want to do is destroy the world because that will hasten the return of the hidden imam”. It's a very strong belief; I'm not sure how it carries over into politics.

Kate Seeyle: Well I'm sure you have a little bit of work to get back to, but so thank you so much.

John Limbert:: Thank, Thank you very much.

[End]

About this Transcript:
Assertions and opinions in this Transcript are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.