Time to Change Tacks on Iran.(Essay)

Byline: Ray Takeyh (Takeyh is a fellow at the New York Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs.)

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the United States has pursued a series of failed policies toward Iran. It has variously sought to topple the regime, threatened military action and proposed strictly limited dialogue--all with an eye toward boxing Tehran in and limiting its influence in the region. This strategy of "containment" continues to dominate U.S. policy.

President George W. Bush repeatedly insists that "all options are on the table"--a not-so-subtle reminder that Washington might yet use force to halt Tehran's nuclear program. Yet realistically, the United States has no military option. Iran has dispersed many nuclear facilities and hardened others. Even if U.S. forces could find and destroy those targets--quality intelligence is a serious hurdle--they could be rebuilt relatively quickly. The bottom line: Washington must accept certain distasteful facts--beginning with Iran's ascendance as a regional power and the staying power of its regime. It should open talks with Iran, not in order to limit its growing power--an impossibility--but with a view toward regulating it and curbing potential excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of detente, just as it did in the past with such seemingly intractable enemies as China and the Soviet Union.

Could Tehran ultimately prove to be as willing a negotiating partner as Beijing and Moscow once were? There are reasons to hope so. One is Iran's emergence as the largest and most militarily powerful state in the Persian Gulf. That very fact will force Tehran to choose between coexistence and confrontation with the United States. For all its hot rhetoric, Iran is no Nazi Germany; by and large, its leaders are tactical opportunists. They seek to avoid war. Furthermore, the Iranian regime is undergoing a transformation of its own. This internal divide is not as commonly thought: moderate reformers versus conservative fundamentalists. No, the real fissure is generational. The elders of the 1979 revolution retain ultimate authority--but they are increasingly challenged by a rising cohort of younger conservatives, eager to abandon failed policies of the past.

This emerging group looks askance at the strident rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Its members tend to stress Iranian ...