Why Can’t the U.S. and Iran Just Get Along?
A Q&A with John Ghazvinian, author of a new book on a fraught relationship going back three centuries.
A loaded relationship.
Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
“The new administration in Washington has a fundamental choice to make,” wrote Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, recently in Foreign Affairs magazine. “It can embrace the failed policies of the Trump administration and continue down the path of disdain for international cooperation and international law … Or the new administration can shed the failed assumptions of the past and seek to promote peace and comity in the region.”
Well, I guess it depends on your definition of peace and comity. While the 2015 nuclear deal put a temporary halt to vital aspects of the Islamic Republic’s atomic weapons program, the Iranians felt no compunction about developing ballistic missiles, supporting terrorism across the Middle East, backing the atrocious regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, facilitating attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and, most recently, taking hostage a South Korean tanker.
Given all this, would even a return to the nuclear pact — or, as the U.S. would prefer, negotiating a tougher one — help repair a relationship between the two countries severed by violence and rancor since 1979? If history is any guide, there may a chance.