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The US-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order

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The US-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs Volume 2 Issue 2 November 2013 Symposium - The U.S.-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order Follow this and additional works at: https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/jlia Part of the Diplomatic History Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, International Law Commons, International Trade Law Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Political Science Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Rule of Law Commons, Social History Commons, and the Transnational Law Commons ISSN: 2168-7951 Recommended Citation Symposium - The U.S.-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order, 2 PENN. ST. J.L. & INT'L AFF. (2013). Available at: https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/jlia/vol2/iss2/12 The Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs is a joint publication of Penn State’s School of Law and School of International Affairs. Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs 2013 VOLUME 2 NO. 2 FOREWORD The U.S.-Iranian relationship has perplexed and frustrated foreign policy decision makers, analysts, and academics for much of the last century. Saber rattling, allegations of oppressive and unfair sanctions, propaganda and covert action fill scholarly papers, newspaper articles and editorials, and academic gatherings on the dynamic between the two states. On September 28, 2013 U.S. President Barack Obama placed a telephone call to the newly elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. This was the first direct conversation between the leaders of the two countries since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The call lasted less than 20 minutes, yet its impact may challenge the current narrative and alter the nature of the relationship between the two countries—and in the process, reshape the contours of international order. By focusing its symposium1 and related issue on Iran, the Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs seeks to reshape the public discussion on how the current U.S.-Iranian relationship will affect the international order in the future—and to do so in a way that challenges conventional debates over Iran’s nuclear capabilities and aspirations. While the relationship between the two states encompasses a multitude of components and facets, the nuclear lens provides a launch point for examining that debate and the larger structural forces it implicates. 1 The annual symposium of the Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs was held on February 15, 2013 at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs. Video of the symposium is available at http://law.psu.edu/academics/journals/law_and_international_affairs/lectures_an d_symposia. 237 2012 Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs 2:2 In the time since the February 2013 symposium, the public discussion has evolved and an opportunity now exists to re-consider the U.S.-Iranian relationship. The essays in this issue do so without succumbing to the usual political frames and offer pragmatic suggestions rooted in an understanding of history, international law, and the demands of those in office. In the opening essay, Flynt Leverett questions the sustainability of the U.S.’s current policy toward Iran, and its compatibility with the material and social realities facing many Middle Eastern publics. He urges U.S. officials to consider anew, and unencumbered by the axis of evil narrative, why Iran may want to pursue nuclear technology. In the conclusion of his essay, Leverett ponders whether recent rejections by the U.S. Congress and U.S. public of the use of force in Syria evince a more significant shift – and he calls on government officials to engage in a “substantial strategic revision” of the U.S.-Iranian relationship In the companion essays that follow, Daniel Joyner and Richard Butler explore how current—often competing— interpretations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) will impact its future viability. Joyner examines the history of Iran’s compliance (or noncompliance) with the NPT and the related safeguard agreements by adopting the lens of the Western arguments and then inverting the lens to show the Iranian response. This device demonstrates how competing interpretations affect the efficacy of the NPT enforcement regime. In his essay on interpretative impact, Butler exhorts policymakers to return their focus to the historical purpose for the NPT: to create a world without nuclear weapons. The companion essays from Mary Ellen O’Connell and Reyam El Molla and James Houck examine the appropriate role for the use of force doctrine in constraining state behavior, particularly with regard to the prospective use of force, by the United States or others, against Iranian nuclear targets. In his essay, Houck imagines a contemporary letter exchange between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and explores the continuing influence of the Caroline doctrine on disputes over the justified use of force under international law. O’Connell and 238 2012 Foreword 2:2 El Molla challenge the assumption, implicit in many current discussions of Iran’s nuclear program, that states have a right to use military force to end that program. Their article defends the primacy of the U.N. Charter and explores why an attack on Iranian facilities would violate international law, and do irreparable damage to the global legal order. In the concluding essay, Hillary Mann Leverett posits that the U.S.’s greatest strategic challenge is to extricate its foreign policy from a quest for hegemonic dominance in the Middle East and other critical areas of the world. She argues that Iran represents an essential proof point for resetting American foreign policy on a more productive and realistic trajectory, and offers guidance on achieving such a reset. The mission of the Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs is to provide a forum for engaged conversations between scholars and policymakers to examine the most pressing and complex international problems and trends. The U.S.-Iranian relationship has occupied this category for much of the last quarter century. There now exists an opportunity to reconsider this label, and reframe the relationship. In his presentation at the recent October 2013 negotiations in Geneva, Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif called for “an end to an unnecessary crisis and a start for new horizons.”2 The essays in this issue reflect that call and provide the insights needed to transform the U.S.-Iranian relationship from one of distrust and hyperbole to one of mutual respect and engaged exchange. Amy C. Gaudion Executive Editor 2 Michael Gordon and Thomas Erdbrink, Iran Presents Nuclear Plan to Big Powers, N.Y. TIMES, October 16, 2013, at A4, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/world/middleeast/in-new-nuclear-talks- technological-gains-by-iran-pose-challenges-to-the-west.html?_r=0. 239 Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs 2013 VOLUME 2 NO. 2 THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR ISSUE, THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY, AND THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL ORDER Flynt Leverett* INTRODUCTION This essay is grounded in two basic propositions. The first is that the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have emerged as the leading antagonists in a new Middle Eastern “Cold War” —a struggle over American primacy in the Middle East that shapes its geopolitics, even as the region is going through dramatic changes on multiple levels. The second is that how the U.S.-Iranian competition for influence plays out will have profound consequences not just for the Middle East, but also for the legal frameworks, rules-based regimes, and mechanisms of global governance that shape international order in the 21st century. This is especially true with * Flynt Leverett, Professor, School of International Affairs and Affiliate Faculty, Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University; also Visiting Scholar, School of International Studies, Peking University. With Hillary Mann Leverett, he is co-author of Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran (2013). The Leveretts also write www.GoingToTehran.com. They are grateful to the other participants in a symposium sponsored by the Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs in February 2013 (David Andelman, Richard Butler, James Houck, Dan Joyner, Tiyanjana Maluwa, and Mary Ellen O’Connell) for contributing to this event and to Butler, Houck, Joyner, and O’Connell for articles flowing from it that appear in the present issue of the journal. 240 2013 Leverett 2:2 regard to U.S.-Iranian disagreements over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities. Strategic competition between America and Iran and its implications for international order play out against a backdrop of the progressive diminution of U.S. leadership in world affairs—the end of what Andrew Bacevich has called “the short American century.”1 Since Henry Luce proclaimed the American century’s commencement in 1941, and especially since the Cold War’s end, America’s status as the preeminent power in the Middle East has been crucial to its global standing. At the same time, official American self-presentation and a considerable body of commentary and scholarship have linked U.S. primacy to the provision of global public goods; these include the transactional platforms and political and security arrangements needed to sustain economic openness and encourage continuing liberalization. The provision of such public goods has been bound up with the elaboration of rules-based regimes for key dimensions of international security (e.g., the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty) and global commerce. For decades, Washington has relied on perceptions of America as benevolent hegemon to legitimate first its post-World War II dominance over the non-communist world and then its post- Cold War primacy, in the Middle East and globally.
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