BEIRUT: President Obama continues to make intriguing gestures in the Middle East that seem to soften or even reverse the policies of the George W. Bush administration. The latest was the president's videotaped message to the Iranian people and leaders on the occasion of the Nowruz holiday that ushers in spring.
"My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties,'' Obama said in the message. "This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect."
Earlier this month, the administration had extended sanctions against Iran for another year on the basis that Iran continued to pose a threat to U.S. national security.
If sticks and stones speak louder than words, the American sanctions against Iran would seem to convey a much tougher posture than the reconciliatory video message. This would appear to be the first contradiction the United States needs to sort out in its overtures to Iran.
Another is the tendency to reach out with words of friendship and mutual respect while laying down the law on what Iran must do if it wants to be invited for tea at the White House.
Obama said the United States wanted Iran to take its "rightful place in the community of nations."� But he continued: "You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.
"And the measure of that greatness,'' he added, "is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create."
We should not underestimate the courage and self-confidence it took for Obama to make several gestures toward Iran since taking office. He reflects real strength, political realism and much humility in being able to reverse many aspects of the belligerent Bush approach.
Yet the flaw in the Obama approach is a lingering streak of arrogance that is reflected in both the tone and the substance of his messages.
This is most obvious in his insistence — after telling the Iranians that they are a great culture with proud traditions, which presumably they already knew — on lecturing Iran about the responsibilities that come with the right to assume its place in the "community of nations,"� and then linking Iran's behavior with "terror of arms"� and a "capacity to destroy."�
It is difficult to see how Washington feels the positive gestures of reaching out can be reconciled with an irrepressible need to lecture others about the rules of righteous nationhood.
One of the principal complaints that Iran has against the United States — and this is mirrored in widespread Arab and Islamist resistance to the United States and its allies — is the lingering colonial tendency by the leading Western powers to feel that they write the rules for the conduct of other nations.
This complaint is exacerbated by hearing the Americans warn against the "ability to destroy" and the danger of using "terror or arms" while Washington sends hundreds of thousands of its troops around the world on destructive yet dubious missions, backs its allies in various Arab countries with a gusher of arms and enthusiastically stands by Israel in the latter's actions in Lebanon and Palestine.
The American gestures to Iran seem sincere and serious, but from the Iranian perspective they still suffer from the persistent structural weakness of dictating the rules of the game to Iran and others in the Arab-Asian region rather than engaging in a genuine dialogue.
This flaw should not detract from the constructive effort that the Obama administration is making, nor blind us to the real shifts it has already initiated. At some point, though, Obama has to decide if he wants to dictate rules or engage in real dialogue, because the two cannot happen together — especially if the standards of behavior the United States wants to see from Iran are often ignored by Washington itself.
We can celebrate Nowruz together and usher in a genuinely new spring, or we can soon celebrate April Fool's day, but in the world of diplomacy and political relations we cannot do both at the same time.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Distributed by Agence Global.
More from Opinion:
Read Full Article »