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Originally Posted by spence
I don't think you have to look at the situation through any lens, there's plenty of history to establish likely motives and predictable actions.
Yes, and if you study history as written by different historians writing it from the perspective of their political or theological orientation, you will see opposing motives and the failure to predict actions because of myopic, self-centered views which disregarded those of their opposition. The twentieth century is full of those misperceptions of opposing view, and the inability therefor to predict horrible reactions.
Certainly the US and Iranian leadership differ on many values, but I think we've become mistakenly tuned to this idea that Iran's policy is driven by an irrational group of clerics and as such any effort to engage will only legitimize irrationality.
There you go again. Who is saying the clerics are irrational? I haven't heard that as part of the argument. Are you imputing irrationality to their Islamist theo/politics. You may say, from your point of view, they are irrational, but they would say you are mistaken and ignorant. And any effort to engage with them needs to acknowledge their stated motives and their fundamental belief in their place and mission in this world. And if that mission is in fundamental opposition to your own, your desire for peaceful rapprochement is in deep trouble.
Sure, Iran wants to be stronger but I don't believe they want to defeat the West. Hell, remember just after 9/11 they were actively engaged in helping the US target the Taliban as it was a shared interest.
In the same paragraph you cast the clerics as being irrational, then you give an example of acting, I assume in your opinion, rationally. Getting rid of the Taliban, however,might have been a shared interest, but didn't share a common goal.
This attitude will certainly just make things worse. Like it or not Iran is and will always be a significant component stability or chaos in the Middle East. Disengagement over the past 30 years doesn't seem to have helped and in fact has likely made things worse.
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Clarity, if applied, should not make things worse. Then, again, it depends on what you mean by worse. Fuzzy, myopic thinking, not regarding what are the most fundamental motives and desires of those you wish to engage, certainly can make things worse.
And what is this notion of disengagement over the past 30 years? How long have negotiations been going on? And sanctions, and various political machinations for and against all sides are forms of engagement. Maybe you mean the really and truly right kind of negotiations? And, of course, for you those negotiations should continue to discount fundamental differences in world view between the Iranian theocrats and the western secularists. The latter, of course, have the "correct" view. And the Iranians, of course, really know that, they're just shamming us into thinking they're irrational so they can scare us into lifting sanctions.
Yeah, that'll work.