The Atlantic Home

Kaplan: No, Jeff, I don't think so yet. And it's the "yet" that's important. Let's see what he can get from Russia, what he can get from these other countries. I think he's ultimately going to fail, not just with Iran, but Russia too. When you look at Iran on the map, what you see is that it has long borders with former Soviet republics--Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia, etc.--and yet Iran is not sending agents into those countries, it's not destabilizing them even though they were part of greater Iran in earlier periods of history. Why? Because the Iranians have cut a deal with Russia about the southern tier of the former Soviet Union. And that is far more important to Russia then our handful of missiles in Poland that we could withdraw. I think ultimately this opening to Russia--which is worth trying because it not only offers the possibility of leverage over Iran, but also the possibility of leverage over China--will not succeed. Still, it's worth trying at this early point in the administration.

Kaplan: I know what you mean. We've been in a Scowcroftian moment since the last two years of Bush. But here's the difference between Scowcroftianism and Obamaism: Scowcroft, James Baker and other country club Republican realists of the post-WWII era, were very much of an era. They had all come out of WWII, out of the Korean war, they had served in military, they had a very skeptical view of the outside world, of what you could achieve. They believed that there were forces abroad that even countries as great as the United States could not bend to its will. The Obama people come out of a different generation--more of an idealistic, post-1960s generation where they still believe they can change things through dialogue. It's a tonal difference. But I think it's also a substantial one. I think the real narrative of Obama's foreign policy hasn't started yet.

Kaplan: It's a clearing the decks kind of thing.

Kaplan: He's established that now and I think Secretary Clinton was doing the same thing in her trip to the FarEast. And basically what she was saying, what Obama was saying through her--especially to a place like Indonesia--is that, "we were absent for eight years because our President was preoccupied elsewhere. We know you need us in the region to balance against the Chinese, this encroaching Chinese superpower. And we're here now." That was very important to say. I think though that the real test for Obama will come in places like Russia and Iran, where it becomes clear that it's going to be very hard to change those two countries self-interests as they interpret them.

Kaplan: What I'd rather have, Jeff, is enough enriched uranium so everyone knows I can make a weapon at the time of my choosing, any time I want. But I won't actually weaponize it.

Kaplan: Right. And the Americans will just have to give in on that point. And based on that, I can countenance relations with the U.S.

Kaplan: Exactly. In a way, the Iranians want something that Israel has. Israel is always an ambivalent nuclear power--everyone knows they've got weapons, but they've never actually tested one.

Kaplan: Right. Well, Iran may go along the same route. Remember, "Death to America" is the bumper sticker of the Iranian Revolution. They can compromise on everything, but once they give that up, once they allow the Americans to have an interests section in a far-off suburb of Tehran, within a week there will be lines of hundreds of Iranians applying for visas and that scares the daylights out of the Iranian regime. Because once they allow even the smallest interests sections, suddenly the bumper sticker of the revolution is gone.

Kaplan: And it doesn't matter if it's a big embassy in the middle of town or an interests section in a suburb.

Kaplan: But everyone wants to be second in line.

Kaplan: Exactly.

Kaplan: Well, it might. I would predict that Barack Obama is, today, more popular in Iran than any of Iran's leaders are.

Kaplan: I traveled all over Iran in the '90s after traveling all over Egypt. And if you were a man from Mars, coming to the planet Earth, you would think it was Egypt where there was no U.S. embassy, where Americans were hated and all of that. And Iran was the place where people liked America, they were not romantic about an Islamic revolution the way they are in many parts of the Middle East because they had already lived through one. And they had seen how it had destroyed the currency, destroyed the middle class. They were almost in a post-cynical phase.

Kaplan: Here's where I think better relations with the Europeans and Russia may play into it. Because if we string Iran along saying we're willing to compromise on this and compromise on that, and the Iranians say, we have enough uranium but we're not going to weaponize, then you have countries like Russia and Germany and others putting real substantial pressure on Iran to finally come to the table and make some real concessions. I don't think the Iranians take seriously the Israeli military threat.

Kaplan: This is not like Iraq in 1981 with the Osirak reactor. This is like a sustained bombing campaign that lasts a week. And, probably, can't take place unless you go through Iraqi airspace which is controlled by the United States. So the United States is complicit anyway. And I don't think the Americans will tolerate that. So I think the Iranians are operating on the assumption that Netanyahu's threats to attack Iran are more a bluff then anything else.

Kaplan: Deep down, I think that Netanyahu, in his mind, really believes he may take action. But we don't know the pressure that will come from the United States.

Kaplan: I was told by someone who knows, that since Obama's been inaugurated, the Iranians have stood down their special groups inside Iraq. I don't mean the Mahdi Army and them, but the cells of people who were really doing a lot of damage and violence. So the Iranians are already suggesting to us that, yeah, we want to play along but if you go backward then we may start up these groups again. And casualties may start rising again inside Iraq for American soldiers. So I think an Israeli strike would be catastrophic for the Middle East at this point.

Kaplan: It radicalizes Iran--which is not a radicalized society now, it's a very post-cynical society that hates its own regime but knows that the last time it brought down an Iranian regime, it got something even worse. It could also endanger regimes in Egypt, in other places in the Arab world. That's what I mean by a catastrophic effect.