What We Don't Know, Can Kill Us: Part 3.
A quick trip through the past 35 years. What Iran remembers and (most) Americans don't. And why that matters.
Less than 11 years ago, representatives of major European powers, plus the US, Russia, and China, signed an agreement that gave outside inspectors 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear sites, and capped its uranium stockpiles at 300 kgs, enriched to a paltry 3.67%. Three years later, thanks to Donald Trump, their work was ashes. Now Iran’s uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels have soared, and the world is at war. (Photo Hasan Tosun /Anadolu /Getty.)
This is the promised Part 3 final installment in the series about “memory gaps” between current US MAGA leadership and their counterparts in Iran.
Part One, about US-Iranian history under presidents from Harry Truman through Jimmy Carter is here. Part Two, devoted exclusively to the consequential Ronald Reagan era, is here. And a bonus interim installment, about a scholar who, from his home in the bombed out landscape of Tehran, is trying to bring classic works of American literature to an Iranian audience, is here.1
This final installment will run from the first George Bush administration to the second term of Donald Trump. These events all fit within Pete Hegseth’s definition of “history” (the past 47 years, the time since Iranian radicals seized US hostages) and may be fresher in American’s minds. And soon I can get on to other topics—though the war itself grinds on.
Again we’ll do it president-by-president:
Bush I: How to run a land war in the Middle East.
The reputation of George H.W. Bush has in many ways been burnished by comparison with the GOP squalor that came after him.
-He was so much deeper, more worldly, and more experienced than his son, who of course also became president. The first Bush employed Dick Cheney as a Cabinet member. The second Bush was functionally Cheney’s pawn, especially in his first two years leading to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq.
-The elder George Bush was accomplished as a person and experienced as a leader. He was in WWII combat in the South Pacific as a naval aviator before age 20; was captain of the Yale baseball team that played in the College World Series on his return from the war, plus being in Phi Beta Kappa; and bicycled around still-closed Beijing as the US envoy in his early 50s. And apart from that he had run a scandal-free CIA and represented the US at the United Nations. Compare that with any of today’s Cabinet members.
-However you feel about America’s erstwhile Episcopalian, prep-school, WASPy elite, the elder Bush illustrated the good sides of that culture. Concepts like “decency” and “how would it look” and “these are the rules” meant something to him.
-And, as US president while the Soviet Union fell apart and the Cold War came to an end, he handled the transition about as well as anyone could have. That was big.
All these—genuine!—positive points about GHW Bush seem to have obscured memories of other parts of his political life. As mentioned in the past installment, with his notorious “Christmas Eve pardons,” just before he left office, he freed most of the Iran-Contra offenders from the Reagan era. This set a terrible precedent for “accountability” and also ended investigations into his own personal role in a scheme that had unfolded while he was vice-president. He approved the racist “Willie Horton” ads against Michael Dukakis in his 1988 campaign. And, in an insult to common sense and the legal profession as a whole, with a straight face he declared that the 43-year-old Clarence Thomas, who had a total of one year’s experience on the bench, was “the best person” for a seat on the Supreme Court. To replace Thurgood Marshall. Oooof.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Clarence Thomas, who will turn 78 this summer, is still there.
But for all this mixed record, let’s say the following about George H.W. Bush: He showed how to wage a land war in the Middle East.
After Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Bush did these things before going to war, with Operation Desert Storm in early 1991. Within six months:
He assembled more than 40 countries into a coalition supporting (and in many cases participating) in the war. This was not a “who cares about NATO?” “who cares about the UN?” exercise.
He went to Congress and, after extensive debate, got both houses to pass an “Authorization for Use of Military Force” against Iraq. This was not one man’s whim.
He defined clearly what “victory” would mean—getting Iraqi troops out of Kuwait—and what would not be involved. Namely, rolling on into Baghdad to overthrow Saddam Hussein and take responsibility for Iraq’s destiny. This was not an ever-shifting mishmash of “goals” defined by angry nighttime social-media posts.
None of these steps was a gimme. Before the war, the “authorization” resolution passed the Senate on only a 52-47 vote. After the war, many people condemned Bush for not intervening to protect Iraq’s Shia, Kurds, and others in the resistance who had stood up against Saddam—and whom Saddam then killed.
But say this for Bush: He went through the steps of getting international and domestic support for what he was doing. And—in crucial contrast to the current US war on Iran—he asked and answered the question, “How does this end?” before he gave the order: “Let it begin.”
What is the Iran perspective in all of this? Two things, which again might be remembered on the Iranian side and not in the US.
-One is the elder Bush’s management of the Gulf War. In the US this campaign was forgotten so quickly that Bush went from nearly 90% public approval in polls, just after the war, to around 30% barely a year later, when Bill Clinton was preparing to beat him on a platform of “it’s the economy, stupid.”
But Iranians might recall this as an era when the US made rational judgments about how and when to commit troops. And at the time, the Iranian regime was neutral-leaning-toward-positive about the US assault on Iran’s long-time enemy, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But soon afterward, when the US did not intervene to help the Shia rising up against Saddam, and as the US seemed to assert more power as a regional hegemon (which included containing Iran), Iran’s policy shifted back toward wariness and then hostility. Again, I mention this because no one in America remembers it, and leaders in Iran probably do.
-The other is this first Bush’s tentative, early moves toward some rapprochement with Iran. In his inaugural speech, with a line Iran’s leaders might have understood as directed to them, he said:
There are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands, and Americans who are unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here, and will be long remembered. Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.
Nothing came of that. Events moved on.
The Clinton Era: Other things on his mind.
A lot was going on through the 1990s, which was mostly Bill Clinton’s era. The Soviet Union finally came apart, and Clinton’s team (SecStates Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, SecDefs Les Aspin, Bill Perry, Bill Cohen, plus VP Gore) was mainly handling that. Plus the Middle East, with the Oslo Accords. And Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday agreement. Plus NAFTA! And the WTO. And Somalia, and domestic politics, and a million other crises. And trying to enact a health care plan. Plus bringing the federal budget into surplus for the first time in decades! As Clinton left office, the federal government lodged a $232 billion surplus for its fiscal year. And then there was … impeachment.
Iran? It was still there, still part of a “dual containment” balance with Iraq, but not center stage, for either side.
And, for the record, near the end of Bill Clinton’s time in office, his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, officially apologized to Iranian representatives for the US role in overthrowing the Mosaddegh regime in 1953.2
Bush II: ‘Axis of Evil.’
The second George Bush took office with things on his mind other than Iran. But then came 9/11, and everything changed—for the world, and for him.
It seems impossible to believe at the moment, but during GW Bush’s first months in office, policy wonks actually debated how best to spend down the impending federal surplus. With big tax cuts, as the GOP always recommends? By paying down the national debt, as Al Gore and the Dems had proposed? Advance-funding Social Security? Investing in something new? Ah, those were the days.
Don’t believe it? Here was a NYT headline as the Bush-Gore contest of 2000 was heating up:
But everything changed on 9/11, from the defense budget to “Homeland Security” to alliances around the world. And while, in the very short run, the Iranian regime was on the US “side” in opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan, very soon the American president let them know which side they were really on.
In his first State of the Union address after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush named three countries that uniquely represented the evil that the US must resist and eliminate:
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
These countries, which he called out by name, were Iraq—which had not attacked the US on 9/11, but which the US would soon invade; North Korea, which had nothing to do with US terrorism, and which no country will attack because of its nuclear deterrent force; and Iran, which also had nothing to do with the attacks that had upended American policy and politics. But was now one of the three evil-doers.
The US—wisely!—did not go to war with Iran on the heels of that pronouncement. Instead—idiotically!—it decided to invade Iraq. I don’t think that many current Americans, other than former speechwriters like me, remember the “axis of evil” line, and Iran’s inclusion in it. But I bet some of Iran’s leaders still do.
Thus began … what seemed at the time like an unimaginable self-inflected wound for the US. But we were all so innocent then. We didn’t know what true self-destruction looked like, as we are seeing now.
The Obama years: One and done.
Here is the only thing I will mention about Obama’s eight years in office, as they involve Iran:
He and his team brokered the most valuable international treaty in modern history. It is known by the ungainly acronym JCPOA—Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—but it addressed every single complaint or fear that the Trump team now purports to have about Iran. Meanwhile, Obama—like George Bush before him, and Joe Biden after him—held off Benjamin Netanyahu’s incessant requests and threats to launch a bombing campaign on Iran. (Recall that Netanyahu gave a formal address to Congress in 2015, without the Obama team’s coordination or clearance, to urge opposition to the JCPOA.)
This is the place for “a picture is worth 1000 words” illustration. The graph below, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, shows the stockpile of highly enriched uranium that Iran has had before, during, and after (because of Trump’s veto) the JCPOA. In case the chart is confusing, more explanation is below.
From Statista.
What do we see from this graph? Through Obama’s time in office, Iran was steadily expanding its supply of enriched uranium. That was the impetus behind the JCPOA agreement. Then, once that deal was struck, Iran’s uranium stockpiles plummeted—that’s the straight-down vertical green line—in accord with the agreement. And, again, these holdings were subject to international inspection. They stayed low, and began rising again only after Trump, mindlessly and destructively, took the US out of the agreement and thus destroyed the deal.
Now Iran has more total tonnage of uranium than before the deal was struck. And much more of it is enriched to weapons-grade category.
You can read more about the JCPOA here. The point is: Even though Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu both opposed it—Trump apparently out of pure resentment of Obama, Netanyahu in keeping with his years-long public campaign for attacks on Iran—its results were far better than anything their ill-advised war could possibly achieve. It mandated international inspectors at Iranian sites. It limited Iran’s total stockpiles of uranium, and its maximum enrichment level. It assumed that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open — because why (before this year) would that even be an issue?
It was a better outcome than the US or Israel could possibly attain through their ruinous attacks.
Today’s Iranians know this back story. I don’t think Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, or Pete Hegseth has ever mentioned it, apart from a reference to the pathetic weakness of the Obama era.
Trump I, Biden, Trump II.
All that matters here is that in his first term Trump blew up the best possible deal with Iran, and in his second he launched a war he cannot win, and that has brought chaos to much of the world’s economy, plus death and destruction to thousands of people. Joe Biden’s administration made some tentative moves to revise JCPOA-style accords. By then it was too late. Early this year, on a whim, Trump launched his attacks.
To wrap up this series: All that today’s American leaders seem to know about Iran’s “history” is that 47 years ago, some radicals there took American diplomats hostage.
The people in charge in Iran know much more.
And that is one of many factors that now gives them an edge.
The lead picture in that post shows the Iranian scholar, Alireza Taghdarreh, of Tehran, along with Don Henley of Eagles and Hotel California fame. Henley is, with Ken Burns, an executive producer of the recent 3-part PBS documentary series about Henry David Thoreau—who, as it happens, is also the subject of Alireza’s translation work.
From her remarks, at a US-Iranian gathering in DC near the end of Clinton’s term:
It’s not surprising that there is much common ground between our two peoples. Both are idealistic, proud, family-oriented, spiritually aware and fiercely opposed to foreign domination.
But that common ground has sometimes been shaken by other factors. In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.
Moreover, during the next quarter century, the United States and the West gave sustained backing to the Shah’s regime. Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah’s government also brutally repressed political dissent.
As President Clinton has said, the United States must bear its fair share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations. Even in more recent years, aspects of U.S. policy towards Iraq, during its conflict with Iran appear now to have been regrettably shortsighted, especially in light our subsequent experiences with Saddam Hussein.
However, we have our own list of grievances, and they are serious.
And she went on to list the 1979 hostage taking and other issues that make up the “public memory” of both countries. This is how you speak as a diplomat. You acknowledge the world as the other side sees it; then you present your perspective as well.
Jim -- this has been an excellent series on the US and Iran. There is little that is more lacking these days than historical perspective, and Americans seem more historically myopic than any other people.
I see the GHW Bush Administration as the last US government with a competent foreign policy. Our generation has royally screwed it up, taking the US from an unprecedented historical position of dominance and security to the present morass. And I give no bye to the Clinton or Obama Administrations (though, as you say, the Iran nuclear deal was the best available). But Bush I and James Baker et al much surpassed anything that our generation of presidents has offered. The first Gulf war and managing the breakup of the Soviet Empire stand out among much else as successes, especially in light of later failures. Bush and Baker also, being oil-men, understood the Middle East much better and more realistically than those who came later
Perhaps their competence comes in large part because their generation actually understood global war and its uncertainties and horrors and effects. They came from a very different and complex world than we did. I share Bush's heritage of Episcopalian wasp-y elite culture (including Greenwich CT), and for all of its many shortcomings, it did impart a sense of decency and proper form as you say, but it also demanded public service and responsibility toward those less favored by fortune.
I believe that a lot of this sense was reinforced by the War (WWII) where men like Bush served along with all other sorts of Americans, utterly dependent upon each other, and in the end victorious together. (President Carter of course also exemplified what was best of that generation, that sense of public service, while certainly not being of the wasp-y elite...) And that sense of us all being in it together persisted into the first couple of decades after the war. That sense of commonality has long since been lost, and our generation should shoulder our share of the blame, for whatever else might have been our merits.
This aviation historian has to stop and say Whoa! George H.W. Bush was the youngest naval aviator to see combat in World War II. He was 19 years old when he flew his first combat missions in 1944.