The Fallout from Nowruz
Oliver Lindholm explains why soft power won’t work (in time) in Iran.
On 20 March, United States President Barack Obama ended his Nowruz overture to Iran with the words: “Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak,” essentially a message of peace from the American people. Upon the invocation of this phrase, uttered in the local vernacular, one can imagine the almost immediate, collective intake of breath from audiences. Had the President just spoken Farsi? More to the point, had he just spoken Farsi in the way in which it was intended to be spoken?
‘Soft power’ is a concept that is fast gaining traction in the United States. After nearly a decade of largely unsuccessful conventional warfare, it is increasingly recognised that an effective strategy is one that captures the “hearts and minds” of rivals, not just their bunkers and weapons caches. By structuring the preferences of others to reflect one’s own interests, soft power avoids confrontation. Prevention in this sense is obviously better than a cure.
Thus, when Obama pronounced the words “Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak”, he was putting the delivery of the message on a level footing with its content. He was, through the use of soft power, exhibiting America’s “attractiveness”; and in exhibiting it in such a way, he was hoping that American values would be “co-opted” by Iranians.
But Obama’s overture, and those that follow, will fail for three reasons. First, American soft power must target either the Iranian regime or the Iranian population exclusively; an each-way bet limits the efficacy of American soft power with respect to each. Second, the U.S. does not fully control the intensity or direction of its own soft power. And finally, soft power is cumulative; it gains force over time. But time is in short supply.
The Iranian Nuclear Situation Explained
Without equivocation, the aim of the U.S. with respect to Iran is to have the country suspend its nuclear program. Having already reached “breakout capacity”, Iran has produced enough fissile material to construct a nuclear device within months. Clearly, this is unacceptable. It would be at the point where Iran does gain nuclear launch capability that one could determine that U.S. soft power had failed.
Previous diplomatic efforts to forestall Iran’s nuclear program have equally met with little success. On the one hand, the Iranian state has continued to defy the sanctions imposed on it by the international community. On the other hand, the few attempts made by the U.S. at negotiating a compromise have ended in stalemate. Meanwhile, each day in which no progress is made brings Iran closer to nuclear launch capability.
Responding to these failed policies, Obama has opted for what Joseph Nye, the theoretician behind soft power, calls “smart power”; that is, the formulation of an effective strategy using both soft power and economic sanctions. Obama wishes to use both the carrot and the stick simultaneously. Yet, whilst such a strategy has shown some promising signs, it has not yet led to any material outcomes.
The question that one must keep in mind is: if soft power will not work (in time), why bother with a smart power strategy? At best, it is mildly distracting; at worst, it is diverting. This article means to illustrate the shortcomings of a smart power strategy that leans too heavily on soft power, and, therefore, to show the futility of an approach that uses it to press Iran into discontinuing its nuclear program.
Targeting the Iranian Regime
Immediately following Obama’s Nowruz address, the ‘Supreme Leader’, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated that the Iranian Government would play a hard negotiating game. U.S.-Iranian dialogue was to be conditional on the removal of “oppressive sanctions” and the withdrawal of “unconditional support for the Zionist regime”. Tehran has now “invited” the U.S. to the table, but refuses to include the nuclear question on the agenda.
After nearly a decade of largely unsuccessful conventional warfare, it is increasingly recognised that an effective strategy is one that captures the “hearts and minds” of rivals, not just their bunkers and weapons caches.
Such temerity is to be expected of a government that has endured strained relations with the U.S. for the last 30 years. It was, after all, a member of the select “axis of evil” group (in)famously condemned by Bush. This scarred history between the nations makes it difficult to reach an agreement on even the most peripheral of issues, but it sets itself especially against the success of U.S. soft power. Soft power will thus not have an appreciable impact on the Iranian regime for three reasons.
In the first place, U.S. soft power is not something that rests entirely within the purview of the U.S. executive. The cultural practices of U.S. society – as conveyed through the mediums of commerce, personal contact, and telecommunications – are run from the civil sphere, not the administrative sphere. Iran’s theocracy thus finds itself seemingly besieged by some of the more prurient social mores of the U.S., and unsurprisingly eschews the culture that created them.
Second, a nuclear weapon is also of great strategic importance to Iran. With the nuclearisation of Central Asia – that is, Pakistan, India, Russia and China – and the broad flexing of U.S. military might in the region, the regime has become fully aware of its vulnerabilities. Ironically, the constant threat of U.S. military intervention has actually highlighted the need for a deterrent.
Finally, there is a broad consensus within Iran that the nuclear program must continue. It has, in fact, become a touchstone for the entire government and its more moderate critics like Mousavi and Khatami. No one wishes to be seen as bowing to the West, either by slowing Tehran’s missile program or by suspending the production of reactor-grade uranium, so all give it their endorsement in one form or another.
These are the religious/ideological, strategic, and political considerations that weigh against the success of U.S. soft power, but perhaps the greater problem is that U.S. soft power limits itself. Insofar as U.S. culture inspires opposition to the regime – through the use of such media as Twitter and YouTube by protestors in June – the regime will make itself less amenable to negotiations on the nuclear issue. The U.S. may have to make the difficult decision to prop up the regime indirectly, so as to more effectively negotiate with it.
Targeting the Iranian People
If the efficacy of U.S. soft power exerted on the Iranian regime seems limited, then the success of U.S. soft power on the Iranian people is just as likely to fail. By exerting soft power on the Iranian people, the U.S. hopes to pressure the Iranian regime to end its nuclear program through a popular movement, or failing this, to have it possibly overthrown and replaced by a more moderate government.
In terms of the effectiveness of soft power, these outcomes actually seem more realistic in Iran. Nye wryly notes that “Iran is the one exception [in the Middle East] because the government hates the United States but the people don’t”. Indeed, a 2008 WorldPublicOpinion.org poll found that, even after the previous Bush administration had alienated over four-fifths of the Iranian population, a majority of Iranians continued to hold the American people in high esteem.
The U.S. may have to make the difficult decision to prop up the regime indirectly, so as to more effectively negotiate with it.
But it would be unreasonable to suppose that greater soft power in this area would allow a greater scope for success on the nuclear issue. In the first place, the moderate sections of the populace simply do not have the strength to overthrow the regime, or even, it seems, to influence it on the nuclear issue. The fallout from the 12 June presidential election, and the subsequent failure of the protest movement to effect any real change, bears out the truth of this.
Second, even if Ahmadinejad were to be replaced by a more moderate leader, there is no assurance that the nuclear programme would be abandoned. Iran’s nuclear programme was relaunched under the 1980s premiership of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and accelerated under Ahmadinejad’s reformist predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. The most for which the U.S. can hope is a more amenable setting for negotiations.
However, the U.S. runs an even greater risk. By negotiating with a regime that a sizeable portion of the moderate Iranian populace now considers illegitimate, the U.S. seriously compromises its soft power with that moderate group. Consequently, in order to maximise the impact of its soft power, it must target either Iran’s regime or its people, wholly and exclusively.
The Danger in Israel
It is important to remember that the Iranian nuclear question is an issue that involves the diverse interests of multiple parties, some of which are so immediate that they are not singularly served by soft power. Having been marked for elimination by Tehran, Israel is perhaps most pertinent in this respect.
Soft power has a cumulative effect and is best exercised over time. For Israel, however, there is no time. Israel has shown a readiness in the past to safeguard its interests, even without U.S. approval. The attacks on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian Al Kibar plutonium reactor in 2007 were precipitated by a lack of progress. There is no way to ensure that, as Iran comes closer to launch capability, Israel would not attempt a similar attack.
In terms of U.S. soft power, this would have disastrous effects. First, it would destroy the legitimacy of the U.S. in the eyes of Iran’s political moderates, and give Iran’s regime the means by which to strengthen its own mandate. Second, it may not even work. The most likely point of attack, the Natanz plant, may not even be where Iran’s matérial is being held.
Thus, as an added burden, the U.S. needs to ensure that Israel would not act independently of the U.S. In addition to its already severe limitations, U.S. soft power would need to operate under impossibly slim time constraints. It would need to go further with less. In these circumstances, why not dispense with soft power?
