There are widespread hopes, and fears fewer in number but more virulent, of the relationship between Natanz [the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment site] and Itamar [one of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank], that is, the connection between Iran’s relations with the West and Israel-Palestine peace. US Secretary of State John Kerry, in remarks made since the Iran channel showed its promise, leaves no doubt that the Obama administration considers these two threats to regional security to be conceptually connected.
In Washington, the decision to turn a new page in relations with Iran has, for the first time in more than a generation, begun to remove both practical, operational, bureaucratic and ideological constraints that have defined US policies in the region. There are encouraging signs that this “new thinking” is already enabling US policymakers to consider possible opportunities that Washington has shunned for decades — Iran, of course, is at the top of the list. Since 1979, no one within US policy and security bureaucracy has seen any value in thinking outside the box on Iran. Challenging the consensus view of Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil” was a terrible career move.
Today, however, thinking about the possibilities of an improved US relationship with Tehran is back on the agenda. And, as a consequence, there is space for more critical thinking by the Washington policymaking bureaucracy. And if Iran is no longer a taboo subject, then what is preventing Washington’s reassessment of other “little Irans” formerly beyond the pale — for example, Hamas, Hezbollah and even Syria’s terrible Bashar al-Assad?
The decision to open a dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program, if it is to be fruitful, must necessarily engage both US and Iranian policymakers, and therefore everyone else, in far broader considerations aimed at defanging other threats to regional security and devising “win-win” solutions across a range of issues according to the model being discussed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, or P5+1.
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