|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://www.jns.org/the-before-and-after-in-negotiating-with-iran/
How Do Iranians Understand Negotiations and War?
(JNS) Dr. Harold Rhode - How do Iranians, as well as other Middle Eastern powers, understand negotiations and war? They ask themselves two questions. Do their adversaries have both the capability and the will to use their weapons against their enemies? If they conclude that the answer to both questions is yes, they usually determine that they must accede to their enemies' demands in order to survive. In the present case, the Iranians seem to realize that we certainly have the military strength, but they seem also to have concluded that we don't have the will to use our force. Therefore, from the Iranian perspective, that means that we are weak. That is why the more we delay action in Iran, the more they raise the ante in the so-called "negotiations" between Washington and Tehran. From the perspective of the Iranians and others throughout the Muslim world, the time to talk is only after one side wins. At these talks, the winner dictates the terms to the loser. From appearances, it looks like Trump and his foreign-policy team seem to believe that their Iranian counterparts are "negotiating" the way we Westerners do, which is a recipe for disaster. If the goal is to create a new world order where Iran is no longer a threat to its neighbors, then the U.S. must take this regime down. Any negotiations before achieving this goal just prolongs the agony that the Iranian people and all others threatened by this regime must endure. There is good reason to believe that most of the Iranians want nothing more than to rejoin the international community of nations as the respected member Iran once was. The writer, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served as an adviser on the Islamic world for the U.S. Department of Defense for 28 years.