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Doing Business with Iran

(Brookings) Suzanne Maloney - Look at the photos from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's tour of Europe this week. The most notorious shot shows plywood barricades concealing ancient Roman statues, apparently out of concern that their nudity would shock or offend the leader of an Islamic theocracy. The alacrity with which Italian leaders jettisoned their values and historical legacy in hopes of gaining some advantage in Iran's post-sanctions gold rush is precisely what nuclear deal opponents predicted and hoped to forestall. A Europe that would so readily censor the treasures of its own glorious antiquity, in an obsequious gesture that was apparently unbidden by Tehran, is unlikely to jeopardize any budding business to penalize any Iranian infractions of the nuclear agreement, or to put pressure on Iran over any of its other objectionable policies. How can the world continue to nudge Tehran toward "acting like a normal country"? For starters, by restraining the impulse to placate ideological excesses of Iranian politics. Iran's reintegration can be a stabilizing force, but only if Tehran reconciles itself to the world, rather than the reverse. The writer is deputy director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.
2016-01-29 00:00:00
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