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Foreign Policy: Former Hostages Seize “Argo” Publicity, Call for Diplomacy with Iran
“If two former hostages can call for renewed and sustained relations with the country that held them hostage, it seems it would be an easier trick for Congress to get on board with a strong diplomatic agenda,” said James Lewis of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The event was co-sponsored by Friends Committee on National Legislation and the National Iranian American Council.
Two top
officials who were held hostage in Tehran in 1979 called Monday for expanded
diplomatic outreach to the Iranian government.
The 2012 Academy Award for Best
Picture was awarded Sunday evening to the film Argo, which focused on the plight of six Americans who
escaped as the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by supporters of the Iranian
revolution and sought refuge in the Canadian ambassador’s residence. Fifty-two
of their State Department colleagues did not escape the embassy and were held
hostage by the Iranian revolutionaries for 444 days. Two of those hostages
spoke at an event on Capitol Hill Monday and urged the Obama administration to
do more to engage Iran.
“The moment before I stepped into
that beautiful Algerian airplane that would carry me, Ambassador Limbert, and
51 of our colleagues home to freedom, I said to the senior Iranian hostage
taker who was standing on the ramp of Iran’s Mehrabad Airport, ‘I look forward
to the day when your country and mine can again have a normal, diplomatic
relationship,’” said Bruce Laingen, who
was the chargé d’affaires, then the senior U.S. diplomat in Tehran, when the
hostage crisis erupted. “I could not have imagined that more than 32 years
later, our countries would still be locked in a hostile cycle of
confrontation.”
“Only
sustained, robust, and comprehensive diplomacy based on the premise of mutual
compromise can break this cycle, which threatens to enflame the region,”
Laingen said. “And until we have an established channel for communication
between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic on the many interests we share, our
countries will continue to teeter on the brink of war.”
No one should have any illusions about
the cruelty and brutality of the Iranian regime, but diplomacy involves dealing
with your enemies, Laingen said. He noted that President Jimmy Carter‘s military attempt to rescue the
hostages in Tehran ended in deadly failure while only negotiations and
diplomacy resulted in freedom for him and his fellow victims.
The movie Argo has reinforced negative views of the Iranian
revolution in the minds of Americans, and Iranians are still clinging to their
negative views of the United States, which date back to American support of the
shah, Laingen said. But both sides need to set aside their grievances and take
new steps now, especially at Tuesday’s nuclear talks in Kazakhstan, he said.
“This
wall of mistrust cannot be torn down in a day. It won’t be torn down during the
talks, when the United States and Iran meet with the other P5+1 delegations in
Kazakhstan. My fear is that by the end of the talks tomorrow, there may even be
an even higher wall unless both sides are willing to make real
compromises,” Laingen said.
John Limbert, who was political officer in Tehran
in 1979 and later became the first deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran
under the Obama administration, said Monday that Americans fail to understand
the U.S. role in creating anti-Americanism in Iran and therefore America’s
responsibility to strive to repair long-held bilateral animosity.
“Argo highlights the negative attitudes that the
two countries have held toward each other for decades. Its brief introduction
attempts to provide historical context behind the embassy takeover, but the
film does not convey the prevailing Iranian sense of grievance — real or
imagined — that led to the 1979 attack, and to the emotional response in the
streets of Tehran,” Limbert said. “More than three decades later, the
same atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust, and festering wounds dominates
Iranian-American relations.”
The
two sides have never addressed their basic historical resentment and therefore
the P5+1 talks have little chance of achieving a real breakthrough, Limbert
said. He argued that the Obama administration has not made any real,
substantive offers that would allow Iran to compromise on its nuclear program
while saving face.
“The
U.S. ‘two-track’ policy of engagement and pressure has — in reality — only
one track: multi-lateral and unilateral sanctions, that whatever their stated
intention and real effects, are allowing the Iranian government to claim credit
for defying an international bully,” Limbert said. “The Obama
administration has not offered (and perhaps feels it cannot offer) far-reaching
sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable Iranian concessions on its nuclear
program.”
The
United States should propose talks with Iran on a host of issues besides the
nuclear program, if nuclear negotiations are not proving useful, Limbert said.
“If
the nuclear issue may be just too politically difficult, then sustained
negotiations on other issues — still starting small — will be the most
effective way to start the countries on a new path of diplomatic engagement
after three futile decades of trading insults, threats, and empty
slogans,” he said. “To move forward, we must stop holding all
questions hostage to agreement on the nuclear issue. Such an approach
guarantees failure… After all, if we and the Iranians could never agree on
anything, Ambassador Laingen and I would still be in Tehran.”
The
event was put on by groups including the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, the Council for a Livable World, the Friends Committee on
National Legislation, and the National Iranian American Council.
“If two former hostages can call
for renewed and sustained relations with the country that held them hostage, it
seems it would be an easier trick for Congress and the White House to get on
board with a strong diplomatic agenda,” said James Lewis, spokesman for the Center for Arms Control
and Non-Proliferation.
2013-03-01 16:00:57
Source: http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9032
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