United States-Iran relations driven by US domestic politics

The United States is one of the very few countries having most long-term tensions with other countries. The reasons are diversified, some of which are actually rooted in US domestic politics. The tensions between Iran and the US are a typical example.

According to Jin Liangxiang, a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the Center for West Asian and African Studies, Shanghai Institute for International Studies, Iran had tried but has failed many times to reach a détente with the US, and the reason actually was on the US side.

It is US domestic politics that had disrupted several processes of potential rapprochements. In other words, Iran-US relations had long been kidnapped by US domestic politics.

The meddling of US domestic politics in its foreign policy takes place in two ways. The first one is party politics. There are two major parties in the United States, namely the Republican and the Democratic parties. For the interests of its own party, one party would always challenge the actions, decisions and policy of the administration led by the other party within the context of party politics. As a result, an international multilateral agreement or a solution on one particular hotspot reached by an administration led by one party could be easily intentionally sabotaged by the other party in Congress.

The second is transition politics. An international solution of one administration could be abandoned by the next administration as the successor would legitimatize its own actions, decisions and policy by de-legitimatizing those of the predecessors. Usually, this kind of challenge takes place early before taking office. Anyway, it is always the best way to win the election by criticizing the policy of the incumbent.

The above-mentioned two scenarios take place in many US foreign policy issues. In climate change issues, the agreements reached by administrations led by the Democrats had been often challenged by the Republicans, and even overthrown by the Republicans in Congress.

US-Saudi policy of the Republican presidents could very easily be reversed by the Democrats either in Congress or by the president of Democrats in the name of human rights. US policy toward China, Russia and numerous other countries is also affected by US domestic politics.

Iran-US relations and US policy toward Iran are typical examples of how US domestic politics disrupted its foreign policy.

The last two decades had seen that US administrations had intended to negotiate a solution to various issues related to US-Iran relations, for instance, the nuclear issue, but had been strongly resisted by Republicans in Congress.

In 2018, the Trump Administration even withdrew from the JCPOA negotiated arduously by Barack Obama’s Democratic administration.

History also had seen how US domestic politics affected the improvement of Iran-US relations.

In the mid-1990s, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, when he was president, had intended to reverse and improve Iran’s relations with the US even by promising US companies to develop Iran’s energy projects, which was regarded as a big business. Albeit this favorable offer, Iran had been rewarded with Iran and Libya Sanctions Act by Congress and then was signed by President Clinton. The ACT prohibited companies from the US and other parties from investing in Iran’s oil sectors.

From 2001 through 2002, President Khatami saw the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to reverse and improve its relations with the US and gave very substantial support to the US in its military actions to fight against Al Qaeda and for regime change in Afghanistan. But Iran was not rewarded with goodwill from the US side, instead, junior Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address unreasonably labeled Iran together with Iraq and DPRK as “Axis of Evils”, which later served as the beginning of US policy to further isolate Iran in the two decades.

A similar cycle also occurred to Hassan Rouhani’s efforts to reverse Iran-US relations. It is not deniable that Barack Obama’s administration had seriously meant to have a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue, and to have a comprehensive dialogue as a second step after the deal.

It was with this spirit that Iran and the US together with other parties finally reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also dubbed as the Iran nuclear deal, on July 04, 2015. If implemented reasonably, Iran could have reversed and improved its relations with the US, which might be something serious in then Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s mind.

Donald Trump criticized fiercely his predecessor for negotiating the JCPOA as benefiting Iran, and he believed that such criticism could enhance his position in the presidential campaign in 2016. Immediately after taking office in early 2017, Donald Trump declared that he would withdraw from the deal, and really did so in 2018 while launching the “maximum pressure” policy on Iran, which triggered Iran’s suspension of implementation of the deal step by step. History had seen the US had lost another opportunity to reverse its relations with Iran, a great civilization.

Despite efforts on the Iranian side from Rafsanjani to Khatami and Rouhani, the relations between Iran and the US had seen a very strange rationale.

Every time the real change could happen, the positive trends had been reversed. It seemed that a very strong force had been blowing back against the trends, which finally put Iran-US relations into a worse scenario each time.

The reasons actually lie in US domestic politics. There are three categories of anti-Iran forces in the US.

The first should be those political liberalists, who regard any non-Western political system as authoritarian and the Islamic system is no exception.

The second should be pro-Israel political lobbyists, advocating counter-Iran policy for the interests of Israel.

The third should be those who had negative memories of the Islamic Revolution, and they would like to take every opportunity to defame the Islamic Revolution.

The movie Argo even won several Academy Awards, which in some way reflected the anti-Iran social sentiments in the US.

Though some US administrations did want to improve relations with Iran, they failed to do so in a sustainable way. Those anti-Iran forces would not only promote anti-Iran policy on a regular basis but also take the advantage of US party politics, congressional politics and transition politics to reverse any trends to change their relations for the better. 

That explains the nexus of problems in Iran-US relations. Though Iran had tried many times to make changes in Iran-US relations, the efforts were strongly either resisted or reversed by anti-Iran political forces in the US via its domestic politics. The root causes of Iran-U.S. relations lie in the US side, particularly its domestic politics. To put it another way, it was the US itself that had lost Iran, which though was detrimental primarily to the interests of the US itself.