Hillary Clinton’s great Iran experiment

By Christian Brose

Well, what to say about Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing? When Senator Kerry Freudian-ly slipped at the outset and referred to her as "Secretary Clinton," we pretty much knew what we were in for. The senators’ kid gloves never came off. The excessive, effusive praise flowed both ways. And the discussion spent a surprising amount of time on State Department inside baseball — management, budgets, the lines between boxes on the organizational chart. This is surely fine, and I for one hope that Clinton and Obama truly do succeed in making the State Department a more capable partner to the Pentagon.

Still, to echo some of Dov’s take, Clinton’s performance was masterful. Her knowledge of the issues was real and deep. And it was hard not to appreciate how easy she made the whole thing look, as only a consummate politician such as herself can — stroking her former colleagues’ egos, flattering their pride, dodging the few hard questions they asked, and not giving an inch when a Vitter or a Lugar pushed her a bit. I don’t know if this is a good indication of how well we can expect her to handle a Putin or a Mubarak, let alone an Assad or — exactly who in Iran? But Clinton passed her own 3 AM phone call test.

From a policy standpoint, one thing that struck me was an early exchange she had with Sen. Kerry on Iran. Kerry, consciously or not, was definitely channeling Steve Biegun’s question # 2 from Monday when he asked:

Is it the policy of the incoming administration, as a bottom line of our security interests and our policy, that it is unacceptable that Iran has a weapon under any circumstances and that we will take any steps necessary to prevent that? Or is it simply not desirable?

Here’s Clinton’s answer:

The president-elect has said repeatedly it is unacceptable. It is going to be United States policy to pursue diplomacy with all of its multitudinous tools to do everything we can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. As I also said, no option is off the table.  

So the goal, as I understand it, won’t change from Bush: an Iranian nuke is unacceptable. And the contours of the strategy she described to pursue it are essentially none too different either. As we read over the weekend, the Bush administration was not hellbent on bombing Iran or having it done for them. Which should only reinforce what the second term policy really was: diplomacy. This is not a synonym for talking. It’s a mixture of incentives (economic, technological, engagement, etc.) and disincentives (sanctions, pressure, isolation, etc.) to get Iran to change its behavior. This is essentially what Clinton described the Obama administration’s policy will be:

[O]ur goal will be to do everything we can to pursue, through diplomacy, through the use of sanctions, through creating better coalitions with countries that we believe also have a big stake in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon power, to try to prevent this from occurring.

What one can expect to be different is how many and what kind of sticks and carrots the Obama administration will put forward — and whether it will work any better than Bush’s policy, which … well, isn’t. On that question, when Kerry asked her whether diplomacy backed by pressure would be sufficient to change Iran’s behavior, Clinton’s response was interesting:

You know, it’s kind of like the experimenter’s bias, in a way. We won’t know what we’re capable of achieving until we’re actually there working on it.

Now, on its face, this looks like a dodge, and maybe it was intended to be. But there’s a kernel of truth in that statement, I think. Countries follow their interests, no big surprise there. But how they define those interests is always subject to change. This is especially the case with two countries like the United States and Iran, which have had no relationship whatsoever for three decades. We have little idea how Iran precisely defines its national interest with regard to its nuclear portfolio, and my guess is, Iran isn’t sure either.

In fact, and this is what I take Clinton’s point to be: I don’t think the United States knows exactly what we would be willing to accept in terms of changed Iranian behavior, were it possible, until we actually start kicking the tires a bit and seeing what’s there. Until we actually force Iran to make decisions that it perhaps hasn’t yet made, to resolve debates that it seems only to be deferring, and compel Iran to react to us by putting the ball more firmly in their court, we won’t have a clear sense of what changes in Iranian policy are possible, and whether we’d be prepared to live with them.

Iran at this moment appears dead set on crossing the nuclear threshold, and perhaps they are. But maybe their calculation of their interests would change in response to new incentives — not only jaw-jaw, and hand holding, and sweet cooing from our coalition partners, but also greater pressure than the Bush administration was able to bring to bear to show Iran that, if they keep walking down the nuclear path, life is going to get a whole lot worse for them.

It may not be comforting that our incoming secretary of state chooses the metaphor of "experimentation" to describe one of the biggest national security challenges we have. But if you have to choose one, that’s not bad. Diplomacy is the art of the possible, and with Iran right now, who knows what’s possible?

The real concern is that, at the end of the day, nothing is possible. Maybe Iran is committed to getting the bomb, full stop. Maybe its leaders will subject their nation to any hardship in order to get it. And then we’d be faced with the same bad choice that Bush tried not to be left with, and that Obama will too: Do you acquiesce to Iran getting the bomb — or do you bomb Iran to stop them?

Maybe Clinton’s search for a third way between these bad options will be more successful than her predecessor’s. But maybe it won’t. One way or the other, this question will be answered in Obama’s first term. There’s no avoiding it.