Beginning of the Reckoning?

Last weekend, European and American leaders, in negotiations with Iranian representatives in Geneva, Switzerland, struck a six-month deal to limit the enrichment of uranium.  It is hoped that this agreement is the first step towards slowing Iran’s search for a nuclear weapon.  However, as a historian, I hope this is not the Munich Agreement of our times.  At its core is a trust (or hope) that Iran will fulfill its obligations as it sincerely presented them at the negotiation table.  Despite this, there is a fear that the western European leaders and President Obama do not end up looking like the appeasers – a group of leaders who hoped, against history, that the promises slipping from the mouths of tyrants do not end up costing us dearly in the end. 

It is often said that the current elected leader of Iran, President Hassan Rouhani, is a moderate.  Keep in mind that in a country like Iran, “moderate” does not translate to a western definition.  If indeed he is not the promise that many westerners desperately hope he is, the question must be asked about the motivation of Iran.  Iran, like most dictatorial regimes, only agrees to that which costs them nothing to do so.  Consider the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Act.  Throughout the Harding/Coolidge administrations, there was a concerted attempt to take war off the table and help bring more belligerent countries in line with some fifty-four countries signing along.  This measure was joined by earlier efforts such as the Washington Conference (1921-2) and the various naval power agreements to limit tools of war.  However, such pie-in-the-sky idealism, further advanced by the impotent League of Nations, only assuaged people’s concern temporarily.  None of the agreements or the organization prevented the carnage ahead.   

The hope for better things, with no history or facts to support such aspirations, brought us to the infamous Munich Agreement, where the Allies, desperate to avoid war, gave away Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s.  Czechoslovakia was not present at those meetings, and today, countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, very concerned by an Iran with nuclear weapons, are equally minimized and now equally anxious.  To put it succinctly, many people are concerned because they don’t trust the governments that formed the agreement.  The Saudis do not trust the Iranians to carry out their obligations and they do not trust the Obama administration or the Europeans to punish Iran should the Islamic Republic fail to uphold its end.  For Saudi Arabia, who fears a Shi’a nuclear power, and the Israelis, who fear anyone nearby with a nuclear weapon, a rather untenable situation has developed.  Despite the words of assurances by various European and American leaders, the general sense is that it is doomed to fail because the aggressor lacks the interest and the appeasers lack the intestinal fortitude for a fight.  

Herein lies the problem of all of the major conflicts that have wreaked havoc in the 20^th century.  The League of Nations was destroyed because it failed to act against Italian aggression in Albania and Ethiopia and when Japan invaded its neighbors.  U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt felt that by not joining the Spanish civil war, the fight between fascists and republicans would not grow but it did when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini helped.  The Allies partially created the carnage of World War II because they failed to check Hitler’s rise to power.  What will be said 40 years from now?  Will European leaders and President Obama further epitomize the folly of trusting untrustworthy dictatorships?  History seems to suggest that the treaty struck in Geneva will be an unmitigated disaster through either Iranian action or pre-emptive strikes by Saudi Arabia or Israel.   

From the outside, it is easy to make judgments and none of us are privy to all the factors that went into the construction of that treaty.  I can only use the examples of leaders past to understand what happens when you try to buy compliance with concessions.  One good side of the treaty is that it lasts only six months and perhaps, with a clearer vision, world leaders might take another approach.  I’d just hate to think the future of relations in the Middle East (and its stability) is dependent upon the cooperation of a country like Iran.  Let us hope our leaders have learned from history instead of just repeating it.