Shooting yourself in the foot

I’ll be on Al Hurra this afternoon discussing the American failure to give an Iranian diplomat a visa to come to New York to represent his government at the UN.  Yesterday, Eli Lake and I exchanged barbs on the subject:

An Iranian diplomat participated in hostage taking in 1979, 35 years later he can’t get a visa. Typical neocon, guilt-by-asociation smears.

DanielSerwer

What if the Vietnamese had taken your approach to Pete Peterson as US ambassador there? Would you have supported Hanoi?

Nope. I am an American exceptionalist.
That was a flip response. I don’t think these things are comparable for many reasons. The Iranians knew what they were doing.
Part of the problem here is that Iran has historically violated consular agreements all the time, using embassies for terror
DanielSerwer
I’m an exceptionalist too, but it’s a limited resource. Use sparingly (and not when counterproductive).
So did we [know what we were doing] when we named Peterson. He helped counter possible domestic opposition.
ure, but in that case the peace was pretty much in place. For US and Iran, peace process is just starting.
Eli’s last point did not resonate with me: it would have been far easier for the US to appoint someone who had not bombed Vietnam and spent time in one of its prisons at the end of the process than at the beginning.
Maybe I can add a point or two.  First, it is unclear what role the Iranian diplomat in question, Hamid Aboutalebi, played during the hostage crisis of 1979.  He claims he was merely an translator for the hostage-takers.  So far as I am aware, no one has authoritatively challenged this claim.  One of the important rules of diplomacy is that you don’t hold translators and interpreters (the former do written and consecutive oral translation, the latter do simultaneous interpretation) responsible for what their role requires them to say or do.  Idiots like the Taliban and Al Qaeda do, but I’d have thought we would not want to be counted in their category.
Just as important:  Aboutalebi is reputed to be close to President Rouhani, as well as a moderate on improving relations with the US.  That is the sort of person Washington should want to be dealing with in New York, on both counts.  The first rule of diplomacy is that you get to choose your own representatives, not your adversary’s.  When your adversary chooses someone who is known to favor an agreement you want and has influence with the president you are negotiating with, the smart thing to do is shut up and issue the visa.
We haven’t been that smart.  Instead we’ve allowed noise in Congress to dictate our policy.  What will the Iranians do now?  If they name an envoy, it will have to be someone far more hostile to the US than Aboutalebi.  Their parliamentary hawks will insist on it.  Instead, they seem to be deciding not to send anyone.  That gets President Rouhani out of a box.  Iran has a Charge’ d’affaires in New York who can handle things.  But it leaves Washington without someone in New York who might have proven a more useful and direct channel than the Charge’.
I too am an American exceptionalist, but I don’t think we should use it to shoot ourselves in the foot.  We need the declining resource we call exceptionalism to project American values and ensure American security.  Refusing to accept a guy who 35 years ago translated for the miscreants who violated our embassy and tortured our personnel does neither.
Daniel Serwer

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Daniel Serwer
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