What is the lesson of “Argo” when it comes to dealing with Iran?
The historical thriller “Argo” has swept the awards season. It has also opened up a debate on how Iran and the United States perceive each other. The film’s real lesson is that the events of 1979 still have the power to affect events today. The hostage crisis casts its shadow over Iran’s relations with the United States and other nations.
Attitudes shaped by those events have led both sides to expect rapprochement efforts to fail— including the upcoming negotiations between the six world powers and Iran scheduled for February 26. Both Iran and the United States must deal with their past grievances to move on.
How does the 1979 hostage ordeal shape Iran and U.S. attitudes today?
“Argo” highlights the negative attitudes that the two countries have held toward each other for the past three decades. Its brief introduction attempted to provide historical context behind the embassy takeover. But the film did not convey the prevailing Iranian sense of grievance—real or imagined—that led to the attack, and to the emotional response in the streets of Tehran.
Jimmy Carter’s administration was oblivious to the depths of resentment and fury in revolutionary Iran, and to the suspicion that would greet the October 1979 decision to admit the shah to the United States for medical treatment. Many Americans still do not understand that resentment, which many Iranians still hold. The film may have reinforced stereotypes of Iranians as violent, fanatical and deceitful.
The Iranian government has also been oblivious to the effect of issuing commemorative stamps and holding annual rallies to mark the embassy takeover. These actions have reinforced the perception that Iranians are irrational or that they will not negotiate in good faith with the United States. Mohammad Khatami’s presidency from 1997 to 2005 was a notable exception, as turnouts for rallies were significantly lower at that time.
The current presidents of both countries have noted the importance of perceptions and attitudes. President Obama said that negative “preconceptions” hamper peace efforts in the Middle East in a 2009 interview with Al Arabiya. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decried the “negative mentality” (zehniyat-e manfi) between Iran and the United States in comments to American academics in October 2012.
What has been the Iranian response to “Argo”?
“Argo” has ripped a scab off an old wound and reminded many Iranians of an ugly chapter in their history. The film has forced Iranians to confront the events of 1979. Until now, many Iranians, including Ahmadinejad, had treated the events surrounding the embassy takeover as ancient history. In September 2010, I asked Ahmadinejad about the hostage crisis. “You were treated well, weren’t you?” he said. Khamenei expressed the same attitude in April 1980, while I was a hostage with 51 other Americans. He visited the hostages and told the press that they were “very happy and even thanked their captors for treating them so well.”
The film has exacerbated a deep divide among Iranians. Private showings of “Argo” have reportedly revived the debate on the wisdom or folly of the embassy takeover, and how the government allowed the student sit-in to become a major international crisis.
Critics of the embassy takeover claim it sent Iran careening down a course of war, brutality, extremism, repression, and international isolation. They argue that it unleashed a torrent of hysteria that destroyed any chance that the revolution would lead to something better for most Iranians. The takeover is a source of shame for some. But others seem proud of the students who stormed the embassy.
Some Iranians have criticized “Argo” for its portrayal of post-revolution Iran. “We Iranians look stupid, backward, and simple-minded in this movie,” a self-described film specialist told The New York Times at a conference in Tehran in February. Participants of the third annual “Hollywoodism” conference claim there is a hidden agenda behind American films like “Argo.”
How might the outcome of the upcoming negotiations be based on past fears and lack of trust?
Iranian distrust of the United States could be an obstacle to multilateral negotiations. “There are many reasons for this distrust,” said Supreme Leader Khamenei in a February 2013 speech. He claimed that Iranian officials have been harmed whenever they trusted the United States during the past 60 years. Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezai claimed the United States has “stonewalled” negotiations with the P5+1 in remarks to Fars News Agency in February.
The next round of negotiations is unlikely to produce a breakthrough in this atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust, and festering wounds. Negotiators from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States—the so-called P5+1—are scheduled to discuss the nuclear issue with their Iranian counterparts in Kazakhstan on February 26. “Argo” probably has a better chance of winning an Oscar on February 24 than the negotiators have of breaking their long deadlock.
Iran and the United States need to leave their old resentments and suspicions behind to move forward. On the nuclear issue, both sides have painted themselves into rhetorical corners. Officials frame the conversation in terms of one side’s rights and the other’s obligations. There is little room for progress as long as the two sides confine their discussions to this difficult issue.
Neither side can afford to make concessions that the other could accept. The United States cannot backtrack on sanctions and Iran cannot suspend uranium enrichment. Simply put, the Iranians want what the Americans cannot give them.
First published in the The Iran Primer, United States Institute of Peace.
AUTHOR
John Limbert was appointed Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at the U.S. Naval Academy in 2006 after 33 years of service with the State Department. The ambassador briefly returned to the State Department and served as deputy assistant secretary for Iran from November 2009 through July 2010. In 1979, he was posted at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and was captured along with 51 other Americans. They were held hostage for 444 days.
John, are you an IRI Agent?! Just kidding! It's just that anyone who tries t mediate something between US and Iran is called an IRI Agent! It may be news to you, though I doubt it since you know much about Iran, but in circles where Iranians blog and communicate in US that is the mentality.
I'm glad you've posted here and hope you can talk to us a little more about your time in captivity. Not too much detail but if you can engage us in the comments section a little.
I liked the parts of your article where you're refering to perceptions and lack of understanding of the resentments Iranian hold as part of the problem, maybe a major problem. As you noted in movies and media Iranians are portrayed as backward, violent, radical and deceitful. Yet if the movies and media in US is the yard stick to use, last year an Iranian movie made in Iran under the censorship of Islamic Republic won an Oscar, the most prestigious award in Hollywood for a foreign film. That should say something.
Ambassador John Limbert, the author of Shiraz in the age of Hafez and Negotiating with Iran, is the most knowledgeable American involved in the contemporary politics I know, when it comes to everything Iranian – thanks to living in Iran for a decade and marrying an Iranian, in addition to being an academic. Yet, he - like many other Americans – suffers from the exceptionalism syndrome – the self-righteous narrative that regards Americans as “rational”, and their adversaries as “irrational”.
To make his point about the mistrust between the two governments, he quotes several Iranian officials, but not once does he quote what American politicians have said about Iranians since the time of Dr. Mossaddegh. And, he makes no mention of the fact that Iran is the boogeyman de jour of the American politics – from being a member of the “Axis of Evil” to building “nuclear weapons”.
He also does not want to remind anyone that Mohsen Rezai's claim that the U.S. '“stonewalled” negotiations with the P5+1' is not that “irrational” in light of the fact that Obama administration indeed sabotaged the agreement reached between Iran and Brazil+Turkey - on terms originally demanded by Obama - with respect to the exchange of Iran's low-enriched uranium with the fuel rods needed for producing medical isotopes.
The real question is not what part of Argo is fiction. If Spielberg can change the Congress's vote on banning slavery – to the dismay of people of Connecticut – who can expect historical accuracy from Affleck? The real question for the erudite John Limbert is why reaching an agreement with the IRI is antithetical to the U.S. geopolitical strategy in the Middle East?
Naazer, cold geopolitical calculations demand that governments deal with governments. No matter how terrible one of them may be. If you want North Korea to change its behavior, you have no choice but to deal with its government. It was the same with the Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao. And it is the same with Iran under Khamenei. The US and the good chunk of the international communuty want to contain Iran's nuclear enrichment activities. How will they achieve that without dealing with Islamic Republic?
Now, the problem is that the Islamic Republic is unwilling or incapable of reaching a compromise. The regime is obviously intent on dragging the negotiations indefinitely without giving any concessions. The Iranian negotiating team has nothing but "no" to offer. It listens only to orders from Khamenei and he has no intention of limiting uranium enrichment. He is willing to see the destructuon of the Iranian economy under crippling sanctions and worsening political infighting as the price for maintaing and expanding a nuclear capability that has no real strategic benefit. Supreme stupidity!
JJ,
Let's agree to disagree. Your comment is – more or less – a repetition of the American version of the US-IRI negotiations. For starters, I suggest reading the piece in The National Interest, posted on this page by Firedup. To the best of my knowledge, the American side has never agreed to sit down across the table and negotiate with the aim of finding common grounds – at least not since the 1981 Algiers meeting. (Do you remember how Bush treated Khatami's grand bargain offer?) As this article quotes NYT, “Mr. Obama’s aides seem content with stalemate.” There is every indication that Obama's policy toward IRI is very much the same as Clinton's vis-a-vie Iraq in the '90s: starving people and destroying the country's infrastructure in order to pave the road for regime change. And, Iran's nuclear energy program is as much a red herring as was Iraq's WMDs.
I realize that you and I find innumerable things going on in Iran today that we cannot agree with – that's the reason neither of us lives in Iran. However, it's a folly to think that geopolitical strategies of the U.S. in the Middle East will provide us with a shortcut for return to a democratic Iran – let's not envy Ahmed Chalabi.
Naazer: I agree with you in that the nuclear standoff is pretext to justify policy of sanctions intended to ultimately lead to regime change or to dry up all the funds that goes to Hezbollah, syria, Hamas, etc.
The geopolitical calculus is also tinged with a great deal of distrust and schadenfruede; simple human emotion.
Mr. Limbert. First, I apologize for your being taken hostage. There is no but, maybe, and what if. I am convicned the hostage taking was wrong. It was wrong then, and it is wrong today.
Second, the act of hostage taking in 1980 had nothing to do with Dr. Mossadegh. Ben Affleck's cheezy introduction in his movie was a farce, although in the opnion of a movie junkie goer -- that is me -- the movie itself was a good one.
Mr. Limbert, you were taken hostage because bunch of Iranian radicals believed because President Carter allowed the ex-Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to enter the US for medical treatment, which eventuially turned out to be a true reason as the ex-Shah died, they were equally justified to take over the US Embassy and take the embassy staff hostage. They hated the ex-Shah. Period. It was not important for them that the ex-Shah was sick or was dying. They also suffered from deep paranoi that the US president was going to energize the ex-Shah and send him back to Iran, or something to that effect. As we have learned now many advisors begged President Carter to deny the ex-Shah entry in the US, but he followed his own moral conviction and let him enter the hospital.
The hostage taking indeed is a dark spot on Iran and Iranians, until such day they relaize it was wrong. Don't give me Dr. Mossadegh grievances. The radicals didn't care for Dr. Mossadegh. In fact, there is another narrative essentially saying the radicals first contemplated about taking over the Soviet Union embassy because, they reasoned, Russia at the time represented the pilar of communism and anti-God. I don't know about the truth of this narrative, but I have heard the woman spokeperson of the hostage takers made a reference to this in her autobiography.
By the way, a small number of radical Iranians did not, and after 30-plus years do not, speak for all the Iranians. Let me be blunt here: Their act then does not speak for me, and I am an Iranian.
I believe even if the hostage taking occurred because of the Iranian grievances due to what happened to Dr. Mossadegh, it still was not a humane act. They threatened the lives of many staff workers at the embassy.
I propose to them, look, you have grievances? Well, you took over the power in Iran; you destroyed a 2500-year monarchy; you executed as many service employees of the country calling them monarchist and ex-Shah supporters; why do you need to take over an embassy and take its staff hostage? You have all the power you ever had.
I do, however, give wieght to the narrative given by the late scholar Edward Said, in which he wrote in an article (or was it a thesis) that the Iranian radicals blinked. They freared. Fear of return of the ex-Shah. But even the late Mr. Said does not justify the hostage taking or at least this is how I understood it, when I read him. I understood that he pointed to a failure of the human psyche.
The movie "Argo" is a good movie. It shows how bunch of radicals could commit an act that has tarnished Iran's image for all these years. Only, and only, when Iran and Iranians apologize for the hostage crisis, this shame will go away. And, it has to be unilateral. What I mean is that I personally do not need a US apology for brining down Dr. Mossadegh or I don't require a mutual apology. I believe the Iranian people must clear their own conscious and the Americans and US goverment too must clear theirs.
I personally believe Dr. Mossadegh was responsible for the crisis he created. Not to mention he violated the Monarchist Constitution as in fact he became the Shah of the country after he closed down the parliament and appointed himself to the post of Minister of War, but that's another discussion. What I am saying even the narrative of grievances because of Dr. Mossadegh may not hold water from a factual point of view.
I am sorry you were taken hostage. As an Iranian and as myself only, I apologize to you.
This apology, sir, does not imply it is coming from Iranians at large, or God forbid, I am not presenting that this is for all Iranians. No. In fact, many Iranians either celebrate the hostage taking or have rationalized it as a politically valid decision. I condemnhostage taking on moral, ethical, and human rights bases. I reject it.
In the movie "Lincoln," when toward the end and in a scene the Confederate representatives (of course, they are called the rebels, right?) face Abraham Lincoln and in response to Lincoln saying democracy prevailed, one of them says "Democracy? What democracy? You won the war because you had more guns and more soldiers." Lincoln responds (is it he or the script or the book based on which the movie is made):
"You see, many died in this war, because we learned a democracy is not chaos that anybody can do whatever he wants."
Sir, the hostage taking was exactly that: chaos. It has nothiong to do with grievances, Dr. Mossadegh, or admitting an ailing and dying ex-Shah to a hospital on the American soil.
I know there was not a single reason you and others had to be taken hostage even for one day, let alone 444 days. None whatsoever. My apology stands because of my human rights and moral conviction. That is the reason I don't not care for a US apology for having brought down the governmwent of Dr. Mossadegh. As I said it is up to the Americans to appropriate an apology after being guideded by their own moral compass. I too am guided by my moral compass. No Ben Affleck movie can influence me one way or another.
JJ what has been US' demand? That Iran "stop" enrichment. Right? Right to enrichment is the same as right to religion or free speech! Right? So this demand from the very beginning is "RUNG"! First step is to accept Iran has a "right" to enriching uranium then we can have sit down and talk.
As far as I can tell (correct me if I'm rung ;-) the only time an American president has acknowledged Iran's right to enrichment was of all people George W Bush. At one point he said "apparently every nation has a right to enrich uranium".
Let's say Khamanei agrees to stop enrichment, then what? Sanctions will be lifted and IRI (oh IRI ;-) will be welcomed with open arms and everything will be under the bridge, everything bygones! Except of course Iran has stopped her quest for nuclear power and the only way back in is through Russia ala Bushehr. Now that doesn't seem like a good deal. It's a deal but not a good deal.
I could not agree more with what Naazer has put forward here.
There are those who always look at Iran’s side as a glass half empty and the US side as a glass half full. Looking at the course of Nuclear dispute, what has Iran received for its concessions (i.e. frozen enrichment during Khatami’s reign or the deal that was made with Turkey/Brazil) and what has US put forward that was of [real] deal that Iran did not accept?!?!?
In regards to the hostage situation, one may forget the disgraceful act by the US in 1953 when they orchestrated a coup de ‘ta against the government of Iran at the time. Regardless of what the nature of that government was, it was wrong and criminal of the US to interfere and topple it. Many believe the hostages were simply a collateral/safeguard against yet another coup by the US.
To continue to paint IRI as an irrational entity vis a vis its foreign adversaries is simply thinking with emotions at best.
Mehrdad
Dear Dr. Limbert:
An average Iranian Mohammad, Ali, Hassan, etc. deeply regrets the following errors:
o Blindly following Khomeini in 1979,
o Participating in 1979 devolution,
o Chanting death to Shah and America,
oTaking American hostages,
o Being a muslim or associated with the cult,
o Pain and suffering of the world casued by the Islamists,
o And more importantly, the mistake G. W. Bush committed in not going after the Mullahs first after 911.
And, he/she whole heartedly agrees with you, NO NUKES FOR THE MULLAHS!