One senses that the government of Iran’s Supreme Leader has adopted the American way of dealing with the problems around it.
The United States devised a method for dealing with global issues that successive administrations have consistently adopted. Why would they not embrace an approach they find convenient? More importantly, it serves American interests while doing little to benefit the parties actually concerned.
This American method consists of managing any problem, crisis, or issue rather than resolving it. If the Trump administration, for example, decides to address the crisis in Libya, it keeps dispatching envoy after envoy, first to Tripoli in the west and then to Benghazi in the east. The envoys continue proposing solutions that they themselves know will never be accepted by the rival Libyan parties, and this is deliberate every time.
The only result is that the crisis remains unresolved. Indeed, it grows more complicated over time, as things naturally do, yet it remains without a solution. Nothing changes except that one American envoy departs and another arrives, while nothing on the ground changes.
Take the intractable Libyan crisis as an example. Trace it back to its beginnings and then to the moment the Americans decided to intervene and resolve it, and you will find the same method consistently applied there as elsewhere: managing the crisis by prolonging it rather than resolving it.
A similar method has been adopted by the government of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has remained out of sight in Iran. Since the American-Israeli war against Iran ended on April 8, American and Iranian delegations have continued shuttling back and forth to Pakistan, which is hosting negotiations between the two sides, even if the talks have temporarily stalled.
Each time, the two parties return from Islamabad without achieving anything, or one side attends while the other stays away. What appears clear is that the Iranian side keeps presenting proposals that it already knows the American side will reject. Once those proposals are rejected, the Iranians return with new proposals through the Pakistanis, though the new proposals differ little from the previous ones. And so it continues, again and again. The aim is to manage the crisis by dragging it out and consuming time, while betting either on American fatigue or on the emergence of another, larger crisis that diverts Washington’s attention away from Iran. This is a method long associated with the bazaar and merchants of Iran, and as we can see, it differs little from the American method itself.
It is also reminiscent of the famous Greek myth of Penelope. Penelope rejected every suitor who came to her door, saying she would choose one only after finishing the garment she was weaving. Yet each night she would unravel what she had woven during the day.
In the myth, Penelope consumes time itself. She continually asks those at her door to wait, seeking more time without ever tiring or giving up. Her entire purpose was to prolong time and turn it into a tool of negotiation and maneuvering. Something similar can be seen in the Iranian case, as the Supreme Leader’s government proposes that negotiations proceed in three stages: first ending the war, second reaching a nuclear agreement, and third engaging in regional security talks.
These are three stages that require an eternity, not merely time. It is enough to recall that the second stage began during the days of President Barack Obama and then proceeded through endless advances and setbacks. Every time the process took one step forward, it soon took several steps backward, leaving the overall balance negative rather than positive, subtractive rather than cumulative.
Iran has followed this course since negotiations began and still hopes to continue along it. However, it is called upon to distinguish between a shifting reality and a myth. The myth has endured, continues to endure, and will keep enduring simply because it is a myth. Reality, by contrast, is governed by entirely different rules, none of them resembling the forces that sustain myths and renew their meaning from one era to another.
Iran must recognize that it is not Penelope, even if it seeks to consume and stretch out time, nor are the neighboring Gulf states the suitors knocking at Penelope’s door. If the nuclear agreement signed during the Obama years ultimately failed, it was because the Gulf states were absent from its signing and because their concerns were ignored despite being a central party to the issue. No new agreement can succeed unless the concerns of the Gulf states are present at the table and their views form part of any agreement. Otherwise, the previous agreement will simply be reproduced.
President Trump launched the “Freedom Project” with the aim of enabling ships stuck in the Strait of Hormuz to resume their journeys. In reality, however, he sought to send a message that relying on Greek mythological tactics in dealing with the United States cannot continue indefinitely. Even if this approach has endured as a method, it cannot continue forever, because Washington’s patience will not last indefinitely.
Penelope’s patience resembled the patience of the Prophet Job. But the government in Tehran has the misfortune of dealing with a president who is impatient by nature, incapable of enduring long delays and unfamiliar with the path of patience itself. In other words, if the myth once helped the Iranians, it will not help them every time.
