America’s neocons are back at work demeaning an agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program — to keep alive the neocon dream of bomb-bomb-bombing Iran. And the insults are having an effect by offending Iran’s dignity and creating friction among the negotiators, writes Trita Parsi.
By Trita Parsi
There are few concepts as important yet as misunderstood and unaccounted for in explaining international affairs as dignity. Explaining what is happening in Vienna right now in the nuclear talks between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany is virtually impossible unless this critical variable is taken into account.
On the American side, the limitations of the negotiators are oftentimes explained in terms of domestic political constraints. Those constraints, in turn, are mostly rooted in the contradictory interests of various groupings and factions within the American political system. While the term dignity appears foreign to the American narrative, it does nevertheless exist in concept, though not in name.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, waving to a crowd. (Iranian government photo)
There is resistance, for instance, towards accepting that the negotiations with Iran and the United States and its partners are on an equal basis. The language of the United States deliberately seeks to reflect that it is the superpower in the equation, that it is in control, and that Iran is a lower power forced into submission.
“The Iranians know what they have to do,” is a phrase often used by Western officials. The narrative suggests that the West decides what Iran will be “permitted” to do and not do, and what it will be “allowed” to keep in terms of nuclear infrastructure.
This Western sensitivity is particularly visible when there is a perception of equivalence between Iran and the United States. When an American official suggested that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to give unlimited access to its military sites, since no country would do so including the United States, critics immediately jumped on the suggestion that the United States could be put in the same category as Iran.
For the Iranians, the opposite is…