WASHINGTON INSTITUTE
by Michael Singh
November 3, 2014

By overlooking Iran’s longstanding policies, making unrequited nuclear concessions, remaining ambiguous on Syria, and allowing tensions to persist with regional allies, Washington is sending the wrong message to Tehran.

Citing U.S. and Arab officials, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that U.S.-Iran relations have “moved into an effective state of detente over the past year.” Detente implies a mutual easing of tensions, but the changes in U.S.-Iran relations have been decidedly one-sided.

The central aim of American policy toward Iran in recent years had been to persuade Tehran to make a strategic shift: away from a strategy of projecting power and deterring adversaries through asymmetric means, and toward one that would adhere to international norms and reinforce regional peace and stability. Detente — and, for that matter, a nuclear accord — resulting from such a shift would be welcome by not only the U.S. but also its allies in the region and beyond.

Iran does not, however, appear to have undergone any such change. Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon has continued unabated even as the group has thwarted efforts to strengthen Lebanese sovereignty and dispatched forces to Syria. According to the U.S. director of national intelligence, Hezbollah has increased “its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level that we have not seen since the 1990s.” Tehran also continues to support non-state actors such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen and — after a brief period of apparent estrangement accompanying the 2011 Arab uprisings — Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups……

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