The Clinton Administration's Approach to the Middle East (Soref Symposium 1993)

Speech at Mashad

Speech delivered before the 51st session of the U.N. General Assembly

Speech to National Arab-American Association Forum on U.S. Policy Towards the Gulf

Speech at Baker Institute, "U.S. Policy Toward Iran"

Untitled Reply to Clinton from Iranian Leadership

Iran and the United States: Prospects for a New Relationship

Speech to the Basiji Personnel

Transcript of Interview with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami

Fax to State Department enclosing proposed “Roadmap” from Iranians

Speech at The Asia Society

Interview with Richard Armitage

Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience

Alert Memorandum "Iran - Iraq"

Memo to President Jimmy Carter, "NSC Weekly Report #156"

Letter to Kurt Waldheim

Memo to President Reagan, "An Iranian Invasion of Iraq: Considerations for US Policy"

The Iranian Threat to American Interests in The Persian Gulf

Message to Javier Perez de Cuellar

Iran-Iraq War: Analysis of Possible U.S. Shift from Position of Strict Neutrality

Covert Action Finding Regarding Iran

A Political History of the Imposed War on the Islamic Republic of Iran

Khamenei Sermon on UN Speech, U.S. Attack

Detailed and Official Position of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the Security Council Resolution 598

Attaching Draft Reply to Iranian Message

Destruction of an Iranian Jetliner by the United States Navy over the Persian Gulf

Notes of the Secretary-General's Meeting with the Foreign Minister of Iran, H. E. Dr. Ali-Akbar Velayati

Public Correspondence [regarding the End of the War]

Letter to Javier Perez de Cuellar

Iran: Patterns of Assassination

Statement before House International Relations Committee

United States of America v. Ahmed al-Mughassil et al

Staff Report on the Khobar Towers Terrorist Attack

Report to the President and Congress on the Protection of U.S. Forces Deployed Abroad

U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Address Delivered by Khatami at His Swearing in Ceremony before the Majlis

Strengthening U.S.-Asian Ties

Message to President Khatami from President Clinton

American-Iranian Relations

Address at the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations

Presidential Policy Initiative/Review -- the AI-Qida Network

Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US

Condoleezza Rice Testimony to 9/11 Commission (Excerpt)

The 9/11 Commission Report (Excerpt)

Negotiating with Iran (Testimony)

Afghan Conference Proceedings on Interim Administration Formation, Mood Remains Optimistic

Iran's Afghan Strategy

Iraq Policy: Proposal for the New Phase

Memorandum to George W. Bush attaching "Global War on Terror" paper and analysis

PST Baghdad: Iranian Influence on Baghdad Provincial Politics

Interview with Hossein Shariatmadari

Statement by Iranian IAEA delegate to IAEA Board

Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The 'Grand Bargain' Fax: A Missed Opportunity?

Statement by U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Board of Governors

Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities

Insight into Iran's Worldview: Permrep Zarif’s 1/14 Speech

IAEA/lran: ElBaradei Sees Progress from Tehran Trip

IAEA/lran: P5+1 Diverge as Russia and China See Positive Momentum

<h4>Phases of the U.S.-Iran Relationship</h4>
This timeline was sourced from briefing books compiled for a series of critical oral history conferences on the U.S.-Iran Relationship. Edited summaries and additional details provided by John Tirman.
To get started, select an entry from the timeline on the left.

The Pre-Khatami Period

After the 1979 revolution in Iran, U.S.-Iran relations deteriorated rapidly with the embassy hostage crisis. The relationship remained hostile through the reign of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Among the irritants was the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the bloody Iran-Iraq War. The relationship seemed headed for improvement after Khomeini died and George H. W. Bush became president (1989), but that momentum stalled. &nbsp;The Clinton administration applied new sanctions and attributed to Iran the Khobar Towers truck bombing of U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Clinton nearly went to war over the bombing. Khatami&rsquo;s election changed that confrontational dynamic.

The Growth of U.S.-Iranian Enmity and the Start of the War

The Iranian Revolution and the taking of U.S. embassy hostages came as a major shock to Americans. &nbsp;The support for the shah and his draconian human-rights abuses turned much of Iran&rsquo;s public against the U.S. &nbsp;A failed mission to rescue the hostages added to American anxieties. &nbsp;When Iraq attacked Iran in September 1980, the U.S. was inclined to support Saddam Hussein to dampen Iran&rsquo;s revolutionary expansion. &nbsp;That support became very extensive&mdash;with real-time intelligence, financial support, and heavy equipment&mdash;in 1982, when Iran appeared to be winning their bloody war.

The U.S. "Tilt" Toward Iraq

Diplomacy, Intelligence, and Stance toward Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons

In 1982, the Reagan administration decided to support the Iraqi war effort against Iran. &nbsp;It provided intelligence for targeting Iranian cities, large credits for commodities that braced the Iraqi economy, sophisticated technology such as computers as well as trucks and other heavy equipment, and political legitimacy. &nbsp;The U.S. turned a blind eye to Iraq&rsquo;s use of chemical weapons on Iranian forces and Kurds in Iraq. &nbsp;Overall, the U.S. aid may have saved Saddam&rsquo;s regime by preventing an Iranian victory in the war.

The Iran-Contra Affair

Israel, Lebanon, Hostages, Arms and Multi-lateral Duplicity

The bizarre episode of the Iran-contra affair was an outlier in U.S.-Iran relations It was an attempt to generate funds for a Central American militia (the &ldquo;contras&rdquo; in Nicaragua), which was prohibited by Congress, by selling weapons to Iran, on which the U.S. had an arms embargo, in 1985. &nbsp;The weapons were channeled through/by Israel.

The "Tanker War"

Re-flagging, U.S. Relations with Gulf States, The Stark and Vincennes Incidents, and the Impact on the Course of the War

Partly due to the threat of oil tankers being attacked by Iran, and partly in hopes of defeating Iran in the war, the U.S. took the controversial step of protecting oil tankers in the Gulf. &nbsp;This did raise the level of U.S. involvement and created military confrontation with Iran.

Endgame

How and Why the War Ended; The Roles of the United Nations, United States and Iran

The war ended as many do, through exhaustion. &nbsp;With the help of the United States and others, Iraq was not defeated; the war on the ground was a stalemate for years. The tanker war and the shootdown of an Iranian passenger airplane by a U.S. warship (claimed to be accidental by the U.S.) convinced Iran that it had to &ldquo;drink from the poison chalice,&rdquo; as Khomeini put it, and agree to a ceasefire negotiated by U.N. official Giandomenico Picco &nbsp;on August 20, 1988.

Clinton Arrives at the White House

Dual Containment Meets the Rafsanjani Legacy

U.S.-Iran relations began to deteriorate anew under the Clinton administration, and the new president declared a policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. &nbsp;The period of cooperation during Operation Desert Storm was over. &nbsp;Iran, now in a post-Khomeini era, was seemingly open to better relations but was also behind some acts of political violence.

Khobar Towers

The Bombing, the Aftermath and the Evidence

At approximately 10:00 PM (local time), 25 June 1996, a powerful truck bomb exploded at the Khobar Towers military compound on King Abdul Aziz Air Base near Dhahran, in eastern Saudi Arabia. Nineteen American servicemen were killed and nearly 400 more were wounded. At a press briefing given within hours of the bombing, President Clinton declared, &ldquo;The cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished.&rdquo; Former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke has written, &ldquo;The day after the Khobar attack we presented [National Security Adviser] Tony Lake with a detailed NSC Staff report placing the blame on Iran&rsquo;s Qods Force and their front, Saudi Hezbollah.&rdquo; According to Clarke, Clinton responded privately to the attack by telling his advisers that if Iran is behind the attack, then military force will be used against Tehran, and &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want any pissant half-measures.&rdquo; Clarke calls these developments the &ldquo;almost war&rdquo; of 1996.
Lake then convened the &ldquo;Small Group&rdquo;&mdash;the top members of Clinton&rsquo;s national security team, including the secretaries of state and defense, the CIA director, national security adviser, and the national security adviser to the vice president. The group is told to present options to the president for military retaliation against Iran if, in fact, it can be demonstrated that Iran is responsible. From the outset, however, the FBI and CIA investigating teams on site in Saudi Arabia are handicapped at every turn by Saudi obstruction and obfuscation. As a result, the search for proof of culpability continues at a snail&rsquo;s pace. In early August, a frustrated Clinton signs into law the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, declaring: &ldquo;You cannot do business with countries that do business with you by day, while funding or protecting the terrorists who kill you and your innocent civilians by night.&rdquo;

The U.S. Response to the Khobar Bombing

To the Brink of War

Options for U.S. military actions to retaliate for the Khobar Towers bombing hinged on definitive proof that Iran was responsible. &nbsp;The difficulty of providing this proof&mdash;hampered by Saudi intransigence&mdash;convinced civilian and military leaders that they could not go forward.

Khatami and Clinton

The election of Mohammad Khatami in the spring of 1997 signaled a profound shift in Iranian politics. Khatami was clearly a reformer, though it was unclear how far the hardliners&mdash;including the Supreme Leader&mdash;would allow him to go. The Clinton team was intrigued by this, and made some small steps toward rapprochement, perhaps too small and too slow to achieve substantive dialogue and change in the relationship.

Tehran Spring

Clinton and Khatami on the Verge of a Breakthrough?

The Clinton team sensed that new opportunities for better relations were possible under Khatami. The lack of interlocutors was one major obstacle. &nbsp;Spoilers in both capitals were busy erecting hurdles. The years of mistrust and the tendency to believe their own national narratives doomed a serious realignment of the relationship.

The Skeleton in the Closet

The Impact of the Khobar Bombing on Clinton’s and Khatami’s Efforts to Transform U.S.-Iran Relations

The letter Clinton sent to Khatami in 1999 was intended to open direct communication between the two leaders, but the hostile tone of the letter seemed to stop any progress in the relationship, despite some further attempts to reach out to each other&hellip;

Khatami and Bush

By 2001, Khatami was under severe pressure from the nation&rsquo;s conservatives and hindered from carrying out his &ldquo;Dialogue of Civilizations.&rdquo; The election of George W. Bush promised more pressure. &nbsp;While not focused on Iran at the outset of his presidency, Bush named Iran as part of the &ldquo;Axis of Evil&rdquo; following the 9/11 attacks, despite Iran&rsquo;s constructive role in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The relationship continued to deteriorate after it was revealed that Iran had a robust nuclear program. Khatami reached out for a &ldquo;grand bargain&rdquo; in a 2003 letter, but was rebuffed.&nbsp;

The Pre-9/11 Setting, the Attacks of 9/11, and Afghanistan

The election of George W. Bush in November 2000 seemed to herald a new phase of confrontation, given the Republicans&rsquo; longstanding wariness of the Islamic Republic. &nbsp;In the first eight months of the administration, however, little attention was given to Iran. &nbsp;That changed with the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. &nbsp;While Iran had nothing to do with the attacks, the administration and the public generally tended to sweep all Middle East terrorism into one indictment. &nbsp;Iran was part of an &ldquo;axis of evil,&rdquo; as Bush put it in this 2002 State of the Union speech. &nbsp;Despite considerable cooperation on Afghanistan, which harbored Al Qaeda and that required nation-building after the Taliban regime was brought down, Iran and the United States were at perhaps their most dangerous phase. &nbsp;

The Bonn Conference

After the Taliban regime fell in the autumn of 2001, the major powers convened a conference in Bonn to construct a new constitution and government for Afghanistan. Major Afghan parties were represented. &nbsp;The meeting was an occasion for the United States and Iran to interact&mdash;U.S. Ambassador James Dobbins, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. (By all accounts, Iran played a constructive role at the conference.) The two men&rsquo;s &nbsp;side conversations held promise for better relations, but Dobbins&rsquo; report back to Washington was essentially ignored&mdash;another missed opportunity.

Nuclear Revelations and the 2003 Letter

In 2002, an Iranian exile group revealed that Iran had uranium enrichment facilities operating in secret, although it was long suspected of doing so. Thus began a long effort to constrain Iran&rsquo;s nuclear program through coercive diplomacy, using U.S. and U.N. sanctions in increasing severity. &nbsp;While Khatami was still president, Iran attempted to settle all differences with the U.S., through a &ldquo;grand bargain,&rdquo; conveyed in a faxed letter in 2003 to the State Department. &nbsp;But that offer was ignored by the Bush administration.

The Iraq War

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003&mdash;ostensibly to capture and destroy Iraq&rsquo;s WMD programs, which did not in fact exist&mdash;involved Iran in several ways. Most of the Shia opposition to Saddam Hussein resided in Iran. The enormous Shia population, 60 percent of Iraq, had a relationship to Iran, which is also majority Shia. The Shia leaders had militias that would play crucial roles in the events following the U.S. invasion and toppling of the Hussein regime, roles often violent and anti-American. Stabilizing Iraq was immensely difficult, not least because the U.S. occupation was unpopular with all but the Kurds in the north. Washington reached out to Tehran several times in hopes of finding some agreement on how to stabilize Iraq, but the results of those efforts were minimal. Iranian support for militias allegedly took about 1000 U.S. soldiers&rsquo; lives. The war itself resulted in as many as one million fatalities.

Negotiations and Impasse

Nuclear negotiations between the &ldquo;E3&rdquo;--Britain, France, and Germany&mdash;and Iran, and then the United States, dragged on without result during the Bush administration, which left office in 2009. The key difference was Iran&rsquo;s insistence that it had the right to enrich uranium under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But enrichment would, potentially, give Iran a path to highly enriched uranium that could be used in a bomb. The Bush team was adamantly opposed to allowing enrichment, and thus the impasse persisted.

Lessons Not Learned

The coming of Obama (2009) and Rouhani (2013) as presidents made it possible to negotiate, at last, a workable nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), the final version of which was signed in 2015. &nbsp;While the agreement seemed to close a period of contention, the lack of deeper rapprochement and the election of Donald Trump (2016) demonstrated how fragile the JCPOA was, and how superficial an arms control agreement was in mending the wounds of 40 years.

Timeline

Phases of the U.S.-Iran Relationship