About the Islamic Republic the Secretary of State said, “We know that refusing to deal with the Islamic Republic has not succeeded in altering the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon, reducing Iranian support for terror, or improving Iran’s treatment of its citizens.”  Secretary Clinton is correct to note the challenges the Islamic Republic poses, but is incorrect to blame her predecessors rather than the Islamic Republic itself for the failure of diplomacy.

It is a myth that the United States has not engaged Iran. Every administration since Jimmy Carter’s has engaged the Islamic Republic. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan criticized the Carter administration’s diplomacy toward Iran but then, faced with his own Iranian-instigated hostage crisis, also sought to offer incentives. During his inaugural address, George H.W. Bush extended an olive branch to Iran. “Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on,” he declared. Days later, he clarified, “I don’t want to . . . think that the status quo has to go on forever. There was a period of time when we had excellent relations with Iran.” Bush offered an olive branch with the promise of better relations upon the release of the hostages, but refused to make concessions or offer incentives, even as prominent foreign policy voices like Rep. Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, urged him “to send some kind of gesture.” The Supreme Leader dismissed Bush’s initiative, however. “Iran does not need America,” he told Tehran radio.

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, relations with Iran were frozen. Neither Khomeini’s death nor the accession of Rafsajani had changed Iranian behavior. Indeed, as the Oslo Accords brought real hope of an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, U.S. concern at Iranian attempts to disrupt the peace process grew. Dual Containment became the benchmark strategy during Clinton’s first term. As Martin Indyk, the lead National Security Council aide on the Middle East told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “We do not seek confrontation but we will not normalize relations with Iran until and unless Iran’s policies change across the board.”