Trying to figure out what the founding of an American "interests section" in Iran meant, last week I e-mailed both Derek Chollet and Anne-Marie Slaughter for comment. I posted Chollet's over the weekend. Slaughter, the dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs, wrote in today, and she says:
In assessing the importance and the desirability of establishing an interests section in Tehran, as the State Department is reported to be weighing, the first question is what an interests section actually does, before turning to what it means. The State Department has a helpful website, Diplomacy at Work, that explains: “When the U.S. does not have full diplomatic relations with a nation, the U.S. may be represented by only a Liaison Office or Interests Section.” What that means is that a small group of U.S. personnel are on the ground to advance the interests of U.S. businesses, U.S. citizens with relatives in the country, and U.S. travelers in the country. It also means that the U.S. has an official presence in the country, short of a full embassy, where citizens of the host country can go to apply for visas and track down relatives and property in the U.S. As it stands, Iranians wanting to travel to the U.S. to visit family or study must go to a small office in Dubai. The symbolism is important in that an interests section is a people to people presence more than a government to government mission. It gives reality to the constant claim on the part of the U.S. government that we have no quarrel with the Iranian people, only with the government. It would put at least a few U.S. diplomats on the ground who could interact with young people and, very quietly, with dissidents, and who could get a much more direct feel for the trends and complexities of Iranian politics. And in formal diplomatic terms, opening an interests section is step toward resuming full diplomatic relations, meaning an accredited ambassador and an embassy in Tehran and in Washington. In international law terms, not having diplomatic relations effectively means refusing to acknowledge the existence of another country as a member in good standing of the international community. Most important, however, from my perspective, is that opening an interests section in Tehran (the Iranians already have their own interests section in Washington) would be a first step toward ending the politics of fear. I was in college during the Iranian hostage crisis, with the yellow ribbons and the lengthening count of the hostages’ days in captivity. It was the beginning of an era that has resulted in U.S. embassies the world over looking like World War II bunkers, of Americans thinking about security first and outreach later. We claim to be the world’s most open society, but our diplomats live behind barricades in fearful clusters. Opening an interests section is the closest we can get to strolling into downtown Tehran, planting our flag and inviting comment, criticism, and engagement from all comers. It would reflect the much more confident and secure nation we wish again to be.
