This week’s ker­fuf­fle over Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Ahmadinjad’s speech to Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and his request to go to Ground Zero indi­cates that we, as a coun­try, have indeed bought tick­ets to absur­dis­tan. I was in New York City for the dustup, roust­ing edi­tors from their desks and pitch­ing sto­ries, so I got to see the crazy head­lines and mas­sive mediagasm.

“The Evil Has Landed” screamed the New York Daily News. “NYers In Rage over ‘Tehran’ting Lunatic” exclaimed the New York Post. (Why not “‘Iran’ting Lunatic”?) Over­all, it was a week of ugly intol­er­ance for even the idea of dis­cus­sion. Appar­ently some things are out of bounds even to talk about, and allow­ing the Iran­ian pres­i­dent to present his views was well beyond the pale.

Which is a shame, con­sid­er­ing how nec­es­sary Iran is to the United States’ plans in the Mid­dle East. Iran is a major power that has its own inter­ests which could be brought in line — a lit­tle, at least — with America’s. So, just to be a lit­tle bit naugh­tier than the New York tabloids, let’s talk about an idea that’s prob­a­bly beyond dis­cus­sion. Given the charges that Iran is on the march across the Mid­dle East, is look­ing to “take it over” and drive the United States back into its own hemi­sphere what’s so bad about Iran­ian hegemony?

To answer that ques­tion, we first have to ask a more basic one: What does Iran really want? Most observers, includ­ing the noted Iran scholar Vali Nasr, believe Tehran wants Wash­ing­ton to accept Cen­tral Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Per­sian Gulf as its “near abroad” — “a zone of influ­ence in which Iran’s inter­ests would deter­mine the ebbs and flows of pol­i­tics unen­cum­bered by Amer­i­can inter­fer­ance.” Tehran also wants its pres­ence in in Syria and Lebanon recognized.

It’s not like it’s never hap­pened before. More than 2,500 years ago, Per­sia was the world’s first super­power and threat­ened Greece for its upstart refusal to bow to Xerxes, king of kings. Its empire stretched from the Ganges to Mace­do­nia — the great­est empire the world had known. Rich and pow­er­ful, it brought cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion to mil­lions. It wasn’t an enlight­ened rule and Xerxes was a tyrant, but nei­ther was it as bad as it could have been; sub­ject peo­ple had con­sid­er­able auton­omy. (The Phoeni­cians, for exam­ple, were par­tic­u­larly net­tle­some for the Per­sians, given they were the best sailors around and more or less ran the Per­sian navy in the Mediter­ranean. An inva­sion of Sicily was scut­tled because the upstart Lev­an­tines decided they didn’t feel like doing it. Sicily never fell into the Per­sian orbit.)

Today’s Iran is, of course, a dif­fer­ent thing. The knee-jerk response among the neo-conservative Nor­man Pod­horetz set is that they’re a ter­ror­ist regime, so screw ‘em. But it’s a bad idea to dis­miss Iran­ian con­cerns over their influ­ence in a region where they have tra­di­tion­ally had a great deal of sway. Imag­ine if some­one tried that with, say, Latin Amer­ica and the U.S. So again, what would be so bad about Iran­ian hege­mony or, more accu­rately, the accom­mo­da­tion of Iran­ian inter­ests and influ­ence through­out the region? Can work­ing with the Ira­ni­ans instead of against them be a form of diplo­matic jujitsu?

First of all, Iran already has more influ­ence in Iraq and Afghanistan than Amer­ica does. Espe­cially in Iraq, it’s got more chips in the game and more play­ers on the field, able to move them at will and check Amer­i­can ambi­tions to turn Iraq into a friendly bul­wark against Iran. (Under Sad­dam Hus­sein it was an unfriendly bul­wark against Iran.) But if Pres­i­dent Bush con­tin­ues on his quest to refor­mu­late his Mid­dle East pol­icy as one that pro­motes sta­bil­ity instead of democ­racy, the U.S. and Iran will have a joint interest.

“The Ira­ni­ans are very eager to replace the United States as a regional leader,” says Trita Parsi, an Iran­ian spe­cial­ist and author of “Treach­er­ous Alliance: The Secret Deal­ings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.” “But that’s not nec­es­sar­ily bad news.”

Much of Amer­i­can pol­icy in the Mid­dle East has been a zero-sum, bal­ance of power arrange­ment, where the U.S. sup­ported regimes such as Jor­dan, Egypt and Saudi Ara­bia, while Iran backed Syria, Hezbol­lah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries. Each coun­try is the leader of its own bloc of allies, but it’s a costly form of lead­er­ship, Parsi says, because it doesn’t allow for any kind of col­lec­tive secu­rity like you find in Europe. And while he admits the Mid­dle East is “a long, long way from that, so was Europe in 1945, but we did it.” War between Euro­pean states is now inconceivable.

“The bal­ance of power has cre­ated wars,” he says. “There hasn’t been peace in the region.”

Instead of attempt­ing to lead rival blocs against one another, the U.S. should work with Iran to take its inter­ests into account while at the same time demand­ing changes in behav­ior for that accom­mo­da­tion. For instance, in exchange for allow­ing it a large degree of influ­ence in Bagh­dad and Lebanon, Wash­ing­ton could demand that Iran cease its mil­i­tary sup­port for Hamas in Gaza and work to dis­arm Hezbol­lah so that it could turn into a full mem­ber of Lebanon’s polit­i­cal culture.

The losers in such an arrange­ment? Israel and Saudi Ara­bia, mostly. Amer­i­can and Israeli posi­tions would no longer auto­mat­i­cally be the law of the land, he says. “The Israelis would not be able to impose uni­lat­eral peace deals on the Pales­tini­ans.” And that, too, is a good thing in the long run. Instead of dic­tat­ing peace terms to a resent­ful peo­ple, Israel would be forced to deal with the Pales­tini­ans on a more equal level. And a less aggres­sive Israel would take the wind out of the sails of the more mil­i­tant anti-Israeli groups such as Hamas and Hezbol­lah, who draw much of their sup­port for their anti-Israeli stance.

Saudi Ara­bia would lose because when it’s not allied with the United States to con­tain Iraq, it’s try­ing to counter Iran. A U.S. and Iran­ian rap­proche­ment means Riyadh can say good­bye to some of those sweet­heart arms deals.

It should be noted that a sim­i­lar arrange­ment with Iran was offered, by Iran, in 2003. Iran offered to end mil­i­tary sup­port for Hezbol­lah and Hamas and work to sta­bi­lize Iraq in exchange for an end to hos­til­ity from the U.S. and an end to sanc­tions. The State Depart­ment was report­edly keen to fol­lowup on the offer, but Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney nixed it.

So while there’s no easy answer or path for­ward to work­ing with Iran, accept­ing that they have legit­i­mate inter­ests in the region could go a long way toward calm­ing the place down. But Iran has to accept that the U.S. has inter­ests, too, and those need to be taken into account as well. If the U.S. steps away from the zero-sum pol­i­tics of the last 28 years, then Iran has a respon­si­bil­ity to do so as well.

*[Orig­i­nally appeared on Spot-on.com](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/09/iranian_hegemony_whats_not_to.html)*.