A quick Google search on “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” and “insane” turns up 468,000 responses, and indeed, the sheer volume of unusual perspectives he levies on a world stage would seem to confirm this electronic diagnosis.  But interestingly, the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results – seems not to describe the unpredictable Ahmadinejad at all, but rather his arch nemesis – The United States. 

A college survey course on United States foreign policy in Iran and the surrounding region would be hard pressed to identify a unifying theme over the past 60 years.  America’s “weekend-at-Berniesque”   support of the Pahlavi dynasty, and correlating overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh laid a trail of breadcrumbs to the pesky Iranian Revolution, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Iran/Iraq war.  It was in this war that the United States found another autocrat to support and another trail of breadcrumbs was laid to disaster. 

When the United States first offered support to Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, the man Americans remember as an evil totalitarian dictator could do no wrong – or rather he would not be held meaningfully accountable for any wrong he did.  The short-term goal of a “pillar of stability” in the Middle East was worth any long-term concessions that had to be made in the less immediate and more theoretical concerns like democracy, freedom, and state sovereignty.  But much to Saddam’s chagrin, these concerns rose to the forefront of United States’ consciousness once Iran was suitably decimated after 8 years of war.  And when Saddam sought to extend his “pillar” into another province, that lesson was brought home on the head of a scud. 

But now fully tied up in the loose ends that were frayed in pursuit of regional stability 20 years ago, caught in a staring context that is eerily reminiscent of one from six years before, one is left to wonder who is really crazy.  Certainly, Ahmadinejad’s refusal to recognize the travesty of the Holocaust,  to flout international standards of nuclear development,  to fight what amounts to a proxy war against the United States in Iraq – certainly these actions on their own are at least foolishly brazen, and at most thoroughly nuts.  But taken together as a comprehensive whole, Ahmadinejad’s antics are strategically, and dangerously sound. 

By acting with such flagrant disregard of international norms of behavior, with such a calculated effort to target the United States, and with such unabashed efforts to antagonize a diplomatically challenging situation, Ahmadinejad is forcing the United States to make one of two terribly unappealing choices: Forcibly maintain the façade of an unyielding commitment to the limitation of nuclear proliferation; or tacitly acknowledge the limits of American power and the boundaries of American commitment to non-nuclear proliferation by taking a back-seat role in the international process.  In the first case, Iran faces attack by a powerful enemy, but the enemy is more likely to kill itself given the internal disunity it already faces in reaction to the war in Iraq.  In the second case, Iran may face the wrath of the international community, but it can salve its wounds with the pleasure it derives from making the US concede, even indirectly, that if force is not appropriate here, it was probably even less appropriate six years ago. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that “the alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye”, and as Ahmadinejad madly and ferociously touts his “insanity” this week, US leaders would do well to remember this.  US policy in Iran and the Middle East has largely been comprised of short-term solutions which generate long term problems,  so it is no wonder that US leaders have such a hard time looking at Ahmadinejad’s posturing as more than the sum of its parts.   It is far easier to identify insanity than culpability, but it is only a recognition of the latter than can comprehensively disarm the former.  As Ahmadinejad shouts wildly, it would do the US much good to look quietly at the past to which he refers – not for the purpose of disregarding the wrongs Iran continues to commit, but in an effort to respond to this crisis differently – so that we may justifiably anticipate different results.