A Success Story Negotiating With Iran

Bilateral negotiations are rarely simple, as the late-February negotiations between Iranians and Americans have recently shown. As an American-Swiss citizen, I can recount a story of successful negotiations I had with the Iranian government several years ago in a very different environment, fully aware of the tension between the United States and Iran and the positive role Switzerland’s “good offices” played between the two countries.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Swiss government established a program to help newly independent countries train their young diplomats. At the time, I brought young diplomats to Geneva – to the Graduate Institute where I worked – and toured Switzerland with them for an intensive two-week visit introducing the basics of international diplomacy.

Each year I traveled to Bern to meet with the number two in the Swiss Foreign Ministry to discuss where the program might go next. After seven years, the program had developed a successful rhythm. In 1999, I asked him, “Why not Iran?” Although Iran was not a newly independent country, the Graduate Institute had a historical relationship with it, and after the 1979 Revolution, Switzerland’s “good offices” represented United States interests there.

I tried to convince the State Secretary that bringing young Iranian diplomats to Geneva would be a promising step in Swiss-Iranian relations. In a more personal moment, he asked me, “Why Iran?” I replied that one of my best friends in high school had been the son of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and that I had always dreamed of visiting Isfahan, Tabriz, and Shiraz.

With typical Swiss caution, he said he had to check with others in the ministry and would get back to me.

Several days later, a positive reply came, though with some hesitation. There were conditions on his part and on mine. First, Bern was concerned because an important Iranian opposition leader and human-rights advocate, Kazem Radjavi, had been assassinated near Geneva in 1990, allegedly by agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. The case remains unresolved.

My own conditions were that I had always insisted on male and female participants, and that I would travel to Iran before the course to interview the candidates as I had done with previous programs. The State Secretary doubted I could achieve both conditions. But the game was on.

Over the next five months, I made several visits to Bern to negotiate with representatives of the Islamic Republic in Switzerland, as well as visits to the Iranian Mission in Geneva. Our discussions were always pleasant and polite, but very formal.

Neither of my original positions was acceptable at the beginning. But it was clear that they were interested in sending about fifteen young people to the City of Calvin for a diplomatic training course. The Graduate Institute still had a good reputation in Iran despite political changes in Tehran.

The question of the number of female participants was negotiable. In a group of around 15, we finally agreed on four or five. However, to accept this, I had to accept that one of the participants would be chosen by them, not me. His role – what I later called “the controller” – was to make sure all activities were properly supervised. He attended every lecture and excursion, usually silent but always attentive.
The interviews were the major sticking point.

After several months of negotiation, I came up with what turned out to be a successful compromise. I would give a lecture at the prestigious Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) — a major Iranian foreign policy think tank based in Tehran under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. About 50 candidates would attend. I would have a chart listing their names and where they were seated before me. As I spoke, I would carefully observe how they listened, took notes, and reacted to the ideas being presented. Based on those observations, I would select 15 participants without conducting direct interviews. That was agreed.

Bern was pleased. Tehran was pleased. And I was pleased to travel to Iran and give my lecture.

The course itself, called the Swiss International Relations University Seminar (SIRUS), was a success. Well-known lecturers from academia and diplomacy presented the basics of international law and international economics, the role of the United Nations, as well as negotiation techniques and simulations. We briefly toured Switzerland, including riding up the Pilatus Bahn – with cows and their cowbells accompanying us – to have lunch at 7,000 feet overlooking the lakes of central Switzerland. We were also briefed by Swiss officials in Bern.

I have only positive memories of the course. Tensions with “the controller” were limited. The experience was probably also well received in Tehran. Several months after the course I was invited back to give a lecture at IPIS, which was published in English and Farsi. I was also invited by the Iranian government to visit Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz after my lecture.

How does the course relate to the current situation? I have had no further contact with the participants, but one incident from my later visit to Iran remains vivid in my memory.

During my second lecture and visit around Iran, I stayed in an elegant guest house far from downtown Tehran. One evening before my departure I was invited out by a high government official for a final farewell dinner. I saw no need to take my telephone, and left it in one of the rooms of the suite.
When I returned and checked, my phone was missing. I quickly called the person responsible for the guest house, who simply shrugged. I then called the government official who had entertained me and frantically told him that I was leaving the next day and could not leave without my phone. No solution was found. So I left Iran without my phone.

After returning home, I quickly informed my contacts in Bern and Geneva about the missing phone. Several weeks later my Iranian contact in Geneva came to my office and returned my phone, placing it rather emphatically on my desk. When I asked how they had found it, and from whom, he looked me straight in the eye, and said coldly; “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know,” with a very firm, almost intimidating manner.

People and countries can have many different faces. My Iranian contact in Geneva and I had had an almost friendly relationship, certainly beyond a purely diplomatic one. The manner in which he returned the phone surprised me. But people, like countries, can have multiple identities, as we are learning every day in the news.

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