On December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, ending a decade-long effort to acquire nuclear weapons. Western capitals hailed the announcement as a diplomatic triumph—proof that adversarial regimes could be persuaded, through pressures and promises, to disarm voluntarily. Yet, what was once framed as the “Libya model” has since become a cautionary tale. Nowhere is this transformation more consequential—or more deeply linguistic—than in the case of Iran. Over the past weeks, U.S. and Israeli policymakers’ evocation of the Libyan precedent to push for the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has been met with outright rejection by Iranian leaders, who have used the comparison to drive home concerns around the perils of trusting and compromising with those they view as duplicitous Western actors, while further securitizing Iran’s nuclear program. While an initial meeting between the U.S. and Iran in Oman on April 12 may have opened a diplomatic space and another meeting is scheduled for April 19, a long road lies ahead to rebuild the trust and credibility essential for reaching a sustainable and lasting agreement. A central bug of U.S. diplomacy with Iran has not just been about policy incoherence or shifting red lines. Instead, challenges have been exacerbated by the inability or unwillingness to understand how language, memory, and perceived humiliation shape the strategic calculus of the other side. Without this understanding, crafting a sustainable, long-term nonproliferation policy remains elusive.
Language, Memory, and the Fragility of US–Iran Nuclear Diplomacy • Stimson Center
