Analysis Question #2

The exact way that American diplomats will have to communicate with their Iranian counterparts depends on the exact message that America wishes to convey. America can either try for a hard or soft diplomatic approach to solving the situation, and both must take Iranian culture into account. One can look at the diplomatic efforts during the First Gulf War, where our diplomats made calm statements wishing for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and we were very willing to go to war, whereas Saddam Hussein's statements were hostile and harshly worded, but he was actually unwilling to go to war. Saddam saw our statements as being evidence that we were unwilling to fight, as his culture took our statements as something not very serious because of our different style of diplomacy. The same thing will be the case here. We must convey a strong message using the right nonverbal signals and setting to get an effect. This could mean the meeting with the Iranians may not be within a conference room like in other diplomatic settings, but where you would take a person in Iranian culture when you wanted to give him a strong message. Nonverbal cues could be the use of certain hand gestures or etiquette, and we would also need to word our statements in the correct way, if Iranian culture is similar to Iraqi culture, then we would have to send harshly worded statements to the diplomats instead of calm ones. The choice of language will be an issue, it is possible that the Iranian diplomats have English knowledge and that the American diplomats may know Farsi, but there may also be a care where both sides are dependent on translators, and one slip-up in the translation could make the crisis larger. Our diplomats are still Americans, and even with guidelines on how to behave like an Iranian, they have been brought up with American traditions unconsciously and those may interfere with their diplomatic efforts. There is also the issue of overcompensation, if the Americans are acting like Iranians and talking in Farsi, the other side's reaction could possibly be negative. Confusion might occur if the Americans try to behave within Iranian culture while the Iranians may have gotten their own guidelines to behave within American culture. In short, the Americans need to be briefed on the behaviors of Iranian culture, but must be able to change their approach during the negotiations depending on the direction they go in.

- Jon Raouf