Saddam Hussein secretly destroyed most of Iraq's illicit weapons by the end of 1991. Yet neither George H. W. Bush nor Bill Clinton was prepared to offer Baghdad anything in return - a diplomatic failure that set the stage for the 2003 invasion, two scholars have argued.
In a Foreign Affairs essay, Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfont detail how Washington's post-Desert Storm cease-fire conditioned sanctions relief on Iraqi disarmament - then moved the goalposts once Iraq began to comply, "Hvylya" reports.
"No one - I repeat no one - should conduct any normal business with an Iraqi government headed by Saddam," then Secretary of State James Baker told European counterparts in 1991. The message was unmistakable: compliance would never lead to sanctions relief or diplomatic normalization. If Saddam was Hitler incarnate, the United States could hardly negotiate with him.
Clinton doubled down. Officially he opted for containment; unofficially he would settle for nothing less than regime change. Saddam initially held out hope that the new president might offer reconciliation. "I believe that during [Clinton's] reign, a change will occur," he told his advisers in January 1993. Clinton rebuffed every overture.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spelled it out in 1997: "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." Iraq needed to "prove its peaceful intentions" - a bar the regime could never clear short of surrendering power entirely.
In 1998, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change official U.S. policy. The lesson for today's Iran negotiations, the authors argue, is stark: Washington must make clear that Iranian compliance with demands on nuclear weapons, missiles, and proxy support will open a genuine path to normalization - not another set of impossible conditions.
Also read: "Hvylya" examined how Iran's deterrence collapse made nuclear weapons more attractive to aspiring states.