Aiming for Iran
The Guardian Leader Tuesday August 8, 2006
The entrenched hostility between the United States and Iran is one of the most tragic and dangerous legacies of the old century to the new. It is tragic because the two countries have so many connections and interests in common, and it is dangerous because it so readily fuels violent conflict in the Middle East, as it did in the Iran-Iraq war, in Lebanon in the early 80s, and as it is doing again in Lebanon today. Washington’s perception of the Islamic Republic as one of its most deadly opponents is paralleled by Jerusalem’s view that Iran must be prevented from challenging Israel’s strategic hegemony, and, in particular, must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
What sent the Israeli Defence Force into southern Lebanon three weeks ago was not only the capture of its soldiers and the threat of Hizbullah’s rockets. These were certainly important, but there was a more fundamental cause. It was the opportunity Hizbullah’s action seemed to offer of dealing a telling blow to Iran by crushing its Lebanese proxy, it can be argued, which danced in the minds of members of Israel’s cabinet and general staff. What impelled the US, followed by Britain, to delay and obstruct the diplomacy which might have brought an earlier end to the fighting was, again arguably, that same impulse. Taking down Iran was more important than saving villagers in Lebanon or civilians in Israel.Yet the idea that Iran is totally dedicated to the destruction of Israel, or incapable of envisaging a friendly relationship with the United States, is far from the truth. Open discussion of Israel’s right to exist has emerged in Iran whenever controls over the media and over intellectual life have been relaxed. Even more intense discussion of the need for rapprochement with the United States has been a feature of Iranian politics since the end of the Iran-Iraq war 17 years ago. President Rafsanjani tried to open up the relationship by offering an oil deal, and President Khatami called for a dialogue between civilisations. Neither opening was successful, because the twists and turns of domestic politics meant that when one country was ready to move, the other was not.
But whoever was most at fault for these earlier missed opportunities, the Iranians, who had expressed their sympathy for Americans in spontaneous demonstrations after 9/11 and offered practical help in Afghanistan, were hardly prepared to be named as members of the “axis of evil” in Bush’s notorious State of the Union address in 2002. It was a piece of grossly irresponsible rhetoric that threw away the chance of a new start with Iran and poisoned what was still at that moment a manageable relationship. It also undermined the Iranian reformists, who had hoped an agreement with America would bolster them, and was a factor in the rise to power of a new and more uncompromising breed of Iranian conservatives.
As Professor Ali Ansari argues in his forthcoming book, American neo-conservatives helped Iranian neo-conservatives consolidate their position. Thus, when the Europeans coaxed a gesture towards Iran out of the United States to facilitate negotiations over the country’s nuclear programme, it came too late. The rightward process reached a logical conclusion with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. The Americans and Israelis might argue that it is Ahmadinejad’s Iran they have to deal with now, not Khatami’s or Rafsanjani’s. Yet Ahmadinejad is only one figure in the Iranian elite.
The other Iran, which wants friendship with the west and is not intransigent on Israel, is still there, and not totally disempowered. In any case, if the fighting in Lebanon is to stop, Iran will have to be consulted. And if the menacing rivalry between Iran and Israel which led to that fighting is really to end, there will sooner or later have to be a fundamental bargain between the United States and Iran.
Recent Comments