Another letter from America for
Iran By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO, California - United States
President Barack Obama has sent yet another letter
to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
reportedly warning Iran that the US considers any
Iranian attempt to shut down the strategic Strait
of Hormuz as a "red line" that Tehran should not
cross or face dire consequences. While the
exact details of this letter are still unknown to
the public and limited information about it has
been leaked by the White House, this much is
clear: it shows that the US and Iran are treading
dangerous waters in Persian Gulf, which can ignite
in 2012 as a result of building tensions.
Confirming the receipt of Obama's letter,
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin
Mehmanparast stated that Iran was studying the
letter and considering an appropriate response; this
could mirror Obama's
initial reaction to a letter of congratulation by
Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, in January
2009, stating that he was "studying" the letter
and would answer, a promise he never fulfilled.
Snubbing Obama in retaliation may be on Tehran's
mind.
But, with an ongoing debate on what
kind of response to give to Obama's letter - and
non-response is still considered a response,
albeit a rather cold one - it may be useful to
probe the Iranian political mindset and engage in
a simulation of Iranian "groupthink".
That
would mean, first and foremost, delineating the
main contours of Iranian national security thought
and the nuances of Iran's current policy toward
the US.
For sure, as Iran's ambassador to
the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, stated on
the popular US talk show program Charlie
Rose on Wednesday night, that Iran sees itself
as a bastion of stability in the Persian Gulf and,
yet at the same time is determined to respond to
any threats.
He added that the US and Iran
had cooperated in bringing Afghan President Hamid
Karzai's government to power and the two countries
had common interests and needed to find new venues
to cooperate and understand one anther.
Khazaee's firm and yet simultaneously
conciliatory tone indicates that Iran is not in
the mood to start a war in the Persian Gulf and is
blaming the US and Israel for making constant
threats and engaging in destabilizing activities
such as cyber-attacks, assassination of Iranian
scientists, etc.
Inside Iran, there is a
small satisfaction at the news that in the
aftermath of global reaction to the cold-blooded
murder in Tehran of nuclear scientist Mostafa
Rahimi Roshan, the US government has decided to
postpone its joint military maneuvers with Israel,
aimed at rattling Iran according to various
Israeli pundits, thus introducing a small dent, by
no means irrevocable, in Israel's long-standing
"rent a superpower" behavior.
A minor
setback to the Israeli warmongers, yet
nevertheless hardly a major reason for the Israeli
politicians to complain of Obama's not playing
along their coercive Iran strategy that nowadays
centers on crippling sanctions led and
orchestrated by Washington.
European Union
foreign ministers are expected at a meeting on
Monday to agree an oil embargo and freeze the
assets of its central bank, French Foreign
Minister Alain Juppe said, according to Reuters.
In keeping with the deep-frozen diplomatic
tones, while Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar
Salehi said on Wednesday that Iran was in touch
with world powers to reopen international talks on
Tehran's nuclear program after a one-year hiatus,
both Washington and the EU quickly issued denials.
Yet, with the rate of escalating pressures
on Iran, 2012 may well turn out to be a decisive
year in Iran's nuclear history, irrespective of
the impending multilateral nuclear talks scheduled
next week in Istanbul, Turkey, coinciding with the
crucial European meeting on oil sanctions on Iran,
clearly a divisive issue that has compounded
European Union's problems.
The nub of
Iran's thinking as its leadership pores over
Obama's letter, which reminds one of a famous line
from the spy movie, Goldfinger, in the
scene when James Bond, about to be cut in half by
a laser beam, asks, "What do you want me to do?"
and receives Goldfinger's response, "I expect you
to die."
It seems that like that rogue
movie character Obama simply expects Iran to lay
down its weapons and lie and die, bear the
crippling weight of sanctions without an iota of
anger and animosity toward the perpetrator(s)
inflicting pain upon pain on an entire nation, in
the name of lofty counter-proliferation.
Clearly a tissue of arrogant Western
imperialist mind-set, such expectations, which
bore fruit against Iraq over an 18-year period
that ripened it for eventual invasion in March,
2003, Obama's demand from Iran is somewhat
tantamount to asking Iranians to act as passive
recipients of imperial benevolence invoked in the
name of "rule of law" and "international norms".
"Please forgive us Mr Barack Hussain Obama
if we refuse to become another helpless Iraq,
which your military pulverized under false
pretexts and, trust us, your pretexts of sanctions
and military threats against us are carbon copies
of your predecessor's egregious missteps in our
region, thousands of miles away from your
country's shorelines. How would you feel if we
constantly paraded our (growing) navy through the
Gulf of Mexico? The US is not the only country
that has national interests you know." This
quotation is the author's, but it could easily
come from Iranian officials, who find the
tightening noose of US-led sanctions increasingly
discomforting, for obvious reasons.
Following the mainstream American
discourse on Iran nowadays, the wealth of
pro-Israel pundits have aptly rationalized the
US's economic warfare on Iran as a "lesser evil"
compared to the Israeli military strike,
considered a sure thing in the absence of tough US
sanctions.
This ploy has dispensed with
any "nuance" and, instead, presented a
straightforward alternative - of either crippling
sanctions or war, thus tying Obama's hands and
committing him to the former, which in turn allows
him to send letters and warn of military blows to
Iran if they dared close the Strait of Hormuz "so
vital to the global economy".
But, why
should Iranians care about the "global" or
"Western" economy when the entire Western world
has been mobilized to cripple and decimate Iran's
economy? The imperial answer, going back to the
Bond movie, is self-explanatory: because we say
so.
Well, now Obama, let us level the
playing field a little, shall we?
The US
should have no illusion that if it succeeds in its
present campaign to impose a global ban on Iranian
oil, Iran will shut down the Strait of Hormuz and
drag the US in an unwanted military confrontation.
The question is: is the US prepared to withstand
the Iranian blows - a recent study suggests that
some 16 US ships would be sunk in a naval bout
with Iran - as well as the skyrocketing oil
prices, and the heat of indefinite role as
"gatekeepers" at Hormuz? And for what end?
The US and its allies should harbor little
doubt that Iran would go full nuclear and try to
assemble a few nuclear bombs in the event of an
Iran-US showdown in Persian Gulf, most likely
resulting in the final decimation of Iran's
mismatched navy. In a word, on all military,
economic, geopolitical, and other fronts, a US war
with Iran spells pure disaster and with the high
probability of a "lose-lose" net result.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
