Iran and the art of crisis
management By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The first six months
of Mahmud Ahmadinejad's term as president of Iran
deserve to be observed rationally, away from all the
anti-Iran rhetoric being heard in the Western
world.
The 49-year-old leader is someone
who is clearly dying for world attention. He has
earned it by moving ahead with his nuclear
program, and now faces the
threat of United Nations sanctions against his
country, despite the objections of Russia and
China.
There is plenty of talk in the
international press about UN sanctions and US
military strikes as an effective way to destroy
the ambitions of Ahmadinejad. Confrontation,
however, would not work with the Iranian
president. To deal with Iran, the West must
understand Ahmadinejad.
The Western
perception of the Iranian leader has been
distorted with reports about him being involved in
the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 at the US Embassy
in Tehran and in the assassination of Kurdish
dissidents in Vienna in 1989. Many dismiss
Ahmadinejad as immature, wild and foolish, someone
similar to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, but it would
be very wrong not to take him seriously.
A
man who survived the Iranian revolution, lived
through the bloody Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and
emerged as president with a landslide victory in
2005 is no fool. He is certainly not mad, but an
ambitious man, in his own special way, who has an
agenda for Iran that he makes no attempt at
hiding.
The secret behind Ahmadinejad
Ahmadinejad is a populist leader. One of
his goals is "putting the petroleum income on
people's tables". This explains his surprising
success in last year's presidential elections. He
was elected by poor and young Iranians, meaning he
has a popular mandate that the Americans should
not forget. He is not a dictator who came to power
through a military coup, against the will of the
Iranians.
An aide to the Iranian president
recently said that Ahmadinejad dreams of creating
a Persian empire, with its capital in Tehran.
In his own words, Ahmadinejad is inspired
in these dreams by the late ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution, and
former Egyptian president Gamal Nasser, who
revolutionized Egyptian society from 1952 to 1970
and entered history as the man to defy the United
States, Britain and Israel.
Nasser lost
his wars with the West (with a brief exception in
1956) but in the long run that did not really
matter. What mattered was that Nasser restored
confidence to the Arabs - fake confidence perhaps,
but confidence nevertheless that they have a cause
that they must promote and defend. In promoting
this cause, he believed, there were no taboos or
red lines.
That is exactly where
Ahmadinejad stands today. Like Nasser, he has a
cause he wants to promote and defend. Like Nasser,
he wants to enter history as a man who defied the
West. And like him, he also has no taboos or red
lines. One thing the world must understand is that
talk is often cheap in the Third World, especially
since the Nasserist era. Not everything people say
will materialize. Ahmadinejad wants to "wipe
Israel off the map", but he will never drag his
country into such a senseless war - unless the
Israelis or the Americans strike first.
He
knows how costly and difficult it would be to
sustain such a war, given Israel's alliance with
the US. His remarks about wanting to destroy
Israel are just provocative rhetoric said with the
aim of enhancing his popularity in the Iranian
street and Muslim world. The paranoid West and the
Israelis made a big fuss over his statements,
which in reality are no different from remarks
read every single day in the state-run dailies of
Syria, the private dailies of Egypt and Jordan,
the Al-Manar TV of Hezbollah, and the mass rallies
of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine.
How to deal with the president? The West has to decide: Do they want to
confront the Iranian president, or appease him?
Confronting him would be too costly for the US,
especially since President George W Bush is
entangled in a mess in Iraq. He does not have the
manpower for another war, nor the funds, nor the
international backing.
Also, all of
America's Shi'ite allies in Iraq are former
proteges and current allies of the Iranian regime.
Ranging from Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to the
Shi'ite leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and the Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (who is Iranian and not
Iraqi), these leaders would never tolerate a war
on Iran.
They also would never tolerate
US-engineered sanctions on Tehran. If they decide
to abandon the Americans in Iraq, and side with
revolutionary Shi'ites such as Muqtada al-Sadr,
this would be America's worst nightmare. Also,
Iran is difficult to break because of its size,
wealth and religious zeal. Any US war on Iran that
did not achieve a total regime change would be a
failure by US standards, and the Americans cannot
afford another failure in the Persian Gulf region.
A successful strike would have to target
at least a dozen nuclear production centers. Iran,
fearing the worst, has spread these all over the
country in well-protected areas, making the task
even more difficult for the Americans.
One
of the loudest voices calling for military action
against Ahmadinejad is not the United States but
Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party and
former prime minister of Israel. He said attacking
Iran "is the Israeli government's primary
obligation. If it is not done by the current
government [of ailing Ariel Sharon], I plan to
lead the next government to stop the Iranians."
Larry Derfner, who writes in the Jerusalem
Post, commented: "Preemptive military attack is
not a strategy for stopping the spread of nuclear
weapons anymore. A nuclear Iran isn't a cause for
indifference but neither is it a cause for dread
and certainly not for recklessness. A nuclear Iran
is actually acceptable. We can live with it."
If Ahmadinejad is bombed by the Americans
or the Israelis, all this will do is increase his
power at home and enforce his determination to
further challenge the Americans and Israelis. It
would make him more radical, popular and
uncontrollable. This is not Saddam Hussein. He has
not been in power for 30 years. He does not have
billions of dollars to protect or palaces to cling
on to. In short, he has nothing to lose from war
with the Americans.
In fact, he is pushing
the Americans into confrontation. One explanation
might be that Ahmadinejad promised a lot during
election time last year, but after coming to power
discovered that it would be difficult to deliver
his social, political and economic reforms. To
keep the people occupied, and divert their
attention from domestic troubles, the president
decided to confront the US and the international
community, knowing perfectly well that,
preoccupied with Iraq, they would bark back but
not confront him.
He talks about sensitive
issues such as the Holocaust and destroying Israel
partially to please the Iranian street, but mainly
because these are just jargon slogans that in
reality mean nothing.
Therefore, if one
accepts that Ahmadinejad wants to provoke a
crisis, the best way is to deprive him of it. This
means the best way to deal with Ahmadinejad is
appeasement. That term, popularized in the prelude
to World War II, is based on pragmatism and fear
of war, where a certain uncomfortable condition is
tolerated to avoid armed conflict.
Some
see it as synonymous with weakness and cowardice,
but in reality appeasement can take great courage
and wisdom. The greatest example from history is
the appeasement of Adolf Hitler by British prime
minister Neville Chamberlain in the Munich
Agreement of September 1938. Chamberlain's
appeasement was surrendering Czechoslovakia, the
only remaining democracy in Central Europe, to
Germany in exchange for a promise by Hitler that
that this would be his last territorial claim in
Europe.
As it turned out, however, this
only enhanced Hitler's ambitions, bringing him to
the conclusion that he was dealing with cowards
who would be unable and unwilling to stand in his
way as he occupied the rest of Europe.
This is what the West must reconsider,
however, before applying appeasement to
Ahmadinejad. Chamberlain appeased Hitler because
the bloody memories of World War I still haunted
the people of Europe. Britain was very reluctant
to go to war against Hitler because of the
psychological trauma that resulted from the vast
number of deaths in World War I.
In
Britain, up to 40% of all young men had been
killed in combat. King George V had famously said
he would rather abdicate and stand in central
London's Trafalgar Square, singing the communist
anthem, than let his country go through another
deadly war as the one of 1914-18. Although the
king of England was eventually dragged into World
War II, his wisdom is worth noting by the current
leaders of the West.
Ahmadinejad, by being
so controversial, believes he can survive the
storm with Washington. If a showdown with the West
arises, he would welcome it and not shy away from
confrontation, seeing it as a golden opportunity
to make history and secure for himself a legacy as
the man who fought the US.
Let us not
forget that this man's idols are Nasser and
Khomeini, not Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi.
Confrontation that would not break him would
actually make him stronger inside Iran. If
Washington ignored Ahmadinejad, the results would
be much more rewarding for the US. The Americans
must accept the reality that sooner or later, as
long as they are weak in the Middle East and
defeated in Iraq, Iran will develop its nuclear
program.
It has the power, money and
intention to do so. If Iran does achieve this
power, the US should find creative ways to
persuade Iran, by diplomacy rather than
confrontation, not to use these weapons for war
purposes. One way is to remember that Iran has no
direct conflict with Israel. It is at war with the
Zionist state because Israel is at war with the
Palestinians. If a fair Palestinian-Israeli peace
deal were reached under US auspices, then Iran
would have no reason to be at war with Israel.
A coalition is rapidly emerging against
the Iranian president from within the Iranian
regime. It is created by a strange combination of
conservatives, reformers, officers and clerics who
all worry that his policies are driving Iran into
a head-on collusion with the international
community.
The more the US pressures
Ahmadinejad, the more likely the opposition
against him will be silenced, because it is common
for people to rally around their leader when he is
confronted by an external threat. If the Americans
were to ignore Ahmadinejad, his radical policies
inside Iran would increase, and so would
resentment to his rule.
The majlis
(parliament) is not too fond of Ahmadinejad,
having rejected all of his cabinet candidates for
the oil portfolio and objected to the appointment
of his allies in senior government office. They
see him as wild and irrational, and if he
continues to make mistakes, or fails to deliver
his promises to the Iranian people, they could
eject him from office.
Iran, after all,
given all its faults, is not a Stalinist
dictatorship. Ahmadinejad is not alone in power
and he shares authority with the majlis, the
Guardians Council and Grand Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
The ayatollah was a former
supporter of the Iranian president, especially
during last year's elections. Today, however, he
has seemingly lost faith in Ahmadinejad,
empowering the Expediency Council, a non-elected
body headed by ex-president Hashemi Rafsanjani, to
monitor the president.
The Americans
should let the system of checks and balances do
its business in Iran. Its power alone can
marginalize Ahmadinejad. The Iranian system, from
within, has enough power either to weaken the
Iranian president, or at least control his
authority, if not remove him from power before his
tenure ends.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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