SPEAKING FREELY Playing to
Iran's strengths By Sanam Vakil
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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Editor's
note: The permanent five members of the United
Nations Security Council agreed on Tuesday that
this week's meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog
should report Iran to the council over its
nuclear program. The decision was reached after a
meeting among the foreign ministers of China, Russia,
the United States, France and Britain, as well
as Germany and the European Union's foreign-policy
chief.
History always repeats itself.
This old axiom is ever pertinent in
examining Iran's
regional alignments and positioning as it jockeys for
power as a regional contender in the Middle East.
For the Bush administration to understand the
theocratic regime's ambitions, Washington need
only open the history books to deconstruct
Tehran's regional aspirations.
Indeed,
the decision to exclude Iran from a regional
security framework after the 1991 Gulf War
marginalized the regime and led Tehran to
strengthen its subversive regional networking
strategies. Ironically, this same pattern can be
witnessed today. After a decade of war and
isolation ending in 1989, the Iranian regime made
an about-face and sought a neutral policy of
accommodation with the US in its war with the
irredentist Saddam Hussein. No longer able to
curry favor with its war-weary population or
stimulate its war-torn economy, the clerical cadre
calculated in favor of realpolitik.
For
the more moderate elements driving Iran's foreign
policy, this strategy of temperance was a gamble
as the factional hardline ideologues were
stridently opposed to bargains with the "Great
Satan". Ultimately, Iran's newly elected
president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, sought to guarantee
Iran a role in the postwar regional security
framework. In doing so, Iran would not only be
flush with revenue but also would assume its
innate position as a regional power.
Events, however, did not unfold
as Rafsanjani had anticipated. In the
postwar reconstruction, US anxieties over Iran's
nefarious activities prevented cooperation between
the two countries. Specifically, Iran sought an
invitation to participate in the
US-sponsored 1991 Madrid Peace Conference,
while Washington had no intention of including
Tehran in the Arab-Israeli peace process, thereby
demonstrating its irrelevance to the entire
negotiations.
This clerical exclusion
was a profound rebuff, especially to hardliners
who were unconvinced about the moderation in
Iran's foreign-policy position. In response, Iran, which
had taken on the banner of Palestinian nationalism
in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, lashed out against
this rejection ferociously.
Indeed,
as known sponsors of Hezbollah, Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, patronage for these groups
and their activities increased. Throughout the
decade of the 1990s there were intensified
activities linking Iran to bombings in Buenos
Aires at the Jewish community center, the
Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and
even the Mykonos restaurant attack in Berlin
against Kurdish dissidents. This implicated the
highest echelons of Iranian leadership and led to
the withdrawal of all European ambassadors from
Tehran in 1997.
At such volatile times
Iranian support also extended into Alawite, Syria.
The Assad regime had pledged mutual allegiance to
their clerical comrades during the eight-year
Iran-Iraq War as the sole Arab state supporting
the "fire-worshipping Persians". In return, grand
ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Shi'ite brethren
enabled Hafez Assad in his atavistic quest to lay
claim to Lebanon through Hezbollah. In effect, one
facilitated the other and together they could
strike back at the "Little Satan" - Israel.
The
events of September 11, 2001, were a catalyst
for regional change in the Middle East. The
traumatic events presented a unique opportunity
for cooperation between the US and Iran, while
also permitting Iran to alter its regional
alignments. The momentous shock to the American
empire was bound to have after-effects on the
Middle Eastern landscape.
For Iran, the
"war on terror" was a blessing and a curse. As Pax
Americana came knocking on Tehran's door,
Washington first sought to eradicate the cleric's
nemeses. Initially, there were signs of
cooperation between the two nations. However, news
of Iran furnishing the Karine A vessel bound for
Palestine with armaments terminated all such
dreams of rapprochement and immediately returned
Iran to its notorious role as a triumvirate member
of the "axis of evil".
With
the United States
commencing operations to oust Iran's enemy,
Saddam, Iran nonetheless would soon bear the fruit
of the US campaign in Iraq. The consequences
for the Islamic Republic, though, lay in its
enclosure as the democratic winds of Pax Americana
would blow from the south, east and west
encircling the Iranian frontier.
Reminiscent of 1991, this isolation of
Iran has yet again reproduced Tehran's regional
balance of power schemes as a way of
pre-positioning itself to fend off any threat from
Washington.
This time, however, Tehran
is better situated, having extended its foothold
to threaten US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and the Persian Gulf.
In Iraq, Iran has allies among the Shi'ite
victors in the recent parliamentary elections. In
Afghanistan, both President Hamid Karzai and
warlord Ismail Khan in Herat cooperate with their
Iranian neighbors. Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal
Sayyed has promised to retaliate if Israel strikes
Iran's nuclear sites. Lebanon's Hezbollah, while
on the road to a democratic transition, still
receives considerable financial support from Iran.
Most significant to this group, though, is
Syria, which signed a mutual defense pact with
Tehran last spring. Indeed, both alienated
countries continue to support each other in their
domestic and international crises.
Ultimately, with Iran's nuclear crisis
coming to a head, Iran's regional alignment only
seeks to protect the Islamic Republic in the face
of the looming military campaign whispered in the
corridors of power in Israel and the US.
Most interesting has been the recent bout
of support from Saudi Foreign Minister Saud
al-Faisal, who suggested that "the West is partly
to blame for the current nuclear standoff with
Iran because it allowed Israel to develop nuclear
weapons". Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul
Gheit, meanwhile, called for a continuation of
dialogue.
Additionally, the Russian and
Chinese reluctance to sanction the clerical regime
signifies the converging commercial and strategic
synergies that override the importance of this
nuclear issue. Clearly, the Iranian clerics have
cleverly pre-positioned themselves with regional
and international allies willing to support the
Iranian position or thwart a crisis in the event
of a military strike.
For the administration of US
President George W
Bush, which is in a unique position to
manage this nuclear crisis, understanding and
managing Iranian regional objectives is crucial to
mitigating this tenuous aperture. Ultimately, the
Iranian clerics continue to seek a role in the
Middle East's regional security.
Indeed,
the clerical elite consider Iran to be located on
the precipice of global power in the region and
thus cannot be neglected. This writer's research
and interviews in both capitals concluded that
Washington and Tehran have mutual interests of
regional stability and security. These interests
can be brought together under the umbrella of the
pressing issue of regional security.
If
the Bush administration included rather than
alienated Tehran in these regional security
arrangements, the converging national interests of
Washington and Tehran could result in the further
co-optation of the Islamic Republic.
Sanam Vakil is an assistant
professor of Middle East studies at the Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
