Ahmadinejad's letter: An
opening quickly sealed By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
In a stunning new development, a letter by
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to US
President George W Bush has stirred the diplomatic
pot and added a new and, from the US point of
view, untimely twist to the nuclear standoff, in
light of the ongoing debates at the United Nations
Security Council and the growing signs of a
predictable policy quagmire.
Described by
some diplomats as a "tactical masterstroke",
Ahmadinejad's letter has elicited a preliminary
rebuttal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
who dismissed it as a "philosophical" narrative
that does not "engage the issues". It is to be
hoped that Rice's negative reaction will not be
echoed by
Bush, who may well connect to
the religious content of the letter and its
"dialogue among theologies" subtext.
According to Rice, there is "nothing in
this letter that in any way addresses any of the
issues that are on the table in the international
community". That is strange, since the letter
covers a whole array of international issues,
including Third World poverty, superpower
militarism, multinational exploitation, the plight
of Palestinian people and, of course, Iran's right
to civilian nuclear technology.
Maybe Rice
does not like Iran's perception of the relevant
global issues, but can she really dispute
Ahmadinejad's assertion that the United States'
global policies, particularly in the Middle East,
have made "people of the region increasingly angry
with such policies"?
"My basic question is
this: Is there no better way to interact with the
rest of the world?" Ahmadinejad says in his
letter, and that is certainly a legitimate
question to ask a US president who has refused to
rule out the option of unleashing a nuclear
holocaust on Iran in the name of combating Iran's
alleged quest for nuclear weapons.
Fitting
the description of what the French philosopher
Jacques Derrida calls "arche-writing", the letter
is yet another vivid representation of how Iran
views the exalted place of the Islamic Republic of
Iran in the international community as a vanguard
of the Non-Aligned Movement. It is a highly novel
enterprise, a banner development that calls for
serious scrutiny and, perhaps, a reply by
President Bush, outlining his own version of what
has gone wrong in US-Iran relations and how to fix
them properly.
Ahmadinejad's letter draws
comparison with the letter of the late ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini to Soviet president Mikhail
Gorbachev in early 1989, where Khomeini stated: "I
openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran,
as the greatest and most powerful base of the
Islamic World, can easily fill up the ideological
vacuum in your system."
Similarly, the
letter by Ahmadinejad boasts about the spiritual
dimension of Iran's Islamist politics and
criticizes Western liberal democracy, again,
recalling Khomeini's pointed criticism of West's
unbounded materialism: "Materialism cannot save
humanity from the crisis of disbelief in
spirituality."
At the same time, compared
with Khomeini's criticism of the then US
president, Jimmy Carter, as a "pretend Christian"
(in a letter to the pope), Ahmadinejad taps into
what Samuel Huntington has termed "elements of
commonality" between civilizations by pointing out
Bush's similar eschatological values: "I have been
told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of
Jesus, and believes in the divine promise of the
rule of the righteous on Earth." Overlooking such
positive aspects of the letter, certain policy
analysts such as Kenneth Pollock of the Council on
Foreign Relations have dismissed Ahmadinejad's
overture as "deeply insulting to the White House".
Consequently, the letter, by the mere
seduction of its appeal in the realm of
international public sphere, invades US thought
and policy, invoking a Derridaian desire for a new
self-image of Iran's hardline president as a
"transcendental signified". Ahmadinejad writes
that "it is not my intention to distress anyone",
and his letter is devoid of any incendiary
comments about "wiping off" the state of Israel,
even though it tries to set the record straight
about Israel's history of occupation of
Palestinian lands and the mass displacement of
millions of Palestinians, writing, "The people are
also saying, 'Why are all [Security Council]
resolutions in condemnation of Israel vetoed?'"
While attacking the United States' false
pretext of weapons of mass destruction for the
ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, Ahmadinejad
nonetheless concedes that "the people of the
region are happy" about Saddam Hussein's downfall.
He may have added that the Iranian people are also
happy that the end of Saddam's one-man
dictatorship resulted in a Shi'ite-led
representative regime. After all, both Iran and
the US support the new Iraqi government and have a
shared interest in Iraq's internal stability.
Assuming that Bush bothers to respond, he
may wish to point out that even in Afghanistan,
the downfall of the dreaded Taliban and their
replacement with a Tehran-friendly regime has
benefited Iran and its national-security concerns.
In that case, Bush may want to throw in a
Rousseauan criticism of the "dangerous supplement"
of politics by religion, in defense of liberal
democracy's separation of church and religion,
while at the same time responding positively to
Ahmadinejad's challenging question: "Do you not
think that belief in these principles [monotheism,
justice, respect for human dignity, belief in the
Last Day] promotes and guarantees peace,
friendship and justice?" Certainly, these
principles, and their underlying theme of
inter-faith solidarity, promote global tolerance,
listening and reciprocity, but are they sufficient
guarantee of the desired results?
In some
sense, Ahmadinejad's letter deconstructs itself,
in its blanket dismissal of liberalism, in the
section where he wonders whether the
"contradictory" policies of the US government
correspond with "liberal values". This is
important, since there are elements of liberalism
in the Islamic Republic of Iran today, such as the
constitution's system of checks and balances, and
its tolerance of political pluralism and religious
diversity. Any conflation of the actual policies
with the soundness and intrinsic value of
underlying politico-philosophical principles,
evinced in Ahmadinejad's letter, is indeed rather
problematic.
Interestingly, Ahmadinejad's
letter, criticizing the human-rights violations
and the misplaced budgetary priorities of the US
government (huge defense expenditures while
neglecting the homeless and the victims of natural
disasters), is a timely antidote to the recent
flood of US commentaries and pending legislation
that dissect and interfere in Iran's internal
politics in the name of democracy and human
rights.
Indeed, if the US allows itself
unlimited say in Iran's domestic affairs, why
shouldn't the Iranians reciprocate in kind,
particularly when Ahmadinejad's critical comments
correspond with those of many civil-rights leaders
in the United States today? Clearly, in today's
globalized village marked by unprecedented
interdependencies across national frontiers, it is
impossible to insulate any government's policies
and priorities from international scrutiny, and
that applies to both Iran and the US.
Another important aspect of Ahmadinejad's
letter is that it reminds everyone that Iran has
forcefully condemned the atrocities of September
11, 2001, which flies in the face of certain
pro-Israel pundits in Washington who have made
outlandish accusations of Iran's complicity in the
tragedy.
Ahmadinejad writes, "September 11
was a horrendous incident. The killing of [the]
innocent is deplorable and appalling in any part
of the world. Our government immediately declared
its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its
condolences to the bereaved and expressed its
sympathies."
This is no pseudo-diplomatic
put-on for public relations purposes. In September
2001, both former president Mohammad Khatami and
his foreign minister, Kemal Kharrazi, addressed
the UN and condemned the atrocities in the
strongest language. Subsequently, a Security
Council committee on al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the
associated individuals and entities praised Iran's
collaboration with that committee by providing
invaluable information on Taliban and al-Qaeda
operatives.
The letter and the nuclear
standoff Ahmadinejad's letter contains yet
another Iranian reassertion of the right to
possess civilian nuclear technology, deriding
Western opposition as a throwback to the "Middle
Ages". He asks: "Can the possibility of scientific
achievement being criticized for military purposes
be reason enough to oppose science and technology
altogether?" Certainly not, in light of Iran's
concrete proposal for the International Atomic
Energy Agency's close inspection of Iran's nuclear
activities. As the Russian foreign minister stated
recently, the mere suspicion of Iran's military
misuse of its nuclear program is not sufficient to
impose sanctions and curb nuclear cooperation with
Iran.
Unfortunately, Secretary Rice and
the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, have
chosen to disregard completely the olive branch in
Ahmadinejad's letter and, instead, mischaracterize
the letter as dust in the eyes of diplomats, to
paraphrase Bolton. But it is more like eye drops
clearing the diplomatic fog that precludes an
intimate knowledge of Iranian religio-political
world view, wherein theological underpinnings of
policymaking reign supreme.
Ahmadinejad's
extensive use of Koranic verses in his letter is
yet another reminder that a main problem in
US-Iran diplomacy may be none other than speaking
through contrasting paradigms, causing distorted
communication. Thus an inter-paradigmatic dialogue
channeled through inter-faith discussions and
discourses may be necessary, as a healthy
"nearing" of the parties closer together across
their huge political-paradigmatic divide.
Among other things, the US should start
paying close attention to the political importance
of Iran's religious declarations against the
manufacturing and deployment of nuclear weapons,
instead of habitually dismissing these as signs of
a rhetorical camouflage.
Already
criticized by Iran's hardline politicians as an
unnecessary concession to the United States,
Ahmadinejad's letter is tantamount to a bolt of
lighting in the hitherto dark sky of US-Iran
diplomatic alienation since 1979. It is up to the
US now to decide whether or not to seize the new
opportunity for a major opening with Iran afforded
by this letter.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After
Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy
(Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating
Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of
World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005,
with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He is also author of
Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating
Facts Versus Fiction.
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