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4 Iran and the US: An unbreachable
divide By Mahan Abedin
As was widely expected, the Iraq Study
Group (ISG) advised the administration of US
President George W Bush to engage with Iran on the
issue of Iraq. But while this key recommendation
is likely to dominate the media and academic
discourse in Washington, DC, over the next few
months, it is unlikely ever to amount to much.
It is not that the ISG has it wrong. On
the contrary, the United States cannot hope to
stabilize Iraq without at least the tacit
support of the Islamic
Republic. But the obstacles to engagement are so
numerous and complex that they override America's
critical strategic need to gain some leverage over
the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Iran
and the United States are at loggerheads over all
the strategic issues in the Middle East and the
wider Muslim world, ranging from the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict to America's
half-hearted attempts at promoting "safe" forms of
democracy in the region. Indeed, given the depth
and intensity of animosity, the best the two sides
can hope for in the foreseeable future is to
prevent their "Cold War" from turning into actual
military conflict.
Conflict without
parallel Iranian-US relations since 1979
are truly unprecedented in the history of modern
international relations. There are simply no
paradigms or comparative frameworks to analyze
against. The complete freezing of relations for
more than a quarter of a century would not be so
strange had there been more symmetry between the
two countries. But this asymmetric Cold War pits a
global hegemon with seemingly limitless resources
against a regional power with modest means.
The confrontation works at historical,
ideological and geopolitical levels. While all the
levels are mutually reinforcing, usually one or
two dominate the hostile dynamics at any given
point in time.
The Iranian revolution of
1979 was the starting point of the conflict. The
new revolutionary regime's misgivings toward the
United States were in essence historical and
revolved around America's highly questionable role
in modern Iranian politics, ranging from
organizing the 1953 coup against Mohammad
Mossadegh's nationalist government to buttressing
the Pahlavi dictatorship. However, America's
refusal fully to acknowledge the new regime (best
highlighted by giving sanctuary to the deposed
shah) transformed the Iranian revolutionaries'
misgivings into downright animosity.
From
the revolutionaries' perspective, the United
States simply did not respect Iranian sovereignty.
But there was also an ideological element to the
break in relations.
What kind of
revolution? On balance, the Iranian
revolution was more about introducing new ideas
into the religio-political lexicon of Muslims than
it was about asserting Iranian independence and
sovereignty.
From the very beginning the
revolution's leaders made clear that theirs was an
"Islamic" revolution and as such it constituted
the greatest Islamic revivalist project of the
modern era. Iranian revolutionaries saw the
charismatic leadership of ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini as the culmination of the legacies of
Islamic revivalists beginning with Seyed Jamaledin
Afghani (Asadabadi), Mohammad Abduh, and Mohammad
Rashid Rida and continuing with Hassan al-Banna
and Sayed Qutb.
There are at least three
core reasons Iran's Islamic Revolution constituted
the most strategic breakthrough for the modern
Islamic movement that emerged in the late 19th
century.
First and foremost, it marked the
first time that modern "Islamists" were propelled
into power. Second, Iranian revolutionaries
embarked on an ambitious long-term plan to
Islamize Iranian society. Third, the new regime
(despite its Shi'ite appearance) was
wholeheartedly wedded to exporting the "Islamic
revolution" to sympathetic audiences the world
over. While the Saudis (with much encouragement
from the Americans) tried hard to limit the
significance of the revolution to Shi'ites in the
first instance - and subsequently tried to reduce
it further to Iranian Shi'ites only - the Islamic
Republic, from the very outset, projected itself
as a non-sectarian entity wholeheartedly devoted
to the politics of pan-Islam.
To
consolidate and export the revolution, Iranian
leaders developed an entire infrastructure of new
Islamic rhetoric based on timeless Islamic terms
and concepts. Such terms as mustazafin
(dispossessed), estekbar (arrogance) and
taghout (satanic rule) gained wide currency
throughout the Arab world. Today, these terms are
widely used by the so-called Jihadi Salafis who -
on the surface at least - profess profound
contempt for the Islamic Republic.
More
broadly, these terms constitute the basic language
of Islamists everywhere, irrespective of their
position toward the Islamic Republic. While the
Iranian revolution has failed to develop a
significant political constituency in the Muslim
world (with the obvious exception of Lebanon), its
language and imagery have been adopted everywhere.
On this account Iranian leaders can claim a
measure of success.
Targeting the
'Great Satan' From the outset, Iranian
revolutionary leaders focused some of their
strongest rhetorical invective against the United
States. This
