An attempt to douse the flames of
war By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - L Bruce Laingen was working
as a senior US Foreign Service officer in Tehran
in 1979 when student protestors - caught up in the
fervor of Iran's Islamic Revolution - seized the
US Embassy and irrevocably changed the course of
relations between the two nations.
Laingen
and 51 other US diplomats endured 444 days in
captivity until their release on January 20, 1981.
On that day, as he
prepared to board the
Algerian airliner that would finally take him to
freedom, the US charge d'affaires turned to one of
his Iranian captors and said, "I look forward to
the day your country and mine can have a normal
diplomatic relationship."
Next Sunday will
mark 28 years exactly since the US cut off
diplomatic, business and military ties with Iran
in response to the hostage crisis. At a discussion
sponsored by the Center for Global Justice and
Reconciliation at Washington's National Cathedral
on Monday, panelists engaged in a sobering debate
rarely seen on the US broadcast news outlets or,
it seems, in the halls of Congress and the White
House.
The current stakes, they agreed,
could not be any higher.
The rhetoric has
reached a noxious fever pitch: Iranian President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad's bewildering comments on the
Holocaust mixed with President George W Bush's
warnings of impending "World War III" should Iran
acquire the means to develop nuclear weapons.
Citing the "poison rhetoric and policy
paralysis that have characterized conduct of both
countries", Laingen said: "We can all agree that
the wall of mistrust is damn high. It will be
difficult to remove."
Against the backdrop
of US failures in Iraq, Washington's bellicosity
towards Iran has intensified. The Bush
administration last week imposed the most sweeping
set of unilateral sanctions on Iran since 1979,
and proceeded with its controversial decision to
brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a
"terrorist organization" for its alleged
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and
the Quds Force's alleged support of "terrorism" in
Iraq.
"The label of the word terrorist is
so devoid of meaning now, it's hypocritical," said
Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times bureau
chief and author of the book All the Shah's
Men, about the 1953 Central Intelligence
Agency-backed coup d'etat to oust democratically
elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq.
"First we find groups around the world we
don't like, then we find ways to label them as
terrorists," he said, and referred the US's double
standard with regard to two Kurdish separatist
groups that, on either side of Iraq's borders,
attack Turkish and Iranian troops.
"One
[the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party] is a
terrorist, the other [the Iranian Party for Free
Life in Kurdistan] receives support from us," he
said.
Bush's hard line has also drawn
criticism from presumed international allies, such
as Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who likened
Washington's recent sanctions to "mad people
wielding razor blades". Russia occupies a seat on
the United Nations Security Council and maintains
military and economic relations with Iran. Tehran
remains defiant in the face of Washington's
pressure to halt its nuclear program, which
Washington alleges is aimed at developing nuclear
weapons.
Analysts at Monday's discussion
said the current tensions underscore Washington's
continued inability to understand Iran, its
history, culture, the aspirations of its citizens
and the effects of the US's ill-fated policies on
the overall psyche of Iranians.
"There is
a fundamental sympathy for democracy [in Iran] ...
Iranians have a democratic consciousness that is
unique in the Middle East," said Kinzer.
"Had it not been for the fact that the
democratic government came to power in the 1950s,
and became obsessed with the great project of
nationalizing the Iranian oil reserves, there
wouldn't be a 1953," said Kinzer. "Had we [US] not
overthrown the Mossadeq government in 1953, we
might have had a thriving democracy in the heart
of the Middle East for these past 50 years."
The CIA-backed coup, code-named Operation
Ajaz, was carried out during president Dwight D
Eisenhower's tenure and was supported by Britain.
Using widespread bribery, the CIA overthrew
Mossadeq and his cabinet and reinstalled Iran's
unpopular pro-US dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
And had it not been for Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein's 1981 invasion of Iran (and US
support for that invasion), the mullahs may not
have been able to consolidate their political
power, according to Iran specialist Trita Parsi.
"[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini survived,
not in spite of, but because of the Iraqi
invasion," said Parsi. "War with Iran would result
in Iranians rallying around the flag [rather than]
turning away. The government would be strengthened
instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program
would more likely accelerate than be destroyed."
Kinzer also criticized the US mainstream
press, which he argued "has played a very shameful
role in helping to fan the flames of war, just as
we did in Iraq".
"We truly have failed
because we have always presented the problems with
the US and Iran through the official US paradigm,"
said Kinzer. "This is a classic failure of the
press, which is why people so easily leap to
support policies that are fundamentally against
our own country."
And then, there are the
missed opportunities: the 2003 memorandum signed
by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a grand bargain
in which the Iranians agreed to open the nuclear
issue to full transparency, offered to stop
support of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, agreed to make
Hezbollah a political party (ie, disarm the
militia group), and promised to help support an
Iraqi government that was not sectarian. The offer
was presented to the White House by former
Congressman Bob Ney several weeks after the US
invasion of Iraq, but was ignored.
"The
Iranians profess this offer doesn't exist. It's a
prime example of missed opportunities and policy
paralysis that can so easily set in," said
Laingen.
The evening's moderator,
Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, also
offered his perspective: "For the Senate or House
[of Representatives] to ramp up the rhetoric on
the Revolutionary Guards as being terrorists, or
insurgents, or rebels, only reduces the ability of
that mistrust to subside," he said.
"It's
beyond time for us to negotiate with Iranians.
It's time for old men to talk, before they send
young men to die."
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