Captain Ahab and the Islamic
whale By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"Why did the old Persians hold the sea
holy?" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
This is a splendid example of what is
fundamentally wrong with US foreign policy, like a
giant whale self-stranding in a maze of
contradictions yet breathing as if exuding fresh
air. Washington's Captain Ahab, in the garb of
President George W Bush, setting foot in the
Middle East, holds the olive branch of Middle East
peace in one hand and the Damocles sword of
Iran-bashing in the other, a twin agenda in
complete disharmony. It's no way to catch
Moby
Dick. [1]
Bush left Washington on
Wednesday on a tour to Israel, Palestine, Kuwait,
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi
Arabia and Egypt.
Lest we forget, in the
aftermath of the Middle East peace summit in
Annapolis in the US last November, when the White
House announced Bush's plan to tour the region,
the initial accent was purely on the peace
process. Yet, somehow, that has increasingly
branched off in the anti-Iran direction,
irrespective of the conciliatory statement of
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
with respect to the possibility of future US-Iran
rapprochement.
Thus, in a careful
pre-travel media stage setting, in addition to
leaking a Pentagon plan for the invasion of Iran
via Iraq, named "The Big Right Turn", Washington
orchestrated a flurry of activities aimed at
conveying the impression of "mounting tensions
with Iran", which convenienced Israel's get-tough
approach with regard to the Palestinians.
Then came the "incident" on Sunday between
the US Navy and Iranian speed boats at the
strategic Strait of Hormouz, confirmed by the
Iranians, who at the same time painted it as a
"normal" occurrence between the two sides, nailing
the Iran focus of Bush's trip.
Consequently, if the White House has its
way, Bush's Middle East trip will yield a gainful
harvest in terms of coalition-building against the
"Iran threat" that, per the latest interview of US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with the
Jerusalem Post, represents "the single greatest
threat to the kind of Middle East we would like to
see". There is, without doubt, a great perception
gap between the US's and Israel's dream of a
compliant "greater Middle East" and the assertive,
self-reliant Middle East favored by Iran and her
allies. The latter increasingly includes some of
the US's own allies, such as Egypt, which is on
the verge of normalizing relations with Tehran
and, simultaneously, slammed by the US on the eve
of Bush's departure to the region.
However, this is not a zero-sum game, and
this is precisely what is wrong with the US's
current anti-Iran drive that has to some extent
overshadowed the Middle East process. That is, the
US's inability to map a different strategy, one
that is not anchored in the murky water of
ingrained hostility, institutionalized since the
early years of the Bill Clinton administration. A
hundred fibers connect the two sides together, a
new closeness that warrants even risk-taking.
Filling a major void in the post-Cold War
milieu, the "rogue" Iran plays a vital role for
the US's military-industrial complex that thrives
on lucrative arms sales to the conservative oil
sheikhs of the Persian Gulf, ostensibly threatened
by the "hegemonic" and nuclear ambitious Iran.
But, whereas the capitalist logic of arms
sales dictates heating up the furnace of
Iran-bashing, on the other hand, certain
geopolitical realities, eg, in Iraq and
Afghanistan, spell out a diametrically different
logic of action. This is reflected in the
bilateral US-Iran dialogue on Iraq's security; a
fourth round of talks has been put on hold because
of Bush's trip and his stern anti-Iran agenda.
This includes pressuring Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC)states such as the UAE to curtail their
financial transactions with Iran, in tandem with
US-led sanctions on the regime over its nuclear
program.
While it remains to be seen if
the UAE and other GCC states will appease the
lame-duck president, who may be wishing a final
grand adventure before he leaves office, what is
already clear, and disturbing, is the White
House's persistent failure to impose even a
modicum of pressure on Israel. Talking peace and
acting war against Palestinians, Israel's
contradictory approach has augmented the US's
image problem in the Middle East. And, short of
any major concession to the Palestinians, that
approach is likely to receive a major boost from
Washington now that Bush has set foot in Israel.
As a result, Bush's Middle East trip risks
being a major foreign-policy disappointment for
the Arab world fixing its glare at the delayed
peace initiative of a US president who has
pulverized an Arab nation and who is widely
regarded in Israel as the "friendliest US
president in history". Unlike his father, former
president George Herbert Bush, who followed his
military gambit in Kuwait in 1991 with the Madrid
peace talks and strong-arming the Israelis by
threatening to cut off US aid, George W Bush has
until now lacked a "balancing approach". This is
reflected in the minutest lack of criticism of
Israel's relentless expansion of Jewish
settlements on Palestinian lands. What is more,
any minor improvement is likely to be regarded as
a necessary adjustment to push the engine of
"containing Iran" and its band of "rogue" allies
in the region.
Yet, if Bush were sincere
in his pursuit of a peaceful Middle East, a good
beginning would be his echoing the United Nations'
call on Israel to furnish the whereabouts of some
1 million unexploded bomblets that Israel
scattered over south Lebanon in the waning days of
its summer assault on Lebanon two years ago. Since
then, more Lebanese, many of them children, have
been killed or maimed by these bombs than during
that month-long war.
Alas, the big wrong
turn on Iran is in essence embedded in a larger
wrong turn and twist of the US's overall approach
toward the Middle East that is cemented by an
"Israel first" priority almost to the exclusion of
all other considerations. And, at this critical
juncture, that simply means missing yet another
window of opportunity to set relations with Iran
on the right foot. Indeed, this Ahab's Middle East
ambitions are dulled by self-made myths, for
example, "Islamofascism", predestined to if not
complete failure, complete muddling through; the
path to his fixed purpose is laid with iron
twists, smelling like the right wing of the day of
judgment. His curtain about to fall and yet
plotting more drama, will anyone survive the
wreck? Will Bush's legacy survive him or will it
be, as Melville put it, "... and his whole captive
form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with
his ship". He may not be dismasted by the Islamic
whale, yet like his neo-conservative friends, he
may spit his last breath at them.
Note 1. "All that most
maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees
of things; all truth with malice in it; all that
cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the
subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to
crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made
practically assailable, in Moby Dick. He piled
upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the
general rage and hate felt by his whole race from
Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a
mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." -
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
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", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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