Iran tries to make up lost
ground By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The conventional wisdom, particularly in
the United States, is that Iran has gained from
the US's invasion of Iran's neighbors since the
events of September 11, 2001. Yet, a careful
reading of the changing security calculus caused
by the exponential increase in the US's military
presence in Iran's vicinity leads to the opposite
conclusion.
Sure, Iran has gained from the
fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam
Hussein and his dreaded Sunni Ba'athist regime in
Iraq, yet the problem with the standard analyses,
for example by the US's ambassador to the United
Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, is that even though
they are couched in the language of "balance of
power", nonetheless these analyses are tainted by
a major gap. That is, forgetting the US
superpower's role in the equation that,
on
balance, has tipped the scales away from Iran, in
a word, amounting to a net loss for the country.
Until now, no one in the US has questioned
what has become an article of faith in the US
media and a kind of self-evident truth to so many
US politicians, such as former secretary of state
Henry Kissinger and former national security
advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
So with
Iran's "success story", which, according to
Khalilzad recently addressing a group of faculty
and students specializing in international affairs
at Columbia University, implies that the US may
send a "large bill" to Iran for services rendered.
This in dislodging Iran's "number one and number
two enemies", to paraphrase Professor Graham
Allison of Harvard University, who was in Iran
recently. According to Khalilzad, the US's
invasion "helped Iran's relative position in the
region, because Iraq was a rival of Iran ... and
the balance there has disintegrated or weakened.
And so one of the objectives of Iran, in my view,
is to discourage a reemergence of Iraq as a
balancer. And Afghanistan, too, the change was
helpful to Iran."
Again, no doubt Iran has
benefited from the regime changes in Kabul and
Baghdad, stepping into the power vacuum to some
extent. But the problem is precisely the US's
perceived threat of Iran and Iranian expansionism,
fueling Cold War-style politics of containment.
This, in turn, translates into the US itself
assuming the role of "balancer" and thus
replicating the story on the Korean Peninsula of
an indefinite US military presence.
Further, Iran faces a third round of
United Nations sanctions over its
uranium-enrichment activities, in addition to
sanctions imposed unilaterally by the US. Last
month, the five permanent Security Council members
- the US, Britain, France, Russia and China -
along with Germany, agreed on the basic terms of a
new resolution calling for more sanctions against
Iran, including travel bans and freezing assets.
The details have not yet been finalized.
A net loss for Iran Hence,
strictly from the prism of balance of power, Iran
has suffered a net loss due to the US's invasions
bearing the marks of a long-term military presence
and constant national security pressure at Iran's
borders. And this not to mention the US-led North
Atlantic Treaty Organization's parallel
post-September 11 presence, such as in
Afghanistan, and or US's base-building in Central
Asia. Given the continuing international standoff
over Iran's nuclear program, volatility in the
Persian Gulf waters, rife with potential triggers
between the US and Iran, and the US military's
accusations of Iran's meddling with Shi'ite
militias in Iraq, the overwhelming power of the US
has caused a national security syndrome for Iran
that in all likelihood will remain for the
foreseeable future.
And it's not only the
United States. At the weekend, Iran accused France
of taking an "unfriendly" position in Tehran's
nuclear dispute, adding that the permanent
military base - housing 400 to 500 personnel-
Paris is building in the United Arab Emirates will
harm peace in the region.
"Iran expressed
its objection to France's adopted negative view on
Iran's nuclear work and also its backing of the
Zionist regime Israel's activities," the official
IRNA news agency reported.
At the same
time, Iran is not being tardy in forging new
relations with its neighbors. On Sunday, Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in
Oman for talks with his counterpart on regional
and international developments. Oman is a member
of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, a
meeting of which Tehran was recently invited for
the first time to attend. Oman, an ally of the US,
also has good relations with Iran.
All the
same, there is little prospect for a major
breakthrough in the stalemated diplomatic
relations between Iran and the US. The Iranians
have few illusions about US foreign policy and
almost no one in Tehran is willing to bet on a
serious modification of the US's behavior toward
Tehran.
All the top Republican and
Democratic contenders for the US presidency are
sold on the notion of containing Iran and,
whatever the varying nuances and or intensity of
their anti-Iran proclivities, the fact remains
that President George W Bush's core policy,
reflected in his stern anti-Iran recent speeches,
resonate with the top presidential candidates,
particularly Bush's statement that any US
withdrawal would mean "success for Iran".
While we await the outcome of the US
presidential primaries and the change of the guard
at the White House, at a time when the US's Iran
policy is landlocked in the marshland of
"containment", all the primary signs are that we
should expect fundamental policy continuity with
respect to the core elements of that policy,
irrespective of whether or not US-Iran dialogue
continues or deepens, or even some minor
diplomatic breakthroughs take place.
In
turn, the security and strategic predicament
facing Iran as a direct result of the US's
post-September 11 invasions will likely remain
constant for the foreseeable future, implicating
Iran in a perpetual search for effective
counter-measures and or remedial actions to
address the security syndrome.
As long as
the US-Iran power contest remains below the
threshold of direct confrontation, Iran will
certainly enjoy a few tools, relating to
geography, solidarity ties and spheres of
influence, to play against the US in their
on-going "games of strategy". But this always from
the position of an underdog potentially caught in
an asymmetrical imbalance of power.
On the
other hand, the various shared or coinciding US
and Iran interests, such as with respect to
supporting the current regimes in Kabul and
Baghdad, countering narcotics and the threat of
Wahhabi terrorism, indicate that this is not a
zero-sum game and both the US and Iran could
benefit from focusing on those shared interests.
However, the problem, routinely overlooked
by the likes of Khalilzad and Kissinger, who
portray Iran as a winner, is that on balance, in
the larger scheme of things, that is, when it
comes to the inherent dynamic of power competition
between the US and Iran, the latter is much
disadvantaged on the "geopolitical chess board",
to paraphrase Brzezinski.
While US
politicians and pundits conveniently ignore this,
propping up the image of a "strong Iran" in dire
need of containment by the US in the absence of
the past Iraqi power, the contrasting picture that
emerges from the prism of Iran's (short and
long-term) calculations is vastly different - one
of a nation more concerned now than in the
pre-September 11 context, about foreign meddling.
For example, with its ethnic minorities, and
outright external threats.
After all, Iran
had successfully withstood Saddam's invasion in
the 1980s and had little fear of another Iraqi
invasion. But, with the US constructing a
Vatican-size embassy in Baghdad, as well as
seemingly permanent bases with an eye toward Iran,
Tehran has been afflicted with a permanent
security headache for which there are no known
pills. And there is no chance of perfect,
harmonious future relations with the intrusive
Western superpower which has gained direct control
of a key Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries state.
In conclusion, the net
loss for Iran due to the US's invasions is severe,
outweighing the gains, no matter how tangible or
significant the latter may be. The bottom line is
they pale in comparison with the national security
predicament rooted in the imperial presence of the
US "leviathan" all around Iran's national borders.
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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