Iran and the left in Latin America
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Bolivian President Evo Morales is in Tehran this week, ushering in a new
chapter in his country's economic and strategic cooperation with the Islamic
Republic of Iran, which has promised a hefty investment in Bolivia's energy
sector and other joint ventures, some involving other Latin and Central
American countries, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, not to overlook Cuba.
In a joint communique, Morales and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad have signed off
on the need for "concrete political steps against every type of imperialism",
while also condemning the intervention of the United Nations Security Council
in Iran's nuclear program as "lacking any legal or technical justification".
Bolivia may be a poor country, but it is strategically located and represents
an important ally for Iran that can act as a catalyst in
enhancing Iran's growing cooperation with other Latin nations, especially those
considered leftist or populist.
In his visit to Bolivia last year, Ahmadinejad promised that Iran would make a
US$1 billion investment in Bolivia's underdeveloped oil and gas sector and the
two sides are now much closer in turning this into reality. Certainly, Morales'
decision to set aside any hesitation and fully support Iran's position in the
current nuclear standoff goes a long way in cementing Iran-Bolivia friendship.
From Tehran's vantage point, an indirect benefit of Morales' visit is that it
impresses on Moscow the services that Tehran can render in strengthening
Moscow's anti-unipolarism credo, which was spelled out by President Dmitry
Medvedev in his major foreign policy speech last week. Tapping into Cold War
lexicon, Medvedev openly mentioned Russia's intention to pursue a "sphere of
influence" in politics and made a point of mentioning "not only with
neighbors".
As various Russian experts, including at the Russian Center for Strategic
Studies, have pointed out, Russia in the aftermath of the Georgia crisis is now
inclined to strengthen its ties with countries such as Iran and Venezuela. In
light of the Georgia visit this week by US Vice President Dick Cheney, reviled
by Premier Vladimir Putin as directly responsible for triggering the Georgia
crisis for election purposes, the growing rift between the US and Russia
simultaneously represents an opportunity for Tehran both to neutralize UN
Security Council efforts to impose tighter sanctions on Iran over the nuclear
program and explore further, and more meaningful, strategic cooperation with
Russia and the Latin left vis-a-vis the common threat of US unipolarism.
On balance, the post-Cold War record of US unipolarism has been less than
desirable. There are many examples of blatant interventionism, bullying and
war-mongering that have risked world peace. And now with both the US
presidential candidates, Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican John
McCain, sold on the notion of maintaining the US's pre-eminence in global
politics, we must expect continuity with the pattern of post-Cold War policies
having the upper hand, albeit with new nuances if Obama wins.
Foreign policy advisors of Ahmadinejad are openly counting on Iran's new
relations with Latin America as one of the net gains of his presidency. In
fact, the new level of cooperation between Iran and Bolivia and other Latin and
Central American countries is a timely, further confirmation of the strategic
vision and outlook that they have brought to the government, compared with the
Mohammad Khatami government that pushed the arch of detente with the West
almost to the exclusion of all else.
Ahmadinejad's foreign policy team is now busy contemplating the next moves now
that the Russians are putting to the backburner their hesitations for closer
relations with countries labeled "rogue" by the West.
"As far as Iran is concerned the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization [SCO] in Dushanbe was a success because China and Russia agreed to
expand the role and input of observer nations at the SCO, and that includes
Iran," a Tehran political analyst told the author. As a result, Iran is today
one small leap shy of fully joining the SCO, and membership is only a matter of
time as far as Tehran is concerned.
Clearly, the windfalls from the Georgia crisis for Iran are multiplying and
Iran's deft Latin diplomacy is meant to add to the new dynamism for
geopolitical and geostrategic cooperation with Russia (and China). As a middle
power (and not a "tiny one" as derided by Obama recently), Iran as a result of
its active global diplomacy in the Non-Aligned Movement has a rather
disproportionate global influence that far outweighs its paltry contribution to
global economy (less than 1%), and is well-positioned and predisposed to
bandwagoning with a new global anti-hegemonic front.
Using its petrodollars to solidify its networks, Iran has already entered into
several economic agreements with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba; should
Ahmadinejad win re-election next year, his second term will likely deepen these
ties even further.
At the same time, the prospect of closer Iran-Russia relations directly impacts
Washington's thinking about Iran, given White House's reluctance to consent to
a new round of US-Iran dialogue on Iraq's security and or to take Iran's
serious misgivings about a US-Iraq security agreement into consideration.
Put simply, ignoring Iran is not an option for Washington any longer as Iran
can effectively act as Moscow's junior partner sowing the threads of organic
connection to the Latin (and indeed world's) leftist or populist governments.
The more organic, or multi-faceted, such ties, the more value and importance
attached to Iran by the key SCO nations, Russia and China, which can be seen in
the visit of Bolivia's president - Iran's diplomacy performs both regionally
and globally.
At this stage it is unclear if China actually favors such a new development, or
if Russia is resolved toward this line, since Moscow appears intent on a
measure of damage control with the West in the midst of these upheavals, and
certainly cooperation with the West on Iran's nuclear program can have the
protean value of healing some wounds.
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. For his
Wikipedia entry, click here.
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