Iran to US: 'It's a culture thing' By Shahir Shahidsaless
One of the principal characteristics of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was
the anti-American sentiment ignited and intensified by the revolution's leader,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In his fiery speeches during the revolution, the ayatollah labeled the shah of
Iran and his military generals "servants of America", he skillfully united the
masses around one of the slogans central to the revolution: "death to America".
A few months after victory in the revolution came the hostage crisis, which
followed the seizure of the United States' embassy in Tehran in November 1979
and severely undermined US-Iran relations, the effects of which persist to this
day.
Since then, relations between the two countries have undergone numerous highs
and lows. Yet, from former US secretary of state
Madeleine Albright's apology for the past actions of the US - such as
orchestrating the overthrow of the popular and pro-democracy prime minister
Mohammad Mossadeq - in 2000, to president George W Bush's "World War III"
warning in 2007 over Iran acquiring the "knowledge necessary to make a nuclear
weapon", the two countries have never even come close, at least not officially,
to initiating a normalization process. But why? To find the answer to this
pivotal question we must turn to the root of the differences between the two
governments - beyond the obvious.
A close analysis of Iran's recent history - starting from Khomeini's first
serious and bloody confrontation with the shah's regime in 1963, which was a
pretext to the Islamic revolution - unveils a fierce battle between Western
modernity and the Iranian Islamic tradition.
The shah, and before him his father Reza Shah, relentlessly pushed for
modernity and Western values, sometimes even by resorting to force, as occurred
during Reza Shah's compulsory unveiling of women. They both strongly believed
that traditional religious beliefs, which to them were equivalent to
backwardness and fanaticism, would slowly but surely give way to modernity
during the process of Westernization.
The shah and the architects of his regime, who were all graduates of Western
universities, believed that in a Westernized society, hardline Islamists, the
biggest threat to the monarchy, would be sidelined and ultimately diminished.
They also believed that expanding Western values would pave the way for Iranian
society to integrate into global modernity.
Sitting on one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, Iran, with a
relatively high population, relatively high literacy rate and a sizable
educated average class, could be an exceptional market unmatched by any other
country in the region and hardly substitutable for the Americans by any other
market in the world. The cultural transformation that the shah, and at a later
stage his wife, Queen Farah, used to vigorously pursue would reap significant
benefits both for the shah's regime and its closest ally, the United States.
However, the plan was halted and reversed before it was completed.
Americanization faced heavy resistance. To the average traditional Iranian, the
dominance of American culture was synonymous with the humiliation of his faith
and the death of his ideals. The struggle between the two forces within Iranian
society was finally resolved with the astonishing victory of the Islamic
revolution.
From this point on, the ideological differences took a new turn. The
fundamentalists, led by Khomeini, who came to power after the revolution,
deemed Western - and specifically American - culture as a threat to their
authority. As a result, the Iranian regime became extremely protective,
suspicious and repellent towards the US.
Years later, the US$75 million budget, which according to former US secretary
of state Condoleezza Rice was allocated for expanding radio and television
broadcasts into Iran, was a clear indication to the ruling power that "soft
toppling" the regime through "cultural aggression" was on its way.
The term "cultural aggression", which is broadly and frequently used by the
Iranian government, especially the commanders of the Sepah (the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Council) and Basij (gigantic part-time militia
organization controlled by Sepah), is a reference to cultural infiltration by
the West in general and the United States in particular, with the goal of
ruining Islamic values in Iranian society.
Although parts of the Iranian government, even at the highest ranks (for
example Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Assembly of Exports and head of the
Expediency Discernment Council) is favorable to opening a dialogue with the US.
They are also hesitant and appear perplexed by one troubling question: would
establishing relations with the US provide an opportunity to the pro-Western
elements - as they are called by the government - to rise and possibly
challenge their authority?
American culture has benefited from an unprecedented level of capital and
technology during the globalization process. Part of this culture, such as pop
and rock music, Hollywood and clothing brands such as Gap, is seeping into
Iranian society. Numerous Persian satellite television stations broadcast
Hollywood movies, fashion and relations between young men and women, which are
symbols of moral corruption in the eyes of the ruling power and its traditional
religious supporters. But they are seen as symbols of freedom and modernity in
the minds of a sizable and undeniable section of urban Iranian society.
One of the main tasks of Sepah is to combat "organized cultural aggression" and
"soft subversion". These concepts refer to the attack and corruption of Islamic
values within society in an organized and deliberate manner. In late March, in
its biggest crackdown Sepah arrested a network of 26 men and women who were
involved in producing pornographic movies and stories mocking Islamic beliefs.
One of the seized porn sites had 300,000 registered Iranian users, and some
porn clips were downloaded six million times, according to Sepah.
The government of Iran is convinced that pursuant to a new plan, the US is now
plotting to corrupt Iran's very young population. According to the Woodrow
Wilson Center, 70% of the population is under the age of 30. In the eyes of the
Iranian authorities, this gradual process of cultural imposition and domination
has replaced the doctrine of militarily force and regime change. The statement
issued by Sepah after the crackdown on porn producers indicated that the
network "was supported by foreign countries including the US, Canada and
Israel".
It is a no-brainer that the conflicts and tensions in the region, from
Afghanistan to Lebanon, could not be resolved without close collaboration
between the US and Iran. However, given that the Americans' push for spreading
Western values seems an inseparable characteristic of its culture while the
Iranian government and its conservative supporters interpret this cultural
infiltration as nothing but a plot to softly topple the regime, how could such
collaboration ever be shaped?
Although never discussed explicitly, this is one of the main - if not the main
- obstacles that divides the two sides and makes peace difficult to attain. The
question remains how the US in the President Barack Obama era can conceive
assurances to alleviate the Iranian government's concerns that not only hard
but soft toppling is also off the table.
Shahir Shahidsaless is a Canadian-Iranian political analyst writing
mainly in Farsi. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, and has
devoted the past 10 years predominantly to researching and writing about the
Middle East and international affairs for Farsi-speaking magazines, papers and
news websites both inside and outside the country. He has authored a book,
which has been published in Iran and Germany.
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