The ongoing crisis in
Libya has presented Iran with a vexing policy
dilemma. Last week's decision by the Arab League
(AL) to call for a no-fly zone in Libya has been
greeted with a mixture of a shy nod plus a deep
frown in Tehran.
The ambiguity from Tehran
is a reflection of sentiments torn between siding
with AL allies like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon - and
thus avoiding a policy split on a serious regional
issue - or standing firm on traditional opposition
to Western intervention - and thus saving
relations with other allies, such as the leftist
governments in Latin America that rushed to defend
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
So far Iran
has officially communicated both positions. Iran's
top envoy to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, emphasized
the importance of respecting
national sovereignties and disallowing certain
powers to bypass international law and intervene
under guises such as "humanitarian intervention".
Simultaneously, top Iranian officials including
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and various Tehran
editorialists have lambasted the embattled Gaddafi
for his militia's brutal suppression of Libyan
people, with the conservative daily Kayhan even
going further. In a story under the headline
"brutal massacre in Libya is a humanitarian
disaster" it accused the Libyan government of
indiscriminate bombardment of civilian centers in
"rebel-held territories".
Similarly, an
article on IRDiplomacy.com by Hojatollah Jowdaki,
on "Libya's contradiction between appearance and
substance", points to Gaddafi's anti-imperialist
demagoguery and corrupt self-interest having no
real resemblance to (Egyptian Gemal Abdul)
Nasserite Arab nationalism. The article ends by
calling for Gaddafi's departure and the
installation of an electoral system in Libya after
42 years of dictatorship.
An important
reason for Iran's hostility toward Gaddafi is his
role in kidnapping the Lebanese
spiritual-political leader, Musa Sadr, some 33
years ago, in light of a statement by his daughter
last week that her father was still alive in
Libya. The issue goes to the heart of inter-Arab
rivalry and no matter what the Iranian present
misgiving about a no-fly zone, weighs heavily on
Iranian policymakers.
"Iran and Libya have
had relatively decent relations, both at the
United Nations, where both nations have condemned
Israel's atrocities, and in terms of common
approaches to regional issues, that was emphasized
at a joint communique during January 2010 Libya
visit by Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr
Mottaki," said a Tehran University political
science professor who declined to be identified.
[1]
Fear of Western roll-back
There is a growing sentiment in Tehran
that the West's real intention in Libya is to
capitalize on Gaddafi's repressive gains over the
opposition to generate a region-wide
counter-momentum vis-a-vis the popular upsurge
throughout the Arab world that has destabilized
the US-backed status quo.
A clue to this
can be seen in US President Barack Obama's
declared shift away from "idealism" toward
"pragmatism" with respect to the Middle East
turmoil, which was broadcast on the front page of
New York Times last week, thus signaling an
administration with a higher tolerance for state
violence against mass protests in the region.
One may take issue with the "realism" of a
new American approach that, just as in the past,
prioritizes "stability" of the oppressive status
quo over democratic rights - after all there is
nothing "pragmatic" about being on the wrong side
of history and swimming against the currents of
great political change. Nonetheless it makes sense
from the US "neo-imperial" interests, especially
in the oil region of Persian Gulf populated by
archaic sheikhdoms.
Assuming that the
tides are turning in favor of Gaddafi, whose
forces have retaken some of the rebel strongholds
in the past few days, the whole noise about a
no-fly zone may soon evaporate under the "realism"
that may be a remedy too late. Already, a large
number of US policy experts, such as Richard Haas,
the president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
have taken a firm stance against the no-fly zone,
one lame argument being that "aircrafts and
helicopters are not central to the regime's
military advantage". [2]
The Libyan
opposition may differ, in light of reports that
two Libyan fighter jet pilots defected to Malta
because they refused to carry out the government's
order to "bomb the population".
In fact,
over the past couple of weeks, Western media have
shown a clear tendency to sow doubts about the
levels of Gaddafi's brutality, even to the point
of a white wash, no small thanks to the smart
public relations ploy by Gaddafi and his son,
reminding the West of how good their business with
Libya has been, blaming al-Qaeda and labeling the
opposition as "deceived youth", anti-democratic
"monarchists" etc.
The fact that Western
media suddenly reverted to the singular depiction
of the opposition as "rebels" that implicitly
drained it of a democratic facade was another step
in the direction of directly and indirectly
helping Gaddafi win the civil war.
As a
result, future historians may tell the story of
Libya's 2011 revolt as a unique story of how the
West saved the regime by actually threatening it.
There is the other distinct, though less likely,
possibility that the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization will impose a no-fly zone and Libya
would for the foreseeable future be disintegrated
as a unified nation.
This is hardly a good
prospect for the Europeans, who have major vested
interests in the country, but not necessarily a
bad scenario from the prism of US interests, which
can then use Libya as yet another leverage over
Europe to toe its line on various international
issues, including Iran.
Either way, the US
is bound to harvest a windfall from both action (a
no-fly zone) as well as inaction (rhetoric without
action on a no-fly zone); in the latter scenario,
a surviving Gaddafi will be beholden to the US
more than ever before, his future mortgaged to
submission to US interests and policy desires.
In turn, this raises serious questions
about the soundness of the pro-Gaddafi stance
adopted by various leftist governments, such as
Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and leftist groups in the
US and Europe, who have focused on the threats of
US interventionism via a no-fly zone as their
number one priority, often buying Gaddafi's
propaganda about the "rebels" as a combination of
pro-West armed monarchists, Central Intelligence
Agency-trained, etc.
Often, the leftist
discourses show a naive embrace of the official
Washington narrative, overlooking the discrepancy
between the declared and actual policies and thus
playing into the hands of the very imperialists
they love to criticize. Hence, the advantage of
the Arab League's call for a no-fly zone may well
be that it calls into question this discrepancy
and highlights the importance of supporting Libyan
people's quest for democracy after decades of
total and complete political disenfranchisement.
From Iran's vantage point, there are pros
and cons to the AL's initiative and also to the
diametrically opposed stance of the African Union,
whose Peace and Security Council has rejected the
no-fly zone idea, offering mediation instead. Any
visit by an African Union delegation may be a step
in the right direction to diffuse the crisis in
Libya, but is unlikely to put a stop to the
murderous acts against the opposition by Gaddafi.
A middle position between the Arab League
and the African Union appears to be Iran’s best
policy course, given Libya’s distance and its
marginal role in Iran's national security
calculus, save the implication of a US roll-back
strategy that may start in Libya but has its real
eyes set over Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For
his Wikipedia entry, click here.
He is author of Reading
In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11
(BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his
latest book, Looking
for rights at Harvard, is now available.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
