Obama
fans flames of animosity in
Tehran By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"America's chains of defeat in the region
will continue," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Seyed Ali Khamenei declared in his speech on the
occasion of the dawn of a new Persian year, one
day after a "new year message" by United States
President Barack Obama that was for all practical
purposes nothing short of a discrete declaration
of war on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Accusing the US of supporting
dictators until the last minute, and fanning the
fire of a Shi'ite-Sunni rift in order to
perpetuate its hegemony in the region, Khamenei
portrayed Obama as ignorant
and confused for comparing the Iranian
masses at Tehran's Freedom Square in 2009 to
Egyptian protesters in Tahrir Square this January.
He reminded the White House that Iranians had
congregated at the square in the Iranian capital
for decades to celebrate their revolution and,
that "their slogan is death to America."
Khamenei turned his attention
to the US's domestic politics, accusing Obama of
selling out to corporate America and turning his
back on working Americans. It was a tit-for-tat
response to Obama's Nawruz, or Persian new year,
speech in which the US president singled out
Iran's youth for anti-regime mobilization, a
strategy his administration is now pursuing with
zeal and energy in part by relying on certain
Iran-American organizations in the US to carry out
its outreach objectives.
In his Nawruz speech, issued by
the White House on Sunday, Obama said:
I believe that there are certain
values that are universal - the freedom of
peaceful assembly and association; the ability
to speak your mind and choose your leaders. But
we also know that these movements for change are
not unique to these last few months. The same
forces of hope that swept across Tahrir Square
were seen in Azadi [Freedom] Square in June of
2009. And just as the people of the region have
insisted that they have a choice in how they are
governed, so do the governments of the region
have a choice in their response.
So far,
the Iranian government has responded by
demonstrating that it cares far more about
preserving its own power than respecting the
rights of the Iranian people.
Obama
went on to say that the 60% of Iranians who were
born after the 1979 revolution had the power to
forge a country responsive to their aspirations
and "though times may seem dark, I want you to
know that I am with you".
Perhaps the most
important aspect of Khamenei's speech pertained to
Libya, a country torn by a civil war and foreign
intervention under the guise of a United Nations
no-fly zone. According to Agence France-Presse,
Khamenei said in a live broadcast from the holy
city of Mashhad:
Iran utterly condemns the behavior
of the Libyan government against its people, the
killings and pressure on people, and the bombing
of its cities ... but it [also] condemns the
military action in Libya. The US and Western
[allies] claim they want to defend the people by
carrying out military operations or by entering
Libya ... You did not come to defend the people,
you've come after Libyan oil.
Khamenei said the US and the West
also wanted to carve out a place for themselves in
the country so that they could monitor the regimes
in Egypt and Tunisia. His strongest words,
however, were directed against the United Nations,
which he accused of turning into an instrument of
Western influence and described the UN Security
Council resolution on Libya as a "shame" for the
organization.
Khamenei's speech instantly
provided much-needed transparency on key issues
that have recently been wrapped in a thick air of
ambiguity and "policy dilemma".
Last year,
he reportedly bothered to respond to one of
Obama's 2009 letters addressed to him, and is no
longer in the mood of toying with the prospect of
any detente with the US. Two years ago, when
Obama's first Nawruz message addressed to the
Iranian leaders offered a small olive branch and
promised that an engagement policy would not be
preceded by threats, Khamenei reciprocated by
stating that no one in Iran had said that
animosity toward the US would last forever and
promised that if he saw tangible signs that
American leaders were "changing their behavior",
then Iran would reciprocate.
Two years
later, those positive sentiments expressed by both
sides now seem an ocean away, overtaken by a tide
of events that has moved the US and Iran further
apart. As a result, the US is now back to the old
script of "regime change" that is much applauded
in Tel Aviv, and is hoping to capitalize on
Obama's appeal among young and idealistic
Iranians. While Obama in his Nawruz message said
"the future of Iran will not be shaped by fear",
the question is, will it be shaped by Uncle Sam's
policy?
"Obama's paternalistic tone
reminds many Iranians of the imperialist language
that previous US presidents used when speaking
about Iran and someone should remind Mister Obama
that no one has selected him as the president of
the world," said a Tehran University political
science professor, who declined to be identified.
According to the professor, most of his
colleagues and students found Obama's most recent
Nawruz speech to be "insulting" and "political
propaganda" by a US leader who is "deeply worried
about the rising new threats to the US's vital
interests in the Middle East, such as instability
in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia."
Dismissing
the notion that the US is genuinely concerned
about human rights in Iran, the Tehran professor
wondered aloud why Obama failed to show comparable
concern about the violent repression of peaceful
demonstrators in Bahrain, home to the US's Fifth
Fleet?
In fact, Khamenei raised pretty
much the same question in his Nawruz speech,
asking why the US did not consider "the presence
of Saudi tanks in Bahrain" as evidence of
intervention and yet "recognizes the objection of
religious leaders and well-wishing people to the
massacres in Bahrain as [evidence of] Iran's
meddling?"
United States Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton also issued her personal
Nawruz message to Iranians, stating, "We commend
the demonstration of peaceful expressions of human
rights and dignity in much of the region." Yet,
Clinton has practically done nothing to stop the
state violence in Bahrain, confining herself to
passing, and vacuous, remarks that call on the
Bahraini rulers to refrain from violence and to
uphold the rule of law.
At a time when US
planes and US cruise missiles are raining down
munitions on Muammar Gaddafi's Libya for turning
against his own people, the US's inaction with
respect to the harsh Bahraini clampdown represents
manna from heaven for Iranian leaders who are now
able to pinpoint a flagrant US hypocrisy with a
great deal of legitimacy.
As a result, the
new Persian year promises more and not less
hostility between the US and Iran; an elevated new
cold war that will be fought at multiple theaters
of conflict in the region.
Whether or not
this will culminate in any open conflict, or
remain restricted to proxy wars, as in Bahrain and
elsewhere in the Persian Gulf and broader Middle
East, remains to be seen. What is quite certain,
however, is that the prospects for any short-term
thaw, let alone detente, in US-Iran relations
remain unambiguously bleak.
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.
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