Mideast preoccupation dooms US strategy to destabilise Iran, Nihal Singh

Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Mideast preoccupation dooms US strategy to destabilise Iran

Nihal Singh

Khaleej Times, 6/24/03

June 24 2003 IRAN faces its most dangerous moment since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 because no country other than Syria is more affected by America's invasion and occupation of Iraq. While the prospect of US troops marching into Teheran to 'liberate' it from itself is unlikely, despite the sound and fury of official statements from Washington, pressure is being piled up on the Islamic republic in the hope that something will give.

At the very least, the American objective is to keep Iran off balance, with US-occupied Iraq in a mess and fears of the majority Shias in the country tilting towards the neighbouring Shia-ruled theocracy. A series of student demonstrations in Teheran and other cities was cheered, and fuelled, by American-based satellite television channels and won the public endorsement of President George W. Bush. In the New World Order the Bush administration has launched in the Middle East, it is not shy in proclaiming its goals.

Apart from issuing warnings to Iran and official American claims of Iranian complicity with Al Qaeda (remember the now-exploded claims of the Iraqi-Al Qaeda nexus), Washington has been targeting Iran's nuclear energy programme but failed to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn it, the latter settling for seeking the imposition of an additional inspection regime. Persistent US efforts to get Moscow to end its help in building an $800 million civilian nuclear plant at Bushehr have proved unsuccessful so far. President Bush has proclaimed that he will not "tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran while Teheran professes its peaceful intent in developing nuclear energy.

The American occupation of neighbouring Iraq comes at a delicate moment for the Iranian authorities because they are far from effecting reconciliation between the ruling clergy headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the reformists symbolised by President Mohammad Khatami. Over 25 per cent of the population is below 25 and the enthusiasm with which Khatami was elected and re-elected has given way to disillusionment, in view of the president's inability to surmount the hardliners' opposition to give the people a better and freer life.

Americans have not officially proclaimed "regime change" as their goal in Iran although they would be happy to see the theocracy collapse. But the Bush administration, in thrall to the neoconservatives, is in a hurry to reorder the Middle East and will grasp at any straw to serve its purpose. Undeterred by the spectacular failure of its attempt in the 1990s to put the economic cart before the political horse in Doha, Qatar, Washington hastily organised a World Economic Forum meeting in the Dead Sea resort of Shouna in what was billed as a "global reconciliation summit". US Secretary of State Colin Powell achieved little success in taking the 'roadmap' to the illusory destination of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Iran's dilemma is that just when it was seeking to translate its assets in energy and geographical location and a population base of nearly 70 million into power and influence commensurate with its potential, the US occupied neighbouring Iraq and imposed 125,000 troops on it. While the Shah of Iran had grandiose plans, his ambitions were built on using the country's geopolitical assets in order to act as the US sheriff in the region as a first step. Corruption, nepotism, and total insensitivity to the dislocating consequences of breakneck modernisation led to his undoing.

After recovering from the initial excesses of the revolution and the eight-year war with Iraq, Iran's new rulers sought to build their foreign policy on a more solid foundation. They made most of the country's energy resources and the dismantling of the Soviet Union by seeking special relations with the former Soviet Central Asian republics, both in tapping their energy prospects and offering them a window to the outside world through new trade routes. Teheran built friendly relations with Russia, for nuclear assistance and for working out a deal on the resources of the Caspian Sea. Iran also helped buttress the Northern Alliance opposed to the Taleban regime in Afghanistan in league with Russia and India.

In an interesting replay on an old theme, the Iranian authorities revived the Shah's attempts to build a special relationship with India on the justified premise that Teheran shared many geopolitical interests with New Delhi. There was, in addition, the added incentive of offering India a new access route to Central Asia while exporting gas, in addition to crude, to energy-starved India. Indeed, outside of the brief honeymoon period India enjoyed during the last years of the Shah's regime, relations between the two countries have never been better.

Iran's somewhat successful attempt to insulate its foreign policy from domestic turmoil is now being called into question by the American invasion of Iraq and attempt to colonise and control the Middle East more directly. Iranians had no love for President Saddam Hussein, but their hostility to the American occupation of Iraq is greater. The latter is not merely destabilising for the theocratic regime but also harmful to Iran's national interests. In immediate terms, President Bush's vocal support for student demonstrations has administered them the kiss of death but the rising tensions between hardliners and reformists cannot be wished away.

It is too much to expect that the hardliners will give up their hold on power, but the present stalemate in which reformist publications are closed although satellite television is tolerated and a vice-like grip is exercised on attempts to open up the system will prove increasingly untenable. For the present, the Iranian regime is balancing its desire for nuclear power with trying to allay fears of its nuclear weapon ambitions - no one except Israel is permitted by Washington to possess nuclear weapons in the Middle East. But Teheran is in the process of framing a longer term strategy in seeking a place in the sun.

Twenty-five years after the Central Investigation Agency organised a coup to install the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution toppled the monarchy. The US today enjoys far more clout as a hyperpower to destabilise the Iranian regime. The deterrents are the mess of the American occupation of Iraq, the certain coming together of all Iranians to oppose an American invasion, and Iranian influence over the majority Shias in Iraq. With the American inability to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians on Israeli terms, even the most ambitious neoconservatives will think twice before engaging Iranians in battle. Iranians thus have a little more time to set their house in order.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).