By Muhammad Sahimi
Introduction
As the neoconservatives and their Iranian allies make
the drumbeats of a possible war with Iran louder and louder, the public, and in
particular Iranians and Iranian-Americans, need to be fully informed about the
true nature of these warmongers, and the true United States policy towards Iran.
We should have no illusion about such a war. This war, if it is started, will
have nothing to do with "liberating" Iran and establishing a truly democratic
political system in Iran. As is well-known by now (see
also below), the track record of the Bush Administration in the Middle East is
too horrifying to believe even one word coming from this Administration
regarding the aspiration of Iranian people for freedom and democracy. The war
will also have nothing to do with the so-called war on terror, as neither
Iran, nor Iraq for that
matter, had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and
their aftermath. But, such a war will have everything to do with dominating the
Middle East and, most importantly, making Iran, once again, a client state of the
U.S., the way it was under the
Shah.
Thus, the main goal of this article is analyzing the
U.S. strategy for regime
change in Iran, and arguing about its futility.
In the author's opinion, the only way to prevent another bloody war in the
Middle East - this time with Iran - is by making people aware of
what is happening and its
catastrophic consequences. Such a war will not only destroy Iran and set it back by decades, but will also
engulf the entire Middle East in fire and blood, as the hardliners in Tehran will not hesitate to respond to any military attack
on Iran by the
U.S. and its allies. Thus, in the
author's opinion, preventing a war with Iran is the duty of every patriotic
Iranian and Iranian-American, as well as that of every peace-loving person. It
has nothing to do with defending Iran's theocracy, its repressive
political system, or the present Iranian government. Preventing such a
catastrophic war is an integral part of Iran's national interests which are - by their
very definition - independent of any type of political system or government that
Iran may have. Thus, first and
foremost, Iran, its territorial integrity, and
its political independence must be protected, before Iranian people can move
forward in their quest for democracy and respect for human rights. At the same
time, preventing a war with Iran is also in the true national interests of
the U.S., the adopted country
for many Iranians living in the U.S., as the futile war in Iraq has already been highly costly for the
U.S.
The United
States Policy towards Iran
During three years of the most intrusive inspections
in the history of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA's
Director-General Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei has repeatedly reported that he can find
no "indication" of diversion of "source or special nuclear materials" to a
military purpose. Despite this, the Bush Administration finally succeeded in
forcing the Governing Board of the IAEA to send the dossier on
Iran's nuclear program to the United
Nations Security Council. After several months of maneuvering, the SC finally
passed Resolution 1696, demanding that Iran halt its uranium enrichment
program by the end of August. As widely expected, Iran ignored the
deadline.
Despite the apparent "success" in sending
Iran's dossier to the UNSC,
the Administration's positions towards Iran seemed, for a long time,
contradictory and even obtuse:
While calling on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program
and resume its negotiations with the European Union, the U.S. refused for
a long time to be a party to such negotiations.
While demanding Iran to help Iraq to stabilize and
avert a full-blown civil war, and announcing on May 31 that it would directly
engage Iran, if it suspends its uranium enrichment program, the U.S. still holds
military strikes like the Sword of Damocles above Iran's
head.
While claiming for a long time that Iran does not
need nuclear energy because it has vast oil and natural gas reserves (whereas,
as the author has documented elsewhere, it played a decisive role in the 1970s
in persuading Iran to start its nuclear program), the U.S. has banned investment
in Iran's oil industry by American companies, and has been pressuring Japan not
to develop Iran's huge Azadegan oil field which will help alleviate pressure on
the tight oil market when it comes on-line. It is also pressuring
India and Pakistan to scrap the plans for building a
pipeline that is supposed to transport Iran's natural gas to these nations,
a pipeline that has been dubbed by some as the "peace
pipeline."
The U.S. also prevented the construction of an oil
pipeline through Iran for
transporting Azerbaijan's oil to the international
markets. The Iran route was considered the safest,
shortest, and most economical way of getting that oil to the market. Instead,
the U.S. pushed for a long
and expensive pipeline from Baku in
Azerbaijan to the
port of Ceyhan in Turkey, which is now being
constructed. The U.S. is also pressuring Kazakhstan not to construct a pipeline to
Iran for transporting its oil
to the international market, and is pushing instead for another pipeline through
the Caspian Sea which, if built, would be an
environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Such contradictions also extend to the rhetoric.
Whereas President Bush dismissed the legitimacy of Iran's presidential elections of June 2005
because in his opinion, "Iran's president has no power," his
Administration is now brandishing Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the world's most
powerful radical.
While bemoaning lack of democracy in
Iran, the U.S. has rejected legitimate elections in which
Islamic groups have either won the elections outright (Palestine), or gained a significant fraction of the votes
(Egypt). At the same time, the
Administration courts autocrats in other Islamic nations, such as Ilham Alyev
(who succeeded his father as president) of Azerbaijan, Nursultan Nazarbayev of
Kazakhstan, Hosni Mubarak of
Egypt, the kings of
Jordan and
Saudi
Arabia, and others.
The true intentions of the Administration become,
however, clear if we consider its National Security Strategy issued by the
Pentagon on March 16 (and the just released document by the White House on the
war on terrorism in which Iraq has been de-emphasized, even though President
Bush claims the war in Iraq is at the center of the war on terrorism, but Iran
has been emphasized), which stated that
The Iranian regime sponsors
terrorism, threatens Israel,
seeks to thwart the Middle East
peace, disrupts
democracy in Iraq, and denies aspirations of its
people for freedom. The
nuclear issue and our
other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian
regime
makes the strategic decision
to change these policies, open up its political system and
afford freedom to its
people. This is the ultimate goal of the U.S.
policy.
Clearly, this "ultimate goal" cannot be achieved
without a regime change in Iran. Thus, the Administration has
adopted a multi-pronged approach in order to bring about regime change in
Iran. This policy is in clear
violation of the Algiers Accord, signed by the U.S. and Iran in 1980, that ended the hostage
crisis. Point I, paragraph 1 of the General Principles of the Declaration of
the Government of the Democratic and Popular Republic
of Algeria (that is, the Accord) stated:
Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs - The United
States pledges that it is and from now
on
will be the policy of the
United
States not to intervene, directly or
indirectly, politically
or
militarily, in Iran's internal
affairs.
Recent revelation by Seymour Hersh that the war in
Lebanon was supported by the
Administration as a precursor to attacking Iran may be an
indicator of its true intentions. In fact, the language that Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice used in her declaration in May about engaging
Iran directly, and the
conditions that she set for starting the negotiations, were clear signs that the
U.S. may not be serious about
resolving the issue diplomatically. She declared that if Iran makes the
wrong choice, it "will incur only great costs." This had very eerie similarity
with the Administration's rhetoric in the run-up to the Iraq
War.
The New York Times reported on June 4 that some
European and Japanese negotiators, "questioned whether this [the U.S. offer to
negotiate with Iran] was an offer intended to fail, devised to show the extent
of Iran's intransigence," and that one former U.S. official said, "It came down
to convincing Cheney and others that if we are going to confront Iran, we first
have to check off the box" of negotiations.
In addition, Rice declared that before the
U.S. would start talking with
Iran, it must first
fully and verifiably suspend its
enrichment and reprocessing activities, and "persuasively"
demonstrate that it has permanently
abandoned its quest for nuclear
weapons.
Reprocessing what? Normally, only spent nuclear fuels
are reprocessed. Iran's sole
reactor has not even come on-line, and when it does, the Iran-Russia agreement
stipulates that the spent fuel will be returned to Russia.
Iran does not have a plutonium
reprocessing facility, anyway. Moreover, who decides how "persuasive" is
Iran's demonstration of its peaceful
intentions?
Let us now consider the Administration's
multi-pronged approach for regime change in Iran.
Working with the Opposition
The Administration believes that working with
internal and external Iranian opposition groups will help change the power
structure in Iran. In advocating this some
officials, including Elizabeth Cheney, the Vice President's daughter and deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, have been making an analogy
between Iran and
Poland in the
1980s.
The "similarity" between Iran and Poland is non-existent. Unlike
Poland's Solidarity movement,
democratic, reformist and moderate political groups and labor unions in
Iran have made it clear that
they will not work with the U.S. In Iran's political
spectrum, these groups are considered mostly as leftist or
center-left.
The largest political group in Iran is the
reformist Islamic Iran Participation Party (IIPP), led by the Cambridge-educated
Dr. Mohsen Mirdamadi, and a group of other Islamic
leftists, reformists, and intellectuals.
The Nationalist-Religious coalition, a group of
Islamic leftists with strong anti-imperialist credentials, is a democratic and
important political group. Many of its leaders have been imprisoned by both the
Shah and the Islamic Republic. Two of its leaders, Ezzatollah Sahabi, an
engineer who was a member of Iran's provisional government
immediately after the 1979 Revolution, and Habibollah Paymaan, a dentist and
leader of Movement of Militant Muslims, are very popular among Iranian
university students.
Next is Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organization,
which was formed immediately after the Revolution of 1979 as a coalition of
seven Islamic leftist groups that had been fighting with the Shah's regime. The
IRMO should not be confused with Mojahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO), a cult
classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department. The IRMO's
leadership played a
key role in the formation of the Revolutionary
Guards, the backbone of Iran's military which did most of the fighting
with Iraq in the 1980s. After a split in
the original IRMO in the mid 1980s, its leftist leaders formed the present IRMO,
while its right wing stayed with the Guards. Dr. Hashem Aghajari, a popular
university professor and progressive Islamic thinker, who was sentenced to death
for criticizing Iran's
conservative clergy and their ultraconservative Islamic thinking (the sentence
was overturned later by Iran's Supreme Court), is a member of
IRMO.
The Association of Militant Clergy, a leftist
clerical group led by former president Mohammad Khatami, is another influential
group. The centrist Freedom Movement, originally founded in the early 1960s by
Mahdi Bazargan, an engineer and progressive Islamic thinker who was
Iran's first Prime Minister after the
1979 Revolution, is an important political group which is led by the
U.S.-educated physician Ebrahim Yazdi.
The National Trust Party, the newly-formed centrist
group led by Mahdi Karroubi, speaker of Iran's sixth parliament and a
moderate cleric, and the center-right Executives of Reconstruction Party whose
members - largely technocrats - held important positions in the administrations
of former
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are also
important reformist groups.
Finally, the Office for Strengthening Unity, an
umbrella group for many university students organizations, is another important
group pushing for democracy in Iran, although it does not act as a
political party.
Some of these groups accept Iran's present
Constitution, while some have called for its revision and elimination of the
post of the Supreme Leader and all the unelected centers of power. But, for many
reasons, they are all against the U.S. interference in Iran's internal
affairs and political evolution.
First, they believe that development of democracy is
an internal affair of Iran and Iranians. They consider the
U.S. aid as an insult to the Iranian
people, believing that democracy is not a product that can be imported from
another country. To quote a recent statement by some of the leading Iranian
dissidents, both in Iran and
in exile, "Iran's independent and self-reliant
forces will never accept a foreign country telling them what to do and which way
to take."
Second, they believe that the Bush Administration's
talk of democracy for Iran is insincere. Many Iranians
wonder aloud why the U.S.
stopped talking about democracy for Libya as soon as it gave up its
nuclear program, although its regime continues to be one of the worst violators
of human rights. Iranians also wonder why the U.S. does not push for democracy in
Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan - all
its allies. Iranians believe the U.S. is interested only in making
Iran a client
State.
Third, Iran's democratic and reformist groups strongly
believe that the U.S.
invasion of Iraq and its
aftermath, and its support of Israel for destroying Lebanon's
infrastructure in the recent war, have badly hurt their cause for democracy.
Using the threat to Iran's
national security as their justification, and boasting about Hezbollah's success
in resisting the Israeli army, the hardliners have tried to suppress
Iran's democratic
movement.
Fourth, unlike most of the Islamic nations,
particularly those supported by the U.S., and despite the crackdown by the
hardliners, Iran is still not a nation with a
single voice, but a society with multiple voices across the political spectrum.
Iran's democratic and reformist
groups have been
expressing their strong opposition to Ahmadinejad's
policies. During the just concluded convention of the IIPP, many speakers
harshly criticized Ahmadinejad's foreign and domestic policies. Former president
Khatami, still a widely respected figure in Iran, has also been criticizing Ahmadinejad, not
only for his pronouncements on Iran's foreign policy, but also for
his domestic agenda. The reformist and democratic groups have been advocating a
fully-transparent nuclear program in compliance with Iran's
international obligations and, if necessary, a temporary suspension of its
uranium enrichment program.
Therefore, the Bush Administration cannot find any
Iran-based political group to work with. There are some secular republican
Iranian groups in exile which are, however, fractured, with little direct
influence in Iran, and
presumably unwilling to work with the U.S.
This leaves the Administration to work with only two
groups, as well as some ambitious Iranians in exile who envision themselves as
Iran's future leaders. One is the
Mojahedeen Khalgh Organization (supported by some neoconservatives and misguided
members of the Congress). The MKO is universally despised by Iranians for acting
as Saddam Hussein's spies during the Iran-Iraq war, and as his agent for
suppressing the Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites.
Some neoconservatives have been advocating
restoration of monarchy in Iran. The monarchists are, however, a
spent force and relics of a dark past. A great achievement of the 1979
Revolution has been introducing into Iran's political culture the concepts
of civic republicanism and elected governments.
Afghanistan, a conservative nation with a very high rate of
illiteracy, rejected restoration of monarchy after the downfall of the Taliban.
Restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (which was overthrown in July 1958
in a coup d'etat led by General Abdul Karim Qassem) was never even considered
after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, even though the neoconservatives, in their
infamous 1996 manifesto, "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," had fantasized about it. Therefore, why would
the politically-informed Iranian people, 70% of whom are below 30 with literacy
rate of 90% and a strong pro-democracy movement, want to restore the discredited
monarchy?
Searching for Iranian Curveball, Ahmad Chalabi and
Iyad Allawi
Recall that the Iraqi curveball was a defector who
made outlandish claims about Saddam's program for developing weapons of mass
destruction - false information that was spread with the help of Judith Miller,
the now-discredited New York Times reporter.
The neoconservatives do have their Iranian
curveballs. One is Manouchehr Ghorbanifar, the arms dealer who played a key role
in the Iran-Contra affairs. With the help of Michael - the Creative Destructor -
Ledeen, the leading neoconservative warmonger, Ghorbanifar is making a comeback.
He is no longer satisfied with making money by selling arms in the international
markets. He now envisions himself as a future leader of Iran. The others
are "former" members of MKO - Alireza Jafarzadeh, Ali Safavi, and Mohammad
Mohaddessin, who have been making outlandish claims about Iran's nuclear
program which, with one exception, have all been proven by the IAEA to be false.
The exception was the revelation about the Natanz facility for uranium
enrichment.
The search for Iranian Ahmad Chalabi (a superb liar)
and Iyad Allawi (a CIA asset) has been going on for sometime. The
neoconservatives have been parading to Washington some Iranian journalists and
inexperienced university activists - to spend time at the Washington Institute
for Near East Studies, and become associated with conservative organizations
with seductive names, such as The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
Committee on the Present Danger (COPD), and The National Endowment for
Democracy. They try to seduce them with fellowships, and meetings with leading
advocates of regime change in Iran, such as Richard - the Prince of
Darkness - Perle and Michael Ledeen.
No "front runner" has emerged yet, but there seem to
be several eager aspirants. In an article posted on the Washington Post website
on Sunday June 25, Laura Rozen listed several of them, but also missed some.
When Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate who was awarded the
2003 Nobel Peace Prize, recently declared that, "Iranians will not allow a
single U.S. soldier set foot in Iran," Akbar Atri, a minor aspirant, eager
neoconservative, and member of the COPD (he was dismissed by the Office for
Strengthening Unity in Iran after his association with the neoconservatives was
revealed), was so distraught by Dr. Ebadi's declaration that likened it to those
of the suicide bombers! As a member of COPD Atri has been happy to be part of a
group that also includes R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA and an
advocate of World War IV, Frank J. Gaffney, whose hallucinations about Iran's
nuclear program are well-known, and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who
was just rejected by the Democratic Party of Connecticut for his pro-war stance.
Given her national and international credibility, Ebadi's purely patriotic and
non-political declaration had apparently badly contradicted the claims that Atri
might have made to the neoconservatives about how Iranians will greet the U.S.
soldiers. The real Chalabi had claimed that the Iraqi people will greet the
U.S. with flowers and
rice.
As the total defeat of Chalabi and Allawi in
Iraq's recent elections
demonstrated, those who are willing to collaborate with foreign powers will
never be trusted by the people of the Middle
East. Iranians, in particular, have horrifying experience with
puppets and agents of foreign governments, such as Reza Shah Pahlavi who came to
power in 1921 through a British-supported
coup, and his son Mohammad Reza who was put back in
power by the CIA in the infamous 1953 coup.
The Propaganda War
Another facet of the neoconservatives' and the
Administration's strategy towards Iran has been an intense propaganda
war, pursued in multiple fronts. The war is being aided by exiled Iranians who,
in the name of patriotism, are willing to do anything and say anything to
achieve their goals. One well-known example is Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh, the
London-based political analyst, who not only loudly repeats VERBATIM the
neoconservatives' nonsense, but also tops it off by his own exaggerations and
innuendoes. In particular, although Nourizadeh lacks even the most elementary
knowledge about Iran's energy
picture, the state of its oil and gas reserves, and its need for an alternative
source of energy, he has been making some of the most absurd claims about
Iran's
energy problems and the way to address
them.
One propaganda front is through the U.S.-funded
radios and satellite televisions. This, however, is having little, if any,
effect in Iran. Using satellite TV, the Iranian
monarchists have, for years, been broadcasting into Iran supposedly
anti-government programs. They have had no impact, however,
because, aside from the profanities that throw at
each other and at anybody who disagrees with them, they only advocate a
Westernized, anti-Islamic counterculture - in essence an anti-religion
fundamentalism - the same "ideology" that the Shah tried to instill in Iranians,
but ignited the 1979
Revolution. Anyone who fails to take into account the
deep religious beliefs of Iranian people cannot succeed or even have an impact.
In forming their views towards Iran's Islamic political groups, the monarchists
and could have learnt from Europe and its
political evolution after World War II:
The Christian Democratic Union and its sister,
Christian Social Union, were also formed in Germany on
religious grounds. But, their gradual evolution and ultimate success in
Germany's electoral process have
shown that, such political parties can, with moderation, contribute to building
a decent democracy based on culture, tradition, history, and religion. There are
several other Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe
(Italy, for example) that have taken
the
same type of path with electoral
success.
But the monarchists have not learnt anything from
this history, because they are blinded by their hatred of the Iranian
Revolution.
Similarly, the Persian programs broadcast into
Iran by the U.S.-owned and funded
Radio Farda, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe, while listened to, are
widely considered as mainly propaganda, simply because Iranians do not believe
that foreign-funded radios are independent and objective. These radios mostly
present the views of those who advocate regime change in Iran - people
who, from the comfort of their homes in the West, make grand predictions and
demands. The radios also often cherry-pick what the experts say, taking their
statements out of context, in order to direct their listeners towards certain
conclusions (the author, as well as several of his friends, have had personal
experience with these radios). Even the popular British Broadcasting
Corporation that has extensive Persian programs, and
compared to which the programs of the U.S.-funded radios are amateurish, is not
considered as being objective.
But, even if we ignore such shortcomings, a glance at
the programs of the U.S.-funded radios reveals their futility. What can they
report that can be new to Iranians? That Iran's economy
is in a terrible state? Iranian people experience it every day and are
well-aware of its abysmal state. That there is rampant corruption? Even
Iran's hardliners admit it. That
there are political prisoners in Iran? Iranian reformists, democrats,
human rights advocates, and internet sites constantly inform the people about
the political prisoners' plights.
In the second propaganda war front exaggerated news,
outright lies, and unsubstantiated claims are planted in newspapers around the
world. Two examples are:
(1) A recent story by Amir Taheri, an Iranian
monarchist and neoconservative, about Iran's parliament debating a piece of
legislation for regulating a special dress code for non-Muslims Iranians, and in
particular Jews, turned out to be completely false.
(2) Iran was accused that it has been trying to buy
uranium from Congo, a claim made in an article by
a newspaper, the Australian, on August 7, 2006. Recall that the same type of
false accusations were made against Iraq when it was claimed that it had tried to buy
nuclear materials from Niger. Although the "revelation" was
retracted on August 9 in Khaleej Times, and on the internet site the Raw Story,
on August 18, the misinformation made some "noise."
In another propaganda front, Ahmadinejad has been
turned into the most powerful radical in the world - akin to the second coming
of Adolf Hitler. But, anybody who is familiar with Iran's political power structure knows that
important decisions regarding Iran's foreign policy and national
security are not made by its President. Moreover, what is never mentioned is
that,
consistent with Iran being a dynamic society with multiple
voices, Ahmadinejad's deplorable comments regarding Israel have actually been condemned by a vast
array of people across Iran's political
spectrum.
The fourth propaganda front exaggerates
Iran's actions and inactions
regarding its nuclear program. Consider the followings:
(1) It is constantly stated that Iran is not
trustworthy because it hid for 18 years its nuclear facilities at Natanz. But,
Iran's only obligation was to inform
the IAEA 180 days before it introducing any nuclear materials into those
facilities.
(2) It also erroneously stated time and again that
Iran has violated the provisions of
the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. However, the only ways to do so are by
either secretly using nuclear facilities to weaponize, or by helping another
nation to do so, or by transferring nuclear technology to a non-NPT nation. It
is, in fact, the Bush Administration that may actually violate the latter
provision of the NPT by transferring its nuclear technology to
India, a non-NPT nation.
Iran has so far been found only in
minor breaches of its Safeguards Agreement, a far cry from violating the
NPT.
(3) Compare these with the treatment that other
signatories receive that have violated either the NPT or their Safeguards
Agreement. The U.S. professes
concerns over the role of Iran's military in its nuclear program, but is
silent about the leading role of Brazil's military in its enrichment
program. Much has been made of Iran enriching uranium at 4.8% at
minuscule scale, but
Brazil has enriched uranium at 20% level, and has greatly
limited IAEA's visits to its enrichment facilities. South Korea, Taiwan, and Egypt have been
caught by the IAEA trying either to secretly enrich uranium, or designing a
nuclear bomb. But, to paraphrase Senator Bob Dole during his run for President
in 1996, "where is the outrage" against such violations?
Another theme constantly repeated, especially by
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is that, Iran has tried to disrupt the political process
in Iraq, or that it has
played a very negative role there, or that it is afraid of a stable and
democratic Iraq. The reality could not be
farther from the truth.
Iraq's territorial integrity is in Iran's national
interests, regardless of who rules it. If Iraq disintegrates into three mini Shi'ite, Sunni
and Kurdish states, the emergence of the Kurdish state will have deep
implications for Iran's own Kurds who represent a
sizeable portion (about 10%) of its population, the least of which will be the
clashes between the Kurds and the Turkish army.
Moreover, given Iran's painful experience with having
to host 2 million Afghans who took refuge in Iran during the Afghan wars, the
possibility of having to deal with millions of Iraqi Shi'ite refugees that might
flee to Iran as a result of a full-blown civil war in Iraq is terrifying, even
to the
hardliners.
Finally, if there is one point about
Iraq on which Iranian
reformists and democrats on one hand, and the hardliners on the other hand, may
agree is that, the emergence of a more or less democratic system in
Iraq is in
Iran's national interests. The
hardliners like this prospect because they believe that the Shi'ite forces
allied with them will always be in control. The reformists and democrats believe
that a democratic Iraq would
brighten prospects for democracy in Iran.
The crux of the U.S. displeasure is that, Iran has
close contacts with almost all the Iraqi groups, from Ayatollah Ali Sistani and
Muqtada al-Sadr and their followers, to the leadership of the Supreme Council
for Islamic Revolution in Iraq who lived in exile in Iran for years, and many of
current Iraq's leaders, the same groups and people who have come to power
through the U.S. help!
In another propaganda front, the House subcommittee
on Intelligence recently released a report on Iran's nuclear program that was
full of lies - such as stating that Iran is enriching uranium at the weapon
level (80%-90%), that it has the long-range Shahab-4 missiles, and other great
lies and exaggerations. It also criticized the CIA and other intelligence
agencies for being too cautious
about the extent of Iran's nuclear
program.
The Godwin's Law
In the latest propaganda front opened last week by
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, we are
being warned about the non-existence threat of the fictional "Islamo-Fascism,"
an absurd and fundamentally contradictory "ism" invented by some of the most
extreme elements in the U.S. This indicates the desperation
of an Administration that has nothing good to show for its costly and bloody
wars in the Middle East after 5 years. What the
Administration is doing by invoking this false analogy is confirming the
Godwin's Law, formulated by Michael Godwin in 1990, according to which (quoted
from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia):
As an
online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving
Nazis
or
Hitler approaches 1.
As pointed out above, one facet of the propaganda war
on Iran, and making the case for continuing other wars in the Middle East, is
making the rise to power of Ahmadinejad and other radicals in the Middle East
akin to second coming of Adolf Hitler.
Talking about a fictitious "Islamo-Fascism" is, in
fact, surprising, because Leo Strauss, the University of Chicago professor and the intellectual
father of the neoconservatives, had actually warned against such false
analogies. In his 1950 book, Natutral Right and History, Chapter II, he writes
(quoted from Wikipedia),
In
following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond
which
the
scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without
saying that in our examination we
must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a
substitute for reductio and absurdum: the reductio and Hitlerum. A view is not
refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by
Hitler.
Thus, for example, President Eisenhower despised
Hitler, but admired Hitler's Autobahnen and promoted the Interstate Highway
System in the U.S. But, as usual, the
neoconservatives, similar to their spiritual allies among Iran's
hardliners, only invoke certain "principles" if they suite their interests. The
reader should read the interesting article by Ken Silverstein, posted on
Harper's Magazine site on August 31, 2006 (www.harpers.org). The reader should also read
the excellent
article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/red-state-fascism.html)
on how the "red states" in the U.S. are moving towards some type of
fascism.
The Lost Propaganda War
What is the reality on the ground? Since Iran is
years away, if ever, from making a nuclear bomb, the fact is, in their
propaganda war against Iran, the Bush Administration and the neoconservatives
have already lost a major battle, if not the war itself. Iran's
hardliners survive, and even thrive, on the existence of a national crisis. That
is almost the only way they can stay in office for long. Therefore, by creating
an unnecessary crisis over Iran's nuclear program, the
Administration and the neoconservatives have played right into the hands of Mr.
Ahmadinejad and his co-horts.
To see this, one should only recall that during
Iran's presidential elections of 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad ran on a platform of
"bringing the oil wealth to people's homes," promising a robust economy, low
inflation, elimination of corruption, a fair redistribution of national wealth,
and ample employment opportunities for Iran's armies of young and educated, but
unemployed, people.
It has become clear, however, that Ahmadinejad and
his co-horts could not deliver on any of those promises.
Signs of hyperinflation have already appeared in
Iran's economy, unemployment has not
decreased, and social and political restrictions have increased, while
corruption is as rampant as ever. Knowing these, Ahmadinejad has used the
U.S.-created nuclear crisis for not only inciting Iranian nationalism, but also
distracting people's attention from Iran's mountain of economical, social, and
political problems, while at the same time trying to
use the same crisis to suppress Iran's democratic
movement.
Fomenting Ethnic Tensions
The neoconservatives support fomenting friction
between Iran's ethnic minorities and the
Persian majority. The ethnic minorities do have many legitimate grievances
against the central government in Tehran. It is also certainly true that the
problems have been exacerbated since Ahmadinejad
took office. However, the grievances - both economic
and cultural - have never been a critical issue in Iran's internal
dynamics, in the sense of posing a threat to its territorial integrity, but the
neoconservatives have been trying to change that.
There have been several reports that the MKO members,
who are protected by the U.S. in their Camp Ashraf in Iraq, are working with the
U.S. Special Forces to collect information about Iran's nuclear facilities, and
Iran's ethnic minorities. Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times of London reported
on February 23, 2006 that, "The intelligence wing of the US marines has launched
a probe into Iran's ethnic minorities..." and that, "the Pentagon was examining
the depth and nature of grievances against the Islamic government, and appeared
to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the
same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq." Violence flared-up in the
Iranian provinces in which the ethnic minorities are in the majority.
In 2005 exiled Iranians from various ethnic groups
held a "Congress" in London. According to Mr. Dinmore, State
Department officials met representatives of the London meeting in the first such talks between the Bush
administration and a coalition claiming to represent Iran's ethnic
minorities.
Several months ago, Michael Ledeen chaired a
conference called, "Another Case for Federalism?" at the American Enterprise
Institute. He claimed that the representatives of Iran's ethnic minorities participated in his
conference, but the conference angered almost all Iranians who live in the
U.S. and Europe.
The Military Strategy
The Administration has refused to rule out the
possibility of military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and beyond.
It has dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Persian
Gulf to join the one that is already there. However,
Iran is not
Iraq.
Iraq was formed only in 1932 with artificial boundaries
that have no historical roots. At the same time, the Iraqi nationalism has
always been weak. Every Iraqi leader from General Abdul Karim Qassim, who
overthrew Iraq's monarchy in 1958, to Saddam
Hussein, always advocated Pan Arabism, rather than Iraqi nationalism. Even when
Saddam's forces were fighting with Iran, he presented himself as the Arabs', not
Iraq's,
defender.
Iran, on the other hand, has existed as an independent
nation for thousands of years. Iranians have made magnificent contributions to
humanity, science and culture. Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce.
Even the Iranian clerics have had to acknowledge this.
As pointed out by the author in two op-ed pieces
(co-written with Dr. Ebadi), published on January 21, 2006 in the Los Angeles
Times and the International Herald Tribune, military strikes on Iran would
create a potent mixture of fierce Iranian nationalism and the Shi'ites' long
tradition of martyrdom in defence of their homeland and religion, which would
respond so violently to the attacks that it would engulf the entire region in
fire. Hezbollah's war with Israel went a long way to demonstrate the
Shi'ites motivations for fighting: After 33 days, Israel's powerful army could not advance more
than 7 kilometers into southern Lebanon, the same army that had reached Beirut
in 1982 in less than a week.
The armchair warriors, both inside and outside the
Administration, have been deluded by the neoconservatives' claim that intense
bombing of Iran will lead to an uprising by
Iranians. The absurd argument is that, "we will destroy Iran, but
Iranians will hate others and love us for doing destroying their country." But,
as the Lebanon war
demonstrated, such a delusion will never become reality in the Middle East. Although a big majority of Iranians despise
the hardliners, anyone who has the slightest familiarity with
Iran's history knows that
intense bombing of Iran will not lead to the downfall of
the hardliners, rather it will help them consolidate their power. Some
historical examples:
Iranians were already tired of the chaos and huge
unemployment that the 1979 Revolution had caused when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980.
Yet, they rallied around their government. Even the Iranian-Arabs of the
oil-rich Khuzestan province, that Saddam's forces had invaded, fought fiercely
against the invaders.
Many Iranians also believe that the last five or six
years of Iran-Iraq eight-year war was unnecessary (as Iran had taken back all of its territory that had
been occupied by Iraq), driven only by the ideologues
on both sides. This period was also when Iraq attacked savagely Iran's
population and industrial centers with missiles and chemical bombs, yet the
Iranian army never greatly suffered from shortage of soldiers or
desertion.
Thus, realistically, regime change in
Iran through the
U.S. multi-pronged strategy will not
happen. The aspiration of Iranian people for a democratic government at peace
with the rest of the world should be supported. Impartial Western NGOs, such as
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, must keep the plights of Iranian
democrats and human rights defenders who have been
imprisoned in the public eyes. They must report on
human rights abuses - the Achilles' heel of the hardliners - in
Iran.
But, no government, and in particular the Bush
Administration and the Blair government, should interfere in Iran's internal
affairs, not only because it is against international laws, but also because
they simply do not have the moral authority after their illegal invasion of
Iraq, their support of Israel for destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon, and
what has been happening at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and
elsewhere.
Diplomatic Solution
Thus, a diplomatic initiative is the only viable
approach to Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps the
best description of how such negotiations can success was given by Albert
Einstein. In an article entitled, "The 1932 Disarmament Conference" (the
conference was held in February 1932 in Geneva), published on September 23, 1932 in The
Nation, Einstein wrote,
Success in such great affairs is not a
matter of cleverness, or even shrewdness, but
instead a matter of honorable conduct and mutual confidence. You cannot
substitute
intellect for moral conduct in this matter.
Thus, both Iran and the West must make
concessions in order to address the legitimate concerns of one another.
Iran must be offered a deal
that addresses its aspirations for having advanced technology, guarantees its
national security and territorial integrity, and recognizes it as the key nation
in the Middle East. Such a deal will strengthen
Iran's democratic and reformist
groups in their struggle for democracy, which will ultimately lead to nuclear
transparency.
Two months before Mr. Ahmadinejad's election, Iran
had already submitted, on March 23, 2005, to the EU troika (Britain, France, and
Germany) a plan of objective guarantees for peaceful nature of its nuclear
program, and offered to, (1) forego plutonium production through a heavy water
reactor, or reprocessing of spent fuel; (2) produce only low-enriched uranium,
restrict its amount to what is needed for Iran's reactors, and convert them
immediately to fuel rods (that cannot be further enriched), and (3) limit the
number of centrifuges in Natanz facility, at least at the beginning, with the
IAEA having permanent on-site presence at all the facilities. In addition, Iran
has offered to, (4) ratify the Additional Protocol, and allow once again
intrusive inspections; (5) guarantee not to leave the NPT (a la North Korea),
and (6) accept an IAEA-verified limit on the production of uranium
hexafluoride.
These concessions, if taken up by the West, will help
realize the worst nightmare of the neoconservatives and their Iranian allies,
namely, that Iran may actually agree to curtail
the scope of its nuclear program. But, the EU ignored Iran's
proposal.
Russia has already guaranteed fuel supply and spent-fuel
management for the Bushehr reactor for 10 years. The agreement can be extended
for longer periods of time, and to Iran's future nuclear reactors. But,
there is historical distrust of Russia by
Iranians:
Russia took over by force large parts of
Iran's territory in 1813 and 1827,
and never relinquished them. It helped the counter-revolutionaries during
Iran's Constitutional
Revolution of 1906-1908, and was opposed, through its Iranian mercenaries, to
Iran's industrialization in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. The Soviet Union refused to evacuate parts of
Iran at the end of World War II,
until it was pressured by the West.
It took advantage of Iran's
weak government and looted Iran's caviar and fisheries in the Caspian Sea from 1927 until the 1950s, when a bilateral
agreement was signed between the two nations. The Soviet Union and Iran signed
two treaties in 1921 and 1940 that forbade the two nations from taking
unilateral actions regarding the natural resources of the Caspian Sea, yet
Russia has done exactly that, signing bilateral agreement, over Iran's strong
objections, with the other littoral States, namely, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,
and Kazakhstan. Iranians also see how easily Russia shuts off its natural gas pipelines to
Ukraine, Western Europe, and
Georgia, just to express its
displeasure with these nations.
Therefore, if the Russian option is to work as a
temporary solution, at least five years of nuclear fuel should be set aside for
Iran, as suggested by the
E.U. in its latest proposal to Iran. In case that the Russian
supplies are cut off, Iran would have enough fuel to last
until it can start its own fuel
production, or an alternative source can be found.
This can be done through, for example, a fuel bank managed by the IAEA. A
credible procedure must also be established to guarantee that the control of the
fuel bank will not fall in the hands of U.S., Britain, France, and Germany that
have long records of illegally freezing many nations'
assets.
The U.S. sanctions against Iran should at least be partially lifted to allow
Iran to buy new civilian
aircrafts, and the U.S. oil
companies to invest in Iran's oil and gas industry. While
the author is against any sanctions, partial lifting of the U.S. sanctions
is far better than the present totally blind sanctions that hurt only ordinary
Iranians.
Most people across Iran's political spectrum believe that the
U.S. never recognized the
legitimacy of the 1979 Revolution, ever since has been after overthrowing the
government in Tehran. They also worry that if President
Pervez Musharraf is assassinated (and there have already been two such attempts)
and the Taliban's sympathizers in the military take over, they will pose a grave
danger to Iran's national security. Add to
these the facts that, (1) in the 1980s Iraq was armed to teeth to invade Iran
and was helped to develop chemical weapons that it used against Iran and its own
citizens, and (2) the constant threats made by Israel against Iran, and then one
can develop a better understanding of Iran's legitimate national security
concerns. So long as such concerns are not addressed, short of invading
Iran and installing a puppet
regime in Tehran, no Iranian government, regardless of
its political leanings, would dare to give up forever the right to enrich
uranium.
Therefore, the UN Security Council must guarantee
that no country would attack or threaten Iran, so long as Iran complies
with its nuclear obligations and does not threaten other states, or carry out or
sponsor aggression against other nations. For this guarantee to be meaningful,
Iran and the
U.S. must start direct
negotiations.
The West - Iran
Negotiations
Insisting on Iran suspending its uranium
enrichment program before any negotiations take place is, for several reasons,
counterproductive.
(1) Iran did suspend for two years its
uranium enrichment program while negotiating with the E.U., but the negotiations
did not produce any concrete result. Therefore, why insist on something that
gives an excuse to Tehran's radicals to scuttle the
negotiations?
(2) Iran's present scale of uranium
enrichment is extremely limited, with only a cascade of 164 centrifuges working
in Natanz, and a mountain of technical problems to overcome. In its latest
report released on Thursday August 31, 2006, the IAEA reported that
Iran had made very little progress in
expanding and advancing its uranium enrichment program. Thus, the small cascade
does not, by itself, pose any threat to any nation.
(3) As a signatory of the NPT, Iran is entitled
to having a uranium enrichment program. There is absolutely nothing in the
present NPT and its Safeguards Agreement that stipulates that, if a signatory of
NPT is found in minor breaches of the Agreement, it has automatically given up
its right to uranium enrichment. If the West intends to impose this additional
requirement on Iran, it must first legally modify
the NPT itself. The West's opposition to Iran's uranium enrichment program is viewed by
Iranians mostly as the continuation of its hostility towards Iran's technological advancements that began by
the British and Russian opposition to building railroads in Iran in the
19th century.
(4) The U.S. and its European allies cannot
arbitrarily decide which UN Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution
1696, ought to be enforced, and which ones do not need to be.
There are those who believe that direct negotiations
between Iran and the
U.S.bestow upon Iran's hardliners international
legitimacy. This is, however, a false argument. It is certainly true that
Iran's hardliners have not come to
power through democratic and fair elections. It is also true that they have been
trying to suppress Iran's democratic movement. However,
the legitimacy of any political group or those who are in power in any nation is
bestowed upon them by the people of that nation, not by any foreign power.
Therefore, if Iran's hardliners have no legitimacy, it is because the Iranian
people do not recognize them as freely and fairly elected leaders, and no
negotiations with the U.S. or any other major power can give them legitimacy
(although it might give them some political relief). Conversely, any legitimacy
that the hardliners might have has been given to them by at least a fraction of
Iran's population, not by any major
foreign power.
Addressing the West's
Concerns
To address the West's concerns about the possibility
of nuclear weaponization, Iran must agree not to invoke for an
agreed-upon period of time its rights for uranium enrichment under the NPT
agreement. In the past, Iran had suggested a two-year period,
but the E.U. wants a much longer freeze. It is unlikely, however, that
Iran would agree to a prolonged
freeze, or that it would freeze
its program before concrete concessions are made to
it through negotiations.
One possible solution is the "delayed-limited
enrichment" program that the International Crisis Group has proposed. According
to this program, the first step for Iran would be to suspend all of its
nuclear activities for a period of time. If Iran did
"graduate" from this phase, it could go forward with pilot-scale enrichment. If
Iran did "graduate" from the second
phase, it could start larger scale enrichment. Clearly, what constitutes
"graduation" must be defined unambiguously.
From the West's view point the transparency of
Iran's nuclear program is the most
critical issue. As the author pointed out in the aforementioned op-ed pieces,
democracy in Iran would lead to transparency.
Therefore, the West must help Iran's democratic movement without
interfering in its internal affairs.
A political solution will have another major benefit:
It will take away from Iran's
hardliners the unnecessary crisis created by the U.S. over Iran's nuclear
program, and force them to address the aspirations of Iranian people for
economical prosperity, and social and political freedom. Without a national
crisis, the hardliners will be at a crossroad: They would have to either solve
Iran's economical, social, and
political problems, or they will be removed from power by Iranian people one way
or another. Thus, the absence of an artificial national crisis would open up all
types of possibilities for democratization of Iran's political
system by its democratic and reformist groups, leading eventually to the
ultimate safeguards - a transparent political system.
About the author: Muhammad Sahimi, the NIOC Chair in petroleum
engineering, and professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the
University of Southern California, writes and speaks regularly about Iran's
nuclear program and its political developments. In addition to his scientific
research that have resulted in over 240 published papers and four books, his
political writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Harvard International Review, and
Issues in Science and Technology, as well as various
websites.
