[Dialogue] Winner of the war in Iraq is Iran

Sun Sep 3 12:32:56 EST 2006

Mary Lasher is a colleague of ours at the College for Seniors here in
Asheville NC. Peace, Harry 
  _____  

CITIZEN-TIMES.com

Winner of the war in Iraq is Iran

Mary Lasher

September 3, 2006 12:15 am

The Bush team's war on Iraq is over and Iran won. A tamer version of this
startling statement is: The incompetence and bungling of the Bush team in
Iraq since 2003 has shaped strategic factors which enabled Iran to achieve
its long-desired goal of political eminence in the Middle East. Iran
achieved its new status in the region without having to go to war or fire a
shot. 

Before 2003, Iran was on the defensive in the region. It had failed to
export the 1979 radical Shiite revolution to Middle East countries. Sunnis
maintained firm control of all other Muslim states in the region, often
oppressing their Shiite populations who were largely poor and provincial. 

Saddam Hussein, albeit a brutal dictator like many others in the world, kept
Iran in check for about 25 years, from early 1979 to 2003. In Saddam's war
on Iran from 1980-1988 the Iranians suffered heavy casualties and a
devastated economy. Iranians were terrified at Saddam's threat to use a
radiation bomb he experimented with in 1987, but the UN brokered a peace
deal in 1990 and the bomb was never completed. Yet Iran's fear of hostile
neighbors was heightened. And the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini's fantasy of
avenging centuries-old Sunni dominance never materialized. He died in 1989. 

After the Iraq-Iran war, Iran resumed its interest in a nuclear program to
protect itself in the Sunni-dominated Middle East. (The U.S. had urged Iran
to develop a nuclear program in the Cold War days of the Shah.) But in the
1990s Iran remained a negligible factor in the power politics of the Middle
East. Meanwhile, tensions between Sunnis and Shiites persisted, as they had
since the 680 C.E. martyrdom of Muhammad's grandson, Husayn, whose followers
became known as Shiites. 

In the 1990s the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia, arch enemy of Iran, supported the
Sunni Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan and used it as a training ground for
various "holy warrior" fighting groups, one of which developed into
al-Qaida, led by the Arabian Osama bin Laden. Thus hemmed in by two
additional enemy powers - Saddam's Iraq on its northwest border and the
Taliban's Afghanistan on its eastern border - Iran sped up its efforts to
develop nuclear power. 

Immediately after the horrific events of Sept. 11, millions of Iranians
poured into city streets to express sympathy for Americans. Urban Iranians,
with a highly modernized and educated middle class, generally like and
admire Americans for our modern and secular lifestyle, but they dislike our
political leaders. Iranians share many characteristics of typical Americans.

After Sept. 11 the U.S. helped expel the Taliban in Afghanistan and
overthrew Saddam's regime in Iraq. Within two years, the Bush team had
removed Iran's two major threats, thereby dramatically altering the region's
strategic factors to benefit Iran. Iran itself could never have militarily
defeated the Afghans and Iraqis. But in 2003, for the first time in several
centuries, since its last great-power rivalry with the Turks in the 1700s,
Iran's political star was rising. With its two nearest threats eliminated,
Iran's leaders skillfully explored all ramifications of the new Middle East
dynamics wrought by the U.S., and they have used them effectively to enhance
Iran's political clout. 

A chance missed

Until late 2004 there were signals from Iran that it sought rapprochement
with the U.S., notably from the Khatami, the democratically elected
president of the majlis (parliament), who served two four-year terms. He won
overwhelming victories at the polls in 1997 and 2001 with promises of social
reforms at home and a "dialogue of cultures" with the U.S. During Khatami's
reform-party presidency, Iran offered assistance to the U.S. in ousting the
Taliban, proposed substantive talks with the U.S. resolving bilateral
differences, and agreed to suspend uranium enrichment if Bush would join
EU-3 talks on economic, strategic, and nuclear questions. Bush rejected the
overtures. Instead of dialogue, he named Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil"
in 2002. One consequence was that the Iranian people lost confidence in the
moderate Khatami, interpreting his failure to engage the Bush team as the
need for an entirely different approach to the U.S. 

Hardliners rise

In June 2005 Iranians elected the hardliner Ahmadinejad. A striking contrast
to the urbane, well-educated, moderate Khatami, Ahmadinejad grew up in a
poor family, was radicalized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, led
commando raids into Iraq during the 1980s, and is an avid Shiite who
believes in the imminent coming of the Mahdi and the End of Days. An
uncannily astute populist politician, he knows how to manipulate the crowd,
and he has played the nuclear card to its fullest, as the street roars its
approval. (Nuclear experts agree that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons
but most likely will have them in the future, as will many other countries
in their desire to use nuclear power as a deterrent.) The inflamed rhetoric
of Iran's new president increases his popular support at home, for Iranians
value their country's newfound prestige above all else. Like Americans, they
are intensely patriotic and are often susceptible to their leaders'
inflammatory, religious-laced rhetoric. Refusals to talk and the bellicose
language of leaders of both countries have hardened attitudes and enormously
increased Middle East tensions. 

Iran's internal dynamics, which the U.S. unwittingly helped create, have
compelled Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's political opponents to give
the president room to maneuver as long as his popular support remains
strong. But the clerics and jurists who dominate the Assembly of Experts
hold ultimate power to impeach the president, as specified in Iran's
constitution. They will do so if the time is propitious, for many government
officials do not support Ahmadinejad. 

In reflecting on Ahmadinejad's popularity with the electorate, it is useful
to consider the irony that free and open elections in countries today can
have disastrous consequences when conducted in impassioned climates by
uninformed voters. 

Strife spreads

The Bush team's war on Iraq is over and that country is spiraling into its
own civil war. Sectarian strife in Iraq spilled over this summer into
Lebanon where an emboldened Shiite Hezbollah has become a military hero and
provider of social services for millions of Lebanese. Political analysts
expect Iran to underwrite the rebuilding of southern Lebanon, which will
further enhance the new popularity of Shiism. 

Are Iran and Hezbollah a direct threat to the national security of the U.S.?
A rational answer must consider their goals. Iran seeks regional hegemony in
the Middle East, not war with the U.S. It is in the national interest of
both the U.S. and Iran to prevent a Middle East conflagration. To avert
conflict with Iran, the U.S. must skillfully assume the responsibility of
honest broker in the region, as Secretary of State James Baker successfully
did during the term of George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s. Hezbollah, as
well as Iran, seeks to be champion of the oppressed Shiites. Hezbollah does
not seek war against Americans, but it does seek to gain control of Lebanon,
whose fragile democracy is now destroyed. 

Who then is a direct threat to the national security of the U.S.? Al-Qaida,
a fanatical Sunni terrorist group, is the gravest threat to our beloved
country today. Its aim is to bring about massive destruction on U.S. soil,
death to U.S. citizens, and the same to our allies. It is too late to weep
over what could have happened after Sept. 11 at Tora Bora in Afghanistan
when the U.S. failed to capture bin Laden, but it is not too late to:
refocus U.S. foreign and domestic policy on bin Laden's worldwide network;
drop the fantasy proclamations about democracy in the Middle East; and
refrain from provocations which open more doors to Iran's dramatic
ascendancy in the Middle East. 

Mary Lasher lives in Asheville. Before retirement she taught history in
schools and universities, and now teaches at College for Seniors and Blue
Ridge Longlife Learning. One of her widely researched courses was "Low Life
and High Life in 18th Century England," dealing with the brilliant satire of
that bawdy and politically important era.

  _____  

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