Through Iranian Eyes

We believe that Iran can be bought into line – to dissemble its growing nuclear weapons capability (if it really exists) – under a combination of global pressure and military threat. Dialog with Iranian leaders is supposed to make that message clear and create an environment where compliance is an attractive invitation to take a seat alongside the “responsible” nations to support worldwide peace and stability.

While the large Iranian middle class may indeed indentify with those goals and Western values, the government isn’t going away any time soon; their power is firmly entrenched, albeit with the threat of force. Indeed, according to a recent Rand study commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, factions within the Iran’s military and even within the religious and political communities (as well as in neighboring states) make Iran feel particularly vulnerable from within and outside of its borders. But they are not stepping up to respond positively to the American proposals? Why?

First and foremost, a reality to Sunni and Shiite powers alike (Iran is a Shiite power, which, until recently, has been viewed very hostilely by Sunnis), that despite their oil riches (and the price of oil is rising again), the Western world looks at them as second rate “rag-heads” – Arab and Persian no matter – and still see camels, Bedouin tents and veiled and dark-wrapped women. We read of the brutality of the religious police, stoning, whipping and what we describe as the trappings of a primitive and tribal society. We don’t see the ultra-modern buildings and the functioning side of a modern society with tribal roots.

This region watched for 400 years during the life of and after the death of their Prophet Muhammad as the Islamic world pummeled Europe very successfully before an historically short 119 years of a Crusader counter-attack. They remember book-burnings in Europe during the Middle Ages as Muslim libraries preserved Western culture and heritage, as their scientists invented modern mathematics and geography. History and complacency trashed that glory in the 1800s, just as the West exploded to new levels with the Industrial Revolution.

Humiliation is a powerful recruiting tool. Iran’s leaders have used the return of the Islamic world to the glory days as their abiding mission. Whether it is the shameless support of Shiite Hezbollah, the vehement threats to destroy Israel in a short devastating attack or support of a once enemy, Sunni Hamas, Iran has risen in stature in the region by pursuing the very policy of aggressive arrogance that America wishes to stop. They just haven’t risen as fast as they had hoped; they still see a world full of threats.

For those who remember our sustained “Cold War” against Communist China and Soviet Union – fearing the same fears, hearing the same threats (albeit directed to other nations, even the United States – you may remember or have studied Nikita Khrushchev’s famous 1960 “we will bury you” speech – “Мы вас похороним! – at the United Nations as he banged his shoe on the desk), think at how U.S. containment and threats worked there. The regimes changed or toppled from within, not through our efforts.

A large number of Israelis say they would leave their country if Iran’s nuclear weapon program is sufficiently developed without some tangible destruction. And Iran’s stature rises with every such statement. As Hamas rockets supplied by Iran rained down on Israel, Iran’s regional stature rose in the region. Her rippling muscles gleam in the hot spring sun, even as the decline of oil revenues (they are on the rise however) have modified their financial capacity. As hostile Hamas suggests that there is a path to peace over Palestine, and as Israeli hardliners counter with a formal acknowledgement of Israel as the Jewish state (a clear rejection of Hamas) and security in the region (Iran’s stopping its nuclear program), Iran basks in the glory of her military might. But her insecurity still shows.

With America very much still funding efforts begun during the Bush administration to destabilize the Iranian government and provide support for her enemies, both within and outside of her borders, statements of a desire for dialog by the Obama administration are met with skeptical shrugs and demands to see evidence equality and reciprocity by the Tehran’s government. With the possibility of an Israeli preemptive surgical airstrike against Iran’s nuclear processing plants, Iran responds with a test of a medium range, solid fuel missile, easily capable of reaching Israeli targets. As the Obama administration poses deadlines for progress in nuclear disarmament talks with Iran, Tehran has yet another defiant act ready to boost its regional stature. Or does it?

Does Iran even want nuclear weapons? Saying “Iranians aren't suicidal,” Newsweek’s Farid Zakaria (June 1^st issue) argues there’s even a chance that Iranian leaders simply want nuclear energy: “[O]ver the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were ‘un-Islamic.’ The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral.” Whom do you believe?

The willingness of the rest of the world to boycott Iran and impose remotely effective sanctions as the U.S. might desire is significantly less than it was before the big meltdown. A hardliner statement during her campaign that she would consider an act that would “obliterate” Iran if deemed necessary and the mere fact that she is a woman, make Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an unlikely peace-maker with Iran’s power infrastructure, and Department of State Iran-specialist, Dennis Ross, “engagement with pressure” strategy is seen as particularly distasteful to Tehran.

So that gives the Obama administration an exceptionally difficult conundrum. If dialog does not work, if Iran’s leadership does back off its right to enrich uranium (look at North Korea’s defiant nuclear test on May 24^th), if the world’s willingness to impose real sanctions doesn’t rise above watered-down “symbolism,” what exactly do we do? How certain are we there will be nuclear weapons? If Israel strikes Iran with an aerial attack, where will that take American policy? Does Pakistan begin a new program of making sure Muslim allies get the nuclear weapons even faster than they can develop them internally? Will North Korean sell them such weapons anyway? Does the price oil of inject a crippling spike into this global financial mess? Will that bring Europe to her knees? Are we in a new Cold War that can turn very hot in an instant? Make no mistake, Iran is not a trustworthy “ally” no matter what the rapprochement. They are definitely not “friendship” material. If you’re confused, welcome to Washington, D.C., city that makes its living out of confusion!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder too.