Satans Great and Small

In 1979, an American-backed regime – the infamous Shah Pahlavi – was crushed in a religious populist uprising. The victorious Revolutionary Guard, led by the deeply anti-Western Ayatollah Khomeini (who had resided in Paris for years!), imposed a form of government in which religion was the ultimate political power. “Students” seized the U.S. Embassy on November 4, 1979, taking more than 60 Americans stationed there hostage. One major failed rescue attempt and a presidential election that replaced Jimmy Carter with Ronald Reagan later, 444 days later, and the hostages were released.

From 1980 until 1988, the United States supplied Iraq’s Sunni dictator with arms and munitions in his war against Shiite Iran. Saddam Hussein, later our dire enemy, was our darling as he battled the “evil empire” of Iran. It was the Iraqi army that began the invasion, but after millions of casualties and billions of dollars of damage, the war ended in a stalemate. Iran’s anger at American support of her horrific enemy seethed and grew. 

Anything that the United States fostered was fair game, and the Iranians were quick to capitalize on what was clearly viewed by regional powers as a festering sore: a disenfranchised body of Palestinians, second class citizens struggling against their “oppressive” conqueror, Israel. Desiring to rise as a Muslim regional power, despite their Shiite faith, Iran embraced a willingness to challenge the greatest power on earth, the United States of America. Israel was perceived as America’s surrogate, doing America’s bidding. Israel became the “Little Satan,” just as America retained the label “Great Satan.” But as Iran watched Israel grow, she mobilized her own surrogate army, Hezbollah (quickly labeled as “terrorists” by the West), to carry conflict and misery throughout the region on her behalf. The rhetoric of pushing the Jewish state into the sea, exterminating her from the Levant, became an oft-repeated mantra, chanted repeatedly throughout Iran. They smiled at America’s irritation at their words; their tactic was working

America had opposed Iran at every turn, backed Iran’s enemies with weapons and hard cash and maintained a massive military presence on both sides of Iran – Afghanistan to the east, and Iraq to the West. We had Iran surrounded. Stupidly, we deposed a Sunni minority in Iraq, handing power to the majority of Shiite, who promptly gravitated towards their natural Shiite allies (the vast majority) in Iran.

To send shivers down the spines of two major nuclear military powers – the United States and Israel (the latter has never officially admitted its nuclear weapons capacity) – Iran needed to fill the world with awe and dread by developing its own nuclear deterrents (weapons that could also be used to make good on its threats to exterminate Israel).

With a little help from Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan – the father of the “Muslim bomb” – Iran’s well-educated nuclear engineers built a vast network of highly sophisticated centrifuges capable of refining the highly concentrated and purified fissionable material necessary to make a bomb. Iran denied a military intention, but no one believed them. America and her Western allies responded. Sanctions. Lots of them. Escalating. The Iranian quality of life plunged and cost of basic goods, particularly food, skyrocketed. Daily life in Iran was miserable, but the top echelons of Iran’s political hierarchy, religious and elected, convinced the populous to endure for the sake of the motherland. Anti-American rhetoric escalated just as the denial of an offensive nuclear weapons program continued.

The American strategy had always been: don’t talk to Iran until we bring her to her knees begging for reconciliation. They never begged. Instead, Iran’s religious leaders, who used the sanctity of following God’s mandate, responded with fiery resistance, vowing to endure and retaliate. To them, it was simply a matter of God vs. both the Great and Little Satans. Both sides dug in their heels as the years rolled by. It was not until non-Western powers – Russia and China – joined the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany (with support from the United Nations) to pressure Iran to forsake its nuclear weapons potential that Iran began to accept the notion of a big trade-off: stop developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a lifting of sanctions. In 2009, the United States ended it refusal to deal directly with Iran’s leadership. It took years, but there is now a fully-negotiated accord signed and sealed.

Should we now trust Iran? Hell no! Even with the nuclear accord with Iran accepted and rising to implementation levels, the “Great Satan” and “exterminate Israel” rhetoric continued to emanate from Iran’s Supreme Leader, the aging and sickly Ayatollah Khamenei. He made it very clear that Iran’s engagement with the United States was to be exceptionally narrowly defined, that no détente was otherwise on the table, and that Iran and the United States remained bitter enemies. It was wonderful fodder for the GOP presidential debated on September 16^th, in which all manner of “Iran must be brought to its knees and all nuclear capacity dismantled” sloganeering was de rigeure.

But the reality in Iran is very different from the angry words of old men atop an aging and increasingly unpopular Iranian religious hierarchy. The religious police and the Revolutionary Guard are deeply resented by the majority of this well-educated population. Are these the dying gasps of a government likely to fall or simply a reflection of slowly changing values? If there were truly an election on maintaining this rather extreme version of theocracy, most experts agree that the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guards would be gone. But there is no real free election looming on the horizon, and the military/police force are there to extinguish dissent as quickly as it can be identified.

The existing regime isn’t going anywhere soon, but even its religious leaders know that keeping their economy in the dumpster would, sooner or later, erode their hold on the people. So while the rhetoric continues, Iranians are more interested in international trade, improving their economy and restoring a decent quality of life. And as that trade builds Iranian economic values, is all that extra money going to go to fuel global insurrection, to annihilate Israel and to cause Iran’s new trading partners to shut down their newfound economic connectivity and return Tehran and her people to lives of enduring misery? Or will having a more globally-integrated economy with money swelling in her coffers give her pause, a maturation of economic standing where there will be too much to lose to foment renewed sanctions and exclusion from normal economic growth. Are folks with too much to lose likely to take military risks for marginal returns or stay the course and accept their renewed quality of life as a right? What does common sense tell you? The old just may be fading, and the new younger pragmatists are taking hold.

“A new struggle is unfolding in Iran, where the top leaders have begun to tackle the question of how to deal with the United States after having reached a nuclear agreement with their great enemy… The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani have been offering starkly opposing visions of Iran’s post-deal future, reflecting their divergent attitudes toward the ‘Great Satan.’

“‘We have announced that we will not negotiate with the Americans on any issue other than the nuclear case,’ Mr. Khamenei said [in September of 2015]. Speaking to a group of hard-line students recently he was even more explicit, telling them to ‘prepare for the continuation of the fight against America.’… By contrast, Mr. Rouhani said on [September 13^th] that the nuclear agreement, reached after two years of tortuous negotiations, was ‘not the end of the way,’ but ‘a beginning for creating an atmosphere of friendship and cooperation with various countries.’

“How the opposing visions are ultimately resolved may be uncertain, but as the nuclear pact is carried out and the sanctions are lifted, Iran’s favorite scapegoat can no longer plausibly be regarded as the root of all evil in the world.”New York Times, September 17^th. Rouhani even took steps to ease American concerns in an interview televised on CBS’ 60 Minutes on September 20^th, trying to reconcile Iran’s anger with America’s battle against Iran since the Revolution with an obvious need to de-escalate the tensions and to build connectivity for the future.

The 1979 Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War are either distant memories or events that occurred before the majority of Iranians were even born. Bitterness is fading, and the desire to participate in the global economy is growing. The rise of ISIS, a common enemy to both Iran and the United States, has added pressure on both states to coordinate their activities in the region, if not opening and transparently, then through private conversations and diplomatic channels.

But old men and what they have stood for over the decades will not fade away in the immediate future. To Iran’s religious leaders, a willingness to make concessions cannot be viewed by either Iran’s own populous or the rest of the world as weakness. A big move on the nuclear program needed to be balanced with a “nothing has changed” sentiment. Remember, nothing happens without a blessing from the Ayatollah. And the rhetoric coming out of the GOP presidential debates isn’t playing particularly well in Tehran, which now believes it needs to counter such extremist American views with its own parallel counters.

“‘In the end even the supreme leader wants to have better relations with America,’ said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the government. ‘But he is angry over the bad remarks coming out of the United States, so he wants to wait if the deal works before he allows relations to get better.’… It was Ayatollah Khamenei himself who drew up the framework for talking to the United States on the nuclear issue. He allowed direct negotiations to take place only through a trusted foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Iran’s original goal for the talks was not to solve problems with the United States, but to get sanctions lifted.

“There was only one glitch in Ayatollah Khamenei’s carefully planned strategy, when in 2013 an overly enthusiastic Mr. Rouhani accepted a phone call from President Obama. While the conversation created considerable excitement in the West, it did not go over well in Iran. Upon arrival in Tehran, Mr. Rouhani was pelted by hard-liners with eggs and a shoe.

“Some Iranian reformist newspapers are predicting hopefully that Mr. Rouhani will meet Mr. Obama at the United Nations General Assembly this month. In contrast, last week a Friday Prayer leader said that Mr. Zarif had been told — for the time being at least — to cease any direct negotiations with the United States, though people close to Mr. Zarif deny this.” NY Times.

So we can either escalate our own rhetoric, which will encourage Iranians to be more willing to bless the extreme views at the top, or let time work its potentially mellowing effect. We gained nothing without engagement, so why political candidates believe going back to a policy that accomplished absolutely nothing is a good idea is maddening. But for anyone who thinks we should just “trust Iran,” that is an equally foolish policy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and until pragmatism and common sense become our drivers in foreign policy, we will continue to trip and blunder our way to continuing declining global credibility and power, regardless of how big our military might be.