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Iranian
Election Means America Must Change its
Attitude
By JONATHAN
POWER
Feb 22, 2000
LONDON- The only question to be resolved, following
the startling result of the Iranian parliamentary
election, is how quickly the U.S. will now move to bury
the hatchet. Its Cold War with Iran has gone on for over
20 years. This is unnecessarily prolonged, a prisoner of
now distant memories of hostages taken in the U.S.
embassy by hot-headed street fighters of the then
recently successful revolution that had toppled the Shah
and installed in his place the rigid, autocratic,
Islamist regime of Ayotallah Khomeini.
No observer brought up outside a theoistic regime can
summon up much sympathy for the excesses of the Iranian
revolution and its aftermath. Like the French Revolution,
on which, in some part, it was modeled, once in power it
immediately discarded any liberal tenets it held and
became so rigid and uncompromising that normal
idiosyncracies were regarded as a profound threat to the
regime and were trampled on as if the human beings
involved were some kind of vermin. The viscious Islamic
dictatorship of Khomeini had as much to do with the
essentially compassionate teachings of the Koran as
Richard the Lion Heart, whose crusading armies ripped
half of Europe asunder on their way to "defeat the
infidel", had to do with Christ's admonition to turn the
other cheek.
The West had much to complain about. But it overlooked
its own complicity in demolishing an earlier version of
Iranian democracy and it hopelessly exaggerated the
threat posed by the histrionics of Ayotallah Khomeini. By
working to isolate Iran the West forsook what influence
it might have had to temper the revolution's excesses.
Indeed, the depths of hostility plumed during the first
decade of the revolution- only ended by Khomeini's death-
infused itself deeply into the whole relationship between
the West and the Islamic world. Five years ago Nato's
Secretary General, Willy Claes, was telling the world
that Islamic militancy was "the single greatest threat"
to the Nato alliance and western security.
Such superficial reading of what has been happening in
the Islamic world took no account of the tensions within
Moslem society that has led almost all these countries to
move- albeit in varied ways- to stymie extreme Islamist
influence or grabs for power. And it totally failed to
see, until quite recently, how even within the ultra
Islamist state, Iran itself, popular forces were working
within to modernise the revolution, to discard its
repressive and violent elements, and to replace it, as it
has now done in glorious fashion, with viable democratic
institutions.
Although the 1977 presidential election in Iran, when
70% of the voters spurned the theocrats' candidate, made
obvious what many observers had been writing about- the
liberal currents bubbling beneath- it has taken the best
part of three years for the U.S. to seriously consider
mending relations. And it is still- even after this
stunning election result- not up to the starting line
yet.
The crux of the matter for Washington is no longer the
supposed threat of Iranian-sponsored, world-wide
terrorism. That much is admitted. It is Iran's continuing
hostility to a peace settlement between Israel and
Palestine and its resolute pursuit of an armoury of
nuclear weapons.
A little common sense is in order. Iran's hostility to
Israel is an old reflex. Iran is not an Arab nation and
the emnity does not run as deep as it does in, say,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Syria. If these countries, none
of them democracies, can bring themselves to think of
peace with Israel, then Iran will not, after this
election, be far behind. For Iran's electorate today the
passionate issues that can ignite a crowd are economic
opportunity, women's rights and cultural freedom, not
foreign policy.
The question of nuclear weapons is more difficult.
Partly because the outside world doesn't exactly know
quite what Iranian ambitions are. Partly because the
U.S., Britain and France among western nations are so
compromised already with their own lack of progress on
nuclear disarmament that they have relatively little
moral leaverage on any new would-be nuclear power. And
partly, and most important for this neck of the woods,
the West has not uttered one sustained word of criticism
of Israel's substantial nuclear arsenal. ( Until very
recently Washington pretended "not to know".)
But is Iran, in fact, trying to build a nuclear
weapon? One can only surmise it is from circumstantial
evidence. The rivalry with Israel and Iraq combined with
its undoubted scientific abilities would suggest it might
be. It is not so much because Iran would believe for a
moment it could use its own nuclear armoury to neutralise
Israel's and it could then successfully engage it with
conventional forces. It is more a simple question of
international standing. It would enable Iran to claim it
is the one Muslim nation who most faithfully supports the
Palestinians.
But all this is surmise and, anyway, no longer carries
the urgency it used to. More serious is the issue of
Iraq. If Iraq had possessed nuclear weapons during its
long war with Iran, 1980-88, it may well have used them,
and who would have said nay? After all it did use
chemical weapons and hardly anybody in the western world
cried foul.
The big question in the year 2000, post these dramatic
elections, do any of these calculationsstand up? They do
in part and that is America's dilemma. But if Washington
pushed Iran too hard on the nuclear issue, when it
manifestly has no clever answer to what to do about the
threat from Saddam Hussein, it is going to miss its
opportunity for a historic rapprochement with Iran.
Rather, if for no other reason, it should think that my
enemy's enemy is my friend.
It may seem to be a bit of a long shot, but a policy
of a new start and a warm embrace for a newly emergent
democracy would be the best. Leave the stick at home and
use the carrot. Maybe the new Iran, where the long
awaited Islamic Reformation appears to have finally
arrived, will see its contribution to a better planet is
not to emulate the Christian and Jewish world and develop
these horrendous and quite evil weapons of mass
destruction.
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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