Iran: Empire of the Mind (47 page)

Some observers of the situation in Iraq and Iran have warned apocalyptically of the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran controlling a Shi‘a-dominated Iraq, a resurgent Shi‘a Hezbollah in Lebanon and a rising (Sunni) Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, combined with Iranian-backed Shi‘a movements erupting in Bahrain and along other parts of the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. This is not a combination that Israel (let alone others) can afford to be complacent about, and the threats of President Ahmadinejad, even if more rhetoric than real, are still significant and influential as rhetoric.

But all is not quite as it may seem. In the wider Middle East, with the possible exception of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shi‘as show little enthusiasm for Iranian-style Islamic rule. For Shi‘ism as a global phenomenon, the velayat-e faqih looks increasingly like a radical step too far, and otherwise the most extreme voices in Islam come from the Sunni side. Under the
influence of Al-Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi Shi‘as have maintained an independent line (though more attacks and provocations by Sunni insurgents may push them further into the arms of the Iranians). Iran has an influence on Shi‘a Iraq, and the Iranians tend to see themselves as the protectors of the Iraqi Shi‘as, as for Shi‘as elsewhere. But the Shi‘ism of southern Iraq, centred on the great shrines of Najaf (the tomb of Ali), Karbala and Samarra, has an authority of its own, independent of Iranian Shi‘ism, centred on the theological schools of Qom. Iraqi Shi‘as do not necessarily trust the Iranians. And many ordinary Iranians do not much like seeing their government spending money and effort on behalf of foreigners (whether Iraqis, Lebanese or Palestinians) when plenty of Iranians lack jobs, housing and decent living conditions.

The ruling regime in Iran has many faults, but it is more representative than most in the Middle East outside Israel (though the trend is not encouraging; the Majles elections of 2004 and the Presidential elections of 2005 were more interfered with and less free than previous elections). Despite repressive measures by the state, Iran is not a totalitarian state like those of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It is a complex polity, with different power centres and shades of opinion among those in power. There is space for dissent, within certain boundaries. Iran still has the potential for self-generated change, as has been recognised by observers from Paul Wolfowitz to the son of the last Shah, Reza Pahlavi. Important independent Iranian figures like Shirin Ebadi and dissidents like Akbar Ganji have urged that Iran be left alone to develop its own political solutions. One thesis of Iranian history, advanced by Homa Katouzian and others,
⁵
is that Iran just lurches from chaos to arbitrary autocracy and back again. There is certainly some evidence of that in the record, as we have seen—perhaps increased political freedom would merely unleash chaos, and no doubt there are pragmatists within the current Iranian regime who make just that argument for keeping things as they are. One could interpret the crisis of the reform movement in 2000, followed by the press crackdown, as another episode in the Katouzian cycle. There are signs of disillusionment and nihilism among many young Iranians after the failure of the Khatami experiment.
⁶
But ultimately I don’t believe in that kind
of determinism. There is real social and political change afoot in Iran, in which the natural dynamic toward greater awareness, greater education and greater freedom is prominent. Other Europeans in the seventeenth century used to say that England was a hopelessly chaotic place, full of incorrigibly violent and fanatical people who clamoured to cut off their king’s head. A century later England was the model to others for freedom under the law and constitutional government.
⁷

There are grounds for some cautious optimism. The preparedness of Iran and the US in the spring of 2007 to speak to each other openly and directly for the first time since the hostage crisis is in itself a great step forward that looked impossible (from the perspective of both sides) a year or two ago. The talks are about Iraq. A priority for those talks must be to induce Iran to end the attacks on US and British servicemen in Iraq by Shi‘a militia that have caused too many deaths and terrible injuries. But attempts to lay a major part of the blame for the current problems in Iraq at the door of the Iranians have been dishonest. When the US government presented a dossier in February 2007 detailing allegations that Iran had supplied components for explosive devices to attack coalition armoured vehicles, the number of deaths they connected to such attacks was 187 (and the validity of the allegations was disputed).
⁸
At that time the total number of casualties among US and coalition servicemen in Iraq was over 3,000. Overwhelmingly, coalition servicemen have been killed and wounded not by Shi‘a militias backed by Iran, but by Sunni insurgents backed by—whom? Presumably by elements within countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
⁹
But we don’t hear so much about that. Iran has been accused of trying to destabilise the new Iraqi government—but why would Iran wish to when Iraqi Shi‘as sympathetic to Iran are running that government already? Like the capture of the British sailors and marines in the spring of 2007, Iranian involvement in Iraq is better explained as a reminder from the Iranians to the US and the UK that Iran has permanent interests on her borders, than as aggrandizement aimed at any other outcome. The message of Iran’s support for the elected Maleki government in Iraq was reinforced by Ahmadinejad’s visit to Baghdad in March 2008. The Iranian regime, as pragmatism would suggest, has always insisted on its desire for stability in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

It does not look like a good time, with Ahmadinejad in power, for the West to attempt a rapprochement with Iran. But willy-nilly, the US and the UK need Iranian help in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the region generally. This is a simple reflection of the fact that Iran is a permanent and important presence in the Middle East, and that Iran has been the prime beneficiary of the removal of the Taliban and Saddam, Iran’s former enemies. The present government of Iran is far from perfect, but there are other governments in the Middle East that are as bad or worse (from the point of view of democracy or human rights), whom we have few scruples about describing as close allies. If we can deal with Iran with respect as a partner and an equal, and not merely (as too often in the past) as an instrument to short-term ends elsewhere, we might be surprised how far even the current hardline regime would go in taking up the partnership, and the beneficial effects a better relationship could have within Iran. The Iranian leadership is not just Ahmadinejad, and his leverage in the Iranian system is less than it appears. The wider leadership circle, that coordinates decisions in the Supreme National Security Council, is substantially the same as it was in 2003, when it authorised the Grand Bargain offer.

There are many bleak aspects to the current situation in Iran. The arrests of women and visiting academics in the spring of 2007 were yet another retrograde step. Arrests to enforce the dress code (which relaxed noticeably in the Khatami period) and prevent so-called immorality in public (such as a couple holding hands or kissing) intensified at the same time
¹⁰
. Khatami’s purge of the MOIS has been reversed and many of those suspected of complicity in the serial murders of 1998 have returned. Peaceful demonstrations are broken up and demonstrators arrested and held for extended periods. It is sad beyond words that the President of a country with such a diverse and profound intellectual heritage, and such an ancient and important Jewish presence, should seek to make a splash with a conference for an international rag-bag of wild-eyed Holocaust deniers, and an exhibition of offensive and inane cartoons (though the propensity of the Iranian regime to Holocaust denial did not begin with Ahmadinejad—just as Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and their attacks on Israel, goes back many years). Ahmadinejad’s call for
Israel to be wiped off the map (or, according to a more precise translation, ‘erased from the page of time’)
¹¹
was foolish and irresponsible. His position on the problem of Israel and the Palestinians, that Israel was created for European Jews as a manifestation of European guilt after the Nazi Holocaust, and that the Israelis should go back to Europe, was ignorant and crass. The Jews of Israel came from a wide variety of countries, over a long period, including large numbers in the last two decades from the former Soviet Union. Plainly the shock of the Holocaust was one factor in the establishment of Israel, but so was the poor position of Jews in Islamic countries at that time. In the years immediately after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, roughly equal numbers came from Islamic countries on the one hand, and from Europe on the other (including for example, around 260,000 from Morocco, 129,290 from Iraq, 29,295 from Egypt; 229,779 from Romania, 156,011 from Poland and 11,552 from Germany in the period 1948-55
¹²
). Of course, many tens of thousands of Iranian Jews went to Israel in those years also. In that period Jews in the Middle East, just as much as the Jews of Europe, were seeking a country in which they could be masters of their own destiny, in which they could resist persecution with their own means, as opposed to hoping uncertainly for the friendly intervention of non-Jewish state powers, as had always been the case in the diaspora. Anti-Semitism had not been just a European phenomenon, and in some degree the present problem of relations between Muslims in the Middle East and Israelis is merely a transformed and relocated version of the old problem of how the majority of Islamic peoples of the Middle East related to the minority of Jews (and other
dhimmis
) in their midst. Notwithstanding the real need for a solution to the suffering of the Palestinians, for Ahmadinejad to expect the Israelis to return to their former status as second-class citizens and victims in the Middle East is unrealistic political posturing.

The Nuclear Dispute

Ahmadinejad’s provocative remarks about Israel have sounded the more threatening because of the continuing dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme. Most Western states suspect Iran of trying to acquire a nuclear
weapon capability, which if acquired would be a contravention of Iran’s commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and associated agreements. The Iranians claim they have no nuclear weapon ambitions, and say (correctly) that the other NPT signatory states are bound to assist Iran’s civil nuclear programme under
their
NPT commitments. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapon programme, but after the discovery of undeclared nuclear sites at Arak and Natanz in 2002 has said that the Iranians have repeatedly failed to meet safeguards obligations and that it could not be confident that there were no further undeclared nuclear activities or materials in Iran. Its chairman, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, has called for greater cooperation and openness from the Iranians to dispel legitimate suspicions about an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. Others have pointed out that Iran was not obliged to declare the sites at Arak and Natanz, because they were not yet operational. In the autumn of 2005 the IAEA declared that Iran was not in compliance with the NPT Safeguards agreement and since then the UN Security Council has called upon Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, and has imposed sanctions.

Uranium enrichment is achieved by spinning uranium gas in a centrifuge to separate out the more fissile uranium 235 isotope from the less fissile uranium 238 isotope. Uranium 235 is the isotope needed for nuclear reactions. Uranium enriched to 2-3 per cent Uranium 235 is satisfactory for a civil nuclear reactor, but needs to be further enriched to 90 per cent or more for a nuclear weapon. This is the problem: civil uranium enrichment is a legitimate activity under the NPT, but the difference between enrichment to levels consistent with civil use and the levels necessary for weapons is difficult to verify from outside once the enrichment process has begun. Iran has been enriching uranium since April 2006 and estimates for the time needed to gather enough highly-enriched uranium for a bomb have ranged from two to eight years (depending on the number of centrifuges and the efficiency of their operation).

The Israeli and US governments have made plain that they cannot accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. But within Iran, Ahmadinejad and other politicians have presented opposition to their programme as
Western blocking of Iranian civil nuclear power, and the dispute has produced an upsurge of nationalist feeling in favour of Iran’s right to nuclear power. This shades ambiguously into support in some quarters for Iran to
be
a nuclear power—i.e. a power with nuclear weapons like Pakistan, India, Israel, France, Russia, the UK and the US. Meanwhile, as the clock ticks and the centrifuges spin, Israel warns that it will take military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear (weapon) programme if it is not halted by other means. Some of the rhetoric against Iran in the US can be dismissed as ignorance and political scare-mongering. Israeli concerns cannot.

It may be that the Iranian leadership are determined to acquire a nuclear capability. If so, even Israeli or US bombing campaigns could not stop it indefinitely (the processes could be dispersed and concealed in deep underground bunkers, if they have not been already). And Iran could do enor mous damage to the US and her allies in retaliation. But the declaration by Iranian religious leaders against ownership of nuclear weapons should be given some credence. Possession of a capability to produce a nuclear weapon (as opposed to an actual weapon) would be almost as desirable for the Iranian regime as a weapon itself—it would have most of the deterrent effect of an actual weapon, and the only real utility of nuclear weapons is deterrence. That may be the real Iranian aim—but even that may not be a fixed, determined aim. If Iran were able to normalize its relations with the US, remove the threat of Regime Change and obtain even a limited version of the sort of security guarantees US allies enjoy, the perceived need for a nuclear weapon capability would be much reduced, if not removed altogether. That may be part of the significance of the Grand Bargain offer of 2003. Either way, the US should at least attempt to resolve the problem in this way before seriously considering military action. It should always be a principle to exhaust diplomacy before contemplating an act of war. That is the minimum that the soldiers and civilians who might die in the event of war have a right to expect of their governments. US/Iranian diplomacy has barely yet begun. It may be that after the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, and the revelation it contained, that the US Intelligence Agencies collectively believed that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon programme in 2003, negotiation toward a normalisation
of relations may have become a little easier. At least the danger of conflict appears for the moment to have receded.