Weapons of mass distrust
By Khaled Diab
Will the conciliatory tones coming out of Washington and Tehran be
enough to bring the Iran nuclear standoff to an end or do we need more to
defuse the region’s toxic weapons of mass distrust?
August 2008
The Guardian has revealed
that the United States plans to establish a low-level diplomatic mission in
Tehran, for the first time in nearly three decades. “We will receive favourably
any action which will help to reinforce relations between
the peoples,” a conciliatory Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad told reporters.
Striking an equally conciliatory note, US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said last month: “We are determined to reach out to the
Iranian people.”
In addition, Undersecretary of State William Burns is attending
nuclear talks with Iran this weekend.
So, can we all breathe a sigh of relief and
will a special interests section be enough to keep the hawks at bay? I
certainly hope so, for everyone’s sake, but I am not
holding my breath.
After all, none of the points of contention
between Iran, on the one side, and the United States and Israel, on the other,
have yet been resolved – and Iran and Israel, with US backing, have been
incredibly reckless in their brinkmanship.
Of course, Iran insists that it is a law-abiding global citizen and
that its nuclear ambitions are civilian, and hence within the scope of international law. In fact, a House of
Common’s investigation concluded that:
“We do not believe that the United States or any other country has the right to
dictate to Iran how it meets its increasing demand for electricity.”
Nevertheless, is a civilian nuclear programme worth the prospect of war
and why doesn’t the country develop less controversial technology to get itself
out of the fix?
The doubters see in this defiance a confirmation that Iran is working
on a covert nuclear weapons programme, although those who advocate this view
have not yet come up with a shred of convincing
evidence.
Given the ‘logic’ of
nuclear proliferation, if Iran were in fact building a bomb, it would have, in
theory, sound strategic reasons for doing so, hemmed in, as it is, by the US
army on two fronts, and within striking range of nuclear-armed Israel, Pakistan
and India.
But surely Tehran must
know that before they have finished building a reactor, Israel, like it did in Iraq
in the 1980s, or the United States, would level
it, although it wouldn’t be quite the cakewalk it
was in Baghdad.
Assuming the
programme is civilian, a rationalist and pragmatist might well ask: why develop
a technology you can ill afford and for which you have no domestic capacity? Moreover,
what is the need in an inflamed situation for bellicose pronouncements and
dangerous sabre-rattling?
As a sceptic, I would say that Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and the hardline
clerics who now have the upper hand are exploiting the classic politics of fear
and patriotism in a bid to hold back the
liberalisation Iranian youth demand, and to divert domestic attention away from
their dismal socio-economic record.
This captures part of the picture, but we must
not overlook the deeply ingrained suspicion and even paranoia which underpins
and undermines Iran’s relationship with the Pax
Americana. Although most ordinary Iranians do not
share the regime’s strident anti-westernism and
admire much about the west, they do harbour a great deal of distrust.
Iranians, like many
Middle Easterners, feel that their aspirations to determine their fate and to
become members of the modern world have partly been stifled by western
interference: from engineered regime change to propping up the corrupt and
oppressive shah, to arming its arch rival Iraq.
Such a sense of weakness is painful for Iran,
which was a major imperial power in ancient times until the
Arab conquests, and the Safavid dynasty, although not
Persian in origin, restored some of that lost sense of power.
In addition to suspicion and fear, another issue
is pride. Given Persia’s status as the cradle of modern science,
Iran has made numerous efforts to revive that legacy, which could partly
explain the current regime’s nuclear obsession, and the Shah’s before them.
But Iran is not alone in these sentiments.
Much of the Middle East is still reeling from centuries of foreign domination, whether
Muslim or European, and this has led to an identity crisis and can manifest
itself as a sense of paranoia towards the outside world.
In fact, as I’ve argued before, western
insensitivity to local sensibilities and its unreasonable demands for completely
pliant ‘client rulers’ is partly behind the rise of hardline
leaders. It is high time for the United States to rethink
the client state model.
Even Israel, which many regard as being somehow outside the Middle
East, suffers, in its own way, from the same malaise.
Although Israelis did not suffer from colonialism in
the classical way, i.e. as strangers in their own land, they have spent many
centuries perceived as strangers in other lands.
Like Ahmadinejad, Ehud
Olmert, who has been on the back foot domestically,
has used the sabre-rattling with Iran and the invasion of Lebanon to try to
deflect criticism of his government’s record.
However, with their perception of being surrounded by enemies and the
still-fresh trauma of pogroms and the Holocaust, many ordinary Israelis are in
a true panic over Iran’s nuclear programme, and believe its official
designation as an “existential threat”. In addition, the ‘tough
Jew’ mentality that still dominates Zionist ideals is one of the factors behind
Israel’s own sabre-rattling and brinkmanship.
So, what’s to be done about all this deep-seated
distrust in a volatile region?
Well, I propose that a campaign is started to encourage all Middle Eastern countries to sign a mutual non-aggression
pact. After that, a regional security council should be set up where Arab,
Israelis, Iranians and Turks can discuss directly their security concerns. Then
efforts to transform the region into a WMD-free area should be re-started in
earnest.
This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 23
July 2008. Read the related
discussion.
ã2008 – Khaled Diab.
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