Iran’s larger than life image

By S P SETH

Iran is becoming larger than life in Western imagination. It certainly is an important country for several reasons. It is a major oil producer. And with its strategic location along the Persian Gulf, straddling south and west Asia, it can’t be ignored; especially when it is seeking to influence and shape regional political and strategic environment. Which it is doing to the detriment of the USA and Western countries, and their friends and allies in the region.

Of particular worry to them is Iran’s nuclear program. They regard it as an exercise in acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, contending that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes of generating energy and furthering medical research. Undoubtedly, its mastery of nuclear technology and materials will equip it to produce nuclear weapons; though deployable nuclear weapons will take quite some years to materialize, if that were the intention.

It will not be smooth sailing, though, with the US and its allies determined to stop Iran from going in that direction. However, even though the present strategy of comprehensive sanctions is hurting Iran, it has failed to dissuade it. Indeed, in some ways, it is helping the government to consolidate its position internally around a popular issue of national sovereignty and dignity. Even thought the Ahmadinejad government is not popular with the country’s urban middle class (as was shown during the last elections), but on the nuclear issue not many would abandon the country’s nuclear option.

While the world sees Iran as larger than life, its own ambitions are no less spectacular. Its clerical regime wants to become the leader of the Islamic world. Ayatollah Khomeini’s clerical revolution in 1979 was supposed to be a trailblazer for the Islamic world, having overthrown the repressive regime of the Shah. It even humiliated the mighty United States by holding hostage its embassy staff.

Much of the Middle East at the time was ruled by autocrats (still is) of various descriptions as US allies like the Shah of Iran. But these countries didn’t follow Iran’s example. First, Iran’s new religious leaders got busy with purging their real or supposed political enemies within the country, thus having very little time to foment revolutionary fervor among its neighbors. Second, and more importantly, the subsequent long war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with the US helping the Iraqi dictator, became a struggle for Iran’s national survival. When the war ended, Iran was exhausted.

But the regime did find a cause to project its credentials where other Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world, were only paying lip service. The Palestinian issue transcended sectarian divisions in the Islamic world with universal sympathy for their cause. But the Arab rulers, having been defeated by Israel, weren’t going to stick their necks out again for the sake of the Palestinians. Their advocacy of the Palestinian cause was political rather than taking real risks of confronting Israel.

Iran, in a sense, has filled that gap. President Ahmadinejad has been loudly questioning Israel’s legitimacy. He has denied Holocaust, attributing it to Jewish propaganda. Iran has also highlighted the hypocrisy of the West in accepting, in effect, Israel’s nuclear credentials while targeting Iran. All this goes well with Muslims all over the world, particularly its active advocacy of the Palestinian cause. By standing up to the US pressure both on the Palestinian issue and the nuclear question, Iran becomes larger than size. By the same token it frightens Arab rulers who are largely Sunni.

Iran might not have succeeded in transcending the Sunni-Shia divide, but it has made some significant inroads into Lebanon, particularly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 virtually destroying the Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon. Iran provided much of the aid to rebuild a battered Lebanon. As President Ahmadinejad’s recent state visit to Lebanon showed, Iran has won kudos there. It is now a major foreign player in Lebanese politics, particularly after the Hezbollah gained the right to veto cabinet decisions that meet its disapproval. And this is of grave concern to Israel.

In Palestine, Iran is on Hamas’ side giving it a strong toehold in Palestine’s internal politics, as well as keeping Israel on notice. And its clerical regime has excellent relations with Syria, which has so far spurned all American overtures to detach it from Iran.

The US is worried about Iran’s influence in Iraq, another Shia-majority state. Iran suffered enormously from the long Iran-Iraq war, and would be loath to see a strongman like Saddam Hussein (whether from the Shia or Sunni sect) emerge on the political stage. Many of Iraq’s current crop of leaders, belonging to the dominant Shia sect, were sheltering in Iran when Saddam was in power. And they had enjoyed the political patronage of Iran’s clerical regime.

Therefore, Iran has an extensive network of political connections with different factions of the Shia political establishment. And hence has the capacity to shape the post-Saddam political order in that country. They are reportedly mediating between competing Shia factions to put together a government from the chaos of the last election.

Above all, Tehran’s overwhelming interest is in keeping the US out from a determining and decisive role in Iraqi politics and from having a major military presence in that country. By the same token, the ascendance of two Shia regimes, with Iraq under Iranian influence, is causing concern among Arab rulers.

Apart from the Middle East, Iran has a special interest in Afghanistan where its interests sometimes tend to clash with that of Pakistan. Pakistan would like to have a dominant, if not exclusive, role in a post-US Afghanistan. A friendly government in Afghanistan gives Pakistan the strategic depth its military would like to have. Iran contests that by refusing to be sidelined. It has developed links with all the internal political forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, by doling out large cash handouts. The Karzai government is also a recipient of bags of cash from Iran, acknowledged by President Hamid Karzai himself. This allows Iran flexibility in its Afghan policy.

Pakistan has the advantage of sheltering the Taliban leadership (as reported in the press from time to time) that might, at an appropriate time, step into any political void created by the American withdrawal. Iran surely would want to exercise its own options in the period ahead.

The US anti-terror war in Afghanistan, and its invasion of Iraq in 2003, greatly increased Iranian sense of insecurity from a large US military presence on its borders. With Pakistan as the frontline state for anti-terror operations against Afghanistan, it didn’t help its relations with Iran. Besides, the targeting of the Shias and their mosques by terrorists and Sunni fanatics in Pakistan doesn’t help Pakistan’s image in the Shia-majority Iran.

This strategic profile underlines both opportunities as well as pitfalls for Iran. While Iran’s active championing of the Palestine issue has raised its profile in the Muslim world, it has also created enormous risks of a retaliatory Israeli strike, especially on its nuclear installations with implicit or explicit US support. The terrible ramifications of this for the region are hard to fathom.

Even though Iran’s clerical regime continues to project a radical image, its political credentials at home are not unchallenged as was revealed during the last elections. It was accused of stealing the elections and repressing its political opponents. However, it has re-established order by strong-arm methods. But Iran is no longer the revolutionary model of the Khomeini days.

Its urban middle class doesn’t want the perpetual motion of Islamic fervor and hysteria. With a high rate of unemployment and rising inflation, it might also be losing support among the country’s poor.

In other words, its clerical order is vulnerable, pushing it further into hyper nationalism and Islamic fervor. But it would be folly to under-estimate the strength and appeal of this in a country so proud of its religion and destiny.

Note: This article was first printed in Daily Times