- (june 2008)
A deal for Iran.
One way to look at Iran is to feel disgust for its totalitarian leadership
and support any democratic movement that aims at ousting it.
Unfortunately the USA has been thoroughly unsuccessful in planning such
a course.
Another way to look at Iran is to ignore its internal situation and focus
on how to contain its foreign influence. So far the USA has treated Iran
as a rogue state bent on supporting terrorists and therefore unworthy
of any diplomatic relationship.
Things look wildly different from the viewpoint of the Iranian leadership.
Iran was the only country that openly fought the Taliban (at the time
when two USA close allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were the only
countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate
government of Afghanistan). Iran is a shiite nation that detests Al Qaeda's
sunni ideology (and viceversa). On the other hand, Iran remembers when
the Reagan administration helped the Islamic fanatics create "holy" brigades
to fight the Soviet Union, the foundations of what will evolve into Al Qaeda
(one of the young leaders of those USA-backed brigades was Osama bin Laden).
Therefore Iran does not see itself as a supporter of Islamic terrorism but as
one of the few countries that truly opposed Islamic (or, better, Sunni
Islamic) terrorism.
The USA correctly links Iran with Hezbollah and Hamas, but the
majority of the planet (and the vast majority in the Middle East)
views them as freedom fighters against Israel's occupation of Palestine
(neither carries out attacks outside Israel).
On the other hand Iran views the USA as an obvious aggressor. It is the
USA that has invaded two of Iran's neighbors (Afghanistan and Iraq), not
Iran that has invaded Canada and Mexico. It is the USA that sells billions
of dollars of high-tech weapons to Israel, Iran's number-one enemy.
It is the USA that arms and protects the Sunni regimes of the Gulf, all
of them rivals of Iran. And, last but not least, it was the USA (under
Ronald Reagan) that supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq when it attacked Iran
in the 1980s (causing the death of half a million Iranians).
The very origin of the Iran-USA feud dates back to 1953, when a coup orchestrated by the USA and Britain ousted the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the totalitarian regime of the Shah.
Last but not least, the USA fabricated a case against the old regime of
Iraq, making several claims that were later proved to be false: that
Iraq had acquired uranium from Niger, that it was close to developing
a nuclear weapon, that it had mobile biological laboratories, that its
troops were equipped with chemical weapons, and even that Saddam Hussein
had struck an alliance with Osama bin Laden and was somehow involved in
the 2001 terrorist attacks. None of this was true, but it was used to
justify the removal of an unwanted regime.
The USA had and has an obvious motive to intervene in the Middle East:
the Middle East has something that the USA does not have and that the
USA desperately needs. Oil. Iran has oil, plenty of oil. That oil is sometimes
a curse: the USA doesn't invest one penny in the overthrow of the evil
Burmese regime, and doesn't even care how many people have died in the civil
war in Burundi, and in fact didn't send a single soldier to stop the
carnage in Rwanda. They don't have oil. The Middle East has oil, plenty
of oil, and therefore the USA cares a lot for what happens there.
The Iranian leadership has all the reasons to feel threatened by a
superpower that is suddenly all over their region and that openly dislikes
them. Again, it is not Iran that in 1953 engineered a coup to overthrow
a democratically elected government in the USA, but the USA that did so to
Iran. Again, it is not Iran that is invading Mexico and Canada, but the
USA that is invading the Middle East. Again, it is the USA that manufactured
false evidence to remove a regime it didn't like (Iraq), not Iran that
manufactured false evidence to remove the Bush administration.
Again, it is Iran that has something that the USA does not have and needs
(oil), not the USA that has something that Iran needs to steal (Iran can
buy anything with its petrodollars if the USA is willing to sell it).
The asymmetry is obvious to anyone living in the Middle East.
One country (Iran) has never threatened the other one (USA), while the latter
has been threatening the former for more than 50 years.
No wonder that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Again, it is simply
reacting to USA behavior: the USA has not made war to any of the hostile
regimes that possess a nuclear weapon (from the Soviet Union to Mao's China to
today's North Korea). How else could Iran protect itself from what it views as
an inevitable USA invasion?
The USA could strike a deal with the Iranian regime only if it removed all
of these sources of friction. The USA has to remove all its troops from the
Middle East (just like Iran has no troops in North America). It has to
apologize for the coup of 1953 (the same way that Germany apologized for
Hitler's atrocities). It has to publicly recognize that it was wrong in using
false evidence to depose Saddam Hussein's regime, and pledge that in the
future it will abide by the findings of United Nations inspectors.
In return Iran would stop its nuclear program and gladly sell its oil to the
USA, and maybe even enact long overdue democratic reforms.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan would turn out to be non-issues. Iran and the USA
have the same interests in both. Both want Iraq to be a democracy (Iran welcomes
it because the shiites are likely to win elections forever, thus removing the
traditional sunni threat to Iran). Both want Afghanistan stabilized (so that
millions of Afghani refugees can leave Iran and return to Afghanistan) and free
of Al Qaeda terrorists (who are sunnis).
The last thing that can bring a reapproachment between the USA and the Iranian
regime is the long-term pact that Bush is negotiating with Iraq, and that
would allow thousands of USA troops to remain in dozens of military bases in
Iraq. This pact will only increase Iran's determination to develop a nuclear
capability.
Either the USA finishes the job and removes the Iranian regime the same way
it removed the Afghani and Iraqi regimes, or it withdraws its troops from the
Middle East and makes peace with the existing Iranian regime.
Any other option is certain to bring permanent instability to the region.
Many in the region suspect that this (permanent instability) is precisely
what the USA wants. Many in the West suspect that this is simply a side-effect
of Bush's stunning ignorance and stupidity.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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