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The Peril Of Taking On Iran

By Stephen Kinzer

20 March, 2007
Boston Globe

Nationalists are in power in Iran, and they are mounting a direct challenge to the West. Some in Washington want the United States to depose them by force.

Should it?

The Bush administration is not the first to consider this question. The conditions it sees in Iran today are the same ones the Eisenhower administration saw there more than a half century ago. President Eisenhower decided to intervene. The world is still paying for his misjudgment.

A military strike against Iran would probably have the same result as the CIA intervention of 1953. These interventions seem successful at first. Many of them, however, plunge target countries into tyranny or upheaval. From these whirlpools of instability, threats emerge that undermine US national security in unimagined ways.

There is no better example than Iran. In the early 1950s, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh directed the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. American and British leaders took this as an unpardonable affront and overthrew him.

The CIA agent who staged this coup, Kermit Roosevelt, was heartily congratulated upon his return to Washington, and even received a medal from Eisenhower at a secret White House ceremony. From the perspective of history, though, his coup does not look so successful. It brought Shah Reza Pahlavi back to the Peacock Throne. He ruled with increasing brutality for 25 years. His repression set off the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s. That revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs who have worked intensely, and sometimes very violently, to undermine US and Western interests around the world.

The United States is now facing a crisis with Iran over its nuclear program. This crisis would probably never have emerged, and this religious government would probably never have come to power, if the United States had kept its hands off Iran in 1953. Iran might instead have become a thriving democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East, with incalculable consequences for the region.

Calls for a new American intervention in Iran ignore lessons of the last one. Violently overthrowing a political order in the hope that something better will emerge is a dangerous gamble.

Iranians know this well. In the 1970s they put aside their differences and banded together to overthrow the shah. The basis of their unity was their shared assumption that whatever regime came next would be an improvement. It wasn't.

From this tragic disappointment, Iranians learned a bitter lesson: No matter how bad a regime may be, there can always be something worse. What could be worse for the United States than a snarling anti-American regime in Tehran that seems bent on developing nuclear weapons? No regime at all. Decapitating the Iranian government or throwing the country into turmoil would produce anarchy. Militant groups would operate free of any constraints.

That would make Iran more dangerous than it is now. If the United States attacks, Iran may become so chaotic that we would look back almost fondly on the mullahs.

In the radically changed security environment of the modern world, dealing with Iran and other countries that challenge the West requires a new strategic vision. Big powers instinctively try to keep their rivals from becoming strong. Today, however, strong states are no longer the real enemy; weak ones are. Strong states produce security, even if not always in ways the West likes. Weak states produce instability that hurts everyone, especially the United States.

Iran and the United States are not fated to be enemies. In fact, they share important strategic interests. No one knows what may come from direct, unconditional talks between them. For more than a quarter-century, the United States has refused to consider such talks.

American leaders have not forgiven the religious regime for its anti-American acts, beginning with its overthrow of the the shah in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis. They should overcome this psychological barrier and explore the possibility of a negotiated "grand bargain" with Iran.

The alternative may be violent intervention. That is what the United States tried in 1953. The results were disastrous. They would be no better this time.

Stephen Kinzer is the author of "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."

© 2007 Boston Globe.



 

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