Ahmadinejad's
Visit –
A Diplomatic Debacle
By Brita Rose
10 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
After
the theater and hyperbole surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
recent visit to New York, there are more sinister developments that
are not getting their rightful attention.
While Ahmadinejad is being
demonized, there is significant U.S. military build-up on the border
between Iran and Iraq, the neo-cons have stepped up the tempo of their
attack planning, and the Bush administration has declared Iran's Revolutionary
Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. The war-mongering of the
White House with its nuclear arsenal is apparently acceptable, but the
aspiration of a nation to acquire an energy source is not. For all his
fiery rhetoric, according to Iranian scholar, Trita Parsi, firstly,
Ahmadinejad is actually in no political position to threaten the U.S.
or Israel. Secondly, Iran has no intention of attacking either country
militarily. And thirdly, Iran is dwarfed by, not only America's already
overwhelming military presence (5 bases and the fifth fleet surround
it), but by its two nuclear neighbors - Israel and Pakistan. Despite
this the U.S. government has been sounding the new war drum for some
time.
Although the international
community ought to be concerned about and monitor any nation's nuclear
program, El Baradei, director of the United Nations Atomic Energy, has
already been doing just that, and finds no dealing with nuclear weaponry.
The key, he claims, is to institute practical safeguards against any
energy program being developed into a weapons program, for which he
has laid out a working blueprint. To date, Iran is over a decade away
from such capability.
Ahmadinejad's outlandish
statements and his denial of the deplorable human rights abuses of his
nation notwithstanding, (see Akbar Ganji's article 'A Plea from the
Iranian People') U.S. posturing is not about ideology, human rights
violations or nuclear power. It is, once again, as is usually the case
in the Middle East, about strategic and geopolitical factors and superpower
dominance in the region. Ironically the U.S. led invasion of Iraq has
strategically favored Iran, and the Iranians have reason to worry given
the history of American and British manipulation of Iran - namely the
CIA-backed coup to overthrow Iran's national government under Mohammad
Mosaddegh in 1953 resulting in the Shah's reinstatement, and U.S. double
dealing in the Iran-Iraq War.
Much of the inflammatory
rhetoric of the Iranian President that alarms the international community
is intended for his regional and domestic community – about which
Western nations seem to know scant little. At Columbia University he
played to his crowd in the same way that Bollinger played to his own
constituency. According to renowned Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian
(author of new book Targeting Iran), Ahmadinejad engages in Holocaust
denial and calls for the destruction of Israel in order to attempt to
narrow the gap between Sunnis and Shiites and to solicit support on
the Arab street. On other occasions he is seen coddling orthodox rabbis
who support his anti-Zionist position. So while his unorthodox methods
may be bombastic, they should not be misinterpreted or overestimated.
It seems Middle Easterners who understand him better, do not take him
as seriously as do Westerners.
Moreover, the President does
not wield as much power in the Islamic Republic as is assumed. In fact
it is very limited: The judiciary, state-run media, civil services,
and military all report, not to the president but to the supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moreover, Iranian society is very complex. It
has an electoral and controlled parliamentary system that could change
the balance of internal power at the next election given the President's
low popularity (which is currently about the same as that of Bush's
– around 25% according to Abrahamian). Regardless, Iranian policy
does not rise and fall on Ahmadinejad; the Iranian government operates
independent of his rule. To the chagrin of many Iranians, the 1979 Islamic
revolution did not bring about representative government; absolute authority
lies with the Ayatollah who has the final say on all matters. The new
constitution promised much, but in actuality it paved the way for what
author, Reza Aslan calls "the institutionalization of absolute
clerical control." It gave the Valayet-e-Faqih ("The Guardianship
of the Jurist," the political ideology founded by the Ayatollah
Khomeini) power to appoint the head of the judiciary, act as commander
in chief, veto all Parliamentary laws and dismiss the President. So
throwing around terms such as 'dictator' and making comparisons to Hitler
and the situation in Germany in the late 1930's is, at best misleading.
Is the kind of rhetoric we
heard any way to build international bridges and win hearts and minds?
City police refused to allow Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at Ground Zero.
Is this how a civilized community that espouses freedom, dignity and
free speech hosts heads of state? To put things in another perspective,
despite Ayatollah's ruthless comments about Israel in the 1980's (which
were more severe than those of Ahmadinejad), Israel was nonetheless
pushing for better U.S.-Iranian relations. But current thinking seems
to be that by refusing to engage in honest dialog with the 'enemy' we
will build better foreign relations, although negotiations with the
ANC and IRA belie this thinking. I fear that, while Bollinger's questions
were provocative, his approach was a poor public relations move that
not only embarrassed him academically, but resulted in offending the
guest speaker and further buttressing Middle Eastern support for the
dwindling leader whom they feel has been publically insulted. The one
spark in this diplomatic failure was a low- key meeting in a chapel
across from the U.N. where church and religious leaders met with Ahmadinejad
for an open question and answer time that was conducted with hospitality
and respect (The New York Times, Goodstein, "Ahmadinejad Meets
Clerics," September 27, 2007).
But such methods do not permeate
the White House. No doubt the U.S. will invade Iran on the pretext of
its arming insurgents in Iraq or funding the militant Islamic Shiite
party Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the latter has no strategy for targeting
the U.S.; Hezbollah's dispute is a regional one. And Iran can hardly
be considered alone among Middle Eastern countries opposed to the U.S.
occupation of Iraq. The U.S. may also use an Iranian response –
such as cutting off Gulf oil supplies, to justify an attack on Iranian
military sites (over 2000 targets have been discussed). Though Iran
has never threatened the U.S., nor violated the NPT, we now hear Bush
talk about Iran and Al-Qaeda in the same sentence. Sound familiar? We
should ask why Saudi Arabia is not part of the 'axis of evil' for its
involvement in Iraq (Parsi notes that 45% of all suicide bombers in
Iraq are Saudi nationals), not to mention its funding of Al Qaeda.
Apparently the Bush Administration
has learned nothing from its blundering experiment in Iraq which has
cost the lives of up to 3,800 American soldiers. The ORB (a British
poll) puts the estimated number of deaths at 1.2 million. As its bullish
foreign policy continues unchecked, one might ask, who is the dictator
in this equation? Who is responsible for the loss of the most innocent
lives? If indeed the Iranians are attacked, they would probably retaliate
where they have most advantage, i.e. in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing
only further misery and death to those already beleaguered nations.
Given the fiasco in Iraq, it is unfathomable to think the U.S. would
embark on another conflict. Ahmadinejad seems to think so – amazingly
he does not seem to take the threat of an attack seriously. But he might
want to consider the neo-cons he is dealing with and think back to the
events leading up to the invasion of Iraq that was also undertaken under
the pretext of WMD's. One can only speculate as to why he chose to preach
at Columbia rather than take the opportunity to defend his nation on
the brink of war.
Talk of a war with Iran that
does not rule out nuclear weapons ought to alarm the entire world and
put pressure on the Washington war cabinet to return to diplomacy immediately.
The military preparations that are already underway should strike horror
into the hearts of any concerned citizen (see Marjorie Cohn's article
"Pursue Diplomacy, Not War, with Iran"). She notes that curiously
in a letter to the U.S. in 2003, Iranian authorities agreed to dialogue
with the U.S. over its nuclear program and offered a deal to freeze
its nuclear program if the U.S. would end its hostility toward Iran.
According to Parsi, in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of
Israel, Iran and the U.S., the Bush administration snubbed the proposal
before covering it up. Apparently it did not synchronize with their
aspiration to dominate the Near East regardless. God help us.
Brita Rose is a graduate student of International Studies
at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC.
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