Ahmadinejad's Visit –
A Diplomatic DebacleBy Brita Rose
10 October, 2007
Countercurrents.orgAfter 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.
Leave A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Digg it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So, as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Get CC HeadlinesOn your Desk Top
