Why is the United States so mad about Iran?

For whoever tries to follow the news as closely as possible, the Iranian theme in American politics would seem to be dominating the media, far more than any other topic worth paying attention to. Only the recent European problems aggravated by unbridled speculation and visible tensions in the EU family over the right ways to save Greece and prevent Spain and Portugal from falling into the same pitfall have somehow eclipsed the Iranian problematic.

While the Europeans are overwhelmingly concerned about the survival of the euro as the common currency, the recovery of their budgetary balances and the normalization of employment statistics, the United States is always clinging to its anti-Iranian rhetoric. Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq – these are the major challenges of the past and current administrations. The only difference is that both Afghanistan and Iraq continue to be crucial hot spots where America is waging wars upon its antagonists and long-time enemies.

For its strategy to look natty and its rhetoric to sound true, Washington has followed the practice of assembling coalitions instead of acting unilaterally, though the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not supported by any resolution of the UN Security Council authorizing the use of force. Overburdened by these two wars, which have not stopped inflicting grave casualties upon the US and coalition forces, and affected by the 2008 world financial crisis which is still ravaging, the White House seems to be as relentless toward Iran as it used to be, when the chips were hardly down.

So what makes the United States pursue this hard-line stance towards Tehran at the time when serious international threats are evidently contained in more than just Iranian radicalism? Is it the Iranian Obsession Syndrome (IOS)?

Look at the latest trips of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton abroad. Wait until the last minute of her press conference with the new British Foreign Secretary William Hague on his first official travel to Washington. Try to peep into the real intentions of Madam Secretary during her March talks in Moscow with the Mideast Quartet and Russian authorities. Iran is everywhere. Not only has it become the personal obsession of Hillary Clinton, who inherited this topic from her predecessor as an inalienable attribute of service as head of the State Department, but it is also one of the most widely discussed topics in American media.

There is no single reason to believe that Iran, more than any other country in the world, is looking for the best opportunity to assert itself both politically and militarily by following the old divide-and-conquer maxim with regard to its neighbors or nurturing some overly bellicose ambitions in the context of the New World Order à l’iranienne.

But Washington is still too eager to demand that Iran open itself further to the IAEA, stop all uranium enrichment activities, diminish its overt anti-Americanism and make the first awkward steps towards democratization. Is this situation somewhat reminiscent of Iraq in the 1990s, when it was stripped of cash, its foreign assets were frozen, and its oil exports were banned from entering the free market? If you think ‘yes, it is’, then it is time to prepare for a new war in the Persian Gulf. Si vis pacem, para bellum. “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”

The 1979 Islamic Revolution, which produced one of the most radical regimes in the world and put an end to close US-Iran military cooperation, as opposed to that under the Shah, taking its effective toll on diplomacy and trade, was just one of the perturbations of the late 1970s. If America were always faithful to the idea of getting disgusted with any form of dictatorship or radicalism, so averse to its democratic traditions, the Iranian phenomenon could be largely explained. But the United States was not, as its history showed, and could easily befriend the worst oppressor and flouter of human rights, if such an attitude secured the defense of American interests against the backdrop of the Cold War and later competition for global power.

The infamous 1986 Iran-Contra affair proved to be the best evidence of America’s attachment to sheer pragmatism and secretive diplomacy and now looks as the only episode of the US’s trying to get rid of the IOS, which, to be frank, was not that pervasive seven years after the Shah’s removal from power.

It is all clear that there are no pure angels and irredeemable demons in international politics. But there are some countries which think it is important for them to play by the rules and accommodate others’ views, and some other countries which are less respectful of the collective game. It is just the case of Iran, whose overblown ambitions are far from being tempered by a potential threat of severe punishment. But Iran is not alone, steering out of normal international practice and pursuing its surreptitious plans.

No expert would now have the courage to refute the ambivalence of Iranian policy which, if not directly threatening world peace, may lead to further destabilization of the Middle East and ensuing tumult on the world oil market.[1] Thus, American engagement in the Middle East to promote, at least rhetorically, a peaceful two-state solution and the success of US participation in local conflicts, such as the one in Afghanistan, remain narrowly contingent on the evolution of Iran as a regional power. For the US to abandon its stake in the Iranian affair, it would be tantamount to the outright betrayal of Israel which, to all appearances, could never maintain its present policies without American help and comprehensive military guarantees.

All these factors notwithstanding, it is hardly possible to make out of Iran the centerpiece of international relations which, if being swayed in two opposite directions and thus becoming totally unbalanced, would entail some unsettling repercussions at the other end of the globe. Nuclear security is potentially threatened by any holder of nuclear arsenals, as only members of the nuclear club may use these deadly weapons in case of armed conflict. The everlasting tension between India and Pakistan, both pigeonholed as such, is far more serious and full of sulkier prospects than the attempts of a not-that-powerful Iran, which most of its neighbors tend to regard with suspicion, to obtain command of nuclear technology (which may be used for a number of purposes other than military).

Israel’s well-being as a sovereign state has been jeopardized for decades by a coalition of Arab countries, once presided by Egypt under Nasser, and is always menaced by the inimical environment where the Palestinian cause is widely listened to and sympathized with. The infamous Islamist radicalism that finds its adepts both in war-torn underdeveloped provinces of Afghanistan and rich capitals of Europe, in this case despite the noblest upbringing and excellent education, is hardly the brainchild of Iranian revolutionaries and tends to be a global phenomenon with unlimited spread and fascinating stamina.

Yet, the United States is persevering in pressurizing its European (with a little luck) and Asian partners (as for Russia and China, reciprocal concessions are strongly appreciated) to condemn Iran and to bring it back into the international family of friendly, rule-based nations (was Iran friendly and rule-based before it purportedly left the family in 1979, or just on good terms with the US?). Not much serendipity is required to see that international sanctions, especially if you remember the ominous slogan of post-World War I French nationalists headed by Georges Clemenceau which sounded like ‘L’Allemagne paiera’ [Germany will pay], usually yield very limited results. They only antagonize recalcitrant regimes, making their peoples poorer and more confident that those who have imposed sanctions are true monsters and need to be either resisted or simply destroyed.

History is full of convincing examples: take the ‘cordon sanitaire’ concept authored by Clemenceau, according to which Bolshevik Russia had to be isolated from Western Europe by a string of buffer states. It was no surprise when the French historian André Fontaine stated that the Cold War had begun not in 1947, but in 1919, when the quarantine line was inaugurated.

Despite Iran’s hard-line stance on the illegitimacy of Israel as an independent state, on the American role in the Middle East, on the spread of democracy and Western culture across various political and cultural landscapes, most countries, including such economic powers as China, Brazil and India, view possible enhanced pressure on Iran as unproductive (to say nothing of some anti-sanctions sentiment in the US itself, which is quite marginal inside the political establishment).

Why are these powers so benign? The answer is simple: Iran is just one of the many. Both China and India have had quite uneasy personal stories. Both countries entertain quite stressful relations with their neighbors: as for China, many experts believe it will attempt one day to solve its territorial dispute with Taiwan by force, and India and Pakistan continue to remain on their belligerent positions from more than a few decades ago. Therefore, each of them may become a potential source of instability and conflict, given their far-reaching ambitions and giant capabilities exceeding those of Iran.

The recent trip of Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Tehran, where an important agreement was signed on the swap of enriched nuclear fuel for Iran against its slightly enriched uranium, shows more clearly than ever that the Iranian problem is just a matter of how you look at it. And this is when the IOS instilled in the American elite a long time ago and being carefully sustained by the powerful Israeli lobby and some other stakeholders benefiting from Iran’s weaknesses reappears at the surface.

It is always difficult to say for certain whether our actions, even minor ones, will be good or bad for ourselves and for those around us. The same thing is true in politics. The only difference is in scale. If you part ways with somebody you have known for many years and then you see that the fault is finally with you, do not hesitate to write a conciliatory note or make a call asking for pardon and understanding. Once this moment is successfully passed, the whole matter will remain between you and the re-conquered friend.

With countries and peoples, it is much more difficult. Politicians have to weigh every action they ruminate about, look out for any awkward remarks that may slip off their tongue, and try to be the least incisive and look determined at the same time. It is also difficult to break with an old tradition, especially the one of blaming others for something off the table now.

The Iranian Obsession Syndrome seems to stand in the same row, just like the decades-long tradition of all American presidents to tackle the Mideast talks as their personal concern. Hundreds of books have been written so far on how America tried to handle and sometimes mishandled a very sensitive Arab-Israeli negotiation. As Aaron David Miller points out in his article for the latest issue of the Foreign Policy magazine, the whole process of peace talks, appearing in the media under various appellations, has been permeated with the “false religion of the Mideast peace”. “If that leads to more realistic thinking when it comes to America’s view of Arab-Israeli peacemaking,” he concludes, “that’s not such a bad thing”.[2]

Indeed, thinking realistically, where the stereotyped views have largely dominated, is the safest way to turn the tide and make a difference amid continued failures and incessant attempts. If the Middle East is corrupt with “the false religion of peace” that makes it difficult for diplomats to look straight into the eyes of the problems they are facing, there should be another false religion, worshipped by American policymakers towards Iran. As Mr. Miller believes, “right now, America has neither the opportunity nor frankly the balls to do truly big things on Arab-Israeli peacemaking”.

Perhaps, this brave conclusion has been drawn from a failed strategy to reconcile Israelis and Palestinians who have more than one reason not to trust each other and whose reciprocal animosity can be traced back to the 1940s, when the state of Israel was established and the United States was not even in mind. Mr Miller’s call for realism in American foreign policy stems mainly from the fact that the United States is not capable of settling one of the toughest conflicts in human history by using its highly ambiguous strategy, when both parties are to be equally accommodated. Thus, the only way to get through with this complicated situation is to either find another way of talking across the round table or to give up the battle, which is not worth powder and shot.

What if the same principle were applied to the Iranian maze? In this case, as history shows us, there will be more than two things at the end of the day to choose from. American diplomacy may become even more proactive by abandoning its rigid shell, where it once pierced a pigeonhole to look through, but now seems to lose sight of the world in the making. No cut and dried recipe, just another angle to look at, another vantage point yet unused.

Indeed, diplomacy is a tough thing to deal with. 1972. The Cold War was raging. The disarmament talks had just kicked off, and neither party (the US and the USSR) was sure they would result in a breakthrough. The United States was at the final stage of the terrible Vietnam War, which had become an unmanageable burden for the American economy and military (try to draw some parallel with the current Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns). The devaluation of the US dollar, the first in the history of the all-powerful buck, was nearing its materialization. The world was in trouble, one might say. The first energy shock orchestrated by the OPEC members would occur in less than a year. US President Richard Nixon, one of the most charismatic leaders of the New World, made his first official visit to the People’s Republic of China, which had been recently clamoring against the Soviet defeat in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, where the Soviets should have acted more resolutely, the Chinese thought. The whole world was set on fire.

It was a daring thing to go to China to meet the author of the Cultural Revolution, still rippling collective memories, and to stand firm in the face of Taiwan’s astonished public. Think now that Barack Obama, the transformational president as he is widely referred to, delivers his speech from the central square of Tehran, speaking the words of President Nixon, with a few alterations of course: “…and what we have said today is that we shall build that bridge”. You will certainly see, as he is still making his way to the end of the speech, a certain number of pre-eminent figures violently protest against the treason committed by America and its nonchalant leadership. And the AIPAC will add more fuel to the fire.

But as the construction of the bridge between the two previously hostile nations was made possible by President Nixon in the 1970s, it is hardly foreseeable today that in order to construct a new bridge with Iran one will need to demolish the old one, more than a thousand kilometers away, with Israel. What about the Iranian Obsession Syndrome then? Indeed, the world has to be healed, once and for all.

[1] Veronika Oleksyn, IAEA: Iran activates enrichment equipment, the Washington Post, 9 August 2010, accessible at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080902733.html; Jay Solomon, Panetta warns of Iran threat, the Wall Street Journal, 27 June 2010, accessible at: http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704846004575332823388936154.html; Associated Press, Iran ‘digging mass graves for US troops’ in case of invasion, the Guardian, 11 August 2010, accessible at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/11/iran-digging-graves-us-troops.

[2] Aaron David Miller, The False Religion of Mideast Peace, the Foreign Policy, May/June 2010, the article can be found at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/19/the_false_religion_of_mideast_peace