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US Hawks Should Not Dictate Policy on Iran Chris Toensing Iranians and observers across the world were bewildered to hear President Bush declare that Iran is a member of the "axis of evil."
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, elected in 1997 and re-elected in a landslide last year, was the first leader in the Islamic world to publicly condemn the Sept. 11 mass murder. And US officials have tacitly acknowledged that Iranian diplomacy secured the participation of Tajik Afghan militias in both Operation Enduring Freedom and the US-backed interim Afghan government formed in Bonn, Germany. But flacks in the Bush administration accuse Iran of sheltering Taliban and al-Qaida escapees from the US Special Forces' manhunt in Afghanistan. They say Iran's inclusion in the "axis of evil" serves the new priority of fighting terrorism. This ignores contemporary history. Osama bin Laden and his extremist Sunni Muslim followers regard Iranians as virtual infidels because they are Shiite Muslims. From 1994 until 2001, bin Laden's guerrillas, alongside the Taliban, fought the Iranian-backed militias in the Northern Alliance and pillaged the Shiite regions of Afghanistan. When the Taliban captured Mazar-i Sharif in 1998, they brutally killed several Iranian diplomats, leading some in Tehran, Iran's capital, to demand an invasion of Afghanistan. So the idea that Iran and al-Qaeda are getting together is implausible. But demonizing Iran serves a purpose for the Bush administration: it helps justify a laundry list of Pentagon procurements. Near the top of that list is more money for National Missile Defense (NMD), the new name for President Reagan's disastrous Star Wars program. Though missile defense prototypes continue to fail tests on a regular basis, the program's partisans have retained prodigious taxpayer funding by pointing to "rogue states" whose real or imaginary missiles might someday target American soil. Many in the administration expect Iraq, one of those rogue states, to be overthrown by US military action soon. If so, hawks would need a new foe to keep National Missile Defense in the money. Iran fits the bill. The memory of the 1979-1980 hostage crisis makes enmity toward Iran an easy sell at home. And isolating Iran internationally pleases important US allies. Turkey and Pakistan continue to compete with Iran to build the pipelines to Central Asian and Caspian Sea oil and natural gas fields. Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States harp on the Persian peril at every opportunity because of Iran's support for the Palestinians and Hezbolla. The administration's exploitation of Iran's anti-American image to fatten up the Pentagon is doing nothing to reduce actual anti-Americanism in the Middle East. And antagonizing Iran will do nothing to help disarm the region. Iran is a country somewhere in the middle of an arduous transition from theocracy to democracy. People with moderate views on relations with the West can be found in both reformist and conservative currents in this complex internal struggle. But Bush's pugnacious rhetoric reinforces rigid and nationalistic ways of thinking. Predictably, reformist leader Khatami -- whose foreign policy watchword has been a "dialogue of civilizations" -- is now calling upon Iranians to join anti-American demonstrations. Bush is recreating conflict where there was a quiet detente. His rhetoric is backfiring already. It may please the Pentagon and the military contractors, but it is not making us any safer. Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report, publication of the Middle East Research and Information Project (www.merip.org). (c) Chris Toensing |
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