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OT:OT:OT:NO MS:NO hurt US:NO racist: Iran, Israel: The good, the bad and the ugly
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| Asia Times
October 29, 2005
Iran, Israel: The good, the bad and the ugly
Dr. Kaveh L Afrasiabi
In light of the political uproar caused by the comments of Iran's president
against
Israel, it is important to examine the comments, which call for the
destruction of
the state of Israel, within the context of Iran's overall foreign policy.
Iran's foreign policy since the revolution of 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini
greeted Yasser Arafat as his first foreign visitor, has been consistent in
terms of a
radical pro-Palestinian orientation.
During the Khomeini era, Iran remained steadfast in its call for the full
resurrection of Palestinian rights and their (armed) struggle for
self-determination,
this despite the overt pro-Saddam policy of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization
during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and, worse, the Iraqi regime's
recruitment of
many Palestinians in the war against Iran.
During the 1990s, however, with a new pragmatic turn in Iran's foreign
policy
initiated by powerful cleric Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's position with
respect to the
Arab-Israeli conflict became somewhat modified. Case in point: after the
signing of
Oslo Agreement, Iran's leaders, including the foreign minister, stated
publicly that
they would abide by the will of Palestinian people and respect the decisions
of their
political leaders.
At the same time, Iran officially maintained a healthy skepticism regarding
Israel's
fulfillment of its Oslo promises, and once Oslo was pronounced dead by
Israeli
officials, who violated their agreement not to build new settlements and to
press
forward for full Palestinian autonomy and self-rule, the Iranian government
and the
official press felt their cynicism to have been justified. This, in turn,
prompted a
more vigorous pro-Palestinian effort, in part by utilizing the Organization
of
Islamic Conference led by Iran during the first term of president Mohammad
Khatami.
The Khatami era featured a policy mixture of moderation and hard line,
reflecting
Iran's political factionalism. Khatami's policy of rapprochement with the
West,
particularly western Europe, coinciding with an Iranian Jew (Moshe Katsav)
being
Israel's president, raised expectations of a more lenient approach by Tehran
toward
the peace process.
A number of influential Iranian foreign-policy experts, such as Mahmood
Sariolghalam,
gave theoretical depth to this new approach-in-the-making by explicitly
linking the
lack of progress in Iran-US relations to Iran-Israel hostility, arguing that
some 80%
of the former was caused by the latter.
However, Israel's leading the global march against Iran's nuclear program,
Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's iron-fist policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and the
U.S.
government's unwillingness to "reward" Iran for its cooperative behavior
after
September 11, 2001, eg, in Afghanistan, where Iran was instrumental in the
bloodless
takeover of Kabul by the pro-Iran Northern Alliance, collectively eroded any
hope for
a significant change of Iranian policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict,
officially
wedded to the creation of a Palestinian state in place of today's Israel.
Yet, this did not constitute the entire sum of Iran's policy, and
whisperings about
the need to revise the policy in favor of an alternative based on a
"two-state
solution" grew noticeably louder during the Khatami presidency.
Complementing this new thinking was Khatami's initiative of a dialogue among
civilizations at the United Nations, which in turn made more transparent the
policy
ramifications of Iran's pre-Islamic history and identity; the latter
includes the
legacy of Cyrus the Great's edict in 534 BC which, after liberating the
enslaved Jews
in the Kingdom of Babylon, allowed them to return to their promised land.
Of course, Khatami's dialogue among civilizations was primarily geared
toward Islam
and Western civilizational dialogue. Nevertheless, to the extent that this
dialogue
looked inward at Iran's own contribution to world civilization, it had a
clear,
though mostly latent, impact in terms of causing a new awakening about the
relevance
and importance of Iran's complex, part-Islamic, part-pre Islamic and
specifically
"Persianist" history and identity.
This "dual identity" does not pertain to a distant past : it is, rather, a
staple of
everyday life in Iran and, in terms of the cultural orientation of Iran's
foreign
policy, is highly relevant to the nuances of this policy, which has been
experiencing
certain readjustments since the passing of the Khatami era and the onset of
a more
militant presidency under Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Such readjustments have been partly dictated by the winds in Iran's
vicinity, and
related Americophobic national security concerns, much to the detriment of
Iran's
moderate politicians headed by Khatami and, to a lesser extent, Rafsanjani,
who
openly yearned for the restoration of relations with the U.S.
Yet, today, the walls of mistrust between Iran and the U.S. which Khatami
talked
about have grown substantially higher, despite the fact that post-Saddam
Iraq
features a convergence of interests between the two countries (highlighted
by recent
comments by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding dialogue
between the
Iranian and US embassies in Baghdad, shortly thereafter reciprocated by
Iran's
interior minister).
Unfortunately, such positive developments, representing tiny cracks in the
glacier of
a quarter century of mutual animosity, are now held back by what appears to
be an
off-the-cuff statement by Iran's president who, by all indications, is a
foreign-policy amateur still on the learning curve of global diplomacy.
Ahmadinejad's incendiary comment that Israel must be wiped off the map runs
against
Iranian history, which harks back to Cyrus the Great's tolerance of a Jewish
state.
Iran's spiritual leader recently welcomed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as
"positive", and yet Ahmadinejad has labeled it as a "joke".
The timing of Ahmadinejad's comment, which coincides with the new
Washington-led
campaign against Syria over the UN report on the assassination of former
Lebanese
prime minister Rafik Hariri, should not be overlooked, for it may have been
calculated to offset any undue pressure, or even strike, against Syria, on
which Iran
counts as a backbone of support in the Arab world.
The question, important for the makers of Iran's foreign policy, is the
proper weight
and attention to be allocated to Israel, notwithstanding reports of Israel's
growing
meddling among the Kurds, and other activities. This question popped open in
January
2002 with the Israeli interception of Karin-A, carrying an alleged Iranian
arms
shipment loaded at an Iranian island in the Persian gulf.
The backlash against Iran at the time was partly internal, as the moderate
majlis
(parliament) deputies called for an official inquiry, some even pointing at
the
unruly Revolutionary Guards and their self-styled foreign policy. On the
other hand,
a number of foreign-policy experts tended to see a redeeming value in that
scandal,
in terms of Iran's military "showing its teeth" and using that as leverage
with
Washington.
Similarly, one wonders if Ahmadinejad's comments were not deliberately
calculated to
solicit a more negotiated response from Israel and the U.S. down the road,
with Iran
willing to discuss the terms of adopting a less militant posture towards
Israel.
For the moment, it is fair to conclude, albeit provisionally, that the
president's
comments were not coordinated aspects of a carefully-planned approach, but
rather a
personal statement of ideological preference.
Regardless of what lay behind the timing of Ahmadinejad's comments, it is
abundantly
clear by the backlash it has caused in European capitals and elsewhere that
Iranian
foreign-policy interests have not been particularly well served by such
public
statements, representing fresh logs in the furnace of the anti-Iran campaign
within
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is about to deliberate
the next
course of action on Iran. In a word, Iran has been somewhat undermining
itself in the
battle for world public opinion with respect to its right to nuclear
technology, by
making official statements that kindle the images of another Holocaust.
How Iranian hardline politicians think that they can advance Iran's nuclear
rights
while simultaneously pursuing such counter-productive public diplomacy
remains a
puzzle. The continuation of such an approach, representing clear
discontinuity with
past diplomacy, irrespective of Ahmadinejad's initial promise of maintaining
policy
continuity, will only harm Iran's interests and bolster the position of
global forces
pushing for Iran's isolation and marginalization.
A prudent Iranian foreign policy should avoid steps that directly or
indirectly help
the cause of the anti-Iran global forces orchestrating a wide-ranging public
campaign
to rationalize a future military assault against Iran's nuclear
installations. The
legitimacy deficits of such sinister plans against Iran have now been
partially
remedied by the harsh anti-Israel statements of Iran's president, and one
only hopes
that the president's advisors and other responsible officials of the Iranian
government realize the extent of damage to Iran's national interests that
can be
caused by an over commitment to an ideological principle.
This principle is in dire need of realistic overhaul in line with the
changing
context of Iran's foreign-policy needs and priorities in a turbulent Middle
East.
* Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, holds a Ph.D. in political science from Boston
University. He
has completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard university and UC Berkeley,
and he has
collaborated with the UN Program on Dialogue Among Civilizations
(http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/20...ue2/0102p54.htm). Dr. Afrasiabi is
author
of several books and numerous articles, including "After Khomeini: New
Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...7616745-8791338),
"Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs,
co-authored
with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003
(http://www.caspianstudies.com/article/Iran's%20Foreign%20Policy.pdf).
Dialogue of
Theologies As Dialogue of Civilizations (Global Scholarly Press,
forthcoming),
"Communicative theory and theology", Harvard Theological Review, and many
articles in
the New York Times, Telos, Brown's Journal of World Affairs, UN Chronicle
(http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/20...e1/0103p75.html), Middle East
Journal,
International Herald Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He recently
co-authored "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of
World
Affairs, Volume XII, issue 1, Summer 2005, with [anti-Iran Turkish Prof.
Mustafa
Kibaroglu] (http://www.bjwa.org/index.php?issue=12.1). Dr. Afrasiabi teaches
political science at Tehran University.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ29Ak02.html
--
Quaecomque sunt vera ----
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