Beyond the nuclear

Ali M. Ansari
CONFRONTING IRAN
176pp. C Hurst & Co. £16.50.
 
Ilan Berman
TEHRAN RISING
Iran’s challenge to the United States
218pp. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. $24.95.
0 7425 4904 6
 
When Presidents George W. Bush and Mahmud Ahmedinejad made speeches to the UN within a few hours of each other on September 20, it was the most direct rhetorical confrontation between the two states since President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech in his State of the Union address of January 2002. Bush’s axis was composed of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. On the face of it, this was a curious selection of states. On September 11, 2001, the United States had been the victim of an audacious and ruthless attack by Sunni Muslim militants, and it might have been expected that the President would link his condemnations to those who supported or harboured men of that description. Instead, he singled out three states that were uniformly hostile or indifferent to Sunni jihadis. And his list indicated the direction of future policy. Iraq was invaded, its regime overthrown and the state greatly weakened. Towards North Korea, US policy was much less determined but the elimination of that state’s deadly weapons remained an object. The greatest pressure is currently directed against Iran. The ostensible reason for the campaign against Iran is to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Behind that motive, however, is a much longer history of animosity and mistrust, and it is this history that Ali M. Ansari subjects to close examination in his valuable and thoughtful new book. Confronting Iran is about a hundred years of perceptions and misperceptions, and hinges on three dates: 1911, 1953 and 1979.

There is a sadness, a long unrequited yearning, hidden in the history of Iran’s relations with the US. It goes back to a time, in 1911, when Iran was dominated by the great Empires of Russia and Britain. In her search for a white knight, a third force to offset the oppressive restraints imposed by the two great powers, Iran – or at least the liberal, constitutional faction which then prevailed in the Iranian parliament – turned to the US. Admittedly, it was only a second choice, made after it became clear that Iran’s first choice, Germany, had no interests in Iran that could cause her to quarrel with Russia. Iran had no success with the US either. “Our interests in Iran”, wrote the then Under Secretary of State, “seem about as near nothing as our interest anywhere can be.” One tiny ray of illusory hope did shine from the West, however. Iran succeeded in employing a private mission of American advisers, led by a former US colonial official named Morgan Shuster. Shuster’s mission was a failure – Sir Edward Grey called him a bull in a china shop (a phrase that has come in useful to describe the subsequent conduct of the US in the Middle East) – but Shuster left behind the myth of honest American support for a progressive democratic future for an independent Iran. Such a dream sustained the faith of Iranian liberals in the US for many years, in fact until 1953.

The sadness lies in the fact that the US never reciprocated the affections of those Iranian liberals, whose voice, in any case, was quickly silenced. The modest interests of the US in Iran were the care of Presbyterian missionaries, Iranian oil, and development contracts. During the Second World War, Iran, which provided a supply corridor to the Soviet Union, was given Lend Lease assistance, and in the aftermath of the war the US administration roused itself to give some support to Iran against the demands of the Soviet Union. In 1949, Iran was given Point Four aid; and in 1950 the US agreed to provide security assistance. It seemed possible that the US might, after all, assume the role of the white knight.

In 1953, the US disappointed the hopes of Iranian liberals. The background was a conflict in Iran between Muhammad Reza Shah, the head of state, and various groups which sought to curtail his power. The occasion was the rise of Muhammad Mussadeq, the Prime Minister, his clash with the Shah, and a dispute with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which culminated in the nationalization of the oil industry. Mussadeq was backed by a mixed coalition of liberals, by bazaar merchants, and by the left-wing Tudeh party, believed to be under the control of the Soviet Union. The US was courted by Mussadeq and the Shah. The Americans decided to go along with Britain in supporting a coup in Iran which ended in the overthrow of Mussadeq and the restoration of the power of the Shah. In a subsequent settlement, US oil interests received 40 per cent of Iranian oil.

There had always been some ambiguity about the notion of the white knight: was his role to save liberalism in Iran, or to save Iran? Fearing that Mussadeq was losing control to the Tudeh Party and that Iran would sink under Soviet control, the US had chosen the second interpretation. But to the Iranian liberals the US now looked more like the sinister Green Knight who had overthrown the once and future liberal democrat leader of Iran. Such remains the view of many Iranians, and it is one with which Ansari plainly sympathizes. It is rather a fanciful notion. Dr Mussadeq was an honest, well-meaning, incompetent windbag who had lost nearly all his support before the coup. The liberal democrats of Iran tended to be big landlords, or their protégés, and were no more in touch with the conservative religious rural masses of Iran than was the Shah himself. The Shah’s White Revolution of the 1960s and 70s was more radical than anything that the Iranian liberals contemplated.

In the years after 1953, Iran, or at least the Shah and his supporters, grew closer to the USA. American economic assistance, advisers and weapons poured in, justified by the claims of defence against the Soviet Union. The relationship between Tehran and Washington was not always easy, but it was one that both parties valued. By 1971, Iran was seen as a guarantor of stability in the region, the policeman of the Gulf in the jargon of the day, and the US was her principal supporter. This did not make the US loved by all in Iran; Ansari describes the rise of anti-Americanism within the middle-class intellectual Left during this period, arguing that Americans were regarded as ignorant people lacking the culture of Europeans.

The third crucial date was that of the American hostage crisis in Iran. The sudden collapse of the Shah’s regime in 1978–9, in the face of mass protests led by the religious classes, came as a shock to Americans. Nevertheless, US diplomats recommended working with the new regime until the hostage crisis of 1979–80 changed American views completely. Ansari emphasizes the striking difference between Iranian attitudes towards the seizure of the US Embassy in Iran and the reaction of the US. To Americans, the affair was a great humiliation, made worse by the abortive rescue attempt and the display by jubilant Iranians of the burned bodies of some of those who died on the mission. But the Iranians, remarks Ansari, could not understand why the Americans were so upset about the business. For sensitive people, such incomprehension appears to show a striking lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others.

The Islamic Revolution added considerably to the existing obstacles to understanding between Americans and Iranians. In Iranian propaganda the US became, and has remained, the Great Satan, a concept as unhelpful as that of an axis of evil. The Americans (and the Israelis) failed to understand the Islamic Revolution, Ansari remarks, because they learned about it from the victims of the revolution who had fled into exile. They believed that the Iranian revolutionaries were intent on spreading their doctrines and blamed the Iranians for matters largely outside their control, notably the behaviour of Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was inevitable, therefore, that, although the US did not encourage Iraq to attack Iran in 1980, the Americans subsequently favoured the Iraqis, a partiality which was to become absurd when Iran was blamed for an Iraqi attack on a US vessel, and tragic when a US warship negligently shot down an Iranian airliner.

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf war of 1991 suggested that the US had previously backed the wrong horse and apparently offered an opportunity for reconciliation. That reconciliation did not take place, Ansari claims, was again due to mutual incomprehension. President Hashemi Rafsanjani would have liked better relations, but Iranian diplomats were quite incompetent, and Iranian intelligence chose this time to begin assassinating its enemies in exile in Europe. And the US had no analysts who understood: many, Ansari argues, were men switched from the Soviet desk who tried to apply the techniques they had employed during the Cold War to explain the behaviour of Iran, and failed miserably to provide a useful guide for policy makers. Iranian influence, the US decided, was to be excluded from the former Soviet territories in Central Asia and the Caucasus, although this region might have been an ideal area for fruitful cooperation.

Ansari suggests that another factor keeping Iran and the US apart was the Israel lobby, and relates the story of a contract offered by Iran to an American oil company and embargoed by President Clinton after strong pressure from supporters of Israel. He also claims that the Israel lobby contrived to extend sanctions on Iran. He does not develop much further his examination of the Israel factor, however, although it is plain that he regards it as a baneful influence on US policy. In the event, the US adopted the policy of dual containment, treating Iran and Iraq as potential enemies to be held in politica  quarantine.

Ansari believes that another opportunity for reconciliation was missed when, in 1997, the US did not respond immediately to the “Dialogue of civilizations” approach by the new Iranian President, Sayyid Muhammad Khatami. A positive response then might have strengthened the hands of the reformers in Iran. By the time the US – or at least the White House – became interested, the position of Khatami and his followers was already greatly weakened. And Congress never approved a relaxation of policy towards Iran. A final chance came after September 11, 2001, when Iran offered sympathy and cooperation in Afghanistan. Discussions were held between the US and Iran, but nothing came of them. Iran was excluded from the planning of the future of Afghanistan, and only weeks later was named as a member of the axis of evil. The incident that precipitated the widening of the breach was the discovery in January 2002 of a shipload of weapons on their way from Iran to the Palestinian Authority. Israel exploited the incident to depict Iran as an inveterate supporter of terror. In fact, neither the Iranian religious radicals nor the American neoconservatives had ever wanted a reconciliation. As in 1910 and 1953, those who passed for Iranian liberals were abandoned. Perhaps the liberals were never very strong. If they did have supporters, these were in the British Foreign Office.

Ansari pays a powerful tribute to the work of British diplomats in Tehran and London during the years 1998–2003. Perversely enough, the Iranians chose this time to pick a totally pointless quarrel with Britain over the choice of Ambassador, as they had earlier over Salman Rushdie. Ansari makes much of the irrationality of US policy towards Iran, but one could make a good case for the irrationality of Iranian policy also.

The author devotes a chapter to considering the current dispute about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. During the 1970s, the US and Britain had encouraged the Shah to develop a nuclear energy programme, although they had discouraged any ambition (which in any case the Shah disavowed) to possess nuclear weapons. It was known that Iran had not abandoned this programme after the Revolution, but it was only in 2002 that an Iranian opposition group published information showing that the programme was further advanced than had been supposed, and indicating that Iran was on her way to enriching uranium and therefore perhaps to developing a nuclear weapon. Negotiations followed between Iran and certain European powers, leading to an agreement, in October 2003, by which Iran undertook to suspend uranium enrichment. At this moment a profound change came over the Iranian political landscape.

Ansari divides the Iranian political classes into three groups: reformists, traditional conservatives, and the neoconservatives, or religious radicals. The first two groups were willing to make a deal with the US: the reformists with enthusiasm, and the conservatives with resignation. But religious radicals hated the US and wanted no agreement. In 2004 and 2005 they came to power in Iran by foul means, Ansari claims. He also argues that, despite electoral appearances, Iran was becoming more, not less, secular. Under its new President, Mahmud Ahmedinejad, a dangerous charismatic according to Ansari, Iran took the decision to restart uranium enrichment in August 2005, and in 2006 announced success.

Mutual prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding had prevailed, Ansari concludes. With greater understanding and cooperation, he implies, Iran might have been led towards a great liberal future. Perhaps his affection for Iran, for Iranian culture and for Iranian liberalism lead him at times to exaggerate the extent of the opportunities lost. And, attractive as the cock-up theory of history is, one has to wonder whether design did not play a greater part than he concedes. There are many people in America and Israel who can read Iranian newspapers, listen to Iranian radio, and analyse what they learn. If their knowledge is not used, it suggests that it is not wanted. And similar comments may be made about Iran. Ignorance can be a choice as well as an accident. But Ansari’s book is one to ponder, in particular those passages in which he uses the Iranian press to demonstrate the seriousness of the debate within Iran about the direction the country should take. They may help to dissolve those images of mad ayatollahs armed with nuclear weapons raging through the Middle East.

Those very images figure in Tehran Rising, a book which perfectly illustrates Ansari’s depiction of US policy. The author, Ilan Berman, is described as one of the rising stars of American foreign policy and an expert on regional security. For him Iran constitutes the greatest single challenge to the US and the war on terror. Iran aims to dominate the greater Middle East, supports global Islamic Revolution and “by some estimates, 90 per cent or more of the major acts of global terrorism committed in the two decades before September 11th can be traced to Tehran”. The phrase “by some estimates” provides a clue to the techniques employed by Berman and his researchers. They have ransacked articles in search of stories tending to depict Iran in the above terms. It all adds up to a mass of hyperbole, rumour, speculation and flimsy stories, some of which may even be true, but which certainly do not give authenticity to the picture Berman paints. Everything is all so reminiscent of some of the wilder anti-Communist and anti-American tracts of Cold War propaganda. The second part of Tehran Rising contains some recommendations for United States policy. There is a party Berman calls “the realists”, strong in Europe and well represented in the Clinton White House, who believe the Islamic Republic is here to stay and that it would be wise to make a deal with Iran. Berman condemns such thinking, welcomes the “moral clarity” of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union message, and outlines the elements of a new hardline policy towards Iran, including the possibility of regime change. One fears in the present climate that Ilan Berman’s book will find a much more enthusiastic reception than Ali Ansari’s.