Looking out across a world of crises American policymakers are trying to balance, Washington would have no option but to see Iran as paramount. But just as impingement is complicated, so will be any effort to deal with Tehran itself. The problems have been accumulating since 1979 when violent Moslem fascism overtook the Shah, the U.S.’ principle ally in the region.
At the moment, it’s no secret Tehran is holding whip hand. You could argue about why. Bush critics, of course, are saying it’s not “negotiating”, abandonment of “multilaterialism”. More accurate would be Clintonism’s eight years when international issues slid while Madeleine Albright galloped around the world placating both allies and enemies with failed diplomatics.
Whatever the analysis future historians would make, Washington finds itself momentarily outmaneuvered by Tehran.
In the fight against terrorism — which Bush rightly warned after 9/11 would be long and with costs after penetration of the U.S.’ defenses — Iran has not only developed surrogates which threaten the U.S.’ allies. But there is a grave threat Iran’s Shia cult of death, martyrdom and barbarism might dominate the Arab and even wider Moslem world. Exploiting grievances of impoverished, embittered and frustrated illiterate masses from Casablanca to Zamboanga, Tehran is emitting Tarzan yells of victory
That is why despite Israeli military might, cleaning up Hizbullah — one of Tehran’s best pupils — among Lebanon’s largest religious-ethnic Shia group, is going to be so difficult. Destruction of weapons blatantly placed among civilians brings growing outcries from Israel’s friends and enemies as Jerusalem shows determination to eviscerate this Iranian power projection. But not to do it, presents the dilemma it will certainly rear up again within years if not months — ceasefire or no ceasefire, UN-sponsored peacekeeping [a monitoring UN operation was already in place when the crisis blew], and, perhaps next time, backed by a nuclear-clad Iran. It could create a Hezbullah-dominated Lebanon with its vast trading community around the world as a new terrorist sanctuary far greater than Afghanistan or Iraq with its oil bounty ever were.
It’s no wonder America’s longtime “moderate” Sunni-dominated [more or less] friendly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Persian Gulf states are quietly cheering the Israelis on at the risk of explosion in their souks. They do not call it the Persian Gulf for nothing: most oil producers have old Persian merchant communities from the days of hegemony. The Saudis’ Shia opponents in their oilfields has long been a menace [as the 1996 Khobar Barracks attack resulting in 25 American Marine deaths proved]. [Not to be forgotten were the more than 200 Marine and civilian deaths at the hands of Hizbullah in Lebanon in 1983 when even President Reagan turned the other cheek and fled.]
The so-called Shia revival — for decades if not centuries, Shia minorities [except in Iran where they are in majority] have been the ”niggers” of Islam — is producing additional violence in Pakistan, adding one more ball to Gen.-Pres. Pervez Musharraf’s balancing act. It could, eventually, exacerbate the Neo-Taliban’s emergence with its Sunni agenda against Hazara Shias in Afghanistan [and in Pakistan], a target as well as the NATO forces backing up the Karzai regime. [China and North Korea get in the act as weapons and technology suppliers to Iran, passed to Syria, and the Hizbullah.]
Of course, the Shia-Sunni divide is not the only feud among Moslems. But Tehran wants to see the Americans’ Iraqi democratic experiment fail, using it as a bloody wedge to force the U.S.’ withdrawal. Although Bush has rightfully blamed Syria [in less than polite language] for facilitating Hizbullah, there, too, is Tehran’s hand. Basher Assad balances precariously on an Alevi [an offshoot of Shia] minority, with a Sunni majority and a large, potent Christian minority, all impoverished by Damascus military and pathetic imitation of Soviet socialism, links arms with Iran for survival. Without it, Damascus could descend into Lebanese chaos.
Irregardless of primitivism as exemplified in Hitler-like rantings of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran’s use of Hizbullah has shifted the spotlight off its nuclear weapons program. European appeasers are happy to throw the world’s attention to “the humanitarian crisis” in both Lebanon and Palestine, diddled for months in their nuclear weapons negotiations with Tehran. Russia Vladimir Putin’s singlemindedness in using Moscow’s role as No. 2 fossil fuel exporter is enhanced by the crisis which Iran feeds. And, therefore, he short-sightedly refuses to block Tehran’s ambitions. Iranian oil resources, the world’s No. 4, even persuaded Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to break lockstep with his ally Bush at the G7 in St. Petersburg on “the cease fire issue” with Putin dangling a Siberian oil pipeline.
Does that mean Tehran holds all the cards? Not likely. Its economy, wholly dependent on refined imports — an example of its decrepit economy -- struggles with dissatisfied Persian-dominated minorities. Ahmadinejad canceled recent trips to the Arab-majority oil producing areas because of anti-Tehran violence. At the other corner, Baluch tribals are restive. And the huge Azeri population has a long history of dissidence. With its population growing at biological maximum, 70 million Iranians — more than half under 15 — are champing at the bit for modernization promised in a sea of corruption run by hypocritical clerics. The “reformers” leader, former President Mohammad Khatami, has retreated into drug addiction, a growing plague.
Tehran’s stability — just as Lebanon’s, Israel’s, and Syria’s — is thus riding on the outcome of Jerusalem's present effort to subdue Hizbullah. That is why Washington’s “green light” despite world opinion and Democratic demands for “negotiation.”
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
