Lebanonwire, April 2, 2003

The Daily Star

Expecting the invasion of Iraq and awash in wishful exuberance, some Iranian expatriates enjoyed a ride on the imaginary wake of the next “regime change” in Iran. For whatever its worth, and for the time being, however, the US seems to have promised the Iranian government that in exchange for good behavior, they would not go after Iran once Iraq is humbled.
There are serious impediments in the way of an outright, Iraq-style invasion of Iran in any case. Hard facts of size of territory (more than trice that of Iraq), quality of the terrain (rugged mountain ranges and forests), population (more than twice that of Iraq), military morale and preparedness (much better than the weakened and ostensibly demoralized Iraqis who are putting up considerable resistance) and different geopolitical and international standing will make the neoconservatives think twice before pondering Iran as the second step to empire building. But how about the softer facts? Will the discontent of Iranians (recently crystallized in the boycotting of a popular election) encourage the hawks to push for intervention anyway? Some argue that the Iranian masses will welcome an American-backed “Hamid Karzai.” Unemployed Iranian princes of democracy, print your name here.
During the Afghan campaign rumors had Iranians whispering: “Let them bomb us to smithereens next if that would rid us of the mullahs.” Such nihilistic sentiments no doubt exist among some and they probably surge every time Rafsanjani, Yazdi, Mesbah, Hasani or the supreme one express their disdain for the will of the people and their elected institutions. But this is exactly that: a sentiment, an affective (not rational) state of mind. I am not convinced that even those Iranians who might say things like that would actually cheer Tomahawks in Tehran. It is a long way from “I have had it with this life” to actual suicide. To gauge the attitudes of Iranians about US intervention (direct or by the proxy of “contras,”) one must rely on more than eschatological anecdotes.
One such source is the recent research by the Ayandeh Institute that so infuriated the right wing that its authors (Ghazian and Abdi) were summarily tried and given eight- and nine-year sentences on trumped up charges of selling “sensitive information” to such nefarious clients as the Gallup Organization. The real crime of the researchers was to demonstrate that three-quarters of Iranians welcome negotiations with the US. But the same polls also indicated that 65 percent of the respondents condemn the past policies of the US in Iran and two-thirds of them do not fully trust the government of the US. In other words, Iranian public opinion regarding the US is more nuanced than the Panglossian Iranian right wing or the Pollyannaish Iranian expatriates would have us believe. While 62 percent of the respondents in the Ayandeh survey said they were not prepared to trust the motives behind the anti-terror campaign of the US, a staggering 74 percent favored negotiations with the US in order to dodge its post-Sept. 11, 2001 rage. This must also dim the visions of throngs of Iranians welcoming the American forces of liberation with sweets and rosewater.
But an invasion is not the only way current operations in Iraq can influence politics in Iran. Setbacks of the current operations notwithstanding, the US hardware on display in Iraq cannot help but impress the Iranian powers that be. Gone is the Khomeini-era slogan: “America can’t do a damn thing.” It turns out there are plenty of damn things that the US can do. If the reform wing were in better shape than it currently finds itself (in disarray after its first electoral defeat) it could exploit the noise in the neighborhood. It could extract concessions from the right wing in the name of fostering national unity and international legitimacy as the best defense against US interventionism. Also, the quest to topple Saddam Hussein could have helped the forces of democratic reform in Iran if the US would stop prevaricating about the promises of the coming democracy in Iraq. But Americans will not stop prevaricating because the Bush doctrine is about US hegemony, or “American global leadership” as the authors of the project for the new American century call it. Democratizing comes in handy as window dressing or an instrument for toppling recalcitrant tyrannies.
History shows that the Iranian right wing knows how not to be recalcitrant. Ever savvy in matters of geopolitics, they will find it more expedient to turn down the reformers and strike an under-the-table deal with the US in exchange for a provisional modus vivendi. Note that both sides of the pact between the “Barbarians” and the “Great Satan,” otherwise known as the Iran-Contra affair, are currently in power. On the Iranian side, Rafsanjani, having lost his popular backing, is still the head of the influential Expediency Council and continues to jockey in the non-elected shadow government for supremacy.
On the US side Admiral Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, both found guilty in Iran-Contra, have been brought into the Bush team. Those who consider the invasion of Iraq a net gain for Iranian democracy must take a moment to ponder the striking elective affinities between the US neocons and the Iranian old cons. Remember that all agreements of limited military cooperation between the US and Iran in the previous (Afghan) and current (Iraqi) wars had to be blessed by the supreme leader. Should the two right-wing parties in Iran and the US break up after the conquest of Iraq the news will still be bad for Iran and Iranian democracy.
A campaign of shock and awe or protracted guerrilla warfare against the mullahs will jeopardize Iran’s territorial integrity and put its inhabitants in grave danger. A foreign invasion will also halt the internal dialectic of liberation that has currently arrived at the radical reform synthesis of democratic and secular politics, a la Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Sazgara, Ghasem Shole Sadi and Mohsen Kadivar. A foreign invasion will truncate the evolution and tarnish the accomplishments of Iran’s self-actualizing democratic movement. The shortcut of achieving the same goals through the agency of the US in its current fit of rage and world domination is a dangerous illusion.

Ahmad Sadri, professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College, Illinois, USA, writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star

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