As I type these words, thousands of reformist candidates for Iran’s upcoming elections are shutting down the Majlis with a sit-in to protest the disqualification of over 4,000 candidates by order of the ruling ayatollahs. This morning, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini took the unprecedented step of “asking” the Guardian Council to “review” its ruling. (This will be the same kind of backpedaling “review” that resulted in the freeing of a dissident whose imprisonment sparked riots last year.)
There is a reason that even Iranian reformers tend to ask the US to keep its distance and vehemently denounce any military posturing by us. One year more than any other, barring possibly the establishment of Israel, has shaped the perception of America in the Middle East and the Muslim psyche: 1953. That was the year in which, for the first time, American intelligence services worked to topple a foreign government - an elected and popular president of the only democracy in the Middle East, Iran. The success of the coup there, which installed an almost reluctant Shah, inspired further operations in other countries which lead to most of the atrocities in Central and South America during the cold war.
When The British approached Truman to retake their oilfields in Iran by fomenting a revolution, of sorts, he turned them down and wondered in his diaries what would become of an America that used ‘European’ methods in its foriegn affairs - the OSS/CIA was a new thing which ran contrary to this President’s vision of America should it be allowed to dabble in kingmaking abroad. Only when a President, surrounded by a cadre of anti-Communist idealogues, was elected did The British find their pitch. They painted the Iranian president as a Communist tool. That was all it took for advisors like Nixon to ‘investigate’ the matter. CIA case officers in Tehran knew which way the wind was blowing and exaggerated reports back to Washington in a situation that reminds one of the reports of pressure placed on intelligence analysts in the modern CIA by the office of Vice President Cheney to interpret facts about Iraq’s WMD and Al Qaeda ties in a certain light, to bring about certain results.
We all know the fallout. The repression of the Shah’s regime and US trained security services lead to an allout revolution and the most powerful revolutionary faction turned out to be that of radical Sh’ia as, as has been noted, the mosque was the only safe refuge for any dissenting voices in these repressive regimes. Radical Sh’ia inspired radical Wahabi, Sunni, muslim movements and those in Saudia Arabia were not only tolerated but encouraged by both the Saudia Royal House and, indeed, the United States Intelligence services. With radical Sunni muslims we had a counter to both radical Sh’ia, a rival sect, and godless communists. We didn’t blink when it came time to fund and train the most radical, and vicious, elements in Afghanistan and foreign Jihadists. Our closest allies were the Saudi Royal family, which rules by theocracy of the most repressive kind, and Pakistan’s corrupt military ruler who was responsible for very atrocious acts and suspected of exporting WMD technology, much as the current scientific community in Pakistan is seen as sympathetic to radical Islamic movements and a prime exporter of nuclear technology. Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are described by this administration as our allies in the war on terror.
With a track record like this, not to mention our incredible partiality for reasons of domestic politics to Israel, and the support of some of the worst regimes, Egypt is our second largest recipient of foreign aid next to Israel, is it at all surprising that America is seen as a very unlikely bringer of liberation to the Middle East? Even if our intentions were pure it will be a next to impossible sale. And when oil is at issue, as it surely is, our intentions will be under a microscope. We aren’t looking very good.
Even genuine democratic reformers don’t want to be associated with us.
Yesterday in southern Iraq, Ayatollah al-Sistani iterated a call for “one-person, one-vote” direct elections to determine a new Iraqi government. He explicitly called for a constitutional form of government, and again made clear his opposition to the imposing of shar’ia.
You do understand al-Sistani’s motivations, of course? Iraq’s Sh’ia majority, approximately 60 percent of the population, has been oppressed for a very long time. With a straight up and down election, winner take all, who gets to make the laws? Sistani, also, is not the only voice of Sh’ia Islam in Iraq. There are young turks and rivals who are much less neutral in their approach to the US and its occupation. These rivals, because they tend to have less domestic support than al-Sistani, often turn to Iran’s clerics for funds and even weapons. Sistani sees that he must deliver Iraq to the Sh’ia population if he’s going to keep his own community together and from fighting each other. Much better to have them fighting the Sunni - which is the inevitable if there are straight elections, or the Americans, which is more likely than most care to admit if the occupational Authority persists in its carefully crafted ‘caucus’ system and a balance of power between factions.
If the Sh’ia do come to rule, will al-Sistani remember his pronouncements uttered to appease the Americans? Even if he does, will he have the power to influence the courts as radical Islamics have done in so-called ‘free’ Afghanistan? Who knows? But I wouldn’t be having a party for the triumph of democracy just yet.
The “historical trend” that produces anti-western terrorism is the lack of real politics in the Arab world: lacking any means for expressing its dissastisfaction through legitimate, modern politics, many people of the region turned to the only outlet available to them, namely virulent politicized Islam. (We could go on to argue the origins of the specific anti-Americanism in this Islam, and the “historic trend” of Arab governments quite deliberately fanning it as a way to redirect the masses’ anger from their own door.)
What is quite clear is the movement toward direct elections, popular democracy, and simple empowerment of the region’s populations in helping decide their own destinies. This is the great “historical trend” of the age, in the Middle East as elsewhere.
I suspect you’re right about the root causes here. But is more of the same, foriegn military intervention and manipulation by intelligence services, really going to bring about positive results? Somehow, I tend to be much more skeptical. I suspect there are remedies but they are less dramatic and short-term than an invasion and a staged handover of power to what may, but more likely may not, be a rickety democratic regime. The world needs to come together and decide how to handle these problems as a lawful community of nations. One county with the power to impose its vision on others by threat, violence or subterfuge, and the demonstrable desire to do so, is exhibiting at best hubris and at worst the same tendancies that have lead to some of the worst episodes in world history. And its record is less than blemishless or confidence inspiring in many cases.
Interesting you mention this. It’s actually one of the most welcome benefits of the new post-9/11 internationalism – it’s provided the opportunity for China to do what it has long sought to do, namely to get out of the bad-guy business and establish itself as a partner for peace and trade in Asia. The new U.S.-Chinese rapprochement post-9/11 may well avert a military showdown over Taiwan. But anyway…
I’d rather get back to the good old days when we were seen as the good trading partners with a vision for a future and folks in the region were scared of China. But anyway…
