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When Bush Comes to IranThe view of American tough talk from Tehran.

By Reza Aslan
Posted Monday, Sept. 3, 2007, at 8:02 AM ET
Iranians at a market. Click image to expand.

My cousin Kamran is a successful software engineer in Tehran with a house, a thriving business of his own, and a brand new Peugeot, which he likes to show off by careening through the city's clogged streets at maniacal speeds. Like most of Iran's young and highly educated population, he must rely on other means to make ends meet. So, in addition to running his software business, Kamran tutors neighborhood children, raises chickens on his aunt's farm, hires himself out as a guide and translator for tourists, dabbles in real estate, and occasionally sells imitation designer handbags out of the trunk of his car.

"What kind of life is this?" he confides in me. "I have a master's degree. I fought in the Iran-Iraq war. I have my own business. But here I am forced to sell purses out of my car to feed my family?" He laughs to hide his shame. "I tell you, when Bush comes, things will be different."

When Bush comes. It is a popular joke in Tehran, akin to saying, "when pigs fly." Of course, behind every joke lurks a genuine sentiment. Sure, Kamran laughs when he says it. But then he grips the wheel and, for a brief moment, glances up at the sky, as though expecting an American fighter jet to zoom overhead.

I can't blame him. There is a palpable sense among many Iranians that the United States might start dropping bombs on them at any moment. After all, Iran is literally surrounded by American troops: The U.S. maintains military bases in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A fleet of heavily armed American warships is conducting military exercises in the Persian Gulf. The CIA just received a presidential directive to launch black-ops meant to destabilize the Iranian government. The Bush administration might well be believed to be considering launching its own nuclear weapons (so-called bunker busters like the B61-11) against Iran's suspected nuclear sites. And Congress has approved another $75 million to "promote democracy" in Iran, which means, unapologetically, regime change.

All of this makes Kamran chuckle. "Regime change. Regime change," he mocks in an American accent. It's not that he doesn't want an end to the clerical regime. He'd love nothing more than to drag the mullahs out of the halls of government. But he has stopped caring. Like the rest of his friends, Kamran has grown so disenchanted with Iran's political system and so suspicious of American intentions in the wake of the Iraq war that he has simply given up. He doesn't vote in Iranian elections anymore. He barely reads the newspapers. He's stopped watching CNN International and the BBC. He has more immediate concerns, like how to pay his mortgage, how to afford skyrocketing gas prices, what to do about the impoverished Iraqis flooding into the country, and, most of all, how to use his immense computer expertise to make a decent living. The only time he pays any attention to the news is when the Iranian press announces yet another impending threat from America.

Those stories are popping up a lot lately. In the past couple of weeks, President Bush has raised the rhetorical stakes again, first by threatening to label Iran's military/intelligence branch, the Revolutionary Guard, a terrorist organization (essentially a declaration of war in the age of the "War on Terror"), then by announcing in a fiery speech before the American Legion that he is authorizing U.S. forces in Iraq "to confront Tehran's murderous activities." Both moves come after months of accusations that Iran is arming and training Shiite militias who are killing both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The accusations of Iran's meddling in Iraq are no doubt true. But consider this: According to a report released by the New York Times, of the 60 to 80 fighters who enter Iraq each month to join al Qaida in Mesopotamia, half are from Saudi Arabia. The majority of suicide bombers are Saudis, as are about 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. And nearly half of the foreign prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia. Yet, far from threatening to confront Saudi Arabia's murderous activities, Bush has just offered to supply billions of dollars in advanced weaponry to that country. Why? According to State and Defense department officials, to help ward off Iranian influence.

No wonder Kamran is so paranoid about an impending U.S. invasion. He's not alone. For all its blustering confidence, the Iranian government is convinced it is next for the "Axis of Evil." And Iran has learned the obvious lesson from its fellow Axis members. The country without nuclear weapons (Iraq) was attacked and occupied by U.S. forces. The country with nuclear weapons (North Korea) is being plied with hundreds of millions of dollars to give them up. It's not hard to figure out why Iran is so frantic to develop nuclear capabilities. In fact, almost everything the Iranian regime does—from accelerating its nuclear program to arming Shiite militias in Iraq to crushing opposition movements at home—must be viewed from the prism of the overpowering fear of a coming military attack.

Perhaps no event is more indicative of the regime's paranoia than its detainment of four Iranian-Americans, including Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson Center on International Policy, on charges of spying for the United States. (Esfandiari, who was specifically accused of trying to start a velvet revolution in Iran, was finally released on bail last week.) The charges are absurd, of course. But the Iranian government's actions cannot be isolated from the announcement made by the CIA in May that the United States is actively recruiting Iranian-Americans who, in the words of one intelligence officer, "have links with their families at home," and who could be "a good two-way source of information." Kamran shakes his head when I tell him this. "How did you think the mullahs were going to react to that?" he asks.

It's true that President Bush has made a concerted effort to temper his administration's saber rattling with direct appeals to the Iranian people. "My message to the Iranian people is: You can do better than this current government," Bush said last week. "You don't have to be isolated. You don't have to be in a position where you can't realize your full economic potential."

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Photograph of Iranians by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

In allegedly supporting some elements of the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S., how is Iran doing anything that the U.S. didn't do in Afghanistan when the Soviets were there? The U.S.S.R. was our avowed enemy, and so we did everything we could do—indirectly and secretly—to thwart their attempts to prop up the Afghani communist regime. We supplied weapons, training and funding to the mujahedeen—including people like Osama bin Laden—and were therefore morally responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of Soviet soldiers.

I'm not saying that that was necessarily a bad thing if looked at in the most brutal terms of cold-war strategy, but it seems easy enough nowadays to make the case that we ended up being hoist by our own petard on 9/11. But the thing is, we did it, and there's no denying it. Even Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time, seems to gloat about it to this day. Therefore, would the Soviets, had they known about our involvement at the time, have been justified in declaring war against us?

One of the big problems with the Bush administration's approach to matters like Iraq and Iran has been that their actions are not based on the idea of a "just cause," but rather, "just 'cause we can." Even leaving aside questions about the efficacy of invading countries like Iraq without really knowing what to do in the aftermath, how can we, as the supposed "beacon of democracy," claim to be a righteous force for good when we can't even be bothered to base our actions on honest or consistent principles?

If the Bush administration can't come up with reasons for attacking Iran that are different from things that we've done ourselves, then maybe they need to go back to the drawing board on this one. Either that or blatantly flaunt the fact that they've essentially become an outlaw regime. In other words, please skip the public hypocrisy.

--fingerpuppet

(To reply, click here.)

Bush's ham-handed efforts to "reach out" to the Iranian people show once again his complete ignorance of history and his utter reliance on the theory that if all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Imagine if North Korean strongman Kim Il Sung were to "reach out" to the American public to overthrow the Bush administration. What sort of response do you think there would be? About the same as the Iranian response to Bush's appeal for regime change in Iran.

Engaging Iran in a meaningful and productive way requires far more finesse and intelligence than the Bush team has now, or ever will, possess. Of course the Iranian government is meddling in Iraq, much the same way that we meddled in Afghanistan when the Russians were there. It was in our interests to destabilize the Russian war in Afghanistan, much as it is in Iran's interest to see America fail in Iraq. The sooner we fail, the sooner we leave Iran's doorstep. That is not to say that we should allow such meddling to occur, but making the situation worse by ratcheting up the paranoia in Iran is only going to make things less stable, not more so.

Iran has been the graveyard of American foreign policy since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Our complicity in having supported the Shah's brutal regime has born bitter fruit ever since his overthrow, and trying to suddenly become the "good guys" is not going to happen anytime soon, especially by labeling Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

Vietnam is a good example of turning a former enemy into a friend, so that is not to say it cannot happen in Iran. But not by Bush, who will be forever remembered in the middle east as a tyrant and a warmonger, and not without some reason. Every Iraqi citizen killed by U.S. forces, either rightly or wrongly, breeds a new hatred toward the United States that will be repaid in blood for years to come. Bush has sown the seeds for conflict in the middle east for the next several generations, so he cannot now come across as a peacemaker without being laughed right out of the region. It would be like Hitler suddenly wanting to join B'Nai B'rith.

The only possible way that we can begin to change the dynamics of Iran's politics is to leave Iraq, and just wait patiently. Iran is having problems of its own without the efforts of the United States to destabilize it further. By removing America as a scapegoat for its problems, Iran will have ever increasing problems with its restless population that has grown weary of the strong arm tactics of the ruling Mullahs. There will be a time and a place for America to step in, but it is not now, and it is certainly not with our current administration.

--pkunzip37

(To reply, click here.)

(9/5)

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