THE GREAT SATAN, THE WOUNDED SNAKE – THE U.S.-IRAN IMBROGLIO
Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta
Desicritics.org, India
Feb 27 2007
The idea for this essay was borne when several aspects came together.
The first was when I heard on the Sky News channel that the Americans
were complaining about the fact that several Iraqi road side bombs
were either designed in or actually being constructed in Iran. The
view that there is a nexus between Iran and Iraq has been endorsed
by Condoleezza Rice, who said a few months ago that Iran "does need
to understand that it is not going to improve its own situation by
stirring instability in Iraq," and by George W. Bush, who said, in
August, that "Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping
democracy from taking hold" in Iraq. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker,
of Abu Gharib fame, wrote recently: "More and more people see the
weakening of Iran as the only way to save Iraq." The second aspect
emerged when I was trying to write about the future of Iraq and the
fact that Iraq as we know it now doesn’t really have any strongly
unifying national ethos or ideology. The final aspect came up when I
was reading Robert Fisk’s magnum opus, The Great War for Civilization –
the Conquest of the Middle East. My overall thoughts at the end of all
this was, Lord, I hope Dubya doesn’t attack Iran, because if he does,
it will be yet another spectacular mistake.
I have already written about Iran and its nukes and why attacking
Iran won’t be such a good idea, but the more I read about the
happenings in the USA, the more worried I get. I am seriously
concerned about President George Bush, his cabinet, the armed forces
and the GOP’s ideas. Slowly and surely, as of middle of February 2007,
the noises around attacking Iran are steadily becoming more and more
cacophonous. Seymour Hersh further wrote recently that U.S. officials
were involved in "extensive planning" for a possible attack –
"much more than we know". There is not much point going on about
the respective strengths of the militaries, the local geo-political
situation or the possibility of non-conventional war, as they have been
discussed before, but what I do want to concentrate on is what Kautilya
has talked about. Kautilya defined the most important aspect of one’s
enemy as being the enemy’s mental strength. In this particular case,
I am afraid, Iran is not Iraq. While debating this, we can look at
what potential angle to take if the grand panjandrums do want to do
something about Iran, purely as a theoretical exercise.
To understand and appreciate the mental strength of your enemy,
history is a very good starting point. That allows one to avoid
getting sucked into the day to day humdrum aspects of the number of
155 mm guns or the coverage of their air defense network. Persia,
the old name of Iran, has an amazing history, almost rivalling that of
Egypt. But unlike Egypt, Iran kept hold of its history, its culture,
language and ethos, even after the Islamic conquest (something which
I find very curious and strange. I intend to explore this strange
phenomena in a later essay, and look into how huge blocks of history
are simply and explicitly lost. The Iranians kept their pride in their
long history. The fact that despite conquering Persia – Alexander
the Great ended his life as a Persian with ringlets and huge palaces
says a lot.. Their culture in terms of arts is extremely strong.,
be that painting, famous miniatures, drama, poetry, song or music
and is famous across the world. Look at their military strategy,
civil administration and judicial systems down the ages.
For a long period of human time, Persian / Farsi was known across
the world, ranging from China to India as the only civilised language.
And believe me, if you hear Farsi, it is such a mellifluous language.
Now imagine that lovely language reading the poems of Rumi, Khayam,
Ghalib, just to name a few of a long list of famous Persian poets.
Even me, a confirmed poetry illiterate know about these great poets
and their prolific, lovely and beautiful output.
But besides this, Iran is now the repository of Shia Islam. A
particular sect of Islam, (we won’t go into the differences and
minute details here), suffices to say that it is heavily symbolic
in nature and more ritualistic as compared to the more traditional
Sunni Islam. Hey, don’t quote me on this, I am no theologian, these
are just my impressions From a long time ago. I grew up in a Shia
Muslim town in India. Muharram, Ashura, the Tajiza processions, the
martyrdom of Hussayn and the Ijtema all were pretty much part and
parcel of my growing up. Ah! Let me not forget the food during the
festivals, the biryani and sweets were heavenly and I can still taste
the biryani cooked by Abdul Mian. But one of the downsides (well,
when you were a kid, all you wanted was to get to the food) of all
this was that you had to sit and hear the stories of Ali Ashgar Ibn
Husayn, Ali Akbar Ibn Husayn, Hussayn Ibn Ali, Qasim, etc. And if I,
living thousands of miles away from Iran, the homeland of Shia Islam,
can get to hear and imbibe all these stirring stories of martyrdom
and bravery, you can just imagine a country full of these young chaps,
who are full of religiously motivated fervour.
How does this matter? It matters indeed, because of a very small
equation. Other things being equal, soldiers seeking religiously
mandated martyrdom will always win over soldiers motivated by
patriotism or money. This is so obvious that I simply cannot see
why the USA would want to make these warlike noises or even consider
going to war with Iran. Given the superiority of Iran in its local
neighbourhood and the power of the religious pulpit, the USA is
never going to win if it goes head to head with Iran. We have already
discussed two aspects of a potential Iran USA conflict and concluded
that it’s simply "nuts", to use a layman’s term.
While I am not one to indulge in conspiracy theories, I am getting
a feeling that there is something which could be happening just
under the surface. You see, this has happened before. At the end of
the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was on its knees. The huge waves of Iranian
warriors overcoming the Iraqi army made its job very difficult. As
mentioned by both Dilip Hiro in Iran Today and Robert Fisk, the western
and Sunni powers got very worried about the possibility that Iran might
win. Combined with very aggressive patrolling of the Persian Gulf,
Straits of Hormuz, the blatant crime of shooting down the Iranian
Airliner by USS Vincennes (an essay on how the US Navy has shown a
rather interesting streak of creating major foreign policy problems
for the USA, rather than resolving is in preparation), supply of arms
and ammunition to the Iraqis, etc. all put intolerable pressure on
the Iranians. And they finally buckled and signed a ceasefire with
Iraq. Ayatollah Khomeini said that he has drunk from the poisoned
chalice. This ceasefire, from all accounts, was one of the seminal
moments of the Iranian Revolution. The Americans with their allies,
managed to clip the wings of the Iranian revolution.
Is that what is happening now? Look at the evidence! The Eastern Sunni
provinces have seen unexplained bombings. The southern Arab areas have
seen riots, shootings, bombings and protests. The Kurds in the north
east are restive and are making loud noises about their independent
brethren across the border in northern Iraq. The other minorities
in North Iran are restless and links between Armenia and the Iranian
Armenians are suddenly improving and much better than before. The oil
prices are being pushed down strongly. Financial Institutions ranging
from the international houses to emerging market banks are heavily
withdrawing from any form of financial links with Iran (and there
have been public examples of banks being very seriously punished for
links with Iran). All this has put immense pressure on Iran’s friends
and allies such as Japan, India and Pakistan against any form of oil
relationships with Iran.
International Oil companies are under severe pressure not to do any
kind of work with Iran. Then there is the whole different area of
pressure around the nuclear issue from IAEA and the UNSC.
Is the USA going around in an indirect way to put pressure on Iran
to perhaps withdraw from supporting the Shia Iraqi insurgents as well
as Hezbollah, in return for a grudging acceptance of the Iranian bomb?
Who knows? Take a look at the short lived story around the claims by
the US army that Iran is supplying bombs to the Shia militants. That
was such a silly claim (even though it might be true), that I cannot
believe that they expected Iran to grind its teeth and admit: "yes sir,
yes sir, we did but we won’t do it again sir". So, there is definitely
something else going on but here’s hoping that USA doesn’t wage war
on Iraq. Covert yes, quite possibly, overt, please no!
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!
Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta works in the city of London in various capacities
in the financial sector. He has worked and travelled widely around
the world. The articles in here relate to his current studies and are
strictly his opinion and do not reflect the position of his past or
current employer(s). If you do want to blame somebody, then blame my
sister and editor, she is responsible for everything, the ideas, the
writing, the quotes, the drive, the israeli-palestinian crisis, global
warming, the ozone layer depletion and the argentinian debt crisis.
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