IDEOLOGY NOT IRAN’S MAIN GAME
Shahram Akbarzadeh

Eureka Street
March 6 2008
Australia

The neo-conservative lobby in Washington DC is working hard to convince
President George W. Bush to attack Iran in 2008. There is a consensus
among observers in the United States that a Democratic president in
the White House would not have the guts to take this step. So the
pressure is on to commit George W. Bush to an air strike before he
leaves office.

In the February 2008 issue of the pro-Israeli magazine Commentary,
Norman Podhoretz placed the responsibility squarely at Bush’s feet.

Podhoretz argues that Bush should not leave this decision for his
successor. Moreover, he insists that air strikes against Iranian
targets are best carried out by the United States, not by an Israeli
proxy.

The neo-conservative lobby is unrelenting and has a track record in
steering US foreign policy in the past decade. Podhoretz was among
the original founders of the New American Century think-tank arguing
for the supremacy of the United States in the wake of the Soviet
collapse, and an ardent advocate of military action against Iraq in
2003. That the US invasion of Iraq prompted a bloody civil war and a
complete breakdown of civil structures do not seem to have dampened
Podhoretz’s resolution.

The neo-conservatives have insisted on the inherent ideological
foundations that prevent the Iranian regime from responding to the
international ‘carrot and stick’ approach. Podhoretz argues that
‘religious and/or ideological passions’ in Iran do not allow for a
‘cost-benefit approach’. In other words, the Iranian regime is bent
on the destruction of Israel and the United States, and no amount of
positive incentives, or threats of negative consequences, would deter
it. In this perspective, Iran is presented as an irrational actor,
blinded by fanatical rage against the United States and its allies.

This is a gross misreading of the Iranian regime and its objectives.

Contrary to assumptions regarding the supremacy of ideology in Iranian
foreign policy making, Iran has been quite careful not to jeopardise
its geo-strategic interests for the sake of ideology. When its two
northern neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war (1988-1994),
Iran supported the Christian state of Armenia against the Muslim
state of Azerbaijan, despite extensive cultural, linguistic and, of
course, religious links between Iran and Azerbaijan. Tehran feared
that an Azeri victory would boost separatist sentiments among Iran’s
large Azeri ethnic minority who predominantly live in the Azerbaijan
province of Iran.

Similarly, Iran refused to be drawn into the civil war of Tajikistan
(1992-97) fought between the Islamic Renaissance Party and its allies
against the former Communist regime. Instead, Iran worked with Russia
and the United Nations to resolve the conflict. Tehran now maintains
warm relations with the government of Tajikistan which is dominated by
former Communists, while the Islamist party languishes in opposition.

When the United States moved to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan
(2001), Iran surprised observers by not objecting to the enormous
military campaign on its door step. The Taliban were a constant threat
to Iran’s border security and it served Iranian geo-strategic interests
to have them removed.

None of the above suggests that Iran ignores the rational
‘cost-benefit’ calculations that govern other states. This is true of
Iran’s relations with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. In
fact, the latest US National Intelligence Estimate (December 2007)
reported a halt in the Iranian nuclear weapons program in 2003 as a
result of international pressure.

Iran is not an exceptional state. Geo-strategic factors govern
foreign policy making in Tehran, just as they do in other states. It
is important to bear this in mind in the current debate on sanctions.

— Associate Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh researches the politics of
Central Asia and the Middle East, political Islam, and US relations
with the Muslim world. He is Director of the Centre for Muslim
Minorities and Islam Policy Studies at theUniversity of Melbourne.