The Encirclement of Iran: This Charade Has to Stop

Farish A Noor

Daily Times (Pakistan), January 21, 2006

— [N]ot an iota of sympathy or solidarity is in evidence in this time of impending crisis, when it is clear that Iran is about to end up as the third target in the US short list of marauding conquests across Central Asia and the Middle East…. [A]s clueless pundits in South Asia, East Asia, Latin America and Africa take their news straight from the CNN which, needless to say, has already cast Iran as the bad boy.

— In the event of a war, the numbers of dead Western soldiers will be in the hundreds, while tens of thousands of Iranians will end up sacrificed. Not too long ago there was a word to describe situations such as these, and though the word is seldom heard today it bears repeating: Imperialism.

Unless policy makers are prepared to take into account the fact that Iran is no minor player in the Central Asia-Middle Eastern scene, and that its influence extends deep into Shia Iraq and in places like Palestine, Jordan and Syria, we are likely to witness a repeat of the same military adventurism that brought the US into Afghanistan and Iraq

The demonisation of Iran over the past few weeks and months reads like a tedious repeat of a tired old script: before the American war machine shakes up its tired timbers, the boom box is cranked up. Stories of alleged plots to re-start Iran’s nuclear research programme with the hope of reviving a nuclear weapons research agenda have been circulating for weeks and months, leading us to the impending climax as Iran is hauled before the less-than-representative UN Security Council.

We all know what will happen next, for another country was forced not too long ago to walk the same path: Iraq. Two uneven wars later the country has been turned into a de facto American colony. Iran’s leaders may talk about their country’s proud history and civilisational legacy for mankind, but did the towers of Babylon and the pride of Assyria stop Baghdad from being reduced to a pile of rubble by American tank-busters and rockets?

Why should the ancient kingdom of Persia fare any better? (‘Smart bombs’ are not trained in ancient Middle Eastern history and have little regard for historic monuments or Persian poetry….)

There is much talk now of ‘isolating’ Iran, imposing sanctions and restrictions on travel for Iranian diplomats and citizens, including Iranian students, artists, scholars and intellectuals — even its football team. This is meant to deny Iran the oxygen of publicity it needs to plead its case before a global audience, and to drown out the voices of common sense and rationality in that beleaguered country. Even consensual voices like Ali Larijani, who stated that Iran was prepared to compromise and co-operate with other countries in its development of nuclear energy, have been silenced.

Commentators in the Western liberal press have bemoaned this silencing campaign as a counter-productive measure, as it would mean marginalising the small yet vocal liberal current in Iran itself and driving the populace into the waiting arms of the more belligerent sections of the Iranian political elite led by its populist leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Such comments fail, however, to note the very obvious fact that the political elite of Washington have no intention to engage in any kind of meaningful dialogue with progressive and moderate Iranian intellectuals. For dialogue would entail a meeting of minds on common ground, and the acceptance of the fact that both sides would have to compromise.

Iran may be brought to the table to talk about the practical realities of living in a world where nuclear energy is regarded as a necessary hazard at best, a lethal and untrustworthy form at worst. But in any such dialogue the West, and most notably the United States, would also be forced to look at itself closely and recognise the contradictions and errors of its foolhardy adventurism, the appalling abuse of human rights by its own security forces in places like Guantanamo Bay, and its complicity in the deteriorating environmental situation and global energy crisis. Would the powers-that-be in Washington be willing to engage in a dialogue on those terms? Don’t bet on it.

So the soap opera with its host of lame-duck characters and clichéd rhetoric plods on at snail’s pace. Iran is harangued and demonised on a daily basis for a host of evils — real and imagined. We are told again and again that the country is in the grip of a motley crew of fundamentalist mullahs whose views on women, Jews, democracy and freedom of speech are medieval, outdated and reactionary.

But doesn’t this apply equally to the Arab states that are also in the stable of America’s partners and strategic allies in the Middle East? It doesn’t take a genius to note that the treatment of women in Iran is still much better than the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

Despite these blatant contradictions and painful ironies, the isolation of Iran continues unabated. The deafening silence of the governments of the Muslim world — from Morocco to Malaysia — sounds like a post-modern concert of silence. The conduct of the neighbouring Arab states is even more appalling, considering the obvious designs that America and its allies have on Arab and Muslim countries on the whole.

Yet not an iota of sympathy or solidarity is in evidence in this time of impending crisis, when it is clear that Iran is about to end up as the third target in the US short list of marauding conquests across Central Asia and the Middle East.

On a global level the marginalisation of Muslims as a whole — as witnessed by the neglect and indifference shown to the earthquake victims of Pakistan — means that beyond the West-Islam dialectic there is even less thought spent on the issue, as clueless pundits in South Asia, Easat Asia, Latin America and Africa take their news straight from the CNN which, needless to say, has already cast Iran as the bad boy.

How and where will all this end? Unless serious-minded policy makers are prepared to take into account the fact that Iran is no minor player in the Central Asia-Middle Eastern scene, and that its influence extends deep into Shia Iraq and in places like Palestine, Jordan and Syria, we are likely to witness a repeat of the same military adventurism that brought the US into Afghanistan and Iraq.

There will undoubtedly be talk of another ‘mother of all battles’ and idle speculation about ‘thousands of allied deaths’. But in the end we will be treated to yet another anti-climax of a vastly superior and technologically sophisticated army wiping out an enthusiastic yet technologically inferior foe.

In the event of a war, the numbers of dead Western soldiers will be in the hundreds, while tens of thousands of Iranians will end up sacrificed. Not too long ago there was a word to describe situations such as these, and though the word is seldom heard today it bears repeating: Imperialism.

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Dr. Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin