Understanding Iran
Credit to Author: Ben Kritz| Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2020 16:18:05 +0000
PEOPLE in the US certainly do not like to hear this, and I suspect many in the Philippines do not either, as entrenched as the social, political and media perspective is in the American mode of thinking, but it is impossible to fully appreciate and react effectively to the Iran-US conflict if one tries to understand it solely from the Western point of view. Taking a look at the rivalry, which has its roots in the early 1950s, from the Iranian perspective can be informative.
In order to understand the Iranian perspective, one has to understand how three factors — ethnicity, oil and religion — have shaped modern Iran’s course.
First, ethnicity: One thing that Iranians are rightfully a little sensitive about is that most everyone assumes they are Arabs, or at least just like Arabs. They are not; they are Persian, with a culture 1,000 years older than that of the Arabs, who otherwise dominate a region that was at one time Persia’s front yard. The Iranians feel they are entitled to a position of superiority in that part of the world, or if not that, at least a position of equality with the broader Arab culture.
Second, oil: Just as with its Arab neighbors, Iran’s abundant oil resources have historically attracted the imperialist attention of Western powers; the difference is that Iran has historically been less inclined to submit to being a client state.
For most of the 20th century, from 1906 until the ouster of the last Shah of Iran in 1979, Iran was technically a constitutional monarchy; a hereditary emperor (Shah) was the head of state, with a prime minister and parliament forming the government. Up until 1953, the power of the Shah was limited, with the prime minister serving as the real leader of the country.
In 1951, the Iranian parliament overwhelmingly nominated a well-known progressive politician and scholar, Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister, and he was subsequently appointed to the position by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh introduced sweeping reforms, the most troubling of which, from the perspective of the West, was the nationalization in 1952 of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC). AIOC, which today is known as BP (British Petroleum) was seen by the populist Mossadegh as the instrument of foreign interference in Iranian affairs, controlling the natural wealth that Iran could be using for its own development.
Britain, of course, was not okay with Mossadegh’s move, and turned to the Americans for help. The CIA engineered a campaign to undermine Mossadegh by stirring up political trouble in Iran; part of the way in which it achieved that was by turning Iran’s influential clergy, the Ulema, against Mossadegh by playing on fears that he would side with the Communist Soviet Union. By 1953, the situation was chaotic enough that the Shah, assured of American and British backing, was able to remove Mossadegh from office. To ensure that he did not return to power, the now thoroughly compromised Iranian government first imprisoned Mossadegh for a few years, then kept him under house arrest until his death in 1967.
Third, religion: The Shiite Moslem clergy, the Ulema, that the CIA tapped as a tool to help oust Mossadegh, at the time wielded political influence in Iran that would be comparable to the influence of the Catholic Church now here in the Philippines, although the Shia majority in Iran is not as large as the Catholic majority in this country. The Ulema had, and still has, a great deal of influence over Iran’s poor and rural classes, and had initially supported Mossadegh. After Mossadegh’s ouster, the Shah, mindful of the Ulema’s role in it, wisely sought to suppress the clergy, along with anyone else who appeared to pose a threat to his rule.
That resulted in growing public discontent, which eventually coalesced around the exiled religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. That, in turn, led to the ouster of the ailing and weakened Shah in the 1979 revolution, a significant feature of which was the seizure of the US Embassy, in which the new regime held 52 American hostages for more than a year.
In other words, the rise of the present-day Iranian theocracy was enabled by the Americans’ own meddling, in much the same way its support for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion — which began in the same year as the Iranian revolution — led to the rise of the Taliban.
From the Iranian point of view, which is much closer to reality than the Americans’, their country is led by a democratic government, in the sense that it has the support of a majority of Iranian people. Obviously, not everyone in Iran agrees, but the fact is the internal dissent comes from a small minority, which the Iranian leadership feels justifies dealing with it harshly.
From the Iranian point of view, its aggressive efforts to extend its influence throughout the Middle East are justified by history — not only its ancient ethnic and religious rivalry with the Arab world, but the demonstrated enmity of the United States over the past 70 years.
One may still choose to come down on the side of the Americans in the conflict between the US and Iran, but if so, that is a choice in favor of the sort of imperialism American principles supposedly reject. It may prevail, but that is by no means certain. After all, for all of America’s overwhelming might, it has already failed once in Iran, and that while under leadership much more competent and prepared than the current US administration.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Twitter: @benkritz