Ranked #1 in the World
Loading ...
By Paul Kinsinger, Thunderbird Professor
We are witnessing an extraordinary series of events from Iran these days. A national election for president that was supposed to return a hardliner to power handily has been tainted with charges of fraud. Once again, many thousands of Iranians are in the streets of Tehran, this time demonstrating against the election outcome and in favor of the major opposition candidate. An autocratic regime that has ruled with an iron hand for thirty years faces its greatest internal political challenge ever.
Why should Americans care about the tumultuous events in Iran? First off, this is an autocratic regime that has radiated hatred of the U.S. since it came to power 30 years ago and has exported its anti-U.S., anti-West, Islamic fundamentalist views in a viral way into the affairs of several countries in the region that matter to the U.S., including Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
>> Read Thunderbird Professor Paul Kinsinger’s comments June 15, 2009, on Phoenix radio station KTAR (620 AM)
>> Read Thunderbird Professor Mansour Javidan’s comments June 17, 2009, on Phoenix radio station KTAR (620 AM)
Second, it aspires to nuclear weapons status in the world’s most dangerous region, which could dramatically raise the stakes for an Israeli-Iranian conflict.
Third, it sits atop one of the world’s largest oil reserves and square in the middle of the world’s largest known oil patch.
Fourth, Iran has a long and proud history as a regional and even global power, and it believes both that it should be involved in its neighbors’ affairs and that the U.S. should not be.
Most Americans older than 40 will certainly remember the Iranian revolution of the late 1970’s and its searing impact on the U.S. One of the half-dozen most important events in U.S. foreign policy since World War II, the advent of an Islamic theocracy in Iran helped cost a sitting U.S. president re-election, introduced state-sponsored terrorism as a global political weapon, gave rise to Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian community, provided a new lease on life to then anti-Iranian bulwark Saddam Hussein, and sent shudders down the spines of every oil-rich Sunni Arab king and sheikh on the south side of the Persian Gulf afraid that their own Shia populations might be emboldened to revolt.
The ripple effects of these developments are still being felt in the halls of power in Washington, as well as in capitals, palaces, and military commands throughout the Middle East. For example, while Iran is not the father of Al Qaeda, the revolution in Iran helped create circumstances that hastened its birth.
Which brings us to how the U.S. should play this current crisis, and that is, very carefully and for now at least, quietly. Why? First off, there’s much yet to unfold in Iran, and the forces for change there have a lot of legitimate wind behind their sails…they don’t need any impetus from us.
Part of what we are seeing in the recent elections is the natural process of how revolutions begin losing steam, and this needs to play out. The Iranian revolution is approaching middle age, a difficult time for any political movement that relies on the continual youthful fervor necessary to demand sacrifices from its people.
Put simply, Iran is having more and more trouble creating the jobs necessary to employ a very youthful population; an increasingly difficult time justifying with much of its population its continuing hostility toward the U.S. and the west; and a devil of a time corralling today’s ubiquitous networking technologies, which we in the West see as a cultural phenomenon, but those in power in Tehran must view as insidious infection polluting their revolution.
There is much at stake here for all sides in Iran; Iranians, themselves must be at the center of what eventually plays out before external actors can have any positive impact. Just as Americans of a certain age cannot forget the outrage they felt over the fall of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage drama 30 years ago, Iranians of all ages and political stripes still smolder over the U.S. role in the coup that toppled their government and brought the Shah to power in the early ‘50’s.
For the radicals that brought the current regime to power, America has conveniently served as “the Great Satan”— the source of all of Iran’s problems and the bane of everything the theocracy has sought to accomplish. While this fervor has subsided from its heyday, the regime has already begun brandishing it again, and if it feels too threatened, it will tie any noisy American support for the opposition around its neck like an anchor. Beating our chests might make us feel good, but it will cost us dearly in Iran.
Make no mistake, the U.S. has much to gain from an outcome in Iran that could lead to an evolution away from the hard-line attitudes of the last 30 years. On the other hand, it also has much to lose from an outcome in which participatory politics in Iran are crushed and the hard liners re-trench while lashing out at the U.S. and its allies in the region.
The Bush administration’s support for elections in the Middle East has helped create the ground for the drama unfolding in Iran; the Obama administration’s quiet re-engagement in the Muslim world puts us on a path to warmly receive any extended hand from an Iran that wants to begin moving past the last 30 years.
Paul Kinsinger is a professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management who spent 20 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, much of it following events in the Middle East and South Asia.
Leave a Reply