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Editor's
note: This article appeared in the November
5, 2001, issue of National Review
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events of September 11 have dramatically reshaped the politics of
the Middle East, and nowhere more so than in the Islamic Republic
of Iran. Iran now faces a stark choice: It must abandon its sponsorship
of terrorism or risk the possibility of U.S. punitive action.
Iran's initial
condemnation of the terror attacks soon evolved into a settled defiance
of U.S. calls for military action against the terrorist strongholds,
quashing hopes in Washington for a tacit alliance with the Islamic
Republic. As the Bush team searches the Middle East for allies,
it will find an Iran that, despite its antiterrorist rhetoric, persists
in supporting organizations that engage in violence for political
purposes.
Domestically,
Iran is making an important social transition. The cadre of reformist
clerics around the president, Muhammad Khatami, appreciates that
the autocratic regime, with its rigid definition of Islam, is eroding
support for the very idea of an Islamic republic; these moderates
are therefore willing to experiment with some degree of political
and cultural liberalization. Hard-liners, however, continue to cling
to dogmatism; they favor an Islam that is averse to innovation,
intolerant of dissent, and contemptuous of democratic accountability.
The hard-liners have found a patron and ally in the stern and forbidding
figure of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader. Khamenei's
power is considerable: Under Iranian law, he certifies elections
and appoints the leaders of the judiciary, the armed forces, and
the Revolutionary Guards. Hard-liners also control important parts
of the foreign-policy machinery, and quickly used this power to
quash Khatami's pragmatic efforts to use the current crisis to reach
out to Washington.
To point out,
however, that Iran's domestic scene is polarized should not lead
us to underestimate the relative consensus among Tehran's competing
political factions when it comes to key international issues. For
an entire generation of Iran's clerics, relations with the U.S.
have been mired in visceral emotion. From Tehran's perspective,
the U.S. is more than another great power with which Iran must deal;
it embodies a whole range of political and cultural grievances.
America's culture of pluralism and materialism threatens the foundations
of an Islamic republic; furthermore, its economic and geopolitical
preeminence works to block Iranian ambitions to lead a coalition
of Gulf and Caspian states. Successive Persian empires have dreamt
of becoming the dominant power in Islamdom, only to be thwarted
by other claimants to that status. Arab dynasties, Ottoman rulers,
and British imperialists all denied Iran its historic mandate of
shaping the region in its own image; the U.S. is just the latest
obstacle to Iran's hegemonic ambitions.
In Afghanistan,
however, Iran's objectives ostensibly coincide with those of the
U.S. Iran shares a long, troubled border with Afghanistan and has
funneled extensive support to the Taliban's opponents. While both
Iran and the Taliban claim religious legitimacy, deep doctrinal
differences and strategic insecurities have divided them from the
start. Tehran has declared the Taliban a menace, its ideology a
perversion of religious teachings, and its policies on women, art,
and culture an affront to civilized norms. (This is Iran talking.)
Three years ago, the hostility nearly escalated to war after Iranian
diplomats were killed in the Taliban capture of a minority stronghold.
All this is
true, but Iran's clerics take only limited comfort in America's
destruction of their Afghan foes — because it implies a further
projection of U.S. power. Khamenei has warned that "the American
government intends to repeat what it did in the Persian Gulf in
this region . . . They intend to come and establish themselves in
this region under the pretext of a lack of security here."
Hassan Rowhani, the secretary general of Iran's Supreme National
Security Council, reached a similar conclusion, declaring, "A
long-time aim of the Americans has been to dominate the oil wells
in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and with the attacks against
Afghanistan, it has found the excuse to gain a presence in the Caspian
Sea." And this is where the apparent convergence of U.S. and
Iranian perspectives falters; because while Tehran can live, however
uneasily, with a Taliban-led Afghanistan, it dreads the prospect
of a pro-Western regime in Afghanistan and further U.S. inroads
into Central Asia.
For Iran, then,
the potential implications of America's war over Afghanistan are
ominous. The last time the U.S. fought a regional war — against
Iraq — it established permanent military installations on Iran's
periphery and doggedly pursued an Arab-Israeli peace process that,
despite its shortcomings, yielded a peace treaty between Israel
and Jordan. The possibility of a further encampment of American
forces on Iran's northern and eastern flanks terrifies Iran's clerics.
This is a major reason for Tehran's efforts to restrain the U.S.,
and its insistence on an international — as opposed to an American-led
— coalition against Afghanistan and the terrorists within it.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, has pointedly rejected
America's definition of terrorism and stressed the need to "make
a distinction between terrorism and a people's legitimate right
to self-defense and resisting occupation." From the American
perspective, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the plethora of militant Palestinian
groups may be terrorist organizations with a "global reach,"
but from Iran's point of view they are allies that provide it with
leverage in the region. At a time when the U.S. military presence
in the region is bound to grow, Iran is not about to abandon its
remaining allies in an effort to curry favor with Washington.
Iran's support
for terrorism, then, rests on sound strategic calculations. Iran's
long-term objectives are the eviction of the U.S. from the Gulf
and the marginalization of Israel. Given the disparity of military
power between Iran and its competitors, terrorism has always been
its weapon of choice. Soon after coming to power, Iran's ayatollahs
created the Hezbollah, whose purpose was to menace Israel and force
the U.S. out of Lebanon. In the latter effort, Hezbollah's success
was spectacular: Its bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks forced
a superpower's withdrawal, and its protracted terrorism against
Israel finally caused Jerusalem, too, to abandon Lebanon.
Iran has also
nourished a web of Shiite militant groups in the Gulf and directed
them against U.S. installations. The 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers
in Saudi Arabia, which left 19 American airmen dead, illustrated
the subtle and effective nature of Iran's operations, as its proxies
inflicted substantial damage while Tehran escaped direct complicity.
We should be under no illusions: Despite the fractious nature of
Iran's politics, its foreign-policy machinery is highly centralized,
and all key decisions — including the selection of terrorist
targets — are approved by the spiritual leader (currently Khamenei).
This terrorism is not a rogue operation; it serves national-security
interests and represents a cool, calculated state decision.
Iran, therefore,
is unlikely to lend a helping hand in America's war against the
Taliban; Tehran's clerics will stand neutral in that conflict, while
plotting their own next move against U.S. influence in the region.
If the U.S. is not prepared to allow Iranian hegemony over much
of the Middle East, U.S.-Iranian relations will continue to be marked
by confrontation, even when both states appear to share certain
interests. In essence, the Clinton-Albright approach — offering
concessions as a means of generating dialogue — failed to appreciate
that the U.S. and Iran simply have different plans for the region.
If Washington wants Tehran to conform to international rules of
conduct, it will have to maintain a robust regional presence and
conduct a determined effort against Iran's terrorism and efforts
to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Only when Iran's theocrats
are convinced of America's resolve on these matters can a meaningful
U.S.-Iranian dialogue take place.
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