Turkey has just warned the US that it could be ‘dangerous’ to persist on a confrontational course with Iran on issues growing out of the nuclear deal the latter entered into with a section of the world community some years back and the impartial observer is likely to agree with this view. This is on account of the fact that Iran is a major actor in Middle East politics and no efforts in the direction of Middle East peace could be thought of without Iran’s participation.
The impression that the Trump administration is currently ‘spoiling for a fight’ with Iran is lent some credence from the realization on the part of the international community that Iran has generally kept to its side of the bargain on the issue of de-nuclearization. However, President Trump insists on the opposite and this could amount to being on a headlong collision course with Iran, which is a number one military power in the Middle East. Thus, have the seeds been sown by the US for a possible regional war.
To understand this conflictual situation to a greater degree, contemporary developments in this connection may need to be viewed from a historical perspective. A good kick-off point for this inquiry would be some of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent pronouncements on US-Iran relations which went thus:’The challenge between the US and Iran has lasted for 40 years so far and the US made various efforts against us; military, economic and media warfare…….in this 40-year challenge, the defeated is the US and the victorious is the Islamic republic.’
Successive conservative US administrations have viewed Iran as a kind of international archetypal enemy and the basis for such stereotyping began with the advent in the US of the Ronald Reagan administration in the early eighties. The Islamic Revolution of Iran explosively emerged in 1979 and it was habitual for some of Iran’s rulers to characterize the US as ‘the Great Satan’. One of the reasons for this seemingly implacable hostility towards the US was the latter’s staunch support for repressive regimes in Iran, prior to the Islamic Revolution, such as the government of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, which dominated the decade of the seventies in Iran.
These monarchies were backed militarily and otherwise by the US for strategic and economic reasons down the decades and the US came to be lumped by influential opinion in Iran with the then highly anti-Islamic, Westernized and decadent sections in Iran which were hostile towards the revolution and Islamic thought and culture, as conceived by radical elements which spearheaded the revolution of 1979. Hence the ‘Great Satan’ label.
For conservative/Republican administrations in the US, on the other hand, Islamic Iran is a sworn enemy that should be disempowered and kept in its place. Beginning with President Reagan down to President Trump, Islamic Iran is the stereotypical ‘Other’ in the international political system that ought to be brought to heel. It has taken the place of the Soviet Union of the Cold War years that should be fought at every conceivable level and relegated to the lowest rungs of the world power order.
As was the case with the Soviet Union, Islamic Iran, projected as a foremost international enemy by conservative US administrations, is a chief means by which Right wing US Presidents garner for themselves the majority ‘white’ vote. The tactic is to exploit the collective fears of the racial majority. This trend is pronounced in the present under President Trump, for whom the rallying cry ‘America First’ could in no way be compromised.
It would not be irrelevant to recall in this context that the ‘demonizing’ of international enemies reached one of its highest points in the President George Bush Jnr. years when in his State of the Union address in January 2002 Bush picked on Iran, Iraq and North Korea as making-up an ‘Axis of Evil’ which should be fought and put down by the US. ‘Importing terrorism’ and helping to proliferate ‘Weapons of Mass Destructions’ were two charges levelled at this ‘Evil Axis’.
Considering that there is a history of highly hostile ties between the US and Iran, it should not come as a surprise if today these relations have soured seemingly irrevocably. Indeed, these hostilities are now 40 years or more old.
However, the policy of multilateralism and international engagement has never been relegated to so low a level of irrelevance by the US as it is today. It is the policy concomitant of the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ slogan. In such a situation, Realpolitik considerations take the place of value-based international politics and these realities define the present in international relations.
But international politics without humanistic principles could set the stage for endemic friction among adversarial countries, which, in turn, could degenerate into armed conflict and war. Has this possibility been lost sight of by the Trump administration? By no means because Trump is not at all averse to making ‘America First’ at whatever cost.
This point came to the fore at the height the Kashogghi crisis. When asked whether in the light of the possible Saudi involvement in this incident, the US would refrain from supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, Trump dismissed the suggestion on account of the number of US jobs that would be lost in the event of an arms embargo on the Saudis. Once again, the US armaments industry must be kept going.
Anyway, in the US perspective, Iran has to be fought even by proxy means and relegated to the status of a military non-entity. Since perceived Iranian influence in the Middle East could be contained by arming Saudi Arabia, this arming process of regional allies must continue. Likewise, Israel must be supported at any cost and accordingly, Iran must be brought to heel.
Needless to say, such a situation sets the stage for a continuation of the present armed hostilities in the Middle East and adjacent regions. All concerned are likely to remain losers.
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