WHY EXACTLY ARE THE US AND IRAN SO CLOSE TO WAR?
Iran is the modern name for an ancient region in Asia called Persia. The Persian Empire was a mighty power in the ancient world. It, at points, occupied much of what is now Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan and parts of Syria and Iraq and fought Grecian city-states for supremacy in the area around the Aegean Sea. Persians were at that time mostly Zoroastrians, a monotheistic religion, predating and influencing the early tenets of Christianity.
Persia was a land of exile and asylum for ancient Jews displaced from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple and from Babylon during and after the Babylonian exile and captivity in 600 BC. Most of their descendants have left Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 for the safety and security of Israel or the US due to the anti-Semitic rhetoric and policies of the regime.
Persians are Persians; they are an Indo-European people. They are not Arabs, who are a Semitic people. And they are not Turks, who came from the steppes of Asia and now live in Turkey and speak Turkish. All three peoples are close neighbors, and all have led great empires of peace, art and learning; however, the Persians are primarily Shia Muslim, while the Turks and Arabs are primarily Sunni Muslim. The Persians, Ottoman Turks and Russians fought battles for many centuries for the control of the Southern Caucasus, and Black Sea regions. The Persians have fought frequently for dominance in Mesopotamia.
The US on 9/11 was attacked by Sunni Arab extremists led by dissident Arabs (Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda etc.) many from Saudi Arabia, trained by the US and based in Afghanistan as mujahidin, holy warriors. We were not attacked by Iranian Shia terrorists, nor by Saddam Hussein and his minions.
The Iranians of today are mostly Shia Muslim. They disagree profoundly with the Sunni Muslims in their interpretations of Islam and trace their religious tenets from the Prophet’s martyred son in law, Ali. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations Shia Muslims live in large numbers in Iraq, Lebanon, parts of Syria, and parts of Bahrain and a portion of Saudi Arabia; however the Shia comprise only 10% of Muslims worldwide. The long-standing and bitter conflicts between the Islamic adherents of the Shia and Sunni sects are akin to the centuries of bitter religious wars and harsh oppression between Catholics and Protestants across Europe, of which Northern Ireland was the most recent remnant. Islam originated in Saudi Arabia with a charismatic Prophet Muhammed and a holy book the Koran, taking many of its central tenets from the Bible common to both Judaism and Christianity. It inspired a great Arab civilization of science, art and learning that was dominant during a time that Europe was mired in the Dark and Middle Ages; its greatest central cities were Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. It stretched from Spain and Morocco to India. It was succeeded in the Middle East by the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey, strongly influenced by Persia, and headquartered in Istanbul (previously Constantinople); it ruled most of the Balkans, portions of Central Europe, the Black Sea, all the Middle East and most of North Africa. It still was considered a great empire, aligned with Germany and Austria Hungary as it entered the First World War. After the war, the Ottoman Empire was dismembered and the modern, secular, democratic nation of Turkey was founded. England and France moved into the Middle East and North Africa as colonial powers administering the region, until they were thrown out as part of decolonization during the 50’s and extending into the 60’s for portions of Northern Africa, like Algeria.
The Shia/Sunni conflicts and resulting oppression have ebbed and flowed in different countries at different time frames. Just over the past 60-70 years, the minority Sunnis in Iraq (while they were in charge of the government under Saddam Hussein) oppressed the majority Shia. The minority Allawite Shia under the Assads in Syria have oppressed Syria’s majority Sunni population. Likewise the Sunnis and the Maronite Christians in Lebanon oppressed the Shia until the rise of the Amal and then the Hezbollah militia defending the Shia communities. The problems with the rise of the Iranian supported Shiite militias are they are using heavy applications of force and intimidation to resolve political and sectarian issues that should be resolved instead with discussion and compromise in state and local parliaments; for example who is to control Iraqi oil fields and how are the oil revenues distributed. Likewise the states in the region are too often using torture, imprisonment, killings to suppress political differences and dissidents and assure the continuing dominance of their particular rulers. The region’s politics are becoming increasingly defined by the Sunni/Shia religious divides as headlined by Iran and Saudi Arabia. The US is not well served nor well equipped to side with one religion vs. another.
US and UK interests in Persia were defined by two issues: oil and geopolitical competition with first Germany and then Russia. The Persians/Iranians were not colonized by France and England, as much of the rest of the Middle East outside of Turkey was. The English, however beginning in the 19th Century, played key roles in developing and exploiting Iran’s oil industry and then interfering in Iran’s internal affairs to promote their own oil and national security interests. They helped place Shah Reza Khan Pahlavi on the throne in 1925 and then helped depose him in 1941 in favor of his son, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, because they felt the father was too close with Hitler’s Germany. The Persian Corridor through Iraq and Iran was a main supply route for US support of the Soviet Army throughout World War Two.
The Pahlavis, who were the monarchs (Shah) of Iran from 1925 to 1979, were Westernizers and led Iran during a period of rapid economic growth and vast social changes, fueled by the oil boom; lots of educated Iranians got quite rich during this time frame. After World War Two, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (who was closely allied with the US and the UK) was in sharp conflict with his Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh sought to nationalize the British oil interests in Iran. This was a period of decolonization throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The rise of Arab nationalism was often considered and characterized by the oil industry as equivalent to the spread of Communism, because their oil assets were being nationalized during the process of reclaiming national sovereignty. The CIA intervened in Iran and deposed Mossadegh in 1953, claiming he was a communist and too close to Soviet Russia. Throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, the Shah was a close ally of the US and was perceived along with Turkey as a Western bulwark against Soviet Russia, and against the secular socialist regimes in Iraq and Syria who were allied with the USSR in the Middle East. Egypt for a time was also a close regional ally of Soviet Russia; then it flipped and became a close ally of the US.
Beginning in the 60’s the Shah became increasingly dictatorial, and he tortured and jailed those who disagreed with his policies. He was finally overthrown in 1979 by a combination of religious conservatives, secular nationalists, students, and communists (the Tudeh party). Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious conservative, ended up on top, and the current government of Iran was established as an Islamic Republic.
During the course of the Islamic Revolution, the US embassy was sacked by Islamic students, and its diplomats were held hostage for 444 days – a great embarrassment to the US. Since 1979, Iran and the US have been enemies although not for any particularly good reasons. Iran has been a leading proponent of its “Islamic Revolution”, which unlike Communism for example poses no particular threat to capitalism and has as yet no adherent states. It is an anti-Western, highly nationalistic, religiously conservative movement, but it lacks the millennialist fervor and visions of establishing a new pan-Arabic Caliphate as ISIS did and Al Qaeda dreamed. It does want the US military out of the Middle East.
Shortly after the successful Islamic Revolution, Iraq attacked Iran and an estimated 1 million died on both sides during the 8 years of intense fighting and grueling stalemate. Hussein invaded and sought to annex a vast oil-producing area of Iran. The US and the USSR both supported Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard served as the shock troops defending the new Islamic Republic and achieved important national status. They now get used (misused) by the Iranian government as the shock troops using force to suppress political dissension at home in Iran and to ensure the staying powers of the despotic Assad regime in Syria.
Two years later in 1990, Iraq attacked and sought to annex Kuwait in a dispute over debts and oil revenues. The US and its allies ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, but did not invade Iraq.
A bit over ten years after that in 2003, the US did invade Iraq and ousted Hussein, claiming he was trying to develop nuclear weapons. That turned out to be false (our motives are still murky at best, oil at our worst) and led to the US occupation of Iraq, the killing of Hussein, the ouster of the Baath party, and the rise of warring Sunni and Shia and Kurdish militias each vying for regional autonomy, and control of Iraq and its oil resources. We have destabilized an already volatile region, lost American credibility and given further impetus to the rise of Sunni extremist terror groups. The Sunni resistance under Al Baghdadi and Al Zarqawi fought to oust the US and aligned with the militant remnants of Al Qaeda and disaffected Baathists. ISIS was eventually defeated in Iraq and in Syria by an unlikely combination of US forces, Kurdish militias, Russian forces and Iran-aligned Shia militias. Iraq is still recovering and now allied, albeit uncomfortably to both the US and Iran.
Iran is a conservative religious theocracy under the guidance of the Ayatollah and his ruling religious council (the Guardian Council) and a republic with democratic elections. Those who disagree with their policies are usually disqualified from running for office; some are jailed or put under house arrest. Dissent is suppressed sometimes with beatings, sometimes with killings of political protesters, and religious and cultural orthodoxy is strictly enforced. Iran has been alternating between electing mild reformers and rightist reactionaries; little social and economic progress can be made due to the dictates and tight control of the Supreme Leader and the religious council overlayed on the impacts of the US economic sanctions. Nevertheless, urban youth, women and many others seek greater freedom of expression and improved living standards, incurring violent pushback from the “defenders of the revolution”. Iran is in many ways the Shia mirror image of the Wahabbi (a Sunni sect) religious and monarchically controlled Saudi Arabia, which has far fewer political freedoms and even greater oppression of women. The Middle East is now being defined by the conflicts between these two intolerant theocracies. It has increasingly become an arms bazaar fueled by the oil revenues in the “got oil” states. As the world transitions to using less and less carbon to generate its energy, the region’s priority must now become development of a more diverse and competitive economic base.
We should take a moment to remember the roles of the Sunni extremists who inspired, recruited and trained the worst terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and their spread of terror and atrocities from the Philippines and Indonesia to North Africa, Mali and Nigeria. We initially trained them in Pakistan during the Reagan Administration as a counterweight to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Madrasas, preachers, religious teachers and internet messaging funded by Middle East oil revenues fueled the spread of absurd myths and lies encouraging religious hatreds and justifying violence — messages and images far from the Koran, messages encouraging young men and women to become suicide bombers, to eviscerate and behead their enemies. These are the people who attacked us and spread terror throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the US. These are the people and the movements actually targeted by the US Authorization of Military Force, not the Iranians.
In September, 2019, the President took his eye off the ball of finishing the job of eliminating the ISIS insurgency in Syria by giving Turkey the green light to invade and crush our Kurdish allies who played such as key role in the fight against ISIS. Then last week, he again took his eyes off the ball of defeating the remnants of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq by killing just outside the Baghdad airport Iran’s top General who was in Iraq in part to meet with Iraq’s Prime Minister. The Iraqis have responded by voting to ask the US troops to leave, further derailing the training of Iraqi troops in counterinsurgency tactics against ISIS and pushing many more Iraqis towards the arms of the Iranians. No one in this country sheds tears for Soleimani, but the President’s impulsive and poorly considered decision-making is not helping our troops and our allies on the ground achieve their top goals of wiping out the extremist Sunni terror insurgency in the region. It has also derailed the promising grassroots reform movements that are growing in both Iraq and Iran. This does not mean that we cannot walk and chew gum at the same time in this region, but it does mean that the President’s rash decisions impair our troop’s prime missions in Iraq and Syria.
It has also just surfaced that the Administration was simultaneously trying to kill a financier of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards while he was in Yemen. Congress is reacting with unusual speed, at least in the House, to let the President know that war with Iran is off the table without Congressional approval first. A few Republican Senators like Mike Lee and Rand Paul now concur.
Under Presidents Clinton, Bush and then Obama, the US imposed heavy economic sanctions on Iran in concert with other UN and EU nations to force Iran to stop its nuclear bomb development. We clearly don’t want the tinderboxes of enmity throughout the Middle East to become a nuclear wasteland. After long negotiations with the Obama Administration, Iran finally agreed to end its development of nuclear weapons, and the US, the UN Security Council permanent members, Germany and the EU agreed to end economic sanctions allowing Iran to participate and compete in the foreign oil markets. The Saudis and Israelis were particularly critical of the agreement because Iran did not simultaneously agree to stop supporting its proxy Shia militias throughout the Middle East. The Trump Administration against the advice of its military and national security staff has withdrawn from the Joint Powers agreement with Iran in 2018, imposed renewed and increased sanctions and adopted a policy of maximum pressure on Iran. Its stated goal is no nukes, no ballistic missiles and no support of regional Shia militias (terrorism). The US-Iran tit for tat actions and reactions potentially leading towards another Middle East war have ensued and are leading us into a perilous place with no discernible strategy and no clear diplomatic off ramps. My own sense is that the trigger point for Trump was the largely peaceful occupation of the US Embassy in Baghdad by an Iraqi Shiite militia group and his fears of being compared to President Carter in the upcoming US election cycle. US allies in the region and Europe have asked the Trump Administration to back down from the precipice, and Iran too is aware of its own vulnerability as it looks into the abyss of a potential war with the US.
The fog of potential war is causing innocent civilian casualties. Iran has shot down by mistake a commercial passenger jet filled with tourists (many of them Canadian) headed from Iran to the Ukraine and Iranian graduate students returning to the their studies in Canada. Iran was reluctant to admit its error and acknowledge that the Revolutionary Guard shot down the plane. It appears they thought it was a US plane on the attack after the Iranian missile strikes on US bases. They have just acknowledged and apologized for their actions while simultaneously blaming the US. However the admission was over three days late and in response to overwhelming evidence that Iran used a surface to air missile and killed many of its own citizens, including graduate students heading back to Canada to complete their studies. Renewed student protests have now broken out against the regime and its policies.
What visions of the future are we offering in the Middle East to its youth and to its young families? It is not pretty, and it is consumed with powerful religious hatreds being stoked by religious fundamentalists seeking to hold on to and consolidate their own power. There is the image of the old religious conservatives holding the reins of power in Iran counter posed by the aging monarch and his murderous Crown Prince and their own religious police in Saudi Arabia. The oil driven, greedy, erratic, Muslim intolerant, isolationist Trump Administration and some of its Armageddon and Rapture enthusiast fringes complete this senescent troika of intolerance. Killings and widespread starvation in Yemen, the poorest nation in the region, are among the ongoing collateral damage to a nation engulfed by Iranian and Saudi military proxies.
The youth in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Iran are beginning to rise in protest and demand democratic change and economic progress. Are we with them or against their efforts to renew their nations? Will we sit on the sidelines? Will we support the protests and reform movements only in those nations to whom we are opposed? President Obama offered visions of hope for the region’s future; he made his own mistakes in the region, but he sought to bring Iran into dialogue with Europe and the US for better mutual security and to enhance regional economic growth, and he succeeded to a surprising degree during his tenure in office. He challenged the Israelis and Palestinians to move beyond the stalemates of their mutual enmity; he was unable to move them past their steadfast and implacable hostility. (Presidents Clinton and Carter were the only ones to help bring some measure of peace). Let us hope that our next President is a leader with compelling vision and compassion to offer the peoples of the Middle East. It is after all the birthplace of three great religions, the earliest written laws governing human conduct, the earliest towns and cities, and it deserves far better.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 1/9/20