Iran’s ‘Century Of Politics’ Makes It Different
Popular anti-regime protests in Iran have reawakened expectations in the United States of a pro-American, ‘postmodern’ future in the Middle East.
Popular anti-regime protests in Iran have reawakened expectations in the United States of a pro-American, ‘postmodern’ future in the Middle East.
In an article published by Bloomberg December 15, headlined ‘A Democratic Iran is Coming and it will lead the Middle East,’ Robert Kaplan suggests that “nothing has the potential to change the region as much as a more liberal regime” in Iran.
Named by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011 and 2012 as ‘one of the top 100 global thinkers,’ Kaplan supported the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion on the basis that it would unleash what he told NPR in October 2002 was a “secular, urbanized developed tradition”. However, he was not alone in that optimistic assessment. Most of the US Congress and media were also believers in removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Unlike many Arab countries, Kaplan argues, Iran’s borders are not “artificial…drawn by Europeans.” This, he claims, Iran shares with the Persian Gulf emirates and kingdoms – although Saudi Arabia dates only to 1932.
Whatever his views about ‘democracy’ or ‘liberalism,’ Kaplan is firmly a realist. He notes “Saudi Arabia may understandably offend Western humanitarians” and expects the US to broker a future Iranian ‘normalization’ with Israel.
Noting Iran’s rich energy reserves, currently hemmed in by US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Kaplan admires the doyen of the realist school, the US Secretary of State who saw Iran’s Pahlavi shah as a US ally against adversaries Iraq and the Soviet Union.
“Henry Kissinger told me that had the Pahlavi dynasty remained in power, Iran, given its strong state and civilizational richness,” Kaplan writes, “would have evolved into a constitutional monarchy with an economy comparable to South Korea’s.”
Kaplan’s commitment to real politic rather than ‘humanitarianism’ opens him to the possibility of a “post-clerical” Iran asserting itself regionally, perhaps “developing even stronger ties” with China than “Germany now has.” And Kaplan is also aware that a “somewhat chaotic, less centrally controlled” Iran might grapple with “large Kurdish, Azeri, Turkoman and Baluch minorities.”
A century of politics
The priority of Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, writing in the Wall Street Journal December 12, is disputing the assessment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that current unrest in Iran “poses no threat to the regime.”
Gerecht, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former ‘Iranian-targets’ CIA officer, championed, like Kaplan, the Iraqi and Afghan interventions. In March 2003, he signed a statement that US intervention in Iraq would help the “democratization of the wider Middle East.”
The problem was that most optimists on Iraq were simplifying the environment in the Middle East and not considering the Islamic Republic’s long-held policy of exporting its Shia ideology and playing the role of a spoiler.
WithTakeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gerecht argues that the CIA has been misled by the “disappointing results of the Arab Spring and of Western military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Iran differs from the Arab world in its history since the 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution, Gerecht and Takeyh write, with a century of Iranians’ “involvement in politics” under both Shahs and since 1979 the Islamic Revolution.
Iranians’ “critiques of authoritarianism,” they continue, have increased with the “massive expansion” or Iran’s “educational infrastructure” since 1979 with now “nearly six million university students, almost 60% of whom are women.”
Hence Iranians “are unlikely to fall victim again to the allure of a secular strongman or militant mullah, having seen the damage such leaders cause. The Arabs who revolted against tyranny a decade ago didn’t have the advantage of decades of trial and error. Self-criticism isn’t a Middle Eastern forte, but Iranians have come far in placing the blame for their own predicament on themselves.”
Gerecht and Takeyh rule out dangers of ethnic fragmentation and look forward to a “post-Islamic Iran…[with] a far bigger Western fan club that did the elected Islamists of North Africa.” Presumably evoking the Egyptian military regime that receives the second biggest chunk of US foreign aid after Israel, the pair cite Samuel Huntington – he of the ‘clash of civilizations’ – to note that US support for “nascent democracies increases the chance of their survival.”
Politicians and pundits criticize their government for its over-reliance on China and Russia, nearly one week after the Gulf Cooperation Council met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a joint statement was issued, which included a reference to the three islands, signaling Chinese support.
The government in Tehran in turn has voiced some mild criticism of China over the issue. It has said that the GCC statement also signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping undermines its territorial integrity. President Ebrahim Raisi has called on Beijing "to make up for the mistake," but no official response from China has been observed yet.
In a statement on Thursday, December 15, Iran's Reform Front, an umbrella organization of several reformist groups and political parties called China's stance "interventionist and opportunist."Meanwhile, the Reform Front, which is a loyal opposition to the clerical regime said that "This has been one of the worst and the most humiliating development in which Iran's tattered foreign policy has damaged the country's national authority."
The front's statement further expressed "deep regret" about what it called "Iran's foreign policy failure after Iran's involvement in the war in Ukraine based on Russian President Vladimir Putin's initiative."
The strongly worded statement was issued while reformists have been mending their badly damaged ties with the country's authoritarian ruler Ali Khamenei by not supporting anti-regime protests.
The statement added that despite its occasional support for the Iranian regime, China would never miss a chance to take advantage of Iran's internal crises to expand its trade relations with Tehran's regional rivals. It also accused Moscow of the same sort of opportunism by convincing Tehran to get involved in the Ukraine war by supplying drones to Russia.
The unprecedented criticism of Khamenei's ‘Looking East’ policy by reformists continued with an article in the reformist Etemad newspaper by Esmail Gerami-Moghaddam the deputy leader of the reformist National Trust Party. He wrote that China's stance about the three islands sent a signal to the United States that like Washington, Beijing also believes Tehran’s regional ambitions should be checked.
Gerami-Moghaddam added that China preferred trade deals with Arab countries. "This shows that Tehran's policy of supporting stronger ties with China and its Looking East policy was a serious strategic miscalculation." However, Gerami-Moghaddam stopped short of saying that the architect of that policy was no one other than Khamenei.
Meanwhile, he argued that Iran could support Taiwan's independence and said China should accept to negotiate the fate of Taiwan. Gerami-Moghaddam recalled that since 2005 the Chinese insisted in their meetings with Iranian officials that Tehran should solve its problems with its neighbors and the United States.
In an interview with reformist Sharq daily, Ali Fekri the chairman of the Iranian Organization for Investment and Economic Assistance said that China chose not to invest in Iran and to transfer its capital and investments to other Persian Gulf states. He added that attracting foreign investment is not easy because of US sanctions. He maintained that last year, Russia was the biggest investor in Iran, but did not elaborate on the matter.
Iranian political analyst Ali Bigdeli told Nameh News that China's improving relations with Arab states does not mean that US influence in the region will diminish. Particularly, the US military and security relations with Persian Gulf Arab states is far more extensive to be affected with developments such as China's extended trade presence in the region.
Despite all these justifications, criticism of the Iranian government for over-reliance on China may continue for some time. On Thursday, Moineddin Saeedi, the member of Iranian Parliament from Chabahar in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, said at parliament: "Unlimited trust in China and Russia is sheer stupidity." He also criticized the Iranian government for "not giving the right response to China."
The hearing session was held Thursday after a one-year gap with the presence of ten defendants.
Flight PS 752 was hit with two surface-to-air missiles as it was taking off from Tehran on January 8, 2020, in the tense aftermath of Iran's missile attack on United States military bases in Iraq. The missile attack on US bases was in retaliation for the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad days earlier.
All 176 onboard the jetliner died but for three days the government lied about shooting down the plane.
Without mentioning any names, the regime’s judiciary only said ten defendants from different military ranks were present.
The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims, however, warned Wednesday that the Islamic Republic is “planning yet another mockery of justice” in a military court.
In a statement the Association stated, “Tehran’s military court will be resuming its show trials on the downing of flight PS752, which claimed the lives of 176 innocent passengers and crew, along with an unborn child.”
Based on the information obtained, added the statement, not a single high-ranking or even mid-level officer or commander of the armed forces are among the accused.
“The case and charges are based on a false theory of negligence and human error. There have been no independent experts to investigate the case. Everything has happened behind closed doors and without any transparency towards the families of the victims,” reads the statement.
The families have instead endured and resisted nearly three years of “persecution, intimidation, threats, and sometimes deceitful offers of compensation,” it added.
Families of flight PS752 victims underlined that in recent days, the world witnessed how “innocent civilians were summarily tried and executed with no due process. Meanwhile, the culprits who ordered or carried out the orders to shoot down a civilian airliner continue to roam around with full impunity after nearly three years.”
The Islamic Republic recently executed two protesters, Majidreza Rahnavardand Mohsen Shekari in less than a week after charging them with either killing or injuring government agents during anti-regime protests sparked by the September death of 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini in police custody.
At least 494 people have been killed in the demonstrations amid a heavy-handed security crackdown, according to human rights groups. More than 18,000 have been detained by authorities.
“It is our duty to inform the public of the nefarious plots of the Islamic Republic thugs and their leaders,” families of flight PS752 victims stressed, underscoring that the regime “intends to close this blood-stained file in silence and at a time when the West is on holidays.”
They stated that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces Mohammad Bagheri, Commander of IRGC’s Aerospace Force Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and many others among the highest ranks of the Islamic regime are “the real culprits behind this crime and must be put on trials.”
Some parents of the victims also boycotted the proceedings last year, saying that the trial of those allegedly responsible lacks transparency and due process.
The families of victims have filed a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court to investigate the case as a war crime or crime against humanity.
In May 2021, some family members also filed a civil lawsuit against the government and senior officials they believe were to blame for the incident. Canada’s Ontario Court ruled that the downing of the plane was an intentional act of terrorism.