by Henry Precht
The starting point for understanding Egypt’s August 14th massacre is Black Friday — September 8, 1978 — during the Iranian Revolution.
On that day, 35 years ago, the Shah’s troops killed an untold number of demonstrators in Jaleh Square in south Tehran. Martial law had been declared the day [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
The starting point for understanding Egypt’s August 14th massacre is Black Friday — September 8, 1978 — during the Iranian Revolution.
On that day, 35 years ago, the Shah’s troops killed an untold number of demonstrators in Jaleh Square in south Tehran. Martial law had been declared the day before, but Iranians opposed to the Shah weren’t aware and filed into the square to be confronted by gunfire from soldiers. The government said that fewer than a hundred were killed; the opposition claimed over 1,000. The latter figure was believed by most Iranians.
The same calculus is true of the August 14 shootings in Cairo: the government reports some hundreds killed; its opponents claim thousands have been gunned down.
Few outsiders understood after Black Friday that a turning point had been reached in Ayatollah Khomeini’s struggle against the Shah. It was downhill for the ruler from then on. The Shah was at war with his people, it can be seen in retrospect; there was no way that he could prevail. The Carter Administration, like most outsiders, failed to grasp that. Focused on talks between Israelis and Egyptians at Camp David, the president, together with his Middle Eastern guests, issued a statement of support for the Shah and hope for his “liberalizing” promises.
Something of the same — support [for a return to democracy] and hope [for nonviolence] was President Barack Obama’s message after August 14. He recognizes that Egypt is sharply divided, the Muslim Brotherhood has close to a popular majority, the military have the guns and the US is distrusted and often despised by both sides. Treading carefully, he cancelled next month’s joint military exercise — perhaps aware that visiting American troops might be in danger of deadly attacks by extremists. But he left on the table for now the next tranche of military aid (over $1 billion) — perhaps aware that cancellation would be deeply offensive to nationalists and the blocked contract for F-16 aircraft a burden on the US budget.
Unwisely, he didn’t go far enough.
If Obama is to be true to American values, he should avoid hurting the Egyptian people, but support their aspirations for democracy and dignity. That means no sanctions against the country as a whole or the military as an institution. It does not mean that individual Egyptians responsible for the killings should be immune from US sanctions.
The president should ban any official US contact with General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, his appointed president, prime minister, minister of the interior and any other officials who can be deemed guilty of authorizing violence after the coup and in the subsequent crackdown. The president should call on them to withdraw in favor of a small and politically balanced committee formed by resigned vice president Mohamed ElBaradei (no friend of the US). This committee, in turn, Obama would suggest, would select three individuals — one from the Muslim Brotherhood, one from the military ranks and one distinguished, independent Egyptian — to form a governing triumvirate. Each of the three would be acceptable to the other political elements.
The US would try to enlist other outside powers — EU members, Turkey, Russia and the Arab League — in backing some such scheme. Together they would demand an end to violence by all parties and the release of political prisoners. President Mohamed Morsi, after a very brief return to office, would resign for the good of Egypt — encouraged by the US and other outsiders and, with luck, by some of his MB colleagues. The constitution and parliament would be restored pre-coup. In effect, August 14 would represent a reversal of the coup rather than the beginning of a civil war.
If a plan of reasonable compromise is not worked out very soon, the threat of prolonged sectarian and civil strife is very real. A point of no return is approaching. Every death on the streets creates new martyrs willing to sacrifice themselves. Think Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Think Iran in 1978.
Photo Credit: Mohamed Azazy
]]>by Peter Jenkins
Last week the BBC’s “Today” programme carried an interview with Dr. Akbar Etemad, who was in charge of Iran’s fledgling nuclear program between 1974 and 1978 and who has lived outside Iran since the Revolution.
Dr. Etemad spoke frankly of the instructions he received from Shah [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Last week the BBC’s “Today” programme carried an interview with Dr. Akbar Etemad, who was in charge of Iran’s fledgling nuclear program between 1974 and 1978 and who has lived outside Iran since the Revolution.
Dr. Etemad spoke frankly of the instructions he received from Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, a valued ally of the West. Dr. Etemad’s mission was “to go for all the technologies imaginable in the field of nuclear technology”.
The Shah wanted Iran to be capable of meeting a large proportion of its electricity needs without running down oil and gas reserves that were better used to earn foreign exchange.
He also wanted Iran to have a nuclear weapons option, to become capable of making nuclear devices should he perceive a need for them. Dr. Etemad is frank about this: “The Shah had the idea at the time that he’s strong enough in the region and he can defend our interests in the region [and] he didn’t want nuclear weapons. But he told me that if this changes we would have to ‘go for nuclear’. He had that in mind.”
What’s striking about this summary of the Shah’s thinking is the close resemblance it bears to post-2006 US national intelligence estimates (NIEs) of the Islamic Republic’s intentions. “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” was the opening sentence of a 2007 NIE. A month ago the opening sentence of the Iran and North Korea section of a Worldwide Threat Assessment read: “We assess Iran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security, prestige and regional influence and give it the ability to develop nuclear weapons, should a decision be made to do so.”
This kind of continuity of intent should come as no surprise. History abounds with examples of revolutionary regimes that soon adopted many of the external goals of the regimes they had overthrown.
It does not follow logically from this resemblance that the NIEs must be right. But the resemblance boosts the probability that they are right.
Dr. Etemad also gives us a clue as to what is likely to be the Islamic Republic’s fundamental motive in seeking the “threshold” capability sought by the Shah. The Shah wanted a capability on which he could fall back if he no longer felt able to defend Iran’s interests by conventional means. The key word in that sentence is “defend”; it is a word that is usually seen as devoid of aggressive connotations.
Dr. Etemad also implies that the Shah saw no inconsistency between the aspiration for a threshold capability and Iran’s international obligations. The Shah was fully aware of what the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated under his authority in 1967-68, required of Iran. He would have been loath to jeopardise his strategic Cold War relationship with the US and his close relationships with the UK, France, and Germany by violating those obligations.
The Shah will have known that Article X of the NPT reads: “Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardised the supreme interests of its country”.
This provision is naturally interpreted as meaning that if a Party feels threatened by another state which is nuclear-armed, it may withdraw in order to defend itself by acquiring nuclear weapons. It implies, on this reading, that as well as having a right to withdraw, Parties have a right to attain a threshold from which they can acquire the means to defend themselves before the threat to their supreme interests materialises.
One final point of particular interest in Dr. Etemad’s historical testimony is his reference to US pressure on him to refrain from developing dual-use nuclear technologies such as uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. “The Americans” told him, he says, that “Iran is not a problem for us but the conditions we impose on Iran are those that we want to impose on other countries”.
That can be interpreted as meaning that as long as the Shah was on his throne, the US would have been relaxed about Iran acquiring the dual-use technologies that underpin a threshold capability but for the fact that this would constitute a precedent. We still hear echoes of the precedent argument now in reference to the Islamic Republic’s programme.
However, the global nuclear landscape has changed since 1975. All but nine states that are nuclear-armed have made an NPT vow not to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of these states have made the same pledge to their regional partners in nuclear-weapon-free zone arrangements. Punishing Iran for acquiring a threshold capability is not the only means available to the US for discouraging the spread of dual-use technologies. It was only the British who used to hang an admiral “to encourage the others”.
Photo: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran pose in December 1959 at the Marble Palace in Tehran, Iran.
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