Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is [...]]]>
Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who proclaims to us nearly every day that Iran is the “real problem” underlying just about everything wrong in the region, and who adamantly opposes anyone reaching any agreement with Tehran on anything. Netanyahu does not want a significant regional competitor that would no longer be an ostracized pariah and that will freely speak its mind in a way that, say, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the other equities they have in Washington, cannot. He does not want the United States to come to realize that it need not be stuck rigidly to the side of — and always defer to the preferences of — “traditional allies” such as Israel and that it can sometimes advance U.S. interests by doing business with those who have worn the label of adversary. And of course the more that people focus on the “real problem” of Iran, the less attention will be devoted to topics Netanyahu would rather not talk about, such as the occupation of Palestinian territory.
For those in Washington who wave the anti-Iranian banner most fervently, the waving is not only a following of Netanyahu’s lead but also a filling of the neoconservative need for bogeymen as justification and focus for militant, interventionist policies in the region. The neocons do not have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more, and they unsurprisingly would prefer not to dwell upon what transpired when they kicked him out. So it’s natural to target the next nearest member of the Axis of Evil — and even when the neocons were still kicking Saddam, they were already telling Iran to “take a number.” The anti-Iranian banner-waving of neocons, despite the abysmal policy failure of the Iraq War that should have closed ears to what they are saying today — finds resonance among a general American public that historically has had a need for foreign monsters to destroy as one way to define America’s mission and purpose.
The prospective reaching of a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program has been a major concern and preoccupation of those who want to keep Iran a hated and feared pariah forever. An agreement would represent a major departure in U.S. relations with Iran. So the anti-Iran banner-wavers have been making a concerted effort for several months to undermine the negotiations and torpedo any agreement that is reached. Not reaching an agreement has become such a major goal that the banner-wavers have no compunction about taking the fundamentally illogical stance of exclaiming about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon while opposing an agreement that would place substantially more restrictions on the Iranian program, and make an Iranian weapon less likely, than without an agreement.
At least the anti-agreement forces have had a game plan, involving such things as hyping “breakout” fears and pushing Congressional action that is disguised as support for the negotiations when it actually would undermine them. Now suddenly along comes a security crisis in Iraq, in which parallel U.S. and Iranian interests and the opportunity for some beneficial U.S.-Iranian dialogue are clear. Oh, no, think the banner-wavers, we didn’t plan on this. One detects a tone of panic in their jumping into print with emergency sermons reminding us that Iranians are evil and we must never, ever be tempted into cooperating with them.
One of the more strident of these sermons comes from Michael Doran and Max Boot. The panicky nature of their piece is reflected in the fact that the first thing they do is to reach for the old, familiar Hitler analogy. The idea that the United States and Iran share any common interests is, they tell us, just like Neville Chamberlain working with Adolf Hitler.
The next thing they do is to match the most imaginative conspiracy theorists in the Middle East by suggesting that the government of Iran really is supporting and promoting the Sunni radicals of ISIS — yes, the same ISIS whose main calling card has been the beheading and massacre of the Iranians’ fellow Shiites. The logic behind this conspiracy theory, explain Doran and Boot, is that a threat from ISIS makes Prime Minister Maliki and Iraqi Shiites “ever more dependent on Iranian protection.”
Then Doran and Boot go way into straw-man territory, saying the United States would be making a “historic error” if it assisted “an Iranian-orchestrated ethnic-cleansing campaign” carried out by ruthless Revolutionary Guards. Of course, the Obama administration isn’t talking about doing anything of the sort. We weren’t flies on the wall when Deputy Secretary of State William Burns talked earlier this week with the Iranian foreign minister about Iraq, but it is a safe bet that a theme of U.S. remarks was the need for greater cross-community inclusiveness in Iraq and the need not to stoke the fire of the sectarian civil war.
Besides dealing with straw men, Doran and Boot here exhibit another habit of the banner-wavers — which comes up a lot in discussion of the nuclear issue — which is to assume that Iran will do the worst, most destructive thing it is capable of doing regardless of whether doing so would be in Iran’s own interests. What advantage could Tehran possibly see in propping up an increasingly beleaguered and unpopular Nouri al-Maliki with rampaging Revolutionary Guards? What Iranian interest would that serve?
This gets to one of the things that Doran and Boot do not address, which is what fundamental Iranian interests are in Iraq, including everything those interests involve in terms of stability and material costs to Iran. Even if Iran had so much influence with Maliki that he could be said to be in Tehran’s pocket, what would Iran do with such influence? Here is displayed another habit of the banner-wavers, which is just to assume that any Iranian influence is bad, without stopping to examine the Iranian interests being served and whether they are consistent with, in conflict with, or irrelevant to U.S. interests.
The other major thing that Doran and Boot do not do is to mention what militant U.S. policies have had to do with Iranian behavior they don’t like. In the course of loosely slinging as much mud on the Iranians as they can, they state that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps “has been responsible for attacks against U.S. targets stretching back more than 30 years.” They do not offer any specifics. The only ones that come to mind involve a U.S. military intervention in Lebanon, U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, a U.S. troop presence in eastern Saudi Arabia, and the eight-year-long U.S. military occupation in Iraq.
Doran and Boot write that instead of having anything to do with the Iranians, we should develop a coalition of those “traditional allies” to prosecute a conflict on the “vast battlefield” that embraces Iraq and Syria. This sounds just like the talk of a coalition of “moderates” we heard during the George W. Bush administration. As then, the talk is apparently oblivious to ethnic, sectarian, and geographic realities. Doran and Boot suggest that clever covert work against “Iranian networks” would be enough to “pull the Iraqi government out of Iran’s orbit.”
This sort of thinking represents not only a missed opportunity to make U.S. diplomacy more effective but also a recipe for further inflaming that vast battlefield.
*This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Roohollah Vahdati
]]>by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy already being trotted out by some observers.
During 1939-1941, Yugoslavian Regent Prince Paul did whatever he could to avoid a Yugoslavian confrontation with its increasingly dominant Axis neighbors. But when he thought he had cut a deal buying lots of valuable time for Yugoslavia, he was overthrown by the Yugoslav Army supported by Serbian nationalist and other anti-Axis elements. The result was the swift Axis invasion of Yugoslavia — just the beginning of a ghastly wartime ordeal for that nation.
Ironically, Prince Paul’s sympathies were with the Allies, having close ties to England, but he was realistic. By 1940 Germany, Italy and Axis Hungary adjoined nearly every Yugoslav border. Yugoslavia also harbored German, Italian and Hungarian minorities left over from the carving up of Europe after World War I. Paul feared that with its domestic Serbo-Croatian rivalry (that would later tear the country apart under Axis occupation and again in the 1990s), Yugoslavia might not be able to fight a war against the Axis as a united country. Worse still, there was no possibility of meaningful near-term help from a beleaguered Great Britain or any other outside powers (despite repeated appeals by Paul to England, France — before its defeat — and the United States).
So, under intense pressure from the Axis for greater accommodation and in order to insure Yugoslavia’s survival, Prince Paul signed the Axis Pact on March 27, 1941. He did, however, insist on important reservations. Yugoslavia’s sovereignty was to be observed fully, the Yugoslav military would take no part in the war, and no Axis troops could transit or be based in Yugoslavia. As a result, on the eve of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Paul thought he had spared his country from catastrophe until the time came when Yugoslavia might be in a position to take a stand.
A furious Winston Churchill, however, encouraged a coup against Paul by anti-Axis elements in the army and among the country’s politicians, replacing him with the youthful King Peter II. Upon hearing of the successful overthrow of Paul, Churchill announced: “Yugoslavia had finally found its soul.”
Catastrophic consequences were not long in coming. An angry Adolf Hitler, perceiving Yugoslavia now as potentially hostile and possibly aligned with England, ordered that it be occupied. A German blitzkrieg was unleashed on April 6, with military assistance from both Italy and Hungary. The hopelessly outclassed Yugoslavian Army surrendered unconditionally less than two weeks later, on April 17.
Yugoslavia was subsequently carved up among the Axis victors, along the creation of a new pro-Axis Croatian state. Between the excesses of Croatia, a civil war between Communist and anti-Communist partisans (won by Josip Broz Tito), Tito’s campaign against Axis occupying forces, and the extension of the Holocaust into Yugoslavia, the country suffered terribly. For example, of its roughly 80,000 Jews (several thousand of whom came to Yugoslavia from countries occupied earlier) nearly 80% perished.
For quite some time history treated Prince Paul, who fled abroad, as a traitorous scoundrel who sold out his country. The British kept him under house arrest in Kenya until 1945. Tito’s Post-war Yugoslavia declared him an enemy of the state. Only much later did Churchill acknowledge that his treatment of Paul had been unfair and overly harsh. It also took decades after Paul’s death in 1976 before was he rehabilitated by Serbia.
This historical backgrounder is not intended to brand, by extension, the deeply flawed Victor Yanukovych as a Prince Paul or Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an Adolf Hitler. Nor is it meant to cast Western leaders today in the mold of the Winston Churchill whose dangerous 1941 gambles in Yugoslavia (and Greece) turned both into Axis-occupied countries in short order.
But all this does show that under certain circumstances, as with the Ukrainian opposition of today, substituting hope and defiance for reality based caution can prove very dangerous. Putin’s aggressive reaction to Yanukovych’s overthrow was unjustified. Nonetheless, there was reason to fear, drawing upon historic scenarios like that of 1941 Yugoslavia, that the anti-Russian tone of the Ukrainian opposition (and the Westward-leaning first statements by the new leadership in Kiev), would likely bring some sort of grief to the Ukraine. And amidst the ongoing crisis, considerable caution is warranted regarding Moscow on the part of the new leadership in Kiev — as well as the West — if Ukraine is to extract itself from its face-off with Russia with a minimum of adverse consequences.
]]>The only problem is that this frequently-repeated “fact” is simply not true. In the final two free elections before Hitler’s rise to power, in July and November 1932, the Nazis received 38% and 33% of the vote, respectively — a plurality but not enough to bring them into government. In the 1932 presidential election, Hitler lost to Hindenburg by a wide margin.
Hitler came to power not through elections, but because Hindenburg and the circle around Hindenburg ultimately decided to appoint him chancellor in January 1933. This was the result of backroom dealing and power politics, not any kind of popular vote. It is true that after Hitler was already ensconced as chancellor, the Nazis subsequently won the March 1933 elections. But this was in the wake of the Reichstag fire, when the government had passed an emergency law that sharply restricted the activities of left-of-center parties (including the arrest of many Communist leaders). Thus it is difficult to claim that these were “free and fair” elections.
Look, I understand the basic point that Lewis and the rest are trying to make with the Hitler example: elections can sometimes bring nasty people to power. And frankly, I agree with this obvious point. But it would be nice if seemingly well-informed people would stop repeating this bogus “fact” about Hitler, so that we can lay it to rest once and for all.
]]>Freeman, who has extensive [...]]]>
Freeman, who has extensive diplomatic experience in the Gulf region, including an appointment as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was nonplused by the contentious rhetoric of Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. In one of the cables released by WikiLeaks, Zayed called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Hitler.” In the words of the U.S. note-taker, Zayed warned against appeasement with Iran.
Freeman’s reaction:
To my experience, if you say Ahamdinejad is “Hitler,” that means you think the person you’re talking with will like you to say that. So it’s ingratiating language.
Many neocons have made hay over the war cries of some regional Arab leaders, claiming these fears give more credence to Israeli warnings about Iran, now that they have been joined by their usually-diametrically-opposed neighbors. Freeman offered a different take, making a sharp observation about the import of Arab influence in Washington:
Does the fact that even an important Arab country, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, urges decisive action have a great deal of influence in Washington’s thinking? Probably not. There’s nothing else that they feel strongly about that weighs heavily on Washington’s views.
But that doesn’t mean the WikiLeaks release will be not have impact on the United States and it’s diplomatic agenda:
It will be a long time before anyone in the region will speak candidly to an American official. If you cannot speak in confidence with someone, you will not speak to them.
The released cables could serve Iran’s agenda in a some roundabout way:
Ahmadinejad will, as he did, dismiss these leaks. But Iran will take this as exposure of the hypocrisy of their neighbors’ leader. But there may also be a reaction form ordinary citizens/subjects in various places.
I don’t think this does any damage to Iran. In fact, it probably increases the prestige of Iran because it inflates the menace that Iran poses.
And bolster the agenda of those who seek war with Iran:
It’ll certainly be a boost for the Israeli effort to corral the U.S. into some sort of action against Iran.
On that note, it’s worth mentioning Freeman’s skepticism about what the cables actually reveal. Tony Karon at Time addressed this in his excellent piece called “Deception Par for the Course in Mideast Diplomacy,” Karon points to a WikiLeaked cable, where an American diplomat also expressed skepticism about Israeli rhetoric as well as the Israeli timeframe for the Iranian nuclear program:
COMMENT: It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States
Freeman concurs that duplicity runs rampant among Mideast diplomats, “worse than any place” he’s been:
]]>The Middle East is a place that gave diplomacy a bad name in the beginning. There’s the Arab proverb “kiss the hand you cannot bite.” You’ve gotta take everything with a grain of salt in the Middle East, including the Israelis. Especially the Israelis.