(NSI News Source Info) February 17, 2009: THE DIPLOMATIC dance has begun, but since it has been over 30 years since the partners managed a public tango, they
need to avoid treading on each others’ toes. A week ago, US President Barack Obama told a Washington press conference that his administration was “looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue” with Iran. A day later Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded, telling crowds celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution: “Our nation is ready to hold talks based on mutual respect and in a fair atmosphere.”
Since President Obama travelled by train to his inauguration, he could do worse than bone up on the Trans-Iranian railway story before honing his Tehran pitch for its story remains central to the Iranian psyche. When the first Pahlavi Shah, Reza Khan, came to power in a British-facilitated military coup in 1921, he set out to modernise Iran. The Trans-Iranian railway was his premier project. London had long sought to prevent its construction, viewing it as a potential threat to the sacrosanct passage to India.
Construction of the 1,400 kilometre line lasted 12 years from 1927. It is a spectacular feat of engineering and it climbs 1,200 metres from the Persian Gulf to reach Tehran, before descending to the Caspian Sea.
Britain refused to recognise Iranian neutrality during the second World War and Anglo-Soviet forces invaded Iran in 1941. They deposed the Shah and seized control of the railway. With US assistance from 1942 onwards, the Trans-Iranian railway became a major Soviet supply route. Winston Churchill called it “The Bridge to Victory”.
The allies installed the Shah’s 22-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1941. He would never really shake his foreign puppet image. As the Norwegian sociologist and father of peace research, Johan Galtung, remarked: “The US promoted an Iranian middle class to produce an Iranian version of America, while the Soviet Union invested in Iranian heavy industry in the hopes of creating a proletariat. They got Ayatollahs instead.”
Iranians understandably feel that foreign powers tend to deny Iran access to the technologies it needs. The popular view of Iran’s nuclear programme slots neatly into this view as do the sanctions which have crippled the country’s petrochemical industry.
This is the context into which Obama’s initiative must step. In today’s metamorphosing Islamic Republic of Iran, everything must be viewed through three intermingling prisms – the Islamic, the nationalist, and the national. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, around the Gulf, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and right across to Lebanon, Shi’ites are often second class citizens. Iran is the world’s only Shia state, and its achievements carry that extra emotional charge of Shia success.
Iranians are proud nationalists, even xenophobes, particularly towards Sunni Arabs. Iranian populist bluster about Israel, a country 1,500 kilometres away, is often at least as much a commentary on Arab failures as it is on Zionism. Iran has genuine security concerns, an unstable Iraq with significant US forces to its west. A crumbling Afghanistan and a troubled nuclear-armed Pakistan to its east. Along its northern borders lie the still-solidifying central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. In this context, the acquisition of nuclear weapons holds a certain attraction.
Iran’s nuclear programme started under the Shah with US, Canadian and European, particularly French, equipment and training for those who are today its senior nuclear scientists and engineers. The programme mirrors the 2003 analysis from the US comedian Bill Hicks: “You know we armed Iraq. How do you know that? Uh, well . . . we looked at the receipts.”
It seems likely that Iran is working towards a Japanese situation where it would have the capacity to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, even if it refrains from actually doing so. In October 2007 a US National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons programme.
Some commentators and think-tanks, largely those who advocated the stunning success of the Iraq war and the breathtaking efficiency of deregulated financial institutions, continue to regurgitate George Bush’s Axis of Evil mantra warning about Iran.
In this scenario a nuclear-armed Iran would create global instability and threaten the survival of Israel. Iran is also the root cause of Syrian intransigence, Hizbollah’s Lebanese success, and Hamas’s military capacities. Jacques Chirac put the Iranian nuclear threat in context when he said in a 2007 interview with the New York Times: “Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous. Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 metres into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed.”
An Iranian nuke hardly alters the global balance on a planet with over 20,000 nuclear warheads. Syrian demands to recuperate its territory, as more or less agreed in its discreet Turkish-brokered talks with Israel, are generated in Damascus, not Tehran. Hizbollah is a political force because it represents Lebanon’s oft mistreated Shia minority.
Iran is an important regional power. Over two thirds of its 72 million citizens had yet to be born when the Ayatollahs swept into power in 1979. The ebbing power of that Shia clergy could offer real opportunities for equitable engagement. Tehran and Washington have a common interest in a Iraqi and Afghan stability. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America are unlikely to launch into a passionate tango. But If they can avoid empty threats, bluster and condescension they should be able manage a coy minuet. That’s a diplomatic dance from which we would all benefit.
need to avoid treading on each others’ toes. A week ago, US President Barack Obama told a Washington press conference that his administration was “looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue” with Iran. A day later Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded, telling crowds celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution: “Our nation is ready to hold talks based on mutual respect and in a fair atmosphere.”
Since President Obama travelled by train to his inauguration, he could do worse than bone up on the Trans-Iranian railway story before honing his Tehran pitch for its story remains central to the Iranian psyche. When the first Pahlavi Shah, Reza Khan, came to power in a British-facilitated military coup in 1921, he set out to modernise Iran. The Trans-Iranian railway was his premier project. London had long sought to prevent its construction, viewing it as a potential threat to the sacrosanct passage to India.
Construction of the 1,400 kilometre line lasted 12 years from 1927. It is a spectacular feat of engineering and it climbs 1,200 metres from the Persian Gulf to reach Tehran, before descending to the Caspian Sea.
Britain refused to recognise Iranian neutrality during the second World War and Anglo-Soviet forces invaded Iran in 1941. They deposed the Shah and seized control of the railway. With US assistance from 1942 onwards, the Trans-Iranian railway became a major Soviet supply route. Winston Churchill called it “The Bridge to Victory”.
The allies installed the Shah’s 22-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1941. He would never really shake his foreign puppet image. As the Norwegian sociologist and father of peace research, Johan Galtung, remarked: “The US promoted an Iranian middle class to produce an Iranian version of America, while the Soviet Union invested in Iranian heavy industry in the hopes of creating a proletariat. They got Ayatollahs instead.”
Iranians understandably feel that foreign powers tend to deny Iran access to the technologies it needs. The popular view of Iran’s nuclear programme slots neatly into this view as do the sanctions which have crippled the country’s petrochemical industry.
This is the context into which Obama’s initiative must step. In today’s metamorphosing Islamic Republic of Iran, everything must be viewed through three intermingling prisms – the Islamic, the nationalist, and the national. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, around the Gulf, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and right across to Lebanon, Shi’ites are often second class citizens. Iran is the world’s only Shia state, and its achievements carry that extra emotional charge of Shia success.
Iranians are proud nationalists, even xenophobes, particularly towards Sunni Arabs. Iranian populist bluster about Israel, a country 1,500 kilometres away, is often at least as much a commentary on Arab failures as it is on Zionism. Iran has genuine security concerns, an unstable Iraq with significant US forces to its west. A crumbling Afghanistan and a troubled nuclear-armed Pakistan to its east. Along its northern borders lie the still-solidifying central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. In this context, the acquisition of nuclear weapons holds a certain attraction.
Iran’s nuclear programme started under the Shah with US, Canadian and European, particularly French, equipment and training for those who are today its senior nuclear scientists and engineers. The programme mirrors the 2003 analysis from the US comedian Bill Hicks: “You know we armed Iraq. How do you know that? Uh, well . . . we looked at the receipts.”
It seems likely that Iran is working towards a Japanese situation where it would have the capacity to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, even if it refrains from actually doing so. In October 2007 a US National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons programme.
Some commentators and think-tanks, largely those who advocated the stunning success of the Iraq war and the breathtaking efficiency of deregulated financial institutions, continue to regurgitate George Bush’s Axis of Evil mantra warning about Iran.
In this scenario a nuclear-armed Iran would create global instability and threaten the survival of Israel. Iran is also the root cause of Syrian intransigence, Hizbollah’s Lebanese success, and Hamas’s military capacities. Jacques Chirac put the Iranian nuclear threat in context when he said in a 2007 interview with the New York Times: “Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous. Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 metres into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed.”
An Iranian nuke hardly alters the global balance on a planet with over 20,000 nuclear warheads. Syrian demands to recuperate its territory, as more or less agreed in its discreet Turkish-brokered talks with Israel, are generated in Damascus, not Tehran. Hizbollah is a political force because it represents Lebanon’s oft mistreated Shia minority.
Iran is an important regional power. Over two thirds of its 72 million citizens had yet to be born when the Ayatollahs swept into power in 1979. The ebbing power of that Shia clergy could offer real opportunities for equitable engagement. Tehran and Washington have a common interest in a Iraqi and Afghan stability. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America are unlikely to launch into a passionate tango. But If they can avoid empty threats, bluster and condescension they should be able manage a coy minuet. That’s a diplomatic dance from which we would all benefit.
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