In the immediate aftermath of
9/11, when the USA was planning its Afghanistan invasion against the Taliban
government, it chose Pakistan's military establishment as its ally and made
Pakistan the base of the whole operation.
Similarly, during its invasion
of Iraq in March 2003, Saudi Arabia became America's closest ally and its
operational base, a country that had been pouring in hundreds of millions of
dollars in Afghanistan and other countries to promote terrorism, puritanical
Islam and a global Jihad against the West, not to mention that Osama bin Laden
and most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
On the contrary, in January
2002, US President George W Bush made his "Axis of Evil" State of the
Union Address blaming Iran, among others, of sponsoring terrorism and seeking
weapons of mass destruction. Iran—strategically located, technologically the
most advanced nation in the region after Israel and with a large petroleum
reserve—became America's enemy number one.
History shows that while Iran
considered the USA as an ally right from the start, successive American
governments increasingly adopted hostile attitudes towards it, and aligned with
the historical colonial interests of Britain and other Western countries,
contradicting the popular sentiment in Iran. This became obvious in 1953 when
the CIA orchestrated a coup d'état and deposed the popular government of
Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iranian Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953) as he was trying
to nationalise Iran's oil industry. Instead, they installed Mohammad Reza Shah,
a loyal American client who ruled Iran with an iron fist for the next 26 years.
Iranians no doubt were deeply offended and realised that the USA was only
continuing the role Britain and France had been playing all along in the Middle
East.
The UN and EU imposed similar sanctions at a
later date in order to deter Iran from its nuclear development programmed..
In July 1988, USA shot down
an Iranian passenger aircraft in the Gulf, killing all 290 persons on board.
The relations between the two
countries saw some brief improvements in September 2013 when Iran's president
Hassan Rouhani and US President Barack Obama spoke over phone—the first such
top-level conversation in more than 30 years. Then in 2015, after a flurry of
diplomatic activity, Iran signed a long-term deal on its nuclear programmed
with a group of world powers known as the P5+1—the US, UK, France, China,
Russia and Germany—and agreed to limit its nuclear activities in return for the
lifting of economic sanctions.
However, in May 2018,
President Trump abandoned the deal and re-imposed even tighter sanctions on
Iran, leading to increased tensions in the region, culminating in the
assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the architect of Iran's overseas proxy wars
and a widely popular figure in Iran.
Iran's security concerns are
rooted in its history. In 1747, Ahmed Shah Durrani united the Pashtun tribes
and founded an independent Afghanistan, breaking away from its Persian masters.
Then in the 19th century, the Russian Czar scooped up Dagestan, Azerbaijan and
parts of Armenia from Persian control. During the Second World War, Iran was
lucky to have escaped breaking up, unlike its Arab neighbours, by the world
powers. Iran's current security concerns are by no means unfounded, as David
Dunn discusses in "'Real men want to go to Tehran': Bush, Pre-emption and
the Iranian Nuclear Challenge" (International Affairs, January 2007). Dunn
provides ample evidence of Iran being the real target behind America's Iraq
mission in 2003.
After the Islamic Revolution
in 1979 and the subsequent sanctions by the USA, EU and UN, Iran was
practically isolated. The Iran of that time might have had the ideology of
exporting the Islamic revolution, but it soon evaporated when it was attacked
by Iraq. The eight-year-long brutal war brought Iran's security concerns to
ground realities as it realized that protecting territorial integrity and
economic and security interests are much more important than an Islamic
revolution, despite what its anti-USA rhetoric might suggest.
However, years later, Bush
Jr's "Axis of Evil" speech infuriated the Iranian leadership.
Tehran started following a
strategy of creating hostile environments for foreign forces that are opposed
to it by building political alliances with various state and non-state actors
and actively supporting them with funds, arms, training and intelligence. In
Iraq, it sent Quds personnel and supported the militia groups that carried out
sustained attacks on US troops and their allies, on an average of three per day
every day for five years, until US withdrawal in 2011. In Lebanon, Iran formed
a key alliance with Hezbollah against Israel and other associated militias. In
Syria, it salvaged the regime of Bashar Al Assad so that the supply line to
Hezbollah, the Shia group in Lebanon, would not be cut off. In Yemen, Iran
supported the Houthi rebels against the government that was backed by Saudi
Arabia, USA, France and other Arab countries. In each case, Tehran has made
clever use of sectarian tensions and its presence on the ground through
Hezbollah and IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite Iranian
security outfit) men. In response to Bush's rhetoric, Iran has created an
"Axis of Resistance", an elaborate network of defense across the region,
stretching from the Western borders of Afghanistan to the Mediterranean,
against its historical rivals Saudi Arabia and Turkey, making it difficult for
any country to sustain supporting them.
The success of this strategy
is clearly evident in Iraq. As the US created a power vacuum by eliminating
Saddam Hossain, Iran was quick to fill it up through its network of allies. It
was again Iran that called in the Russian Air Force in Syria to its own benefit
and saved Assad's regime from imminent collapse. Iran's once top strategist
Qasem Soleimani successfully blended state machinery with insurgent
organisations, and this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. With the
assassination of Soleimani, Iran is likely to become even more nationalistic
and determined, making any war in the region impossible to end.
America's choice of allies is
guided by its long-term interests and goals, especially those of the defense
and oil industries. As it appears, in the case of the Middle East, the
preference is continuation of the conflicts rather than diffusion. Arguably, a
non-hostile American relationship with Iran might actually serve this purpose
better. Mega contracts for modernizing Iran's oil and defense industries will
be the much-coveted prize for winning a war against Tehran. But as this is less
likely to happen in the foreseeable future, a friendly Iran may be a better
option for Washington.
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