Columnist – John Sammon Obama’s long expected decision to escalate the Afghanistan War is based on the dubious conclusion that if decisive military victory over the Taliban isn’t possible, some kind of honorable (for us) chastisement of them is, by holding more ground, as well as retraining a corrupt regime in Kabul to be more honest.
It demonstrates a sad fact.
Some change in the status quo in the way America is, is possible. But not much. Not enough.
Obama ran his candidacy on a call for change. His supporters voted for him in part based on that promise. He was elected on that premise.
Unlike the war-making, torture-mongering wire-tapping crooks Bush and Cheney, Obama is a decent and honorable man. He is attempting to change some things, health care for one. But the public should understand that no matter who holds the office, the United States is not truly of and by and for the people, but a conglomerate geo-political-military-industrial ruling elite whose first priority is to maintain monetary power and influence, material and energy wealth.
Obama, nor anyone else, will be able to change these:
1. The US will continue to make war on or meddle in the affairs of much smaller, Third World impoverished countries, because of political differences, or we want their natural resources, those who lack a navy, air force, shoes on their feet and refrigerators. We’ve been in Afghanistan eight years, and killed a number of them, but it’s not enough, enough revenge. We have to triumph over them, or at least appear to. No attempt will be made to reach a political settlement until enough people have died. Just from the standpoint of size and firepower, the US comes off looking like an imperialist bully, but its people many of them nonetheless for some reason have great pride that we are sometimes able to defeat these impoverished pygmy countries.
2. The US will just as assiduously avoid military attack on small countries that have a nuclear capability, like Iran and North Korea. Any country, even a small one, that could strike back and cause us great harm, we will treat with caution and seek a political solution.
3. The US will continue to back Israel to run wild in the Middle East pushing Palestinians out, treating them like dogs, sometimes murdering them, and building new settlements on formerly Palestinian land, which over decades is what led to the anti-American sentiment and 9-11. There’s a huge difference between defending Israel’s right to exist, and equipping them with sophisticated weapons so they can expand at the expense of others who have also lived in the area for centuries. There is a very powerful pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill and championed by the likes of Joe Lieberman that makes any objective discussion of the situation impossible.
Anyone, including Obama, who criticizes Israel, is immediately branded an anti-Semite. Americans never look in a mirror when it comes to understanding how a problem came to be. They believe they are always innocent, noble, incapable of error, and that bad evil countries picked on them for no reason at all.
4. The US government and the priorities of the country will continue to be influenced by corporate lobbyists whose loyalty is to their industry and profits and not the American people. Thus, ruthless, dishonest corporations of the kind that nearly destroyed the economy will continue to hold sway. Money talks.
5. America will continue to be domestically the most violent country in the history of the world, a nation of child abusers, rapists, serial and spree killers, drive-by back shooters and gangs. Media will express shock and ask “why?” at each new atrocity, and then run the usual nightly shit entertainment programming glorifying violence, beautiful Hollywood models and cool-dude guys with their perfectly arranged hair pointing hand guns in prime time, acting tough and yelling “freeze!” Right before a Viagra commercial.
This is a sick country with twisted values, and will remain so.
6. Americans, using religion and the military, will continue to believe they are better than other people. You never hear a Frenchman say God bless France, or a Honduran say God bless Honduras, like you hear “God bless America.” This fantasy supposes that the creator of all life, the God of all people, would select for special reverence a nation above all others with an artificial border created by European immigrants who purchased or out-rightly conquered it from its former owners, while also performing the extermination of its original native inhabitants.
7. Racism will continue.
8. So will sexism.
9. There will be no standard flat and fair tax for Americans, but a system that bleeds the middle class and rewards the few richest.
10. The destruction caused by global warming will race ahead of any president’s attempt to deal with it, and any president who does, will face the anger of the people who will call him a traitor.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. The propensity to extrapolate from past events to future trends is especially unfortunate in the discipline of History. Thus, the existence hitherto of a thriving multicultural polity does not presage the preponderance of a functioning multiculturalism in its future.
On the very contrary: in an open, tolerant multicultural society, the traits, skills, and capacities of members of different collectives converge. This gives rise to a Narcissism of Small Differences http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismsmall.html: a hatred of the “nearly-we”, the resentment we harbor towards those who emulate us, adopt our values system, and imitate our traits and behavior patterns.
In heterogeneous societies, its components (religious communities; socio-economic classes; ethnic groups) strike implicit deals with each other. These deals adhere to an organizing or regulatory principle, the most common of which, at least since the late 19 century, is the State (most often, the Nation-State).
These implicit deals revolve around the allocation of resources, mainly of economic nature. They assume that the growth of the economy ought to be translated into individual prosperity, irrespective of the allegiance or affiliation of the individual.
There are two mechanisms that ensure such transmission of national wealth to the component-collectives and thence to the individuals they are comprised of:
When the political elite of the country fails to guarantee and engender individual prosperity either via economic growth (and, thus, allocative prosperity) or via imported prosperity, the organizing principle invariably comes under attack and very often mutates: empires disintegrate; uniform states go federated or confederated, etc. The process can be peaceful or fraught with conflict or bloodshed. It is commonly called: “history”.
TWO CASE STUDIES
The Case of the Balkans
I have a Roma (gypsy) cleaning lady. She cleans my house every fortnight. She is nice and well spoken. She values education and good manners. She is spotless, obsessively purgatory, compulsively tidy. And she hates “shiptars” (the derogatory name assigned to Macedonian Albanians). They are dirty, she says, and criminal and they have too many children. They don’t respect their women. She is afraid of them. Her eyes glow with the gratification of the underdog turned top dog, if only verbally, if only for a while, if only while cleansing my house. This is the way it is, a chain of abuse, a torrent of prejudice, an iron curtain of malice and stereotyping. Czechs portray “their” gypsies with the same lingual brushstrokes, the same venomous palette, a canvass of derision and atavistic, reflexive hatred.
In the Balkans reigns supreme the Law of the MinMaj. It is simple and it was invariably manifested throughout history. It is this: “Wars erupt whenever and wherever a country has a minority of the same ethnicity as the majority in its neighbouring country.”
Consider Israel – surrounded by Arab countries, it has an Arab minority of its own, having expelled (ethnically cleansed) hundreds of thousands more. It has fought 6 wars with its neighbours and (good intentions notwithstanding) looks set to fight more. It is subjugated to the Law of the MinMaj, enslaved by its steady and nefarious domination.
Or take Nazi Germany. World War Two was the ultimate manifestation of the MinMaj Law. German minorities throughout Europe were either used by Germany – or actively collaborated with it – to justify one Anschluss after another. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Russia – a parade of Big Brotherly intervention by Germany on behalf of allegedly suppressed kinfolk. Lebensraum and Volksdeutsch were twin pillars of Nazi ideology.
And, of course, there is Yugoslavia, its charred remnants agonizingly writhing in a post Kosovo world. Serbia fought Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo to protect besieged and hysterical local Serbs. Croats fought Serbs and Bosnians to defend dilapidated Croat settlements. Albanians fought the Serbs through the good services of Kosovars in order to protect Kosovars. And the fighting is still on. This dismembered organism, once a flourishing country, dazed and scorched, still attempts to blindly strike its former members, inebriated by its own blood. Such is the power of the MinMaj.
There are three ways out from the blind alley to which the MinMaj Rule inevitably and invariably leads its adherents. One exit is through ethnic cleansing, the other via self determination, the third is in establishing a community, a majority of minorities.
Ethnic cleansing is the safest route. It is final, irreversible, just, fast, easy to carry out and preventive as much as curative. It need not be strewn with mass graves and smouldering villages. It can be done peacefully, by consent or with the use of minimal force. It can be part of a unilateral transfer or of a bilateral exchange of population. There are many precedents – Germans in the Ukraine and in Czechoslovakia, Turks in Bulgaria, Jews in the Arab countries. None of them left willingly or voluntarily. All were the victims of pathological nostalgia, deep, disconsolate grieving and the post traumatic shock of being uprooted and objectified. But they emigrated, throngs of millions of people, planeloads, trainloads, cartloads and carloads of them and they reached their destinations alive and able to start all over again – which is more than can be said about thousands of Kosovar Albanians. Ethnic cleansing has many faces, brutality is not its integrated feature.
The Wilsonian ideal of self determination is rarely feasible or possible – though, when it is, it is far superior to any other resolution of intractable ethnic conflicts. It does tend to produce political and economic stillborns, though. Ultimately, these offspring of noble principle merge again with their erstwhile foes within customs unions, free trade agreements, currency unions. They are subsumed in other economic, political, or military alliances and gladly surrender part of that elusive golden braid, their sovereignty. Thus, becoming an independent political entity is, to most, a rite of passage, an adolescence, heralding the onset of political adulthood and geopolitical and economic maturity.
The USA and, to a lesser degree, the UK, France and Germany are fine examples of the third way. A majority of minorities united by common rules, beliefs and aspirations. Those are tension filled structures sustained by greed or vision or fear or hope and sometimes by the very tensions that they generate. No longer utopian, it is a realistic model to emulate.
It is only when ethnic cleansing is combined with self determination that a fracturing of the solutions occurs. Atrocities are the vile daughters of ideals. Armed with stereotypes – those narcissistic defence mechanisms which endow their propagators with a fleeting sense of superiority – an ethnic group defines itself negatively, in opposition to another. Self determination is employed to facilitate ethnic cleansing rather than to prevent it. Actually, it is the very act of ethnic cleansing which validates the common identity, which forms the myth and the ethos that is national history, which perpetrates itself by conferring resilience upon the newly determined and by offering a common cause and the means to feel efficient, functional and victorious in carrying it out.
There are many variants of this malignant, brutal, condemnable, criminal and inefficient form of ethnic cleansing. Bred by manic and hysterical nationalists, fed by demagogues, nourished by the hitherto deprived and humiliated – this cancerous mix of definition by negation wears many guises. It is often clad in legal attire. Israel has a Law of Return which makes an instant citizen out of every spouse of every Russian Jew while denying this privilege to Arabs born on its soil. South Africa had apartheid. Nazi Germany had the Nuremberg Laws. The Czech Republic had the infamous Benes Decrees. But ethnic cleansing can be economic (ask the Chinese in Asia and the Indians in Africa). It can be physical (Croatia, Kosovo). It has a myriad facets.
The West is to blame for this confusion. By offering all three solutions as mutually inclusive rather than mutually exclusive – it has been responsible for a lot of strife and misery. But, to its credit, it has learned its lesson. In Kosovo it defended the right of the indigent and (not so indigent but) resident Albanians to live in peace and plough their land in peace and bring forth children in peace and die in peace. But it has not protected their right to self determination. It has not mixed the signals. As a result the message came through loud and clear. And, for the first time in many years, people tuned in and listened. And this, by far, is the most important achievement of Operation Allied Force.
Minorities or Immigrants? The Kven and Sami Peoples of Norway
The phrase “minority rights” conjures abhorrent images of Palestinians tortured in Israeli prisons; Aegean Macedonians expelled from Greece or incarcerated on remote islands, there to perish; and Native-Americans confined to wasteland “reservations“, having been decimated for decades. But, the sad truth is that minorities are welcome nowhere and that every single nation harbors embarrassing skeletons in its historical closet.
Consider Norway, by far the least plausible candidate for the role of perpetrators of genocide, physical or cultural. This remote Scandinavian polity has repeatedly won every conceivable prize for upholding and cherishing human rights. Yet, it, too, has a dark chapter that ended only recently.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, many Finns – destitute farmers and fishermen – emigrated from their homeland and from Sweden and settled in the inhospitable northern reaches of Norway. They joined the original inhabitants of that area, Finns known as Sami. The new arrivals came to be known as Kvener (in Norwegian), Kvenee (in their own Finnish dialect), or simply Kven, by everyone else.
Fully one quarter of the population in the north identified themselves as Kven in the census of 1875 – yet, it took their adopted country two centuries (and a parliamentary investigative committee) to recognize them a minority (in 1996) and to accept their right to use their language (in 2005) within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Yet, this may have been too little, too late. In the intervening period, the word “Kven” was used as a pejorative by the Kvens’ upstanding “ethnically pure” compatriots. Kven and Sami culture and languages were considered backward and inferior (with racist undertones). Across the border, in Sweden, Samis were compulsorily sterilized.
In Norway, the Kven and Sami were re-labeled “The Foreign Nations” (non-Nordic, of Mongol roots) and “The Original Immigrants” (a falsification of history, as the Norwegians were the immigrants, not the Sami).
The mandate of the “Finn Fund“, established in the 19th century by the National Assembly, called on it to “civilize” the Kven and the Sami. Even after World War II, as Norway sought to “modernize” itself, Kven and Sami civilizations were cast as outdated and primitive.
Consequently, many Kvens now claim counterfactually to be Norwegians (or merely Norwegian Finns) and consider the Kven language to be a dialect of Finnish.
Inevitably, in a nationalistic backlash, some Kven now insist that they are the aborigines of northern Europe and that once, in the 11th century, they ran an empire that covered most of northern Scandinavia. Groups of opportunistic Swedish Finns support these theories in an attempt to leverage the ILO 169 Convention about the Rights of Indigenous People and apply it to Sweden’s Kvens.
Be that as it may, the truth is that Norway had made it exceedingly difficult for Kvens (and other Finns, such as the Sami people) to obtain citizenship or maintain it and literally impossible to buy real estate – unless they agreed to change their names, give up their language and culture and, later, move away from sensitive border areas (they were considered pro-Russian, then pro-German and, therefore, a security risk). Additionally, lands in the public domain (in truth, owned by the Sami and Kven) were declared to be state property and confiscated without compensation.
This discriminatory policy was known as fornorskningspolitikken (Norwegianization).
Thus, for instance, well into the 1950s, it was forbidden to teach the Sami language in schools (with a few exceptions in the 1930s and 1940s). The very existence of the Sami nation (as a minority) was acknowledged only in 1989, after massive demonstrations in 1979 (ostensibly against the construction of an environmentally-disruptive dam, but actually to air Sami grievances).
Only in the 1990s were some of the wrongs righted: the Sami language was declared a “national treasure” (and a second official language in Norway), a Sami parliament was established, and lands appropriated by the state were returned to the Sami people.
The Kven are envious of the Samis’ achievements. Well into the 1990s, they were still being labeled “immigrants” (and not a minority) by the Norwegian state.
In 1987, they established The Norwegian Kven Organization. Its aims are both political and cultural: the ultimate compilation of a government report about the Kven population; liaising with the Norwegian media; to push for the establishment of a State Secretary for Kven issues; to further the knowledge of the Kven language, from the kindergarten level onwards, using the proceeds of a Kven culture fund and income from museums and culture centers. The Kven also demand bilingual signage and place names.
Yet, only after Norway ratified, in 1999, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, did it reluctantly alter the Kvens’ status and accept that they are a “national minority“: a minority with a historical presence (longer than 100 years) in a given territory. Now, only Norway and Canada maintain a three-tiered hierarchy of “nations“: indigenous, minority, and immigrants.
Even so, Norway is light years ahead of countries such as Israel and Greece who completely deny the existence of their minorities. Israel has insisted until quite recently that the Palestinian “nation” is an invention and the Greeks refuse to accept the existence of Macedonians on Greek soil.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Citizens are reporting dry runs in the skies of the Negev, Israel’s traditional air force training grounds and a desert with some resemblance to Iranian conditions. Piecing these scant testimonies together, it seems that the Israelis are concentrating their effort on midair refueling and surgical strikes on multiple targets.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. Late last year, Israel embarked on a coordinated campaign of leaks to the press regarding its determination to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities if Obama’s then-new administration fails to sway the Iranians diplomatically. Israel is unwilling to accept a nuclear Iran: “It is not an option,” say its senior intelligence and military leadership.
On January 20, 2009, I appeared as a guest in the most popular political affairs program in Macedonia (“Glasot na Narodot,” or The Voice of the People). I warned that Israel is willing to wait 6 to 8 months for Obama’s “diplomacy” with regards to Iran’s nuclear capability to show some progress. If Iran remains recalcitrant, Israel plans to bomb two facilities in Iran as it did in Iraq in 1981, I said. Refueling won’t be a problem, I assured the program’s host, Slobodan Tomic: both Egypt and Saudi-Arabia offered to help.
Israel has decided to go ahead. Taking into account political, geopolitical, military preparedness, and climatic conditions, there are two windows: between July 21 and 24 and between August 6 and 8. Advance teams comprised of Mossad agents and military personnel are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq (including in the Kurdish lands, adjacent to Turkey).
A mock has been erected not far from Eilat (near the Red Sea, opposite Aqaba). A defunct airbase in Biq’at Ha’Yareach (Moon Vale) has been resurrected to accommodate Air Wing 10. In a country as small and intimate as Israel, it is amazing that this has been kept a secret: hundreds of recruits and reservists – from mechanics and pilots to cooks and administrators – have been re-stationed there in the last few months.
A mysterious facility also sprouted up not far from Dimona’s nuclear reactor, next to a university town called Sde Boker. It is not known what is its role, though speculation is that it is intended to shield the sensitive facility from an Iranian counter-attack. Several batteries of aged Patriot missiles have been recently replaced with brand new anti-missile rockets developed by Israel.
Citizens are reporting dry runs in the skies of the Negev, Israel’s traditional air force training grounds and a desert with some resemblance to Iranian conditions. Piecing these scant testimonies together, it seems that the Israelis are concentrating their effort on midair refueling and surgical strikes on multiple targets.
Finally, HAGA (Hagana Ezrakhit), the Civilian Defense Force, a part of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), has been instructed to begin preparations for a possible Iranian counter-strike with long-range conventional missiles. At this stage, Israel is not contemplating chemical or biological warfare (though the distribution of gas masks does seem to be part of the drill).
No one knows for sure where will Israel strike. Wiping off all the widely distributed and impregnable components of Iran’s capability to enrich uranium is close to impossible. The after-effects of even a limited air attack may be devastating and not necessarily short-term, as the Israelis are convinced. The price of oil is likely to spike and radicals and extremists throughout the benighted region are bound to leverage the attack to smear and taunt Israel and its allies but, then, what else is new. The Arab countries are likely to breathe a sigh of relief that the Iranian bully has been humbled.
The big question mark is how will the Obama administration react to such a fait accompli that flies in the face of the new President’s stated policies. Will Obama try to make an example out of Israel and harshly punish it – or will he merely verbally lash it and proceed with business as usual? Time will tell. Soon.
Israel, Obama, Iran, and Journalism “During Netanyahu’s visit, Israel shared intelligence with the CIA regarding the potential for a terrorist attack which will dwarf 9/11 if Iran is allowed to continue with its nuclear designs and share its outcomes with allies such as Hamas and the Hizbullah. Iranian proliferation is a direct threat to US National security.
Obama’s staff is ignoring the intel (HUMINT) because they believe that it is intended to manipulate the Administration into accepting Israel’s planned bombing of two facilities in Iran.
They are also ignoring intel regarding a Hamas cell in Cairo that is bent on mischief. The Israelis are shunned. The CIA is exasperated.”
How reliable is this information? Can journalists be trusted not to be manipulated; not to substitute opinion and wishful thinking for facts; not to be corrupted with the trappings of power or outright pecuniary incentives?
Consider my case:
On January 20, 2009, I appeared as a guest in the most popular political affairs program in Macedonia (“Glasot na Narodot,” or The Voice of the People). I warned that Israel is willing to wait 6 to 8 months for Obama’s “diplomacy” with regards to Iran’s nuclear capability to show some progress. If Iran remains recalcitrant, Israel plans to bomb two facilities in Iran as it did in Iraq in 1981, I said. Refueling won’t be a problem, I assured the program’s host: both Egypt and Saudi-Arabia offered to help.
This and other interviews provoked speculations in Balkan media and on the Internet:
Vaknin probably had assumed that the NSA (which has a presence in Skopje, having recently moved some of its facilities there from Athens) will be monitoring the program and will report to Washington, suggested one of them.
Vaknin’ sister is Sima Gil-Vaknin, the IDF’s (Israel Defense Force’s) Chief Censor (true) and Vaknin is a senior Israeli intelligence operative (which I deny emphatically).
Recently, the leading Balkan newsmagazine “Fokus” published a long article about the Eligibility Problem (Obama’s missing original birth certificate and other personal documents). In that article, Fokus speculated that Israel may have written off Obama and has embarked on a worldwide campaign to discredit him and counter his dangerous diplomatic and military moves. Vaknin, contended the magazine, spearheaded these activities in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans in conjunction with the Hasbara’s clandestine unit, which is under the direct control of the Prime Minister’s office. I have since denied these rumors, too.
I am a journalist of long standing (since the mid-eighties), have lived and worked in Israel and maintain a network of top-level, unimpeachable sources. I am made privy to a lot of information and disinformation (see my articles about Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the name issue). Like every journalist, I sometimes can’t tell the difference and get duped. But this is one of the risks of the First Amendment.
As I see it, my job is not to block or filter content. My task is publish with appropriate disclaimers regarding the sources of my information. I should serve as an eBay of data, ranking the past performance of “vendors” of intelligence and letting the fully-informed reader make up his or her mind whom to believe and whom to discredit.
Back to the opening scoop:
Is it true? Did it happen?
Who knows! All I can say is that someone wanted this information leaked. It could be a arrow shot across the Obama administration’s bow. It could be part of a much larger picture. It could be a signal aimed at Iran. It may be a brazen fabrication. History will tell.
But one thing it is for sure: a story. Someone(s) told me, a journalist, this story. They wanted it out. The importance of a story sometimes lies not with its content, but with its very release. It is the role of the discerning reader to read between the lines, connect the dots, and come up with his or her own narrative.
The Iranians insist they must be able to enrich uranium on their own soil. One proposal is for this to take place in Iran but only under the control of an international consortium. It’s not a perfect solution because the Iranians could-if they were very creative and dedicated-cheat. But neither is it perfect from the Iranian point of view because it would effectively mean a permanent inspections regime in their country. But both sides might get enough of what they consider crucial for it to work. Why not try this before launching the next Mideast war?
Iran – They May Not Want The Bomb And Other Unexpected Truths
By: Fareed Zakaria
Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What’s the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that “developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.” Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini’s statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.
Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And if Tehran’s aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn’t need a bomb to do so. Simply having a clear “breakout” capacity-the ability to weaponize within a few months-would allow it to operate with much greater latitude and impunity in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Iranians aren’t suicidal. In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as “a messianic, apocalyptic cult.” In fact, Iran has tended to behave in a shrewd, calculating manner, advancing its interests when possible, retreating when necessary. The Iranians allied with the United States and against the Taliban in 2001, assisting in the creation of the Karzai government. They worked against the United States in Iraq, where they feared the creation of a pro-U.S. puppet on their border. Earlier this year, during the Gaza war, Israel warned Hizbullah not to launch rockets against it, and there is much evidence that Iran played a role in reining in their proxies. Iran’s ruling elite is obsessed with gathering wealth and maintaining power. The argument made by those-including many Israelis for coercive sanctions against Iran is that many in the regime have been squirreling away money into bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland for their children and grandchildren. These are not actions associated with people who believe that the world is going to end soon.
One of Netanyahu’s advisers said of Iran, “Think Amalek.” The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, “Go and smite Amalek,and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic.
Iran isn’t a dictatorship. It is certainly not a democracy. The regime jails opponents, closes down magazines and tolerates few challenges to its authority. But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship. It might be best described as an oligarchy, with considerable debate and dissent within the elites. Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, the Assembly of Experts, who selected him and whom he has to keep happy. Ahmadinejad is widely seen as the “mad mullah” who runs the country, but he is not the unquestioned chief executive and is actually a thorn in the side of the clerical establishment. He is a layman with no family connections to major ayatollahs-which makes him a rare figure in the ruling class. He was not initially the favored candidate of the Supreme Leader in the 2005 election. Even now the mullahs clearly dislike him, and he, in turn, does things deliberately designed to undermine their authority. Iran might be ready to deal. We can’t know if a deal is possible since we’ve never tried to negotiate one, not directly. While the regime appears united in its belief that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program-a position with broad popular support-some leaders seem sensitive to the costs of the current approach. It is conceivable that these “moderates” would appreciate the potential benefits of limiting their nuclear program, including trade, technology and recognition by the United States. The Iranians insist they must be able to enrich uranium on their own soil. One proposal is for this to take place in Iran but only under the control of an international consortium. It’s not a perfect solution because the Iranians could-if they were very creative and dedicated-cheat. But neither is it perfect from the Iranian point of view because it would effectively mean a permanent inspections regime in their country. But both sides might get enough of what they consider crucial for it to work. Why not try this before launching the next Mideast war?
Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek’s editions abroad. The magazine reaches an audience of 24 million worldwide. He also writes a regular column for Newsweek, which also appears in Newsweek International and fortnightly in the Washington Post.
Starting this year, Fareed has been hosting a new foreign affairs show on CNN Worldwide — Fareed Zakaria GPS, an hour-long program that takes a comprehensive look at foreign affairs and the policies shaping our world. Every week they bring you an in-depth interview with a world leader, as well as a panel of international analysts who examine the major global developments of the week. As always, Fareed’s emphasis is on new ideas and innovative approaches to solving the world’s toughest problems. Fareed Zakaria GPS airs each Sunday, at 1pm, on CNN.
The U.S. strategy is fairly straightforward: Obama is trying to create a new global perception of the United States. Global opinion was that former U.S. President George W. Bush was unwilling to engage with, and listen to, allies or enemies. Obama’s view is that that perception in itself harmed U.S. foreign policy by increasing suspicion of the United States. For Obama, offering New Year’s greetings to Iran is therefore part of a strategy to change the tone of all aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
U.S. President Barack Obama released a video offering Iran congratulations on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, in March. Israeli President Shimon Peres also offered his best wishes, referring to “the noble Iranian people.” The joint initiative was received coldly in Tehran, however. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the video did not show that the United States had shifted its hostile attitude toward Iran.
The video is obviously part of Obama’s broader strategy of demonstrating that his administration has shifted U.S. policy, at least to the extent that it is prepared to open discussions with other regimes (with Iran being the hardest and most controversial case). The U.S. strategy is fairly straightforward: Obama is trying to create a new global perception of the United States. Global opinion was that former U.S. President George W. Bush was unwilling to engage with, and listen to, allies or enemies. Obama’s view is that that perception in itself harmed U.S. foreign policy by increasing suspicion of the United States. For Obama, offering New Year’s greetings to Iran is therefore part of a strategy to change the tone of all aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
Getting Peres to offer parallel greetings was undoubtedly intended to demonstrate to the Iranians that the Israelis would not block U.S. initiatives toward Iran. The Israelis probably were willing to go along with the greetings because they don’t expect them to go very far. They also want to show that they were not responsible for their failure, something critical in their relations with the Obama administration.
The Iranian response is also understandable. The United States has made a series of specific demands on Iran, and has worked to impose economic sanctions on Iran when Tehran has not complied. But Iran also has some fairly specific demands of the United States. It might be useful, therefore, to look at the Iranian view of the United States and the world through its eyes.
From the Iranian point of view, the United States has made two fundamental demands of Iran. The first is that Iran halt its military nuclear program. The second, a much broader demand, is that Iran stop engaging in what the United States calls terrorism. This ranges from support for Hezbollah to support for Shiite factions in Iraq. In return, the United States is prepared to call for a suspension of sanctions against Iran.
For Tehran, however, the suspension of sanctions is much too small a price to pay for major strategic concessions. First, the sanctions don’t work very well. Sanctions only work when most powers are prepared to comply with them. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are prepared to systematically comply with sanctions, so there is little that Iran can afford that it can’t get. Iran’s problem is that it cannot afford much. Its economy is in shambles due more to internal problems than to sanctions. Therefore, in the Iranian point of view, the United States is asking for strategic concessions, yet offering very little in return.
The Nuclear Question
Meanwhile, merely working on a nuclear device – regardless of how close or far Iran really is from having one – provides Iran with a dramatically important strategic lever. The Iranians learned from the North Korean experience that the United States has a nuclear fetish. Having a nuclear program alone was more important to Pyongyang than actually having nuclear weapons. U.S. fears that North Korea might someday have a nuclear device resulted in significant concessions from the United States, Japan and South Korea.
The danger of having such a program is that the United States – or some other country – might attack and destroy the associated facilities. Therefore, the North Koreans created a high level of uncertainty as to just how far along they were on the road to having a nuclear device and as to how urgent the situation was, raising and lowering alarms like a conductor in a symphony. The Iranians are following the same strategy. They are constantly shifting from a conciliatory tone to an aggressive one, keeping the United States and Israel under perpetual psychological pressure. The Iranians are trying to avoid an attack by keeping the intelligence ambiguous. Tehran’s ideal strategy is maintaining maximum ambiguity and anxiety in the West while minimizing the need to strike immediately. Actually obtaining a bomb would increase the danger of an attack in the period between a successful test and the deployment of a deliverable device.
What the Iranians get out of this is exactly what the North Koreans got: disproportionate international attention and a lever on other topics, along with something that could be sacrificed in negotiations. They also have a chance of actually developing a deliverable device in the confusion surrounding its progress. If so, Iran would become invasion- and even harassment-proof thanks to its apparent instability and ideology. From Tehran’s perspective, abandoning its nuclear program without substantial concessions, none of which have materialized as yet, would be irrational. And the Iranians expect a large payoff from all this.
Radical Islamists, Iraq and Afghanistan
This brings us to the Hezbollah/Iraq question, which in fact represents two very different issues. Iraq constitutes the greatest potential strategic threat to Iran. This is as ancient as Babylon and Persia, as modern as the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Iran wants guarantees that Iraq will never threaten it, and that U.S. forces in Iraq will never pose a threat to Iran. Tehran does not want promises alone; it wants a recognized degree of control over the Iraqi government, or at least negative control that would allow it to stop Baghdad from doing things Iran doesn’t want. To achieve this, Iran systematically has built its influence among factions in Iraq, permitting it to block Iraqi policies that Iran regards as dangerous.
The American demand that Iran stop meddling in Iraqi policies strikes the Iranians as if the United States is planning to use the new Baghdad regime to restore the regional balance of power. In fact, that is very much on Washington’s mind. This is completely unacceptable to Iran, although it might benefit the United States and the region. From the Iranian point of view, a fully neutral Iraq – with its neutrality guaranteed by Iranian influence – is the only acceptable outcome. The Iranians regard the American demand that Iran not meddle in Iraq as directly threatening Iranian national security.
There is then the issue of Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamist groups. Between 1979 and 2001, Iran represented the background of the Islamic challenge to the West: The Shia represented radical Islam. When al Qaeda struck, Iran and the Shia lost this place of honor. Now, al Qaeda has faded and Iran wants to reclaim its place. It can do that by supporting Hezbollah, a radical Shiite group that directly challenges Israel, as well as Hamas – a radical Sunni group – thus showing that Iran speaks for all of Islam, a powerful position in an arena that matters a great deal to Iran and the region. Iran’s support for these groups helps it achieve a very important goal at little risk. Meanwhile, the U.S. demand that Iran end this support is not matched by any meaningful counteroffer or by a significant threat.
Moreover, Tehran dislikes the Obama-Petraeus strategy in Afghanistan. That strategy involves talking with the Taliban, a group that Iran has been hostile toward historically. The chance that the United States might install a Taliban-linked government in Afghanistan represents a threat to Iran second only to the threat posed to it by Iraq.
The Iranians see themselves as having been quite helpful to the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as they helped Washington topple both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In 2001, they offered to let U.S. aircraft land in Iran, and assured Washington of the cooperation of pro-Iranian factions in Afghanistan. In Iraq, they provided intelligence and helped keep the Shiite population relatively passive after the invasion in 2003. But Iranians see Washington as having betrayed implicit understandings that in return for these services, the Iranians would enjoy a degree of influence in both countries. And the U.S. opening to the Taliban is the last straw.
Obama’s Greetings in Context
Iran views Obama’s New Year greetings within this context. To them, Obama has not addressed the core issues between the two countries. In fact, apart from videos, Obama’s position on Iran does not appear different from the Bush position. The Iranian leadership does not see why it should respond more favorably to the Obama administration than it did to the Bush administration. Tehran wants to be very sure that Obama understands that the willingness alone to talk is insufficient; some indications of what is to be discussed and what might be offered are necessary.
Many in the U.S. administration believe that the weak Iranian economy might shape the upcoming Iranian presidential election. Undoubtedly, the U.S. greetings were timed to influence the election. Washington has tried to influence internal Iranian politics for decades, constantly searching for reformist elements. The U.S. hope is that someone might be elected in Iran who is so obsessed with the economy that he would trade away strategic and geopolitical interests in return for some sort of economic aid. There are undoubtedly candidates who would be interested in economic aid, but none who are prepared to trade away strategic interests. Nor could they even if they wanted to. The Iran-Iraq war is burned into the popular Iranian consciousness; any candidate who appeared willing to see a strong Iraq would lose the election. American analysts are constantly confusing an Iranian interest in economic aid with a willingness to abandon core interests. But this hasn’t happened, and isn’t happening now.
This is not to say that the Iranians won’t bargain. Beneath the rhetoric, they are practical to the extreme. Indeed, the rhetoric is part of the bargaining. What is not clear is whether Obama is prepared to bargain. What will he give for the things he wants? Economic aid is not enough for Iran, and in any event, the idea of U.S. economic aid for Iran during a time of recession is a non-starter. Is Obama prepared to offer Iran a dominant voice in Iraq and Afghanistan? How insistent is Obama on the Hezbollah and Hamas issue?
What will he give if Iran shuts down its nuclear program? It is not clear that Obama has answers to these questions.
Rebuilding the U.S. public image is a reasonable goal for the first 100 days of a presidency. But soon it will be summer, and the openings Obama has made will have to be walked through, with tough bargaining. In the case of Iran – one of the toughest cases of all – it is hard to see how Washington can give Tehran the things it wants because that would make Iran a major regional power. And it is hard to see how Iran could give away the things the Americans are demanding.
Obama indicated that it would take time for his message to generate a positive response from the Iranians. It is more likely that unless the message starts to take on more substance that pleases the Iranians, the response will remain unchanged. The problem wasn’t Bush or Clinton or Reagan, the problem was the reality of Iran and the United States. Only if a third power frightened the Iranians sufficiently – a third power that also threatened the United States – would U.S.-Iranian interests be brought together. But Russia, at least for now, is working very hard to be friendly with Iran.
STRATFOR is a world leader in global intelligence. Their team of experts collects and analyzes intelligence from every part of the world ? offering unparalleled insights through their exclusively published analyses and forecasts.
Due to its unrivaled analysis and accurate forecasts, STRATFOR frequently serves as a source for the media – and continues to provide daily intelligence updates and expert interviews for local, national and international media outlets and venues. Here is a sampling of recent citations that demonstrates the depth and breadth of coverage and recognition STRATFOR receives.
Obama’s long expected decision to escalate the Afghanistan War is based on the dubious conclusion that if decisive military victory over the Taliban isn’t possible, some kind of honorable (for us) chastisement of them is, by holding more ground, as well as retraining a corrupt regime in Kabul to be more honest.
Related Websites 
The propensity to extrapolate from past events to future trends is especially unfortunate in the discipline of History. Thus, the existence hitherto of a thriving multicultural polity does not presage the preponderance of a functioning multiculturalism in its future.
About The Author: 
