Excellent anatomy of the present world by John Simpson.
*****************************************************************
Iran's growing regional influence
By John Simpson

Iran is now a regional superpower, and ever since the Islamic revolution in 1978-9, we in the West have consistently misunderstood it.

On 9 January 1979, a couple of weeks before his triumphant return to Iran, I interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini at his base in exile outside Paris.

In the interview, Khomeini sketched out Iran's entire future: the eradication of the monarchy, universal suffrage and the ban on "corrupt" Western influences.

And he outlined his attitude to Western countries like Britain and the US.

"We intend to reject a relationship which makes us dependent on other countries," he said.

"We have bitter memories of the British, because they ensured that Reza Shah (the last Shah's father) came to power, and for half a century we have been under the domination of this man and his son."

Heightened position

For almost 30 years, the West has concentrated on the religious, fundamentalist aspect of Iran's Islamic Republic.

We have forgotten that Khomeini's revolution was also a declaration of independence from British and American control.

Now, thanks to several different factors, Iran has suddenly reached a new level of power and influence.

The sky-rocketing price of oil has put a lot of money into its pocket.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US has swept Iran's local rival off the chessboard, and free elections in Iraq have brought the Shia majority to power.

Last Updated: Wednesday, 20 September 2006, 11:13 GMT 12:13 UK

E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Iran's growing regional influence

By John Simpson
BBC News, Iran


Iran is now a regional superpower, and ever since the Islamic revolution in 1978-9, we in the West have consistently misunderstood it.


Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989

On 9 January 1979, a couple of weeks before his triumphant return to Iran, I interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini at his base in exile outside Paris.

In the interview, Khomeini sketched out Iran's entire future: the eradication of the monarchy, universal suffrage and the ban on "corrupt" Western influences.

And he outlined his attitude to Western countries like Britain and the US.

"We intend to reject a relationship which makes us dependent on other countries," he said.

"We have bitter memories of the British, because they ensured that Reza Shah (the last Shah's father) came to power, and for half a century we have been under the domination of this man and his son."

Heightened position

For almost 30 years, the West has concentrated on the religious, fundamentalist aspect of Iran's Islamic Republic.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US has swept Iran's local rival off the chessboard


We have forgotten that Khomeini's revolution was also a declaration of independence from British and American control.

Now, thanks to several different factors, Iran has suddenly reached a new level of power and influence.

The sky-rocketing price of oil has put a lot of money into its pocket.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US has swept Iran's local rival off the chessboard, and free elections in Iraq have brought the Shia majority to power.

UNCOVERING IRAN


Click here to listen to John Simpson on Radio 4's: Iran and Her Neighbours

Iraq, weakened by the immense violence which has followed Saddam's overthrow, now regards Shia Iran as the dominant partner in the relationship.

Finally, after eight years of ineffectual government by the moderate reformist President Mohammed Khatami, Iran suddenly has an loud, idiosyncratic, fundamentalist president who cannot be ignored.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone back to Ayatollah Khomeini's principles, and he wants to establish Iran's independence further by turning Iran into a nuclear power.

Relations with Israel

The US and Israel are seriously worried.
President Ahmadinejad insists that Iran is simply setting up a civil nuclear power industry, and that the US has no right to stop it.

But the American-based scholar Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival, believes he plans to go further: "He really wants to be one screwdriver short of a nuclear weapon," he said.

Israel's justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, is certain that Iran plans to build a nuclear bomb.

"They are fighting against the free world," he says, "and I'm warning not only Israel but all Europe and all democratic countries. Otherwise it could be too late."

But, if President Ahmadinejad wants to attack Israel, there are simpler ways than building a nuclear bomb.

Iran's close ally, the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, armed and trained by Iran, launched a highly successful brief war against Israel.

A guerrilla movement, well supplied with low-tech weapons, out-fought and outmanoeuvred a big conventional army using tanks, planes and artillery.

Modern alliances

By encouraging and arming Hezbollah, Iran has managed to create an anti-American front between Shia and Sunni Muslims in many parts of the Middle East.

Instead of the old Sunni-Shia hostility, there is a new unity.

Nowadays, you can see pictures of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in shops and streets and houses from Cairo to Amman to Jerusalem.

According to Prince Hassan of Jordan: "The populism of Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah is an alternative to civil society in the Middle East.

"By recruiting the poor and disenfranchised, they are closer to people's needs than governments are. Which is why they have this enormous following."

Pro-Western governments in the Middle East may not like it, but there is nothing they can do.

American influence in the area is visibly declining.

Their own positions are distinctly weaker.

President Ahmadinejad has put Iran at the forefront of all these changes.

For him, it is all part of the same process that Ayatollah Khomeini started, 27 years ago, when he overthrew the American-and British-imposed Shah.

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/5363098.stm

Check these out too :

Will Iran be Next

Can sabotage and assassination stop Iran from going nuclear?

And this great write-up by Naipaul :

Among the believers
titled after the book he wrote on the subject

Captain Haddock, thank you for the Naipaul's article links. I am going to read that on my lunch break :).

And see the analysis of this '' Royal A$$ L.........." Ms. Preeti Koirala's ..This so funny , twisted and ignorant...

- http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2006/others/guestcolumn/sep/guest_columns_09.php

It's an interesting academic excercise to compare ourselves to others in history, and sometimes they are valuable lessons to be learnt, but in this case, I think she is way off base. At the core of her argument is the arrogrant and elitist notion that Nepal's masses "are not fit" for democracy (based on Lessons 1 to 5). The truth, in my opinion, is everyone is fit to have a say in the running of their country and live a life of dignity. Whether you are rich or poor, educated or not, should not determine whether you deserve democracy or not. That is the single most important lesson of all revolutions in history including ours. Many palace supporters seem to have learnt that lesson - obviously, she is not one of them.

The supreme irony of her article, is the Shah of Iran, if you go back and read some of the litterature out there, used to think pretty much the way she seems to think. Look where that landed him!

I totally agree with Cpt. Haddock.

Yes, we can learn a lot by comparing ourselves to others. That's why they have comparative politics as a major in colleges these days. Who was it who said, an Englishman who only knows about England knows nothing about England? (Could it be Bacon?)

Anyways, I also agree with Haddock that Ms. Koirala's piece is quite far-fetched. Any introductory book on Iranian economic history or political economy would have told her that it was precisely the "uneven" and "haphazardly imposed" modernization that led to Shah's fall. What Shah did not realize was that Iran was not only Tehran. His modernization was mainly focused on Tehran and other cities, which made the rural youth to migrate there (in Tehran and other cities). The rural agricultural economy collapsed, and the migrant workers in Tehran and other places were, as it happens everywhere in the world, not quite happy with their jobs, housing arrangements and the urbanites biased views about them. And Khomeni makes his grand entry! The rest is history.

If Shah had focused on the rural areas and had kept the youths who would later in their anger, frustration and fanaticism support Khomeni by focusing on rural development, then he would still be the grand Shehenshah. However his team of mostly pro-American bureaucrats and politicians did not do anything to address the rural poverty and other problems. The wealth and development were confined to the cities only.

Because the Shah had good relations with the US, and had given the US exclusive priviliges of drilling and processing oil, and US interfarance in Iran's governmnet (Note there was a coup in Iran in 1953 or sometimes in the 50s), led to anti-US, anti-Shah nationalism among the urban youth and intellegentsia. And they too were inclined to support Khomeni. And if you look at the pattern of regime changes in modern times, its usually due to the alliance of urban students and intellegentsia and the peasantry/workers. Shah could do nothing. And as it happens everywhere, the angry crowd chose its super angry leader to head the govt. And things did not turn out as good as the people had expected.

However, from an Iranian's persepective : Hardships and other things besides, Iran could stand against the US, the great Satan. Iran was not percieved by others as a US puppet anymore. And Iran could get on with its nuclear program. In other words, Iran could at least in principle act independent. Poverty, anger and nationalism is a deadly combination! and add religious fanaticism to it, its lethal.

Nepal's situation is quite interesting. What lies ahead?- I don't know. But whatever happens, it will be quite an interesting lesson for all, from the policy planners in Singhadurbar to ..well..., the State Department in DC.

Ignitor, I think you can keep the discussion civil by regraining from using colorful adjectives. Is it asking much?

---

Anyways, in that Simpson's piece, there's an interesting line: Iranians wanted independence from the Brritish/American indirect control.

There is a great book on the Middle East called "A Peace to End All Peace". Its an amazingly well-written book that documents/chronicles how the British Foreign Office + Kitchner, Churchill, Chamberlain, LLyod George screwed up the middle east. Another book that is worth reading to understand the conflicts, nationalism and anti-westernism in Iran+ rest of the middle east is, Paris 1919: Six Months that changed the world.

---

Since i am not a student of middle eastern politics, I don't claim that everything in my post is historically accurate. If you come across mistakes, historical or others, please do let me know.

regraining= refraining

Isolated Freak - Welcome back! Thanks for your insights - very true indeed.

Ahmadinejad apparently created waves in New York. I also watched his interview on TV last night. I cringe every time he talks about the holocaoust the way he does. I wish he would stop doing that because because it drowns out the rest of what he has to say, which, even though I may not agree with it completely, provides an interesting perspective on the balance of power in the Middle East.

- http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/21/africa/web.0921iran.php

The Economist's take on his remarks about the holocaust:


Milking the Holocaust

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revisionism is aimed at the wider Islamic world

IRAN'S growing political incorrectness thrills and scandalises the two worlds: Islamic and Western. The country's combustible president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launches blistering verbal attacks on Israel. An exhibition of more than 200 satirical cartoons about the Holocaust, on show in a state-owned museum in Tehran, is about to come to its underwhelming end. Behind both lies a tale of domestic vulnerability and foreign ambition.

The old Middle Eastern view that the world's Jews exaggerated the Holocaust to rationalise Israel's formation and subsequent brutalities against the Palestinians has long underlain the Islamic Republic's hostility to Israel's presence in the region. But it took Mr Ahmadinejad, and his now notorious description of the Holocaust as a “myth”, to reheat the issue.

Prompted by the publication in Europe of caricatures lampooning the Prophet Muhammad and the defence, by some Western editors and politicians, of these caricatures on grounds of freedom of speech, came the idea of demolishing a Western shibboleth in retaliation. The idea, say the organisers of the Holocaust exhibition, is to highlight Western double standards when it comes to freedom of speech. Mr Ahmadinejad has queried the fitness of such countries as Germany, Austria and France, where Holocaust-denial is a crime, to lecture Iran on free expression. The trouble is that only a few of the works in the show confine themselves to probing this inconsistency.

Dozens of the cartoons, the Iranian entries in particular (entries came from countries as diverse as Italy, Brazil and India), are wantonly anti-Semitic. The imagery is grotesque and predictable: Stars of David morphing into swastikas; the Statue of Liberty giving a Nazi salute. Subtle, the cartoons are not. Perhaps for this reason, visitor numbers have been on the low side. Your correspondent had the place to himself, until more foreign journalists turned up. That may not matter to Mr Ahmadinejad: the suspicion is that the show, like his outrageous one-liners, is aimed abroad.

This became clear from the president's decision, at the end of August, to release the text of a long, quixotic letter that he had sent to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. In this letter Mr Ahmadinejad regretted that the victors of the second world war continue to keep “a black cloud of humiliation and shame” hanging over modern Germans, described Israel as “the greatest enemy of humanity” and urged Ms Merkel to join Iran in an alliance to set the world to rights. She did not reply.

Her silence exemplifies Westerners' bewilderment and distaste at the revisionism of a leader whose country was a bit player in the war and does not even border Israel. On September 3rd Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, observed during a visit to Tehran that the Holocaust is “an undeniable historical fact”. On the same day the Iranian government announced its intention to hold a conference on the subject in Tehran. “Scholars” who refute the conventional history of the Holocaust will no doubt feature prominently.

For a president whose influence over strategic decisions, especially in foreign affairs, is constrained by the untrammelled power of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, probing the Holocaust is a cheap way of raising his prestige among Islamists everywhere. But it seems that for Mr Ahmadinejad, too, freedom of speech has its limits. On September 11th the government banned Iran's foremost reformist newspaper, Shargh, for publishing a cartoon that, it has been alleged, depicted the president as a donkey.

Good part is we'll see belly dancing Mid- Eastern gals everywhere...bad part is I might end up in a Burqa somebody......AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

its horrific...I think someone needs to Boost up Buddhism and / or Hinduism throughout the world to counter these MUSALTEs...starting Nepal being a Hindu nation..there are reasons why we need a Religion...for sure,....hmmm..and a stronger Asian Economy..HMM HMM

At the verge of growing ISLAMIC influence ..Nepal other hands wanted to ignite they sense of insecurity among hindus and declared secular without majorities mandate..

The effect of which .. we will be seeing in coming days...This is what i called lack of far vision amoung Nepalese politicians and pseudo intellectuals ..i have no desire to discuss whether it was good to decide nepal secular or not anymore ..time will tell ..why the close eyes will open to see for real what a blunder at wrond time with wrong method SPA has committed.

AS far as IRAN is concerned some intellectual and professor are worried about the hardliners but they cannot really do anything..this 1% bad musalmans are making world a hell..

Cpt. Haddock!

Heard Mr. Ahmadinejad was quite good at the UN, but he did not get the same "enthusiastic" response from the audience as Mr. Chavez did. By the way, today's NYT reports that Prof. Chomsky's book is now the bestseller, and if you want to promote your book, have Mr. Chavez endorse it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, however, held a press conferecne and held a panel discussion with the Council on Foreign Relations members. Now that is SOMETHING. There is a news report summarizing the main points on its website http://www.cfr.org/publication/11498/
I wonder if they will upload/publish the whole verbatim trancript or video/audio of that discussion.

Now there are two ways to look at the Iranian President's denial of the holocaust:

One, that he really believes that it did not take place or, as he stated in his discussion with the veteran policy makers and diplomats, the Jewish suffering was of the magnitude as what is regarded officially and historically and that far more Palestanians suffered because of the Jewish influx in Palestine. (However given the evidence, reords, memoirs etc. there's no reason not to believe in the official historical account of the Holocaust.)

Two,-- and this I believe is the case-- it is his ONLY tool to rally the population behind him. If he does not become anti-western and anti-American and if does not assume a strong posture against the US, the anti-US nationalism that wants to create a stronger Iran which brought him to power will soon oust him from power.

Another thing is, in a country like Iran where there are almost no outlets for the population to voice its disconetnt with the government, it is always the case that the population tends to be highly nationalistic and always demands a strong foreign policy. In Iran's case, due to the Iranian govt's. propoganda, and the American governmnet's "misguided" policies towards the Middle east, the population is turning nationalist. In this context, the leader has to appear super nationalist.

To be a bit technical, the inward-directed nationalism has to be channeled outward. And I think this is what is happening. I don't think the Iranian population (or the majority of it) is

Now the Iranian policy makers are aware of the fact that their nationalist agendas are in direct confrontation with teh US interests in the region, and having seen what happened to Iraq, denying the holocaust is one of the ways to protect Iran from any hypothetical or real US invasion. The Iranian govt. wants to reach out to the Muslim majority that sympathizes with the Palestanians in the countries of the region and elsewhere. If the US attacks/invades Iran, then the US has to deal with not only Iran and its problems but a potenial hostile to US/Israel majority in the Middle East and elsewhere. By directly linking Iran's security with Israel, he is making it difficult, if not impossible, for the US to use force or coercive diplomacy when it comes to dealing with Iran. And if we were living in the 18th century world, he would have been considered a great statesman.. however he is and his approach is a bit old fashioned, but brilliant nontheless for Iranian national security. I won't be surprised if the US will soften its rhetoric and position vis-a-vis Iran soon. This piece on this week'[s Newsweek is quite well-written:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14924428/site/newsweek/

ahile lai yettinai..

a very happy dashain to all.

Jewish suffering was of the magnitude = Jewish suffering was NOT of the same magnitude

k k huncha yo computer-


To be a bit technical, the inward-directed nationalism has to be channeled outward. And I think this is what is happening. I don't think the Iranian population (or the majority of it) is = To be a bit technical, the inward-directed nationalism has to be channeled outward. And I think this is what is happening. I don't think the Iranian population (or the majority of it) is that lacking in its knowledge of history