Asked in Tehran earlier this year about the possibility of a United States military strike on Iran, a senior official laughed. “Are you serious?” he asked. “They will never attack us. That would be madness.” His amusement was genuine — and chilling.
Ignorance and complacency about US motivations and intentions abound in equal measure in the land of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Uniquely among the countries of the world, Iran has been almost entirely cut off from US cultural, social and economic influence since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
This semi-voluntary, semi-imposed isolation is changing as an ever more youthful population reaches out to the West. And long-held certainties are fading that the US, having behaved so injuriously towards Iran during the shah’s time, would not dare do so again. Local media have been agog with speculation that Israel’s US-approved air raid inside Syria earlier this month was aimed obliquely at Iran.
All the same, old political habits die hard. Khamenei, an instinctive conservative of the Khomeini school, told worshippers at Friday prayers that the US was fighting a losing “psychological war” against Iran.
“America’s power in the region is waning … Those who attack the revolution even in the capacity of a mighty power such as America are facing defeat day by day.” His words were greeted with ritual chants of “Death to America”.
In similar vein, Ahmadinejad this week shrugged off the sternest warning yet by any European government that the stalemate over Iran’s nuclear programmes was leading to catastrophe. “We do not take these threats seriously,” he said, referring to remarks by the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, about a possible war. Britain’s sober view that Kouchner had merely stated the obvious appears to have been dismissed, too.
Given that Iran is facing a possible third round of United Nations sanctions, a US-orchestrated international business and trade boycott, and rising, indirect military pressure in and across its borders, Ahmadinejad’s insouciance inspires alarm rather than confidence. What Tehran, fatefully, appears not to understand is that the longer there are divisions within the Bush administration, and between the US and European Union countries, over how best to pursue a diplomatic solution, and the further Iran’s nuclear activities advance unchecked, the more likely that, exasperated, out of time and egged on by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Israel, George W Bush will opt for force.
As the pressure builds remorselessly, attempts to keep the diplomatic process on track seem to be failing. Kouchner’s tough words provoked Germany into publicly advocating a much softer line this week. Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN’s nuclear weapons chief, also waded in, warning that the West’s whole policy was spinning out of control.
Russia and China, playing strategic power games of their own, have meanwhile once again underscored their opposition to any talk of force, or to additional sanctions outside the ambit of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Their stance is bringing ever closer an Iraq-style split in the UN security council — a split that, far from benefiting Tehran, could doom it to a military attack.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, having fluttered uncertainly between hawks and doves since taking over from Colin Powell, appears to have belatedly recognised the danger of another unplanned, disastrous Middle East conflagration. With the Pentagon’s discredited chief, Donald Rumsfeld, no longer around to block her, and backed by his successor, Robert Gates, she is mounting another effort, beginning on Friday in Washington, to knock Security Council heads together and rebuild a consensus on diplomatic action.
Hers is an uphill task. Cheney and the neocons, Israeli hawks and ideologues, Arab states terrified of Iran’s expanding regional power, and Iran’s complacent, uncomprehendingly hardline leaders are coming together in an unholy coalition of the willing — and chilling. Their shared destination is confrontation, their common cause is fear. They all believe, without a shadow of doubt, that they are right. And they may take a lot of stopping. — Â