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by
Geov Parrish
May
24, 2003
Late
in April, the United States quietly agreed to help its enemy.
The
US, as the world knows, is on an unquenchable mission to end terror. The
immediate focus of that noble, albeit impossible, goal is to stamp out dozens
of groups that the US State Department has officially named as terrorist
organizations. In the wake of 9/11, a host of new laws and regulations make
material or financial assistance, association, or even advocacy concerning such
groups basis for civil charges, criminal charges, asset seizure, and/or
deportation, often with no due process, no appeal, no glimpse, even, at
evidence that allegedly supports the government's claims.
And
last month, the Bush Administration signed a ceasefire agreement with one of
those banned groups. The Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in eastern Iraq,
formerly designated a "terrorist group," now operates freely out of a
country controlled by the United States, without changing its political agenda
or tactics a bit. The Bush Administration, in short, has become a sponsor of
terrorism even by its own definition.
The
MKO episode would merely be a particularly stark illustration of the double
standard that has permeated US foreign policy for a half-century: that the
difference between terrorism and freedom fighting depends largely on whose
bagfuls of cash are buying the weapons. It is also a symptom of a much more
dire foreign policy failure of the Bush Administration. The MKO, widely
believed to be originally created and sponsored by Saddam Hussein's regime
before handing itself over to its new Beltway patron, has for years been crossing
the border from Iraq into Western Iran to attack civilian and military targets
there. Under the ceasefire, the MKO is being allowed to keep its Iraq bases and
weaponry and to continue its cross-border attacks. The MKO has, in short,
shifted from being a pawn in Saddam Hussein's anti-Iranian vendetta to being a
pawn in the Bush Administration's anti-Iranian vendetta. Under George Bush's
own doctrine, Iran should have every right to invade US-occupied Iraq on the
grounds that it is harboring terrorists.
The
Bush version of an anti-Iranian vendetta, not surprisingly, has a number of
fronts. Today, for example, a carefully planted "officials said"
story in the New York Times--one of two newspapers of record for White House
press releases with neutral-sounding bylines pasted over the original author's
name--details White House efforts to seek "broad international support for
an official finding that Tehran has violated its commitment not to produce
nuclear weapons."
Iranian
interest in obtaining a nuclear capacity--to counter both Saddam's ambitions
and Israel's enormous (and illegal) existing stockpile--has been a quietly
accepted reality in international circles for years. While the Saddam threat is
gone, the American threat is suddenly far more urgent than Saddam was since
1990. Moreover, it was the Bush Administration itself which, by abandoning ABM
restrictions (among numerous other moves), fired a starting gun for a new race
to nuclear proliferation. But the Bush Administration's decision to press the
Iran issue now is more than an opportunistic linkage with North Korea's newly
declared nuclear production, a linkage used to justify a troika (the infamous
"Axis of Evil") that has never made sense to anybody in any world
capital other than Washington DC.
Other
fronts have opened up as well: the bellicose public pronouncements by
high-ranking officials touting American Empire, Middle Eastern dominos, and the
like; the establishment of major new US military bases on Iran's western (Iraq)
and eastern (Afghanistan) borders; and what, in addition to MKO support, is
assumed to be a major covert effort to destabilize Tehran. Taken together, a US
war to effect "regime change" in Iran seems to be under careful
construction, if not in its opening stages.
The
problem is, Iran's current "regime" offers the region's best true
hope for democracy.
The
images most Americans have of Iran since what is referred to universally in the
Islamic world as the Iranian Revolution are a quarter-century old. They are of
Ayatollah Khomeini and a coterie of severe-looking bearded clerics, ruthlessly
imposing a theocracy based on religious law, tolerating no dissent, and
severing hands and heads in public spectacles of punishment. They are the
images of mobs shouting "Death to America," and of yellow ribbons and
the hostage crisis that crippled Jimmy Carter's presidency. They are outdated.
To
be sure, Iran is still a theocracy, still uses the Koran as the basis of its
legal system, and still thinks poorly of America. It is also the only Muslim
country in the region that sustains competing political parties and genuinely
contested elections. It has, in recent years, been a political petri dish, as
so-called "moderates" slowly and unevenly tempered the harshness of
the original Revolution, and began to introduce more cultural freedoms, greater
freedom of expression, experiments in economic development, and greater
autonomy in local governments. A new generation of Iranian students agitates
not for greater repression, but for greater freedom.
The
notion that the yearnings of Arab and Islamic peoples for greater self-
governance must necessarily come in the form of Western-style democracy is as
arrogant as the old colonialist notion that primitive brown peoples were
incapable of self-governance at all, or that--if they were even genetically
capable--they could only sustain small spoonfuls after careful training.
Instead, left to their own devices, the chances that the citizens of Iran will
be able to freely decide leaders and public policies are far greater than the
chances of Iraqis under the historically, culturally, and spiritually
illiterate model the Bush Administration proposes to import. An unmolested Iran
is also far likelier to be able to serve as a model for other Islamic states currently
ruled by despots.
But
United States leaders -- especially the neocons that now seem to be the
dominant force in determining US foreign policy -- seem incapable of not
molesting another country's experiments in freedom. What Iranians are
attempting to create is democracy in an Islamic context. It is a remarkable
experiment that would be in the United States' direct self-interest to
encourage. Instead, the White House seems eager, almost desperate, to pick a
fight with Tehran. In doing so, it strengthens the already considerable power
of Tehran's hard-liners--clerics who take a dim view of the country's
increasing liberalism.
For
all the brutality of the Revolution, far more people died, both on the streets
and in the dungeons, under the country's previous ruler, the CIA- installed
Shah of Iran, who ruled the country for a quarter-century (1954-78) and is
remembered not only for his government's staggering brutality, but also its
corruption. The austerity of Tehran's clerics is admired and appreciated by Iranians
who remember the kleptocracy of the "Peacock Throne" all too well.
American
assurances of pure intentions and beckoning freedom ring hollow with the memory
of the Shah (not to mention the current crop of US-supported sheiks in
neighboring countries). As such, a direct threat to Iranian security by the
United States is the best possible way to strengthen the political hand of the
clerics who toppled America's brutal dictator last time around. Short of a
direct invasion--and America now has hundreds of thousands of troops in the
region and a public policy of unprovoked invasion--it's hard to imagine a more
directly threatening stance to Iran than new bases on two sides, a Persian Gulf
full of aircraft carriers on a third side, overt assistance to cross-border
terror raids, covert support for who knows what, and an effort to affect
international isolation that follows virtually the same script that the same
President just used to invade, conquer, and occupy the country next door.
This
sends a message--not just to Iranians trying to construct a model of greater
freedom, but to every other country in the Islamic world.
What
on earth is Washington doing?
Geov Parrish is a
Seattle-based columnist and reporter for the Seattle Weekly, In These Times and
Eat the State! This article first appeared in Eat The State!