Past midnight, my flight from Dubai to Tehran crosses the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The sky is moonless and black, as are the waters below, except for the running lights of the freighters moored or under way. Among them are the forty-plus vessels of two U.S. carrier groups recently deployed to the Gulf by Cheney and Bush.
Iran has never threatened to block this narrow arm of the sea but the explanation for presence of this armada, which carries more destructive force than all that was expended in World War II, is to keep sea lanes open. Waxing ironic, carrier Nimitz’s commander calls his ship “1100 feet of diplomacy.”
Military aid to General Musharraf’s Pakistan on Iran’s southeastern border, invasion of Afghanistan to the northeast, occupation of Iraq on Iran’s west, coupled with Bush’s earlier labeling of Iran part of an “axis of evil,” confirms Iran always was this administration’s target.
In an odd turn on history, China has established an economic presence nearby, building a massive deep-water port at Gwadar, Pakistan, one of a chain of stations China installed around southern Asia. The US calls these China’s “String of Pearls.” The Pentagon myopically labels these developments “creations of a climate of uncertainty.” Gwadar is 43 miles from Iran.
Two recent administration-ordered documents command our attention. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2006)” concludes “China’s leaders must realize … they cannot … somehow ‘lock up’ energy supplies around the world.” Yet the US itself expresses just such a goal in the Middle East.
“The Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2006)” projects a 20-year war against “global terrorist networks that exploit Islam to advance radical political aims.” Pentagon operational works include “shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads” – in short, continued military intervention. Force projections are for capability “to conduct multiple, overlapping wars.” Members of the military are described as “the workforce.” The new weapons tab is $1.4-trillion. It is important to remember Paul Wolfowitz authored the mother of such strike plans, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000),” well before Cheney and Bush were selected by the Supreme Court.
One can imagine Eisenhower shouting from the grave, “I warned you!” For what has steadily grown since World War II is an American foreign policy driven by its arms industry, supplying not only its technically advanced military but also Middle East countries allied in a goal of controlling the region’s resources. Cheney and Bush have accelerated this process, and the reason the Democrats’ leadership has taken impeachment off the table is that they too embrace it. Competition with Russia and China for dwindling oil, our politicians have decided, is to be settled by projecting military force. As was the case in Iraq, planning for consequences, local and global, is not seriously considered.
Western media would have us picture Iran as closed and foreboding as North Korea. Utterly convinced of this, others asked before and since my work there, “How were you able to go?” Indeed, fewer than a thousand Americans visit Iran annually, further limiting revelation that Iran is prosperous, slowly recovering from its poverty under the Shah, and approaching self-sufficiency. Iranians love Americans and everywhere wanted to take visitor’s pictures.
Iran, a country four times the size of Iraq with a very youthful population of 70-million (three times that of Iraq) possesses vast treasures of ancient art and architecture, world famous mosques, and a cultured, highly literate people. One consequence of U.S. invasion of Iraq was destruction of its museums and libraries. Often forgotten is that during Europe’s Dark Ages, this part of the world was the center of arts, science and learning.
What constitutes a democratic government is in the eyes of the beholder. It may come as revelation that Iran’s parliament, president, and clerics are popularly elected. These clerics, like the College of Cardinals, select ayatollahs. Ayatollah Khamenei is the present “supreme ruler,” not President Ahmandinejad.
Significantly, Khamenei says building nuclear weapons is “un-Islamic” and has issued a fatwa (prohibition) against building them. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ELBaradei finds no evidence Iran is making nuclear weapons. Only from the White House comes this accusation.
Here lies the fundamental crux of East-West conflict. As Edward Said spelled out in his classic study “Orientalism,” during the 19th Century the colonialist West fabricated an East suitable for control and exploitation. Iranians with whom I spoke universally reject development of nuclear weapons, but the West conveniently conflates development of nuclear power as a WMD threat. A further illustration of how sanctions limit technical development is that a significant amount of Iranian oil is refined by Israel at Haifa.
Finally, to glimpse Iran’s nuclear facility and visit the nearby city Natanz is to be acquainted with some of the men, women and children who would be vaporized by attacks from the Nimitz. The specter is that those who presume to know more from afar are driven by ideology rather than science. So called “intelligence,” as we learned about WMDs and Iraq, can be unreliable.
Ahmandinejad’s popularity has sagged nearly as much as that of the Cheney/Bush team in this country. He benefits from bellicose defense of his country and for this reason, goes to extraordinary lengths to bait both Israel and America.
It is a mistake, however, to accept the criticism leveled at him with every mention of his name in western media. As explained by his own government, and scholars here, his alleged condemnation of Israel and call for destruction was directed not at Israelis or Jews but at “the Zionist government of Israel.” We must get translations right; contrived ones distort fact.
My 10-week sojourn in the Middle East included filming interviews with a sampling of the 5-million internally displaced and exiled Iraqi refugees, as well as weeks in Palestine. Nothing in this region will be settled until the Palestinian question is equitably resolved, but as the thrust of American power has long loomed over Iran, it is that country and its people about which we must now be informed. Iran empathized with Americans after 9/11, offered assistance in stabilizing Iraq, and took initiatives to end 25 years of animosity. Three years of overtures were shamefully rejected. Cheney and Bush had a different agenda.
Information and diplomacy are the path to peace. A new president in America could begin an Iran dialogue with apology for the U.S. intervention that precipitated Islamic revolution, if that does not come too late.