OpinionsThe US has aided extremism in Iran

The US has aided extremism in Iran

Date:

Bhopinder Singh

The moderates had no substantive case to justify their re-election and their popularity plummeted, and the US facilitated their helplessness

The history of the fractured US-Iranian relationship is fraught with deliberate amnesia and convenient posturing on both sides that lays a disproportionately large blame on the Iranian side, in driving Iran towards hardline anchorage. The starting point of the American angst and narrative is the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the following US Embassy hostage drama that lasted for 444 days. In the Iranian conscience (completely ignored in the US), the grouse started much earlier with the US-backed coup against Iran's nationalist, reformist and immensely popular Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953.

Mosaddegh was not a bigot, instead he personified secular democracy — but his moves to liberate Iran from the grossly unfair and inequitable stranglehold of western oil companies were his undoing. The proud people of a civilisation founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BC did not take too kindly to repeated sleights, manipulations and clientelism that were to trigger the revolt and takeover by the religious fundamentals, ultimately. In the tentative years following the Iranian Revolution, Americans strengthened the hands of the Iranian Ayatollahs during the deadly Iran-Iraq war, by supporting the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein (who too would be disowned later). The US knowingly supported Iraq with double-usage , shared intelligence, given training, overlooked excesses and continued giving economic support — the decade-long war with an estimated 1-2 million casualties, mostly on the Iranian side, galvanised the Shiite spirit of martyrdom and legitimised the theocracy in Iran. Later, from 1989 to 2005, Iran saw the presidentship of moderate pragmatists in Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami — this was also the years of the two Gulf Wars and Islamic extremism, where the pointers were squarely on the Arab Sheikdoms, yet Iran remained designated ‘Foremost State Sponsor of Terrorism'!

With nothing to suggest the Iranian hand in the 9/11 attack, the rise of groups like Al Qaida, Taliban, or later the Islamic State (IS), debilitating sanctions against Iran continued and it figured prominently in the “Axis of evil”. Americans wasted opportunities to thaw relations with Iran, partly driven by pressures from Arab Sheikdoms and Israel, who had their own sectarian and domestic considerations, as also due to American calculation of resultant cost-benefit analysis of hypothetically undoing its belligerent posture. On the rebound, Iranians soon reposed faith in the hardline populism and fiery anti-US rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — willy-nilly, the Americans had forsaken the opportunity of engaging meaningfully with the pragmatists and the reformists.

Oddly enough, confrontational of the Iranian hardliners suited both Tehran and Washington DC as each regime was able to justify their intransigence to their domestic constituents and the Arab-Israeli combine was content with the rupture. Only the coincidentally overlapping tenures of a statesman in Barack Obama and a yet another Iranian moderate-progressive, Hassan Rouhani, could nudge and shape the pathbreaking Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran Nuclear Deal. In July 2015, the deal was signed and the crippling sanctions against Iran were lifted; for once and only for once, the hands of the moderate political options in Iran were strengthened. However, within a year, Donald Trump was railing against the “rotten” deal and threatened to “tear up” the deal, if elected. Trump was indeed elected, and he did renege on a deal that was complying with all its provisions, as per all expert accounts. Humiliating sanctions soon returned.

Joe Biden had campaigned on “rejoining” the Iranian Deal, albeit with political correctness of “if Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal”. Biden was confirmed on November 7, 2020, and sworn in on January 20, 2021. The Iranian presidential elections were slotted for June 18, almost five months after Biden assumed the presidentship, but Biden, who oversaw the Israel-Palestinian flare-up in the interim, did not move forward on re-ratifying the Iranian Nuclear Deal, something he had promised. Even on lifting sanctions as part of COVID-related humanitarian relief, Biden remained inexplicably silent. Beyond the controlled levers of the Iranian Election Monitoring Agency (EMA), managed by the clergy-led Guardian Council, allowing for only a handful of candidates to run — popular circumstances and frustrations with the continuing failures of the moderates in power to stymie the socio-economic conditions or revive the Iranian Nuclear Deal successfully led to revisionist sentiments and the return of the familiar hardliners, with Ebrahim Raisi. The moderates had no substantive case to justify their re-election and their popularity had plummeted, and the US had facilitated their helplessness.

Familiar sabre-rattling has returned with Raisi refusing to budge from pursuing Iranian militaristic plans, supporting friendly militias or from meeting Biden. The new Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, has opened account by calling out Iran's “regime of brutal hangmen” whereas the US is left mumbling a half-convincing, “Iranians were denied their right to choose their own leaders in a free and fair electoral process”. History repeats itself with the US misusing its “monopoly on truth”.

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed are personal.)

Northlines
Northlines
The Northlines is an independent source on the Web for news, facts and figures relating to Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and its neighbourhood.

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