[Mb-civic] FW: Why Europe Is Wrong on Iran

Sat May 28 09:12:54 PDT 2005

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 11:24:43 -0400
Subject: Why Europe Is Wrong on Iran

Arab News
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily

Saturday, 28, May, 2005 (19, Rabi` al-Thani, 1426)

Why Europe Is Wrong on Iran
Amir Taheri ‹

During his visit to Washington last week, Britain¹s Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw told his American interlocutors that the European Union¹s initiative
on Iran, of which his government is a part, was heading for an impasse. But
when asked what the next move should be, all that Straw had to say was: Keep
talking until after the Iranian presidential election.

The Europeans said a similar thing last year when talks on Iran¹s alleged
nuclear ambitions had hit another brick-wall. At that time the advice was to
keep talking until after the Iranian parliamentary election. Well, that
election took place without producing any evolution in the Iranian position
except that the Islamic Republic may now be a year closer to the ³surge
capacity² it needs to become a nuclear power.

The latest round of talks, slated to continue until after the Iranian
presidential election, is equally likely to produce no change in Tehran¹s
position. Tehran will continue to use the talks as a diplomatic smokescreen
while driving a wedge between Europe and the United States.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to blame Iran for this state of affairs. The
leadership in Tehran is acting in accordance with its own agenda that is
aimed at securing the technological and industrial base that would enable
Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal if and when it so decides. The creation of
that ³surge capacity² is a key element in the Islamic Defense Doctrine as
approved by Khamenehi in the mid-1990s.

The Europeans are victims of their own delusions. Their policy on Iran is
based on a logical contradiction and a number of illusions.

The contradiction is this: They assume that Iran has been lying about its
nuclear program for two decades, and invite the Iranians to stop lying. But
to do that, they would first have to admit that they had been lying. The
Europeans are asking Iran to stop doing what Iran insists it is not doing at
all. Thus to satisfy the Europeans Iran must first do what it says it is not
doing and then stop doing it in a verifiable way. Remember the conundrum
about the liar who says that, all his life, he had told nothing but lies?

What about the European illusions?

One such is Straw¹s belief that the results of the Iranian presidential
election will have an impact on Tehran¹s position. ³We have to wait and see
who wins,² he told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

What Straw ignores is that we already know who the winner is. He is a
mid-ranking mulla named Ali Hussein-Khamenehi whose position as ³The Supreme
Guide² in the system created by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, gives him
unlimited constitutional powers. Whoever wins the Iranian presidency next
month will be little more than a member of Khamenehi¹s vast entourage. Like
all his predecessors, the future president will be part of a façade that
hides the true decision-making mechanisms of the system. Any suggestion that
a president of the Islamic Republic could overrule ³The Supreme Guide² is
too absurd to merit refutation.

The second illusion stems from the first. For over a year, Straw and his
German and French colleagues have been talking to a certain Hassan Rouhani,
a junior mulla with the title of secretary of The High Council of Islamic
National Defense. By all accounts Rouhani is a bonviveur with a sense of
humor. His friends say that, in his lighter moments, he makes a good
imitation of the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

But anyone with the slightest knowledge of how things work in Tehran would
know that Rouhani has no decision-making powers even on procedural matters.

The Europeans have never been able to see any of the real decision-makers
(known as tasmimgiran) in Tehran let alone engage them in negotiation.
Rouhani and other facade officials who talk to the Europeans may honestly
believe that Iran is not up to mischief if only because they do not know
what is going on. Only those in the camarilla around ³The Supreme Guide²
have the full picture. The doors of that camarilla, however, remain shut to
the Europeans.

The Europeans also ignore the messianic nature of the ideology that sustains
the Islamic Republic. That ideology sees itself in a global competition with
Western liberalism of which the European Union is one manifestation.
Khomeinism¹s ambition is to win that competition one day, and remold the
global system on the basis of its vision. That ambition may seem laughable
to outsiders who know that the Islamic Republic counts for little in the
global balance of power. Some in the Tehran establishment also regard such
ambitions as absurd. The truth, however, is that the system cannot act
against its own nature.

The problem that the Europeans, among others, have with the Islamic Republic
is not one of behavior, as Straw and his colleagues assume. The problem is
with the nature of the Iranian regime.

Put in terms of practical power politics the problem is simple: The present
global system is almost exclusively a Western creation. Francis Fukuyama¹s
theory of ³the end of history² is true in the sense that there no longer is
a major ideological challenge to the Western world, which is now opposed
only by a few oddballs such as North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Cuba. The
Khomeinist regime sees itself as the successor of the late Soviet Union as
the principal challenger of the West¹s global domination.

Talleyrand once said that there are powers that will not stop because they
do not know how; they stop only when they are stopped. The experience of the
past three decades shows that this is true of the Islamic Republic.

Hamid-Reza Asefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, has already
dismissed the package of concessions that the Europeans and, to a lesser
extent, the Bush administration, have offered Iran, as ³a joke.² He is not
being frivolous. Almost half a century of Cold War with the USSR teaches at
least one lesson: Your adversary will stop doing whatever it is that you
don¹t like only if you stop him. If you cannot, he won¹t stop. Why should
he?

If Iran has decided to get the bomb, it is not going to stop because Straw
talks to a junior mulla. Nor would the promise of investment and trade
persuade them to change course. As for the threat of ³referring² them to the
United Nations, then above-mentioned Asefi has already described it as
³laughable².

The European initiative is not only useless but could also be dangerous. By
fostering Tehran¹s illusion that the Islamic Republic could take the major
powers for a ride, the European initiative strengthens the hands of those in
the camarilla who believe, or pretend to believe, that their war of
attrition against a ³corrupt, cowardly and moribund West² is winnable. There
are many ways of dealing with the Khomeinist challenge. The European
imitative, now heading for another failure, is the worst.

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URL: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=64482&d=28&m=5&y=2005

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