The hornet’s nest of Iran: a crash course

In many ways, American foreign policy, particularly as it relates to the “War on Terror,” can be characterized by its refusal to attempt to understand our enemies.

There’s a good reason for this, actually. The driving narrative of the last eight years has been that the United States is the beacon of hope, the representative of all that is good and pure in the world, and our enemies are ham-fisted evildoers who simply like to watch free societies collapse. Many people have bought heart and soul into this line, and if we were to actually take a look at the effect our actions in the past may have had in shaping our present, that story has a great chance of falling apart.

Iran is shaping up to be President Bush’s last hurrah in trying to be the next FDR or Churchill and prove to the world that he’s a tireless crusader of the torch of democracy. North Korea as a node on our Axis of Evil has really faded away since we’ve decided to do deals with them, and we’re already in Iraq, so now it’s Iran’s turn. The way we’ve been fed it, the nation is either a bunch of nice people led by a maniac who wants to nuke Israel and the US or they all want to. Either way, the idea is that they’re evil and hate America and we’d better do something about it.

I’m not sure if the lack of historical perspective is intentional or if no one involved in the fist-pumping is aware of events that happened before Bush was elected. I’d call it revising history, but “erasing” might be a more accurate way of phrasing it.

Let’s go back a ways and remind ourselves that the very first injection of the United States into the affairs of Persia was the 1953 CIA-backed coup that placed the Shah into power. This was not a minor event. The United States felt that it needed more control in the petroleum exportation of a Middle Eastern nation and, quite literally, stuck their own guy in control to make it happen.

One of the remarkable things about us is that we’ve not had a single revolution or overthrow of any kind since the nation was formed. But try and think what it would be like if the Chinese embassy orchestrated a revolt that stormed the White House and put a pro-China dictator in place. No matter how much you might dislike Bush, or how great the new guy would be, the fact that another country stuck their nose into our business probably wouldn’t sit well.

It didn’t help that the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi immediately dismantled what freedoms Iranians enjoyed and turned himself into a dictator. He held his post until the 1979 revolution, giving you an idea of how willing he was to let the people decide.

That was the United States’ very first foray into Iranian affairs. A CIA-backed coup that took out an elected official (granted, not elected by the citizens at large) and replaced him with a rather ruthless dictator that stripped away as much of the country’s liberties as he could. But hey, at least he was friendly with the United States.

We look now at the state of Iran, with its clerics and Ayatollahs, as a kind of cruel theocracy that would never have the support of the citizens, but that’s still more ignorance of Iran’s history. The infamous Ass-a-Hole-a Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, came into power not because he, like the United States’ pet Shah, snuck in and overthrew the current government against the nation’s wishes. Instead, it was a true revolution a la the French, whereby the people wanted the government changed. Granted they put in a theocratic dictator of sorts, giving them only a nominal republic, but the point remains.

Think about that for a moment. The man the United States placed at the head of Iran was so despised that eventually the people revolted. Bush is supremely unpopular in the United States and he’s got a guy championing his causes that could win the election. Imagine just how much we’d have to hate Bush to actually march to Washington and overthrow the government.

One hostage crisis later and now suddenly the United States is mad at Iran. This was pretty convenient since Iran was also dealing with a war with Iraq. We tend to think of our current kerfuffle as the 2nd Gulf War, but it’s more like the fifth depending on how you count. And yes, the United States got involved.

Specifically, we backed Iraq. It’s probably not hard to figure out why. Iran’s sitting on huge reserves of oil and they had the audacity to go and overthrow the dictator we foisted upon them. So the US gave Iraq arms, intelligence, money, the works. Basically threw our all behind it, to the point that Reagan proclaimed that the United States could not “afford” for Iraq to lose to Iran.

That’s US involvement with Iran #2.

So zap forward an administration and in 1995 the United States had some growing trade relations with Iran. That all came to a rather sudden end when President Clinton decided to implement a complete trade embargo against Iran to punish them for supporting terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. Actually, the more bizarre part is something that should sound familiar: “American intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran, which sits on more energy resources than its civilian economy will ever need, is pursuing reactor and other nuclear technologies from Russia and China to develop atomic weapons.” Sounds a bit familiar to me.

Years went by without any real new developments, until the towers fell and President Bush decided it was high time to go on a crusade and/or jihad against every Middle Eastern country we weren’t strong allies with (meaning although 15 of the 19 hijackers came from there and got their funding from ‘em, Saudi Arabia was off-limits). Iran became an easy target since the United States had a rather noticeable lack of friendly relations with them, so that got us our famous “Axis of Evil” speech, listing off Iran along with North Korea and the now-invaded Iraq.

Which brings us to the present day. If you add up what has happened between the United States and Iran, you’ll have the following:

• Led a coup to overthrow an elected leader and put in a dictator.
• Funded and armed their enemy during a war.
• Imposed a complete trade ban due to ties with terrorists and nuclear aspirations.
• Called them a part of the “Axis of Evil” at a time when we were invading their neighbors on the east and west.

Is it any wonder why Iran is a little less than embracing of the US? Imagine if you will that China had overthrown Bush, then after we tossed out their guy and put another in, they funded and armed Iraq during the Persian Gulf and then invaded Mexico and Canada while calling us a bunch of terrorists. Do you really think Washington would try and play ball with Beijing?

Let me save you time: hell no. Even if Bush had a 1% approval rating (with that 1% being his family and friends) and we vehemently disagreed with everything he stands for, there is no way we wouldn’t be flooding the streets calling for Hu Jintao’s head on a pike.

This isn’t an attempt to make Iran look like the cute and innocent victims here, but it’s a reminder that, much as Sean Hannity would argue it, America’s conduct can have repercussions. Toss out words like “fault” and “deserve” for these situations, that’s the child’s way of looking at foreign policy. A child who refuses to listen when his dad says not to tug on the dog’s tail doesn’t deserve to have his face chomped on, but it’s a reality that had he listened, it wouldn’t have happened.

There’s this perpetual “because we’re America” attitude where people think that the US can do whatever the hell it wants and other countries will somehow let it slide simply by virtue of the US being the US. They think that since we’re the torchbearers of freedom and democracy, the world will just understand that all of our actions are for good so no one will get mad even when our actions are to the detriment of someone’s country. After all, we’re America, we wouldn’t have done it without a good reason.

Our legacy with Iran is not one of friendship and mutual respect spoiled because a handful of despots decided to fund terrorism and force us to reluctantly take action. The United States has, frankly, screwed over Iran far more than they ever did us, and it’s no surprise that their leaders are kinda pissed off and don’t feel like playing nice now. It might be a good idea to learn the lessons of history to figure out both how to solve the current problem and prevent new ones from forming.

And no, that isn’t “sympathizing with our enemies” or “blaming America”. It’s understanding simple cause and effect relations. Without being able to do something that elementary, it’s hard to see how these people plan on “winning” the “War on Terror”.