NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
June 25, 2003
Persian miniatures
Iran not Israel/Palestine is now the real centre of action in the Middle East as the ayatollahs totter. This is much more than an Iranian domestic question with some regional implications -- for when the world's first most successful and longest-lived Islamist totalitarian regime finally dies the prestige of Islamic political fanaticism everywhere will be catastrophically undermined. Nor would it be merely an intangible alteration of perception or mood; there would be many immediate practical consequences. Though limited in scale each of the changes would be decisively for the better; and in combination a more significant victory for the side of the angels than the defeat of Saddam Hussein. If the ayatollahs fall the international Hizbollah terrorist network will be orphaned; the Syrian Baathist dictatorship will lose its main foreign ally and prop; the North Koreans will lose their principal weapons market; the nuisance of Iranian subversion will be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan; the last serious Russian influence in the region will evaporate; France will lose its chief remaining means to sow mischief against U.S. interests; and the U.S. will lose its only credible rival as a military presence in the Gulf. It is moreover just possible that the world oil market will go into long-term glut from the collapse of political obstacles to free trade. This would have various economic implications debatable environmental ones but two indisputable strategic effects: the permanent elimination of Saudi Arabia's oil weapon and the gradual removal of the oil crutch upon which the region's economies lean. The very need for productive enterprise to feed swelling young populations will force free market reforms that will change the nature of Arab society. And this is before calculating the power of example if Iran -- flanked Allah willing by other successes in Iraq and Afghanistan -- can establish a secular democratic constitution. The desire for it is overwhelming and after the fall of first the Shah and then the mad mullahs Iran may have exhausted the alternatives. The prospects for a democratic constitutional order are better in Iran than in any Arab country from the Iranians' willingness to do it themselves. They do not require a foreign liberator. At least neither they nor the Bush administration think they do. The news from the streets in all leading cities is of protests still escalating. Unlike Iraq the news is available and great hordes of Iranian Internet bloggers are now spreading it around. Sophisticated mostly U.S.-based Iranian exile media are beamed into the country by satellite and the ayatollahs apparently divided among themselves would now almost have to shut down the power grid to re-isolate people. The Iranian WMD question is also coming to the point of decision. This time there is no real dispute (as there was over Iraq) between the U.S. and the IAEA about what the regime is up to; and even the Russians have begun to show some alarm over aspects of Iran's nuclear research they perhaps didn't know about coming to light from independent reports within Iran itself (and reaching me as plausible rumour). The two issues (of Iranian freedom and Iranian WMD) previously only indirectly related are rapidly converging towards critical mass. One way or another the U.S. must prevent the ayatollahs getting The Bomb. Ideally the Iranian people will achieve "regime change" in the window of time remaining; if they can't something else will have to be tried it may not be possible to wait until President Bush's second term. Public opinion can change radically and quickly with events and with arguments; polls are just snapshots within something broader and deeper; but sometimes a poll captures something quite amazing in a single frame. Such was I believe the case yesterday when a Washington Post-ABC poll was released that showed Americans were by a margin of 56 to 38 per cent in favour of using military force to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons programme. This result was obtained despite set-up questions designed to worry people about e.g. "the mounting number of U.S. military casualties in the aftermath of war in Iraq" (cutely worded for no matter how low a death toll may be it is always "mounting" until the moment when the victims begin rising from the dead). And it was obtained before the Bush administration had made any argument for using force against Iran for any purpose at all. So note that: the people of the United States are more hawkish than their President and more eager to project U.S. military power. That puts Mr. Bush in the driver's seat though it doesn't help him steer. He is in a political position to make effective threats to the mullahs to aggravate their domestic problems and thus hasten their fall -- if he steers cleverly. But if he actually does get into a position where he must put his money where his mouth is -- and order an air attack on Russian-built Iranian nuclear installations as the Israelis once did against a French-built Iraqi reactor in 1981 -- there is no telling what would come of it. This might just be what the mullahs are praying for. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top