Ominous Signs In Iran Under Siege

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
October 2, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"



Iran is increasingly under siege. From cyber-attacks on its nuclear infrastructure to biting economic and financial sanctions, to overt support for (armed) opposition groups, to a military build-up of neighbors, it appears that outside powers are making a concerted effort at regime change in the Islamic Republic.

If unchecked, this will likely yield growing regional tensions instead of dialogue that reduces them. For all practical purposes, United States President Barack Obama's "Iran engagement" policy has turned into a subversive engagement with pro-democracy and opposition groups, tantamount to a new level of interference in Iran's internal affairs under the veneer of democracy and human rights.

By all accounts, in the aftermath of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's controversial speech at the United Nations last week eliciting harsh Western responses, the prospects for dialogue appear to have diminished, replaced by a new, and ominous, qualitative turn for the worse in the tumultuous US-Iran relations. This in addition to the new "human rights sanctions" imposed by the US government on a number of Iranian officials, as well as the new drumbeats of war by various US pundits. (SeeNew Iran sanctions as war chorus rises Asia Times Online, October 1, 2010.) 


Adding new teeth to the harsh jaws of Iran sanctions, the US government has just announced that four major oil companies are quitting Iran, which, if true, represents a major blow to the ailing energy sector. It has been forced to shut down several major projects, such as in Assaluyeh, which is bound to reverberate throughout the oil-based economy in the near future. United States Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said on Thursday that Royal Dutch Shell, based in Britain and the Netherlands; France's Total; Eni of Italy; and the Norway-based Statoil had committed to no further investments in Iran.

Coinciding with Tehran's announcement of a new delay in launching the Bushehr power plant, widely attributed to the cyber-attack that Tehran say originate from the US and or Israel, these represent serious setbacks for Iran that the country can ill-afford.

Simultaneously, neither the US nor its Western allies involved in nuclear negotiation with Iran have displayed any genuine interest in moving forward with a new round of negotiation, despite the conciliatory gestures of Ahmadinejad during his New York visit. There, he repeatedly expressed optimism on new dialogue and even went as far as declaring Tehran's readiness to halt the 20% uranium enrichment (for the Tehran reactor) if a proposed nuclear swap deal was accepted by the Vienna Group, consisting of US, Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

According to some Iran experts, Ahmadinejad's 9/11 accusations hurled at the US government during his UN General Assembly speech served to put Iran on the offensive in light of all the variegated attacks on Iran, which had put Tehran "on the defensive". It has also served the president's domestic considerations, given the solid support by the majority of Iran's parliament (Majlis), many of whom had been vocally critical of the president prior to his New York visit.

But, as an untimely trade-off between internal gains versus external loss, it is unclear whether the 9/11 remarks will have a lasting negative impression on Obama, who lambasted the speech in an interview with the Persian program of the BBC. That would be unfortunate, given the fact that while in New York Ahmadinejad revealed the existence of a new letter to Obama, this while praising the US government for the first time as "an influential world power".

None of those conciliatory gestures seems to matter the least nowadays to Washington, still angry at Ahmadinejad's audacity in raising the touchy issue of 9/11. This despite the fact that other world leaders such as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez have long been making the same allegations of US government complicity in the 9/11 tragedies, with some help from various US sources. [1]

Ironically, compared to the light reactions in the US media to Chavez's allegations, Ahmadinejad has been the recipient of the harshest responses, with a Fox news reporter interviewing him asking him how dare he makes such "stupid and nutty claims?"

One of his key advisers, who spoke with the author on the condition of anonymity, maintains that Ahmadinejad's "communicative rationality" is his ace, which disarms his US media critics who "actually expose their own biases by their rude behavior".

In light of the concerted US-led campaign of destabilization of Iran, the stage is now set for more ominous developments on the US-Iran front, given the proximity of US forces to Iranian (land and maritime) territory; in a word, at this point no one can rule out future triggers such as in the Persian Gulf, scene of potential naval flash points between US and Iran.

With the risk scenarios many, and a poisoned climate evaporating the chances for selective cooperation on regional issues such as Ahmadinejad's offer of cooperation with the US on Afghanistan, the future of US-Iran relations looks hopelessly bleak at the moment. A familiar story since the onset of the anti-Western Islamist regime in Iran however, the new level of hostilities between the two countries may be followed by a cooling off period caused by the mere threat of an unwanted spiral toward physical confrontation.

According to a Tehran political analyst, the US and Israel have exploited the Iranian president's 9/11 comments to deflect attention from Israel's total disregard for Obama's call for extending the moratorium on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which he characterized as an impediment to peace process in his UN speech.

Instead of focusing on the Israeli non-response and the mad rush for building thousands of new housing units in the occupied territories, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is reportedly granted the discretion of setting the Iran policy, has been side-tracked, busy issuing punitive measure after measure on Iran, to the delight of the pro-Israel lobbyists.

Best described as a Iraq war-in-slow-motion, the current impasse with Iran is rapidly acquiring all the ingredients of a major international crisis warranting prudent conflict-management by the world community. The European Union, which is outsourcing its Iran policy to the Obama administration, requires an urgent wake-up call before it is too late. But then again who in Europe today can resist the Obama "charm offensive" even though it may be the Mephistophelean charm of a militarized superpower?

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. He is author of Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his latest book, Looking for rights at Harvard, is now available.

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