“What is the Iran problem that analysts and policymakers often talk about?” This was the question fired at me at a recent brain-storming session with a number of political commentators in London.
The short answer is that, depending on who is looking, Iran is made of a cluster of problems.
To some, like successive US administrations, the core of the problem is the current regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Never mind that for the past quarter of a century US intelligence services have regularly reported that Iran wasn’t doing so every US president presented “tackling the Iranian nuclear problem” as a priority. Under President Barack Obama that “problem” consumed almost all the four years of John Kerry as Secretary of State.
The US wasn’t alone in that context. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited Tehran five times to “solve” the “nuclear problem.” All German and most French foreign ministers did the same.
In a different context the, “Iran problem” has been defined as “exporting terrorism” with cases concerning over 30 countries –from Kuwait to Argentina and passing by Türkiye, Switzerland and many members of the European Union. To that must be added financial, arms and political support that Tehran has given to almost all Palestinian groups fighting Israel not to mention guerrilla outfits in Latin America.
Setting up “proxies” in a number of countries, notably post-Saddam Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and west Yemen has also been cited as another facet of the “Iran problem” with the killing of untold numbers of Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Yemenis by the Quds Force and its local mercenaries.
Interestingly, the outside world has seldom seen the “Iran problem” in terms of what the regime has been doing to the Iranian people for more than four decades. That includes tens of thousands of executions, several instances of massacring unarmed protestors and dissidents and Iran topping the world in number of political prisoners. And that is not to mention transforming a more or less developed economy into what resembles a poor house lorded upon by an ultra-rich minority.
Well, all that may sound like a litany of woes part of which may describe a few other countries. So what is the core of the “Iran problem”?
Without answering that question, no solution to the problems paraded above is conceivable. Although the concept of original sin doesn’t exist in Iranian culture I think we could use it to describe what happened in 1979.
At that time part of the clergy in alliance with a variety of leftist and tier-mondiste groups seized power and transformed Iran from a normal nation-state into a vehicle for an ideological cocktail made of a localised version of Muslim Brotherhood narrative and misunderstood Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tropes.
The mistake the outside world made was to ignore that transformation and continue with the assumption that they were dealing with a normal nation-state with regular interests, aspirations and ambitions of normal nation-states.
Falling for that illusion was facilitated by the fact that part of the pre-1979 Iranian nation-state had survived and could be used as a façade for the new Khomeinist regime. The bureaucracy was functioning more or less as before while there were enough characters with American and European education to play the role of ministers, diplomats and business negotiators.
This is how Chris Patten, then the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesman, put it: Dealing with Tehran we meet talented actors who know the diplomatic and political jargon as good as anyone. What we find out however is that they are just playing diplomat or minister while others wield the real power.
To complicate matters further the powers that dealt with Iran gradually formed alliances with parts of the cartel that dominated the fragmented political structure in Tehran.
Russia focused attention on the “Leader’s House” (beyt) and the person of “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei and chunks of the Revolutionary Guard Corps under his control. China put its chips on the faction led by Ali-Akbar Rafsanjani and his business associates.
The US forged close ties with so-called “Reformists” such as ex-Premier Mir-Hossein Mousavi and later the group known as “New York Boys” that acted as the local branch of the US Democrat Party. The British and to a lesser extent the French identified Mohammad Khatami and later Hassan Rouhani as “the man we could do business with.”
Other nations interested in Iran or fearing it secured their own niches of influence within the perimeters set by the big powers mentioned above.
In every case the outside players made sure that they could reap maximum benefit from minimum economic and political investment in the fragmented power-structure in Tehran while making sure that rival powers didn’t expand their sphere of influence.
Russia refused to sell to IRGC weapons it sold to others including India and Türkiye. China bought Iranian oil with a hefty discount but didn’t pay cash to force its own products on Iranian market. The EU promised moons and marvels by signing contracts but never delivered.
Thus, maintaining the status quo became the un-admitted priority of all players.
That means keeping Iran on the wrong train it boarded in 1979 instead of helping it to get off at the first stop.
Thus, for Iran to help solve any of the problems mentioned above, it is imperative that Russia, China, the US, the EU and half a dozen smaller regional players sing from the same hymn-sheet. The fact that they didn’t in almost half a century may mean that they can accommodate themselves with what President Bill Clinton described as “containment” of Iran.
Iran stands at a point at which rival internal and external factions counter each other. It cannot change the environment around it while it is incapable of changing itself to suit that environment. It cannot wage war in a meaningful way but is also unable to seek peace. The result is what is called Zugzwang in German, which means being stuck in an unenviable position.
