Coming down to
earth?
In recent days,
the US had taken steps aimed at Iran’s alleged ‘danger’ to peace in the Gulf region,
accompanied by bluster that set alarm bells ringing lest all this led to an
actual war. Attacks on Saudi and other Gulf shipping had been ascribed directly
or indirectly to Tehran’s ‘hand’. An alarmist scenario devoid of facts or
rationale was constructed to show that Washington and its regional allies had
to take Iran’s ‘activities’ with the seriousness they deserved. Now suddenly,
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the known hawks in the Trump
administration, has switched to a more reasonable, even conciliatory tone
vis-à-vis Iran. Pompeo now says his country is prepared to hold talks with Iran
“with no preconditions”, but also adds that Iran must abandon its “malign
activity” in the Middle East. Tehran has
rejected the Pompeo about-turn as mere “word play”. Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani says talks can only be held with the US if it shows “respect” and does
not attempt to apply any ‘pressure’ on his country. It may be recalled that even
before the attacks on shipping in and around the Gulf, which carries some 20
percent of the world’s oil supplies, the strident rhetoric emanating from
Washington was a portent of the subsequent beefing up of the US air, sea and
land armada that monitors and patrols this vital oil supply line. The build up
reminded of the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria launched by or with the help of
Washington. Ordinarily, the received wisdom is that the infamous
military-industrial complex is by its very nature the driver of wars to sell
its deadly products and ensure the US’s global hegemony. But reports say the
hawkish lobby inside the Trump administration led by Pompeo and National
Security Adviser John Bolton is in fact at odds with more pragmatic, level
headed, strategically clear elements within the administration and, even more
significantly, the US military. This latter group has warned of the dangers of
provoking a conflict with Iran with its devastating consequences for the region
and the world’s stability and security. Stoking the flames of war is the
Israeli lobby in particular. The US military, which after all would be running
the frontline risks of any new conflagration, is reportedly in touch with the
Iranian Pasdaran through a back channel, and has sent it the message that it is
not looking for war.
If Pompeo’s
remarks truly reflect a more sober assessment of the ground realities in the
region and beyond, it is something to be welcomed. The issue of tense
Tehran-Washington relations has its roots in the Iranian revolution of 1979
that overthrew the US’s strong ally the Shah and declared his ‘mentor’ the
‘Great Satan’. What has further aroused the ire of the hawks lobby in
Washington in recent years is the role Iran has played, in tandem with Russia
and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, in defending Bashar al-Assad’s regime
in Syria after the outbreak of the Arab Spring in late 2010. The
Syrian-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah coalition drew a line in the sand to deny any
further regime change adventures a la Iraq and Libya, whose devastating
consequences are still playing out in destruction, bloodshed and tragedy. This
unforgivable act on the coalition’s part, but especially Iran’s, upset the best
laid plans of the mice and men of the hawks brigade vis-a-vis Syria. The
unforgiven therefore naturally found themselves in the hawks’ gun sights. If
better sense now appears to be winning if not setting in even in the blinkered
horizons of the pro-Israeli hawkish lobby in Washington, this is a welcome
relief and a good start. It could, and should, be followed by engagement with
Tehran that takes in also the unilateral withdrawal of Washington from the
meticulously drawn up nuclear restraint agreement with Iran, to which it adhered
to the letter until Trump tore it up. Whatever the US’s nostalgia for a time
when it strode the world stage like a Colossus, it now needs to recognize that
its military might rests on feebler feet of (economic) clay and that the world
is no longer so easily browbeaten as in the past.
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