Iran possesses about 10% of the world’s oil reserves and about 15% of the world’s gas, making it one of the largest energy-producing nations. Yet it has embarked on a nuclear program – allegedly for energy production – which is a thinly veiled attempt to build nuclear weapons in one of the most volatile regions of the world. Iran’s neighbors include Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq – centers for the war on terror – but they also include American allies: Saudi Arabia, a presumptive ally; Turkey, a Muslim democracy; the Persian Gulf sheikdoms; and the Persian Gulf itself, through which 40% of the world’s oil flows to market. The world’s major oil producing region and the heart of the sponsors of terrorism are therefore superimposed on each other – a lethal concoction.
Iran’s decision to “go nuclear” poses a major threat to world peace. How the West should confront it is a major dilemma. To understand what seeded this confrontation it’s necessary to understand how Iran’s relationship with the West – primarily the US – soured in the past. Confronting Iran’s nuclear weapons threat will be the subject of next week’s blog.
Historical events have connections to other historical events and those of Iran’s relations with the West are no exception. The most notable event in modern Iran-US relations – at least from the American perspective – is undoubtedly the November 1979 hostage-taking of 52 Americans and their incarceration for 444 days. However, like many antagonistic ventures, the hostage-taking was Iran’s retribution for the 25 years of misery it had been forced to endure as a consequence of the American foreign policy decision to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, in a CIA-engineered coup d’état in 1953. And the overthrow of Mosaddeq is linked to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the predecessor of modern day BP, which was formed at the beginning of the 20th century to exploit Iranian oil reserves.
Exploit is the operative word because, during the control of the Iranian oil fields by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the Iranian oil workers lived in squalid conditions and Iran received only a small royalty on the production of its reserves. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, became the head of government during World War II when the Iranian oil fields were a vital asset to the allied war effort and the Allies needed a reliable person to control the country. After the war, the Shah allowed a constitutional monarchy to rule through an elected parliament and a Prime Minister. But the government was shaky, if not corrupt, and a succession of Prime Ministers came and went.
In 1951 Mohammed Mosaddeq, a nationalistic critic of the AIOC, received the Parliamentary vote to become Prime Minister and the Shah was forced to confirm him in that position. Mosaddeq quickly moved to nationalize the oil industry, provoking British retaliation that brought the Iran economy to its knees. Britain withdrew its tankers, preventing Iran from getting oil to market. The British PM, Winston Churchill, approached US President Truman to support a coup that would return the oil production to AIOC control but Truman refused.
However, Cold War contentions led the Eisenhower administration to fear that Mosaddeq would drift toward the Soviet Union, cutting off a major oil supplier from the West. Churchill now found a willing partner in the plot to overthrow the legitimate government of Iran. Mosaddeq was toppled, tried for treason, and confined to house arrest – an event the Iranian people never forgot. In the wake of the coup, Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled the country as an autocrat – essentially a puppet of the US. For the next 25 years, this worked well in creating the regional stability and a reliable oil source, which the US desired, but it didn’t work well for the Iranian people.
The Shah signed an agreement with an international consortium of foreign companies to develop its oil industry, allegedly receiving half of the oil profits, although Iran was never allowed to look at the books. Revenues were used to institute Iranian land reform and eliminate illiteracy, and reforms were instituted that allowed women to vote, hold office, and refuse marriage before age 15. The Shah also encouraged the adoption of western dress and culture, much to the horror of the clerical class.
However, the Shah also spent lavishly on himself and his family, which in a poor society, alienated him from the people, and he spent heavily to build up a massive military – the largest in the region. His trickle-down spending didn’t improve the economic well-being of the lower classes. Social unrest was brutally suppressed, and the Shah’s secret police murdered hundreds and arrested and tortured even more. When the Shi'ite clergy became alarmed that their influence in Iranian society was threatened by the Shah’s policies, their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, began to speak openly for overturning the Pahlavi dynasty. Khomeini was exiled, further polarizing the country.
In January 1979 the Shah announced he would leave Iran for 18 months to seek treatment for his terminal cancer. With the country collapsing, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and established a de facto government. In retaliation, the US froze Iranian assets. It also allowed the Shah to visit the Mayo Clinic for treatment, which was seen by the Khomeini government as harboring a criminal and preventing his return to Iran for trial. This set the stage for seizing the American embassy in Tehran and taking its occupants hostage in November. The new revolutionary government banned political parties, cracked down on symbols of western influence, and in an effort to unify the country, vilified the US as the “Great Satan”. In the end, Khomeini had accomplished the first religious revolution in modern time.
After an eight-year war with Iraq that devastated the Iranian economy and infrastructure, Khomeini died in 1989 and was replaced by Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader. The allegiance of the clerical ruling class split into two factions: those who sought a pragmatic accommodation with the West and supported internal reform and those who endorsed the ideology of Khamenei and wanted a confrontational foreign policy with the West in order to maintain the moral authority of the ideologues. Until the present, the conservatives have held sway, using the revolutionary constitution to disqualify reformers from office, close newspapers, control judges, and intimidate opponents. But their anti-western restrictions are wearing thin on Iran’s youthful society who see the revolutionary leadership, not the West, as largely responsible for their misery. This offers hope for the future.
Here’s why.
A country’s internal stability is a function of its openness. Countries in the free world are open societies that are quite stable to the irritations of recessions, war, and unpopular government policies. Their citizens don’t take to the streets in mass demonstrations of civil unrest. Ironically, however, closed societies such as North Korea and Cuba are also quite stable because society is under the thumb of its government. No country can permanently maintain isolation from world influences unless it is governed by personality cults, like North Korea or Cuba. Fidel Castro is Cuba. Kim Jong-il is North Korea. Ali Khamenei is not Iran because Iran is a semi-open society. If the mullahs attempt to make it less open, there will be social upheaval. If Iran progresses toward more openness, the mullahs are out. Even among the mullahs there are longstanding philosophical differences tugging the country toward more or less openness. The struggle for and against openness is one of the internal tensions in Iran today.
Another internal tension is the growing population and the declining economic opportunity in Iran. Iran is one of the most populous countries in the Middle East. There were 30 million Iranians when Khomeini launched the religious revolution. Today there are 72 million Iranians of whom 70% were born after the revolution and, therefore, don’t have the emotional investment in despising the Shah’s regime or the past usurpations of the West. They are more interested in jobs than ideology.
However, because the most influential mullahs eschew openness, the Iranian economy is shrinking. During the Shah’s regime, oil output was six million barrels a day; today it’s more like four million barrels a day. Still, Iran has sufficient oil revenues and foreign reserves to build infrastructure, capitalize private entrepreneurship, and promote foreign investment and trade which would create the million or so new jobs needed annually to employ its young people. Instead, Iran’s financial assets are used to buy off restive reformers and prop up the country as its manufacturing sector wears out and the country labors under the sanctions imposed by the UN, EU, and US.
Yet a third source of internal tension in Iran is the pressure coming from young people for regime change. While the majority of Iranians may dislike the US, they like its people. Iranians admire western culture and fashion and want a similar open modern society for their own country. Last summer, Iranians took to the streets, chanting "Where is my vote?" Their protests in major cities in Iran and around the world were in support of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi who lost in what was alleged to be the rigged reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president. The protests have been called several names by their proponents but the one that seems to have stuck is the Green Revolution, reflecting Mousavi's campaign color.
Last summer’s protests were met with violence by Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, whose harsh repressions may have sealed his fate. More than 5,000 protestors were arrested and an unknown number of them killed. In an era when mass communications can’t be controlled by the government, the use of extreme violence is a threat to the regime's credibility. The death of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman shot in the chest by security forces, whose death throes were captured on a phone camera, shocked the world.
Revelations of rape and torture by security officials outraged Iranians and dissident mullahs. And the regime may be losing its influence over the military. There are indications that a large part of the Revolutionary Guard is no longer willing to be used as an instrument of oppression. Video images from demonstrations show Guard members joining the ranks of the protesters. A declaration signed by air force and army officers and published on the Internet warned radical Revolutionary Guard members to "Stop the violence against your own population."
These internal tensions could be used by US policy makers to drive a wedge between the clergy and produce a government more favorable to the West. In next week’s blog, I’ll discuss how.
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