Even as the global crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions continues unabated, Tehran knows there is very little the United Nations can really do to force it to give up its nuclear program, considering the litany of snafus the world body has come to be associated with.
If all the UN could do is to issue some pious platitudes about the US to prevent it from attacking Iraq, it hardly stands a chance with Tehran.
What is more if comparisons are any guide, just why hasn’t the same hard-line position been adopted against North Korea by the United States and its allies if they are indeed serious about nuclear proliferation?
A sanctions regime or any other act deemed hostile can only bring the exact opposite of what was intended at a time when the world continues to reel under the Iraq quagmire and escalating oil prices.
Add in the specter of war that forcibly changes that status quo by higher price increases through conflict, Tehran only emerges from it all as the undisputed strategic dynamo.
Though Russia has offered to process Iran’s uranium along with the European troika of France, Germany and Britain offering it incentives to discontinue its program, Tehran is downright adamant in not seeking to budge. Indeed, if there is anything more inspiring for Tehran, it is the international prestige and clout Pakistan achieved when it acquired nuclear weapons.
That has set off echoes within Iran when it too enjoyed such respect — the last being when the Shah boasted of having the most powerful air force anywhere in Asia.
From the Pakistani experience, Tehran knows it cannot be threatened as much or even invaded by a US bogged down inextricably in Iraq, Afghanistan as well as in its hunt for Al-Qaeda terrorists.
It also knows that unlike Pakistan, which plays an insignificant role in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, Tehran’s strategic position can only be bolstered by the strength derived out of nuclear weapons. That in turn causes a shift in political gravity to Tehran replaying the lore and glory that characterized Tehran’s dominant position before the 1979 revolution as well as to the times in the 14th century when Iran held court for the many Islamic classics revolving around her.
That shot in its morale and psyche centuries ago is hardly forgotten by the chants from the Iranian national anthem of its present-day students, proclaiming Iranians as a superior race. Inferentially, that more to strategic and other pursuits, the whole game plan behind its weapons program is a harking to its old days of glory, that lapsed in the interlude from the renaissance of the 14th century to present times.
So it is a very delicate high stakes game, and Tehran seems to be enjoying every minute of it. From the writing of letters to Bush to show his conciliatory face, to drumming up support in Indonesia — President Ahmadinejad’s grand stratagem is to regain the international prestige that is so tied in with Iran’s identity of being a one-time regional power in the Middle East.
With backing from the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a morally credible path is now sprung wide open for Tehran to continue with its confrontational approach with a sclerotic West. What Tehran relishes is an opportunity for it to emerge as victor in the ongoing high stakes game, thus reaffirming its traditional role of regional power. That now seems to be more or less, happening. With the Chinese and Russian refusal to approve sanctions on Iran, what is evident is a slap in the face for Washington and its hectoring ways.
“If the Iranian nation and government step back on nuclear energy today, the story will not end there and the Americans will make another pretext. The Iranian people and the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, more powerful than before and like steel, will stand against any pressure or conspiracy”, inveighed the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.
In the many ways the ancient civilization has evolved since its glory days of centuries past, martyrdom is more than a strategic impulse.
It is well known that martyrdom has long held an established and venerated place in Iranian psyche. It becomes particularly acute, when facing an enemy that is non-Islamic as is the case with the United States.
As a matter of fact, what is depicted in the Iranian Coat of Arms fluttering in Iran’s state flag is a symbol consisting of four crescents and a sword. Shaped like a tulip, the emblem reminds people of the memory of those who died for Iran. It is an ancient belief with mythological roots, but over the years has been sanitized, to instead symbolize martyrdom.
That effect on the Iranian psyche from nuclear weapons is what the West or the rest of the world has hardly seen. And being such, the technicalities behind the complicated knot of energy needs, identity and power play, is what defines the ongoing impasse.
— Jaya Prakash lectures journalism at Beacon School of Technology (www.beacon.edu.sg)
