In the midst of deep gloom, the Arab-Islamic world has seen shafts of light emanating from two recent events, both from Saudi Arabia. First, the Makkah accord reversed the Palestinian drift into chaos and created the framework for the establishment of a government of national unity. Secondly, the high level diplomacy culminating in the visit to Riyadh of the Iranian president on March 3 raised hopes that the feared, or, in some quarters, eagerly awaited, polarization between Arabs and Iran would not materialize.
The first creates an opportunity to revive the all but moribund Middle East peace process. Israel’s alibi that there is no credible interlocutor on the Palestinian side and the Western reservations that Hamas does not renounce armed resistance and respect past agreements have largely been met. Much depends now upon the United States balancing the Saudi effort by persuading Israel that its future security and prosperity depend on a final settlement based on the Arab initiative of 2002.
The second issue relates to an epoch-making event which is being inevitably transfigured by the dynamics of history and which demands unflagging understanding and engagement. The Islamic revolutionaries of Iran challenged the ancient monarchy of their country appropriated briefly by a recent dynasty not only in the name of a national narrative but also a universalistic discourse offered to the entire world of Islam. Events in the region have overtaken that phase. The intended and unintended consequences of the Iraq war have by themselves altered the relative weight of geopolitical forces at work in the region.
As an eyewitness to the proselytizing zeal of the Iranian regime in the first white heat of the revolution, I follow closely the trajectory by which this ardor settles into a national ideology and into the paramountcy of the country’s strategic needs. It bears comparison with other great revolutions of human history — in France, Russia and China to name only a few. As in those cases, Iran’s revolutionary fires get rekindled when apprehensions of counterrevolution or violent regime change by alien foes grip the national imagination. History dictates forbearance. An increasing number of Iranians realize that their solution was not necessarily relevant or attractive to others. What they aspire to is security and respect for their sovereign choice. Pakistan’s quest for continuing friendship with Iran which has so far yielded less than perfect results is based on this reading of Iran’s policy. The imperfections are seen as an incentive for greater effort, not for abandoning it.
Some other seminal events in the Middle East have impinged on Iran’s relations with the region. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla and the attempt to create a surrogate state in the South sucked Iran into empowering the Hezbollah under Sheikh Hassan Nasarallah. The tectonic shift of global power in the post-Cold War era spurred the United States into spearheading a transformative Napoleonic policy of reconstituting the Middle East. The unilateralist presumption that a far-away superpower knew what was good for the Islamic world more than its rulers and its peoples fostered militant resistance. As Arab states turned inward to achieve greater political and economic consolidation in an increasingly insecure environment, the focus on the Palestinian cause got a trifle blurred. The Palestinians sought to energize their struggle by turning to Hamas for which Iranian support became a default option.
The most momentous event, however, is the slide of Iraq into an unprecedented sectarian strife. The destruction of the ancien regime and its replacement by an administration based on the Western majoritarian principle meant a fundamental revision of the traditional power distribution. But the process need not have degenerated into ethnic and sectarian explosions. A Western thinker speaks of the transformation of counterterrorism into the “great Muslim war”. A Jewish writer adds an internal “Middle East clash of civilizations” to Huntingdon’s definition of the conflicts of our times. Neither of these two was predestined or unavoidable.
Prognostications of interminable sectarian conflicts are very disturbing for non-Arab Islamic countries. Muslims in Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere jealously guard a mystical nexus with the Arab heartland and have over the centuries absorbed a healthy diversity of exegesis, interpretation and ritual. They quote Arab authorities for their specific orientation but have, by and large, seen no reason for internecine sectarian strife. Such tensions as have emerged are rooted only in recent history, not in any permanent fault lines that are being exaggerated by analysts all over the world.
As in many other cultures, Iran has multiple layers of identity. The Islamic revolution has not erased the memory of its great imperial past. It also may seek an outer ring of influence to enhance its own security; the war with Iraq is a living memory. But these considerations cannot translate into dreams of dominance in the region. The important thing is to assist internal evolution in Iran toward a harmonious integration into an equitable regional framework. The cautionary tale of late Saddam Hussein’s regime warns us that there is a precious window of opportunity when overweening ambitions should be moderated through time-honored methodologies of balance of power, robust negotiations, mutually beneficial economic cooperation and above all a free intellectual interaction that eliminates misperceptions.
There is time to achieve strategic stability in the region. The nuclear question merits a separate article but even in the worst assessment of its politics and technology, there are still many years available for a constructive dialogue. It is safer to put faith in the recent Saudi diplomacy than in the alien doctrines of reconfiguring a large swathe of nation states from the Horn of Africa and Egypt to Pakistan. Afghanistan and Iraq are reminders that outside powers are more adept at demolition than reconstruction. The region has to find its own answers.
— Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and former ambassador of Pakistan to Iran.
