Resumo de Confronting Iran

When it comes to the United States and Iran, there's simply no getting away from the burden of history. Last month, when Washington prevailed upon the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions on Tehran because of the latter's refusal to suspend its nuclear energy programme, the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. was quick to make the connection with the past. Noted Ambassador Javad Zarif referred the resolution imposing sanctions can only remind the Iranian people of the historic injustices this Security Council has done to them in the past six decades. It is reminiscent of the attempt made in this Council to punish the Iranian people for nationalizing their oil industry, claimed to present a threat to peace. It is also a reminder of the Council's indifference in the face of a military coup, organized by two permanent members, which restored the dictatorship. Zarif was referring to the draft resolution brought before the UNSC in October 1951 by Britain, the U.S. and France opposing the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, and the subsequent sequence of events, which culminated in the overthrow of Muhammed Mossadeq as Prime Minister. Thanks to the Soviet Union, the 1951 resolution was never pressed and Mossadeq went ahead and nationalised the assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. But two years later, the Anglo-Americans ensured he was removed, and that constitutional, democratic rule was replaced by the authoritarian dictatorship of the Shah. Then, as now, in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, the issue at stake was Iran's sovereign right to the development of an energy resource free from outside domination or control. For most Iranians, not just the politically active ones, writes Ansari, the overthrow of Mossadeq on August 19, 1953 marks the beginning of U.S.-Iran relations. Emergence as a power Ansari's book follows a chronologically straightforward storyline in which the brief period of national affirmation which followed more than a century and a half of interference and domination by outside powers? mainly Britain and Russia? was deliberately undermined and subverted. Even though the rule of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi saw Iran's economy grow very fast? thanks, in part, to high oil prices, particularly after 1973? the Shah could never shake off the popular impression that he was merely an agent of the U.S. In the popular revolutionary conception, writes Ansari, the break in diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. is divorced from the reality of the hostage taking and instead interpreted as a natural consequence of the fact that the U.S could not relate to Iran's Islamic Revolution... What distinguished the two interpretations was that the Iranians regarded it as an act of closure, while the Americans marked it as the beginning of an era. Laingen memo Having said that, Ansari also suggests the break, which came with the seizure of the embassy in November 1979, was not necessarily inevitable. After all, the U.S. maintained diplomatic relations with Iran for nearly 11 months after the Shah fled. Though most American citizens had left the country after the revolution, a U.S. embassy report notes in June 1979 that "many U.S. businessmen have continued their work or returned permanently or periodically without incident." The U.S. administration was clearly in a `wait and watch' mode. Ansari quotes at length from an internal memo drafted by Bruce Laingen, U.S charge d'affaires in Tehran at the time, recommending that Washington publicly acknowledge the reality of the Islamic Revolution. If the seizure of U.S. hostages ended the chance of any semblance of a political understanding being established at the time, Washington's tacit support for Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran took the hostility between the two countries to a still higher plane. To be sure, there were moments of cooperation and collaboration, such as during the Iran-Contra affair, but it was only 15 years after the rthat the possibility of a rapprochement seemed even remotely likely. After 9/11, Iran was one of the first West Asian countries to condemn the terrorist strike on the U.S. and express its condolences. But President Bush's response was to list Tehran in the `Axis of Evil' in his State of the Union speech in January 2002. Need for dialogue The Iranian side tried yet again in the spring of 2003, sending a non-paper via Swiss diplomatic channels for Washington's consideration. The unsigned note, which was seen by senior Bush administration officials like Richard Armitage as nevertheless bearing the imprimatur of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, contained suggestions for both Iran and the U.S. to de-escalate and address each other's concerns. Significantly, the note also signalled Iran's willingness to discuss the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution to the Palestinian question. But like the Laingen memo, the 2003 offer was summarily rejected. Since then, the U.S. has consistently sought to up the ante, using the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UNSC to coerce Iran rather than to seek dialogue with it. The concluding chapter of Ansari's tightly argued book deals with the nuclear issue. Events have rapidly moved on since Confronting Iran went to press but his central message is one the U.S. will ignore at its peril: the more obsessed it is with war, the greater is the likelihood of conflict. It is only diplomacy and dialogue that can resolve the Iranian nuclear question.

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