Understanding Iran

Teddy Lishan Desta, PhD

Understanding Iran

By

Teddy Lishan Desta, PhD

 

Teddy is an Associate Editor for the Journal of the International Relations and Affairs Group (JIRAG). He has lectured at colleges and universities on International Affairs, and is also a Teaching Assistant at Florida International University. He holds a PhD in International Relations from The University of Texas at Dallas, a Master of Science in Economics degree from Baylor University. He specializes in International Relations Theory, International Trade, Economics and the International Political Economy.

 

The late 1970s ushered the world into a transformative moment. Within a few years from each other, two ancient civilization states passed through massive domestic and international policy change. These two countries are China and Iran. Following the transformations China under Deng Xiao-Ping and Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini , and given the heavyweight these two countries lift in the regional and international arena, world politics has not been the same ever since. However the trajectories of change each country has followed, at least in the international relations context, is starkly contrasted. China abandoned its 40 years old left-wing anti-capitalist rant and joined the capitalist world with gusto.  China courted and engaged the west for its capital investments and export market, while it master planned its revival as a true great power. On the other hand, Iran abandoned its alliance with the west, became antagonistic with western powers, and embraced a very combative nationalist and Islamic ideology as a way to regional and world significance.

 

It is important to recognize that both China and Iran have a great power status ambition. The way they have been building up their military forces and have been extending their ideological, political and economic influences in their respective regions and in the rest of the world give China and Iran a revisionist state status. Revisionist state because both seek for the redistribution of global power and influence to advantage their interests. Of course, the redistribution of regional and global power comes at the expense of the USA which has been left as the sole superpower in the post-Cold War world. What is quite surprising is that we see these two ancient civilization states trying to recover their past glories, but each following a very contrasting path. China has chosen very quiet and unassuming manners while it has been building its economic and military power by engaging the west in a most lucrative economic relationship. Until very recently China took extra care not to ruffle anyone’s feathers as it sought for the extension or protection of its economic and political interests regionally.

In contrast, Iran has adopted a very adversarial stance from the very outset of its revolution.  Iran’s ideological and military behavior has irked regional as well as global powers from the very beginning. Iran has not failed to challenge or undermine the great powers of the Middle-East region, namely Iraq under Saddam, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the USA. Iran had a the dream to unseat Saddam Hussein and overshadow Iraq Gulf’s most important regional power ,of replacing Saudi Arabia as the great influence in the Islamic world, of destroying the state of Israel  thereby removing from the scene the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, and of eventually edging the global power, the USA, altogether from the region. 

Since Iran has begun reviving its nuclear power program and by the degree its leaders have continued to speak in defiant language about their determination to push forward with their nuclear power ambitions, the fear of the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia that Iran is headed to developing a nuclear bomb have grown apace. These countries most fear once Iran becomes the owner of an atomic bomb its defiant behavior will grow more and that it will be tempted to launch adventurous military and political actions that further disturb the volatile Middle East region.  At the moment, the Middle East is set on edge because of the stand-off between Iran on one hand and the three countries on the other. Even Israel continually threatens to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities to stop Tehran from acquiring the bomb.

We see China cultivating its political and economic influence and growing its military might without garnering any punitive measures from the rest of the world. While China’s rise is quiet and seems to last for long, why is Iran’s ambitions to great power are so noisy and potentially brittle?  What is Iran’s leaders’ calculus to maintain a very combative stance and a defiant tone, even in the face of economic sanctions and the threat of military actions against their country’s nuclear program? Are Iranian leaders rational actors when deciding to turn their back on the west and in keeping challenging  the west’s  presence in the Middle East, in threatening and in working for the dismantling of Israel as a state, and in attempting to overshadow Saudi Arabia as Muslims’ most important religious state?  What kind of tangible gain Iranian leaders expect from their international policy positions, which in the eyes of many are risky undertakings?  Here I list a few reasons why the actions of Iran’s leaders can be viewed rational (albeit, risky). The rationality of Iranian actions could be analyzed by taking a few major goals they will like to achieve; namely:

1). Great power status

Iranian ambition as a great power is primarily focused on the Middle East region. This ambition has three pronged strategy; namely, challenging other regional great powers and building its own military capabilities. Revolutionary Iran’s strategy is geared towards mainly challenging and diminishing the powers and influences of other major regional powers it considers as its enemies. These enemies primarily are the USA and Israel which Iran likes to daub, as “the Great Satan” and “the little Satan”, respectively. For example, the Iranian revolution severed ties with the USA and Israel right away after the revolution. The new rulers ensured that the USA should no longer have a trusted ally in Iran that it can use for its strategic purposes in the region. Second, in 1982, Iran financed and trained radical Shi’ia groups drove the USA marine force presence out of Lebanon. Due to growing political and military influence of such Shi’ia groups in Lebanon, the influence of the USA in Lebanese affairs is much curtailed.  Third, Iran through the pressure it has been exerting, directly and indirectly, through its Iraqi ally, the Mehadi Army, it has succeeded to cut very short the days the USA military planned to stay in Iraq. Fourth, Iran works tirelessly to delegitimize and dismantle the state of Israel. Iran does not only see the state of Israel as another great power standing in its path of regional supremacy, but also as an alien entity planted as an American or western bridgehead to control Islamic Middle East. So destroying the state of Israel is tantamount to destroying a bastion of USA presence in the region. Fifth, Iran views the Arab Spring in favorable eyes as it topples in many places western friendly autocrats and brings to power islamists, which it hopes can easily identify with Iran’s defiant foreign policies. Sixth, there is also Iran’s nuclear power ambition. This ambition is of a tactical nature; where Iran surmises that if it becomes a nuclear power, it thinks that it can permanently take away any advantage the state of Israel has in this regard, or it can deter any other power’s desire to force to change it its policies.

2). Ideological leadership of the Islamic world

In contrast to the Chinese experience in the late 1970s, the Iranians were in the grip of launching an ideology, which some call fundamental or political Islam. The Muslim high clerics who took power in Iran their political agenda was not merely overthrowing an age-old monarchy and replacing it with a populist revolutionary government, but also launching an Islamic revolution which they believe will restore the political importance of their religion to billions of Muslims world-wide. The way the Iranian leaders were deploying religion to attack powerful global, regional and domestic forces were winning admirers and imitators around the Muslim world who were either chafing under autocratic leaders, or not were not happy  in USA role in the Middle East, or Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, etc. Undoubtedly, the popularity of Iran in the Arab street grew apace the more defiant it became to the west and challenged Israel indirectly through its allies like Hamas and Hezbollah.     

Iranian leaders as astute power players, approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a tactical opportunity in their strategic maneuvering to be the leader of the Islamic world.  Since the Palestinian issue is the major cause célèbre among the Arab people, Iran wants to exploit this issue to the fullest extent to its advantage. Iranian leaders calculate that whoever champions the Palestinian cause or brings down the Jewish state to its knees will get the accolades of the Sunni Arabs and easily be crowned as the undisputed political and moral leader of the wider Islamic world. To this end Iran finances, trains and arms at least two sworn enemies of Israel – Hamas and Hezbollah.  Iran has placed Hamas and Hezbollah as nooses around the neck of Israel and believes that it is a matter of time before Israel gets asphyxiated by these two forces.  

3). National liberation

Iran’s 1979 revolution gave Iranian nationalists the chance to take political power, retain it, and begin the work of national liberation. This is not a national liberation of the classical kind of overthrowing a colonial yoke, but the psychological liberation from great power domination. In the eyes of Iranian nationalists, since the turn of 1900s, Iran has suffered a series of humiliations in the forms of economic concessions (i.e., “capitulations”), and great power political interference as when the USA coordinated the overthrow of the democratically elected nationalist government of Mossasedgh in 1953.  For many Iranians, after his restoration in 1953, the Shah’s government got too close to and very compliant to USA interests, thereby undermining Iranian sovereignty.

After coming to power, Iranian nationalists showed extra zeal to cleanse the soul of the nation from its history of “capitulation” and compliance with America’s economic and political interests. So, the behavior of Iranian leaders in maintaining a very strident antipathy towards  the west and maintain a very independent direction of policy it is because of this hidden need of restoring the honor of Iran, a historically great power which should not play second fiddle to anybody.  We cannot fully understand the defiance and rhetoric of Iranian leaders without taking into consideration their struggle for recovery of national honor which they feel has been trampled underfoot through use of mishandling by imperial powers, such as Russia, Britain and the US.

4). Building a national economy

There is a hidden rationality in Iranian leaders’ choice of de-associating from the mainstream global economic integration. They more or less follow a ‘let-us-do-it-ourselves approach to develop a strong national economy that is mainly geared towards developing the skills sets of its people.  Rather than choosing to be a part of economic globalization, where like many developing countries, Iran becomes an export oriented-economy of low end manufactured or assembled products, Iran followed a different path. Iran followed a very nationalist economic development method, even leaving many sectors of the economy in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard. Iran engaged in military technology development that included its long-range missile and nuclear program. Iranians became masters of reverse engineering as they chose to learn techniques of modern manufacturing management the hard way. Iran’s Resistant Economy carries its own rationality as Iran attempts a self-sustaining economy

Religion: Does it help or hinder peace?

Religion is perceived differently in many societies. The political evolution in Western political thought led to a secular state. The Islamic tradition, on the other hand, has a different view of religion and political governance. The question is if religion is an agent of peace or if it perpetuates conflict in the international system. Some scholars view religion as having the ability to connect different faiths and it has a significant role in the peace process. It is believed that this will also be a way of integrating values of the particular culture and it will possibly lead to a resolution of the conflict. It is also thought that religion also can view how families interact and this can be used as a metaphor for dealing with conflict on a larger scale. It is also thought that considering there are many myths about religion this also plays a factor in dealing with the resolution of the conflict but by studying religion it can also show ways of how to deal with more complex problems and aid in the resolution process. Viewing the peace process from the vantage point of religion can bring about better cultural understanding and help engage with adversaries during meetings (Gopin, 2002).  However, much of these like many potential negotiations for conflict depend on the willingness of the two parties to decide to learn the cultures and religions of the enemy and also respect them in the mediation process. Religion also brings to fruition both positive and negative myths about culture and if the parties decide to concentrate on the negative issues associated with a particular religion than this can be destructive to the peace making process. There must be separations of positive and negative myths but either way both of them should be acknowledged. If myths can be understood to be myths then there can be a critical look into more underlying issues such as apologizing for each side’s wrong doings and try to understand the goals and values of the individual cultures and people involved in the negotiation process, without this, then negotiations the take place will only be concerned with only the obvious issues (Gopin, 2002).

Peace treaties should focus on religion, culture, symbolic gestures, moral commitments, and transformation of relationships. If these factors are not addressed and they are only focused on the political gains and outcomes than there is a possibility that it is going to be a clash in religious and cultural ideologies and the end result would ultimately end in failure. Talcott Parsons who elucidated systems theory believes that action between an individual and actor constitutes “action systems.” His systems places people in the role of “subjects” and “objects” and he also explains that at any given time people are members of several other action systems such as family, religious and nation-state. Parsons states that the three subsystems are (1) the personality system (2) the social system (3) the cultural system. They are interconnected through the action system. If there is a change in one of the subsystems it will affect another in turn affecting the entire action system. The systems theory “assumes the interdependence of parts in determinate relationships, which impose order on the components of the system.” “Social systems are characterized by a multiple-equilibrium process because social systems have many subsystems, each of which must remain in equilibrium in the larger system is to maintain equilibrium” (Dougherty, 115-116). Keeping this in mind and incorporated into religion with regards to peace building and sustainability of that the same method could be used in the planning process.  The interconnectedness of religion into culture is a factor than can be more substantial then the political gains of reaching peace.

The understanding of religion aids in the understandings of culture and how it impacts negotiations. Regardless of the context, culture impacts negotiations in two ways (1) cultural similarities or differences can affect the attitudes of the parties toward each other and (2) cultural similarities or differences can affect their ability to communicate effectively with each other (Regan & Leng, 2008).  Religion along with other variables are fundamentals that can be used to guide this in negotiations, while there are other variables religion and culture can be intertwined(Regan & Leng, 2008). While it is true that the success in negotiations and mediation between states can be dependant of democratic cultures, religion can be the outlier that ensures the success or failure of them. Religion can add to the cultural variables that make it difficult for effective communication between parties including.  When mixed signals are sent to opposing sides the intended interpretation is not received. Many times countries with the same religion have similar ideologies and this can assist in the negotiation process and speed up the negotiations but the lack of societal and local culture and vastly different religious ideologies can prevent the success of negotiations (Regan & Leng, 2008). 

If looking at the correlation of culture and religion on negations then Iran could be looked at. The languages of the two countries are not the same; the United States is primarily English, while Iran is primarily Persian.  Religions of the two states are different and social and political cultures are completely different.  Iran suggests to its people that there should be a theoretical understanding of Islamic ideology and it believes that the citizens are Islamicized (CIA Factbook, 2009). The history of Iran and the study of the Islamic revolution from Iran’s point of view portray the clergy as being very influential in the movement and the changing of the society. The current regime paints the former regime as being oppressive and immoral to the populace and suggests that they had to be liberated and saved by the Islamic Republic (Almond, 2008 p 583). This is based on the idea that the Pahlavi monarchy allowed, women to be unveiled, and other things that were against proper cultural norms. However with all the religious control that the Islamic Republic conveys onto its people several students still mock social morés and policies about male and female relationships and other aspects of the controlling religious state (Almond, 2008 pp 583-584). The highest offices in Iran are held by followers of Shiite Islam and this is a factor that should be addressed in negotiations (CIA Factbook, 2009). Another variable that should be addressed with regards to Iran is that most view themselves as religious and being Muslim with higher accords than they view nationalism of the state; this is not the case with the United States and this should be addressed in preplanning and meetings. While there are several other reasons as to why there has been failed meetings and negotiations between the United States and Iran, religion does play a part in the reason for there not being successful diplomacy between the two countries. The United States is still viewed by Iran as the “great Satan” and the mistrust is not just rooted in political differences but has strong roots in the opposing religious ideologies and public policies of the two nations (Almond, 2008 p 587).

Religious communities do not deal with “moral failure” the same way as political communities do; religious communities usually focus on variables such as atonement, request for forgiveness,  and they suggest forgiveness (Gopin, 2002). With regards to the peace process forgiveness is a key variable and without it there will not actually be true peace. While neither side wants to admit that they are part of the blame there is faults on both sides and the correlation with religion to accept these wrongs and forgive the wrongs of others could be a huge factor in the conflict resolution process. Forgiveness is a factor in most religions and it can be used to forge new relationships and the ability to build trust even if there is still not an acceptance of all ideologies.  Verbal and nonverbal communications with regards to religion can also be taken the wrong way.  While many negotiators focus on these subtleties if they do not understand the religious connotation of gestures and other verbal and nonverbal communications it can be detrimental to the peace process and alienate the situation even more; especially if a miscalculation on a gesture is seen as disrespect (Gopin, 2002). 

Religion is an obstacle in the peace making process and much of this based off the internal culture of countries with regards to religion. It is very clear that culture and the understanding of it has been an obstacle in the negotiation and mediation process for many countries.  While the causes of conflicts may center on factors such as ethnicity, race, ideology, and other factors, to resolve them there must be careful attention in not missing the role that religion has on all of these variables.  The history of the intractable conflict between the countries can also create its own culture other then the internal culture of each country and this has put yet another variable that must be dealt with (Gopin, 2002).  Variables that can continually come up have to do with the mistrust between the countries, language, verbal and nonverbal communications, perceptions of the world and how each country sees themselves, and political and social cultures but many times it stems from religious ideologies and the understandings of them.  It is not impossible for countries to communicate and a lot of it has to do with the degree of commitment by each nation.  If countries want to come to terms they must both step outside of the box and respect the culture and religion of one another whether they necessarily like it or not.  There are several cultural differences between countries but religion can be a tool used to get past most cultural difference but stubbornness of  countries and neither side wanting to be the one the compromises first will destroy the peace making process in any negotiation (Gopin, 2002).

References

Almond, G.A., Powell Jr., G.B., Dalton, R.J.,& Strom, K. (2008). Comparative Politics Today: A World View. 9th Edition. United Sates: Pearson-Longman 

Dougherty, J. E., & Pfaltzgraff, Jr., R. L. (2001). Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, Fifth Edition. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 

Gopin, M. (2002). Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East. New York, NY: Oxford University Press 

Regan, P, & Leng, R. (2008). Culture and Negotiations between Rival States. Workshop on Culture and Conflict, Binghamton University. Retrieved (2009, October 20) from http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/Regan-Leng.pdf