Lecture 7 in a series of lectures given to a group of British and American journalists at the BBC Monitoring on 24 March 1999
“The Persian Empire had once included the Caspian Sea. Gradually, Russia had brought the surrounding area under its control, and in 1874, the Trans-Caspian region was added to the Russian Empire as an administrative unit. In the mid-nineteenth century, Russia had prepared her ground in Central Asia. Forts were built, towns were taken, and areas of the steppe were annexed. The three Central Asian khanates of Khokand, Bukhara and Khiv had been absorbed by 1873. All became vassal states. Nominally independent, in fact, they were firmly under the thumb of the Russian government. In the 1880s, a new phase of expansion was underway. The resistance of the Turkmen was broken at Geok-Tepe in 1880, and Merv Oasis submitted to Russian rule in 1884. The Russian railway network was extended into Central Asia. The trans-Caspian railway was begun in 1880; it was extended to Merv by 1886 and to Samarkand in 1888. In 1895, Tashkent was linked to the Russian railway system. In 1900, the extension from Merv to Khushk was finished, which brought the Russian railhead up to the frontier of Afghanistan.[1]
In the above passage in a book published in the year of the Iranian revolution, David McLean provides us with some idea of the not-too-distant past of Iran and its northern neighbours. The national memory of the loss of vast territories in the north, south, West and East of the country is still fresh in the minds of many Iranians. Western writers – like the author of this book- often speak of the collapse of the Persian Empire. However, to many Iranians, the territories in the Caucasus, especially in the present Republic of Azerbaijan, or some areas on the East of the Caspian Sea, were not parts of the ancient Persian Empire as it existed during the times of the Medes, the Achaemenians or the Sassanians. They were part and parcel of the historical Iran and had existed alongside the rest of the Iranian community, composed of various ethnic and linguistic groups for centuries and centuries.
When the Iranians remind themselves of some of these historical facts, this does not denote any xenophobia or excessive nationalism. Indeed, it is remarkable how easily the Iranians have accepted the loss of those territories and have reconciled themselves to the fact that history cannot be reversed. The problem arises when efforts are made by others who have come to those areas from near and far, and who try at all costs to exclude the Iranians even from any contacts with their immediate neighbours.
What I would like to say in this speech, as I did in previous lectures, is not to explain how other nations see Iranian foreign policy, but how foreign policy issues are seen by the Iranians, especially as it concerns the relationship between Iran and the United States. If we wish to discuss the background to the developments in this century, this lecture will become too long. Therefore, I will concentrate on the Iranian foreign policy since the Islamic revolution, with brief references to the period since the Second World War. I will divide this talk into two parts: The first part will deal with Iranian relations with its immediate neighbours. The second part will deal with Iranian relations with the United States, an issue that has dominated Iranian history since the Second World War and has assumed a new urgency and significance in recent years.
IRAN’S RELATIONS WITH ITS ARAB NEIGHBORS
Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbours have traditionally been rather tense and have been characterised by competition, if not outright hostility. Iran straddles the entire northern shores of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s shorelines extend to 1,500 kilometres in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Iran also has 900 kilometres of borders with Iraq. Iran’s population is nearly twice as large as the population of Iraq and the rest of the GCC put together.
Iran is a non-Arab country that dominated the region for many centuries before the Arab Muslims conquered Iran in 650 AD and brought Islam to the country, which in time became the religion of the majority of the people. Ever since, a great dichotomy has always existed in the Iranian soul, between their ancient national heritage on the one hand, and their adherence to Islam on the other. Throughout the centuries, these two identities have sat uncomfortably together; at times the nationalist feelings predominated over the religious ones, as was the case under the Pahlavi dynasty, and at other times, such as the period after the Islamic revolution, the religious identity had the upper hand.
The Arabs have also always looked at Iran as an Islamic country, but as a country that is not quite one of them. After the imposition of Shi’ism as the official religion of the country at the beginning of the 16th century, Arab suspicions and alienation from Iran increased. Shi’ism has also given Iran its own peculiar and separate identity, not only from the Arab world, but from the rest of the world of Islam, as Iran is the only Islamic country where Shi’ism is the dominant sect.
In the view of many Western and Islamic scholars, Shi’ism represents a form of Iranian nationalism that combines Islam with pre-Islamic Iranian beliefs and customs, setting Iran apart from its Arab neighbours. In any case, it is a badge of national identity that sets Iran apart from the rest of the Muslim countries. The Shi’is see their faith as a doctrine based on the rejection of secular authority as that of the caliphs in favor of the divine authority of the Imams, standing up to tyranny as was done by Imam Hussein against Yazid and Mu’awiyya, defending the rights of the downtrodden and the minority against the powerful and the majority, and in accepting persecution and hardship to achieve those higher goals. Martyrdom is glorified as the supreme form of self-sacrifice for the attainment of spiritual and material salvation. These beliefs have endowed the Iranians with certain characteristics that often seem to foreign observers as fanaticism, chauvinism, arrogance, self-righteousness and rebelliousness.
However, these characteristics have revealed themselves only at rare periods in history, such as the early days of the Safavid rule and the early years of the Islamic revolution. For the greater part of their history, the Iranians have been fun-loving, hospitable, peaceful, pragmatic and firm believers in the idea of live and let live. As Professor Fred Halliday pointed out in a lecture at SOAS: “Compared to any of its near neighbours – Russia, Turkey, Iraq, all of whom have repeatedly invaded other countries – Iran has, over the past two centuries, a record more pacific than any.”[2] Indeed, over the past few hundred years, Iran has been more the victim of foreign aggression, rather than the aggressor.
After the Second World War when radical Arab nationalism became fashionable in Egypt and a number of other Arab countries, Iran sided with the more conservative and traditional Saudi Arabia. Initially, Iran joined Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey in the American-backed CENTO pact as a buffer against Soviet expansionism and as an attempt to encircle the former Soviet Union. However, after Colonel Abd al-Karim Qasim’s bloody coup against the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, and the ascension of the socialist Ba’th party in 1963 and the start of a pro-Soviet stance in Baghdad, Iraq left CENTO, and relations between Iran and Iraq became very tense. In the course of the radical policies pursued by Aden and the Marxist rebellion in Dhofar, Iranian forces actually went to the assistance of the conservative Sultanate of Oman and played a leading role in defeating the Dhofar rebellion.
After the withdrawal of the British forces from the East of Suez, with American backing, Iran assumed the role of the gendarme of the region. With both British and American support, in November 1971, Iran seized the three small but strategic islands of the Greater and the Lesser Tombs and Abu-Musa as the price for recognising the creation of the United Arab Emirates.
These three islands had, in fact, been under Persian control before the British moved to the Persian Gulf. Under British rule, the Sheikh of Sharja had been given leave to use Abu-Musa as a grazing ground for a limited number of sheep and camels, hence the UAE’s claim to sovereignty over those islands. Indeed, in 1971, Iran signed an agreement with the UAE that recognised the Iranian ownership of those islands, but allowed the UAE nationals access to Abu-Musa. At the end of the Gulf War, Iranian Revolutionary Guards prevented some UAE nationals from entering Abu-Musa, rekindling the debates over the ownership of the islands.
During the 60s and 70s, Iran became one of the most important pillars of American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf region and in the Middle East as a whole. The other pillars of American policy in the region are Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Iran was perhaps the most important pillar compared to the other three, in view of its population that was much larger than that of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and its oil wealth and geopolitical position and long borders with the Soviet Union that made it a more pivotal country than Turkey. The West had a vital interest in the Persian Gulf oil resources, and Iran was well placed to safeguard these Western interests. Under President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Iran was given access to an unlimited amount of American weapons, short of nuclear weapons, and Iran became one of the leading American trade partners in the region.
As a result of the overwhelming American support for Iran, the shah’s pro-Western policies, Iran’s oil wealth and the size and sophistication of the Iranian armed forces, the Arab countries of the region had no option but to accept or endure Iranian hegemony. Iran was the first country in the region and in the Islamic world to recognise Israel and to establish friendly relations with it. In fact, after the establishment of the provisional Israeli government, established to govern the Yishuv. It was immediately granted de facto recognition by the United States, followed by Iran. The entire Arab League opposed the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel. The Soviet Union was the first country to grant de jure recognition of Israel on 17 May 1948. The shah refused to join the Arab oil and economic boycott against Israel.
Iraq, which had pursued very hostile policies towards Iran and had expelled hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of Iranian origin, was forced to accept the reality of Iran’s superior military might. Iran and Iraq had fought a kind of a low-level, undeclared war from 1969 to 1975. However, in 1975, Saddam Hussein signed the Algiers Accord, agreeing to drop Iraqi claims of sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab and accepting Iranian demands to regard the Thalweg Line as the border between the two countries. Iran also provided an important behind-the-scenes role in the negotiations between Egypt and Israel that led to the signing of the Camp David Accords.
With the victory of the Islamic revolution, all that changed. Iran joined the camp of radical and anti-Western countries, and relations with the Persian Gulf countries became very tense. Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf littoral states became worried that the Islamic revolution would sweep through their populations and would topple the conservative regimes there. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was also nervous about the reaction of the Shi’i majority in Iraq, tried to make use of the post-revolutionary chaos in Iran and to abrogate the agreement that he had signed with the Shah. On 22nd September 1980, while Saddam Hussein ceremoniously tore up the Algiers Accord in front of television cameras, Iraqi forces invaded Iran, occupied Khorramshahr, Iran’s main port on the Persian Gulf, and bombed the Abadan oil refinery, the biggest in the world.
Iraq’s invasion was a clear violation of international law and the UN Charter, and an undisputed case of aggression. That aggression would have necessitated an immediate Security Council resolution condemning the aggressor and insisting that Iraqi forces return to the frontiers before hostility. Unfortunately, this did not occur. On the contrary, the Iraqi invasion of Iran led to undisguised Western pleasure. After some delay, the Security Council eventually issued the notorious SCR 479 of 28th September, calling for a cease-fire in place, while the Iraqi army was in control of vast areas of Iran over a 750-mile front.
That devastating war continued for eight years, becoming one of the longest wars in the twentieth century, inflicting about a million casualties upon Iran and causing untold damage to the Iranian economy.[3] This proved to be the worst disaster for Iran since Timur’s (Tamerlane’s) invasion in the 14th century. Saddam Hussein first made use of chemical weapons as early as 1984 against the Iranian armed forces. Thousands of Iranian soldiers died a most painful death, and scores of them were sent for treatment to various European hospitals. Yet there was hardly any condemnation of that crime until shortly after the end of the war, when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurdish population in Halabja that had fallen into the Iranian hands.
Shortly after the start of the war, with Western encouragement, the six small Persian Gulf countries formed the GCC alliance, mainly as an anti-Iranian front. Saddam Hussein received huge financial support from the GCC, as well as a vast amount of military support from Western countries and Russia, including Super Etendard planes and Exocet missiles from France, military intelligence support from the United States, and missiles and advanced aircraft from the Soviet Union. Much was made of the Scuds that Iraq launched against Saudi Arabia and Israel in 1991. However, out of 390 Scuds that Iraq has launched in recent wars, 308 of them — nearly 80% — were launched against Tehran and other Iranian cities, with the loss of over 2,226 lives and 10,705 injured.[4]
The only Iraqi outlet to the Persian Gulf was through the Fao Peninsula, which was put out of action in the early stages of the war by the Iranian forces. Iraq was not able to export oil through the Persian Gulf, and to disrupt Iranian trade, it started to attack the ships and tankers that were visiting Iranian ports. Iraq continued to export oil both through Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and by means of a pipeline through Turkey. It also used both Jordan and Kuwait as trade routes, as well as for a safe haven for its military and civilian aircraft.
For a time, Iran did not respond to the Iraqi attacks on its shipping, because it was not in Iran’s interests to endanger the security of the Persian Gulf that provided it with the only outlet for the export of its oil. However, as the attacks grew more intense, Iran began to retaliate against the ships that were using Kuwaiti ports, arguing that Kuwait had assumed the nature of a belligerent country by its massive support for Iraq. Iran also supported opposition groups in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
As Iran seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the war against the Iraqi forces, to tip the balance in Iraq’s favour, the United States re-flagged the Kuwaiti ships on the excuse of wanting to preserve the security of shipping in the Persian Gulf. By doing this, in effect, the United States joined the conflict on the side of Iraq, because it never attacked any of the Iraqi military installations from which the attacks on Iranian-bound ships were being launched. Records show that the number of vessels attacked by the Iraqis was about twice the number of those attacked by Iran. With the massive presence of the American fleet in the Persian Gulf, the balance was heavily tilted towards Iraq. Many Iranian offshore oil facilities and more than a third of the Iranian navy were sunk by the American navy. Meanwhile, Iran tried to retaliate against the GCC supporters of Iraq.
The Arabs who had so lavishly helped Iraq during its conflict with Iran paid a very heavy price shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when trying to be the dominant power of the Persian Gulf and hungry for greater oil resources, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The United States amassed a massive force to force Iraq out of Kuwait and launched Desert Shield and Desert Storm campaigns, which decimated the Iraqi forces at the cost of tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
Iran declared its neutrality in the conflict and, in practice, tilted towards the West and the GCC countries. The aftermath of the war, which shattered the Arab ranks and caused massive human and economic misery in the region, helped Iran to be reconciled once again with its Arab neighbours. The resumption of relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, and President Khatami’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar (15- 20th May 1999) – the first such visit since the start of the Islamic revolution — have once again brought the former enemies closer together. In a joint communiqué, Saudi Arabia and Iran stressed “the need to strengthen bilateral relations based on good neighbourliness and non-interference … in order to establish permanent peace and security in co-operation with all countries in the region.”
This situation is in sharp contrast to Ayatollah Khomeini’s views about those countries that were cursed by him even in his will and testament. These moves will not only help reduce tension in the Persian Gulf, but they will also have a positive effect on the domestic political situation in those countries. Given the signs of moderation in Tehran, Khatami’s overtures to the Arab world should be welcomed, wrote one Kuwaiti editor, who suggested that the Iranian leader’s liberal ideas could prove useful. “Greater liberties in Iran can help the Arabs marginalise bigots” of the sort who have staged bloody Islamic insurrections in Algeria and Egypt, Mohammad Ruhaimi wrote. “Arab and Iranian reformers must join hands in seeking to promote Islamic practices more in tune with the modern era.”[5]
Therefore, instead of propagating Islamic fundamentalism and revolution in the Persian Gulf countries as in the past, Iran can now play a useful role in encouraging religious moderation and the development of a form of Islamic democracy more in keeping with the requirements of the contemporary world. The relations between Iran and Egypt, and even between Iran and Jordan, are also improving, and it is only a matter of time before those countries establish full diplomatic relations again.
However, despite these positive developments and even closer relations with Iraq, the relations between Iran and Iraq are bound to remain very tense for a long time to come. In the not-too-distant future, either under the present regime or its successor, Iraq is bound to become a major oil exporter and, in time, will again become a significant military power and, in all likelihood, it will turn on that state which has been its historic enemy. As a result of the unfinished state of the war, the issue of the payment of reparations, the existence of Iranian opposition groups in Iraq and Iraqi opposition groups in Iran, the two countries may again stumble towards further conflicts. This is why Iran must stay wary of Iraq’s long-term intentions and must be prepared to defend itself against future Iraqi threats.
IRAN’S RELATIONS WITH ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran’s northern borders changed drastically. For the first time in many centuries Iran has no common land borders with Russia. Instead it has gained a number of new countries as its neighbors. Iran shared a 2,250-kilometer frontier with the USSR, but now across its northern land border it faces independent Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and from its northern coast can reach out across the Caspian Sea to the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. These profound changes have presented important challenges. They have given rise to tension with Turkey and some of the newly emerged republics, and their repercussions for Iranian domestic scene are also considerable and as yet difficult to predict.
The Russo-Persian wars of the first half of the nineteenth century ended with the Persian defeat, which was confirmed by the Turkmanchai Treaty of 1828. According to that treaty, Iran lost the areas north of Aras (Araxes) River. After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Iran found an opportunity to reverse the situation at the Paris peace conference of 1919. The Bolsheviks had renounced the tsarist treaties and had indicated that they would revoke the unjust conditions of the Turkmanchai Treaty. At that time, Russia had in any case lost control over Transcaucasia and had actually recognized the independence of the three states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.[6]
However, the Iranian claims went unanswered, and the three republics were incorporated into Soviet Russia in 1920-21. Iran had no choice but to accept the loss of Transcaucasia, formalising the border with the Soviet Union by a treaty in 1921.[7] Therefore, for the past two centuries the greatest threat to the security and territorial integrity of Iran has been posed by the Russian Empire and its successor, the Soviet Union. In the nineteenth century, Russia took from Iran the Transcaucasian territories, and in the twentieth century, the Soviet Union supported puppet regimes and separatist movements in Gilan, Kordistan and Azerbaijan after the two world wars.
Against this background, it is clear that the break-up of the Soviet Union was an event of great significance for Iran. The new situation also held many dangers. The removal of one of the two former super-powers has created a unipolar world that limits Iran’s room for manoeuvre. With the communist enemy defeated, militant Islam is now viewed in Washington as the greatest threat to American and Western interests and values. As the Islamic revolution in Iran was the first Islamist movement to succeed in the Middle East, Iran is regarded as the original fount of Islamic radicalism.
On the regional level, the removal of the Soviet military threat has been offset by the dangers arising from regional instability and conflict, as witnessed in the conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the conflicts in Chechnya and Abkhazia, and the civil wars in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1993 led to a large refugee influx into Iran. Iran is home to nearly 15 per cent of all refugees in the world. At its height, Iran was housing about 3,000,000 Afghan refugees in the East, a large number of Marsh Arab refugees from Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish and Azeri refugees in the northwest.
As the Soviet Union fell apart, it was widely expected that Iran and Turkey would enter into a rivalry for influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Both countries claim to have historical, cultural, ethno-lingual and religious ties with these Muslim republics. It was suggested that the Turko-Iranian struggle might take the form of a struggle between two ‘models’, Turkey presenting a secular, Western-oriented, democratic model, with Iran presenting an Islamic fundamentalist, anti-Western outlook. However, the reality has proved to be much more complex, with many more players from near and far entering the field of competition than merely Iran and Turkey. The countries with direct interests in this region include the Russian Federation, the United States and European countries, China, Japan, India, Pakistan and some Arab countries, as well as Iran and Turkey.
At the same time, in the rush to decide the fate of the region and to exploit its resources, it is easy to forget these countries themselves and what kind of a future they wish to carve out for themselves. Most of the foreign debate about the region portrays those states as “passive sponges absorbing foreign influence, not as active participants.”[8] What is perhaps even more significant than Turkish-Iranian ties with Central Asia is the security concerns in the region. Civil war in Afghanistan, in the vicinity of the Central Asian republics and the tensions in Tajikistan both provide grounds for the Russian army to offer its protection and consolidate its position in Central Asia. As the supporters of the “Atlanticist” and the “Eurasian” policy options in Russia fight it out among themselves, and as the Russian Federation begins to assert itself, it will be logical to assume that as the old imperial power in the region Russia will try to have a say in what goes on in “the near abroad.”
It should be remembered that, contrary to the East European countries that threw away the yoke of communism and joined the fold of modern democracies, nearly all Caucasian and Central Asian countries are still led by the same communist leaders who ran those countries during the Soviet era, and who are reluctant to give up their power and influence. It is absolutely clear that the present situation will have to change. Either with the passing of the present dictatorial rulers from the scene or as a result of new uprisings and revolutions, the situation in these countries will change drastically from what we see today. Whichever way these countries go, and whether they will still wish to be under the control of a big brother from near or far, is something that cannot be predicted with any certainty. The best bet would be that many of the present assumptions and plans will be overturned, and what will emerge in that region will be something new and different from the past or the present.
The newly independent Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics have the potential to alter the existing regional balance of power in the Middle East. Despite their so far limited interaction with the expanded Middle East sub-systems, they offer an arena for existing players to act out their own strategic, political and economic ambitions, not only through bilateral relations but also through the reshaping of the balance of power in the region. The collapse of the Soviet Union has brought about changes in the region that are as profound and momentous as those that took place after the First and Second World Wars.
The end of the First World War saw the collapse and the carving up of the Ottoman Empire, and the post-World War Two Middle East was characterised by the rise of independent Arab states and the creation of the State of Israel. The entrance of the non-Arab, mostly Muslim Caucasian and Central Asian republics into the expanded region provides new opportunities for the non-Arab Middle East states — i.e. Iran, Turkey and Israel — to assert themselves and to enter into new alignments. Each of these non-Arab states has much to gain in terms of foreign policy goals from an active and concentrated projection into this region.
For Israel, the opportunity presents itself to extend its influence to the periphery of the Arab sub-system in line with the Ben-Gurion doctrine. Economic and diplomatic ties with the new republics – maybe with Turkey’s help – will enable Israel to ‘leapfrog’ over dependency on the Arab oil, and develop an economic hinterland while politically marginalising its hostile neighbours. In the long term, Israel’s relations with those Muslim republics would also depend on the general relationship between Israel and the rest of the Islamic world. If Israel can resolve its conflict with the Palestinians and be integrated into the Middle East, it would find it much easier to play a big role in this region, too. However, if the present hostilities between Israel and her neighbours continue, that will also affect her relations with these republics that are once again asserting their Islamic identity.
For Turkey, there is, for the first time since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the opportunity to open up to the Turkic areas to the East and to convert them into an economic, political and strategic asset. The new situation has once again also revived the sinister ambitions of a Pan-Turkic Empire, probably accounting for the popularity of the extreme right in the April elections in Turkey. Using its geo-strategic position, Turkey desires to provide the gateway between Asia and Europe, and to assert itself as the new driving force of economic development in an expanded Middle East. Turkey also hopes, with active American support, to become a transit route for the export of the energy resources from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
A major problem for Turkey is that it has no borders with either Azerbaijan or with Central Asian republics. Iran enjoys an over 700-kilometre-long border with Azerbaijan, which gives it the important advantage of direct access to that country. Turkey’s shortest route to those countries passes through Iran, which, at present, the United States is trying to bypass. The other route passes through Armenia and Georgia, which are at loggerheads with Azerbaijan. It is unlikely that the deep-rooted and bloody conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia that occupies Nogorno-Karabakh and a huge chunk of Azerbaijan’s territory, will be resolved in the near future.
This may explain the recent attempts by some Azerbaijani authorities to ferment trouble in the Iranian Azerbaijan, and even make calls for uniting the much larger and more populous Iranian Azerbaijan with the northern Azerbaijan that was annexed from Iran in the last century. If these hostile moves continue, not only will they not provide an easy route for Turkey, they will give rise to extensive and never-ending conflicts in the region that will further undermine the security of both Iran and Turkey, as well as the Caucasian states, and may even involve Russia in major hostilities with Turkey. Those conflicts would create another version of the Balkan wars and would destabilise the entire region for many decades to come. They might even backfire and destroy the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
It should be noted that not only Ayatollah Khamene’i, but nearly 100 Iranian Majlis deputies and many members of the Cabinet and high-ranking Iranian officials come from the Azeri background. There are nearly twenty million people of Azeri ethnic background in the Iranian Azerbaijan and the rest of the country, as opposed to about seven million in the Azerbaijan Republic.
For Iran, the new republics provide a buffer between itself and the Russian Federation. The possibilities presented by trade and economic cooperation with the new northern neighbours are matched by the potential for linguistic, cultural and even religious assertion by the Islamic Republic. Already, Iran’s trade with some of these republics has increased dramatically. Iran is Armenia’s second biggest trading partner, while the volume of trade between Iran and Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan has also increased. Contrary to Iran’s policies towards the Persian Gulf region, its policies towards the Caucasus and Central Asia have been marked by pragmatism. One reason is that the mullahs were not as interested in the region as they were in the Arab countries to the south. Consequently, those in charge of Iranian foreign policy were given a freer hand in dealing with that region. For instance, Iran sided with the Christian Armenia rather than with Shi’i Azerbaijan due to the latter’s hostile policy towards Iran. Iran played a constructive role in the civil war in Tajikistan and tried to bring the warring factions together.
It is ironic that, given the plight that Iran finds itself in, it has made a common cause with its long-term adversary, Russia, against their common foes. Iran has, on the whole, supported Russian policies in the region to the detriment of the Muslim republics. Russia, too, for similar reasons, has not given in to Western pressures to isolate Iran. On the contrary, Russia and Iran have improved and expanded trade relations, as well as technical cooperation.
Russia is still continuing with the agreement to complete the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Indeed, at a 6th April 1999 news conference, Acting Atomic Energy Minister Adamov reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to complete the $800 million Bushehr nuclear plant on time, and said his ministry was also ready to construct a “research reactor” with less than 20 per cent enrichment at the Bushehr site. Adamov was worried about America replacing Russia in the field of nuclear technology in Iran. He warned that if Russia does not secure this contract, the current “flirting” between Iran and the United States could lead to the United States delivering a reactor with “90 per cent enrichment” in 15 years.”[9]
Russia and Iran have both been arguing for an international regime in the Caspian where all the resources would be jointly exploited by the littoral states. In fact, the only agreements on the status of the Caspian Sea are the 1921 and 1941 agreements between Iran and the former Soviet Union, which divided the Caspian Sea between the two states. Recently, Russia has moved closer to the acceptance of the Caspian as an enclosed sea, which allows various littoral states to have national sectors and exploit resources exclusively within them. Turkmenistan has also joined Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in dividing the Caspian into territorial waters. Iran is a lost cause, and sooner or later, it too has to accept the inevitable and come to some sort of agreement with other states in delineating the Caspian territorial waters.
Were it not for American opposition, Iran could benefit greatly by acting as the natural transit route for the energy resources of the region. Iran provides the shortest and by far the cheapest transit route, but political considerations are contradicting economic realities, and are preventing Iran from playing its geographical and geopolitical card.
IRAN-AMERICA RELATIONS
This brings us to the pivotal role of the United States in the region and its implications for Iran-US relations. Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations on “Reassessing U.S. Policy toward Iran”, started his speech with the following remarks that encapsulate the issues involved in Iran-US relations and express them much better than I can:
“First, no country has caused the United States more anguish or more trouble over the past two decades than has Iran. Problems with Iran contributed to the downfall of one President and tarnished the record of another. Emotions have run high. The rhetoric has been hot, and mutual recriminations frequent.
Second, the confrontation between the United States and Iran—between two peoples and two countries that were once close friends and partners—has benefited neither country. Years without dialogue have served the interests of neither the United States nor Iran.
Third, important changes are underway inside Iran. It is a society in transition. President Khatami wants to promote civil society and the rule of law. He wants to end Iran’s isolation. He wants to improve the life of the Iranian people. He is reaching out to Iran’s neighbors — and he is reaching out to the United States. He is also engaged in a fierce power struggle inside Iran.”[10]
He went on to say that Iran matters, because “With over 65 million people, Iran is the most populous country in a region of vital importance to the U.S. national interest, the Persian Gulf. Iran has some of the world’s largest oil and natural gas reserves… Iran controls half of the coastline of the Persian Gulf and one side of the Strait of Hormuz, through which half of the world’s traded oil moves. Iran borders the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, where huge reserves of oil and gas are now being tapped. Poor U.S. ties with Iran harm the competitive position of U.S. companies in Central Asia, and make it more difficult to bring new energy supplies to world markets… In short, poor relations with Iran immensely complicate American foreign policy. Improved relations with Iran could lead to comparable benefits. An Iran that rejoins the family of nations and follows its rules could make a major contribution to regional prosperity and stability. A better relationship with Iran would serve the strategic interests of the United States and improve the climate for the Middle East peace process.”
He summed up the current American policy towards Iran as consisting of:
- A sound bite that we want Iran “to change not just words, but deeds”;
- A slogan called “dual containment”; and
- A sledgehammer in the form of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, known as ILSA.
After nearly 20 years of estrangement, it is time for both countries to reassess their relations and see if there are ways of improving them. The history of relations between Iran and the U.S. goes back a long way, and they have gone through many fluctuations. An American citizen who was a resident in Iran during the Constitutional Revolution at the beginning of the century joined the Constitutionalists, was killed during the clashes and is immortalised as one of the martyrs of the Iranian Constitutional Movement.
As I pointed out in a previous lecture, after the Constitutional Revolution, Iran turned to the United States for assistance to reform its finances. It obtained permission from the American government to recruit a young American expert, Morgan Shuster, who devised a new taxation system and planned to set up a tax-collecting gendarmerie. After the First World War, again Iran turned to another American, A. Millspaugh, to continue the work that had been started by Shuster. Millspaugh was called upon again in 1942 to return to Iran.
During the oil nationalisation period and early years of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq’s government, Iran looked to the United States as an ally in the struggle of the Middle Eastern countries to throw away the yoke of European and Russian imperialism. It also served the American purpose of wishing to get a foothold in the Middle East oil that was mainly controlled by British concessions. Mosaddeq himself believed that the United States government would side with him in his disagreement with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
However, the growing influence of the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party, as well as the U.S. desire to replace the British influence and exert direct power in Iran, persuaded the American government that things were getting out of hand and that the Soviet Union might make use of the disturbances in Iran to install a communist regime there. This fear led the British and American governments to organise the coup against the nationalist government of Dr. Mosaddeq and to bring back the shah, who had fled into exile. Mosaddeq himself was imprisoned, and many of his supporters were also jailed or killed.
That event marked a turning point in the popular perceptions of the United States in Iran and was comparable to the fall of Salvador Allende in Chile. No matter what the West thought of Mosaddeq, he was very popular in Iran and was regarded as a great nationalist figure who was trying to put an end to decades of foreign economic exploitation and political interference in the domestic affairs of Iran.
Although the shah’s rule from 1953 to 1978 brought a great deal of prosperity and progress to Iran, he was never forgiven for the coup and was always regarded as an American lackey. When things began to go bad and the regime’s repression became intolerable, most Iranians blamed the United States as the main supporter of the shah. That view might be quite wrong, as successive American administrations tried to encourage the shah to introduce greater democracy and freedom, yet the popular perception was that the United States approved of all the oppressive measures of the Israeli and American-trained brutal secret service, SAVAK.
In the course of the revolution, the American administration instinctively supported the shah, as it was again worried — as in the days of Mosaddeq — that the revolution would bring a militant, pro-Moscow regime to power. There were many good reasons for American fears, as many leftist forces that were opposed to the American presence in Iran were the initial instigators and supporters of the revolution. However, America’s unquestioning support for the shah did not make her popular with the revolutionaries when the revolution finally succeeded. During the first few months after the victory of the revolution, there was a deadly competition going on between the leftist and the religious forces for supremacy.
It was at this time that some militant religious students with leftist leanings occupied the American embassy in Tehran on 4th November 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini used that episode to appear more militant than the left and to isolate and eventually destroy the leftist forces. That illegal act served Khomeini’s domestic purposes well, as he managed to crush the leftist forces one after another. However, it proved the most disastrous mistake as far as Iran’s foreign policy was concerned. The image of American diplomats held hostage, blindfolded and humiliated, has been ingrained in the minds of many Americans. The hostages were kept for 444 days and were then released unharmed, but the cost to Iran has been incalculable.
Most Americans are not aware of the price paid by Iran for that ghastly deed. For a start, it isolated Iran in the international community and tempted Saddam Hussein to attack Iran and inflict all the casualties and the economic damage that was referred to above. Some Iranian officials believe that Saddam Hussein was actually encouraged to attack Iran to put pressure on Iran to release the hostages. In the course of the war, it prevented nearly all other countries from helping Iran militarily or economically. It was the only time in the course of the Cold War that both super-powers became united in helping a country, Iraq, against another country that seemed to pose a threat against both of them. Nearly all Iranian weapons obtained under the Shah were American-made. It became extremely difficult for Iran to receive spare parts for those weapons.
Later in the war, when Iraq was on the point of defeat, when Iranian forces had occupied Majnun oil fields, the Fao Peninsula had advanced many miles inside Iraq and were shelling Basra, America joined the hostilities and tipped the balance in favour of Iraq. The United States froze billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets – some of which still remain frozen – and stopped sending the weapons that Iran had paid for under the shah. Later, America imposed the “dual containment” policy and economic sanctions on Iran. Iran has found it extremely difficult to attract investment or even to borrow money from international organisations. Right till the present time, all Iranian moves in trying to establish close links with Central Asian countries have been blocked and frustrated by the United States. The catalogue is endless.
Therefore, if any country suffered as a result of the hostage crisis, it is Iran and not the United States. The time has come to put that sorry episode behind us, especially as President Khatami openly apologised for that incident in his CNN interview, and expressed his respect for “the great American people and the American civilisation.” It is also important to reassess the relations in view of the real changes that have taken place in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy, as well as the new realities in the Middle East and Central Asia.
If Khatami’s reform movement is to be successful, he needs foreign support. The pressure is on Khatami and on the United States to turn a new chapter and to take bold measures. Both sides need to engage in what is politely called “an agonising reappraisal.” The most dramatic change Khatami can initiate is to deliver better relations with the United States, but for this to happen, the United States needs to signal real change in its attitude towards Iran.
Both sides seem to have become tired of demonisation, but neither of them seems to have recognised that each side is paying an ever-steeper price for prolonging the alienation. Graham Fuller, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation and a former vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council for long-range forecasting at the CIA, in an article a few months ago pointed out the cost of the break in relations for both sides: “Iran measures the cost in terms of the economic pain of sanctions, its inability to develop its own oil industry, the obstacles to participating more fully in the development of Caspian oil, and its own relative international isolation. The United States, in turn, has lost the support of most of its allies on its Iran policy, while punitive U.S. sanctions on allies now hinder cooperation in many other areas of broad strategic interest in the region. American oil companies, too, are losing out on participation in developing Iran’s energy sector, and U.S. geopolitical goals are stymied in the region by the intractable reality of Iran’s geographical presence athwart all key lines of communication across Central Asia.”[11]
Of course, American complaints about Iran are not limited to the issue of the hostage crisis. The main threat that was posed by Iran shortly after the Islamic revolution was the export of Islamic fundamentalism that could have destabilised countries friendly to the West. That threat has been contained, and at the moment, Iran is leading the debates about Islamic democracy. The triumph of the reformist faction and the isolation of the hard-liners require the success of Khatami’s democratic reforms at home and the easing of tension abroad. Indeed, if the West can help ensure the success of the reform movement in Iran, it has demonstrated the failure of Islamic militancy and fundamentalism. This is bound to have enormous repercussions in the rest of the region and in the Islamic world as a whole.
The “dual containment” policy summed up American grievances against Iran into three well-known areas: Iran’s support for international terrorism, its opposition to the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace process, and Iran’s quest for weapons of mass destruction. However, in the words of Fuller, “While seeming quite straightforward and explicit, they are in fact a complex mixture of fact, semi-fact and much politically convenient but quite selective interpretation of reality.”[12]
Let us look at these three complaints more closely. There seems to be no doubt that the Iranian intelligence organisation has been involved in some terrorist activities in the past, mainly against Iranian dissidents, such as the assassination of former Premier Shapur Bakhtiar and the leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Movement at Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, and many other similar cases. These acts of terrorism have not been confined to foreign countries, but as was proved recently, the Iranian intelligence organisation has been involved in the murder of several dissidents at home too. It was encouraging that, for the first time in Iranian history and perhaps in the Middle East as a whole, the government admitted that “rogue elements” within its intelligence organisation had been responsible for those murders.
It seems that since Khatami’s election and the removal of the former head of the Ministry of Information, there have not been any reports of similar acts abroad. It is hoped that a thorough reorganisation of the Ministry of Intelligence will bring that secretive organisation under democratic control and will put an end to these crimes. However, in the eyes of many Iranian officials, the killing of some of their opponents who had been involved in armed attacks against the country has not been any better or any worse than the Turkish campaign against the PKK or the Israeli assassination of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders abroad or in the occupied territories.
Unfortunately, the violation of human rights of religious minorities has not come to an end since Khatami’s election. If anything, they have been intensified by his opponents to embarrass him, as the recent death sentences and imprisonment of members of the Baha’i community attest. Again, with greater foreign pressure and the further development of democratic reforms at home, these inhuman violations will also cease. If Iran has normal relations with the West and has a stake in maintaining those relations intact, that is bound to affect its domestic and foreign behaviour and would make it more willing to observe human rights at home and abroad.
However, when American officials refer to Iranian support for terrorism, they are also thinking of the Iranian support for the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad. Iranian support for those organisations, which Iran officially denies, falls within the greater issue of the Iranian opposition to the Middle East peace process. Again in the words of Fuller: “But as ugly as terrorism is, it must be seen as a form of war itself, and those wars must be seen in the perspective of the broad regional military struggle, with different sides employing different weapons, B-52’s, tanks, naval aircraft, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, with victims on all sides.”[13]
In the Iranian eyes, the mullahs’ support for their fellow Shi’ites in Lebanon should be compared with the Israeli support for the SLA forces in South Lebanon, with the differences that Israel and SLA are occupying a foreign country, while Hezbollah is trying to fight against that occupation. If, as the new Israeli government has promised, Israeli forces will be withdrawn from Lebanon within a year, there would be no cause for supporting the Lebanese Hezbollah by Iran or by anyone else. If Iranian support for radical Islamic groups in Lebanon continues under those circumstances, then the international community would rightly condemn them for it.
There is no question that Iran’s policy towards the Arab-Israeli dispute deserves criticism. It is strange that despite very strong rhetoric against the “Zionist entity” or the “regime occupying Jerusalem”, Iran has had some covert relations with Israel, most notably during the Iran-Iraq War when it received vast quantities of weapons from Israel. Despite these relations, Iran has denied the right of the Israeli State to exist and has opposed the Arab-Israeli peace process, in effect “being more Palestinian than the Palestinians!” This opposition has in no way accorded with Iran’s national interests. However, it should be admitted that the main problem in the Arab-Israeli peace process does not lie with Iranian opposition to it, but with the main players in the game, the Israelis and the Palestinians. Iran is not in a position to veto any agreement that might be reached between Israel and its neighbours.
Even on the Iranian-Israeli front, there have been some changes that might lead to greater relaxation of tensions between the two countries. The ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ daily reported that its correspondent had spoken to the only female Iranian vice-president, Ma’sumeh Ebtekar, in Davos, Switzerland, in “the first interview by an Iranian political figure with an Israeli newspaper.” The newspaper quoted Ebtekar as saying that although the time was not yet ripe for formal relations between the Iranian and Israeli governments, she supported a dialogue between Iranians and Israelis. During the OIC summit in Tehran, Iran implicitly dropped its objection to the existence of Israel and went along with the resolution calling for the implementation of the Oslo Accords. Yasir Arafat has said that Khatami had told him during the conference that Iran would be happy with any arrangement that the Palestinians could reach with the Israelis.
More significantly, during his recent visit to Qatar, in an interview with Qatari al-Jazeera television, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Iran only gave political support to the Arabs and the Palestinians opposed to the peace process in the Middle East. “We have said we don’t have any practical interference concerning Palestine… It is natural to support any humanitarian work to confront the occupation of land and fight oppression, and this does not mean we give support in the form of weapons. We only give political support,” he added.[14] This is a significant statement by the Iranian president, officially stating that Iran does not have “any practical interference concerning Palestine.” This is a clear admission that it is up to the Palestinians to reach whatever form of agreement they wish with Israel.
Furthermore, Iran’s active opposition to the Middle East peace process is partly due to the strained relations between Tehran and Washington. It reflects Iran’s feeling that it is under strategic siege. Thus, it lashes out against the peace process because it is the centrepiece of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. If relations between Iran and the United States improve, that in turn will lead to great improvements in Iranian and Israeli relations. By history and by sentiment, the Persians and the Jews have never been and still are not hostile to each other. Even twenty years of anti-Zionist and even anti-Jewish propaganda by the mullahs has not changed those sentiments. In fact, the election of a reformist premier in Israel who has declared his aim to be the establishment of unity at home and peace abroad could act as a catalyst for more friendly Iranian-Israeli relations.
As to the third point of contention between Iran and the United States, namely Iran’s alleged quest for weapons of mass destruction, this is not again an issue that cannot be resolved as a result of talks between the two countries. As the largest country in the region, Iran has some genuine and legitimate defence needs. As a country that has fallen victim to the use of chemical weapons and Scud missiles, Iran feels that it has the right to defend itself in any future conflict. Iran’s defence budget is a fraction of that of Saudi Arabia and some other wealthier regional states. Iran’s current rearmament efforts are actually far more modest than those pursued by the shah with American support, or by Saudi Arabia, Israel or Turkey at present.
The issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not limited to Iran, even assuming that Iran is trying to gain access to such weapons. At a time when India and Pakistan, as well as Israel, have joined the nuclear club, it is time to find regional solutions to this worrying problem. As a country with the largest population in the Persian Gulf region, Iran would be the last country that would find it necessary to be armed with weapons of mass destruction. As I suggested in an earlier speech, the time has come to ban the possession and the use of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East as a whole. This requires greater trust and transparency among the regional states and impartiality and even-handedness by the West.
As opposed to these American complaints, Iran also has a long list of grievances and demands from the United States. Some have been referred to above. Others include an end to U.S. congressional calls and funding for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, unfreezing of several billion dollars worth of Iranian frozen assets, and above all, an end to U.S. sanctions on Iran, including blocking of all energy routes through Iran.
Many Western oil executives and politicians are saying that Iran must be involved in the development of solutions for the export of oil from the Caspian Sea region. BP Amoco Vice President Tony Hayward, whose portfolio includes the Caspian, has said that he believes that multiple pipelines would ultimately be built, including a southern route. “I believe there will be a major route to the south. I think Iran is a major player in this area, and we need to find a way… to begin involving them in this game. Because if we don’t, I believe we’ve got a problem,” he said.[15]
In 1996, Iran and Turkey signed a $23 billion agreement under which Turkey would buy Iranian gas from 2001 through a joint pipeline. Turkey would initially buy 3.0 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Iran through a pipeline from Iran’s Tabriz to Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Supplies were expected to reach 8.0 bcm at their peak. Turkey has already completed nearly 50 per cent of the pipeline from Dogubayazit (on the Iranian border) to Erzurum, and the Iranian section of the Turco-Iranian pipeline is almost 80 per cent complete. However, on 3rd May 1999, Gokhan Yardim, general manager of the state pipeline concern Botas, said that the American government was still opposed to the deal and was trying to stop it.[16]
Some of the big firms have expressed interest in creating pipelines through Iran to export oil and gas. Total, for example, had proposed a $2.5 billion pipeline to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan, through Iran, to Turkey, where it would be sold to Western consumers. A trans-Iranian pipeline, a “southern route,” for oil export to the Persian Gulf has also been discussed. This proposal has the advantage of being relatively cheap (less than $2 billion), but that too is opposed by the U.S. State Department, which continues to threaten sanctions against companies that would invest in such a pipeline.
Instead, the United States has argued for an “east-west route” for the export of Caspian oil, beginning at Baku (Azerbaijan), passing through Georgia and Turkey, and terminating at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan (Turkey). Such a pipeline would cost roughly $4 billion to construct, a price tag that has the oil companies baulking in view of the current low price of oil. If a US-Iran rapprochement were reached, and business confidence were established in the safety of investing in Iran, the “southern route” would be the favoured path.
Even without a “southern route” however, Iran takes on a new significance. It is now a regional power lying adjacent to smaller, newly independent countries in which Western business is making substantial investments. New diplomatic alignments are being weighed. In the eyes of some US officials and oil executives, it may be possible to see Iran transformed from a “rogue state” into, if not a US ally or client, then at least an effective counterweight to the other regional powers, particularly Russia, China, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey.
Apart from pipelines, the US does not allow oil companies even to swap oil with Iran. Both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have shown interest in swap deals with Iran, but those moves, too, have been stopped by the United States. Recently, the State Department rejected a request by Mobil for a swap with Iran, a request to deliver to Iran oil produced from its operation in Turkmenistan in exchange for Iranian oil delivered to Mobil at the Persian Gulf. This deal would have allowed Iran to use the oil from Turkmenistan for its domestic consumption, and Mobil would, in effec,t be able to bring oil from Turkmenistan to the world market.
A few weeks ago, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliev signed another $10 billion agreement with Western oil companies. So far, agreements worth £70 billion have been signed with Azerbaijan. In the initial consortium of Western, Russian, Turkish and Asian companies that had been formed to exploit Azerbaijan’s oil, Azerbaijan had decided to give Iran a five per cent share. Even that had to be cancelled as a result of the U.S. pressure, and that five per cent share was given to another American company instead. Therefore, Iran feels that in all the areas that really matter to it, the U.S. adopts a very hostile policy towards it and prevents it from playing its regional role. Consequently, one should not be surprised if the tone of the Iranian officials remains hostile towards the United States.
However, as opposed to all these negative developments, there have been many influential voices in the United States calling for the reappraisal of the relations with Iran. Last January, the former American Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who was instrumental in ending diplomatic relations with Iran, in a speech at the Asia Society, said that the time had come for the resumption of US-Iran relations. He concluded his remarks by saying: “In short, the time has come for us as American and Iranian citizens to apply our mutual energy, intellect, and goodwill toward strengthening relations between our two countries. This will contribute to the well-being and security of both countries and societies, and strengthen our ability as Americans to face the challenges of the new century.”[17] Speaking at the same venue, the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented a “road map” for the development of American-Iranian relations.
During the past few months, the Clinton Administration has made a number of diplomatic overtures towards Iran. In December 1998, for example, President Clinton removed Iran from the U.S. list of major drug-producing countries, telling Congress that Iran had nearly eliminated cultivation of opium poppies. Administration officials said that it represented simply a factual assessment, but added they would not be unhappy if Iran interpreted it as a friendly gesture.
On April 28, the Administration decided to allow US firms to sell food and medicine to Iran, along with Libya and Sudan. Though the State Department continues to denote all three states as “terrorist” and to maintain other economic restrictions against each of them, it will now permit the sale of “human necessities” on a case-by-case basis rather than continue the blanket trade embargo on all products. Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat, however, depicted the move as part of an overall reform of U.S. economic sanctions policy, not a “signal to any country.” Then on April 30, the State Department dropped its designation of Iran as the world’s chief terrorist nation. The New York Times quoted an unnamed government official as saying, “If the Iranians read this as a signal for better ties, fine.”
At a White House event on April 12, President Clinton delivered off-the-cuff remarks about Iran that apparently surprised both the State Department and the officials in Tehran. Many Iranian politicians and journalists argued in parliament and on editorial pages over whether the president’s words should be interpreted as an apology for past U.S. policy toward Iran, in response to Khatami’s apology for the American hostages in Iran. “It may be,” President Clinton said, “that the Iranian people have been taught to hate or distrust the United States or the West on the grounds that we are infidels and outside the faith. And, therefore, it is easy for us to be angry and to respond in kind. I think it is important to recognise, however, that Iran, because of its enormous geopolitical importance over time, has been the subject of quite a lot of abuse from various Western nations. And I think sometimes it’s quite important to tell people, look, you have a right to be angry at something my country or my culture or others that are generally allied with us today did to you 50 or 60 or 100 or 150 years ago. But that is different from saying that I am outside the faith, and you are God’s chosen.”[18]
These words have been by far the most significant and the most friendly remarks made by an American president about Iran since the revolution. The importance of these remarks did not go unnoticed. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami welcomed those remarks and praised President Clinton’s courage. In an interview with the Qatari satellite television channel Al-Jazeera, Khatami said: “I think that the point of view expressed by Mr. Clinton was courageous, without knowing to what extent he was convinced of what he was saying or whether it was just a tactic.” The Iranian president added, however, that “this personal opinion cannot easily change the traditional policies of the United States towards Iran, the Middle East or the Islamic world.”
At the same time, he gave a signal that if these words were followed by some positive action, they could change the nature of the relationship between the two countries. He said: “If this was a signal of a change in US policy, and if behavior really changes on the ground, then this could serve as a basis and we could see a new type of international relationship between the West and the Islamic world, the West and the United States and Iran, and Iran and the United States. But this must be proved in practical terms, and for the moment we are seeing the opposite.”[19]
The problems between the two countries are not over by any means, but some big cracks have been made in the wall of mistrust. There is strong opposition in both countries to the resumption of ties, but enormous progress has been made since Khatami’s election. It is to be hoped that economic and political necessities and the desire for a more peaceful Middle East and Central Asia will bring the two countries closer together. As had been famously stated, countries do not have permanent friends or foes but permanent interests. It is in the Interest of both the United States and Iran to draw a line under the past and move their relations towards a direction that serves both countries and the region.
[1] David McLean, Britain and Her Buffer State: The Collapse of the Persian Empire 1890-1914 (London, 1979).
[2] Fred Halliday, “Iran and the West, a time for Change”, Lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 3 March 1991.
[3] Professor Kamran Mofid, an economist at Coventry University, has estimated the cost of damage inflicted on Iran to exceed 640 billion dollars, or more than all the revenue that Iran received from its oil from 1919 to the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War. The economic loss suffered by Iraq was about half that of Iran.
[4] S. Taheri Shemirani, ‘The War of the Cities’, in Farhang Rajaee, The Iran-Iraq War (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1993).
[5] Quoted by Howard Schneider, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, May 15, 1999; Page A20.
[6] See: Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1951).
[7]Svante E. Cornell, “Iran and the Caucasus”, Middle East Policy Journal, Volume V, Number 4, January 1998, pp 31-45.
[8] Edmund Herzig, Iran and the Former Soviet South (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995), p 12.
[9] Interfax, 6 April; Izvestiya, 8 April 1999.
[10] Speech by The Honorable Lee H Hamilton, Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-IN) before the Council on Foreign Relations, Reassessing U.S. Policy Toward Iran. April 15, 1998, Washington, D.C.
[11] Graham E. Fuller, “Repairing U.S.-Iranian Relations”, Middle East Policy Journal, volume VI, Number 2, October 1998.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Reuters, Sunday 23rd May 1999.
[15] Reuters, May 5, 1999.
[16] Reuters, May 3, 1999.
[17] Cyrus Vance, “US-Iran Relations – Has the Time Come?”, American-Iranian Council and the Asia Society, New York City, January 13, 1999, AIC Publications.
[18] AFP, 21 April 1999.
[19] AFP, May 23, 1999.
F Jahanpour 