Only a Face-off

"On January 3, 2020, the United States military kicked off the new year by assassinating a powerful man in Iran, Major General Qasem Soleimani, through a drone strike near Baghdad’s international airport. Although the US in the past has carried out similar acts by breaching international borders, the brazen audacity of killing of the military man seemed reckless to many international observers, an act that has potentially risked the peace and security of the Middle East and beyond. Iran responded by targeting US military bases in Iraq with missile strikes, though no casualties were confirmed. Some after-effects of the Iranian missle strikes have been reported, though. Dozen’s of people died in a stampede in Soleimani’s funeral procession and a Ukrainian passenger plane was downed, killing all 176 on board, when Iranian forces targeted it with missiles – apparently by mistake taking it to be a US military plane.

A US-Iran face-off then began. It is important not to forget the bigger picture. A picture that is complex and is interlinked not only to the present state of affairs but also to the history of the US-Iran relationship. It has its beginnings in 1978. This was the the time when only a few years had passed since US military engagement in Vietnam. Britain was prepping for an election. France was hosting a foreign guest of a controversial nature - Ruhollah Khomeni. The protests against the US-backed Iranian monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi, were intensifying. Those who wanted the Shah deposed were not only asking for an Islamic state, but also an end of the secular sections of the country’s socio-political fabric. It seemed as if the whole country had united against the Shah’s rule, with Ruhollah Khomeni emerging as the symbolic leader of the revolution. There was also a growing feeling in the West, despite its own strategic reluctance, that the Shah’s days were numbered and Iran was ready for a regime change.

1978 gave way to 1979. Raza Shah Pahlavi, sensing his time was up, fled Iran and Khomeni enetered Iran to a hero’s welcome. Within months of the Shah’s fleeing, following a popular referendum, Iran’s revolutionaries solidified their power by taking control of all the facets of the Iranian state machinery, including the military, the ministries and the media. If the overtly acrimonious stance against the West taken by the new Iranian government and Khomeni was not enough, what added further strength to it all was the takeover by the revolutionaries of the US Embassy in Tehran.

The embassy staff and other US personnel were taken hostage by the Iranians and they demanded that the US hand over the deposed Shah to them. Some 52 Americans ended up spending 444 days in the US embassy in Tehran. Six of them were helped by the Canadians to escape. This was the first time that the US and the West imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran, a trend that would be repeated on and off in the coming decades. The hostage crisis also served to cement Iran’s position as a pariah state in the US-led international world order.

No wonder that following Iran’s stated resolve to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani, President Donald Trump tweeted that America had identified 52 Iranian sites that would be targeted if the Iranians transgressed any further. The number 52, it seemed, was a symbolic figure as the same number of American hostages had been held by Tehran almost 40 years ago.

For all that time, Iran has been ruled by an anti-West Islamist regime. This is a part of the new world where most regimes are aligned with the US. A growing Iranian hegemony, whether strategic and/or military, is a threat to America and its closest allies in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to the nuclear hegemony of Israel. A powerful Shiite theocracy on its borders is also a nightmare for Saudi Arabia. It is no surprise that President Trump, given his eccentric nature and strong partiality towards Israel and the Saudis, rolled back on the nuclear deal that Obama had struck with the Iranians in coordination with other world powers. From a rational point of view, the deal was an effective one and there was no need to back out from it. Iran had also restricted its nuclear activities in return for easing of economic sanctions. This was independently verified and reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Whether the current face-off will lead to an escalation of hostilities and war, the answer is ‘No’. The United States, despite the flippant ways of its current administration, is aware that the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is under threat from domestic social and political forces. Apparently, the Iranians at large have rejected the rigid, authoritative and deceitful ways of the current regime and are demanding change. In such circumstances, open war against a regime already on the wane is perhaps not an ideal strategy. What the US and its regional allies want is just to keep Iran in check and ensure that the economic sanctions remain in place, costing the Iranian regime billions in lost foreign trade revenue.

On the Iranian side, the fact remains that wars are expensive and need to be financed. The Iranians, despite their grand claims, don’t have such money. While a war against the “evil of America” might hold the key to uniting some sections of the otherwise disaffected Iranian population, the act itself will only paper over the cracks that have been widening within the Iranian social fabric since the turn of the century.

For now the ideological, strategic and proxy conflict between world’s only Islamic theocracy and a US-led West will continue to play out, but it would take only a significant error in judgement from either side for matters to escalate towards open war – a rational standpoint that was echoed in Iran’s tempered response with missile strikes on American bases in Iraq.