Ahmadi-Nejad’s Easter Gift
New America Media, News Analysis, Amir Soltani Sheikholeslami, Posted: Apr 06, 2007
Editors Note: With the release of the British sailors held in Iran, NAM writer Amir Soltani Sheikholeslami says this is a perfect time for the U.S. to wage peace with Iran.
Iranian President Ahmadi-Nejad’s release of British sailors as an “Easter gift” to the people of Britain was a happy ending to a story that could have spiraled into a calamity. The resolution of the British hostage crisis in less than two weeks is a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about war between Iran and the U.S.
Viewed in historical perspective, the political divide separating Iran and the U.S. should not be any wider than the divide separating Iran and Britain. Yet, the wall of rhetoric has made it much harder for American and Iranian diplomats to break a gridlock that has cornered them as enemies. Iranians do not forgive Americans for their role in ‘Operation Ajax’, a British initiated coup that toppled the nationalist government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. Americans do not forgive Iranians for the invasion of the U.S. embassy and the hostage crisis of 1979. The ease with which British and Iranian diplomats—historical enemies—resolved the British hostage crisis should serve as a diplomatic prod for the resumption of U.S. Iranian relations.
Iranians make the British U.S. sponsored coup of 1953 into the most atrocious violation of Iranian sovereignty ever. Yet, from an historical perspective, the coup was not that catastrophic. Iranian sovereignty has been violated by foreign powers since time immemorial. One can neither compare the scars of American intervention to the Greek, Mongol or Arab invasions nor suggest that the humiliation was greater than the Turkish or Afghan invasions. The coup was not more heinous than the British and Russian interventions, annexation, and partitions of Iran for much of the 19th and 20th century. So it is an exaggeration to suggest that Americans have been greater Satans than the rest of the demons haunting the Iranian imagination.
The fall of Iran’s prime minister, Dr. Mossadegh, in 1953 like the death of Kennedy, only boosted his status as a political icon. The old fox who could run circles around the British is viewed as the innocent victim of a dreadful conspiracy by world powers depriving an impoverished nation of the right to its oil. Fair enough. But, had westerners not invested, searched for, pumped, bought and sold the oil, it’s unlikely that Shaykh Khazal and the Bakhtiari tribesmen ruling Iran’s oil provinces would have stuck a straw in the ground and sucked it up. And even if the Brits had not stolen the bigger share of the pie (they did have a larger empire), Shaykh Khazal would have, so even theft is relative. Conversely, had Mossadegh succeeded in nationalizing Iran’s oil, the scale of corruption and incompetence in Iran’s economy would have left Iranians as unhappy with him as they are with poor Ahmadi-Nejad today. And so, in a sense, Mossadegh was lucky not to realize his potential. The challenge of pumping Iran’s oil wealth through a sick kleptocracy would have caused him endless migraines, earned him a flurry of epithets, and quite possibly, an early heart attack.
Historians would point out that Mossadegh’s fall was not terribly violent. For much of the past few centuries, Iranian history has been as gruesome and bloody as Elizabethan dramas or for that matter, modern European history. When they were not invading their neighbors, Iranian kings and chieftains regularly changed regimes, dynasties and ministers by decapitating each other’s sons, uncles, brothers and nephews. The luckier ones lived but were poisoned, blinded, or castrated. And, of course, their wives, slaves, jewels and property would be expropriated. To this day, one wonders why a just nation who whine so much about the injustice of American and British imperialism cling to the Peacock throne with pride as the symbol of Iran’s rape of India.
Even if some liberals view the coup of 1953 as the murder of the innocent orphan of democracy by its American father, a huge national drama comparable to the death of Imam Hussein in Karbala or the murder of the Iranian epic hero Sohrab, the tragedy has not stopped the Islamic republic from embracing the arch villains of the coup of 1953—our good British friends. So the only reason for hating America more than Britain is that Iranians looked up to America and did not expect the young country to betray them in the manner of the ‘Old Europeans’. But that, if anything, is proof of a deeper love affair, not a justification for greater hatred.
Similarly, Americans exaggerate. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 was not the most horrific act of war against the United States, ever! It was not exactly Pearl Harbor. Iranian revolutionaries did not march down into Washington D.C. and burn the White House, as the British did in the war of 1812. Although holding Americans hostage was a huge departure from the Iranian people’s age-old custom of welcoming and protecting foreigners as their guests, to their credit, nobody killed any of the American hostages.
Yes, a bunch of unlucky diplomats experienced a rather horrible and harrowing 444 days as guests of Ayatollah Khomeini. Still, they were not exactly in Abu Ghraib. Yes, they were blindfolded, so sorry, but not stripped nude, forced to perform lewd acts, and attacked by Abu Rumsfeld’s dogs. Besides, with much of California’s youth growing up in prison, a handful of diplomats spending time locked outside, instead of inside, a maximum security embassy is statistically insignificant.
Deep down most Iranians feel sorry and humiliated by the hostage crisis, and they have apologized—profusely, as only they can--for the breach in Persian etiquette to their American friends. A few years after the hostage crisis, I personally apologized to Henry Precht, President Carter’s Iran Desk Officer in 1979. Henry had retired from the diplomacy and was teaching at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where I was a student. He, in turn, apologized for the 1953 coup, and we have all moved on. Henry now has Iranian grandkids, and they have an American grandpa. We’re blood—members of one big family. America is our wings, Iran our roots.
Iranians and Americans are no longer political abstractions to each other—a fact that makes California the friendliest, largest and richest little Iran outside big Iran. Helloooooo! Enough hitting, hating and hurting. Life in California is so grooooooovy. Come play in our Pacific pond. Sadly, the politicians have not caught on to the fact that old icebergs have thawed in our hearts and crumbled in our names. Can’t beat global warming.
Socially, the barriers between Iranian and American culture have never been lower. And historically, the political barriers between Iran and America are surmountable. Anyone armed with a little good faith can see that the barrier is fairly easy to cross. Peace is a cakewalk. It’s war that should be hard.
And, there’s hope. On this holy week—Easter, Passover and the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad—the compass of these calendars points towards peace.
Iranian diplomats created peace with their arch enemy, Iraq. To do so, they stepped over ground covered thousands of Iran’s sons and daughters corpses and littered with billions of dollars of wreckage from their long war. Despite Khomeini’s personal hatred for Saddam, even he recognized the need to abandon the false logic of vengeance and violence to protect the Iranian people and army. If Iran’s leaders and people have such a grand vision of peace that they can discount the deaths of millions, forgive the use of chemical weapons, write off all other kinds of debts and grudges to give life a chance, then surely selling the idea of peace with America to the Iranian people—before, rather than after a war—cannot be beyond the Iranian leadership’s many talents.
Similarly, the United States has made peace with virtually all of its historic enemies—Britain, Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Nicaragua and Vietnam. In an historical context, it’s clear that American diplomacy can deliver a political triumph—without war--in the case of Iran. Iran holds the key to peace in the region and the Islamic world. The best way to secure America’s long term interests in the Middle-East—whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Israel—is to win the peace with Iran.
With the threat of war so grave, the case for altering reality by imagining peace has never been stronger.
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