Those who argue that the battle in Lebanon is really a proxy war with Iran for supremacy in the Middle East need not look far for evidence. Yet the picture that Iran presents on the ground is both more complex than that and, given the stalemate over the country’s nuclear program, more worrisome. The greatest concern: everything that’s happening in Lebanon, Iran and the United States right now is stiffening Tehran’s resistance to what the United Nations Security Council demanded last week–a suspension of the country’s uranium-enrichment program.
The bloodied Lebanese babies plastered across Mideast TV screens are vindicating Tehran’s claims about the iniquity of the West. Iran’s links to Hizbullah, as well as the tirades of its Israel-bashing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are elevating the country to the leadership it’s long coveted in the Middle East. Perhaps even worse, according to a senior Western diplomat in Tehran, the crisis has undercut those within the regime who might have compromised over the nuclear issue. Continuing violence has driven crude prices to near $75 a barrel–a godsend for a government that depends on oil for as much as 80 percent of its revenues. And if, as some insiders say, the mullahs fear Hizbullah’s being demolished by the Israeli onslaught, that unease, too, is feeding a prickly defensiveness.
True, international pressure on Iran is building. The Security Council’s resolution threatening possible sanctions if Iran does not halt its enrichment program by the end of August passed 14-1. And while both Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei–the real power in Iran–denounced the measure as bullying, they haven’t yet rejected a negotiating package presented in early June by the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, which also demands a suspension of Iran’s nuclear program. (Tehran officially plans to respond to the offer by Aug. 22.) Still, the U.S.-driven strategy of confrontation truly seems designed to exacerbate all the worst trends coursing through the region.
Washington’s argument that Iran simply cannot be trusted with a nuclear program, for instance, now has to contend with an inflamed nationalism. Anti-Americanism in Tehran goes beyond the bloody murals that still spread across the walls of the former U.S. Embassy, or the ritual chants at Friday prayers each week (led by a figure known as the Minister of Slogans), or the equally ritual headlines in the state media, enumerating Washington’s “arrogances” on a daily basis. Iran’s is a neonationalism of the sort common to newly decolonized countries–a heady mixture of bluff, insecurity, openness to and suspicion of the world. The teenagers who fill the malls of north Tehran–the boys with their hair slicked back into exaggerated ducktails, the girls glamorous in bejeweled sunglasses and loosely tied Pucci scarves–are more than happy to drink Coke, listen to iPods and watch J.Lo and Madonna on illegal satellite TV. But their sense of well-being in the world is tied crucially to the idea that they are equal players in global culture.
To declare that they cannot be allowed advanced technology is a direct affront. For the regime, which has cleverly made the nuclear program a signpost of Iran’s modernity, there is no percentage in backing down now. “This is no longer an economic issue–it’s about politics and stature,” says Hossein Marashi, a leading politician and brother-in-law of the losing candidate in last year’s election, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The idea that the government has raised Iran’s place in the world has a surprising currency in Iran, and won’t easily be surrendered.
U.S. criticism only bolsters that reputation. “The more America and Israel blame Iran, the stronger Ahmadinejad becomes,” says Ebrahim Yazdi, the first post-revolution foreign minister and now a reformist. Both a devout youth eager for martyrdom in Lebanon and a worldly, jaded artist (who serves home-brewed vodka along with the unavoidable cups of sweet tea) praise the Iranian president in essentially the same terms. “Before, America attacked Iran and we had to defend ourselves,” says the youth. “Now it’s the other way around–we have a voice, and the whole world is listening.” As several analysts with links to the government point out, both the Lebanon crisis and the stalemate over the nuclear program help Ahmadinejad in the same way–as a means of burnishing his image, and of distracting Iranians from the various incompetencies of his administration.
Perhaps the greatest distraction is the flood of petrodollars gushing through the Iranian system, propelled by fears of an American attack or sanctions. Those expecting Tehran to look like an imperial Persian capital–or another Havana, faded and peeling from isolation, but glorious in its decay–are bound to be disappointed. Construction cranes tower over half-built skyscrapers. Glossy new condo complexes blend fake marble and blue-mirrored glass in a style familiar to nouveau riche metropolises from Bangalore to Dubai. The well-paved streets are roiling with cars–little Paykan sedans, mostly, but also shiny Peugeots and even the odd BMW. Toward evening, as the heat of the day lifts, crowds of shoppers fill the sidewalks; hundreds of stores beckon them with flat-screen TVs, Italian sofas and Puma sneakers. It’s as easy to find a $200 Bugatti knife set as a mosque, maybe easier.
Some $60 billion per year in oil revenue washes away most blights on the Iranian economy. Subsidies that may run as high as $25 billion annually help keep gas prices down to a mere nine cents per liter; according to economist Saeed Laylaz, each of those little Iranian-made sedans uses six times as much fuel as cars in France. Ahmadinejad has made himself particularly popular by traveling to remote provinces and doling out aid and cheap loans. Government contracts have increasingly gone to cronies and powerful constituencies like the Revolutionary Guards, who in June were awarded $8 billion worth of oil-sector contracts without tender. In fact, economic policy seems designed to buy off most of the population, easy when by some estimates the state controls two thirds of Iran’s economy. “With the oil boom, the government can do anything without fearing the consequences of its wrong decisions,” says Prof. Masoud Nili, a macroeconomist at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.
Opponents of the government are a lonely bunch. The reception area for the leading reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, is filled only with empty Naugahyde chairs and the lingering smell of raw onions, a common condiment locally. Party spokesman Saeed Shariati freely admits that part of the reason reformists hold only 39 seats in the 290-seat Parliament is that they could not draw a connection in voters’ minds between democratic principles and their economic well-being. That task has been made immeasurably more difficult by the hypocrisy Iranians believe they’re witnessing in the Middle East. “Bush says he supports human rights and democracy–that should apply not just to Iranians but to Palestinians,” says Mohsen Kadivar, a leading reformist cleric. Others point to the chaos next door in Iraq as an effective advertisement against Jeffersonian freedoms. But most crucially, the link between Washington and Tel Aviv has thoroughly discredited not just America but any Iranian who could plausibly be tarred as its stooge. In Tehran today one is hard pressed to find a single reformer, even among several who have been jailed by the regime, who thinks that the United States is helping their cause.
Given all this, the offer currently before Tehran looks much less attractive than Washington imagines it to be. Maintaining some functioning enrichment program is the Iranians’ red line–and the one thing the United Nations is asking them to give up outright. Over and over again, those who deal with the mullahs in Iran insist that their greatest concern is not spreading the revolution but staying in power. Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, a contemporary of Khomeini’s who fell out of favor, says of the regime: “They don’t care about the people; they only care about their own interests.” Yet after Lebanon, the chances of the Bush administration’s providing the mullahs with airtight security guarantees look not just unlikely but impossible.
The international community has maintained a remarkable consensus to this point, with even Russia publicly urging Iran to accept the deal last week. But Tehran knows time is likely to fracture that unity. “China and Russia are totally different [from America],” says Hossein Shariatmadari, president of the conservative Kayhan group of newspapers and an unofficial mouthpiece for the regime. “Some European leaders are even sending us secret messages saying, ‘Please, just come to a compromise, because we don’t want to go further with this’.” Even granted that he’s exaggerating, European governments have certainly split with Washington over its handling of the Lebanon war. As Council on Foreign Relations Iran expert Ray Takeyh says, if the stalemate continues, “in several months Europeans are going to have to ask themselves if they want [to deal with another] crisis in the Middle East.”
What can Washington do? First of all, the United States might take a page from the Iranian regime and compartmentalize. In order to maintain an internal consensus on the nuclear issue, Tehran has sought to neutralize potential flashpoints. The burgeoning youth population, for instance, has been largely placated. Those Pucci scarves have been slipping farther and farther back on the capital’s most fashionable heads; ordering up a few bottles of whisky for a party is no harder than it’s ever been. Reportedly, Revolutionary Guards chief Rahim Safavi has even warned members of the thuggish basij militia not to “interfere in people’s lives, ask for identification cards or rifle through CDs and cassettes.” At the same time, authorities have intimidated intellectuals with well-timed arrests, like the mysterious April detention of Prof. Ramin Jahanbegloo for unspecified crimes. Kadivar spoke with NEWSWEEK reporters in a mosque because he’d been warned he would lose his job if he met foreigners in his office at a state-run university.
America needs to decide on its priorities. If stopping the Iranian nuclear program is most urgent, then continuing to raise the prospect of toppling the regime–however democratically–and criticizing Tehran for its links to groups like Hizbullah serve little purpose. No security guarantee should be offered outright, but the prospect of one as part of a larger accord in the Persian Gulf could be raised. And while the Security Council cannot back down on its demand that Iran halt its enrichment activities, it could sweeten the offer. Simultaneously unblocking some frozen Iranian assets, for example, or turning over for trial some members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) –a dissident group even the U.S. State Department admits are terrorists–would be a powerful PR move, if nothing else.
And that’s the point. In all likelihood the current Iranian regime will never be able to overcome its suspicion of the Bush administration, any more than the Republican grass roots would support truly conciliatory gestures toward Tehran in an election year. But demonstrating some statesmanship would at least remove doubts in the international community about Washington’s seriousness–and back the mullahs into a rhetorical corner. For the same reason, some pro-democracy types in Tehran say that America should seek a more open consular presence in Iran, both to ease access to U.S. visas and to embarrass the regime with the long lines out the door. (Kadivar also smartly suggests offering more scholarships to students in the humanities, rather than just the sciences, to instill free-thinking values.)
True, a more generous U.S. policy risks confirming the regime’s growing conviction that bad behavior pays. “The government feels they need to act confrontational in order to get anything from the West,” notes Mohammad Atrianfar, publisher of the leading reformist daily, Shargh. But all the other options on the table seem guaranteed to make a bad situation worse, not better. The larger goal of fully democratizing Iran is laudable but won’t be realized through airstrikes, Voice of America broadcasts featuring pro-shah exiles or, as one Tehran dissident noted dismissively, human-rights seminars that focus on how to surround and occupy a state radio station. “Democracy is not a commodity you can buy and transfer,” says Emadedin Baghi, a prisoners’ rights activist who spent three years in jail for accusing the Intelligence Ministry of being involved in the assassinations of Iranian intellectuals. “It’s a process, and we have to go through certain stages in order to develop democratic values.” Making Iran a nuclear pariah isn’t going to help that process along. Living up to our own ideals just may.
