There Was a Pregnant Pause before He Said OK

by Eric Martin

The always interesting Hooman Majd recounts his recent travels to Iran, debunking some misconceptions such as Secretary of State Clinton's admonition about Iran becoming a military dictatorship, and of the Green movement's alleged revolutionary aims, as well as the level of domestic support for that same movement.

Majd also addresses the nuclear issue, stressing two facets that receive far less attention than they deserve in Western media/analysis: First, even for many in the Green Movement/reform movement, nuclear power is popular, and attempts by the West to curtail its progress are seen in terms of nationalism, national pride and double standards.  Second, nuclear weapons have been repeatedly described as "forbidden" under Islam by Iran's leading clerics (including, especially, the Supreme Leader):

The nuclear issue looms large here in Tehran -- there has never been as much talk and even anxiety over the possibility of a military assault on Iran, not even during George W. Bush's days -- but the issue seems to have become a distraction that impedes progress on all fronts, and not the weak point for the regime. My airport cab driver reminded me...Iranians had one thing in common. "We Iranians have namoos," he said, "and if anyone even thinks of ravishing her, our gheirat will take over. Iran is our namoos." Namoos is a man's wife, his woman; her chastity his responsibility to protect, and gheirat is pride and dignity -- concepts both Persian and Islamic and one reason women, "sisters" in the Islamic Republic, wear the hijab and many did even under the secular shah. What the driver meant was that if Iran were attacked, Iranians, and he presumably thought me as well, would defend her with their lives.

Tehran's nuclear summit in mid-April, dubbed "Nuclear Energy for All; Nuclear Weapons for None" and timed to contrast with Obama's own summit in Washington (to which Iran was not invited), was, despite a paucity of media coverage in the West, successful in laying out Iran's stated nuclear agenda -- non-proliferation as well as complete disarmament -- for a domestic audience and sympathetic listeners in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the developing world. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's opening address to the conference, read by his top foreign-policy advisor Ali Akbar Velayati, in which he emphatically proclaimed weapons of mass destruction haram, strictly forbidden in Islam, went a long way in convincing at least the pious that Iran is not developing nuclear arms (although it begged the question of whether nuclear and Muslim Pakistan, present at the conference, is a sinner state, a question the Japanese representative put to Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and a moderator at one panel I observed).

But Iranians seem to also know that no summit, fatwa, or public proclamation by their officials will convince the United States that Iran is not hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and then either deploying it against Israel, handing it over to terrorists, or using it to threaten the world at large (none of those scenarios appearing to be particularly plausible to the average citizen or even to citizens of the region). There are no scientific polls that can accurately gauge public support for Iran's nuclear posture, but here in the capital it is hard to find an Iranian who doesn't agree with at least the concept that Iran deserves to enjoy the same rights as other states when it comes to nuclear energy, even as many may find Ahmadinejad's diplomatic tactics distasteful. In that sense, the military parade in Tehran on the second day of the nuclear summit and the Revolutionary Guards' maneuvers in the Persian Gulf a week later were simply expressions of the national gheirat, particularly in light of escalating threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.

The above excerpt also addressed the risible claim by neoconservatives that Iranians would rise up in support of the West, to topple the Iranian regime, if only the U.S. and/or Israel would attack Iran. 

His conclusions are hard to argue with as well:

From Tehran, despite the ambiguity of what the future holds, of what the Green Movement might be or become, or how the government will deal with the fundamental problems it faces, it is evident that neither debilitating sanctions nor military action (nor continued threats) will accomplish the Obama administration's stated and unstated Iran policy goals -- to induce Iran to alter its nuclear course, or to lend support to an opposition that even if successful in bringing about change in the leadership, might not do so.

Most Iranians believe their country is powerful, and unlikely to bend to any Western threats. "The rahbar basically told Obama to go fuck himself, didn't he?" said my South Tehran friend, a little admiringly. "And what happened? Nothing. No one can touch these guys." Iran's nuclear program is entrenched as important, legal, and valid in the minds of most Iranians, and many of them with whom I've spoken find it hard to believe that there is no solution to the crisis short of armed conflict, fewer still believing that the U.S. military would even win a war.

Many Iranians can forgive Obama for his hesitancy to enter into serious negotiations with Iran in the aftermath of the elections of 2009, but given what they know now -- that barring a major natural calamity the government is here to stay -- it seems the U.S. president's only real option is to negotiate with Iran in good faith and reach an agreement that satisfies Western concerns about its nuclear program while also satisfying Iran that its rights as a sovereign nation have not been eroded. Perhaps only then might Iranians turn to seriously addressing domestic concerns; economic concerns about the gaping inequalities between the privileged and working classes, as well as political concerns about civil rights and the nature of the regime, which Iranians are perfectly capable of doing without outside interference. And only then will we be able to better judge whether Iran is turning into a reflexively anti-American military dictatorship, or is on the path to fulfilling the needs and wants, economic and otherwise, of its people.

Our diplomatic intransigence, and attempts and punishing/isolating the Iranian regime, are not weakening that regime as much as providing it with plausible excuses for not dealing with more pressing issues, as well as distracting the population from emphasizing the necessity of that same reckoning.  Which suits the regime just fine - which at least partly explains their own intransigence.

Comments

[Mojo]

"Ali Khamenei's opening address to the conference... proclaimed weapons of mass destruction haram, strictly forbidden in Islam"
Yet Iran has publicly admitted to having produced chemical weapons during the 80s. Is Khamenei planning to condemn Khomeini for that? I don't really find his announcement to be anything but words. On a related note, I couldn't help but notice the fact that Soltanieh's answer to the question about Pakistan wasn't mentioned.

[Tom M]

I don't really find his announcement to be anything but words.

So, I'm guessing that to you, these are mere words as well?
“The Obama presidency has two great missions: ...and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

[Eric Martin]

Mojo,

Would that be the period that Iraq was using them, en masse, against Iran?

[Pinko Punko]

Ahmadinejad took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket novel called "The State I Am In"

[RealitasMordet]

1) Taqiyya gives Shiites the dispensation to "dissimulate" when they fear harm would come from the truth being known. I'd say fear of a military attack would qualify, which means we'd be fools to take the Supreme Leader at his word about this.

2) Saddam had (and used) chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s. Israel has nuclear weapons now. Mojo's point is valid.

[Turbulence]

Yet Iran has publicly admitted to having produced chemical weapons during the 80s. Is Khamenei planning to condemn Khomeini for that? I don't really find his announcement to be anything but words.

I don't think chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction by any reasonable standard. I mean, are there any such weapons that are significantly more lethal in practice than comparably sized explosive or incendiary devices? Or are we doing that pathetic American thing where we pretend that all weapons are infinitely powerful so that we feel justified about sobbing uncontrollably under a table?

I know that in theory a gram of nerve gas can kill a billion people, but in practice, there's no easy way to disperse a gram of nerve gas to a large number of people. Especially since nerve gas degrades into nontoxic substances fairly quickly in the presence of advanced anti-nerve-gas agents such as sunlight or oxygen. Note that the Tokyo subway attacks, which were executed by a large organization with tremendous technical skill only managed to kill 20 people.

That's why most of the US Army's chemical weapons use VX which is a jelly that clings to the skin...and those weapons are only dangerous to people in the blast radius who get the jelly on their skin. Of course, if you replace the VX in an American chemical weapon with, say, steel, you end up with a weapon that kills using shrapnel...i.e., a conventional explosive device.

[Hartmut]

Or, if shrapnel is too far from nerve gas jelly, maybe napalm and white phosphor are better analogies. Both are used freely by 'civilized' nations like the US and Israel and not considered WMD (just legal barbarism).
On the other hand mustard, more likely to be used than nerve gas, lasts a good deal longer and is thus, in this narrow aspect, comparable to the after effect of nukes.
---
As for the Taqiyya, I see no real difference to the 'Christian' rule that there are no obligations to abide by treaties or to not lie, if the other party is infidel/pagan/heretic/uncivilized. And don't tell me that this 'rule' has become obsolete, esp. on the Kristian(TM) Right.

[Eric Martin]

Taqiyya gives Shiites the dispensation to "dissimulate" when they fear harm would come from the truth being known. I'd say fear of a military attack would qualify, which means we'd be fools to take the Supreme Leader at his word about this.

This is nonsense. A terrible misreading, pursuant to a propaganda effort.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/11/08/taqiya/

Saddam had (and used) chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s. Israel has nuclear weapons now. Mojo's point is valid.

This doesn't make sense. You left out a few steps in the argument.

[Mojo]

Eric, I'll try to clarify.
- The point of the declaration that WMDs are haram was to imply that Iran would not produce them for that reason.
- Iran has produced WMDs in the past and has not indicated that the action was wrong.
- Therefore, the statement indicated not an absolute ban but, at best, a conditional one.
- And, because representatives of Iran won't clarify the statement (e.g. the question about Pakistan), it is unclear under what conditions they believe WMDs are allowable.
- Is production OK but not first use? That's the most restrictive interpretation I can come up with that accords with the historical facts but, even in that case, the statement is completely irrelevant to the question of Iranian intentions regarding a nuclear weapons program.
- If the statement provides no useful information as to the limits of an Iranian WMD program, then it's just words.

[Turbulence]

Mojo, you still have not explained why chemical weapons should be considered weapons of mass destruction. Without explaining that, your entire argument fails.

You can start by pointing to chemical weapons systems that are currently in production that have demonstrated lethality rates significantly greater than equivalent conventional weapons.

[Turbulence]

Note that technically speaking, defoliants like Agent Orange are also chemical weapons, no less than Sarin or VX. Does anyone in their right mind think that Agent Orange is weapon of mass destruction?

[Omega Centauri]

As we can see from the lively debate above, there is a large segment of American opinion which is not going to take Iranian claims of nonbelligerence seriously. And I think this means that any politician who doesn't apprear to at the very least have grave doubts about their intentions is taking a very large political risk of being declared naive. So the dynamic on our side, is that we expect the worst from Iran, and are practically congenitally incapable of acting otherwise. So how can we head off a nasty confrontation that may at its heart be based upon a misunderstanding?

[Phil]

Does anyone in their right mind think that Agent Orange is weapon of mass destruction?

Triffids, maybe. And pod people.

[Eric Martin]

The point of the declaration that WMDs are haram was to imply that Iran would not produce them for that reason.

No, this is not true. Nuclear weapons are haram. Not "WMDs". That's a more or less meaningless term these days, and not what Khamenei said.

This renders the rest of your argument moot.

[Eric Martin]

Adding (to clarify) that Khamenei seemed to distinguish between nukes and chemical weapons, and either way, focused on their use. Regardless, this statement was made after the period in the 1980's before Khamenei. So his views are not inconsistent with the fact that Iran may have developed, but not used, chemical weapons during the 1980s.