The Iranian Syndrome and the American “Fall”

The U.S. president must face Iran’s aggressiveness and the American people’s despair, both directed against the vices of capitalism.

After the horrors of World War I, the world experienced — to a much wider extent — those of fascism and communism. It took a while for the Western world, after being shaken by an unprecedented financial crisis, to realize that an ideological danger was threatening to take hold of the masses of desperate people. At the end of World War II, Western democracy chose to “contain” the illusion of extreme socialism, thus assuming the risk of a confrontation that would last for another half century.

Nowadays, 20 years after the fall of the “curtain,” ideology has once again become a central issue of current political affairs. This time, however, there is no conceptual opponent to “capitalism” — it is no longer opposed by planned economy but by a mass of people who have been left destitute by their own “dream” of wellbeing.

Nevertheless, the protests that have taken place as part of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement are not a proof of the failure of capitalism or, even less so, of the failure of democracy. Although at a first glance we might be tempted to believe, like many other voices heard during these tense days, that the American “dream” (characterized specifically by the two poles of democracy and capitalism) is dying, the cries in the main squares of New York, Rome or Berlin show that the system that was the winner at the end of the Cold War has remained valid. Through the demands expressed freely during the demonstrations in Zuccotti Park Plaza (New York), American democracy lives on and is still a model for the rest of the world.

It is not the failure of democracy that is frightening the administration in Washington today but the ideological challenge that they must fight using credible arguments.

Tehran Is the Main Threat

Last week, while anti-Wall Street protests were in full swing, President Obama chose to identify America’s true enemy. It was not vicious capitalism nor the instability created by the manifestations that had begun in New York; it was Tehran.

The belligerent statements that the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have issued so far have not caused the White House to adopt a particular strategy concerning Iran’s anti-American foreign policy.

The White House has rightly considered that an indifferent attitude will calm Iranian hostility, which has peaked under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During the U.S. visit of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Barack Obama surprised the audience when he asked the international community for the “toughest sanctions” against Iran, explaining that the American government had clear evidence that Tehran was behind the attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. For many analysts, this scenario is meant to draw attention away from anti-capitalism manifestations, which are gaining more and more supporters. For others, the U.S. president’s action is a step further in the fight against terrorism.

Whichever may be the reasons behind this move, the American leader has now found himself in the situation where he must fight two sides that, at least declaratively, want the same thing: the fall of capitalism. If Obama prefers to speak about the “indignants” in a low voice and as rarely as possible, the White House leader’s attitude is definitely surprising when it comes to the Iranian head of state.

We cannot fail to ask ourselves why, during such a difficult period on the domestic front, Obama is looking for enemies abroad. One plausible answer used by the president’s political opponents was that a conflict with Iran might quench people’s dissatisfaction. Tens of possible variants have made their way into the international press during the past few days. However, people are forgetting that Iran is America’s sworn enemy. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has provided Tehran with the opportunity to attack the U.S. with its own weapons — capitalism and democracy — which have proven their inefficacy, according to Iranian officials.

In this context, Barack Obama is not mistaken to exaggerate the danger coming from the Islamic republic — he is doing this in order to protect America and the entire world from the possibility of a “war of civilizations” breaking out (between the Islamic and the Western civilization).

America Does Not Respond to the Challenge

Nevertheless, the occupant of the White House is not an innovator in terms of U.S. foreign affairs — he is applying an older containment policy: his predecessor Harry Truman’s recipe for success.

The opponent is not that different from what the Stalin-run USSR was for the Truman administration at the end of the ‘40s. The Tehran ideological arsenal seems to be in the same vein as Stalinist precepts.

While addressing a group of university students and faculty in the Kermanshah province, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attacked Washington in a speech that would have even aroused the envy of Soviet leaders: “Westerners […] as they have already showed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many other countries, […] tend to seek such devilish goals as to control economic hubs or energy reserves or to support the Zionist regime as a loop to their hegemonic chain under the banner of democracy, combat against nuclear weapons or fight against terrorism.”

That same day (Oct. 16 of this year) Iranian newspapers were fiercely supportive of the Tehran leaders’ attempt to provoke the U.S. administration into responding to a new ideological confrontation, by means of headlines such as “The U.S.A. Is the World’s Ugliest Regime,” “Wall Street Protests Become Global” or “The Islamic Republic of Iran Will Withstand Western Intimidation.”

President Ahmadinejad went even further in an attempt to justify to his citizens the hostile actions of his executive: “The hegemonic system [American] has today reached a deadlock and they [the Americans] cannot bear to see that a flag has been raised in the world, which displays the culture, thought and revolutionary spirit of the Iranian nation.”

For the moment, Iran’s statements have not made the Western world take up arms, as the latter is busy finding solutions to economic issues. The result of the next U.S. presidential elections will, however, be decisive for the configuration of international political guidelines: The U.S. will have to choose between the fight against Iranian terrorism led by Barack Obama or the fight against Russia and its allies announced by Republican candidate Mitt Romney.