American-Iranian Enmity

The Big Six (America, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) are leaning towards holding yet another useless trip to chew the rag, announcing a resumption of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programs that they ground to a halt over a year ago. Meanwhile, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in statements hostile to Israel and the West, has overstepped the fringe of this carpet whose weave has covered a large area of Persian history as it turns away from patience, tranquillity and rationality. The periodic bulges in the carpet, filled with vivid threats and the swift re-upholstering of stances, have placed those following the situation in a fog, in a labyrinth of interwoven stances and associations through which each statement is filtered. We deserve to wonder: Who is chewing the rag or sacrificing the other with its thread, the West or Iran?

Of course, it is difficult to find a definitive answer to a divisive question of this kind, which shrinks a huge quantity of the indefinable identifications between the West and Iran, and their dependent territories in a region prone to transformations and complications. Of course, we do not aim here to convey or analyze the contents of the Iranian president’s recent fiery speech, in which he considered Israel to be a “dead entity” which only finds protection in the support of “idiot leaders.” He also reflects that the nation of Iran will not care about the West’s attempts to “terrorize Iran,” nor about the jets and warships, nor the choices laid on the table which “will rot there, “ just as those proffering them will rot from the tedium of waiting.

This is not the first time an Iranian speech has leapt off the carpet. Iranian-American relations have been strained since the announcement of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, but matters have reached a point where, for the United States and Israel, Iran represents a much greater strategic threat than Syria. They are both countries which have long defended their hostility toward the West and Israel, and are aligned with Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic jihad, although they are both truly opposed to al-Qaida. Although Syria and Iran both possess chemical and possibly biological weapons, they are very much separate and distinct in their hostility to the West, in more than essence and in more than one way. What aspects does this distinction take?

The first aspect rests on the fact that a number of Iranian leaders, with Ahmadinejad at the fore, have adopted a threatening tone and directed overtly fiery speeches toward Israel and its right to exist. Syria, meanwhile, is addicted to speaking about a just, comprehensive and honorable peace, or what it once termed “a peace of the brave.”

Ahmadinejad has previously called for Israel to “be eliminated from the pages of time” on more than one occasion. The global and Western media felt obligated to translate these tones as an incitement to the actual physical destruction of the Zionist State, to wipe it off the map. It is this that implanted worry in international circles about Iranian intentions in this regard, increasing their anxiety about Israel. This has left Israel untouched; it has even helped it to survive, however unintentionally or indirectly, as the urgent necessity sits constantly in the Western mind and on its tongue. For its part, Israel exploits these statements and stances, employing them as moral and material capital to strengthen the Western mortar surrounding the country; this mortar is perpetually used to Israel’s advantage, presenting Israel to global opinion (via funds and the media) as a meek lamb surrounded by ravenous wolves. It is enough for us in this respect (limiting ourselves to the presidential election seasons in France or the United States) to review the speeches, statements and stances in which Israel, its existence and its interests, appear to be protruding into the each of the world’s nations, whether through Obama’s speeches or Sarkozy’s, or those of others. Of course, we cannot neglect the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Zionist lobby which grasp the arteries of decision-making and the pillars of global rule. It makes us feel that we, as Arabs and Muslims, are weak within the language of global discourse. Nothing of us or of discourse in our mother tongue is reported, of course, implying various negative forms: Curses and abuse, slanderous epithets, descriptions and accusations.

The second aspect in which Iran and Syria differ rests on Western-Iranian head-butting on the subject of nuclear power. The West is worried that Tehran commands nuclear weaponry, and especially that it is taking noticeable steps in the field of manufacturing missiles and developing them to create different ranks of capabilities. This will allow it to multiply warheads with which it can threaten its neighbors, Israel most of all. By virtue of this, Israel sets greats store by presenting Iran to the world as a threat, a danger to its stability and very existence. It is true that these missiles are incapable of striking targets on American soil, but they are capable of reaching American bases stationed throughout the Middle East, Europe and other places. If some Western political thought looked into Iran’s rapid advancement in the nuclear field something positive can be reached, but this positive aspect is waylaid by consideration of how to achieve the desired status quo in the Middle East, just like between Iran and Pakistan. This is a moot point by some analyses which do not underestimate Syria’s ill-omened capabilities in the field of missiles, which commands a greater portion of concern and debate.

The third aspect, and the most important, rests upon the two previous points. Iran is presented as an Islamic state, isolated within the Middle East and the Gulf, with the means of threatening this region so abundant in oil. This is what came to the fore after the fall of Iraq, a fundamental adversary to Tehran; this is what tore it up and prevented it from ensuring equilibrium. However, it has fallen into the arms of Tehran to such a degree that analysts insist that Iran was the only victor to emerge from the war with Iraq, in contrast to the large group of defeated nations – retreating America among them. America will remain, standing firm in the face of this steadfast Iranian force and any other single force in the Middle East. As this force gradually increases, this region will transform into a flourishing arms market, ensuring cover for regimes worried about the future. America will not allow Iran to possess the nuclear weapons which worry Israel. This in turn increases Israel’s obstinacy in intensifying the danger of Iran, which poses a strategic threat to it. America, along with a number of countries in the Gulf, evinces total resolve and rapid cooperation in order to put a brake on Iran’s ambitions and aspirations; this, we suggest, would occur even if Israel did not exist. This long-term balancing act and insularity is doomed to be of long duration within the chewed rags made of Iranian and American wool and silk, for a quintessential reason: Iran remains a counter to al-Qaida, maintains its capital in lightening the heat in Iraq (as in Syria today), and raises its remaining capital in the quietness of Afghanistan. In accordance with this tedious equation, the Far East once again wafts into the game, with Syria using Beijing and Moscow to substitute the reservoirs of power it had lost, but even this won’t make Syria reach the level of threat Iran poses to Israel or the Gulf. The questions appear very complicated, as if we are at zero once again.