Following failed US policies in the region , Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Syria , Sunni states are watching in dismay Iran emerging as a major player and bulwark against USA and the leader of the Muslims and applauded even in Asia and Africa. Iran has survived Arabs, Turks and Mongols .It has a negotiating manner anchored in ancient statecraft leavened with recent centuries of unsatisfactory relations with American, European and Russian powers.

Iran, Syria and Hizbullahs have emerged in the past few years as the principal parties defying American power in this region, following Washington's accusations against them in the fields of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation, and their policies in Lebanon and Palestine-Israel. “Their anti-American defiance tends to be primarily rhetorical and political, because none of them is stupid enough to challenge the U.S. militarily, except possibly indirectly in Iraq.”

As Rami Khuri concluded recently in Beirut’s Daily Star, “Washington has used both the Iraq and Lebanon situations as instruments to pressure and mildly threaten Syria, with some success. Because Iraq is an evolving situation, local powers like Syria and Iran - with memories of how to engage foreign armies going back several millennia - are carefully calibrating their policies in view of America's combined vulnerabilities, determination, power and perplexity in Iraq. Both leaderships have a track record of engaging, delaying, challenging, waiting and finally consummating deals with external powers that threaten them, as they do today with the U.S. and the European Union.”  Khuri might prove to be too optimistic, in view of the bulldozing policies of Neo-Cons driven Washington.
The world has seen hubris driven American policies, arrogance, accusations and double standards against Arab and Islamic states, which Iran now challenges head-on. Now that USA is caught in the Iraqi quagmire where most US enemies , it has such a talent for creating them , want it to remain stuck .And George W. Bush has yet not given any indication to disappoint them.
 
Third World War;
 
Paul Craig Roberts, a Fellow at the Independent Institute and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury warned recently to ‘Get Ready for World War III ‘and wrote that with polls showing majorities of Americans both fed up with Bush’s war against Iraq and convinced that Bush’s invasion of Iraq has made Americans less safe, “the White House moron proposes to start another war by attacking Iran. VP Cheney has already ordered the US Strategic Command to come up with plans to strike Iran with tactical nuclear weapons.” In a recent interview with Israeli TV, Bush said: "All options are on the table" with regard to Iran.

“Israel’s Likud government is Bush’s last remaining ally in his war against "Islamic terrorism." Israel, which is loaded with nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the nuclear pacts, is the accuser against Iran, asserting that Iran’s nuclear energy program is just a veil behind which to produce weapons. Iran, however, has signed the nonproliferation pact and is willing for the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the nuclear energy program.

”Bush, however, dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but paranoia.”
 
Iran’s role in history;
 
Situated at the crossroads and itself a cradle of many great civilizations, Iran has exercised great civilizing influence since ancient times. Whosoever (King of Kings, Sahanshah in Darius's words), ruled what now constitutes Iran, exercised great political and cultural influence not only in the neighborhood but also in far-off places.

During the classical Greek political and social evolution in western Asia Minor, which Turkey was then called, the Persian Achaemenid dynasty had its satrapies and outposts on the Aegean coast, known as Ionia, from which the word Yunan for Greece entered the eastern lexicon. In 517 BC, it was Persian Emperor Darius who ordered Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (western Turkey) to survey the river Indus from Peshawar to its exit into the sea, part of his empire. In addition, for the first time, the West became acquainted with India. Herodotus's chapters on Indian history were based on records of that exploration.

The Persians routinely crossed over to European Thrace and a Greek victory over the Persians in 490 BC at Marathon, perhaps the first of the West over the East, is still commemorated as an athletic event in the Olympics (showing Western bias in sports). Later, even in defeat, the Persians civilized Alexander the Great and his Macedonian and Greek hordes, introduced the small town boys to the protocol, trappings and grandeur of an imperial power and implanted the strongly held belief in the divine right of the kings, later adopted by Alexander's military commanders and successors.
 
On these beliefs were laid the foundations of the structure for the Roman and Byzantine empires. The Islamic Omayyed Caliphate in Damascus and later the Abbassid Caliphate in Baghdad also borrowed from the same state structures and ceremonies. Up to the 7th century, the Persians disputed with the Romans control of Asia Minor and Syria, which exhausted them both, making them easy prey for the Muslim Arabs. Persians then acted as a civilizing sieve to nomad Turks, Mongols and others from the horse-riding nurseries of the Eurasian steppes who played such havoc for centuries in Asia and Europe alike.

Iran’s reach to influence regional and world events remains as durable as ever. The Iranian hostage taking of US diplomats certainly tilted in1980 elections against US President Carter made to look impotent, leaving a visceral desire in US for revenge. In 1996, BB Netanyahu’s Likud won only because Israeli Arabs denied its traditional support to Labor party following firing of Katusha rockets by its Hizbolla partisans in South Lebanon and the expected Israeli retaliation against Lebanese civilians. It was the Lebanese Hizbullahs, which killed 259 US marines in Beirut in 1983 making US go home. It has even attacked Israeli missions and assets in Latin America.
 
Conclusion;
 
The collapse of the Karakitai in Transoxiana, engineered by Muhammad II, was fraught with dangers of which the latter was probably ignorant. The Persian historian of the Mongols, Juvaini, aided by the perspective of years, put into the mouth of the dying Atsiz the injunction to his sons not to fight the Giir Khan because "he was a great wall behind which were terrible foes." The pre-vision of Atsiz may be doubted, but the prophecy, even if invented post facto, was true enough.
 
The collapse of secular Saddam regime like the Buddhist Karakitai has been engineered by George W. Bush. His father  , President George H.W. Bush whose military chief during the 1990 war on Iraq , Gen Colin Powell demanded that clear objectives be defined ( and left having been lied to by the CIA Chief and made irrelevant by the current US Administration ),  was wise enough not to demolish the Saddam Hussein’s secular regime and open a Pandora’s box . However, he was responsible for thoughtlessly encouraging the Shias and Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein, who killed thousands of Iraqi army, police and bureaucrats, Ba’athists and their supporters .US leaders blame Saddam Hussein for the ruthless suppression of the rebellion for which really the former are responsible. Bush Senior and the Americans then just watched the gory events.
 
Let not Ariel Sharon of Israel and George W. Bush not behave like Otrar‘s Governor Inalchik and Mahmood II.
 
Suicide bombing is an acquired tool in Sunni’s repertoire of struggle against uneven odds, but since the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, martyrdom has become a part of Shiia Psyche. The Assassins originated from Iran. A secular Iraq was fooled into taking on the fury of the Khomeini revolution in early 1980s. A direct attack against Iran now will change the entire situation and even bring all Muslims together, with the Chinese, Russians and others letting Anglo-Saxons having an interesting time.

(K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990-91 Gulf war), Romania and Senegal .  He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest .  The views expressed here are his own.- Gajendrak@MWCNEWS.NET

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