MWC Special Features,

AN UNNECESSARY CRISIS
By  David MacMichael, Ph.D

(Author’s note: As a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an organization of former US intellligence officers from the CIA, DIA, Department of State and Department of Defense, I took part in 2002 in the preparation of a series of public statements countering the Bush administration’s alleged intelligence behind its rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

          These statements were based not only on our past experience with presidential manipulation of intelligence in Vietnam and the Iran-Contra era but with information we received from alarmed former colleagues still within the intelligence services. We warned that not only was the information about supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, particularly nuclear weapons, suspect and more than likely false, but that the overall strategy behind the invasion plan overrated prospects of success and vastly underestimated the probable cost to the United States in lives and money.

            Our misgivings, we now know, were all too correct. That is why we look with growing alarm at the manner in which the administration has approached the problem—if, in fact, it is a problem—posed by Iran’s long-established program of developing a nuclear energy system, a program which could eventually give the country the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. This Iran, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, pledges not to do. It has submitted to the regular inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency which has found no evidence of a weapons program.

 In my belief, as the writer of the following analysis, the Bush administration representation of Iran, unarguably a conservative Shiite Islamic state supportive of Shiite minorities in Iraq and Lebanon, among other countries, as a reckless and aggressive nation, a danger to the region or even to the United States, has no grounding in history. My analysis demonstrates that Iran, on the contrary, has over the past half century been the victim of both covert and overt aggression—in much of which the US has been involved.

It is difficult for me to understand not only why the Bush administration is pursuing its aggressive policy against Iran, especially at a time when its position in Iraq is crumbling toward utter failure, but how it has been able to enlist much of the European Union countries in its support. The analysis explores the issue.)

BACKGROUND      

For almost a half century Iran, both under the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and the succeeding Islamic governments after the Shah’s overthrow in 1978, has had a policy of developing nuclear plants for electric power generation. Prior to 1978 the policy had the full support and encouragement of the United States and other western governments which used Iran as a major Middle Eastern ally against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For example, in 1974 Iran contracted with the American research firm SRI International (the former Stanford Research Institute) for assistance in the design and construction of such plants.

            Things changed after the overthrow of the Shah and the subsequent US Embassy hostage crisis, during the course of which American Army Special Forces attempted a military rescue raid in Iran which proved an embarrassing failure.. Not only were diplomatic relations between Teheran and Washington broken and never restored, but the US prohibited all direct trade between US business and Iran and sequestered all Iranian assets in the US, including some $18 billion in deposits in American banks, assets which the US government still holds. Admittedly, the ban was covertly lifted during the Reagan presidency when advanced US weapons were sold, through Israeli channels, to Iran and the proceeds diverted to the support of US-directed forces (the “Contras”) seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan government—thus, the “Iran-Contra” scandal. However, this was a momentary digression from the policy, partly rationalized as a means of restoring US influence in Iran’s military or establishing links with “moderate elements in Iran” with an eye toward repeating the pro-US military coup of 1953 which ousted Iran’s elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq and established the essentially US-controlled monarchy of the Shah.  (It might be noted in the context of the present US effort to have Iran sanctioned by the UN Security Council, that prior to the 1953 coup Great Britain, furious at Mossadeq because of his nationalization of British-owned oil fields, unsuccessfully attempted to have the Security Council punish Iran).

            Indeed, such was US hostility toward the post-Shah government and its Islamic fundamentalist religious leader, the Ayatolla Khomeini—despite the fact that it was by any definition anti-communist, possibly even more so than the also fundamentalist mujahaddin rebellion the US organized and supported in neighboring Afghanistan—that Washington and its western allies to greater or lesser degrees encouraged, financed, armed, provided intelligence to, and even directly participated in the war of aggression which Iraq launched against Iran in 1980. This participation climaxed in 1988 when a US cruiser operating in Iranian national waters mistakenly shot down an Iranian civil airliner, killing the 100 plus passengers aboard.

Ironically, this western aid included scientific and industrial support for Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. This support proved critical because it was only by resort to massive use of chemical weapons that Iraq—which had disastrously underestimated Iran’s ability to rebuild its armed forces following 1978 when most of the pro-Shah senior officer corps left the country—was able to prevent Iran’s enthusiastic Islamic volunteers from routing Saddam Hussein’s secular baathist regulars. In any event, the war was a disaster for both countries with deaths in the hundreds of thousands and huge economic losses. Less noticed then, but a major factor in current US strategic calculations, was the fact that Iraq’s very large Shia Muslim population tended to a great degree to identify with largely Shia Iran and to reject their own secular government whose popular support base, insofar as it was religious, was drawn from Sunni Muslims, traditionally foes of the Shiites they regard as heretics.

            When the war ended in 1988, with the United Nations negotiating a ceasefire and then supervising withdrawal of both sides to pre-war borders and repatriation of prisoners, Iran turned its energies to restoring its economy. Iraq, on the other hand, feeling betrayed by its Arab neighbors, particularly Kuwait which Baghdad believed had not only failed to provide promised financial assistance but had actually taken advantage of the war to steal oil from Iraqi fields, committed the extraordinary error of launching its August 1990 attack on Kuwait. Admittedly, Saddam had some reason to believe that his old allies in Washington would tolerate his assault. US Ambassador April Glaspie in Baghdad famously told him on July 25 that the United States “had no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait….The issue is not associated with America.”

How wrong was Saddam’s belief, because the George H.W. Bush administration seized the opportunity to lead an international coalition to war against Iraq—the Gulf War--; totally crush his painfully reconstructed military forces; and usher in the decade-long era of brutal United Nations economic sanctions that almost completely destroyed what was left of Iraq’s once thriving economy and social structure. Saddam and the Baath Party remained in control of  the government, somehow retaining the capability of bloodily suppressing a major Shiite rebellion in the southern third of the country and maintaining tenuous control over the Kurdish provinces in the north despite British and US-imposed “no fly regions”—non-UN-authorized activities which prevented the Iraqi air force from supporting Baghdad’s military operations there.

While Iraq sank deeper into misery—an impoverished international outcast—Iran, although still seen by the US as an enemy, made a relatively rapid recovery. It continued satisfactory trade relations with everyone but the US and, after the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, experienced social and political moderation. Certainly, the Shia religious leaders who succeeded Khomeini retained an effective veto over the elected civil government, but by and large Iran’s large and cosmopolitan middle and upper classes were not subjected to any Taliban-like repression or even the severe life style restrictions of Saudi Arabia. Compared to many other nations of the Middle East Iran’s political system was relatively open. The result of the 2005 national elections which confounded most observers by giving the presidential office to Mahmoud Ahmajinedad, the populist and religiously conservative mayor of Tehran over much better known and wealthier candidates from the Iranian elite is evidence of that.                            

Iran’s conduct of its foreign affairs following the war with Iraq shows no record of disruptive international or regional behavior. As a member of OPEC it has cooperated with that body’s policies. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union Teheran quickly established cordial political and economic relationships with the new Russian Federation as well as with the new Near Eastern states formed from the old USSR—the so-called ‘Stans. Trade with western Europe has continued; Germany, for instance, exports about $5 billion worth of products annually to Iran. Likewise, Tehran has worked diligently to improve its diplomatic and economic relationships with the rising Asian economic powers of China and India as well as with Japan, which gets over 15 per cent of its petroleum from Iran. Fully conscious of the dangers posed by the Taliban regime in its eastern neighbor of Afghanistan to its own relatively moderate Islamism and comparatively open political system, Iran worked closely with others in the region to counter the efforts of the mujaheddin and, after, 2001 cooperated with the United States in suppressing alQuaeda’s activities in the region. Iran, with a significant drug abuse problem among its population, has also been active in efforts to stop the opium and heroin traffic emanating from Afghanistan. Indeed, Iran was notably cooperative with the anti-Iraq coalition during the Gulf War.