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**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:20 PM

VALI NASR ON THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SHIITES AND SUNNIS
"We Need Engagement with Iran"

American political scientist Vali Nasr discusses the bloody sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq as well as Tehran's rise as a regional power.

Vali Nasr: "Violence in Iraq is producing more and more radical ideologies on both sides."
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Martin H. Simon

Vali Nasr: "Violence in Iraq is producing more and more radical ideologies on both sides."
SPIEGEL: Mr. Nasr, in your book "The Shia Revival," you paint a dire picture of the future of the Middle East. You predict that the conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis will dramatically increase.

Nasr: Sectarian identity and sectarian tensions will be the backdrop of all the other issues in the Middle East. We saw this in Lebanon where a war that was initially an Arab-Israeli war -- a war that belongs to the old conflicts of the region -- very quickly became all about the Shiite-Sunni issue. Some Arab governments and radical Sunni clerics came out and characterized this as a Shiite power grab and said Hezbollah cannot legitimately fight for the Palestinian cause because it is Shiite and a heretical organization.

SPIEGEL: What caused the revival of the Shiites?

Nasr: First, there was Iraq, but also it's Iran's influence in the region. Everything has to do with what happened in the past few years -- the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran was contained by these two Sunni powers, but the United States removed the barrier. Now Iran was provided with elbow room to expand its power because the United States' own ability to contain Iran has been limited by its involvement in Iraq. It's an opportunity for Iran to expand, a sort of Prussian moment.

SPIEGEL: And Shiites all over the region feel emboldened?

ABOUT VALI NASR
Vali Nasr, 46, is professor for Middle East studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as a Middle East policy advisor to United States president George W. Bush and is the author of the book "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future."
Nasr: They represent about half the population in the countries of the Middle East. When President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt says that the Shiites are more loyal to Iran than their own countries, he is saying that the Shiites are not genuine Arabs, that they are somehow Iranian tools. They are not accepted as members of the nations, they don't have a share of the wealth. In Saudi Arabia, for example, there is no Shiite ambassador; in Lebanon, they are the largest community and the most they have is the speakership of the parliament.

SPIEGEL: Tensions between the two religious groups have existed for centuries.

Nasr: The relationship between these two sects is somewhat like those that existed earlier between the Protestants and Catholics. Germans must be able to identify with this since they were at the heart of the Thirty Years' War. It's never about theology alone, it's also about power. The Shiites don't want to split from the region, they want a seat at the table. But the real drama is the conflict is Iraq, which has ended up the worst way in which this could have happened.

SPIEGEL: Because of the open violence between the ethnic groups?

Nasr: It is the worst-case scenario for the region because you had a minority Sunni regime that ruled over a majority of Shiites. When the regime change came, the Sunnis refused to accept a change in power, and then things went particularly bloody and badly. In other words, the very first case of a transfer of power from Sunnis to Shiites has ended up becoming the worst nightmare, and the shadow of Iraq now will loom over the region. Iraq is so corrosive to politics there because it raised the Shiite-Sunni issue.

SPIEGEL: What are the consequences?

Nasr: The violence in Iraq is producing more and more radical ideologies on both sides, the kind of activities we haven't seen before: beheadings, large-scale executions, kidnappings. And ultimately that violence doesn't stay there, it is going to travel elsewhere in the Middle East. If Iraq really collapses, it will be difficult to assume that other countries in the region are not going to get involved. The Turks will look after the Kurdish issue, Iran and Hezbollah will be on the side of the Shiites, and other Sunni governments will be on the side of the Sunnis. So the potential to impact public opinion in the region along sectarian lines and to produce a sort of broader struggle of power and regional competition is there.

SPIEGEL: Isn't Iraq already in the midst of a civil war?

Nasr: By some definitions it is, like it was in India in 1947. At the end of the British rule the Hindus and Muslims got involved in a kind of communal violence. There was no civil war as such -- there were no armies, there were no battle lines, and yet millions of people died.

SPIEGEL: The conflict in India ended with the splitting of the country, an idea which is heatedly debated by American politicians.

Nasr: Well, a split happens when one side cannot impose its will on the other, and it is at the same time not willing to submit to the other side's will. Then two things can happen: One is that the conflict will go on for many years to come, like in Lebanon where it took 15 years before they came to an agreement. Or they decide that neither side can win and neither side wants to live with the other side and they will separate.

SPIEGEL: According to US intelligence, Iran already supplies Shiite militia with advanced weapons.

Nasr: Yes. And the Shiites believe that the Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians are supplying the Sunnis with those kinds of things. The hundreds of millions of dollars going into the insurgency has to be coming from somewhere. There is all kinds of evidence that wealthy individuals in the Gulf have been subsidizing the insurgency.

SPIEGEL: Today, the Shiite militias are just as brutal and murderous as their Sunni counterparts.

Nasr: Oh, absolutely, it's a sort of degeneration of Shiite power into Shiite militia rule, driven by the inability of the central government to govern. When you are in a war, power shifts to those who carry the guns.

SPIEGEL: Grand Ayatollah Sistani is considered an influential man by all sides. Couldn't he serve as a voice of moderation?

Nasr: He is a very popular leader, like a John Paul II for the Shiites. But he is exactly like the Pope: He has no army divisions; and when there is a battle on the street, he cannot impose his will. His influence is purely moral.

SPIEGEL: President George W. Bush still hopes that democracy and not sectarian violence will shape his "New Middle East."

Nasr: Democracy is very important to the future, but right now, it is not what is shaping the Middle East. Task number one is to deescalate tensions in the region, create stability for Iraq, making sure that Lebanon does not flare up again, making progress on the Palestinian issue. The most popular Middle East leaders according to a recent poll in Egypt are Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khalid Meshal.

SPIEGEL: You are an influential voice in Washington, even the president asks for your advice. What do you propose?

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Nasr: The two-ton elephant is the Iran issue. War is not an option, we need engagement with Iran. The strategic implications of Iran for the West are far broader than just the nuclear issue. We shouldn't only look at the Iranian government and it's theocracy and authoritarianism. Persian is now the third language of the Internet -- there are 85,000 Iranian blogs, and every Iranian cleric, every Ayatalloh and even Ahmadinejad has his own.

SPIEGEL: You have to cut a deal with the new regional power?

Nasr: Whether you like it or not, they are the new power. It's a matter of overlapping convergence of certain trends -- Iranian society, culture, economy, combined with a turning point in favor of Shiites in the region and America's traditional allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan weakened. We need Iran. It's about the whole stability and future of the Middle East.

SPIEGEL: But the Iranians also have a tendency to overplay their hand.

Nasr: Absolutely. Now, the question is which way Iran will go. Will it be an India, or China, which would be good, or Germany of the inter-war period which ended up ultimately forcing an international alliance against itself. I would like to think that ultimately there is greater realism on the part of Washington, and greater realism means you need to engage Iran. Otherwise you had better be prepared to spend a lot of money on troops for the region for a long time.

**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:24 PM

Manufactured Crisis 1

Of Real and Manufactured Crisis:
Iran in the Eye of the Storm
by Faramarz Farbod

November 04, 2006

A popular joke in the United States of the late 1980s depicted Iran as a country that had for long generated substantial troubles for successive U.S. administrations. A U.S. President, so the joke went, had his State Department tasked with bringing him the U.S. government file on Iran. The Department was unable to find the Iran file under the letter “I.” The President asked that the search be conducted under the letter “P” for Persia, Iran’s pre-1933 name. As the second search also failed, confusion set in the White House whereupon an advisor suggested that perhaps Iran had been filed under the letter “U,” to which the President asked what it stood for. The reply: Ulcers.

Clearly many North Americans agree and consider the U.S. as the
aggrieved party. If asked they would point to the year 1979 as when it all began. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution toppled a key U.S. ally, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Later in the same year, Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 North Americans captive for 444 days. Establishing time-lines that tell of origins is critical to historical storytelling. To Iranians their troubled history with the United States did not begin in 1979. For them 1953 is the key year. In that year, an Anglo-U.S. coup toppled the parliamentary government of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq. The coup ended the only democratic experiment in government in modern Iranian history.

The 1979-Centered Version of History

To this day the U.S. continues to view its history with Iran by privileging the events of 1979 over any other historical account. The salient theme in their version of “1979” is that of modernization and its discontents. Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979) of Iran, so it goes, was eager to modernize his people, the majority of whom were governed by traditional Muslim ways. As he pushed modernization on them they began to view him as cruel. By 1978 bloody riots swept the country, forcing the Shah to leave the following year. Khomeini, a Muslim fundamentalist leader, replaced him and established an Islamic republic. The new regime was very anti-U.S. and keen on eradicating western cultural influences in Iran. When the U.S., in a humane act, allowed the Shah, who was ill with cancer, to come to the U.S. for medical treatment, the revolutionaries in Iran were angered and overtook the US Embassy and held its staff hostage. The fundamentalist Khomeini manipulated this rage to his advantage and further consolidated his power while fanning the flames of anti- North Americanism. The U.S. responded by freezing Iranian assets in the United States, placing a trade embargo on Iran, and taking the side of a lesser evil, Saddam Hussein, in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. In the 1990s, Washington adopted the policy of containing Iran (and Iraq) while Iran secretly worked on its nuclear programs. Now in the aftermath of 9-11, the U.S. cannot sit idly by while Iran pursues its programs to acquire nuclear weapons.

In the 1980s, Iran was summed up in the minds of many North Americans with the oft repeated “The United States Held Hostage” headline. The U.S. public officials and media focused almost exclusively on the hostage-taking. North Americans were fed daily images of angry mobs burning the U.S. flag, and striking and burning the effigies of President Carter in front of the Embassy gates in Tehran. The display of mass rage was often staged just for the western news cameras. As a result, to most North Americans, the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 became practically indistinguishable from those images of visceral mob anger. And so many North Americans simply failed to comprehend what had been unfolding before their eyes. As a result, tensions began to grow between North Americans and Iranian-Americans in the U.S.

My brother and I had a firsthand experience of this growing tension. We were attending college in the United States at the time of the hostage-taking. One afternoon we found ourselves surrounded by two dozen angry fellow students. The incident had been triggered by a student from a dormitory where we also resided who had thrown a soda can at us and a visiting Iranian friend. Our friend unwisely returned the favor by throwing the can back at the dorm floor and smashing a window. He then left the campus in a hurry, leaving us to deal with the angry crowd.

Facing grave danger, we asked if any of them knew of the real history behind the news headlines, and whether they were willing to let us tell that story before they would carry out the sordid business of injuring their fellow dorm-mates. Reluctantly, they agreed. So we began and when we had ended a good many of the students were still left standing and listening attentively, and some were visibly affected. When it was all over, no one had been hurt, and some even offered us protection from abuse in the future. That day we learned the following lesson. Sometimes history can help heal historical wounds suffered by contending communities, and that its misuse can do the exact opposite, replacing natural feelings of human empathy and solidarity with contrived animosity and aggression.

The 1953-Centered Version of History

Iranians emphasize the themes of national sovereignty and democracy, or constitutional government, in their national historical narrative. From their perspective, the years 1951-3 represent an exceptional period in which the nation came closest to achieving political independence and establishing a lasting constitutional monarchy. In 1951, the popular Mossadeq had put an end to British colonialism by nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control since the 1910s. Naturally, nationalization angered Britain. But what surprised most Iranians was that in the end the U.S. sided with Britain. To many Iranians, the U.S. enjoyed an exalted moral status. The United States had sympathized with the Iranian constitutionalists during the constitutional revolution of 1905-11, and many Iranians tended to view the United States as an anti-imperialist great power.

In the aftermath of the nationalization act, Iran faced an embargo and a blockade from the west. Just when its oil revenues were dramatically reduced, the U.S. withheld aid and denied loans to Iran, despite Mossadeq’s pleas. As this created a climate for disaffection and subversion among the people, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsored a royalist coup (Operation AJAX) that put a halt to the only experiment with democracy and independence in Iran. Mossadeq himself was tried in a military court and convicted on charges of treason, sent to prison for three years and subsequently banned to his remote home village under house arrest until his death in 1967.

In the three years that followed the coup, total U.S. economic and military aid to the Shah increased by nine fold. In 1954, the oil industry was in fact (not on paper) denationalized, with the rights to, and management of, Iranian oil transferred to a western oil consortium. In 1957, the CIA, according to William Colby, its former Director, “created SAVAK,” a repressive national secret police agency, “and taught it proper methods of intelligence.”[1][1]The veteran investigative reporter, Seymour M. Hersh, reported that, according to Jesse Leaf, the chief CIA analyst on Iran in the period 1968-73, the CIA had instructed the SAVAK on torture techniques, which “were based on German torture techniques from World War II.”[2][2]In later years, as the Shah became an absolutist monarch the U.S. continued to back his rule.

By the early 1970s, as the price of oil quadrupled, and Iran’s state revenues expanded dramatically, the U.S. assigned a regional mini-hegemonic role to the Shah, a role which required transferring vast amounts of U.S.-made armaments to Iran. A 1977 report by a Senate committee explained: Iran’s role is to block any “threat to the continuous flow of oil through the Gulf,” which “would so endanger the Western and Japanese economies as to be grounds for general war.” It continued, “…the most serious threats may emanate from internal changes in Gulf states … If Iran is called upon to intervene in the internal affairs of any Gulf state it must be recognized in advance by the United States that this is the role for which Iran is being primed and blame cannot be assigned for Iran’s carrying out an implied assignment.”[3][3]The report concluded that “a strong and stable Iran,” serves “as a deterrent against Soviet adventurism in the region,” and “against radical groups in the Gulf.”[4][4]

In sum, the Shah was a modernizing dictator who pushed economic modernization initiatives, as did his father (Reza Shah, 1925-1941) before him, but who forfeited any chance of gaining legitimacy for his rule when he went along with the Anglo-U.S. coup against nationalist democratic aspirations of his nation, became dependent on foreign (U.S.) tutelage, and relied increasingly on state terror to rule. And it was the fact that the U.S. backed his rule despite the gross violations of the human rights of ordinary Iranians that alienated many of them from the United States.

(continued below)

**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:25 PM

#2

(continued from above)

The Present Confrontation

In the aftermath of September the 11Th, the paths of these two nations seem once more to be set on a collision course with ruinous consequences for both peoples. And once again history is being misused, manipulated, and ignored. One senses in the air the forming of that mindset of havoc and destruction that necessarily feeds on fear and ignorance. And again we are called upon to halt the death train set in motion towards greater ruins ahead. Let’s begin by outlining what each side says the confrontation is about before lifting their rhetorical veils to see what lurks underneath.

An Issue of Security: The Bush administration presents the conflict in terms of global security. It claims Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. And given the radical Islamist nature of its clerical regime the world cannot permit this destabilizing outcome. Iran’s pledges that it will abide by its legal obligations to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is no consolation to Washington. Bush administration argues that after two decades of deception, recent outrageous threats against Israel, and the backing of Hizbullah in the recent Israeli war in Lebanon, Iran cannot be trusted.

An Issue of Sovereignty & Rights: Iran presents the conflict as primarily a rights issue. Iran is a sovereign nation and has the right to pursue a national nuclear development policy that includes producing nuclear fuel domestically. Furthermore, such an activity is a permitted activity according to Article IV of the NPT, to which Iran is a signatory. The problem, they argue, stems from the U.S. opposition to this right to development.

What Is the Quarrel Not About?

The available evidence belies stated U.S. concerns about a nuclear weapon Iran. The issue seems more of a device of obfuscation than indication of a real concern. The evidence in fact shows that the issue of nuclear non-proliferation has not been a top priority for Washington. Let’s review part of this record.

Washington has to date refused to endorse the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 2003 proposal to place all production and processing of weaponized materials under international control. In 2004, the Bush administration cast the lone “no” vote (147-1) in the UN committee on disarmament against a verifiable fissile material ban. In 2005, Washington again cast a “no” vote (179-2) on the same issue in the General Assembly of the UN. The U.S. has also been pushing to develop new generations of tactical nuclear weapons, and threatening to use them, including against Iran, in violation of Article VI of the NPT, which obliges all nuclear-weapons states to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Furthermore, the application of Bush’s Doctrine of preemptive war, and regime change, has prompted proliferation efforts by targeted states and others.

Of more significance is the relevant U.S. record with Iran on this issue. On three known occasions since 9-11 the U.S. either failed to take advantage of a strategic opening with Iran or indeed rejected them out of hand. The first opportunity occurred after Tehran cooperated with Washington in toppling the Taliban regime and helped in establishing a new political order in Afghanistan. President Bush returned the favor by initiating the campaign of vilification against Iran in his 2002 state of the union address when he included Iran in the infamous “axis of evil” list and thereby squandered any chance of leveraging tactical cooperation over Afghanistan into a strategic opening.

The second opportunity was consciously rejected when, immediately after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the Bush administration rebuked the Swedish ambassador for delivering a letter from Iran’s Foreign Ministry. The letter had contained a detailed proposal by the moderate President Khatami’s government for comprehensive negotiations to resolve all bilateral differences including full cooperation on Iran’s nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel, and the ending of support for Palestinian militant groups. According to a National Security Council official at the time “the administration’s response was to complain that the Swiss diplomats who passed the document from Tehran to Washington were out of line.”[5][5]

The third opportunity was squandered when in 2004 the U.S. refused to join the ongoing European negotiations with Iran and crucially refused to offer a security guarantee (that it, or Israel, will not attack Iran) and thus guaranteed instead the failure of the negotiations. Iran had voluntarily agreed to suspend its enrichment program and accepted the IAEA’s intrusive inspections at any recognized site and without any prior notification (the Additional Protocol). Iran, in its turn, has not been entirely forthcoming with its real concerns either. She presents the confrontation in terms of a conflict between her sovereign rights and an international bully (the U.S.) bent on opposing them. Although Iran is within its rights, as guaranteed by NPT, to own its own nuclear fuel cycle, it was only a short while ago (2004) that Iran voluntarily suspended its uranium enrichment without arguing that doing so violated its sovereign rights.

Iran may have hardened its position on this issue for the following reasons. First, it did try the soft approach, under the soft-spoken former President Khatami, in the aftermath of the quick fall of Baghdad, when the new-conservative ideologues seemed emboldened and ready to extend their muscular regime change policy to Tehran. Second, it had become increasingly clear that the neo-con planners in Washington had shifted the U.S. Iran policy from what it was under the Clinton presidency, namely a cold war policy of containment and behavior change, to one of regime change, as signaled by President Bush’s famous “axis of evil” speech of 2002. Iran may have concluded from this that it not only needed a new strategy but also a new president that would not hesitate to stand up to Washington’s new belligerency. Third, as the situation in Iraq dramatically deteriorated for the U.S., Iran benefited enormously as its Shiite allies came to power there. This could not but embolden Iran’s leaders.

What Does Washington Want?

The evidence suggests that Washington is driven by other motivations, for it seems keen on never missing an opportunity to miss opportunities to enter into strategic dialogue with Iran and resolve the issues between them. Below I suggest three factors behind the persistent U.S. hostility to Iran.

(I) Punishing Defiance: In 1954, after the dusts had settled and the passage of time permitted a retrospective look at what the sordid events of 1953 had signified, the New York Times editorialists mused thusly: “Costly as the dispute over Iranian oil has been to all concerned, the affair may yet be proved worthwhile if lessons are learned from it. Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-reaching leaders.”[6][6] The powerful rarely abandon the task of teaching harsh lessons to those who defy them. We cannot underestimate the strong desire of Washington to continue to teach the defiant ruling clerics in Iran the same “object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid.” The U.S. has imposed a unilateral trade embargo on Iran, threatened sanctions on companies seeking to invest more than $20 million in Iran’s oil and gas industry (thus ensuring that Iran’s energy industry remains underdeveloped and continues to perform below capacity), backed Iraq in the devastating Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 (with 300,000 Iranian deaths alone), not to mention several unsuccessful coup attempts in the 1980s.

(2) The Neo-Conservative Hegemonic Plans: The Bush White House has announced that it will not tolerate any “peer competitors” in any region of the globe, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Iran has been a rising regional power for some time but one whose power had been balanced by its regional rivals, namely the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ba’thist Hussein in Iraq. The removal of both regimes since 9-11 by Washington has led, predictably, to a rapid ascendancy of Iran’s power in the region. In particular, Iran’s power in the region has received a dramatic boost as a result of the coming to power of its Shiite allies in the post-invasion Iraq. Even so, Iran is still acting with some restraint in Iraq due to the presence in Iraq of the U.S. forces. If and when the latter are withdrawn or their influence reduced, Iran will surely step up its activities to fill the vacuum. In that case, Washington’s nightmare scenario of a radical Shiite alliance in control of vast reserves of that greatest of all material prize in history, namely oil, may come to pass.

(continued below)

**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:28 PM

**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:29 PM

mefnf01@moravian.edu

**zubin** · 11-07-2006, 07:39 PM

Russian Maneuvers, American Incoherence

By JOHN VINOCUR
International Herald Tribune
Published: November 7, 2006 pagetwo@iht.com

**mike435** · 11-07-2006, 11:56 PM

wow man i bet you have read it can you like post a theseis or breif summary
i

**zubin** · 11-08-2006, 12:31 AM

one of the posts called "conclusion" is a summary; the other ones are relatively short.

essentially the claim is that the US or anyone else does not have the right to interfere with Iran culturally, acting as if they are superior to Iranians people.

Also that human rights will be delayed when leaders like Bush use unreasonable logic and threats based on a false superiority and moral authority in the world, because attention can be diverted to national security issues.

**zubin** · 11-17-2006, 04:36 PM

No one can interfere

**zubin** · 11-17-2006, 04:37 PM

Announcement

Iranian Independence

Iranian Independence

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