Iraq and Afghanistan

There have been a number of items in the news recently that remind us of the importance of maintaining good relations with Iran. Dilip Hiro in an Op-Ed on Monday pointed to the variation of opinion that he found within Iran. Interestingly, he found that those most supportive of what we have done in Iraq are those living closest to the Iraq border (because of what happened to them in the Iran-Iraq war). Further away he found many young people who looked to the possibility of democracy in Iraq as a future model for Iran. (One should be cautious about this and the reports from other recent trips by Westerners to the country. Even with one's best efforts, one tends in a foreign country to spend more time with those like oneself in ideas, culture, and age than with those less interested in you and less able to contact you.) He also found, especially in the holy city of Qom, some virulent anti-Americans, a segment dating back to the Mossadeq era and the later satanization of Americans by Khomeini. This group often regards recent events in Iraq as a deliberate attack on Islam. It is interesting to reflect that the nationalist movement in Iran began about 1890 with a boycott of tobacco (being imported by the British) led by the religious leaders.

The United States should develop better relations with Iran for many reasons.

First, outside of Turkey, it is most democratic significant democratic state in the region. We make a lot of it being a "theocracy". But it has in fact held a series of elections over the past twenty years that have been more "free and fair" than most elections in the area. The position of women in Iran is far better than that in neighboring states (always with the exception of Turkey). Freedom in the arts and in the expression of opinion is significant if by no means complete. Iran has a relatively well-educated population as the result of the efforts of both the preceding monarchy and the present "theocracy".

Second, whatever we may think of it, Iran is situated between Iraq and Afghanistan. It is understandably interested in what goes on in both states. That it interferes in their affairs from time to time should not be condemned as much as modified or redirected. As the most powerful Shi'a state in the world (a role it also played from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), Iran is also directly involved in the affairs of the Shi'as of Iraq, as well as those of Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Khomeini fled to Iraq to escape the Shah. Under Saddam, high religious leaders fled from Iraq to Iran (Qom). Many of these are still revered in Iraq, and some have returned or intend to. The holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf are equally holy cities for Iranians.

Long before the religious leaders came to power in modern Iran, Iran has longed for a decisive role in the world. After all, they see themselves as the descendants of a people that once ruled from Cairo to Delhi. The support of Palestinian groups opposing the Israelis as well as their interest in nuclear energy, the development of new missiles and maintenance of the possibility of a bomb are not unrelated to their view of their "international responsibility". These objectives clash with our own objectives and must be countered. But they should be countered in the framework of an understanding of, and accommodation where possible with, the Iranian understanding of themselves.