Iran Wielding ‘Soft Power’ Against America
Tehran's quest to overthrow the existing order and dominate the Persian Gulf region is being cleverly strategized.
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“If each Muslim throws a bucket of water on Israel,” said the late Ayatollah Khomeini, “Israel will be erased.” This immortal sentiment, and surreal image, captures the essence of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s public diplomacy campaign these last four years, one of the most effective uses of “soft power” in recent memory.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to destroy Israel have so captured the hearts and minds of the Arab masses that they are too distracted to understand that the Persians are primarily coming after them. And the princes and presidents-for-life who rule the Arabs dare not speak the truth since they have promised for sixty years now to rectify the historical error that led to the establishment of the Zionist entity. With the reflexive Arab humiliation at the failure to annihilate a UN member state, the Khomeinists offer at least hope: if you can’t throw Israel into the sea, then take the sea to Israel — and bring your bucket.
So, while Ahmadinejad — the regime’s dark sorcerer, carny barker, and bearded lady rolled into one — has talked of making Israel disappear, he has effectively dropped his cloak over the rest of the Middle East to hide it from view. Even Washington doesn’t seem to have noticed that Iran has pulled a three-card monte trick with a vital American interest — the Persian Gulf.
To be sure, Ahmadinejad is a messianic obscurantist whose vicious threats should not be taken lightly. But Israel is not the main issue here, nor for that matter is the regime’s nascent nuclear program. For these are merely aspects, albeit important ones, of Iran’s project for the entire Middle East, a revolutionary putsch against the established order. And since Washington for over half a century has underwritten that order, from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, which Martin Kramer has called an “American lake,” the Iranian project by definition means to drive the U.S. from the region. And that’s the main event: not Israel, which has a nuclear deterrent, but the Gulf Arabs, who don’t, and their oil, a vital American interest.
Just as it would be ignoble for the world’s superpower to assign an attack on Iran’s nuclear program to the Israelis, neither should Washington leave it up to Israel to counter Ahmadinejad’s rhetorical onslaught. It is the prerogative of a superpower to formulate strategy, tasks that Washington has so far botched. Consider Annapolis, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s redundant effort to convince the Arabs and Israelis of the obvious — that they have a common foe in Iran — and then reward Arab inaction by demanding concessions from Israel on the peace process.
Not surprisingly, the Israelis are confused and frustrated and the Arabs are hardly more impressed. Indeed Arab regime confidence in Washington’s ability to stop the Iranians seems to be at an all-time low. Four years ago U.S. ally King Abdullah of Jordan was stirring up the sectarian hornet’s nest by warning of a Shia crescent; today Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is hosting unprecedentedly Shia-friendly interfaith conferences in order to pave the way for an accommodation between the Sunnis and those who are awaiting the return of the twelfth imam, a comity that does not need Washington as a guarantor.
And there is no American clarity on the horizon either, for so far neither U.S. presidential candidate has indicated that he will be any more effective than the Bush administration.
Senator Obama says that he’s the man who would speak with the Iranians — apparently ignorant of the fact that every man who has sat in the Oval Office since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran has tried to engage the IRI. While this puerile boast richly merits the derision of his opponents, the fact is that Senator McCain has not shown that his Iran policy consists of much more than proving that he is a steadfast friend of Israel. Is it possible that the two men running for this country’s highest office do not know what is at stake?
Lee Smith is a Washington, DC-based writer and visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. He’s a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard on Middle East issues.
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12 Comments
westerner:It should be clear that the purpose of any action is to maintain a free and open market in oil, not to monopolise the whole production for exclusive American use.
Jul 4, 2008 - 2:50 am Lisa:Just bomb the facilities already.. before Obama gets into office. That namby-pamby will do nothing. Israel should take out those damn facilities and have its citizens on high alert.
No nukes for Iran!
Jul 4, 2008 - 4:17 am chuck,:Somebody had better be schmoozing, and schmoozing hard, with China, India, Russia and other parties beforehand to get them to agree that the removal of this pain in the butt would be good for everybody. If we don’t play this right, we could end up playing Germany to Israel’s Austria-Hungary, which didn’t turn out so well for either of them.
Jul 4, 2008 - 5:48 am Eric:The election of Obama will be a world wide disaster. Maybe that’s what it will take to return true men of strength, character, and determination to the WH instead of the steady stream of mediocrities with the lone exception of the Gipper.
Jul 4, 2008 - 1:39 pm rotwang:The Gipper sold missiles illegally to Iran, our enemy, and then lied about it.
If he’s the high-water mark of recent presidents, we are truly a lost cause as a nation.
He had the strength, character and determination of a mollusk.
Jul 4, 2008 - 10:34 pm Bart:At the time, Iran was fighting a war with our other enemy Iraq, whom we then tilted toward when the Iranians began to get the upper hand. These were tactical, not strategic, missiles.
We’re not in as bad a situation with Iran as it may appear. You’ve got to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Their economy is a wreck - not merely in a minor cyclical slowdown but a real wreck, with stratospheric unemployment and inflation. They are exporting oil but importing gasoline due to lack of refining capacity. At least half their population is hostile to the regime. They are surrounded on three sides by our troops, who rolled up in three weeks the military in Iraq whom they could not defeat in 8 years. We control the high ground of space and their air force is no match for ours. They have missiles which can theoretically reach Israel and Eastern Europe, but with poor quality control and anti-missile systems on the other side, they are of questionable value. If they get into an unconventional missile war with Israel, they will be annihilated.
The reality is that Iran is weak. The danger is that the regime will do something stupid in desperation to cling to power. But, with the younger generation overwhelmingly opposed to the Islamic Republic, their days are numbered.
Jul 5, 2008 - 7:03 am PD Quig:“If each Muslim throws a bucket of water on Israel,” said the late Ayatollah Khomeini, “Israel will be erased.” This immortal sentiment, and surreal image, captures the..” ignorance of the Grand Poobah mullah.
I hate to break it to Old Eyebrows posthumously, but assuming 1.4 billion Muslims, and assuming each bucket carried one gallon of water, depositing said water on Israel (20,330 square miles of landmass) would amount to a mist of less than .004″ of precipitation.
Jul 5, 2008 - 7:43 am Zane:rotwang
Neat, the way you summed up a mans life in one episode. Do you have any idea what Iran/Contra was all about or are you just spouting the party line?
If you took the time to look closer, you would discover that the Gipper was is it to win. That’s Strength, Character and Determination.
Oh . . . and he won.
Just like the current Repeb Pres is winning.
So what you got against winning?
Jul 5, 2008 - 9:04 am Boazhorribilis:rotwang
Not enamored by the Gipper but to impune motive and reason retroactively twenty years later is ridiculous. All actions and policies must be considered in their timely and current circumstances.
Jul 8, 2008 - 2:06 am Mary Madigan:Even Washington doesn’t seem to have noticed that Iran has pulled a three-card monte trick with a vital American interest — the Persian Gulf.
Washington notices everything that happens in the Persian gulf - their obsession with the place is partly responsible for the mess our economy is in lately.
We’ve always depended on our Gulf allies to regulate oil prices and defend American interests in the area. We’re now discovering that our Gulf allies are useless. They can’t regulate oil prices, their influence is minimal, they have less oil than they claimed to have, their economy is a tulipmania bubble about to burst and they’re generally not worth our trouble.
Then there’s the fact that Saudi Arabia is the hub of world terrorism. If Washington does finally realize that our Gulf enemies are no longer a vital American interest, if they realize that they can be as malign as the Iranians, they deserve a lot of credit.
Oil in the Middle East may be of vital interest, but it’s not our vital interest. We get most of our oil from the Western Hemisphere. We should be paying more attention to our own backyard.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:19 pm kabud:Mary Madigan
it just happened that TODAY there is no substitute for transportation fuel.
Mind that major oil-nat.gas reserves are located on the enemy territory: Russia and ME, also effectively controlled by Russia
Mexico where we get a big chunk of our oil imports is always in the state of instability and under marxist threat
Mexico is crawling with kremlin agents and their instrumental `islamic radicals`
Canada as well is and always was infiltrated by kremlin to the unprecedented degree.
You are right we have to work on the situation in the Western Hemisphere.
Or may be start working on elements of active subversion right here in USA?
There is another approach that doctor Zubrin is promoting:
instead of oils and natural gas we may use domestically produce METHANOL for transportation fuel: auto and air as well.
It is much better option then ethanol, because we will not be dependent on agricultural situation or external imports like from brazil or Caribbeans where subversion goes full grown
Jul 13, 2008 - 10:44 am