| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| The mullahs want Iran to be a mental hospital - so let's invite them over |
| 2005-11-01 |
| Liberal Democrat peers: you never know whether youâre going to find them bravely castigating Western governments for human rights failures, or seeking to have us understand why much worse abuses committed by exotic foreigners are somehow less awful than they seem. Under a fortnight ago the lawyer Lord Phillips of Sudbury (Andrew Phillips) was doing the second thing â attempting to explain the ways of President Ahmadinejad of Iran to fellow Britons. And though it must be said at once that this was not at all the kind of Assad-licking one gets from George Galloway, it was still a wonderful example of relativism. Ahmadinejad was a âself-made man with a good doctorate in engineering, who lives in modest circumstances and has a reputation for incorruptibilityâ. Though a bit on the reactionary side he had fought a mainly secular campaign concentrating on the Iranian equivalents of schools-ân-hospitals. Iran was a diverse country, Phillips emphasised, far more democratic than in the Eighties, and Iranians were well-educated, highly cultured âdevourersâ of a diverse press. As for all that stoning of adulteresses, hanging of homosexuals and imprisoning of editors, well, it should be kept in perspective. Then came this: âAlthough a country of, by our traditions, cruel Sharia law, (Iran) is nonetheless a place full of humour, spirituality and aesthetic depth. Where in the West does one find the main thoroughfares and squares named after poets?â I dunno, Andrew. No, itâs coming back. Berlin. Paris. Rome. Just about everywhere, in fact, except Britain where we never change street names if we can help it, and America, where they never named them in the first place. In fact the West is festooned with Heinrich Heinestrasses, Rues Balzacs and Avenidas Cervantes. How can educated people such as his lordship know so little about their own hemisphere? In any case the latter-day Tehran St Francis spoiled the picture last week by not once, but twice, committing himself and all good Muslims to wiping Israel off the map and consigning those Middle Eastern leaders who so much as recognised the Jewish state to the âfires of the Ummahâ. Diverse the Iranian press may be (though you take a considerable risk), but reports from the Iranian capital during the anti-Israel demos there suggested that the state-controlled radio and TV did sterling service by showing non-stop pictures of Israeli atrocities, then covering a state-sponsored event at Tehran University, while suppressing all mention of the international response to Ahmadinejadâs remarks. But what did it signify? Nothing, apparently. Some Western observers pronounced it to be not much more than an uncharacteristic rhetorical flourish from the otherwise ascetic president. âThe fact,â said one, âthat the Iranian regime is hostile to Israel is hardly news.â It was a silly miscalculation from someone who didnât, in any case, have the power greatly to influence anything. This view suggests that Ahmadinejad is â in political terms â a moron. Maybe we should now expect some zoomorphic cartoons from the same brilliant satirical minds that have always cast George Bush as a chimp. And maybe not. But the hopeful notion that â protests made â we can assume that he doesnât really mean it, wonât appeal much to even the most sunny Israeli nor to that countryâs most critical supporters. When it comes to men offering to wipe Jewish things off the map, it seems prudent to take them at their word. So sentiments such as those of the Iranian President are alarming enough at any time. And this is not just any time, because â as the United Nations reports â Iran is probably developing a nuclear weapon capacity. There are, of course, some British political figures who are rather more tolerant of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons than Britain keeping hers. But for the rest of us itâs pretty frightening, and strato-talk about regional power structures and Iranian insecurity seem to exist in a psychological world separate from wipings-outs of entire nations. Go and read the main Ahmadinejad speech on the internet and see whether it makes you feel less queasy to read the whole mad rant of it. So, of course, the tisch-talk turns once more to how Bush and Blair might take pre-emptive military action against Iran, or how Israel might do to Iranâs nascent nukes what it did to Saddamâs French-engineered capacity at Osirak in 1981. Except this time with unimaginable consequences. It is interesting how almost all the predictions of such actions come either from opponents of Western intervention in the area, or from the most exotic fringes of American neo-conservatism. I can tell readers that in my contacts with US and British officials and politicians, off the record, hush-hush and all that, I have found zero appetite for an Iranian adventure and zero expectation that the position will change. The formula is that ânothing can be ruled outâ, but in this case it means that â outside the circumstance of an Iranian attack on Pearl Harbor â there wonât be a war. Nor will the Israelis launch an air strike, not least because the Iranians are not stupid enough to have repeated Saddamâs errors. What, then, do we do about Iran? I may be infuriated with Phillipsâs relativisms, but the adult truth is that I agree with half of his argument and almost all of his conclusions. Iran is indeed a far more complex, porous and open country than Saddamite Iraq was or Kimâs North Korea still is. An enlightening article in this monthâs New York Review of Books, by the intellectual and writer Timothy Garton Ash, based on a recent visit to Iran, paints the picture of a young and increasingly outward-looking society, in long-term conflict with the conservative theocrats who seek to rule it. Young Iranians live undercover lives, admire American freedoms and desire more democracy. But their progressive inclinations could easily be overturned by Western bellicosity. Somehow we have to woo them, strengthen them, while not appearing to manipulate them. The problem for Ahmadinejad is that his Iran will fail. What he wants, my analyst friend said to me, is a country like a psychiatric hospital, in which the patients are soothed by being told when to take their meals, what to eat, what to watch, when bedtime is, how to relate to the opposite sex and when to take their medication. It is unbelievably boring and undynamic. No wonder that one of the Presidentâs first acts, completed last week, was to ban all foreign films from being shown in Iran. They were said to contain seeds of a dangerous and corrupting culture, which could influence Iranians in the directions of drug-taking (as if!), feminism, liberalism and secularism. Given half a chance, the hardliners seemed to be saying, those contaminated would chuck in the safety of the closed ward and lithium tablets, for a cavort in the wild world outside. This offers us our clue. If thatâs what the theocrats are scared of, then thatâs what we should give them. We should offer young Iranians every chance to experience the outside world: places in our colleges, work permits in our industries, cultural contacts of every kind. We should encourage visits to Iran. We should love-bomb the mullahs out of the Stone Age. |
| Posted by:.com |
| #4 His mention of Pearl Harbor is interesting. I have suggested that the Iranians are planning just such an attack against a US fleet in the region, most likely not by nuclear missile but by other nuclear means. This would be critical to almost any scenario they have for war against the US. They also are probably developing extensive plans to use unconventional attacks in the US and possibly western Europe. Finally, they would want to mount an invasion into the southern part of Iraq, to bog down any US ground forces there, rather than letting them into Iran. From that point, they can use extensive missile attacks and blackmail against everyone else in the region. They may even choose to ignore Tel Aviv entirely in favor of expelling the US from the region. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-11-01 13:13 |
| #3 If he wants a mental hosipital state... THIS could help him. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-11-01 12:19 |
| #2 Please read the article above on page 2. Seems that not all Iranians agree about the "out of touchness" of the Islamofascists vis a vis the population. Article by Bruno Schirra: "How Dangerous Is Iran?"] |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-11-01 08:54 |
| #1 The problem for Ahmadinejad is that his Iran will fail. Does the old saying, never get in the way of a man about to commit suicide apply when the guy intends to nuke everyone before he goes? |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-11-01 06:40 |