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The delusion of 'common interests' - -

By Amir Taheri

February 28, 2009
Posted: 1:18 am
February 28, 2009

UNTIL a few weeks ago, advocates of dialogue with the Islamic Republic in Iran claimed that this was the only way to prevent the mullahs from doing mischief. Now, the tune seems to be changing. The "dialogue" is now presented not only as a means of preventing mischief but also as a way of persuading the mullahs to do good - to join the "right side" in the name of "common interests."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started the chorus by insisting that Iran has a role to play in promoting regional peace. Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's envoy to southwest Asia, followed by musing about the contribution that Iran could make to stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan.

The core idea here is that the Islamic Republic and the US share interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both nations wish to see Afghanistan and Iraq stabilized, Holbrooke tells us; neither wants to see the Taliban return to power in Kabul.

The Americans don't want the Taliban because they had sheltered the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks. Tehran doesn't want them because they represent the most vicious form of sectarian bigotry aimed at Iran's brand of Islam.

Similarly, in Iraq, the US doesn't want the remnants of the Ba'ath to return to power in Baghdad to prepare for revenge. The mullahs, meanwhile, know that such a regime could become their worst enemy.

But this analysis assumes too much and ignores a great deal. True, Iran and the US have an interest in stability in Afghanistan and Iraq - but each wants its own brand of stability.

The US wants Afghanistan and Iraq to achieve stability through democratization, closer ties to the West and faster inclusion in the international system. The Islamic Republic regards that kind of stability as a threat: The theocratic tyranny dreads the prospect of becoming sandwiched between two democracies to its east and west.

Tehran's theocrats want their own political siblings to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq as part of what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls "the Islamic bloc" in a war of civilizations.

In other words what Washington and Tehran want in Afghanistan as in Iraq may appear to be the same thing - but in reality they want the exact opposite.

The Islamic Republic and the US work with different constituencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The US is trying to build a new elite in Afghanistan based on the emerging urban middle classes and the ethnic Tajik community (which accounts for about 32 percent of the population). Iran, on the other hand, has forged special relations with the Hazara Shiites and ethnic Uzbeks, while bribing some Pashtun groups to encourage opposition to the US presence.

While Kabul and much of northern Afghanistan could be regarded as an American influence zone, most provinces in the west and northwest are under Iranian influence. (These are areas that, under British pressure, Iran ceded to the then newly created Afghan state in the 1856 Treaty of Paris.)

In Iraq, the US is depending on the Kurds, a good chunk of Shiite Arabs and at least a third of Arab Sunnis to build a secular democracy. Tehran, by contrast, depends on militant Islamists to advance its interests. It sees Iraq as an extension of the Islamic Republic in Tehran, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as "supreme guide."

Far from being potential partners in Afghanistan and Iraq, as Holbrooke & Co. seem to think, the Islamic Republic and the US are rivals, to say the least.

To be sure, this need not exclude dialogue or even an accord between Iran and the United States.

But such a dialogue and any eventual accord would repeat the Yalta experience, under which the United States and Britain allowed the Soviet Union to carve its zone of influence in eastern and central Europe.

At that time, too, the Western powers and the USSR shared common interests in Europe - especially in making sure that the Nazis and their allies didn't return to power in any form. Both wanted stability in Europe. But the Europe that Stalin wanted was quite different from the one Roosevelt and Churchill hoped for.

Over the last 66 years, there have been countless debates about whether or not the Western powers should have allowed Stalin to carve out an empire in Europe. Many believe that Yalta was a betrayal by the Western democracies of the eastern and central European nations.

Others argue that Roosevelt and Churchill had no choice because they couldn't have persuaded their peoples to support a new war to prevent Stalin from acquiring an empire. In other words, the surrender at Yalta was dictated by historic necessity.

The question for those who urge a new Yalta, this time with the Islamic Republic, is whether capitulating to the mullahs is a similar necessity.



    
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