Iran seems to have limitless capacity to insult, obstruct, render one speechless and generally make a mess of things. On March 23, Iranian gunboats seized 15 sailors and marines from a British warship purported by Iran to be in Iranian waters. The British government has maintained that its ship was several kilometers inside Iraqi waters and that it was the Iranians who were trespassing.
Who was actually where is neither here nor there in the larger scheme of things, though it is worthy to note that the British government has released piles of navigational data proving its case while the Iranians have yet to release any. The most interesting, and indeed disturbing, aspect of this geographical tragicomedy is the timing.
A second American aircraft carrier group has arrived in the Persian Gulf and the military just concluded a large exercise off Iran’s shores. A second United Nations Security Council resolution on Iran passed unanimously, broadening the scope of financial sanctions passed in December, increasing their depth as well. Iran’s continued defiance left even sanction-wary nations no choice but to vote for Resolution 1747.
Russia announced that it will not ship fuel to the reactor it is building for Iran, allegedly because of missed payments. Off the record, though, Russian officials are incensed that the Iranian government has taken their support for granted. Iran announced that it will sever more ties with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. To top it all off, the oil markets are on edge, largely from the instability and unpredictability of the current stand-off.
All of this leaves one wondering which game the Iranian government is playing. The international arena is not a glorified sandbox where a nation can experiment without fear of consequences. It is hard to believe that the Iranian government is so significantly handicapped in the foresight department that they believe any good could come of the current situation. If their world-view truly is twisted and warped enough that they see their continued insistence on “nuclear rights” as having any sort of positive outcome, the real losers will be the Iranian people.
In a recent special of “Koppel on Discovery,” Ted Koppel visits a mosque in Tehran during evening prayers. As the crowd is exiting, two men become aware of the foreign film crew and begin shouting, “Nuclear power is our right,” attempting to goad the crowd into doing the same. Eventually, reluctantly, the others say it, but as Koppel comments, and as one can clearly see in the video, the effort is determinedly half-hearted and the chant quickly dies.
If, in the political heart of Iran, at the largest mosque in the city, among urbane and knowledgeable people who are the most informed on the situation, a crowd can only muster a tepid and cursory huzzah to their beloved leaders’ most precious issue, what does it say about the attitude of the various groups of the Iranian people?
Of course, one has to be cautious when drawing conclusions from generalizations, but it seems perfectly reasonable to gather that perhaps the Iranian people aren’t fully behind their government, belying the unified image the government attempts to present to the world.
In nearly every press release or public statement, Iranian officials call upon the name of “the Iranian people,” whether they are objecting to some course of action they find offensive or claiming their right to nuclear power. Every time the government’s nuclear program comes under attack, it hauls out the preposterously presumptive claim that “the Iranian people will not be denied.” To justify their rigged political system, they call upon the good name of “the Iranian people,” who apparently want, with their whole hearts, to be ruled over by a seemingly half-crazed president hand-picked by a council of jingoistic octogenarian religious figures deluded by their overt separation from the unwashed masses.
The government even claims to speak for its people’s cultural affinities. The state-owned Iranian News Channel had this to say about the film “300”: “Warner Bros., which belongs to the famous and rich American Jew, is the company that has made [‘300’]. This movie, which is totally against Persian culture and civilization, could be considered a production by Zionists and a group of American extremists…The American movie “300” has angered the Iranian people due to its intentional insults to the country’s ancient culture.”
Has an American movie been the greatest insult to the Iranian people’s rich and colorful history, or is their present government the ultimate black stain on its mantle? It seems that as the pressure builds, the terror-sponsoring state has reverted to terror tactics itself, capturing British military personnel, an action that wouldn’t spark as much controversy as American hostages would, in a desperate bid to hold off further action against the government.
The Iranian government’s actions are a serious cause for concern as they evince the truly worrying aspect of Iran. Beyond the defiant rhetoric, beyond the nuclear aspirations, beyond the sponsorship of terrorist groups, beyond all this is the utter unpredictability and knee-jerk reactionism of Iran. It is this characteristic, coupled with its terrorist ties and a possible nuclear ability, that make it such a threat, not only to regional stability, but to international peace as well.
About the writer:
John Jose is a first-year finance, economics and international studies major. He can be reached at [email protected].
