Willliam O. Beeman--A New Era in U.S.-Iranian Relations?

A New Era in U.S.-Iranian Relations?

William O. Beeman

Iran is in the midst of celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Since the United States has also had a recent revolution of sorts in its political life, it would make sense to see how these two events might coincide to produce a new future relationship between the two nations.

The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and with him the extraordinary influence that the United States had on Iranian life. According to many right-wing pundits, the revolution was the start of an era of hostility between the United States and the Muslim world—an era that they see as still underway.

However, now with President Barak Obama in the White House, clearly a new rhetoric has taken hold—one in which the United States does not assume an automatically hostile posture toward Iran or the Muslim world, but will base its actions and reactions on deeds rather than perception of ideology. The depths of our past mutual hostility can be seen in the fact that President Obama’s mere willingness to talk to Iran is seen as earth-shattering in some quarters.

In this light it is important to look at matters from an Iranian perspective. The Iranian Revolution was not an anti-American Revolution, it was an anti-colonial revolution directed at all outside control of Iranian affairs. Americans forget that one of the great slogans of the Revolution was “Neither East nor West.” The United States unfortunately inherited the mantle of Great Britain and Russia, who had oppressed the Iranian State for more than 150 years before Ayatollah Khomeini began to rail against the Shah. Iran was just as upset with those powers as with the United States, and still remains distrustful of all European influence in its affairs.

Even after the Revolution, Iran sought not simply to oppose the United States, but rather to chart its own course as a regional power, an industrial leader, an economic force in the region and as a diplomatic broker for its neighbors. Although its revolutionary ideals were the driving force in many of its early policies—such as the founding support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, these ideals soon proved to have little currency in an Islamic world where the Iranian Shi’a were viewed with suspicion.

So, the original Revolutionary ideals, initially hailed throughout the Islamic world now have little practical force, and Iran has changed in turn. Today Iran’s politics are less ideological and religious than practical. It has good diplomatic relations with all of its neighbors, and despite the fiery pronouncements of its largely powerless president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, operates with caution in the region. It no longer has any effective control over Hezbollah, and never had much direct influence over Hamas or other regional oppositionist groups.

Indeed, now there are many possibilities for building ties with the United States if Americans can only wake up to them. The U.S. has common cause with Iran on many fronts. In political terms, the United States and Iran both oppose Islamic extremists like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite attempts on the part of the Bush administration to tie Iran to these groups to frighten the American public, the truth is that Iranians oppose them fervently. One prime reason is because these extremist groups utterly reject Shi’ism, even to the point of sanctioning the murder of Shi’a believers, such as the Hazara minority in Afghanistan.

Like the United States Iran also favors stability in the region. Again, contrary to the Bush-era accusations, Tehran’s leaders are not pleased with the militarism of individuals like Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, and have worked to quiet his opposition groups in Iraq in the name of a more comprehensive stability for the Shi’a community, which must eventually rule Iraq. Tehran’s leaders also want stability in Afghanistan. Iran is host to millions of Afghan refugees. They would like most of them to go home, and that can’t happen until Afghanistan is quiet once again.

Other areas of potential cooperation include prevention of drug trafficking, environmental protection, health care, trade stabilization and international transport. Iran also has a strong stake in culture and tourism. The whole world travels to Iran to see the astonishing historical and archaeological sites—except for Americans.

Americans see it as a paradox that Iranians love Americans and American culture, but this is no surprise given the primacy of Iranian independence rather than opposition to the West in its national sentiment. As long as the United States does not try to dominate Iran, treating the Islamic Republic with “mutual respect” (to quote President Obama), Iranians have no problem with Washington. Iran’s youthful population now has a majority of citizens who have no experience of the original Revolution, or remembrance of Ayatollah Khomeini or other Revolutionary leaders.

It is not likely that any administration will offer Iran congratulations on the anniversary of its Revolution, but just stopping the invective pouring out of Washington will be congratulations enough. It is time to realize that a generation has passed since the United States’ hostile reception of the Revolution. With a new generation comes a new opportunity. With luck we will see the mood of Washington change. It was always permissible to denigrate Iran in American politics. A good first step toward a “breakthrough with Iran” would be to let it be known that this cheap political rhetoric is no longer acceptable in the Obama Era.

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William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and past President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. His most recent book is The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago, 2008).

Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet--William O. Beeman (New America Media)

Hamas is Not Iran's Puppet

New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2008

Editor’s Note: The popular wisdom that Iran is pulling the strings behind
Hamas doesn’t take into account the geography of Gaza argues William O.
Beeman. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and past-president of the Middle East Section
of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of “The
‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran
Demonize Each Other,” published by the University of Chicago Press
(2008).
________________________

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and
Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and
is now widely promulgated with little or no support.

Iran has, it is true, been sympathetic to the Hamas situation, particularly
since the U.S.-endorsed Palestinian elections of 2006, when Hamas won a
plurality of votes, allowing it to form a government. Subsequently, the new
Palestinian government was rejected by Israel and the United States, and an
economic embargo plunged the Palestinians into economic chaos. At that
point Iran provided substantial humanitarian aid.

In the present conflict, Iran is also sending two ships to provide
humanitarian assistance.

However, American and Israeli analysts would have the world believe that
Hamas could not carry out any actions against Israel if they were not
directed by Iran. As George Joffee of the Cambridge Centre of International
Studies maintained in 2006 in an interview with U.S.-based Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty, “The Israeli government has alleged that
indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran is engaged in trying to
control the events inside the Occupied Territories and there have been
allegations with no proof at all, of involvement in some of the more
violent activities there. Those links I suspect are largely Israeli
propaganda and don't really carry water.”

The same is true today.

No one promulgating the theory that Hamas’s attacks on Israel are
directed by Iran bothers to think much about geography. Hamas has been
effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt. The Israelis
have essentially controlled the import of food and medical supplies. The
idea of Iran shipping arms to Hamas under these conditions is patently
absurd. The rockets launched against Israel that started the current
conflict were clearly homemade, low-level weapons, not sophisticated arms.

A parallel claim is that Iranians are providing training to Hamas. Given
the rhetoric, one would imagine that this is being done on a massive scale.
However, on March 9, 2008 the Times of London reported that 150 Hamas
fighters were being trained in Tehran. Hamas itself claims to have 15,000
fighters, and Israel has millions of potential fighters at its command.
Thus training for a team of 150, if the facts are correct, is hardly much
of a threat to Israel.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is sometimes cited as an Iranian cat’s-paw in the
region, but Hezbollah has no geographical access to Gaza. Therefore they
are limited to leading protests in Lebanon. Timur Goksel, former adviser to
U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon, told Reuters News Agency on Dec. 30, “With
all their rhetoric about Palestine, there is not much [Hezbollah] can do
about Gaza, short of getting Lebanon involved in another disaster. So they
are leading the popular reaction.”

Egypt is not a conduit for Iranian arms either. President Hosni Mubarak is
caught in a dilemma with regard to Gaza. He receives aid from the United
States, and has a long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Moreover, his
secular government is desperately afraid of Islamic extremism, which they
see as a threat. Because Hamas has a religious base, not a secular one like
Fatah, its rival for power in the Palestinian community, they are seen as
dangerous. For this reason, Egypt has kept the border crossing to Gaza
firmly closed except for humanitarian emergencies.

Why then does the myth of Iranian military support persist? One reason is
that it has been a long-standing American foreign policy belief that
resistance movements cannot exist without state support. Before Iran was
targeted as the source for support, Libya was the U.S. bogeyman. It is
instructive to look at rhetoric against Libya from the 1980s and see that
exactly the same accusations that were leveled at Libya then are being
hurled at Iran today.

Finally, Iran does not help matters. The rhetoric of the original Iranian
revolution is still alive and well in some segments of Iranian political
life. Iran ousted a Western-supported leader, the Shah, and tried in the
early days of the revolution to promulgate this action elsewhere in the
Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas were sympathetic rhetorical partners. Iran
supported Hezbollah in its early days, but no longer controls its
operations. Iran had nothing to do with the founding of Hamas, but sees its
conflict with Israel as sympathetic with its revolutionary ideals. This
does not mean that Iran is controlling the action.

The more apoplectic visions of Iranian involvement see Iran developing
nuclear weapons and supplying them to both Hezbollah and Hamas. However,
not only is there no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program; the
simple logistics of transfer of such weapons to a place like Gaza are
virtually impossible.

For Israel, and the world, blaming Iran for its troubles with Hamas does
not advance the peace process. Nor would attacking Iran mitigate in any way
the tensions that exist between Israel and its neighbors.

(Note: Please consult the original article for links to references and footnotes to quoted sources)