Are Iranian hardliners being facilitated?

The three European powers, viz. Germany, France, and Britain, are playing a mediatory role. They have persuaded the US to stay its hand for now. They are trying to persuade Iran to desist from enriching uranium that would enable it to eventually fabricate atomic weapons. The negotiations between the European Three and Iran are going nowhere, however. Although the European Three are officially optimistic, Iranians are frankly pessimistic. Additionally, the Iranian Majlis has adopted a tough resolution that commits Iran to enriching uranium, thus aggravating the crisis.

In the brouhaha about nukes, Iran's internal crisis is being relegated to the sidelines. Iran has been in crisis for more than eight years. The first election of President Mohammed Khatemi was a mini New Beginning -- away from the rigidity and Islamic extremism of the clergy who had led the Revolution. People had gradually become disenchanted with Mullahs. Mohammed Khatemi, with excellent clerical credentials, stood for a relaxed attitude toward personal freedoms, especially regarding women. But entrenched clergy more or less successfully thwarted his nominal government, in both its successive stints. It has successfully defanged the twice-elected Khatemi. He is now fading away.

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What Khatemi had sought to do was to lighten the weight of the coercive apparatus of state on ordinary citizens, especially women, about matters of dress and expressions of personal liberty. He stood for greater press freedom and allowing the populace to express itself. He was trying to make the theocratic state less oppressive and he was not a rank outsider. But the rigidity of entrenched clergy groups, necessitated by their determination to stay in key seats of power, frustrated the nominal government under Khatemi at every step. They demonstrated the oppressive nature of the regime based on a regressive system of non-democratic division of powers that allowed cliques to corner key levers of power

-- security apparatus, armed forces, the paramilitary Basijis, morality-related police, and above all judiciary.

The net result is that this US-created crisis is actually strengthening the fundamentalist clergy. The West may actually be helping clergy eliminate modest reformism in Iran. If the US had left the Iranian crisis to Iranians, the democratic forces would perhaps have succeeded in incremental democratisation of the society, resulting in the weakening of the clergy's hold. But that possibility has been all but foreclosed for now.

Causes of the external crisis need examination. Why did the US originally include Iran in the Axis of Evil? Possible reasons for the crisis can be two or three. First America's protege and regional gendarme, Israel, hates Iran as a security threat. Iran is too independent-minded and articulates anti-Israeli sentiments. Thus Iran is perceived by Americans as a disturbing force, creating trouble for oil-producing Arab Sheikhdoms. The second major reason is America's long-term strategic designs. Iran cannot be left out of the loop because it is a large oil producer. Since the US is now clearly embarked on controlling most sources of strategic raw material, particularly oil, how can it let Iran stay outside its web of power.

There are fears of a Shia arc of power in the ME. Western experts are at pains to emphasise the Islamic world's fault-lines. Shias in the Middle East happen to be numerous enough to be a majority in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, and constitute sizeable minorities elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Syria. A democratic Iraq would, it is feared, link up with Iran and the two together may de-stabilise Saudi Arabia, where its Rub-al-Khali area, the oil-bearing region, is largely Shia. That Iraq and Iran fought a war for eight years and Iran has stayed neutral in current Iraqi troubles is not seriously considered. The propaganda of a revolutionary Shia arc in ME are intended to inflame Sunni sentiments against Shias.

But subordinating and controlling Iran is no joke. Iran is a large, populous country and is technologically not too backward. It has a large army and paramilitary soldiery. Thanks to widespread anti-American and anti-Zionist sentiments, the task of galvanizing Iranians to resist foreign aggression is easy. If the Americans can get entrapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, an adventure inside Iran will pose insurmountable difficulties. Israel too is not keen on war with Iran.

The question is what does the West want from Iran. Iran successfully revolted in 1979 from the American yoke under clerical leadership. This clerical leadership was actually accidental. That American stooge, the Shah, had, by killing most leaders of different persuasions, made sure that clerics were the only possible alternative to his crown. The success of Iranian clergy in getting leadership of the Revolution owes not a little to American advice to the Shah.

Whatever America's strategic requirements, Iranian oil is not likely to come under American control the way Iraqi oil has. By extending the conflict to Iran, the Americans and the Israelis will not increase their chances of eventual success. This particular adventure may create too great an overstretch for America.

But an Arc of Crisis has in fact been created by Americans already: It extends from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and into other Arab countries, not excluding Syria and Lebanon. Syria is currently in the eye of a diplomatic storm. But although the task is not easy, new democratic forces' success in getting control over many ME states is quite conceivable, though it is contrary to the real Israeli and American schemes of making sure that social conservatives and right-wing extremists should go on ruling these states. They will not let the crisis end with true democratisation of even Iraq and Afghanistan. To prevent the spreading of anti-American sentiments, the effort has been to aggravate the Shia-Sunni fault-line. Consider: who benefits?

American power is based on their near-virtual-monopoly of nukes. They are using their nukes-based power to dominate and control the sources of strategic raw material in Asia. They want to subordinate the resource-rich states to American direction on allowing or denying their strategic raw material, particularly oil, to others. The US wants markets to invest in discovering new oil fields, production, transportation and sale of this commodity and other key ones. The former Soviet Republics are gradually being sucked into America's imperial system.

One word in parenthesis: America is neither anti-Islam nor anti-Muslim per se. The Americans have long been protecting tyrannical Muslim potentates in the ME and elsewhere. Throughout the cold war period, most hard-line Islamic clerics were in America's pay. The Americans never had compunction in exploiting the Mullahs, not excluding even Taliban. It is only now as a result of Islamic extremists' stepping on the American tail that War on Terror was declared. American policy is still, at bottom, interested in sabotaging enlightened democratic forces. What the US wants is promoting Ukraine-style revolutions in former Soviet republics and the ME, and to win back Iran.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.