I don’t pretend to be anything remotely like an expert on Iran, but I know that I have more knowledge than your average joker, because I used to be that average joker and then deliberately read a bunch of books to learn more about the place. (I was writing something with some action set there and wanted it to be authentic.)
Let me reassure you that through my marginally-better-informed eyes, the craziness going down in the US over the visit to New York of President Ahmadinejad seems even more crazy.
Conventional wisdom is that this is the start of the path to war in Iran. That Bush – well, Cheney, actually – wants to make military action against Iran either a done deal or actually underway by the time the election rolls around. There are a bunch of threads all converging at present, and the war drums are sounding all over the place. To which I have to ask, are they completely insane?
There is no way that the U.S. is remotely capable of any kind of sustained military action against Iran! It’s bogged down in Iraq and barely able to keep up its troop numbers there, let alone halt the violence or support Iraqi state-building!
All the U.S. military machine is capable of is bombing the crap out of a bunch of targets in Iran. It cannot follow that up with any kind of ground war. There just ain’t the warpower available. Is that the whole plan, then? “Bomb Iran until we win”? Look, here’s what would happen – it’s dirt simple. If the U.S. launches a serious air campaign against Iran, then Iran will mobilise its armies, move into Iraq, and make that country unliveable for the U.S. Then it will pull back to Iran and leave its Shi’a proxies to try and build something out of the even greater mess that will remain. End of story.
If the Iran war plan is real – and right now it sure seems that way, because there’s precious little to be gained posturing without intent – well, we’re in whole new areas of Emperor madness here.
Anyway. Ahmadinejad. The President of Iran is in New York to address the UN, as he does every year, only this year the entire U.S. machine is intent on calling him out. The media hate-on for Ahmadinejad is intense. Glenn Greenwald wrote about it superbly in Salon:
What this really illustrates more than anything else is the true danger to our national character and basic liberties from being in a permanent state of war fighting. When we become a society that just leaps from one New Ultimate Hitler Enemy Who Must Be Destroyed to the next, we ensure that all of our political values and institutions become infected by this bloodthirsty mentality.
Greenwald, who has become my favourite writer on US politics in recent weeks, also quotes the always-insightful Juan Cole, whose words also turned up in Salon:
The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.
Rumour control: It is worth pointing out at this point that Ahmadinejad is not a dictator, for two reasons. (1) He was democratically elected. (2) He isn’t the boss.
Ahmadinejad takes his orders from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Political power in Iran has been vested in the clergy since the revolution, and that hasn’t changed any. Previous President Khatami was gently moving things in a secular direction, and was unpopular with the mullahs for his efforts; when the US rained down its condemnation and scorn on Iran despite its signs of rapprochement, the mullahs and the electorate both ran out of patient and the populist holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad was the result. Ahmadinejad has been gently moving things back towards social conservatism, which the mullahs support, and also building his own power base, which the mullahs don’t support.
The nadir of this stupid affair was Ahmadinejad’s appearance as a guest speaker at Columbia University in New York. Hugely controversial – how could the new Hitler enemy be given a platform to speak! – the end result was farcical, as Columbia’s Dean Bollinger introduced Ahmadinejad with a welter of aggressive questions and accusations. Many of these were right on the money, but a lot of them just read like Bush talking points. They certainly followed the media script that the Fox-White House axis has been anxiously putting about.
Distant Ocean writes about how this same Bollinger gave a fawning welcome in 2005 to an *actual* Dictator, President Musharraf of Pakistan.
But the extremity of idiocy is the gay issue. The most surprising thing about this whole affair has been the revelation of just how deep is the concern for the gays of Iran among the right-wing commentariat. They are so very, very worried about the gays! The gays are treated savagely! Truly Ahmadinejad is like Hitler!
(For any google drop-ins with low sarcasm detection abilities: yes, the above is sarcasm. These displays of hand-wringing are purely an act of convenience, just as the worries about the fate of women under the Taliban were a convenient humane rationale under which to set up tents supporting the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s completely cynical theatre.)
Which brings me, finally, to the lowest point of all. If the Columbia visit was the nadir, then this moment in it was the reverse-pinnacle:
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” he told the audience (see video below). “In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”
This moment of absurdity has been repeated ad nauseum. He says there are no Iranian homosexuals! (He’s not just Hitler – he’s crazy, reality-doubting Hitler!) But that isn’t what he meant. Here’s Hooman Majd, who served as Ahmadinejad’s translator for his last two UN speeches:
…declaring Iran devoid of homosexual culture (rather than his declaring Iran as literally devoid of homosexuals, as was erroneously translated in much of the U.S. media)
Think about it. Considering gays in Iran can be executed for being gay, this makes complete sense. “Hiding at all costs” is the only acceptable gay culture in Iran.
So there you have it. The soundbite that will be remembered above all others from this ridiculous two-minute hate, and it’s a mistranslation. That’s so stupid it’s just sad.
(Do I have to say more? Yes, I guess I do, or some wingnut will spam my comments with how I’m a crazy pro-Islamofascist or whatever. For the record, I fully acknowledge that gays are treated appallingly in Iran. The word “savage” is appropriate. It is widely acknowledged that men are executed for homosexual behaviour. But there is, at least, more complexity than is often recognised. For example, it is often forgotten that Iran conducts more sex-change operations than just about anywhere. Also, I am in no way a fan of Ahmadinejad, was hugely disappointed when he won the election, and eagerly anticipate his departure from office. There, am I covered?)
Conspiracy theory #1: the Cheney faction of the GOP expect to lose the elections to the Democrats. Therefore they want to leave the Democrats with the biggest mess imaginable in the hopes that the Democrats’ failure to tidy it up will tell against them on a longer basis than that of single terms of office, rather than telling against the Republicans.
It doesn’t hold water but it’s interesting…
Oh, I’m not reporting this from somewhere. I made it up right now.
Actually, Iran taking over Iraq doesn’t seem that bad an idea, if they could do it without too much mess, in terms of long term peace plans in the area. At least the people in charge of the government wouldn’t be universally hated by the general populace. Or at least, not as much.
I’m not convinced that the US are on a committed path to war against Iran (and the ridiculous mess that would create). The state of Iraq is making the US government and military look weak, and like any good bully they need to rattle their sabres against another target.
But rattle their sabres is all they’re going to do, I think. With an ascendant China and a restrengthening Russia they want to look strong. For both their international face, but also to those heartland constituents who fund and put in power the current administration. Because those people actual believe the pro-war propaganda. But the folks at the top must know that any further high-profile questionable military action is going to be unsustainable and unpopular. By blustering, they look strong in a way that helps to appease their core support without putting their necks out any further. I could be wrong, but I don’t see a sustained bombing campaign coming. They can’t be that stupid, can they?
Andrew: Yeah, I’ve heard that. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, which is kinda incredible on its own.
Steph: I agree to an extent – Iran in charge of Iraq would bring a heck of a lot of stability, instantly. But it would probably set the region on course for a full-on region-vs-region civil war in the five years following. Also, I think Iran has no interest in directly controlling Iraq; they could have seized lots of territory after the Iran/Iraq war and didn’t. Given the current situation there, I think it likely they’d steer clear of any long-term commitment to the region.
Mr S: I would have agreed with you myself not long ago, but I’m slowly coming into the view that the Cheney administration are true believers in their mission. They want to roll the dice here as well. I actually think they are so far from reality that within their paradigm it does make sense. I dearly hope its just sabre-rattling, but right now I’d put money on seeing some concrete moves in this direction over the next few months setting up for a February/March attack. Sheer lunacy, but I don’t think that’ll stop them.
I think Cheney and Bush are the kind of pseudo-Christians who just wish the end times would hurry on up so they can get their just rewards for smiting the evil-doers.
Thank you morgue! I am sitting in New Zealand appalled at the media circus that we see on TV, every time the Iranian president is mentioned. We got a fraction of the way Ahmadinejad was treated at Columbia (site of learning, they should be ashamed). And there definitely seem to be hidden agendas in that Ahmadinejad now seems to be the new Bin Ladin and focus of derision and hate right around the world, fueled I feel by a US dominated media.
And I agree that the gay thing was just ridiculous. Of course the situation of gays is appalling in Iran, as it is in just about every Muslim country. But this is a values issue which must be fought on its own terms, not dragged in to confuse other issues.
The Ahmadjined-bashing is in fact no better than gay-bashing and the govt and media institutions who encourage this behaviour should be ashamed of behaving in this way.
Thank you, Shirkin. Well said.