The sixth and last chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World examines the United States’s relationship with Iran. The first part of the chapter is a look at Iran’s current political system, noting the ways in which anti-Iranian sentiments and fears are whipped up through distortions of evidence and even bizarre fantasies, such as Bernard Lewis’s 2006 suggestion that Iran might attack Israel as part of a plan to bring about the end of the world. Along with comparatively mundane matters such as the common mistranslation of Ahmadinejad’s assertion that Israel should “vanish from the page of time” and the persistent habit in certain quarters of ignoring the fact that the president does not control the military and has only a circumscribed role in foreign policy, they serve to create an image of Iran as a nation led by unpredictable, possibly nihilistic religious fanatics even though it has one of the most open political systems in the region.
It is after this that Cole delves into the colonial background, defusing the most emotional charges about the present before explaining the past. Iran never became a formal territory of a European empire, but its development was stunted by Great Power rivalries, and its resources plundered by Western business interests. There’s a quote Cole could have used from Winston Churchill in the 1920′s in which he declares to Parliament that Britain has made far more money from Iran’s wealth than had Iran, to the tune of some jaw-dropping figures. He also mentions the role of the United States in deposing Muhammad Mosaddeq, remembered in Iran as the great betrayal and demonstration of American hypocrisy.
Cole then returns to current issues, with a specific focus on Israel, and in particular Iranian support for Lebanon’s Hizbullah. Cole properly situates this movement in a Lebanese context as well as one related to Israel, noting in the process the largely economic and political reasons both it and Iran are viewed favorably by Lebanese Shi’ites.
Cole does note key differences between Iran and NATO nations, differences related to both the values which determine its internal security policies and civil liberties, as well as geopolitical differences. I am, however, a little less convinced than usual of one of his proposed solutions. His focus on Iran’s nuclear program derives from a view that it’s all about energy independence, but might there also be status issues in play? Still, his overall points are irrefutable, and need to be shouted from every rooftop whenever someone starts beating the war drums or raising fantasies of mad mullahs with their fingers on the button.
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One point about Juan Cole’s analysis of Iran: if his tome was written before this year’s disputed Presidential election, his analysis of their “open political system” is, sadly, a bit obsolete. If anything, Pres. Ahmaninejad’s “victory” in June, and the government’s reactions to the dissent it engendered show that the Iranian PTB are moving to a much more “closed” system than before. And one that (even more sadly) seems to be bent on relying mainly on just those sorts of “…sentiments and fears … whipped up through distortions of evidence and even bizarre fantasies” to bolster its domestic repressions.