An Impulse for Intrigue
Iran has really big plans. And lots of folks have really big headaches
The sources of Iran's new strength, paradoxically, include Bush administration policy. By toppling Iran's next-door enemies--Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan's Taliban--the administration unintentionally upgraded Iran's strategic punch. After American troops rolled into Baghdad, Iranian officials feared partial encirclement by U.S. forces. They had Swiss intermediaries pass on a feeler proposing comprehensive talks on Iraq, terrorism, and nukes. The overture was rebuffed by an administration riding high at the time. But as a murderous insurgency threatened Iraq's U.S.-sponsored government--and unexpectedly bogged down American forces --Tehran's fear receded. Iran grew confident that Bush could not intervene in yet another country. Iranian support for anti-U.S. Shiite militias in Iraq, including money and weapons, and a campaign to gain sway with fellow Shiites there soon unfolded.
Soaring oil prices--rising in part because of tensions with Iran--have also given Tehran a new swagger. The West's brinkmanship over its nuclear program, and now fears of a regional war sparked by the conflict in Lebanon, may be responsible for hiking Tehran's monthly oil revenues by as much as $1.4 billion over just a year ago.
Hero. The quest for nuclear weapons has spurred the West to offer Iran help with civilian nuclear power generation, trade, and other incentives if it abandons enriching uranium, the main step in making nuclear fuel for power plants or bombs. Iran has also gained ground in the region with the populist--and stridently anti-Israeli--appeal of Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has questioned the Holocaust and stated that Israel "must be wiped off the map." A worried senior European diplomat calls Ahmadinejad "a new nationalist hero of the ummah [the Islamic world]."
Iran has been extending its reach in other ways, too. It has forged a quasi-alliance with Syria, a state also at loggerheads with Washington. Ahmadinejad has warned that Iran would enter the fray if Syria were attacked by Israel. That is a thesis that could only be tested under real fire. Still, Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, tells U.S News that leaders in Damascus welcome Iranian might as "counterbalancing the extraordinarily powerful Israeli military machine." U.S., European, and Israeli officials say Iran has also showered money, training, and arms on Hezbollah, which was founded by Lebanese Shiites with Iranian help just three years after Iran's 1979 revolution. Iran is said to have supplied most of Hezbollah's 12,000 or so rockets.
Iran has also funneled cash and arms to Hamas, which won Palestinian elections this year and has been battling Israeli troops in Gaza. Last month, Hamas militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier in Israel in a foray eerily similar to Hezbollah's raid in the north. U.S. officials consider Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist groups--and Iran the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brands Tehran the "central banker" for terrorism.
Yet, there is a depth to Iran's growing strength that differs from Saddam's Iraq, a country cobbled together by British colonial overseers. With Persia's 3,000-year history, 69 million people atop the world's third-largest oil reserves, and a strong national identity that aspires to restore Iran to a dominant place in the region, Iran is, to use the term of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser, "a serious country." Popular support for Iran's nuclear program runs deep. And, according to a Zogby International poll of Iranians released this month, a majority (56 percent) want their country to lead the region "diplomatically and militarily." The general ambition for regional pre-eminence, it turns out, is not just a feverish emanation of the mullahs.
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