An Impulse for Intrigue
Iran has really big plans. And lots of folks have really big headaches
A coup d'état, and then a pro-American shah. Revolution, and chants of "Death to America." Blindfolded hostages held for an agonizing 444 days. A symbolic offering of a Bible, pistols, and a cake--come to naught. And, always, the bearded, berobed mullahs thundering against the "Great Satan." The scenes are seared into America's collective memory, snapshots from what is perhaps its most irrepressibly malign foreign relationship. That, of course, would be the one with Iran.
New images came flooding in last week, as Hezbollah guerrillas rained rockets down on Israel, drawing a fierce Israeli bombardment in reply. They added a new dimension to the old picture, one of an Iran with the power and the will to wreak havoc far from its borders. U.S. officials and many analysts see an Iranian hand at work in Hezbollah's new fractiousness. Exactly how much is a point of debate, but not in the White House or in Washington's other power centers. "Part of those terrorist attacks," President Bush suggested last week, "are inspired by nation states, like Syria and Iran." Iranian officials deny involvement in the Hezbollah raid that resulted in the abduction of two Israeli soldiers, but they're also happy stirring the pot, with Iran's parliamentary chief warning ominously that "no part of Israel will be safe."
Whatever the precise facts of Iran's role in this latest crisis--at a minimum, both arming and financing Hezbollah--its rapid escalation is a sign that the Middle East has changed. And not simply because Lebanon has yet again been plunged into tumult. Iran is emerging as a true regional powerhouse, more ready than ever to flex its muscles. "Iran," says Fawaz Gerges, a leading Mideast scholar at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, "really is making a bid for regional supremacy." Gerges was no distant observer of the phenomenon last week; he was living it, temporarily trapped at his parents' home in Beirut with his three children as Israeli warplanes pressed the attack on Hezbollah.
Pivotal. The spasm of violence reinforced the Bush administration's conclusion that Iran is playing a pivotal role in the issues that will make or break the Middle East: nuclear weapons, terrorism, the stability of Iraq, democracy, and Israel's security. "They are all interrelated," says a senior administration official. "The nexus of it is the regime in Tehran."
That reasoning is prompting a range of responses in Washington. These include a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to shed its nuclear program, new efforts to promote democracy and beam uncensored information into the Islamic republic, and intensified intelligence gathering to shore up Washington's shaky understanding of events in Iran. The latter is a formidable challenge. "I don't think we've ever had a handle on the theocracy in Iran," says Dean McGrath, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
None of the efforts, so far, have dented Tehran's rogue status in the region. The Iran nuclear issue, a senior State Department official says, may be unresolved for "maybe years." Time seems to be on Iran's side. Says a senior Arab diplomat: "The Iranians are playing these cards very well. Iran's influence is increasing day after day."
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.
Growing Iranian clout with Israel's adversaries in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Lebanon explains part of the ferocity of Israel's reaction. "It's a race against time to stop Iranian influence," explains an Israeli official. The country's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is charging that Hezbollah coordinated its raid with Iran, which stands to gain by distracting attention from its nuclear dispute with the West. That standoff, it just so happens, has returned to the United Nations Security Council, which is preparing to issue a binding call on Iran to stop making nuclear fuel. But Iran is vowing to continue building toward industrial-scale enrichment and says it won't formally reply to the western offer of incentives until August 22. The Lebanon crisis has given the nuclear question fresh urgency. "How much worse would it be," a senior U.S. official wondered last week, "if Iran had a bomb?"
Signals. The alleged Iranian connection to the Hezbollah raid is also seen as part of an ominous signaling game directed at Israel and the United States: Attack our nuclear facilities, and you'll reap an array of punishing reprisals. This is known, in the argot of the military, as asymmetrical warfare--countering a stronger adversary by terrorism, oil embargoes, and other unconventional tactics. Martin Indyk, a former senior U.S. diplomat now with the Brookings Institution, says both Syria and Iran "would like to use this crisis to establish in the minds of the Bush administration that they are the address not only for turning up the heat but also turning off the heat."
Iran's activities, meanwhile, are stirring concern among predominantly Sunni Muslim Arab leaders, who see Hezbollah as one agent of expanding Iranian influence. Jordan's King Abdullah II has warned of a burgeoning Shiite "crescent" that includes Iran and Iraq and carries over into Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province. But Iran also reaches across the sectarian divide with its support for Sunni Islamist Hamas, suggesting that it may be willing to stoke radical challenges to the leaders of moderate Arab nations.
Fissures. Fear of Iranian meddling has driven a remarkable split in the Arab world, where Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have condemned Hezbollah for "adventurism" in its initial attack (and, of course, Israel for its military campaign). "There is a foreign element playing in our backyard," warns an Arab diplomat. A senior European official describes the mood of Arab governments on Iran: "They are scared to death. Discreetly, they say, 'Do something.'"
While applauding efforts to repel Iranian influence and "isolate" Iran, as President Bush puts it, the administration has been hobbled by policy differences. Hawks favoring regime change have repeatedly bumped up against those preferring engagement. "The usual cacophony of voices" is how one senior official describes it wearily. The engagers, under Rice, have gained the upper hand so far in the second term. U.S. policy has been softened to offer direct talks with Iran if it can show that it has stopped cooking up enriched uranium. The watchword now is "patience" in pursuing diplomacy.
The shift has fired up the right, which once cheered on the Bush policy. Leading neoconservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, calls the Mideast flare-up an "Islamist-Israeli war" with Iran at its center. Last week, he recommended a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites to erase the sense that Washington has grown "weak." Slowed by State Department caution, the administration has lost the inclination for action conveyed in Bush's "axis of evil" speech, contends Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official and another outspoken neoconservative. "I call it an ignominious retreat," he says. "I think Ahmadinejad is laughing."
And yet, the Iranian president may also have reason to fret. Iran's foreign minister, visiting Damascus last week, called for a quick cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners in the Israeli-Hezbollah fight. With the unexpected scope of Israel's assault, Iran may be concerned about seeing its ally--or strategic asset--whittled down before its eyes. "Will Iran allow Hezbollah to be defeated?" asks Robert Rabil, a professor and Mideast watcher at Florida Atlantic University. "I don't think so, because Hezbollah expands the border of Iran to the border of Israel, so it's a deterrent force."
Miscalculations and missteps, along with bullets and bombs, are the stuff of war--especially when it is proxies that are fighting for survival. In Lebanon and elsewhere, the future may hold more such surprises.
With Kevin Whitelaw
This story appears in the July 31, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.