Maintaining Perspective
'It's too soon to tell," The late Chinese leader Zhou Enlai is reported to have answered when asked for an evaluation of the significance of the French Revolution of 1789. This was nearly two centuries after the great upheaval of France. Revolutions are full of cunning, and the Iranian Revolution, now almost three decades old, has been no exception-cunning and ferocity side by side, the talk of a revolutionary millennium often concealing the skills of a leadership steeped in the ways of the bazaar. Shrewd players, these clerical leaders have found the cracks in the order of states around them. Brutal men, they rule a society of great historical sophistication. Given room to maneuver by a substantial windfall of oil income, they have made their nation a player of consequence in its neighborhood. Sly and opportunistic, Iran's rulers have been able to pick and choose at a time, and in a place, of great volatility.
American power swept away two regimes that the Iranians dreaded-the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. True, America was now a land power on Iran's flanks; the Iranians ducked at first, then gathered themselves as the American burden grew. Mixing bravado and bluff, and granting proxies in Palestine and Lebanon, the leaders of the Iranian theocracy appear to have succeeded in spreading the image of a mighty power able to have its way in the world. For some, that great arc stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean is now a battleground between Pax Americana and the Persians. This belief is in part due to the abdication of the Arab states, their virtual absence from the contest of nations. There is bigotry in Arab lands, an animus on the part of the Sunni majority toward the political emancipation of the Arab Shiites. Arab diplomats and leaders shy away from Iraq-the pitiless jihadists are the only Arabs who come to Iraq-but the Iranians are present in force as pilgrims and traders and troublemakers and intelligence operatives.
"A cemetery of dreams." Iran is a radical player in the world of states, to be sure, but we should not overstate its power. We should not fall for the Persian bluff. It is important that we do all we can to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions and to checkmate it in arenas that count, but we should always remember that this is a society swimming against the tide of history and confronting the limits of its capabilities. There is an Iranian role in Iraq, but it should not be exaggerated. It is not true that the Iraqi political class marches to the Iranian drummer. It is well known that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spent his years of exile in Syria and kept his distance from the Iranians. "Iraq is a cemetery of dreams," a thoughtful Iraqi observed to me of his country. "Iranian dreams, no less than American dreams perhaps." Iraqis are a tough breed, and the notion that they are eager to take their country into a Persian dominion is unconvincing. The Iranians dwell virtually alone in the House of Islam, separated by language and culture, marked by their Shiism.
advertisement
