Iran’s cult of despising ‘Amrika’ : The Tribune India

Join Whatsapp Channel

Mockingbird

Iran’s cult of despising ‘Amrika’

in April last year, I was invited to visit Iran— then on the cusp of a presidential election.



Saba Naqvi

Saba  Naqvi

in April last year, I was invited to visit Iran— then on the cusp of a presidential election. Voting took place on May 19, 2017, and Hassan Rouhani, who was instrumental in signing the 2015 nuclear deal with the US, was re-elected. In the course of the trip, I had access to the government, foreign office, media and managed to improvise and meet one of the clerics who is in the Assembly of Experts that chooses the Supreme Leader when the eventuality arises. Utterly fascinated, I’ve kept touch with people in Iran and followed the news subsequently. 

Now that Donald Trump has reneged on the nuclear deal, how is Iran processing it? First, a few caveats: Iran sees itself as running what they call a “resistance” economy and the regime that’s now in power for four decades has a doctrine devoted to despising the US and Israel. Last year, I’d also managed to go off tour and visit the US embassy in the heart of Tehran abandoned since January 20, 1981, when American diplomats left after being held hostage for 444 days. The painted signs on the walls of the embassy still said in Persian “Oh Amrika, we will crush you under the soles of our feet.” In the wild garden of the embassy I noted posters in English that mocked the US (“United States of Saudi-Israeli America”). It was called the “Museum Garden of Anti- Arrogance”. 

There could be something in the mix of a great civilisational past, oil wealth in the present, the Shia faith and its location in the most volatile part of the world that has made Iran very resilient. True, it is a totalitarian regime with a controlled electoral process and a country beset with problems such as unemployment and dissatisfied youth, but it’s still a place that produces extra-ordinary creativity and genius that sparkles when showcased in the world. Iran remains an enigma.

The US has actually opted out of the deal at a time when Iranian influence in the region is at a high. The country played a pivotal role in pushing back the Islamic State in late 2017 in geographical territories in Iraq, something that is more easily acknowledged by China and Russia. Just earlier this week, Hezbollah (always supported by Iran) and its allies won half the seats in elections in Lebanon (around the same time that the Israelis were escalating the latest cycle of using deadly force in Gaza pummelling mostly unarmed Palestinians). 

Iran is in a sense the “last man standing” as far as Israeli strategic interests are concerned as other regimes in the region who dared to do this were either defeated militarily (as Egypt was decades ago) or have by a curious design ended up facing US invasions and/or short durations operations designed at regime change. Iran’s allies remain the battered regimes in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Ansarullah movement in Yemen, and Russia. 

From my sources in Iran, I gather that the Tehran regime and the clerics in Qom now say that the Trump walk-out only reinforces their doctrine of anti-Americanism/imperialism. A friend writes that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had always maintained that American interests in the region coincide with Saudi and Israeli interests, making him thereby circumspect about President Rouhani’s enthusiasm for the deal. 

Still, even as the US walks out, the Iranians have also noted the European frustration with the Trump administrations on issues ranging from trade, climate change to Russia (that played a critical role is pushing back the IS) and now Iran. Tehran, therefore, is now arguing that the US walk-out should be seen as an opportunity to separately negotiate with other countries who do not want to be under the umbrella of what is an unpredictable US establishment. They would like to operate separately with Europe, and in doing so increase the wedge with the US.  

In a sense, Donald Trump could have handed a Ramzan gift to the hardliners within the Iranian establishment who have always drawn from philosophical and religious texts to state that there are great merits in isolation and turning inwards for strength. Unlike the rather shabby standards of religious universities in South Asia, I’d discovered in Qom that the religious establishment in Iran has a certain intellectual rigour and a great interest in world affairs.

Haj Abul Qasim, the member of the Assembly of Experts, I met in Qom had told me this: there are dangers to letting the West into Iran as the strategy of imperialist powers is to penetrate. They talk of freedom, but bring war to the region. To a question on whether Iran should not spend its resources outside its boundaries, he had replied: The Iranian system considers itself tasked with challenging the borders established by imperialist powers. If a Muslim hears a cry for help from another human being and does not rise to help him, he is not a Muslim.

Now they say that false hopes built around the nuclear deal should evaporate. A friend writes to me: the US act will reduce any delusional hopes of revolutionary rapprochement with ‘The Empire’. It will also strengthen those voices within Iran who seek domestic solutions to the endemic problems of the Iranian economy.

As I said, in a globalised world, Iran remains a fascinating enigma.

Top News

Jailed gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari dies of cardiac arrest

Jailed gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari dies of cardiac arrest

Ansari was hospitalised after he complained of abdominal pai...

Delhi High Court dismisses PIL to remove Arvind Kejriwal from CM post after arrest

Delhi High Court dismisses PIL to remove Arvind Kejriwal from CM post after arrest

The bench refuses to comment on merits of the issue, saying ...

Arvind Kejriwal to be produced before Delhi court today as 6-day ED custody ends

Excise policy case: Delhi court extends ED custody of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal till April 1

In his submissions, Kejriwal said, ‘I am named by 4 witnesse...

‘Unwarranted, unacceptable’: India on US remarks on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest

‘Unwarranted, unacceptable’: India on US remarks on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest

MEA spokesperson says India is proud of its independent and ...

Gujarat court sentences former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years in jail in 1996 drug case

Gujarat court sentences former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years in jail in 1996 drug case

Bhatt, who was sacked from the force in 2015, is already beh...


Cities

View All