Does This Mean War Between Israel and Iran Can Be Averted?

Are we witnessing an anti-1979 -- a democratic uprising against the Ayatollahs by the grandchildren of the revolution? On the streets of Tehran, many of the massed millions are chanting: "We will die - but count our votes." The religious police are trying to teargas and truncheon this cry into submission, with the possibility of a Tehran Tiananmen hanging in the city's smog. But for today, the secret policemen are in panic, and the Ayatollahs are in retreat.

The Iranian Revolution was, from its first gasps, a marriage between two incompatible urges: theocracy, and democracy. Only now are they two finally unravelling. The Shah - the torturing dictator installed, armed and adored by the C.I.A. - was overthrown by a chasm-wide coalition stretching from communists to Islamists. My parents lived in Iran at that time, and they remember the raw hatred of the Shah that was felt by bearded Mullahs and hijab-free feminists alike. Almost everybody rose up in 1979.

But once the Shah was toppled, one wing of the revolution hijacked it. The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini installed himself as the Supreme Ruler, and started killing off the democratic wing of the revolution. But splinters of democracy remained in the constitution, like shards of glass after an explosion. Alongside the theocrats, there was an elected President and Parliament. For thirty years, the clerics have smothered these institutions, blocking most candidates from running, and - on the rare occasion when a reformist gets through - preventing him from changing much.

But now that system has over-reached by blatantly falsifying the election results in order to keep their preferred candidate in power. The official results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh winning by huge margins in the strongholds of the opposition - Tehran and Tabriz. It's as if George Bush in 2000 claimed to have won not only in Palm Beach County but also in Massachusetts and San Francisco. As soon as the polls closed, Ahmadinejadh said he had won by 64 percent - precisely the amount that was later 'counted.' Either he has superhuman powers of prediction, or he had a role in the result.

Inside Iran, shifting power from the clerics to the people would free millions of women. Today, a woman's testimony is worth half a man's in court. A woman can only inherit half as much as her brother. A woman invariably loses her children in a divorce case, and while she can be dumped in a second by her husband, if she wants a split, it can take up to a decade. The late surge to the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi was driven in large part by women enthused by his wife's call for an end to this vicious misogyny.

But what about outside Iran? This uprising could avert the disastrous war between Israel and Iran that was looking increasingly probable until today. The leaderships of the two non-Arab countries in the Middle East have increasingly resembled each other as they embark on a long, dark tango towards bombing. With Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman on one side and Ayatollah Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the other, both countries are led by paranoid strongmen who are traumatised by their country's histories and scrambled by a political strain of post-traumatic stress disorder.

We can't understand the mindset that is driving both sides - and could be about to change - unless we delve into the past.

The current Iranian leaders' pursuit of enriched uranium is a response to a long history, too often scrubbed from Western textbooks. By the 1950s, Iran had developed a thriving democracy, and its people decided - rationally, correctly - to take control of its own oil and use the profits for its own people. The governments of the West ruled that this was unacceptable: it's our oil under their soil, dummy. So they toppled the democracy and installed a dictator. From 1953 to 1979, this dictator was paid by the Americans, Brits and friends to suppress the Iranian population and keep the petrol pumping. Khameini is one of the many people he jailed and tortured.

When the Iranians rejected "our good friend", we paid for Saddam Hussein to attack their country using chemical weapons. Ahmadinejad saw some of this mass slaughter - death toll: one million - as a young volunteer. That's why they feel nervous when they see US bases encircling them from Turkey to Afghanistan to Iraq. And that's why they want at least nuclear power and perhaps (although there are some doubts, even in the C.I.A.) nuclear weapons. We mustn't offer a second of excuses - but we should understand why they are acting this way.

Meanwhile, Israel - with its own memory of its people being subject to near-annihilation in the gas chambers of Europe - sees something different. When they watch Ahmadinejad inviting a jamboree of Jew-haters to Tehran for a deranged Holocaust denial conference, or hear his massed supporters chant for "death to Israel", they begin to suspect that Ahmadinejad would use these weapons if he had them, and therefore they must bomb to stop him.

There were, thankfully, always a number of flaws with this theory. If Ahmadinejad and Khameini (whose finger would be on the button) are so determined to kill the Jews that they are prepared to kill themselves and everyone they know in a nuclear holocaust, why are the 30,000 Jews living in Iran alive and well? Wouldn't they start there? Hasn't Ahmadinejad's disgusting Holocaust denial been attacked within Iran - by the man who probably just won the election? And if Israel bombed the more than 40 sites where Iran's nuclear programme is spread across the country, wouldn't they just kill many of the people marching against Ahamdinejad today? Wouldn't this create support for a bigger, bolder nuclear programme tomorrow by vindicating the fears that Iran is left vulnerable to attack without the bomb?

Yet it's not hard to see how each side has talked itself into a paranoia they can't back down from. Khameini and Ahmadinejad won't let international inspectors in to see their full programme, much less control it, pointing out that the CIA used information gathered by inspectors in Iraq to know where to bomb. Netanyahu, in turn, has convinced himself that Ahmadinejad is an incarnation of the genocidal anti-Semitism that stalked Europe down the centuries. His rhetoric becomes as crazed as Ahmadinejad's. When asked how he sees Iran, he replied: "Remember Amalek." The Amalekites are the primordial enemies of the Jews in the Torah. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

Irrational fear and tribal-religious manias are now driving both sides - and until this week, a violent show-down looked ever-more-likely.

But the uprising in Iran offers a radically different route. If the Iranian political system can be made to bend to the will of the Iranian people, we will see there is a peaceful solution that has been waiting for us all along. The most detailed study of Iranian views - carried out by the independent Centre for Public Opinion - found that 94 percent of Iranians want nuclear power, and 52 percent want the nuclear bomb. But there's a crucial clause. More than 70 percent agree that if the US and EU offer a peace package where they guarantee there will be no invasion and instead bring aid and investment, they will let inspectors closely monitor their nuclear power programs and renounce nuclear weapons for good.

This is a way out of the ratchet of fear. It averts a bombing campaign that would spread another bush-fire of mutual loathing through the world, and forestalls the risk of an endless Gazan Missile Crisis at the heart of the Middle East. It's not inconceivable that a deal could be struck with a weakened Ahmadinejad still in power, but it would be far more likely under a reformist with the people at his back.

But how can the Iranian people get there? It's plain what kind of Iran they want to build: some 70 percent of them want every position of power in their political system, including the Supreme Ayatollah, to be directly elected. They don't just want a rerun of this election: they want to expose the entire corrupt gerontocracy to election. The Islamic Republic would be dramatically reformed from within, without the wrenching risks of abolishing the entire system and starting again.

The Mullahs won't go quietly. They may go down fighting. But the demographics ensure Ahmadinejad's side will lose in the long-term. Another 70 percent of Iranians are under the age of thirty, and the vast majority are growing up in the cities, linked via Twitter and Facebook to a world beyond. They have developed huge subcultures of bloggers and rappers expressing their rage at the "morality police" who monitor their behaviour at every turn. While the hardcore Islamist constituency - the old and the rural - shrivels, the reformist constituency is swelling.

There's only so long you can suppress an angry, wired population much younger than you. IPods beat i-slamism in the end. But will they prevail before another Middle Eastern war born of irrational fear begins?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com

Comments

[TrekBear]

I'm more concerned that Israel will initiate a war with Iran. Iran, to my knowledge, doesn't have the force-projection capabilities Israel does. I think that if or when Israel attacks, its neighbors may go on the offensive: Syria, Turkey, Egypt, for starters.

[Blackspeare]

The crowds took the Shah down and the crowds will take the Ayatollah down and we'll finally get back to 1973 when the US took down a popularly elected regime because it was a bit socialistic.

[TrekBear]

You mean 1953, right?

[ModernTimes1]

Ayatollah- opressive theocracy is opposed to democratic Iran just as bitterly as to the Shah.
Get a clue.

[ModernTimes1]

"But once the Shah was toppled, one wing of the revolution hijacked it. The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini installed himself as the Supreme Ruler, and started killing off the democratic wing of the revolution."
Precisely!
And this why Iranian people are raising up against the oppression. Hopefully they win. Because the win of progressive forces of Iran is the best guarantee for Iran peacefully co existing with the world.

[FloresdelaHoz]

Electing a brilliant non White male as President does have its optical benefits in a world were Northern European Whites compose less than 6 percent of the global population.

Obama is given the benefit of the doubt by many in the third world. In a multi-polar world, we need more friends to listen to our side of the argument. Obama's openness to dialogue with Iran appears to be paying off with the average young Iranian.

Go Obama!

[WmC]

". . .Yet it's not hard to see how each side has talked itself into a paranoia they can't back down from. . ."

A perfect one sentence summary of the situation.

Johann Hari for US Sec. of State

[zaz33]

Haaretz News - Israeli intelligence now says Iran won't have bomb until 2014.

Why are they backing off now?

Keep in mind that there is no evidence of any nuclear weapons at all. -

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093631.html

[StuManChu]

Israel should strike now while Iran is distracted.

[FloresdelaHoz]

The window to attack Iran closed in 2007. An Israeli attacked without US approval is impossible.

The US cannot win a war with Iran. The world would turn against the US and the Buchanans will make sure that Jewish Americans get blamed for the death of thousands of US military personnel. The world is multi-polar and we cannot afford to make any geo-political mistakes. Israel must make every effort for peace. Time is running out.

[continentalshelf]

strike themselves in the heads

[IamaGApeach]

Thanks for the history lesson. Too many Americans think that our bad blood with Iran started with the hostage crisis, and we consistently fail to acknowledge our "meddling." Although the thought of a nuclear Iran scares me almost as much as nuclear-armed Pakistan, I understand Iran's motivation for doing so. When our policy is regime change and we surround them w/U.S. troops, what do we expect? Could you imagine if they were waging wars in Mexico and Canada?

I hope the Iranian people achieve the freedom and autonomy they deserve and I hope we can peacefully persuade them to give up their pursuit of the bomb. I read that Iran's unemployment is at 40%. They're wasting $ on a needless weapon.

[JGatsby]

"I hope we can peacefully persuade them to give up their pursuit of the bomb" Actually that won't be hard at all since they aren't actually pursuing a nuclear bomb. They are pursuing peaceful nuclear power and unlike our so called allies India, Pakistan, and Israel they are doing so following the rules of the UN Nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The "stock piling of uranium" is a distortion put out by the media. In fact enriching uranium is a natural by product of peaceful nuclear power and accumulating it does little to give Iran a weapon. The uranium they have is not weapons grade and the centrifuges they use are not capable of creating weapons grade uranium. To create a bomb, ONE BOMB (Israel has over one hundred), they would have to kick out the UN weapons inspectors, retool their centrifuges, re-process the uranium, oh and also the little problem that people seem to take for granted of building and TESTING the actual bomb itself. At best this would take a year and the world would know about it.

[Wisdo]

War between Israel and Iran can obnly be averted if Israel does not attack Iran.

Iran has no plans to attack any country, has never done so and has only ever pledged to defend itself from agression.

Israel attacks other countries at the drop of a hat, or a homemade mortar round. It does so repeatedly and often. It constantly threatens its neighbours with destruction and carries out that destruction without regard to the international norms of warfare, civilian casualties, or the geneva conventions.

[Macready]

totally agree with you Wisdo

[Macready]

Great analysis . . . thank you for posting . . . if the US withdraws its financial and militay aid to israel .. which I hope it does . . . and UN sanctions are enforced against israel . . I think that will make for a new beginning in politics in the Middle East . . .

[OpenHand101]

America cuts off it's aid to Israel, the UN sanctions the only functioning democracy in the Middle East to within an inch of its life...then someone decides to invade, a lot of bombs, nuclear and other otherwise, are dropped... then afterwards, when the Middle East is carpeted with millions of bodies courtesy of a second Holocaust, the bleeding hearts of the world will comfort themselves with the the thought that "those damned Israelis...at least they at it coming...leaves us with a clear conscience...."

So much for a new beginning....

[arvay]

Another brilliant and incisive analysis!

Thank you!

[rughead23]

Hopefully, if change occurs we can have an acknowledgment that the holocost did in fact take place.

[Wisdo]

and that the Romany suffered as much as the Jews (but didnt get handed a mediterranean country for a homeland)

[NourCA]

Excellent job with this article! Hopefully more people read this and we find a way forward.

[Justtellthetruth]

I think the best course for the US to take would be to offer Iran the same protection that we offer Israel; If Israel attacks Iran without provocation, (and there has been NO provocation) we would retaliate against Israel until threat of further attacks was quelled by taking out all of their active military installations.

Iran in no way threatens Israel, and an Israeli attack would set of a chain of events that wold plunge the US into a TRUE depression (mass joblessness, hunger, and a decades long return to normalcy) when Iran mines the gulf and makes oil traffic impossible. Oil will go to 500 per barrel, gas to 12 per gallon or more, and the US economy will crumble into a protracted depression that makes the current one look like the good old days.

Israel is currently lead by fanatical settlement (apatheid and ethnic cleansing) supporters who are FAR more dangerous to the US than the Iranian regime could ever be.

We must hold our government responsible for the devastation caused if they ever allow this to happen.
Israel must be stopped at all costs.

[ModernTimes1]

"Iran in no way threatens Israel."
Really????
Some quotes:

"Ahmadinejad, speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran, threatened any country that supports Israel... "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow," he cautioned. "Nations will take revenge."

"The Iranian leader also called the U.N. Security Council “illegitimate,”

Newsweek interview with Obama:
“I understand very clearly that Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and given some of the statements that have been made by [Iranian] President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, you can understand why,”
Iranian general quoted by German newsource NTV.de:"
...Glaube ich nicht, dass wir mehr als elf Tage benötigen, die Existenz Israels auszulöschen."
Translation.
"... I do not believe that we need more than eleven days, to extinguish the existence of Israel."

[Wisdo]

"The Iranian leader also called the U.N. Security Council "illegitimate,"

So has Israel - oh and so did John Bolton and every Pundit on FoxNews

[Justtellthetruth]

I am no fan of Ahmedinejad, yet, some nations have already taken revenge in the form of 9/11. We have the settlers to thank for helping to be, as Bill Clinton put it, the Philosophical underpinning of middle eastern terrorist recruitment.

Obama is playing a political game giving lip service to the "existential threat" BS. However, EVERYONE knows that the entire US intelligence community has said that Iran has NO WEAPONS PROGRAM. Furthermore, the Israelis ROUTINLEY and QUITE LITERALLY threaten Iran with attack, while Iran has never threatened Israel with attack and WOULD never attack Israel. Israel has HUNDREDS of nuclear weapons and the support of the US, and would face total devastation if they ever attacked Israel.

The usual response to that statement is that the Iranians, despite the fact that they have no attacked anyone in about 250 years, are actually suicidal and fanatical.

But a realistic examination of Israels behavior clearly indicate that THEY are much more fanatical and dangerous to the US than Iran would ever be. Israel is running a racist, ultranationalist settlements program, and threatens unnecessary and preemptive attacks which would cause a US and maybe global depression of unprecedented magnitude.

The "threat of Iran" may be even bigger BS than the threat of Iraq, although the repercussions of listening to the same Neocons babble about it will be catastrophic as opposed to merely damaging and pointless, as the Iraq war turned out to be.

[ModernTimes1]

re."Iran in no way threatens Israel"
this is blatant lie. Iran threats against Israel have been unrelenting since the inception of the theocratic Iranian government.

German magazine Der Spiegel:
"It's hardly surprising any more when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens Israel with destruction. It wasn't so long ago that he suggested the country be moved to Alaska. Or just wiped off the map.
But in a Thursday speech at Isfahan broadcast on state television, he issued a threat more direct than any that had come before. If Israel, he said, were to go to war against Lebanon again this summer, it would be destroyed."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,484958,00.html

[continentalshelf]

he's talking about the threat of ability to do something, not empty words. tsk. tsk. Defensive are we?

[Wisdo]

In other words he is pledging to defend Lebanon from Israeli unilateral agression.

I applaud the sentiment.

I would hope other nations would pledge to defend Lebanon from Israels depredations.

[MikeDu]

"...a marriage between two incompatible urges: theocracy and democracy."
Almost sounds like the Republican party, doesn't it!

But I'm diverted from my point.
Nobody mentions what will happen in the region if/when Israel's attack on Iran FAILS. This is not longer 1981 when Israel bombed its (much closer) neighbor Iraq's nuclear reactor. Iran is much farther away, and much more formidable. imagine the TV footage of the downed aircraft, imagine Israeli pilots tried on terroism charges in the Iranian courts. Its not impossible. Remember how Israel was humiliated on the Lebanese border in 2006. Hasn't the Iraq fiasco taught us to look at the worst-case scenario?

[JGatsby]

Good point, not to mention that Iran has many ways to retaliate. The world is far more dependent on mid-east oil now than it was in the past and while Iran poses no existential threat to Israel except in the minds of US and Israel Neocons it does have the capability to hit back in non-conventional ways such as shutting down the Straights of Hormuz, inciting violence in Iraq, etc.