Iran's Power Dilemma

▪ 2007

by Keith S. McLachlan

      Since the early 1990s but especially in the past two years, Iran's policies of opposition to the Western powers had paid off handsomely and transfigured it from a pariah state into a successful leader of the Shiʿite Islamic world. Tehran's ability to project regional and global influence was a marked change from its many years in the international wilderness. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's endorsement in November 2006 of Iran as a legitimately interested party (subject to important caveats) in any peace settlement in Iraq reinforced Iran's new standing. Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the initiative to gather Middle Eastern interests, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, to devise an Islamic, regionally based solution that would preempt the imposition of a Western-sponsored plan for the postwar settlement of Iraq.

 The strength of Iran's claim for international recognition solidified in 2006 because of its posture of support for Islamic militias in the war in Lebanon, defense of Palestine against attack by Israel, and supply of conventional arms and rocketry to the militias. The Tehran regime could claim a victory from its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Ahmadinejad's prestige grew enormously in the region's Shiʿite communities. Iranian financial subventions to the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories demonstrated its deep interest in that conflict and in the defense of Islam.

 Clever Iranian tactics of procrastination in negotiations with the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency over nuclear development gave time for Iran's rapid technological advancement and won the regime further acclaim among Islamists. Iran's single-mindedness in rejecting foreign opposition to its nuclear policies was widely seen as a major victory over the UN, the U.S., and the EU.

      The apparent transition of Iran from a conservative bystander to weighty ideological influence in Middle Eastern affairs was upsetting to the established regimes in the area—Arab, Israeli, and Turkish. Iran was critical of both the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent inability of the coalition forces to overcome the mass insurgency and sectarian bloodletting. There was growing apprehension that the whole region was moving into a state of instability, a feeling that divided loyalties and impeded united opposition to the Iranian challenge. Clearly the U.S. and its partners were not likely to quell the internal violence or exit from Iraq without further deterioration in the situation unless they solicited Iranian cooperation. Thus, Iran's rising influence could in large measure be attributed to the fact that the U.S. coalition had got itself mired down in Iraq.

      The importance of the revolutionary regime in Iran's geopolitical posture was debatable. Acting behind a curtain of idiosyncratic diplomacy, the radical regime sought to score points for Islam and against Israel without itself getting directly involved in the fray. Iran always stopped short of taking actions that would put its regime in jeopardy. The various factions in Tehran understood that the regime possessed limited capabilities to withstand foreign-backed political change. It was therefore always risk averse; survival was its first imperative. The tilt toward riskier policies began only in 2005, when Ahmadinejad was elected president and enunciated a policy of active hostility toward Israel and the U.S.

      Those Middle Eastern states and terrorist-fundamentalist groups politically aligned with Iran provided useful but limited platforms from which Tehran might transmit its influence. The Shiʿite communities throughout the region were nationalist in sentiment and had their own tribal and cultural traditions and therefore were not automatic allies of Iran. Within Iran there were fears that the breakup of Iraq might result in an autonomous Kurdish state, which would have implications for aspirations of self-rule among Iranian Kurds. Further, if only because Turkey too had a Kurdish question, Iran was loath to court conflict with that state.

 The Iranians' positive assessment of their national and international weight was not altogether misplaced. By the end of 2006, its military had been rebuilt following the disastrous 1980–90 war with Iraq, and spending on defense was running at 3.3% of GDP. In addition, some new domestically produced missiles and torpedoes tested in the spring made for a strong, if untested, military presence. Iran had the largest population in the Middle East (70 million) and was a major producer of oil and natural gas. It was a significant market for imported goods and had rich, undeveloped domestic resources. The country was strategically well placed, linking the Middle East with Central and South Asia and serving as the natural overlord of the Persian Gulf and caretaker of the underbelly of greater Russia. Farsi-speaking Iran was an independent non-Arab power in an Arab-dominated region. Persian civilization retained world status in arts and crafts, philosophy and poetry, and architecture and urban design.

      Though these aspects contributed to Iranian national pride, they also led to an acute sense of injustice inside Iran as it was excluded from regional decision making and tarred as a state sponsor of terrorism and member of the “axis of evil” by the U.S. and its allies. High oil prices in 2006 emboldened President Ahmadinejad and his supporters to seize the moment to swing the balance against the Western states and confront their interference in the Muslim world and the Middle East. Iran, they felt, could become the major beneficiary of the Iraq conflict and, arguably, the Afghan wars. Ahmadinejad's government demonstrated confidence in its ability to maintain its independence while simultaneously confronting the Western powers. In most situations his regime kept its conservative distance from potential strife. President Ahmadinejad held fundamentalist Islamic beliefs and had a religiously inspired anti-U.S., anti-Israel mind-set. He lacked experience in foreign policy, however, and although he enjoyed a degree of popular support, he was not able to take independent action.

      The main quandary for the regime in 2006 was whether to abandon its policy of disengagement from regional conflicts and its long-established support for the territorial integrity of Iraq. President Ahmadinejad, in words at least, showed an appetite for the creation of an Islamic front under Iranian leadership or, failing that, a connecting up of the Shiʿite communities, ranging from eastern Iran across Iraq and into Syria and Lebanon, regardless of external opposition. A policy of aggressively promoting Iran's role as a world pacemaker for active fundamentalist Islam would require continuing supplies of money and arms to maintain support for attacks on Israel—which the U.S. could be expected to oppose vigorously. A far more radical alternative, espoused by some of the president's opponents, would be to reestablish links with the United States, a course that could change Iran from a transitory political gadfly into a formidable regional power. For this to work, however, there would have to occur a marked improvement in U.S. treatment of Iranian ambitions and rights and, within Iran's power structure, a jettisoning of the more extreme legacies of revolutionary suspicion and prejudice against the U.S.

      At year's end, to the frustration of all, Iran's direction was still unclear. The powerful inner committees of the revolutionary regime seemed just as likely to deny President Ahmadinejad's aggressive line in foreign affairs as it was unlikely to support a rebuilding of relations with the U.S.

Keith S. McLachlan is Professor Emeritus, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Boundaries of Modern Iran.

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