A not-so-happy anniversary

Over the past three decades and change, few countries have outwardly expressed their contempt for each other as virulently as the United States and Iran. Of course, behind the bluster, there are a great many things the two countries talk about in peaceable (if not amicable) terms, the so-called “back-channel” conversations that have characterized U.S.-Iranian dialogue since this day 31 years ago when Iran’s fundamentalist Muslim clergy toppled the Shah. American policy ever since has consisted of frustrating Iran’s attempt to project power and influence throughout the region it has historically dominated as the seat of numerous Persian Empires. Over the years, this desire has led the U.S. to court strange bedfellows and make a series of minor blunders, including its toleration of Iraq’s Baathist regime, which proved to be a far more destabilizing force in the greater Middle East. But such are the trade-offs of the Great Game, a constant stream of choices between lesser and greater evils.

And, of course, U.S. history in Iran pre-dates 1979 or even the Shah. The U.S. has attempted to steer the course of events in Iran ever since the old European colonial powers retreated from the area in the immediate post-war period. This early U.S. engagement culminated in what can only be described as a very great failure of historic proportions: Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup d’etat that ejected a democratically elected government in Iran in favor of the Shah. Self-styled “realists” will remind us that Iran was nearly ungovernable and that “democracy” would have been short-lived in Iran, leaving the country vulnerable to Communist influence from the neighboring Soviet Union. Given Iran’s immense oil and gas reserves, it could not fall into the Communist bloc, or so the reasoning goes.

As is so often the case in geopolitics, attempting to solve one problem creates others. Our zeal to defeat Communism made us blind to powerful and complex historical dynamics operating in Iran and elsewhere in the former colonial lands (not to mention the Shah’s own personal failures and shortcomings). This is the legacy of the Cold War, a continuation of truly global conflict, of world war.

If this day causes the gnashing of teeth in America, it is that much worse for many Iranians, particularly those who are not Shia Muslim, those who aren’t partial to theocracy, those who long for commercial freedoms and opportunities, and those who value basic human rights.

These are the people who filled the streets after the fraudulent elections of last June, then filled them again during Ashura in late December. These so-called “Twitter Revolutions,” named after the social networking websites that have aided communications among dissidents, add up to a lot less than the name would imply. Not much has changed on the ground, and now the forces of counter-revolution have swung into action and gotten up to speed on the technology its opponents have used with gusto. The regime has dealt with the problem as it deals with so many others – it has simply shut off the grid in preparation for a larger crackdown today during the country’s observance of the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.