Iran Turns Arab Spring Frosty
By Dr Colin Rubenstein - Australian Polity - Volume 2 (Number 3)
A year since the ‘Arab Spring’ erupted it has become clearer that a major thrust has not been genuine democratisation and liberalism but a wave of Islamism sweeping across the Arab world. At the same time, Iran is developing nuclear weapons and seeking to strengthen its regional dominance amongst the emerging Islamist regimes threatening not only the Middle East but global peace and security.
When the ‘Arab Spring’ movements first arose many Western commentators rushed to focus on the secular liberal protest elements in the uprisings, and compared the protests to those of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet bloc. Now they are waking up to find the confronting reality that Islamist parties are winning elections, and the liberals are falling far behind.
It first occurred in ‘liberal’ Tunisia where the ‘moderate’ Islamist al-Nahda (Ennahda) Party won its first free elections, gaining some ninety out of 217 seats. A month later, the Islamist Justice and Development Party and its allies won a majority in Morocco’s general election. In Libya following the downfall of Gaddafi, Islamist factions appear to be the major force in Libya’s National Transitional Council, and some of its members reportedly have links with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In Egypt, despite the liberal and secular protestors of Tahrir Square, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party has won forty per cent of the vote so far in the parliamentary elections, with the even more hard line Salafist party al-Nour receiving 25 per cent of the vote. The Egyptian Bloc, a coalition of mostly liberal parties, was a distant third with 13.4 per cent of the vote. The Egyptian elections will continue until March, but there is strong reason to believe that Islamists will do even better in future rounds given that the ‘liberal’ regions of Egypt have already voted.
While genuine democracy in the long run can only benefit the peoples of the Middle East, the West needs to consider the implications of undemocratic, intolerant, or totalitarian elements using democratic elections to capture power, as occurred even in ‘sophisticated’ Weimar Germany? For publics and policy makers, this creates complications, conflicts and doubts in pursuing democracy for the region. For pundits, it is so much easier to pontificate that anti-democratic exploitation of democratic institutions as unlikely, even impossible.
So editorialists, commentators and columnists are rushing to reassure Western publics that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood and even more extreme Salafists in Egypt is nothing to worry about—they will be tolerant democrats respecting human rights, and keen to encourage peaceful coexistence. These states will be democratic Turkey, not theocratic, revolutionary Iran, we are assured.
These predictions are neither certain, nor, if true, that reassuring. The states in question—Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia—have none of the recent democratic traditions that Turkey has developed over decades. Moreover, given the way the current, admittedly non-violent, but Islamist AKP Government of Turkey has made widespread use of the judicial system to intimidate or even jail political opponents and media critics, it remains unclear if genuine Turkish democracy can survive.
The Muslim Brotherhood is tactically very different from al-Qaeda—much more sophisticated and patient concerning the tools and methods they will use to reach their goals, and prepared to use the language of democracy to placate both Western and Arab publics about their intentions. However, they share a belief that the Sharia legal system is not only the blueprint for a perfect society given by God but provides a political and religious obligation to create such a society. Yet the implementation of this Islamist political ideology is obviously incompatible with both democracy and human rights.
Concerns that democratic elections in the Arab world will not alone give rise to liberalism, were recently raised by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when she commented:
Transitions require fair and inclusive elections, but they also demand that those who are elected embrace democratic norms and rules …We, therefore, expect all democratic actors and elected officials to uphold universal human rights, including women’s rights, to allow free religious practice, to promote tolerance and good relations among communities of different faiths, and to support peaceful relations with their neighbors.
Existing Islamist regimes do not offer a promising record in this regard. Both the Gaza strip and Iran are run by Islamist fundamentalist regimes. Under these regimes, the rights of women, minorities, homosexuals and opposition parties have been sharply curtailed.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is eagerly exploiting the Arab Spring to strengthen its regional dominance. It views the revolutions across the Arab world as an Islamic awakening that will strengthen its power in the region. In addition, no one serious doubts that if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons it would dramatically accelerate nuclear proliferation and alarmingly increase the prospect of a nuclear confrontation.
The Iranian regime’s impulse for regional dominance and its ideology based in Islamic fundamentalists ideas makes its quest for nuclear weapons all the more frightening. Iran claims that it has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, however an International Atomic Energy Agency report released in November, provides strong evidence that Iran has undertaken research and experiments geared towards developing nuclear weaponry. Following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency report, there can no longer be any doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. This is a grave concern for both the Sunni Arab world as well as Israel, which it repeatedly threatens to wipe off the map!
Many officials warn that Iran may only be months away from gaining nuclear weapons technology, and if it were to succeed it may be impossible to contain or deter. These concerns were raised recently by Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak who posed a terrifying scenario. Speaking to CNN he said: “Who would have come to rescue Kuwait when it was taken by Saddam Hussein twenty years ago, if Saddam could have said credibly enough that he has three or four crude nuclear devices?” The answer of course, is that no one would have acted. In all likelihood, Iraq would still be in control of Kuwait and all its oil wealth today and Saddam would still likely be in power.
Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi (who relinquished his nuclear arms program) were both overthrown thanks to Western military intervention, while nuclear-armed rogue states like North Korea appear to be safe from any such foreign interference. Iran’s clerical leaders are well aware of these precedents as they race to build nuclear weapons and become both invulnerable to military intervention and positioned to dominate the region in the name of both their religious ideology and Persian nationalism.
So what happens if a nuclear Iran, whose leaders have publicly claimed that the small Gulf state of Bahrain is rightfully a “province of Iran” just as Saddam Hussein once proclaimed Kuwait was the “19th province of Iraq,” invades Bahrain? As in Barak’s Iraq hypothetical, no one could stop it – only the aftermath would be even worse. Iran, already benefiting from proxies and allies across the region and riding high and able to act with impunity, would likely become the model for the remaking of the region triggered by the Arab Spring. In order to prevent the nightmare of a resurgent Persian Empire, Iran’s regional rivals would feel compelled to attain the same capabilities.
The Saudis have already indicated that they have plans to obtain a nuclear arsenal (probably from Pakistan) the moment Iran tests its first nuclear warhead. It would be surprising if the other powerful regional players—like Egypt, Turkey, Algeria and the Gulf Emirates—did not also follow suit. This Middle East arms race would destroy every non-proliferation effort that the world has known and would pose the greatest threat of nuclear conflict the world has yet seen.
Moreover, unlike Iraq, or the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Iran is a theological state founded on a religious ideology. This includes a vision of the end of days, which will follow a catastrophic apocalypse, as well as a belief system that both promises Iran’s leaders protection by God if they pursue a “righteous” path, and places a high value on martyrdom. This does not mean that Iran will necessarily use its nuclear capabilities to bring about such a catastrophe, but it makes this more likely – too likely to risk in the hope that deterrence or containment will be effective.
And the Iranian regime is divided, unstable and unpopular, with a struggle occurring between three sources of power: the clerical Supreme Leader, the President and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The International Atomic Energy Agency report fingered the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as the organisation principally responsible for the nuclear program. The Iranian regime could fall through an internal power struggle or in one of the popular uprisings that they have so far succeeded in quelling. What would then prevent a renegade group from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps using the nuclear arsenal or providing it to its terrorist allies?
There is no easy way to stop or delay Iran’s nuclear program and some of the options are indeed risky and dangerous. But it is still not too late to hope the issue can be resolved without a choice between the catastrophe of a nuclear Iran or the grave risks of an Israeli or American military strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. But this possibility only exists with the immediate implementation of the most severe sanctions possible, genuinely threatening Iran’s clerical rulers’ ability to hang on to power, and backed up by a credible threat of military action. Moreover, the sanctions will have to be implemented outside the United Nations framework, given determined Russian and Chinese obstructionism in the United Nations Security Council.
On 21 November 2011, French President Nicholas Sarkozy outlined the sort of sanctions needed: “willing countries” must “immediately freeze the assets of Iran’s central bank,” which would largely prevent Iran from operating on the world market, and suspend purchases of Iranian oil.
Since his statement, the European Union, the United States of America and Canada have imposed tough sanctions on Iran. On 1 December 2011, Australia announced its plans for additional sanctions on Iran that will target “additional entities and individuals for their involvement in Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs”. It is unclear at this stage whether Australia will follow the French call for to enact sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank and suspend all purchases of Iranian oil – measures that many say are required if sanctions are to be effective.
Another blow for the Iranian regime would be the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, which is under mounting pressure from opposition protestors. Iran is Assad’s closest ally and together they support Hezbollah and Hamas. Assad’s Ba’athist regime is dominated by the twelve per cent Alawite minority, a Shi’ite sect, in a country where most are Sunni. Almost any alternative Syrian regime would most likely end or weaken Syria’s close ties to Shi’ite Iran and Hezbollah. Even the United Nations estimates that over five thousand people have been killed so far in the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on protestors. The Assad regime is desperately clinging to power, and if it prevails, this may be a lost opportunity not only for the Syrian people but for regional and Western interests. Suppression of the yearning for positive change should not be allowed to succeed in Syria. Every reasonable policy option should be explored with the greatest urgency to ensure reformist regime change.
The Arab Spring provides the world with great opportunities and challenges. While a civil society underpinning democracy takes time to develop and should be encouraged, it must be acknowledged that elections alone do not alone result in liberalism or respect for human rights. So far election results reveal the reality that the Arab world is not in the midst of an Arab spring but an Islamic awakening. Iran is exploiting this Islamic awakening and combined with its nuclear intentions, poses a significant threat not only to the Middle East but to global peace and security.
In the wake of the Arab Spring many of the countries in the region are assuming more hostile postures to the West and projecting more hospitable overtures to extremist groups. Strategic planning is required on three key fronts: first to support the democratisation process in the Middle East and foster liberalisation; second to weaken Iranian efforts to dominate the region, in part by encouraging the downfall of the brutal Syrian regime; and above all to make sure Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons. Failure on these fronts will not only further retard the prospects of a genuinely democratising Middle East but foreshadow a threatening period in regional and global affairs.
