Shirin Ebadi and Reza Aslan

Continuing with the Iranian theme there were two items of particular interest in today’s papers. The Guardian carries an article by Reza Aslan entitled “A Giant Awakes” while the Independent carries an article about Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

Nobel Prize winner accuses US of double standards over Iran

Shirin Ebadi is currently in London to promote her memoir Iran Awakening in which she intendeds to show correct Western stereotypes of Islam, especially the image of Muslim women as "docile, forlorn creatures”..

Mrs Ebadi wishes to see an advanced and open democracy established in Iran even though she has few illusions about it happening. She argues that this is the way to end the standoff between Iran and the West over her country's nuclear programme. "No government needs nuclear weapons, neither Iran nor America. The Iranian government claims they want a peaceful use, but the world does not accept this," she says. Therefore, if the Iranian government wants the world to trust it, it must establish a more advanced democracy at home. She believes the first step towards this must be the abolition of the Guardian Council, the religious body that vets political candidates and which barred many pro-reform politicians from running in the 2004 parliamentary election and the presidential polls last year.

Despite being viewed as an American Stooge in Iran (qv) Shirin Ebadi is highly critical of the Bush administration’s double standards over the Iran Nuclear programme:

"America says that Iran would pose a threat if it gains access to nuclear weapons because it is not a democratic country, and because its government is fundamentalist, and this could pose a danger to the whole region," she says. "But America has forgotten that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and Pakistani Muslims are much more fundamentalist than Iranian Muslims, and Pervez Musharraf [the Pakistan President] did not come to power as a result of an election. The only difference between Iran and Pakistan is that Pakistan is friendly towards America and obeys America, while Iran does not obey America. This double standard is something that the Iranian people cannot understand."

A giant awakes

Reza Aslan, a scholar of comparative religion and the author of "No god but God - The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Argues that Iran’s position in the Middle East has hardly been stronger and that this is due primarily to the recent American foreign policy.
The removal of the Taliban and Saddam has effectively eliminated Iran’s two nearest enemies and has allowed it to secure its interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through its ties with Hizbullah, Iran has also managed to fill the vacuum left by Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. At the same time it has taken advantage of the cut in international funding to the Palestinian authority to make up its economic shortfall, giving it a firmer foothold in the Palestinian territories.

He argues that those who imagine that bombing Iran would lead to regime change are displaying an utter ignorance of the Iranian mindset:. Unlike Iraq, which is in many ways an artificial state, Iranians, whle fragmented in other ways, are united by a distinct sense of nationalism that transcends politics or piety. The surefire way to rally the people of Iran behind a much despised regime would indeed be to drop bombs on the country

Although Iran may never have had such influence in the region it is in many ways a disunited nation: many Iranians, including some powerful conservatives, are incensed with the way negotiations with Europe have broken down under the leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The merchant class is up in arms at the prospect of suffering even greater international isolation while the prominent cleric and politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has gone so far as to publicly denounce the president (something unheard of in Iranian politics) for essentially destroying any hope Iran may have had to pursue its nuclear research in peace. In the meantime, the chorus of voices in Iran calling for a negotiated settlement is growing louder by the day.

These differences would be cast aside the moment the first American bomb lands on Iranian soil. Political dissent would be stifled and the regime given unchecked wartime authority to do whatever it thought best to "protect" the country. Already those activists, like the Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who call for an end to the nuclear showdown with the west, have been labelled American stooges and possible threats to Iran's national security.

Mr Aslan argues that the way forward for US-Iranian relations would be to put in place a package of security guarantees and economic incentives in exchange for international cooperation with its civilian nuclear programme, i.e. what is being offered to North Korea. He argues that despite its unsavoury influences Iran is no longer a rogue state teetering on the brink of a popular revolt. For better or worse, Iran is now a sturdy and stable political powerhouse in an increasingly volatile region. It is long past time for the Bush administration to begin treating it as such.

If the US can put aside its ideological reservations and confront Iran the way it confronted the Soviet Union and China - with an aggressive policy of interdependent trade relations in the hope that economic growth will foster democratic change - it could do so much more than reign in Iran's nuclear ambitions. By forcing the country out of its isolation and giving Iranians access to the global market, the US could achieve the very regime change it has been striving for all these years.