Iran takes on bad guy role
MULLAHS MAY BE FEELING DISCOMFORT OF A TIGHTENING U.S. KNOT
Iranian President Hassan Ro uhani may not appreciate it, but he’s taken on a particularly important significance as a target of American disfavour.
Whatever people may say about the U.S. and the quality of its current leadership, it is accustomed to thinking of itself as a leader of the Western world and a defender of democracy. In America’s estimation, it’s still a good guy.
But a good guy needs bad guys, if only for reasons of comparison. Washington has seldom had trouble finding enemies it considers a threat to the values it upholds. The Soviet empire, Beijing’s Maoist dictatorship, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam, Castro’s Cuba, Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…
And those are just the major bad guys. The world has provided plenty of other, lesser, tyrants and dictators against which to do battle, whether directly, covertly or militarily: the Panama of Manuel Noriega, the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega, the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic.
Gone, all gone (although Ortega is currently attempting a comeback and can claim 280 deaths as his government cracks down on the “terrorists” who dare challenge his rule).
When president George W. Bush left the Oval Office, his “Axis of Evil” remained an ongoing source of U.S. alarm. The original Axis consisted of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. John Bolton, then the undersecretary of state and now the national security adviser, added three more: Cuba, Libya and Syria. Of those, Cuba was the target of intense normalization efforts by the Obama administration, is no longer governed by either of the Castro brothers, and has become such a pussycat that its proposed new constitution drops the promotion of communism as a fundamental goal, recognizes private property and opens the door to gay marriage. Libya has been freed of Gadhafi and collapsed into chaos, but barely registers as a vital threat — “we decimated that country,” Donald Trump boasted back in May, as a threat to North Korea of what the U.S. was capable of.
Iraq has been invaded and judged pacified enough to substantially reduce U.S. forces there. Trump met North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June and declared any worries about its nuclear activities “largely solved.” Although the U.S. still has trade issues with China, the U.S. president has nothing but praise for President Xi Jinping, who he says has been “terrific” and “who has done more for us than he’s done for any other administration, or than any leader of China has done for any president or administration.”
Russia may worry the CIA and much of the U.S. national intelligence apparatus, but the president met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and remains convinced Moscow is part of the solution, not the problem. And since Russia has become the dominant foreign power in Syria, Bashar Assad’s regime has fallen well down the administration’s A-list of enemies as well. U.S. soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, but Americans largely viewed bin Laden as the core enemy in that campaign, and he’s been successfully eliminated.
Which pretty much leaves Iran, where, indeed, the Trump administration has enthusiastically stoked the fires of confrontation. The Obama nuclear deal has been junked, sanctions reimposed, the economy squeezed, oil exports threatened and Europe pressured to join Washington in isolating Tehran. China, India and Turkey have been urged to end all imports of Iranian oil; Iran’s currency has collapsed from the uncertainty.
Unlike Putin, Kim or Xi — all of whom have found it more useful to humour the administration while extracting benefits — Iran’s leadership has artlessly played the role assigned it. On Sunday President Hassan Rouhani shook his fist in a rhetorical onslaught that couldn’t have been better scripted to suit U.S. needs.
“Mr. Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail. This would only lead to regret,” he proclaimed Sunday, as Iran’s ruling mullahs feel the discomfort of a tightening knot.
“America should know peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.”
Rouhani may not have grasped the irony of his remarks, which echoed Saddam Hussein’s pledge to wage “the mother of all battles” against the U.S., just before he was chased from power and found hiding in a hole in the ground. His warning may also strike many as a sign of nerves rather than strength. The deteriorating economy has sparked a series of protests, a fact reflected in Rouhani’s claim the U.S. is out to overthrow Iran’s entrenched autocrats.
“You are not in a position to incite the Iranian nation against Iran’s security and interests,” he insisted. “We’ve become more united than before. Threats bring us together.”
That may be, though popular governments usually don’t have to work so hard to convince doubters. In any case, his performance was a gift to Trump, who quickly fired off one of his trademark all-capital Tweets: “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”
You’d never catch Putin or Xi so artlessly playing the Hollywood bad guy. Perhaps that’s why Washington now spends so much of its time fighting with friends and allies. Few countries are as willing as Iran to offer such an easy target.