‘Provocative policies’ root of hostilities
Analysts agree with Iran’s view that US involvement led to Ukraine crisis
With Iran among those citing the United States as a root cause for the Ukraine crisis, experts said the current European conflict stems from decades of provocative policies from the West.
In a televised speech on March 1, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Teheran “advocates ending the war in Ukraine”. But the solution to any crisis, he said, only works when the root cause has been identified.
Stressing that “the root of the crisis in Ukraine is the policies of the United States and the West,” he said “Ukraine is one victim of these policies”.
“The US regime creates crises, lives off of crises and feeds on various crises in the world,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official English website.
Nagapushpa Devendra, an analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said Iranian society believes that US policies toward Russia, from former US president Bill Clinton to the current administration of Joe Biden, “have led to the current situation in Ukraine”.
Devendra noted that Clinton in 1990 decided “to let NATO be” despite having served its purpose of defending the nations against the expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR, a union of constituent republics which included Ukraine and Russia, existed between 1922 and 1991.
According to the US Office of the Historian website, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was created in 1949 by the US, Canada and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. It has 30 member states today.
Although formed in response to the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted beyond it, the website said, with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states, making Russia increasingly tense.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb 24 authorized “a special military operation” in Donbass as a response to the “fundamental threats” of NATO. In a televised interview, he said the plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories or imposing anything on anyone by force.
Moscow views its operation against Ukraine as a move and possible victory “against years of US’ provoking policies and actions against Russia”, Devendra said.
Kamaruzaman Bin Yusoff, a Middle East political analyst and former professor of Middle Eastern politics at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, said the current crisis started when the US and European powers were “trying very hard to control Ukraine”.
If the US and other NATO members did not convince “Ukraine to be part of NATO, for sure, the Russian leaders will not take any action because they also have some other important financial businesses over there”, Yusoff said.
In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a constitutional amendment stating Ukraine’s commitment to joining NATO. In December 2021, the Russian foreign ministry demanded “legal guarantees” that NATO would not expand eastward.
Across the ocean, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said that Brazil will remain neutral in the conflict, noting Russia and Ukraine were “practically brother nations”.
“We will not take sides, we will continue being neutral, and help with whatever is possible,” Bolsonaro told a press conference on Feb 27. “A big part of Ukraine’s population speaks Russian.”
Khamenei also spoke of the lessons that one can learn from the events in
Ukraine. He said the Western powers’ support of the governments that they themselves have placed in power is a mirage, which is not true and “all governments should realize this”.
He referred to Ukraine and Afghanistan as being examples of this first lesson. And the second lesson is that the people are the most important source of support for a government. If the people had been involved in Ukraine, “the Ukrainian government and the people would not be in this situation today”.
Khamenei described the US as a “mafia regime” that meddles and creates problems around the world, and also blamed it for crises in West Asia.
Iran’s foreign ministry has also asserted on several occasions that the crisis is “rooted in NATO” but has called for it to be resolved through diplomatic means.
Asif Shuja, an Iran expert and senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute at National University of Singapore, said Iran’s reaction to the Ukraine crisis has so far been “measured”.
Many in the West also believe that “the insistence of the US to expand NATO closer to Russia’s backyard was not a very prudent idea”, Shuja said.
He added that it would be in Iran’s interest, “just like for the rest of the world, that the current Ukraine crisis does not escalate any further”.
Yusoff, the analyst from Malaysia, said: “I think this is the time where some countries who are really concerned … to bring about peace in the world should hand-in-hand help each other to bring all these big powers together.”