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May 10, 2010
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Ideas for the Correction of Iran’s Strategic Blunder
Kurdishaspect..com - By Dr. Fereydun Rafiq Hilmi
A few years ago I published an article on the web with the title “Turkey’s strategic blunder“, in which I pointed to Attaturk’s blunder when he isolated Turkey from its natural environment and fertile domain, in favour of an ill-conceived ideology based on the notion of the Turkish super race and a paranoia stemming from a feeling that it was the “lesser” nations such as the Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and Arabs that caused the downfall of the Ottoman empire. However, although these undesirables were still making up a substantial proportion of the new Turkey, their territories were precious and should stay as part of the great Turkey. The result was a new state that suppressed all dissent, did not recognise the language, culture and religious affiliations (including the religion of the ethnic Turks themselves. Secularism was chosen because Islam was regarded not only as the religion of one of the lesser nations but also the source of backwardness and degeneration.
With the new state also came a new language written in the Latin alphabet with a much softened pronunciation to make it sound European and less Middle Eastern or oriental.
Attaturkist theologians even started searching for older religions practiced by the Turkish nations’ ancestors such Buddhism and even some Jewish influences (Islam was the religion of the backwards nations and Christianity was that of their arch enemies the Greeks and Armenians).
The new philosophy went way beyond nationalism to give the world the first fascist and oppressive state, a number of years before the Italian fascist movement and German Nazism. Turkish Attaturkism was therefore a product of failure and apportioning of blame for that failure of Ottoman Turkey on others, less fortunate and less powerful than themselves. This new ideology was grabbed immediately by the colonial powers that had defeated the empire and it took them no time to abandon the caliphate in Istanbul in favour of the new leader with the great reactionary ideology against all that reminded him of his past, background and history. The fact that he was born in what is called Europe gave him a feeling of superiority and soon France and Italy came to his aid and Britain followed suit.
But despite that Turkey inclined to group itself with the Fascists and the Nazis and paid the price after the defeat of these by having to become subservient to the west and in particular, NATO and the United states. This condition continued until now and only the new government of Erdugan and Gul and has managed to move away slightly from the hegemony imposed upon their country part of which was to side with the arch enemy of their Muslim and Arab brothers: Israel.
After publishing my original article a great change seemed to occur over Turkish politics and the new leaders started to steer a corrective course, finding in the process the great opportunities they had squandered through their 80 year policy of isolationism and negative policies which nearly bankrupted the country. Today, Turkey is on its way to becoming a great power again because it found its original roots again and is no longer running after Europe to regard them as equals and are happy to be important and prosperous players in the Middle East as they should have done before.
Turkey’s approaches to the middle eastern nations, making peace with Armenia and Greece and hopefully finding it imperative that the Kurds are an equal and substantial nation who must have all their national and cultural rights; and their rapprochement with Iran and the Arab people is a most welcome sign of realisation of the blunder I have been describing above.
On the other hand, it seems that both Arabs and other Muslim states are just starting to suffer the same inferiority complex which led to the isolation and subjugation of Turkey over the best part of the last century. Arab rulers have got on board the western train to oblivion and have abandoned all control to their tour operator while their wealth and nations are being usurped. The enormous wealth which they find themselves in possession of is not doing them or their nation much good. In fact much of that wealth is directed at the increased enslavement and oppression of their people by their political masters who are desperate to keep them divided not just among themselves but crucially within their own natural domain.
The Arabs are in such a pathetic state that they have started attacking their own religion, culture, way of life and mass converting everything and everyone to the model which has been imported from their masters. For decades the west has been rearing generations of Arab “missionaries” to convert everything from social and moral values to their history and actively brainwashing the population as a cancer cell does to all the cells it comes into contact with.
It is this relationship which carves the Arab policy towards Iran. Excuses however must be offered, unbelievable as they may be, to justify an aggressive and negative attitude towards the Islamic Republic. The West are trying their utmost to subjugate Iran to their will and are pulling all the stops, instructing all their men and lackeys to join ion the attempt to do so. The main excuses they have found for their Arab collaborators are:
Iran is a Shiite state and that makes it an enemy. The same Arab states making this charge have not shown the slightest interest in supporting Islam of any kind while under attack from their best friends and paymasters.
Iran has occupied 3 little Arab islands in the Gulf, forgetting that it was their British Lord and Master who bequeathed them to the Shah when Iran was also a servant of the US and Britain. Then no Arab ruler would dare open his mouth about them and were quite happy making lasting relations with him.
Iran has expansionist tendencies and will gobble up more lands and possibly threaten the Gulf States too.
Iran calls the Gulf, The Persian Gulf when it should be called the Arab Gulf. Such a ridiculous excuse is quite unbelievably stupid, childish and demonstrates the fallacy of the entire superficial conflict which has been drummed up by the west to meddle and interfere and weaken the unity of the Middle East neighbourhood. The simplest way to demonstrate this is to point to the fact that the world atlases which have been produced by the very western states that provoke the Arabs against the Iranians all call the Gulf the Persian Gulf so if anyone is to blame it is the British and other western states and not Iran. You never hear any Western Politician calling it “the Arab Gulf”. At best they would simply call it “The Gulf”. Secondly, the Arabs are at liberty to call it the Arab Gulf and they do. The Persian Empire predates any Arab awareness of the world and they were sailing the Gulf as a force to be reckoned with a thousand years before Islam and the end of the Age of Ignorance in Arabia. Calling the water way Arab or Persian is not important and only the very naive would pay any attention to it. The English Channel is called by a different name in France and that was settled decades ago.
Iran is developing Nuclear Weapons and that would threaten the Gulf States. This is a falsehood which the Arab media in the Arab states and their thousands of western trained and CIA recruited demagogues repeat in the Arabic media continually upon instructions from above, designed to make people look eastwards for fictitious danger when all the danger, aggression, and threats are coming from the other direction. Iran, Turkey and the Arabs who should be close allies as they share geography religion, much of their culture spanning over a thousand years and history will make a formidable force possessing all the means of a rebirth of an eastern bloc which would be self-sufficient, free and bring the entire area into the 21st century. The irony is that while Arab leaders warn of Iranian invasion they are already in a state of subservience and invasion by dozens of nuclear bases and sea-borne armaments which they pretend are there to defend them.
Iran supports Syrian, Hizbullah and the Palestinian resistance. This is true but could only be seen as a negative point against Iran if you are firmly in the enemy camp, working hard to help realise their projects and plans. Any Arab worth calling himself one should be extremely pleased for this. Egyptian government officials and thousands of US-grown and well-fed, well-clad and well-primed Egyptians who were taken to the US and UK to rear and train in matters of propaganda and intelligence after the Camp David conspiracy waste no time attacking Iran for doing that and spoiling the game for them. They would have finished off the Palestinians and Lebanon and Syria would have fallen into the hands of the Israelis and Americans by now but for that Iranian life line and that makes the Egyptian sphinx lose the rest of his nose and perhaps forehead too. The same Egyptian government that propagates unhealthy hatred of Iran is the best chums of Israel and has been strangling the Palestinians of Gaza conspiring against their simplest aspirations of a decent and honourable life. Egypt goes further than having a relationship on equal footing with Israel assuming the role of bodyguard and trusted servant to the extent of not only assisting Israel politically and logistically but also in condoning and supporting its attack, murder and destruction of their own people in Gaza. And to cap it all they have blockaded Gaza to increase to the maximum the effect of the damage and destruction caused by their Israeli masters. Yet the Egyptian leader and his propagandists spend all their time warning of non-existent Iranian invasions.
Iran played an evil role in Iraq. There is a great deal of truth in this. Unfortunately this is also where the strategic blunder started and is the main subject of this article.
The Arabs collaborating with their enemies are the very people who conspired against Iraq and allowed them into their bases and even funded them. Yet, they have managed to make Iran appear to be the one and only entity which helped invade Iraq purely because of this great weakness which Iran introduced into her own position when they supported the Shiite collaborators with the invaders and tried to take revenge from the followers and officials of the previous regime. Thus Iran needs to take a big radical step similar to that taken by Erdugan to reenter the Arab and Islamic world in style. The Turks recently discarded many of the ideals and prejudices of Attaturk, realised the futility of following a bloc which did not want them and resented their major religion, thus coming out of their 80 year self-imposed cultural and political isolation. Iran’s isolation by contrast is based on a sectarian divide and needs to be discarded in a similar way. Only then can a homogenous and effective Middle Eastern Bloc can be created.
Iran’s blunder is therefore twofold. It is partly the result of a desire to avenge the victims of Saddam’s war which was imposed on them upon the instigation by the US to avenge their humiliation at the hands of the followers of Khumeini and partly because of a misguided and prejudicial incident that occurred a very long time ago ending in the murder of the two grand children of the prophet Mohammed and his cousin Ali, son of Abi-Talib. Followers of the sect which is predominant in Iran today and their sectarian brothers in Iraq blame it all, quite unfairly and for political reasons which do not exist anymore, on the ordinary Muslims of today. The result is a long term feud which is not easily settled.
Even so, Iran has played a brilliant political chess game against the overwhelming odds of great power, trickery, conspiracy and technology. The Iranian leadership also faced a hostile and conspiratorial clique of Arab and Islamic regimes working covertly and more recently quite overtly emboldened by the success of the greatest treachery of all time executed by the Arabs against themselves resulting in the loss of Iraq, Afghanistan and their political golden-egg laying goose; namely, PALESTINE.
Iran plays the game well but sometimes her objectives are in doubt and may be contradictory. While they act as though the USA is their great enemy and the Great Satan and realise that they need to gather around alternative power blocs, in particular the blessing and cooperation of the rest of the Islamic and Arab worlds, they practice a somewhat sectarian behaviour which automatically pushes these blocs away. The political fallout of this situation is also twofold. It gives the treacherous Arab regimes which are in the American and Israeli pot a stick to beat them with and frighten their populations, portraying Iran as an empire-seeking and historic enemy of Arab nationalism and mainstream Islam and has a negative influence over their efforts to get closer to the peoples resistance movements who are mainly of the wrong sect.
The Iranian leaders do not deny that they were more than happy to get rid of Saddam and may have even helped from the intelligence and manpower points of view enabling easy access to Iraqi Shiite opposition and in a similar manner they did in Afghanistan. The idea was to get into Iraq and Afghanistan (both Sunni-controlled at the time) and to tie down the bulk of the US armies and air force, thus rendering them incapable of launching an attack on Iran itself. They achieved great success in all of those areas but unfortunately they lost the opportunity of becoming part of a radical and progressive liberation bloc including the peoples (as opposed to the regimes) and allowed the regimes to become more resistant to the advances of the Iranian leadership.
Thus, the total power of the USA and its western imperial club was added to that of their rich and mindless Arab and Islamic lackeys which along with enormous funds, media organisations and intelligence services is now engaged in reducing all Iran’s gains, bit by bit, until an opportune time when they will pounce on a much weaker and more disliked and isolated Iran. Iraq will then have been a small gain which will lead to greater and greater losses because of this terrible strategic error.
It is my view that Iran has nevertheless some very strong points and with the elimination of some of the conflicts in its policies much of their aims and goals of becoming a power to be reckoned with ion a Middle East free of Israeli and US hegemony, but they have to act swiftly, particularly n view of the latest UN resolution and the tendency of Russia and China to pursue narrower and more immediate interests.
My advice to the Iranian leadership is:
Stop raising doubts about the holocaust. In fact it is wiser to emphasise it as specific and horrific example of what the West is capable of. Moreover, it should listed alongside the atomic holocaust of Japan by the US, the holocaust of 2 million in Vietnam and the holocausts of 2 world wars that killed nearly 70-100 million people.
Stop backing the Iraqi Shiites blindly and to offer it’s real and genuine support to the resistance (as opposed to terrorists) admitting the mistakes made in the first few years of the invasion of Iraq when it encouraged revenge and the uprooting of Ba’athists and Arab nationalists. The Arab lackeys and Dumb-doms are spending a great deal of money to bribe political opportunists into attacking everything Iran does even if it is the best thing under the sun for them.
It should operate a policy of equal treatment of all Iraqis and make more pacts and strong links with willing Sunni states, stop its clerics from attacking the Sunni sect and all things that are insulting or accusing the other sect and concentrate on supporting resistance movements in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Lebanon, Palestine and so on.
It should make it absolutely clear to all those ion the Baghdad Green zone that it would withdraw all its backing from those who pursue the slightest sectarian policy and put all its pressure to get reconciliation particularly with those she had quarrels with in the past. It should support and push for a non-sectarian system of government, encourage really free and fair elections away from sectarian divisions. I believe rather than losing influence over the Shiites of Iraq they will gain influence over the entire Iraqi population and those who are part of the US-Israeli axis of hegemony will not be able to prompt the Arabs to choose between Iran and Turkey or divide the Muslim world along sectarian lines where Sunnis would follow Turkey an Shiites will follow Iran. The favourite pastime of the west has always been to dream up schemes to divide the rest of the world and conquer it. They will therefore use the sectarian differences not only to cut the influence of the two great regional powers but imagine the financial and military gains of a war between Turkey and Iran? That would not be too far from the strategic thinking of the war-mongers in charge of western international policies.
Basically it should back clean and patriotic Arab Shiites in the Arab world; the likes of Nassrullah and apply n Iraq the same successful policies as it has in Gaza and Palestine. Its policy towards resistance should be consistent and solid and not changeable or contradictory.
Out of the three possibilities of the occupiers remaining bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, succeeding in defeating the nations and keeping solid links with a puppet regime or being kicked out the last option is the only safe one for Iran and the region. The US and Israel will only keep out if they are defeated as it happened in Vietnam and Lebanon. By contrast note their remaining in Japan and Germany. More than 50 years after the occupation of Japan the Japanese people are still struggling to get rid of the Okinawa bases.
Strengthen its ties with the Muslim nations to its east, north and west and work out a common policy towards ethnicity and religion that will be beneficial to all
Stop the war of words about sectarian issues and concentrate purely on political goals.
Pursue a very cautious but friendly relationship with Russia and China. New Russia is a product of Western and Yeltsinite political husbandry with a rebirth of Christianity while the Chinese are early converts into pseudo capitalism which they have managed to grow larger and more economically powerful. That means their needs are greater than their principles and would not hesitate to abandon anyone in the middle of the sea. The Russians are therefore susceptible to Islamaphobia and the Chinese to Dollarfilia.
The best way to keep these two giants onside is to intensify trade and cultural links with the smaller states to their south and west.
It is unfortunate that international politics in the twenty first century should be so primitive as to depend on such narrow prejudices and traits but one has to deal with the situation as is and not as it should be. Thus the above suggestions are in my view the best recommendations for correcting the Iranian Strategic Blunder.
Finally a word for the western policy makers (the leaders just follow). The long standing policy of hegemony by deception and the stoking of the fire of conflicts around the world to gain from arms dealings and “reconstruction after the fact” cannot succeed forever. It will be eventually defeated and the repercussions very serious. British involvement may bring some quick gains at the point of invasion but any benefits will turn into a disaster and more and more of the British people distinguish very clearly today between patriotic service in the protection and defence of the country and sending young men and women to fight underdeveloped and poor nations for the sake of financial gains for multi-national arms manufacturers and oil cartels. The periodic of crating a model enemy to hate and fight has this time chosen Islam which is unlike the flash in the pan Nazi ideology or the ill-thought out utopian communism. Islam has been the religion of a billion people for over 1000 years and cannot easily be defeated with corruption and money. It is simply too big a bite to swallow and either a change of enemy is called for or abject submission to the will of 1.3 billion believers. I should add however that I am not a follower of any religion other than science and logic.
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