Brian M Downing
Iran has recently offered to assist in a new probe of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina – an event often attributed to Iran and its Hisbollah ally. Iran has hinted at exculpatory evidence, but this, while interesting, is unlikely. Another motive might be at work.
Iran is raising the issue of world terrorism and presenting itself as having endured numerous attacks over the last few years. Sympathy will not readily flow toward the Iranian clerics whose regime has not been innocent in similar endeavors, and whose oppression has drawn considerable attention around the world.
However, there has been a slew of recent incidents against Iran and complicity may well attach, embarrassingly, to other states.
Attacks inside Iran
Over the last few years several attacks have taken place inside Iran, aimed at halting its nuke program and effecting regime change. Some have been military targets and as such fall outside the definition of terrorism, but others have clearly targeted civilians and can be seen as terrorism. While Iran has internal groups capable of such action, many of the attacks almost certainly have had foreign support.
In February of 2007 a bomb blast in southeastern Iran killed 18 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In April of the following year a mosque in the southwestern city of Shiraz was bombed, resulting in over 200 casualties. In January 2010 a nuclear physicist was assassinated and two more were killed the following November. In October 2010 explosions rocked an IRGC base in west-central Iran.
Aside from these incidents, low-level insurgencies smolder in the northwestern Kurdish region and in the southeastern Baloch region. Tribal grievances against central government are the stuff of Persian-Iranian history dating back centuries, but those today are supported from without. A group or two seeking to bring back the Pahlavi monarchy make their presence felt.
External Support
A few years ago there would be little doubt but that most of these acts were supported if not directed from the US as part of the neoconservative strategy of bringing regime change. Iran, after all, had been identified as part of the Axis of Evil, and Iraq, one of the Axis powers, had been invaded and defeated.
But Iran thwarted the neo-conservative ambitions by directing Shiite militias against US forces. The attacks dropped off markedly in early 2007, as did US threats against Iran – a sign that a confidential agreement had been reached between the two states. Chess is thought to have begun in Persia and its practice is better training for foreign policy than football is.
Israel, of course, is gravely concerned over Iran’s nuclear program and livid that the US has backed away from confronting Iran more forcefully on the matter. Israel has had longstanding ties with Kurdish groups in both Iraq and Iran. Largely forgotten now, Israel could once count Iran as its closest ally in the region, as they both opposed Arab powers, especially Iraq after Saddam Hussein took power in the 70s. Israeli intelligence officers operated from the safety of Kurdish Iran and conducted operations across the border inside Iraq.
Israeli intelligence worked with Iranian and Iraqi Kurds to limit the forces Saddam could deploy against Israel and Iran. With the destruction of Saddam’s army in the First Gulf War (1991), Israel saw Iran as a growing threat and began to use its Kurdish assets to cause trouble in Iran. Today, Israeli intelligence officers operate from the safety of Kurdish Iraq and conduct operations across the border inside Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s concern with Iran’s nuclear program is intensified by its fear of growing Shiite power in the region – a dynamic begun with the Khomeini Revolution in 1979 and greatly strengthened by the ouster of Saddam, whom the Saudis saw as an ally against Iran, though a rather mercurial one. Saudi Arabia is as livid over US inaction as is its strange Israeli bedfellow.
Saudi intelligence is not as dextrous or lethal as that of Israel but it brings vast financial resources and extensive influence in the Sunni world. The Saudis are coalescing disparate Sunni forces of Iraq to counter Iranian influence there and, in conjunction with Pakistan’s intelligence services, supporting Baloch militants in southeastern Iran and also countering Iranian influence in Afghanistan.
Iranian Response
Tehran has responded to these actions more cautiously than might have been expected. Its Hamas ally has increased rocket attacks into Israel; Shiite militias in Iraq have renewed their attacks on US troops after a lengthy respite; and the IRGC is giving the Taliban more sophisticated weapons.
Nonetheless, and despite Saudi claims, there has been thus far no discernible effort on Iran’s part to stir up Shiite groups in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Gulf states. Nor has the IRGC retaliated directly against the states supportive of assassinations and bombings inside Iran – again, thus far.
Iran is developing a protracted diplomatic response. Tehran hosted a conference on the issue of world terrorism last month, which was widely viewed as propagandistic and unblushingly incongruous, but the UN sanctioned it and influential Iranian allies, most notably China, lauded it.
Iran is unlikely to win substantial sympathy around the world. It may be able to present a case that it is taking more than it has given. It will further note that sanctions, currency manipulations, and computer viruses are one thing, but bombings, assassinations, and insurgencies are quite another.
States less doctrinaire and more practical than Saudi Arabia and Israel – EU states and smaller Gulf states, perhaps – may be important. Iran may be able to underscore to them the dangers of intrigue and provocation in so economically-vital a region.
Gunboats of numerous flags and of antagonistic outlooks ply the same narrow straits. Shiite populations in the region do not need distant mullahs to point out oppression to them. Events can get out of control, sending oil prices skyrocketing and gravely worsening the global economic situation.
These more practical states may also point out the ineffective and counter-productive nature of such attacks. Historically, they do not usually undermine support for regimes. On the contrary, they tend more often to coalesce support for them, problematic and even oppressive though they might be.
There may be some urgency to Iran’s effort. The US has been forced from a more aggressive stance vis-a-vis Iran by the latter’s chess moves in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the US pieces will be almost entirely off the Iraqi board in 5 months, and in the next year their numbers will decline significantly in Afghanistan as well.
At some point in the troop reduction, Israel and Saudi Arabia will press the US to return to its more aggressive stance vis-a-vis Iran. Each of those powers has a great deal of influence in Washington; combined they may be irresistible. American foreign policy, after all, has been known to stray from the sobriety of its national security under the influence of lobbies. Paradoxically, a US departure from region – an objective of Iranian policy for many years now – may be destabilizing and highly problematic for Iran.
©2011 Brian M Downing