WAR ON IRAN – Holding three opposing ideas

By Ebrahim Rasool (Former Ambassador to the USA)

F. Scott Fitzgerald held that one of the signs of a first-class mind was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one’s head. The complexity of the current geopolitical situation globally probably requires our minds to hold at least three contradictory and opposing ideas at the same time if we are to navigate and make sense of the world today, especially the Middle East as the theatre of conflict.

What We Know

What most citizens of the world increasingly know as true is that a genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinian people, their lands occupied, and their prospects for a state are diminishing. They know that Israel is the perpetrator, and the USA is the enabler with arms and permission. Furthermore, it is becoming quite clear that diplomatically, South Africa and the Hague Group are holding them accountable in the ICJ, but also that Iran in the neighbourhood is the only country providing resistance and support militarily to the Palestinians through proxies. We also know that much of the neighbourhood is tied to Israel and the USA through the Abraham Accord – signed or unsigned – and therefore, have tied their long-term future, economically, to the West. We also know that the USA has maintained hegemony over the world with a combination of hard power (military) and soft power (aid and trade), but that the supremacism of Trump has shifted to domination – cutting all aid, imposing tariffs, threatening allies and enemies alike, and effecting a regime change agenda.

 Consequently, Trump is accelerating geopolitical shifts from USA unilateralism (dictating the global agenda) to a cautious multi-polarity (the emergence of multiple poles of influence) that could eventually see a multi-lateralism (contesting poles of power). Following regime change in Venezuela, it was always going to be Iran’s turn next. At Israel’s behest, and combining with the USA, they attacked Iran and assassinated its Supreme Leader, expecting that this would achieve the primary objective of regime change beyond false pretexts like nuclear weapons, democracy for Iranians, and an imminent attack on the USA.

Managing the dilemma

Iran’s response – its resilience, strategic choices, and operational capability – created confusion and a dilemma. Public opinion alternated between moments of clarity (it’s wrong to attack without provocation and rules); moments of confusion (why is Iran attacking other Muslim countries), and moments of division (are they even Muslim). Such moments become moments of strategic, ethical, and theological dilemma. A first-class mind must have the ability to weigh, sift, sequence, and prioritise multiple opposing ideas and beliefs, using tools from ethical and strategic frameworks: discerning the lesser of two evils; distinguishing crime from sin, the domain of the human from the divine; permissibility as default while impermissibility needs proof; choosing the easier rather than the difficult; and avoiding undue suspicion. How does this play out currently?

Dilemma One – Is this a cosmic battle between good and evil?

Iran is not an unadulterated force for good and its practices often dubious. It has been shaped by a combination of historical experience and ideological zeal. Historically, when it went democratic under Mossadegh, a USA-led coup re-installed a brutally despotic Shah; when it won liberation in 1979, it was subjected to a western-inspired, regionally supported destructive war conducted by Saddam; ever since it has been sanctioned and isolated; and whenever it negotiated (the Nuclear Deal), the USA reneged. History shaped Iran’s zeal: ideology under siege reinforces victimhood, and victimhood engenders totalitarianism; totalitarianism controls freedoms and rights, difference and diversity; and thus, surveillance and security are the antidotes to uprisings and regime change agendas.

The first-class mind can absorb this dilemma between historical injustice and totalitarian injustice. But the first-class mind must also be capable of understanding that the architect of the historical injustice cannot own the right to be the custodian of what it has subverted in Iran (democracy, rights, and freedom), in the Arab Spring, what it by-passes in the neighbourhood of Iran, and how it perpetrates the genocide of the Palestinians. The first-class mind defends Iran’s sovereignty and reduces its siege AND advances its people’s claim to democracy, rights, and freedoms.

Dilemma Two – why attack the Arab Muslim lands?

The Arab States have a conundrum: they are no match for Israel militarily because the USA does not sell them weaponry superior to what Israel is provided, and for which Israel does not have an antidote; in a world accelerating to a post-fossil fuel energy regime, oil and gas may have a century to go, and will not sustain them unless they are fast-tracked into a post-oil world by the USA through its proxy, Israel. Therefore, the combination of military powerlessness and economic dependence has frog-marched them to the Abraham Accord with Israel.

This conundrum leads to a trade-off. The Abraham Accord carries the seeds of both realism and betrayal: realism recognises Israel as a fact in the Middle East, but betrayal gives Israel silence amidst genocide. Realism sees the urgency of a post-oil economy, while betrayal allows the USA to have military bases in Arab lands, and realism now means such bases are only realistically against Iran, but betrayal implicates the one housing the aggressor in war. Therefore, when Iran’s military defence is founded on attacking both the direct aggressors (USA and Israel) and their bases in ‘neutral’ Arab lands -whether the military base itself, the fuel and other supply lines, or the accommodation housing evacuated soldiers, then Iran’s strategic calculus says to the Arab lands: call off your masters otherwise we all go down together.

The first-class mind has sympathy for collateral damage of innocent citizens and infrastructure, and the consequent instability and choking of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. It will have an impact on all of us. But these should have been in the calculus of the aggressor, not the responsibility of the defender facing an existential threat. The first-class mind can well comprehend that you cannot house the aggressor and expect someone you barely tolerated as a Muslim to act in a spirit of Muslim solidarity.

Dilemma Three – Are Iranians even Muslim?

Only when Iran responded by attacking USA bases in Arab lands, did we see the mobilisation of some of their clergy: they mobilised historical anti-Shia stereotypes (cursing of companions, how they pray, their belief system) and encouraged the idea of excommunication from Islam. This was for the consumption of the Muslim masses. At home, they counted the costs of a strategic error of housing the USA military. Hysteria for the masses, strategic recalculation for the leadership. Only when Iran attacked the Arab lands did we hear the fervent prayers for protection of Muslim lands, while no real fervour in praying for an end to genocide, for the deaths of 180+ girls at a school in Iran, or for an end to US-Israel aggression in the month of Ramadan.

A first-class mind can be bewildered or dismayed by aspects of Shia theology but be content to leave the final judgement to the Divine. It will wonder why there would be public pronouncements of the Shia being non-Muslim, but the same people issue Hajj and Umrah visas for Shias, especially if the holy precincts are barred for non-Muslims. A first-class mind will compare the silence of the majority in the face of Palestinian genocide with the punishment of Iran and the emasculation of its 3-H proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) and ask: Who else is defending Palestine? Ultimately, a first-class mind can dismiss sectarian rhetoric to understand how the USA-Israel war is strategically reshaping the Muslim world into zones of domination and extraction.

Quo Vadis?

Indeed, a first-class mind must sift and weigh the dilemmas and conclude: firstly, rules must always apply, because its opposite – impunity – is what makes might right and the world a jungle; secondly, there is no neat delineation of good and evil, but rather the lesser of two uncomfortable choices – who is the constant perpetrator and who the occasional? Who is the historical victim? and who has the moral authority to advise regarding rights, freedom and democracy. Thirdly, if Iran is destroyed, who else lies outside the hegemonic consensus that could inspire and assist resistance at the frontlines with Israel when the neighbourhood is tied into the Abraham Accord; fourthly, is this not the time for the Abraham Accord to argue that USA military bases and co-operation with Israel’s defence is a fundamental compromise as well as a magnet for endangering the Arab lands, and should end; and finally, if Iran’s battle for survival means inviting the USA to engage, not merely from the air, but in a ground war of blood and mud, the world would experience another Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, while unleashing the next generation of armed and trained militias.

A first-class mind is rooted in values, has ultimate strategic objectives, and is tactically astute, sometimes prioritising some objectives, delaying others, and co-existing uncomfortably with yet others.

*Ebrahim Rasool is the former Premier of the Western Cape and former Ambassador to the USA.