One of the United States’ top priorities in the Middle East is supporting authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes that are in line with Washington’s policies in the region. The priority of maintaining stability and security in the Middle East is entirely based on the defined interests of the United States in this sensitive region of the world, which has limited political freedom and hindered the establishment of the principles of democracy. Refraining from addressing the principles and concept of democracy discussed in contemporary political thought, the author defines democracy in the Middle East as granting citizens the right to self-determination and vote at the expense of the emergence of anti-American and even independent governments. This is the starting point for Washington’s confrontation with an intractable dilemma: on the one hand, loyalty to democracy in Iran in this sense in the 1970s and many contemporary Arab countries has always accompanied by the possibility of the changing of the structure of power in governments due to their ethnic, religious, and political realities, and ultimately the emergence of governments who do not follow the policies of Washington.
On the other hand, the extreme emphasis on pursuing a strategy of stability and security and its preference over democratic models is itself a critique of the prestige of American democracy and the policy of democratization in the Middle East. With this explanation, studying the United States political behaviours in response to two influential and prominent phenomena in recent decades in the Middle East, namely Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the current Islamic Awakening, indicates the re-adoption of the strategy of supporting authoritarianism in two different historical periods (the early 1980s and the beginning of the second decade of the second millennium).
In fact, re-adopting this strategy in the period between the occurrence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the recent revolutions in the Middle East reflects Washington’s insistence on pursuing the strategy of supporting authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. In principle, decades of United States support of the rule of Mohammad-Reza Shah and the Arab dynasties in the Middle East shows that democracy, i.e., the rule of the majority and the right of citizens to self-determination, by no means has been the United States’ number one priority in the Middle East. However, establishing stability and security by using and supporting non-democratic governments is the main United States priority in the Middle East.
The Strategy of the United States in Dealing with Iran’s Islamic Revolution
1. Trying to Prevent the Occurrence of a Revolution
In the United States diplomacy, the occurrence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution was defined as a sign of losing Iran’s role as the gendarme who serves Washington. Therefore, the first strategy of the United States in dealing with this issue was to prevent a popular anti-Pahlavi revolution in Iran. The concern of American strategists was to prevent the collapse of the pro-Western and pro-American military system, such as the Pahlavi regime, and the establishment of an anti-Western, anti-American government to which the Islamic Revolution could also give religious and ideological aspects. With this explanation, the United States took extensive measures to prevent the Islamic Revolution from taking place in Iran. In the words of William Quant, a member of the United States National Security Council under Jimmy Carter: “The Iranian Revolution terrified Washington. Fearing that the wave of revolution will spread throughout the Persian Gulf, we have decided to establish a security structure in and around the Arabian Peninsula to make sure that the Iranian Revolution will not spread to other countries.” All the behavioural indications of the United States in the process of the triumph of Iran’s Islamic Revolution show the seriousness of the Americans in pursuing their initial strategy of dealing with the phenomenon of the Iranian popular uprising in the 1970s, i.e., preventing the occurrence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Measures such as serious support for the Shah, creating, equipping and training SAVAK by the Mossad, directing political movements to fight the popular movement, equipping the Pahlavi regime with weapons used for repressing the people’s revolutionary movement, and attempting to do a coup similar to the August 19 coup under the leadership of General Huyser, are among the behavioural cues which show the adaptation of the strategy of preventing the occurrence of the revolution. CIA documents also fully illustrate the importance of Washington’s initial strategy in dealing with Tehran after the Islamic Revolution. As one CIA document states: “This revolution and its implications destroyed our position, dispersed our people, and turned our stable organization and methods into nothingness.”
2) The Strategy of Controlled Democracy
The inability of the United States to confront the popular movement of Iran’s Islamic Revolution has led American strategists to think of misusing people’s revolutionary potential to put their elements in power so that they could stop the anti-Western and anti-secularist Islamist aspect of the Iranian Revolution. In other words, after the role of the clergies and the Islamist movement in the triumph of the Iranian Revolution became clear, the United States, to divert the nature and function of the Islamic Revolution, sought to direct the process of democratization toward the empowerment of Western, or at least those who were neutral in dealing with the United States, by using the post-democratic open space which had been created in Iranian society. In general, during the Iranian revolutionary developments, the United States policy was to support Mohammad-Reza Shah in every possible way, but after the Shah departed from Iran on January 17, 1979, and the United States realized that it could not keep the Shah in power, it tried to keep Iran in the Western camp and prevent the Islamic system from coming to power.
The strategy of controlled democracy which became possible through adopting the approach of supporting the so-called moderate groups gained much importance especially after the failure of the policy of containment of the Islamic Revolution and the ineffectiveness of the idea of preventing the changing of the Western Pahlavi monarchy became clear. Understanding the inevitability of the occurrence of a revolution in Iran, the strategy sought to take advantage of the new, political, anti-monarchical and anti-dictatorial wave in the Iranian society using it for making a government with anti-monarchical, but Western or neutral to the-West, figures and currents so that to prevent the anti-Western Islamist forces from gaining power in Iran. According to one of the documents obtained from the United States Embassy in Tehran, after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, the United States policy was based on “making a deal with the new government.” “Bruce Laingen, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Tehran at that time, in a letter to the United States State Department wrote that, “Until the formation of a new government, we want all past issues to be resolved and no challenge or dispute should arise. Throughout these months, we would prepare the basis for a new government that we hope will have more effective power… According to the long-term strategy, the moderates should be in power and the anti-religious nationalists should have more power and freedom in governing the country.”
However, after failing to prevent the Islamic Revolution, the strategy of the United States focused on strengthening the moderate current led by the Provisional Government and weakening the anti-Western policies of religious forces led by Imam Khomeini. This idea pursued a kind of dual rule in the political system of Iran after the Islamic Revolution, which eventually led to the confrontation of two approaches based on nationality (Iran) and religion (Islam). James Bell says, “Even though after the Revolution, there were many examples of espionage activities in Iran, two of them played a key role, especially in the relationship between Iran and the United States. One was the role of the CIA in establishing relations with Banisadr, and the other, which had a more general aspect was that the CIA was trying to establish a relationship with a group of moderates who were involved in revolutionary movements. Both plans were carried out carelessly, and each led to a miserable defeat of the moderates and ultimately the demise of the United States’ only remained privilege in Iran.”
Having the notion of the possibility of the establishment of a national government consisting of liberal elements affiliated with the National Front in Iran, the United States government was one of the first countries in the world which formally recognized the interim government after the fall of Mohammad-Reza Shah’s regime. The United States was trying to expand its relations with Iran, and in return, the Bazargan government was willing to maintain its relations with the United States and even Americans and Iranian revolutionaries have negotiated in this respect. After the revolution, the Americans immediately recognized Iran’s revolutionary system, at least legally, and even negotiated with the leaders of the interim government. Relations between the two countries continued though they had been severely damaged in the post-revolutionary period. For this reason, it is not surprising that when, in early 1980, a Marxist group occupied the United States embassy, revolutionary forces who followed the discourse of Imam Khomeini’s Islamic jurisprudence quickly expelled the occupiers from the embassy and took the responsibility of protecting it; Because they were still trying to differentiate to some extent between the strategy of overthrowing Pahlavism from rejecting the United States. The policy and strategy of a controlled democracy towards Iran’s Islamic Revolution is largely rooted in the CIA’s approach and analysis on which the Islamic world in the Middle East should structurally depend on the West and at the same time preserve its legal and apparent independence.
In the final analysis, the United States government’s goal in pursuing this strategy was to take control of the political destiny of the revolution and divert the revolution, and ultimately to bring Iran back to pre-revolutionary political conditions. Therefore, we see in the documents of the United States-occupied embassy in Tehran how the United States sought to attract influential and important figures from the interim government, including Banisadr and Abbas Amir-Entezam, in order to remove Imam Khomeini from the country’s political scene. Finally, after the Revolution, attempts to coordinate the activities of liberal and moderate religious forces and linking them to nationalist, monarchist, and pro-regime elements against religious revolutionaries were considered by the United States State Department as the main missions of the United States embassy in Iran.
3) The Failure of the Strategy of Guided Democracy and the Radical Rejection of American Discourse
Accepting the Shah by American officials in the first months after the Islamic Revolution should be seen as the beginning of the “second revolution.” While the United States declared the recognition of the Shah as temporary and because of his illness, Iran’s revolutionary leaders were so skeptical about the intention and goal of the United States. In fact, the Shah’s travel to the United States when Washington had recognized the interim government and the members of the interim government still hoped to establish relations with the United States, further intensified the darkness between the two countries and acknowledged the notion that the United States is an enemy.
This issue is essentially a continuation of the close and intertwined connection of the Pahlavi hegemonic discourse with the United States, even after the Islamic Revolution, and as a result, a clear sign of the existence of a thick layer of “conspiracy” around the liberalist discourse of Jimmy Carter against the new discourse of the Islamic Revolution. This connection further highlighted the boundaries of enmity and alienation with the United States thereby wasting few opportunities that the United States could seize by politically recognizing the discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
On this basis, it is understandable why the anti-American process, which has begun in the 1960s and 1970s and contributed largely to the emergence and objectivity of the foreign policy discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, would become more objective and serious and that why left-wing and Islamic discourses overtook each other in expressing hostile views towards the United States and pursuing the strategy of rejecting an alien that is to say the United States. Henceforth, the discourse of political- jurisprudential Islam, while assuming that the United States is totally and seriously supports Israel and the Pahlavi regime, places the United States as the “main enemy,” who is incorrigible, and deserves radical and comprehensive rejection.
Until now, the United States has not been seen as an outsider and a staunch enemy that cannot be overcome and negotiated with. But in the months following the victory of the Revolution, events such as the growing uprisings and conspiracies that occurred in the early months of the revolution and threatened the existence of the system and the new and emerging discourse of political Islam and the Islamic Republic were creating and reinforcing this notion that the American government, as the “main instigator” behind these threats and conspiracies who seeks to overthrow the revolutionary system.
Thus, in the context of the text and discourse of the revolution, anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism would integrate all the sub-discourses of resistance which were influenced by the people promoting signs such as “surrender,” “being a puppet,” “those affiliated with Satan” and “followers of the Great Satan” and thereby labelling the United States and its domestic backers as an alien on the one hand, and rejecting the discourse of American foreign policy, on the other. In fact, recognizing the Shah by the United States reinforced the notion that Americans have been “plotting” to bring the Shah back to power in Iran. New signs of the objective and serious entry of the denial of the United States and the struggle against the Great Satan into the logic and order of the foreign policy discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran can be found in the messages and speeches of Imam Khomeini in early October 1979 when the United States recognized the Shah’s regime. In a message to the Hajj pilgrims in early October, he called on them to make the world aware of “the conspiracies of the right-wingers and the left-wingers,” especially “the aggressive and plundering the United States” and “criminal Israel.”
Attributing “all troubles” to the United States in Imam Khomeini’s speech shortly after this message indicated the beginning of a serious process of considering the United States as an alien in the new emerged discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy and the mentality and words of the most original and influential founder of the discourse of the jurisprudential Islam and the Islamic Revolution. In the view and words of the main founder of the discourse of the Islamic Revolution and Iran’s foreign policy, the United States has since been described as the “number one enemy to humanity.” The occupation of the United States’ embassy as an act of discourse should be seen as a radical reaction to what was called a “conspiracy” and the beginning of the objectivity of the enmity of Iran and the United States as well as the radicalization and escalation of the aspect of anti-Americanism policy in the foreign policy discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran which ultimately caused the failure of the American strategy in pursuing a democracy which has a special orientation.
Archive of The Thought of the Islamic Revolution
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