[lit-ideas] Iran (4), The Soviet Substitute
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 09:23:58 -0800
Berman on page 11 writes, "Tehran's troublemaking may have started during
the Cold War, but it did not end with it. The dissolution of the U.S.S.R.
in 1991 sidelined what had been the principal sponsor of international
terror for the preceding four decades. As a result, a bevy of radical
organizations in the Middle east suddenly found themselves without a patron.
"Then came the first Gulf War, and with it the shattering of old illusions
in the Middle East. Not only did the conflict painfully demonstrate the
inadequacy of regional militaries, it also served to fragment the
traditional symbols of Arab nationalism in the region - Saddam Hussein's
Iraq and Hafez al-Assad's Syria. The first was discredited militarily, as
Iraq's vaunted Republican Guard crumbled before U.S. and Coalition forces.
The second was bankrupted politically, as Damascus joined the U.S. -led Gulf
Coalition against its Ba'athist twin.
Iran was ready with an answer: it's own, radical brand of Islamic
revivalism. Iranian leaders dusted off plans for Islamic outreach that had
been moribund since the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. And they
embraced the notion of a return to Iran's true calling - the exportation of
the Revolution. As one Iranian leader put it at the time, 'What could we do
in order to enter the world scene? We need a force which the enemy does not
possess, and this is the force which is superior to technology and to arms.
What we need as a balancing force is the newly born, fully-alert, and ready
to sacrifice Islamic force. If the Islamic Republic is supported by such a
force . . . then its movements would be taken seriously.' (emphasis added)
"That official was none other than cleric Mohammed Khatami, then Iran's
Minister of Islamic Guidance, and more recently its 'reformist' president.
"Iran's ayotollahs were perfectly position to play that role. Over the
course of the Cold war, Iranian revolutionaries - along with Palestinian
militiamen, Cuban Marxist radicals, and a host of other unsavory characters
- had been educated in subversion, propaganda, guerilla warfare, and
anti-Western ideology in the Soviet system. Iran's Supreme Leader, the
Ayatollah Ali Khameinei, is himself reportedly the product of the Kremlin's
premier finishing school for third-world radicals, the notorious Patrice
Lumumba University in Moscow.
"Iran's new status as terrorist sponsor extraordinaire was on display in
February 1993, when it convened a summit of radical groups in Tehran. The
meeting, organized by Iran's Intelligence Ministry, the Pasadaran, and the
countries Supreme National Security Council, generated a game plan for
global 'Islamic revolutionary action.' As part of this process, the Iranian
regime also earmarked half a billion dollars for insurgency operations world
wide.
"The results were not long in coming. Islamic militants in Turkey had
already taken the initiative, launching a campaign of assassinations against
the country's leading journalists, authors, and secular intellectuals
between 1990 and 1993. Officials in Ankara charged that the killings,
carried out by a group called Islamic Action, were made possible through
assistance from Iran. Eight years later a Turkish court confirmed hat
connection when it handed down a verdict against forty-one of the Action's
members in which it declared that their terror spree had been 'supported
with arms and funds by the Iranians.' Tehran also expanded it sties to the
Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK), building on a relationship established
during the late 1980s to provide the radical Kurdish separatist group a
territorial base and training for its violent insurgency campaign against
Turkey."
[Further examples of Iran's achievements to follow]
Lawrence
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