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May 26, 2003
The US is just not happy with Iran. So it is shifting away from supporting the elected government of President Mohammed Khatami in its battle with hard-line clerics to a more radical policy of destablizing the Government. It is talking about working to topple it with a popular uprising. I presume this kind of confrontation by the neocons is called ensuring regional stability. For two speeches on Iran from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) see here and here.
I am sure that this destablizing with a made-in-America stamp all over it will go down a treat in the Islamic world. It will be seen as the US playing an overtly imperial role of direct intervention in regional politics of sovereign Arab states.
And Alexander Downer, Australia's Foreign Minister, duly repeats Washington's lines. He issued a tough, last-chance call to Iran yesterday to crack down on al-Qaeda terrorists allegedly in the country;warned Iranians not to interfere in political developments in Iraq in relation to leaders of Iraq's Shiite majority in Iran calling for the establishment of an Islamic state;and urged that Iran sign a protocol enabling unfettered access to its nuclear facilities by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
This is Canberra acting as the mouthpiece of the US in the Middle East.
We can ask: What concern is Iran for Australia? Surely, what the Iranians do in their region is no business of ours … What if Iran is full of men engaged in doing evil non-liberal things? That does not mean that we should act as policemen threatening to round them up; or acting as judges finding them guilty of evil deeds and to sentence them with an invasion! Surely, as a nation we have no national interest in what Iran does inside its own country.
Is not Downer, in so acting on behalf of the US, really speaking in the name of a western arrogance that is backed by US military power? We don't have the fire power to destablize Iran. So why is Downer making threats an delivering a tough, last-chance call? He sees the military victory in Iraq as a first step in a Middle East policy to radically change the region through the direct and indirect use of American power.
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Gary, you've summed up the situation eloquently, as usual. Iran and it's politics is no business of Australia, any more than it is any business of the U.S. The repercussions of being seen as the 'bestest-buddy' of the fascist state that the U.S. has become don't bear consideration, especially when we'll be the ones pushed to the front of line when Islamic fundamentalists pick out the most convenient target of opportunity.