04 February 2016By Amir Taheri
Foreign officials dealing with Iran since the mullahs seized power have often
wondered who is really in charge in Tehran. Chris Patten, a British politician
who served as the European Union's foreign policy point-man, once observed
that Iranian officials he dealt with always turned out to be ''actors playing
the role of ministers''.
Over the decades, scores of officials from all over the world have reached the
same conclusion after dealing with officials in Tehran including men bearing
the lofty title of President of the Republic. The impression is that Iran has
two governments: one that is presented to the outside world, and another that
wields real power.
Last week that impression was reinforced when Ali-Akbar Velayati, whose title
is Special Foreign Policy Advisor to the ''Supreme Guide'', flew to Moscow on
what he said was a ''mission to start the Islamic Republic's new strategy''
which was labeled as ''Looking to the East''.
Velayati's trip to Moscow was interesting for a number of reasons. To start
with, it was timed to immediately follow President Hassan Rouhani's visits to
Rome and Paris with the message that the Islamic Republic was seeking close
ties with Western democracies. Rouhani is also scheduled to visit Austria and
Belgium later this month.
In addition to this, Rouhani has missed no opportunity to send friendly
signals to the Obama administration in Washington. He has praised the US
president as ''intelligent and perceptive'' and claims to be in an epistolary
relationship with him.
Rouhani has noted that the world today is like a village in which America is
the ''headman''. Thus it is important for the Islamic Republic to foster good
relations with the ''headman.''
In fact, political circles in Tehran have nicknamed Rouhani and his entourage
as the ''New York Boys'', a faction of the Khomeinist regime that hopes to
imitate Communist China under Deng Xiaoping by forging close ties with the US
while maintaining the repressive one-party system at home. Their godfather has
been and remains former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a
wheeler-dealer who first established secret contacts with Washington in 1984,
triggering the ''Irangate'' scandal under President Ronald Reagan.
Since then, successive US administrations have pursued what has so far turned
out to be a chimera: helping the ''moderates'' led by Rafsanjani to eliminate
''hardliners'' led by Khamenei, closing the chapter of the revolution and
turning the Islamic Republic into another despotic regime that minds its own
business without making trouble for the US and its allies.
During the past 150 years, how to balance hostile foreign powers against one
another has been a key preoccupation of Iranian leaders. In the heyday of
European Imperialism, Iranian elites were divided between Anglophiles and
Russophiles: a choice between ''pest'' and ''cholera''.
In the 1950s, as Britain faded and Russia re-emerged as the USSR, Iranian
elites were divided between pro-Americans and pro-Soviets. Muhammad Mussadeq,
who briefly served as Prime Minister, started as pro-American but ended up
dreaming of what he called a ''negative balance''; that is to say keeping both
east and the west at an arm's length.
To deceive the Mussadeqists, with whom he had a tactical alliance against the
Shah, the late Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini launched his slogan of ''Neither
East nor West''.
In practice, however, Khomeini regarded the US as the most dangerous enemy of
his ideology and the Soviet Union as a far lesser threat. The reason was that,
for many Iranians, America was attractive for cultural, scientific, economic
and even political reasons while the USSR was unable to attract even Iranian
Communists most of whom were Maoists, Trotskyites or Castrists.
Khomeini approved the attack on the US Embassy and the seizing of American
hostages but vetoed similar moves against the Soviets. He invited Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev to convert to Shiite Islam and believed that
anti-Americanism was enough to tie Moscow and Tehran together.
Khamenei is aware of all that. This is why he decided to clip the wings of the
''New York Boys'' before it was too late. Last November, as the ''New York Boys''
were making a song and dance about their ''nuke deal'' with Obama, Russian
President Vladimir Putin flew to Tehran, went straight to Khamenei's palace
and pointedly ignored Rouhani and Rafsanjani. It was after that meeting,
described by Velayati as ''epoch making'', that Khamenei coined the phrase
''Looking to the East''.
Will Khamenei be able to contain the ''New York Boys'' in the context of a new
anti-American axis with Russia? Tehran and Moscow share a number of
objectives.
Both want to capitalize on the American retreat under Obama and make sure that
the US doesn't return to the regional scene as the decisive power. In that
context they want to keep Bashar Al-Assad in place in Syria, albeit in a
pocket of territory, for as long as possible. They also want to consolidate
the influence that Iran, and to a lesser extent Russia, have gained in Iraq
and Lebanon while ''Finlandizing'' some members of the Gulf Cooperation Council,
notably Oman and Qatar.
In Moscow on Monday, Velayati spoke of Russia and Iran as ''guarantors of peace
and stability'' in a vaguely defined region stretching from Central Asia to
North Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.
The trouble is that Russia is deeply unpopular in Iran while there are few
Russians who have lost any love for the Islamic Republic. While some four
million Russian tourists went to Turkey in 2015, Iran, promoting ''halal
tourism'', attracted a few thousand. Trade between the two neighbours is also
limited simply because Russia has nothing that Iran wants to buy and Iranians
cannot tempt Russians away from western products.
Tehran and Moscow have a centuries-old tradition of mutual suspicion and one
effect of this has been their failure, after 25 years of negotiations, to
decide a common legal regime for the Caspian Sea.
For more than 2500 years, the direction of the Iranian ''historic gaze'' has
been to the west while Russia, newcomer to history as a state, has also looked
in that direction since the 19th century at least.
Finally, mere anti-Americanism is not enough for building a new global
strategy for either Russia or Iran. Khamenei's ''Looking East'' is a failure
even before it is translated into concrete policies.
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran, London
and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and 2004, he was a contributor to the
International Herald Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post, the New York Times, the London Times, the French magazine
Politique Internationale, and the German weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005, he
was editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt. Taheri has published 11
books, some of which have been translated into 20 languages. He has been a
columnist for Asharq Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book "The Persian
Night" is published by Encounter Books in London and New York.
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