Hypint the threat from Iran by Barbara Slavin

Hyping the threat from Iran

Barbara Slavin

War talk against Iran is rising again in Washington as the Bush administration enters its final months with little to show for its labors in the Middle East. Yet the consequences of attacking a third Muslim country in seven years could be far worse than an already precarious status quo. Iran hawks anxious to blunt Iran's growing regional influence also fail to grasp the real constraints on Iranian expansionism, instead creating a bogeyman that, like Saddam Hussein, may turn out to be a chimera.

There is no doubt that Iran's reach has increased considerably since 2001. Toppling Hussein and the Taliban eliminated Iran's worst enemies and allowed it to build on long-standing ties with Shiite co-religionists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran has benefited from the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute to forge new ties with Hamas and to deepen its relationship with Hezbollah. After the Bush administration rejected offers to negotiate with Iran without preconditions in 2003 and 2006, Tehran accelerated a nuclear program that could give it the material to make bombs.

But to respond to these challenges by ordering a military strike on Iran risks solidifying Iran's gains, putting American soldiers and U.S. allies in Iraq in an untenable position and sending already stratospheric oil prices over the moon. An attack would also reflect an exaggerated view of Iran's real capabilities and goals.

Iran's reach is limited by the U.S. military presence in the region, domestic weakness and historic divisions between Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shiites and among Shiites. The most popular cleric among Shiites around the world is Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who, though born in Iran, has lived in Iraq for the last half-century and opposes theocratic rule.

A country whose boundaries have barely changed since the 16th century, Iran is not able to or interested in recreating the Persian Empire and is not about to become a second Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. As Mohammad Atrianfar, a veteran publisher who is close to former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, told me recently in Tehran: "We are not going to stretch our legs beyond the capacity of our carpets."

Those who fear a rising Iran tend to see a few patterns, not the whole tapestry. Thus they miss the fact that Iran's goals appear to be largely defensive: to achieve strategic depth and safeguard its system against foreign intervention, to have a major say in regional decisions and to prevent or minimize actions that might run counter to Iranian interests.

In its efforts to achieve those goals, Iran has re-armed Hezbollah but does not dictate that group's actions. When Hezbollah recently showed its muscle by occupying much of West Beirut, senior Iranian officials said the decision was made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah without prior consultation with Iran, in reaction to Lebanese government moves that threatened the organization's military communications.

In Iraq, Iran has become embroiled in a proxy war with the United States through support for the Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr and renegade militias. Iran is also providing assistance to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in hopes that whatever Shiite faction comes out on top in Baghdad will be beholden to Tehran.

Still, there are limits to Iran's power in Iraq. Iraqi leaders, including those who once lived in Tehran, want to retain ties to the United States to balance relations with Iran. There is little affinity between Iranians and Iraqis, even those who share Iran's Shiite faith. This is a consequence of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq started and which killed more than a quarter of a million Iranians, as well as grievances that go back centuries. I well recall being told by an Iranian, as violence mounted in Iraq in 2006, "What do you expect? They killed our Imam Hossein." The reference was to the most emotional event in the history of Shiism: the murder of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson in 680 by the army of the Sunni caliph, Yazid, on the plains of Karbala.

Iranians, with a long historical memory, also see their pre-Islamic culture as superior to that of the Arabs and bemoan the seventh century battle of Qadisiyya, when the Arabs defeated the Persian Empire and converted its subjects to Islam by the sword. Many Iranians are not happy to have their hard currency earnings lavished on what they regard as "Arab" causes and would prefer that the money stays at home. March parliamentary elections focused on Iran's high inflation and mismanaged economy. Pragmatic conservatives are already lining up to run against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in elections next year - elections he could lose unless a U.S. attack rallies the Iranian people around him.

For policymakers in this U.S. administration and the next, it is critical to see Iran in its true dimensions. Many analysts remain convinced that Iran would curtail malign behavior in return for an end to U.S. sanctions, progress toward Arab-Israeli peace and full integration into regional forums and the international community. "At some point, Iranians will be willing to trade the Arabs for the United States," said Adnan Obu Odeh, a former Jordanian information minister and ambassador to the United Nations. "They want to survive."

Barbara Slavin is a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the author of "Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation," (St. Martin's Press, 2007). The views expressed here are her own.