The Enmity Conspiracy, or How War with Iran Became ‘Inevitable’

July 21, 2012
The Diplomat
by Trita Parsi
http://thediplomat.com/2012/07/21/the-enmity-conspiracy-or-how-war-with-iran-became-inevitable/

 

The U.S.-Iran conflict has acquired an air of inevitability. The last ten years appear as a slow-motion prequel to a pre-destined outcome: War. While structural factors have helped push the two actors towards confrontation, there has never been anything inevitable about this conflict. Rather, a long series of miscalculated escalations have brought the two states to the current deadlock.
Iran and the United States are entrapped in a paradigm of enmity. Within the mindset of this paradigm, both assume the worst about the other's intentions. The “other” embodies almost pure evil, and everything it does is aimed at making life more difficult for you. The gradual adoption of this mindset has created a self-fulfilling prophecy—acting on those assumptions has further entrenched the two sides and rendered a solution to their tensions more difficult. All actions of the other have been interpreted from a lens of absolute, unwavering suspicion. Information that appears to vindicate the mistrust has been seized upon, while data that contradict it

 

have been dismissed, neglected or disbelieved. Moreover, according to the conspiracy-like understanding

 

that has emerged from this mindset, the other side is believed to have a magnificent grand strategy. All its actions “fit” into this grand strategy and push the country closer and closer to its assumed goal.