Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could not have asked for a better occasion. Speaking at the 29th anniversary celebrations of the country's Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad, one of the student leaders who participated in the seizure of the American embassy, reiterated his now familiar position on Iran's right to pursue a nuclear program.
The Islamic Revolution was conceived as an indigenous movement that sought to chart its own course, avoiding both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. While it began as a movement to depose the corrupt regime of the Shah, it adopted an anti-U.S. position after America agreed to let the Shah enter the country for cancer treatment. This led to the famous hostage crisis, after which the relationship between the two countries never healed.
Almost three decades after deposing the Shah and surviving a debilitating war with the neighboring Iraq that lasted eight years, Iran is the only stable regime in the Middle East today.
The country has many achievements to its credit. It has learned to live with the sanctions imposed by the U.S., though its economy has silently taken the hit.
Iran also has a vibrant cinematic tradition. While it produces many commercial movies, it is better known in the West for its art films, some of which deal with the ramifications of war and internal strife with an amazing cinematic sensibility. The films convey the deep impact that continued military interventions have had on life in the Middle East.
Another little-known fact about Iran is the high visibility of its women in public life. There are many women in civil service and in higher education. They also serve in the Revolutionary Guard, making Iran one of three entities in the Middle East that use women in their armed forces - the other two being Israel and the Kurds.
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But the jury is still out on what it means to live in Iran. While women enjoy a relatively high level of freedom compared to other parts of the Middle East, they are absent from positions of power, which is firmly concentrated in the hands of men. Human rights violations have tarnished the image of Iran in the eyes of the West. Public hangings of criminals have made it to the front pages of the Western media, attracting criticism from agencies such as Amnesty International. At the same time, the continued ban on Western cultural products, particularly films, has irked Western critics.
The nuclear program controversy has made matters only worse and brought Iran in direct confrontation with the West. Ahmadinejad is adamant in pursuing what he calls a peaceful nuclear program to meet Iran's energy requirements, while the West, led by the U.S., is against it. The U.S. maintains that Iran's uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear warheads which, it believes, will be used against it or Israel. Even the National Intelligence Estimate report that Iran suspended its nuclear program in 2003 has done little to ease the buildup.
While Ahmadinejad's saber rattling should be rightly condemned, other developments in the region do not help the situation. Israel, for instance, launched a spy satellite from India last month to monitor Iran's military activities. Iran will see this as a provocation aimed at undermining its capabilities.
Diplomatic offensives launched by the West have also aggrieved Iran. India entered into a deal with Iran to build a gas pipeline to India via Pakistan with the possibility of its extension to China. But the deal was scuttled by the U.S., which threatened it would not enter into a nuclear agreement with India if it went ahead with the proposed pipeline. In 2005, India was forced to vote in favor of a resolution at the IAEA, demanding that Iran's case be referred to the U.N. Security Council. Iran believes most countries that voted against it were coerced to do so by the West.
While Iran should be prevented from acquiring nuclear capabilities, the way to do so is through diplomacy and incentives and not by strangulating its economy or by threatening it with war. So far, China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, the European Union have been trying hard to prevail upon Iran to give up its nuclear program. Any military move at this point will only exacerbate the tensions in the Middle East.
At the same time, the nuclear club cannot indefinitely prevent other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons without discarding its nuclear arsenals. Such double standards feed into the insecurities of countries that are already bogged down by a conventional military disadvantage.
While Iran needs to tone down its anti-West rhetoric, it cannot alone redress the situation. The West needs to step in with overtures aimed at improving Iran's economy and assuring Iran that its security will never be threatened. If this happens, Iran may stop concentrating on its nuclear program and, hopefully, celebrate next year's 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in a more meaningful way.
