Second of a series
THE United States maneuvered to oust Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh from office in 1953, bringing back Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from exile. The Shah himself was later removed during the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini become the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Relations with the United States further worsened with the hostage of dozens of American diplomats and civilians by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979.
In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran to forestall the possibility of the Iranian revolutionary influence spilling over to their country; the US provided tactical support for Iraq during the conflict. The Iran-Iraq War lasted until 1988 with devastating consequences. The United States also imposed various economic sanctions on Iran that eventually eliminated trade and investment between the two countries. Iran continued to be a thorn in the side of the Americans and allies in the Middle East by supporting radical organizations such as Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
To highlight the complexity of US foreign relations, the Americans established a back-channel with Iran to cooperate in mutually beneficial efforts in Afghanistan against the Taliban, including the Bonn Agreement of 2001 to pave the way for US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-backed state-building efforts in the war-torn country.
For Filipinos and the Philippines, a junior diplomat of ours with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Angelito Nayan, was taken hostage by an armed group in Afghanistan in 2004. According to the DFA, Nayan was “seconded to the joint electoral committee connected with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan” at the time of the incident. Nayan — together with two other fellow hostages — was released in Kabul, Afghanistan, after 27 days of captivity. Incidentally, Nayan is personally familiar to me as he was the student council president at Adamson University Boys High School when I was a freshman there in 1987.
In 2002, US President George W. Bush, during his annual State of the Union Address, lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea as part of the so-called axis of evil forcing Tehran to halt back-channel meetings with the Americans concerning efforts against al-Qaida operatives and the Taliban. After the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 purportedly to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to end Saddam Hussein’s support of terrorism and to free the Iraqi people,” Iran supported local Shiite militia during the ensuing power vacuum. According to a Reuters report:
“... Iraqi Shiite militants fought the Americans with Iranian support after the 2003 US invasion toppled Sunni ruler Saddam Hussein. The militants went on to embed themselves in Iraqi government institutions.”
Even though there is a sizable pro-Iran proxy militia in Iraq, these forces have supposedly “hollowed out” in the succeeding years, according to a Reuters source, due to the following factors:
– Israel and America’s war of attrition against regional allies.
– The loss of Syria as a supply line.
– The transition of commanders into Iraqi political and economic life.
By the time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president of Iran in 2005 focus shifted to the US-Iran nuclear tensions. Ironically, Iran’s nuclear program began with the US-sponsored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who built the country’s first nuclear research facility in the 1960s to harness nuclear power for nonmilitary purposes. Under the Shah, Iran was one of the original signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970. Iran’s nuclear program was stalled after the Revolution of 1979 and essentially for the entire duration of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s time as Supreme Leader.
Iran’s nuclear program restarted in the 1990s with the help of Russia and China, primarily for civilian purposes. However, it is believed that Iran also proceeded with a parallel development of nuclear technology for weaponization covertly. A covert uranium enrichment center in the city of Natanz was exposed to the public only in the early 2000s. Initially, uranium enrichment in Natanz was halted in 2004 but with the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005, it was resumed. Natanz was also targeted by a sophisticated malware called Stuxnet in a James Bond-type operation in 2010, allegedly undertaken by US and Israeli operatives. According to Paul Kerr, John Rollins and Catherine Theohary for the Congressional Research Service:
“In September 2010, media reports emerged about a new form of cyberattack that appeared to target Iran, although the actual target, if any, is unknown. Through the use of thumb drives in computers that were not connected to the Internet, a malicious software program known as Stuxnet infected computer systems that were used to control the functioning of a nuclear power plant. Once inside the system, Stuxnet had the ability to degrade or destroy the software on which it operated. Although early reports focused on the impact on facilities in Iran, researchers discovered that the program had spread throughout multiple countries worldwide.”
Iran was likewise exposed to have built another secret nuclear facility, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, inside a mountain near Iran’s 7th largest city, Qom, in 2009. The covert construction of the facility as well as its fortified position stoked fears that Iran was building a secret bomb.
President Barack Obama signed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010, which Russia criticized because the “new restrictive measures [were] directed not only against Iran, but against foreign companies and individuals who cooperate with it.” The law, according to a contemporary report by RIA Novosti news agency, “applies extra penalties on countries working with Iran across a variety of sectors, from oil to insurance and shipping.” A Russian foreign ministry official warned the United States that bilateral relations between their countries were “seriously affected” by the far-reaching consequences of the new law.
To summarize, while oil politics continue to figure prominently in United States-Iran relations, concerns about Iran’s nuclear agenda and its implications for the development of WMD took center stage at the turn of the new millennium. This, however, could not be divorced from other security-related developments in the region.
To be continued