Are some countries just plain nuts?

In a speech to students at a university in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, among other things, that Israel should be “wiped off the map”.

Needless to say, the Western nations reacted angrily, but perhaps more of a surprise was the chilly reaction from the Palestians themselves. Their chief negotiatior, Saeb Erekat, commented that “Palestinians recognise the right of the state of Israel to exist and I reject his comments”. In Israel itself, this has been seen as yet another reason why Iran should not be allowed to become a nuclear power. If Ahmadinejad would like see Israel obliterated, then nuclear weapons would give him the means to do that.

But is it really as simple as this? Is Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government just a bunch of nutcases out to start the Third World War in a country that seems hell-bent on souring any kinds of diplomatic relations with Europe or the United States.

Probably not.

There’s an old saying that “all politics is local”, and Ahmadinejad’s words have to be read in context, not just as a statement to Israel and the West, but also to his own people, not all of whom support him. Iran is, ironically, one of the very few Middle Eastern countries with something that can, with a certain stretch of the definition, be considered to have a representative government that reflects the broad will of the people. It isn’t a democracy by any definition, but over the decades since the overthrow of the Shah it has, in some ways, adopted some democratic ideas. Of course it still has an appalling human rights record, and ultimate power remains in the hands of the conservative clerics who channel Iran’s political development through the boundaries of “Islamic revolution”. There’s good evidence that some elements within the Iranian government still view terrorism as a legitimate part of their ‘foreign affairs’, and have sponsored a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas.

But, here and there, you can find signs of ordinary Iranians striving for political power and freedom of speech. Iranian arts, particularly literature and cinema, are flourishing and respected even on the world stage, and bilateral co-operation between European and Iranian institutions is gradually being normalised. Just last month, a huge exhibition of Iranian antiquities opened in the British Museum in London, under the banner of “The Forgotten Empire”, a reminder to many in the West that the Persian Empire was the first world empire and in many ways just as important and influential as the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians.

The tragedy is that in one speech, Ahmadinejad has managed to undo massive amounts of slow, often difficult, diplomatic, economic, and social reconciliation. More tragic for the Iranians, the pictures of parading student activists burning Israeli flags on the streets of Tehran shown on the BBC and CNN play right into the hands of those who’d like to “wipe from the map” if not Iran itself, then certainly the Islamic Republic.

The majority of Iranians live a hard life, they’re poor, have few prospects for betterment, and are continually harangued by both government and the clerics that most of their ills have, at base, some connection with the way the Europeans and Americans tried to exploit their mineral wealth. As a historical point, it’s hard to argue with this — Britain and America did indeed collaborate to topple the reformist, quasi-socialist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Their motive was to ensure than Mossadegh didn’t nationalise the Iranian oilfields. The subsequent autocratic rule of the Shah after this, characterised by a favouring of Western interests in Iran over native ones, meant that apart from a small elite, most Iranians never benefitted from their countries tremendous wealth.

None of this justifies wanting to wipe out Israel, however. But the parallels with other countries are obvious enough. After the French Revolution in 1789, within twenty years Napoleon had formed his Grand Army and swept across Europe. Adolf Hitler managed to turn the collapse of the old German state into a fertile ground for creating an new expansionist, totalitarian one.

Turning mass discontent into a potent political force therefore isn’t new, and it isn’t unique to Iran. Ahmadinejad is using Israel, as a symbol of Western “occupation” of the Middle East, to bind together different strands of public discontent into something he can use. Though he’s unlikely, and probably unable, to use it militarily, he can still use the fear factor to nudge Europe and in particular America into treating him in a more cautious, favourable way. At home, he can please the clerics and shore-up his own hardline base.

As a self-confessed bleeding heart liberal, it’s difficult for me to view such cynical, dangerous posturing without worrying about the potential outcome. There are a lot of innocent people in Iran, Israel, and elsewhere that could get swept up in this through no fault of their own. The Iranians genuinely do have a beef with regard to the way the West has treated them since the Second World War, and both the UK and the US have much to apologise for. But apologies won’t get heard while people are shouting for death to their enemies.

Neale Monks