“After Babylon, Persia”

Last year, I described in details how the neoconservatives (together with their friends and allies of the Israeli Likud) had directly participated in raising people’s awareness regarding the invasion on Iraq. If we analyze the hypothesis under which the neoconservatives established the same guidelines to attack Iran, where are the facts then? This problem is found in three political realities that define the institutional and ideological environment of the US contemporary neo-conservatism and its impact on relations with Iran.
Firstly, the “global war on terror” and doctrine of preventive action of Bush administration have become two main pillars of the US foreign policy, which champions the use of military force against potential enemies even when they pose no immediate or indirect threat to the United States. For Norman Podhoretz, chief editor of the influential neoconservative magazine Commentary between 1960 and 1995, the “global war on terror” is just a way to define “a new type of imperial mission of the United States, whose objective is to favour the emergence of governments in the Middle East which would be characterized by providing more support to Western values than the one provided by the existing despotic regimes today”. After the fall of Baghdad, said Podhoretz, “the political and military logic will be that we would be obliged, eventually, to overthrow five, six or seven tyrannical regimes more in the Muslim world”. The doctrine of preventive strategic action announced in 2002 by Bush is the political justification of this plan. The country has to “face through the use of military force if necessary, the evil regimes that do not respect international laws”. Everything indicates in Washington that Iran is on the list of the next attack, as shown in the secret presidential guideline disclosed by the Washington Post.
Secondly, it is the constant characteristic of every neoconservative strategy that is aimed at discrediting all democratic processes, no matter how weak they might be, in the country which is a target in order to undermine the State diplomatic power in question. In Iran, elections are labeled by Michael Ledeen from American Entreprise Institute as a “theater of shadow plays, a comedy that is performed to deceive and prevent us from supporting the forces that seek a real change in Iran”. For Kenneth Timmerman, in an article widely broadcasted by the international media, the participation of the Iranian electorate is insignificant and the candidates are irrelevant because they were “evaluated and selected by the Mullahs”. Nir Boms, vice-president of the Center for Freedom in the Middle East and former liaison official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Elliot Chodoff, Israeli Army Commander and Abbas Milani or Michael McFaul, who are running the Project on Iranian Democracy of the Hoover Institution publish regularly distorting articles in this regard.
The third pillar is the organization American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that since one and a half years ago has made the Iranian nuclear question its central issue among US politicians. In May 2005, the AIPAC, more than ever before, presented a multimedia show set up by Walt Disney engineers in order to present the progress and dangers of the Iranian nuclear program. The AIPAC funds a think tank army and pressure groups that seek a change of regime in Iran, for example, the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) of the Committee for the Present Danger. While some support the monarchists of Reza Pahlavi, the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) lobbies in favor of the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) an organization which is, however, considered as terrorist by the United States and Europe. They were allocated three million dollars for the 2005 budget that was approved by the US Congress.
The neoconservative activists have come with the explanation for the conflict they are preparing in a personal presentation of international relations. It is in line with the institutions (for example, the Project for a New American Century); the language that would be immediately used and broadcasted by the media until it becomes a common place (for example “The Axis of Evil”); the coined phrases that distort the problem (for example “why do they hate us?”); and finally, the legitimate doctrines (for example, preventive action). This strategy turns the rest of the countries into simple replaceable variables. Preventive action and the “war on terror” become changeable and useful concepts for anything that enables recognizing any military action at a global scale. All local conflicts are just episodes of the same neoconservative project, the “Fourth World War” invented by Eliot Cohen and broadcasted by James Woolsey. Even when we are able to prevent a crisis, the US neoconservatives will be already planning the next one. The US neoconservatism is defined by war, a war launched by different means. It is up to the peace forces to put an end to a doctrine so corrupted.