The inspiring Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion already has one positive consequence a thousand miles to the southeast — it should end, once and for all, the dangerous calls in Israel and by the U.S. Israel lobby to step up attacks on Iran to change the regime there.
Vladimir Putin apparently expected that Ukrainian resistance would collapse quickly, and that the Russian invaders would have a cakewalk into Kiev. Instead, Ukrainians rallied around their government, and president Zelinsky’s popularity shot up overnight. A month later, their ferocious defiance is once again proving a central truth; even people who don’t like their rulers won’t accept foreigners who try to dictate to them at gunpoint.
The unhinged calls to overthrow Iran’s government are not confined to the fever swamps of the far right. Just last December, 7 former U.S. government foreign policy hawks, including General David Petraeus and Leon Panetta, who headed both the Defense Department and the CIA, publicly called on the U.S. to threaten to attack Iran. They said:
We believe it is vital to restore to restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force against it by the United States.
Earlier, a 2020 Washington Post opinion article, also written by members in good standing of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment, was entitled: “Regime change in Iran shouldn’t be a taboo.” Its tortured logic ended with:
Seeking regime change isn’t rude. It is pragmatic, cost-sensitive, humane and — in the best sense of the word — liberal.
Putin’s view that the Ukrainians would not resist the Russian military was not entirely an illusion. Ukraine has long-standing political and cultural ties to Russia; a significant proportion of its people are actually Russian-speaking; the country has only been independent for 30 years.
By contrast, Iran is a nation with a powerful, long-standing identity. John Ghazvinian notes in his recent, magisterial history of U.S.-Iranian relations that:
. . . Iran is one of the world’s oldest, proudest and most enduring civilizations. . . Iran has had 3000 years of (mostly) continuous nationhood. . . Iran is one of the very few nation-states that can legitimately claim to have existed more or less continuously since antiquity. . . Cultural, historically and politically, Iran has an extraordinarily strong sense of its identity and its regional significance.
For years now, Israel, apparently with at least some U.S. acquiescence, has been conducting a terror campaign inside Iran. The distinguished Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that this campaign has included “assassinations of nuclear scientists, explosions at nuclear sites, cyberattacks, attacks on Iranian ships, extensive airstrikes against pro-Iranian militias in Syria. . .”
The prevailing theory is that at least some of these attacks in Iran are carried out by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), an extremist opposition group. (The cult-like group has ties, probably including financial links, to top Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and to former national security adviser John Bolton.) Expecting Iranians to support the MeK is absurd, not least because the cult fought alongside Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s army during his 8-year war against Iran in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Israel and the pro-Israel lobby have an immediate fear; the talks in Vienna to restore the Iran nuclear deal are apparently going well and nearing an agreement. The Biden administration is preoccupied with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the last thing it wants is another crisis in the Middle East. What’s more, Israel’s refusal to stand squarely with the U.S., NATO and the Ukrainian government has not gone unnoticed. The pro-Israel lobby is surely already working overtime at damage control.
While I agree with the sentiment, reality says otherwise.
Israel and the US have learnt nothing (other than hypocrisy) from their litany of failures at regime change. The US still can’t get its head around its own Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria disasters, while Israel has been occupying, oppressing, and controlling Arabs for 3/4 of a century, and hasn’t learned a damn thing after its attempt at regime change in Gaza. They keep making the same mistakes and even more enemies in the process. I seriously doubt they’ll take anything away from Ukraine that they haven’t already dealt with firsthand many time over.
If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that if you are a nuclear power like Russia, the US, or Israel, you can basically do whatever the fuck you want with little to no consequences. And if you are a non-nuclear power like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, or Iran, you can expect to get bent over a barrel and fucked in every way possible.
Need more evidence? Take a look at the Middle East’s biggest exporter of state sponsored terrorism to the West. No. Not Iran. Pakistan. Pakistan has exported more terrorists to the West than nearly anyone else outside of Saudi Arabia. Pakistan was harboring al Qaeda militants within its borders for years while the US was still playing the sand in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan was harboring Osama bin Laden and god knows how many other terrorist leaders. It’s a fundamentalist breeding ground that would make bin Laden himself blush. Pakistan also just happens to be nuclear armed state. So we do fuck all when it comes to them. We can’t officially label them a state sponsor of terror, because that would effectively trigger the AMUF and we’d be legally obligated to act against a recognized nuclear power. Can’t have that! So we look the other way and pick on, bully, invade, occupy, and change regimes in non-nuclear states instead.
No wonder nations like Iran flirt with their nuclear ambitions. Look what it’s done for Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. And look what disarming did for Ukraine. For one it’s got Iran a seat at the negotiating table… TWICE!
Nuclear Israel keeps bleating on about how Iran is always threatening it with destruction, yet who exactly is threatening whom? While Iran rattles its saber and writes ‘Death to Israel’ on missiles it never fires, Israel and the US actively and routinely violate Iran’s sovereignty killing their scientists, generals, leaders, and seeking regime change.
Making the people suffer in hopes of getting them to dump the regime they live under DOESN’T WORK. Look at Cuba. They may not like their government but they love their country. Ditto Iran. Ditto Ukraine.
This post is empty. The fact is: it is very difficult to overthrow a regime of tyrants. It is not impossible, but but it is difficult. This is particularly true when over 30% of the populace supports the dictatorship. There is a large group of people in Iran (primarily rural) who support the regime. There is a larger group of people in Iran who oppose the regime and would like to see regime change. I can’t testify to numbers, but if there was really support for the regime, why don’t they offer free elections. They don’t, not only because they believe in imams before democracy, ,but because imams know that they would be kicked out of power if they had real elections. But in the short term, 10 to 20 years, there is little chance of overthrowing the regime. That is the essence of the matter. Not because the people rally behind the flag due to opposition to outsiders, but because there is an iron fist wielded by the imams and the imams know how to use that 30% support to stay in power. Dictatorships are not that easy to overthrow.