Forever Enemies? American Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

• Author: Fuller, Graham E.

IRAN IS PROBABLY the most emotional foreign policy relationship to confront America since the Vietnam War. Given the high drama that has characterized dealings between the two countries in the last two decades, it could hardly be otherwise. First, there was the stunning and unanticipated collapse of America's good friend, the Shah. Against the background of the love affair of various American presidents with the glitter and pomp of the Peacock Throne; the major strategic role assigned by Washington to Iran that began during the Nixon administration; and the concomitant, huge, lucrative role of American companies and defense industries in Iran, this collapse amounted to the biggest setback America has ever encountered in the Middle East. Then, in rapid succession, came Iran's seizure of the American Embassy in 1979, its detention of American hostages for nearly two years, and Carter's humiliatingly bungled desert rescue mission to save them. All this brought the Carter presidency down. Reagan's Iran policy, too, simplistically implemented and fatally damaged by the illegal Nicaraguan Contra connection, cost his administration dearly. It even tainted George Bush and made his whole administration gun-shy on Iran.

American policy failure is just one side of the story. The Ayatollah Khomeini, a stern black-robed Old Testament figure, presented a phenomenon that Americans have been quite unprepared to deal with. Yes, we Americans know that we can be stupid, make mistakes, and formulate bad or even disastrous policies. But Khomeini was the first to say that we are evil, the Great Satan; he conjured with such terms as "America, the global arrogance" and taunted Washington by saying that "America cannot do one damn thing." Several years have passed since the death of the Ayatollah, but America and Iran have scarcely lessened the visceral character of the confrontation. Washington policymakers are fearful of even touching the poisonous Iranian issue lest it infect them too. We were, it appears, born to hate each other--at least at this juncture in history.

Nor is it just a matter of ideological opposition. We opposed the Soviet Union for over forty years, yet there is not the same intense hostility to Russians among Americans. Russians, to be sure, did not kill Americans. (Vietnamese did, but even in their case most Americans are ready to forgive and forget what was a national trauma, America's first military defeat of sorts in modern times.) Iran is more unsettling to us as a country because of the apparent national hatred it nurtures and projects towards the United States, and especially for the dark, seemingly implacable religious character of that hatred and the regime that embodies it. As a nation we are culturally ill-equipped to understand the passions of religious policy. American political science, based on its Western "rational actor" school of political analysis, knows not what to make of religious zealotry, suicide bombings, and the concept of martyrdom as an integral part of the political process. Iran has invoked the resources of an entire culture--that of Islam--to marshal forces against the evil Americans, and the results of its efforts are only beginning to be apparent. Political Islam--Islamic fundamentalism--is on the march, and it scares Washington more than any other political force since the heyday of messianic communism. It knocks on the door of political power in important states such as Algeria and...