Why U.S. elites are suckers for war with Iran

The U.S. policy elite, usually of both parties, hates Iran with a recurrent, near-maniacal, fury that is not shared by most of us.

I thought about this when I read that one response to the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani was a rush of queries to Google about a military draft. Are we being drafted into yet another war in the far off place we call "Middle East"? Seems so.

I've probably written this summary before but it seems worth repeating. What explains the endless elite animosity toward a country about which few of us think very often? I see three streams that intermingle.

Historic guilt
Persia -- modern Iran -- is unlike most of the countries we use and abuse in the so-called Middle East. Its boundaries are not some accidental affliction inherited from European colonial conniving after World War I as is true for most of the Arabic-speaking countries. Persia, an ancient Farsi-speaking Shiite Muslim land, was and is more or less what it has always been: a rich and diverse nation that is conscious of its history as the center of the civilized world when Europe was a feudal backwater.

In the aftermath of World War II, Iran was on its way to becoming a modern parliamentary democracy. British oil companies combined with a cowboy C.I.A. agent, Kermit Roosevelt, to overthrow its elected Prime Minister in 1953 and stick the unhappy Iranians with several decades of repressive, authoritarian rule led by the oil companies.

In 1979, Iranians -- left, right, and center -- rose up to take back their nation. Such eruptions are not neat and orderly and Iranians ended up with the Shiite Islamic rulers who still run the place. (Repressively, we should understand.) Along the way, nationalists seized the U.S. Embassy, grossly mistreated U.S. diplomats, and crowed over their dramatic escapade. Protection of diplomats is a real imperative of any international law-based system, but it's understandable that many Iranians didn't much credit the U.S. commitment to good behavior. The ensuing 444 day hostage crisis became a domestic political football in the U.S. and helped bring down Democratic President Jimmy Carter who looked ineffectual while Ronald Reagan wandered around beating his chest. (He was, after all, a celluloid cowboy.) For a slice of the U.S. elite, of which our current president is an exemplar,

If it’s always 1979, it’s always 1979.

David Graham

Iran remained hostile the U.S. while the U.S. remained hostile to Iran. During the entire 1980s, we encouraged and funded Iraq's Saddam Hussein in his war on the Islamic state, a murderous conflict that killed at least half a million combatants.

Iran didn't take U.S. hostility sitting down. In 1983 Iran almost certainly was responsible for helping Hezobollah, its allied Lebanese Shiite militia, carry out Beirut suicide truck bomb attacks which killed 241 U.S. military personnel, 58 French military personnel and 6 civilians. For a somewhat younger slice of the U.S. foreign policy elite, this was the opening act of a war with Iran they've never given up on. It's little remembered today, but that era's pseudo-cowboy president knew better than to be drawn into overt hostilities: Reagan quickly withdrew U.S. troops from Lebanon.

In the years since, Iran and the U.S. have warred covertly with a few episodes breaking into public consciousness as when we shot down an Iranian civilian airliner and they supported and trained Shiite Iraqis fightings against the U.S occupation after 2003. Then again, sometimes these enemies have been temporarily on the same side as when Iran, in operations led by the assassinated General Soleimani, helped the U.S. find al-Qaeda terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. Iran, too, wanted ISIS eradicated. This is a complicated part of the world -- a little much for monochrome U.S. thinking.

Our sick relationship with the state of Israel
In the U.S., relations with Israel are about domestic politics. Given the (more and more inaccurate) assumption that the route to the (tiny) Jewish vote runs through fealty to Israeli political aims, U.S. politicians have more often than not been onboard with Israeli demands we stand in for them in containing Iran. Israel does have something to worry about. Unlike their venal and repressive Sunni Arab neighbor states, Iran is a modern country of 80 million people, scientifically educated and capable of making a real threat if it came to hostilities. The Obama-era "Iran deal" was meant to walk back the threat of Iran advancing toward nuclear capability.

This wasn't good enough either for Israeli right wingers or our right wingers. They didn't want Iran constrained. They wanted the country obliterated. Trump did their bidding by violating the nuclear deal and thus pushing the region toward hot war.

And then there are our rapture-seeking evangelical Christian whack doodles ...
Apparently Secretary of State Pompeo is one of these, as is Vice President Pence. These nutcases believe that the Persians are tools of Satan and fighting them will bring on the battle of Armageddon, bringing back their weird version of a Messiah. Or some such. If they manage to start a war with Iran, they are just helping fulfill Biblical prophecies.

I cry: "Heaven preserve us!"