Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
These are all indications that history, up to this point in time, did not need to turn out as it
did. Other outcomes were possible.
Geography dictates that Iran will be pivotal to the trend lines in the Greater Middle East
and Eurasia, and it may dictate how it will be pivotal, but it cannot dictate for what purpose
it will be pivotal. That is up to the decisions of men.
As I write, true to the innovative imperialist traditions of its medieval and ancient past,
Iran has brilliantly erected a postmodern military empire, the first of its kind: one without
colonies and without the tanks, armor, and aircraft carriers that have been the usual ac-
companiments of power. Rather than classic imperialism—invasion and occupation—Iran,
notes author and former CIA field officer Robert Baer, is a superpower within the Middle
East by virtue of a “three-pronged strategy of proxy warfare, asymmetrical weapons and an
appeal to the … downtrodden,” particularly legions of young and frustrated males. Hezbol-
lah, Tehran's Arab Shiite proxy in Lebanon, Baer points out, “is the de facto state” there,
with more military and organizational heft, and more communal commitment, than the
official authorities in Beirut possess. In Gaza, Shiite Iran's furtive military and financial
aid, and its “raw anticolonial message,” seduced poor Palestinians trapped in Soweto-like
conditions, who were alienated from contiguous Sunni Arab states run by the likes of the
former dictator Mubarak. 35 Iran, a thousand miles away to the east, felt closer to these
downtrodden Palestinians than did Gaza's border with Egypt under Mubarak's rule. This,
too, was the Iranian genius. Then, at least through 2011, there were the friendly govern-
ments in Syria and Iraq, the former of which clung to Iran for dear life as its only real ally,
and the latter of which has a political establishment enmeshed with the Iranian intelligence
services, which can help stabilize the country or destabilize it, as they wish. Finally, there
is the Persian Gulf itself, where Iran is the only major power with its long and shattered
coastline opposite small and relatively weak Arab principalities, each of which Tehran can
militarily defeat on its own, undermine through local fifth-column Shiite populations, espe-
cially in Bahrain as we have seen, or economically damage through terrorism in the Strait
of Hormuz.
Though forbidding and formidable, that most important element, again, having to do
with enlightenment, is absent. Unlike the Achaemenid, Sassanid, Safavid, and other Iranian
empires of yore, which were either benign or truly inspiring in both a moral and cultural
sense, this current Iranian empire of the mind rules mostly out of fear and intimidation,
through suicide bombers rather than through poets. And this both limits its power and sig-
nals its downfall.
Iran, with its rich culture, vast territory, and teeming and sprawling cities, is, in the way
of China and India, a universe unto itself, whose future will overwhelmingly be determ-
ined by internal politics and social conditions. Yet if one were to isolate a single hinge in
Search WWH ::




Custom Search