Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 27, 2003; Page A20

When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, flew to Saudi Arabia in October, his hosts denied that the visit had anything to do with the looming war in Iraq. Use of Saudi territory to facilitate a U.S. attack on Iraq was out of the question, senior Saudi officials told reporters.

In retrospect, the Myers trip marked the start of five months of intensive military cooperation between Washington and Riyadh that played a crucial role in the U.S. victory over Saddam Hussein. According to sources close to the negotiations, Saudi Arabia ended up agreeing to virtually every request made by the Bush administration for military or logistical assistance.

In addition to allowing the United States to run the air war against Iraq out of a Saudi air base, the Saudi government provided U.S. Special Operations forces secret staging grounds into western Iraq and granted overflight rights to U.S. planes and missiles, officials said. Saudi Arabia also tapped into its vast oil reserves to help restore stability to the oil market at a time when prices had hit their highest levels in more than a decade, oil industry sources said.

Taking place against a background of enormous public unease in both countries over U.S.-Saudi relations, the cooperation over Iraq suggests that the controversial alliance between Washington and the Saudi royal family is stronger than often portrayed, and will survive the aftermath of the U.S. military ouster of the Iraqi government. While some adjustments are inevitable -- including a scaling-back of the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia -- the basic oil-for-security bargain struck between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz in February 1945 remains intact.

On the public level, U.S.-Saudi relations have been seriously troubled since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and on the Pentagon. According to recent opinion polls, 97 percent of Saudis now view the United States in a negative light. Americans have been alarmed by the Saudi funding of extremist religious groups and the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers who took part in the 2001 attacks were Saudi citizens.

The evidence of the past few months, as well as conversations with U.S. and Saudi officials, suggests that both governments seek to cast the relationship in a light that fits their domestic needs and foreign policy goals. At the very time Saudi leaders were denouncing U.S. policies toward Iraq, for example, they made a strategic decision to facilitate a U.S. invasion. While U.S. officials talk about the virtues of democracy in the Middle East, they have shown little interest in free elections in Saudi Arabia, which would almost certainly be won by Islamic groups opposed to the United States.

The relationship could come crashing down if, as some commentators predict, Saudi Arabia is swept by political and economic turmoil. For the time being, however, official Washington is continuing to bet on the autocratic House of Saud as the best means of ensuring continued U.S. access to a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves.

With such exceptions as the governments of Britain and possibly Israel, few foreign governments enjoy the degree of diplomatic and personal access to the heart of the Bush administration as Saudi Arabia's.

During the run-up to the war, contacts between the two sides deepened, officials said. The generally smooth cooperation between Washington and Riyadh contrasted with the much more turbulent, and ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations with Turkey over the opening of a northern front against Iraq. The administration has pointed to Turkey as a democratic model for the rest of the Muslim world. In practice, however, the administration found it much easier to negotiate with an authoritarian government free of the constraints of public opinion.

Now that the war is over, both the U.S. and Saudi governments have signaled that they will soon begin talks about the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, and particularly the 4,500 U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at the Prince Sultan air base south of Riyadh. The aviators' principal mission -- enforcing the southern "no-fly" zone in Iraq -- ended with the toppling of the Hussein government.

The presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil has been one of the major grievances exploited by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in his diatribes against Washington. But even if the Air Force role is sharply reduced, officials say that other U.S. troops will remain.

The Saudi decision to cooperate with the United States over Iraq reflected a political calculation that the administration was determined to go ahead with the ouster of Hussein, no matter how much opposition it encountered.

The Saudis "bent over backwards not to get in the way of the U.S. military plans, while reassuring their own population that they weren't doing anything extra," said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "From the point of view of political acrobatics, it was quite a skillful show."

Related Links

Live OnlineYoussef M. Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discussed the Saudi peace proposal for the Middle East.

Marriage of ConvenienceIn the first of a three-part series on U.S.-Saudi relations, Post reporters David Ottaway and Robert Kaiser report that, after Sept. 11, the Saudi Leader's Anger Revealed Shaky Ties Part 2: Oil for Security Fueled Close Ties Sidebar: Enormous Wealth Spilled Into American Coffers Part 3: After Sept. 11, Severe Tests Loom for Relationship Sidebar: Viewing Oil as a Bonding Agent Live Online discussion with Post reporters, Robert G. Kaiser and David Ottaway

<a href=asia.reuters.com>Reuters Tue April 22, 2003 11:58 AM ET By Pascal Fletcher

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (Reuters) - Half a world away from Iraq, Arab merchants in Venezuela's Caribbean island of Margarita swap gossip and finger prayer beads as they serve customers in this traditionally bustling free port.

Like Arab nations and communities around the globe, most of Margarita's well-established Muslim traders bitterly oppose the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an unlawful and unjustified attack against their race and religion.

But the Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians who have made this tropical resort and duty-free zone their home for decades are even more angry about what they see as another American affront, this time leveled directly against them.

Allegations by a top U.S. military chief that Margarita is a base for radical Islamic groups posing a potential terrorist threat have angered both the 12,000-strong Arab community and the government of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.

"We have nothing to do with terrorism here. Pure business, that's what we do," Naim Awada, who emigrated from Lebanon 20 years ago, told Reuters in his clothing store in Porlamar.

All around him, shop names like Nabil Import, El Laden Mustafa and Flower of Palestine attest to the strong Arab presence on Margarita, an island of tourist hotels, arid hills and abundant beaches off Venezuela's eastern Caribbean coast.

Arab community leaders and Venezuela's government say the allegations by the Pentagon's top soldier for Latin America, Gen. James Hill, are really part of a wider campaign by foes of Chavez to try to discredit the populist president abroad.

They say Chavez' opponents, who have failed to topple him over the last year despite a short-lived coup and a crippling two-month anti-government strike, are seeking to paint him as a dangerous anti-U.S. maverick collaborating with terrorism.

The debate is more than just academic for Washington because Chavez, a former paratrooper and coup plotter elected in 1998, rules over the world's No. 5 oil exporter that is also one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the United States.

VISCERAL HATRED OF ISRAEL

In testimony to Congress in March, Gen. Hill, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command, said his country was concerned about what he called the "possible activities of radical Islamic groups on Margarita Island in Venezuela."

Probes into potential terrorism hot spots increased after the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States.

Hill said money laundering and arms and drugs trafficking in Margarita and in the tri-border region between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil were generating several millions of dollars a year in funds for militant Middle Eastern groups like Hizbollah and Hamas, considered "terrorist" organizations by Washington.

On the teeming boulevards of downtown Porlamar, Venezuelan Arabs do not hide their anger over the Iraq war, their visceral hatred of the governments of Israel and the United States or their sympathies for Hizbollah and Hamas.

"Of course, we back Hizbollah, but there is no terrorism here," said Ziad Faiad, 39, who came from Syria 14 years ago. "We don't back Saddam Hussein. We support the Iraqi people."

Many Margarita Muslims say they admire Hizbollah for its resistance to Israel in southern Lebanon and support Hamas as a legitimate defender of the rights of the Palestinian people.

"It is natural that people should identify with the religious leaders that they have," Abdallah Nassereddine, an Arab community leader and businessman, told Reuters.

"No Arab ever came to Margarita with a plan to act against the United States," added Nassereddine, who is president of Venezuelan-Arab Federation which represents most of the estimated 1 million Arab immigrants and their families.

He said the terrorism allegations had hurt the image of Venezuela's top vacation destination. Margarita's tourism is already in the doldrums because of the severe economic recession triggered by a year of domestic political turmoil.

On top of this, foreign exchange controls introduced in early February are squeezing the business of many Margarita Arab importers. "Sales are down 95 percent," Awada said.

EVIDENCE HARD TO FIND

Concrete evidence of the presence of Hizbollah and Hamas members in Margarita is hard to find.

The 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured 200, raised international alarm about the presence of Islamic militants in Latin America.

Three years later Venezuelan security police detained three Lebanese-born Arabs in Margarita in a probe of a suspected cell of members of Iranian-backed Hizbollah. But the suspects were freed and results of the inquiry were never made public.

Fears of a Venezuelan terrorist connection surfaced again in February this year when a Venezuelan Muslim, Hasil Mohammed Rahaham-Alan was arrested at London's Gatwick airport with a hand grenade in his luggage. He was held under Britain's anti-terrorist laws.

Non-U.S. security experts give some credence to U.S. allegations about the presence of radical Muslim groups in Margarita. "It may serve as an R and R (rest and recreation) facility and is certainly used for finance raising," said one European expert in Caracas, who asked not to be named.

Ariel Kurtz, whose Tel Aviv-based security consultancy SIA has analyzed the threat of radical groups like Hizbollah and Hamas in Latin America, said the accusations of fund raising and money laundering among Margarita's Arabs seemed credible.

But experts are skeptical about media reports of terrorist training camps being based in the western half of Margarita.

Barely an hour's drive from the high-rise hotels and apartments of Porlamar, the scrub and cactus-covered western Macanao peninsula is largely inhabited by poor fishermen whose seaside shacks lack basic amenities. The words "we want water" daubed on walls are a testimony to the peninsula's neglect.

DOMESTIC POLITICS A FACTOR

Gen. Hill's comments, magnified by heightened world tensions over the war in Iraq, have been seized on by domestic foes of Chavez, who cite them as evidence of the president's alleged anti-U.S. intentions and tolerance of "terrorism."

Chavez, who staged a botched coup bid in 1992, angered Washington in 2000 by becoming the first foreign head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War.

His critics accuse him of using his friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro to try to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela, and of cooperating with leftist rebels fighting the U.S.-backed government of neighboring Colombia.

Chavez, who despite his vocal condemnation of the war in Iraq has kept on shipping oil to the United States, denies the allegations, dismissing them as a "diabolical media campaign."

Interior Minister Gen. Lucas Rincon called on Gen. Hill to back up his accusations about Margarita with proof.

"If this gentleman has this information, well, he should pass it on and we will investigate," Rincon told Reuters.

But he said Venezuelan inquiries, which have included a probe of bank accounts in search of suspicious transactions, had not produced any evidence of terrorists on Margarita.

"We do not support, nor have we ever supported, terrorist groups ... If we manage to detect a terrorist, then of course we will act," Rincon said, angrily cutting short an interview.

Pressed for details to back up Gen. Hill's public accusations, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said he could not give any more information as this could compromise ongoing U.S. intelligence investigations

<a href=www.khilafah.com>Atrueword.com uploaded 01 Apr 2003

As Mark Twain once noted, prophecy is always difficult, particularly with regards to the future. However, it is a safe bet that as soon as Saddam is toppled one of the first tasks of the America-backed regime will be to restore the US dollar as the nation's oil currency.

In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil for euros, moving away from the post-World War II standard of the US dollar as the currency of international trade. Whilst seen by many at the time as a bizarre act of political defiance, it has proved beneficial for Iraq, with the euro gaining almost 25% against the dollar during 2001. It now costs around USD$1.05 to buy one Euro.

Iraq's move towards the euro is indicative of a growing trend. Iran has already converted the majority of its central bank reserve funds to the euro, and has hinted at adopting the euro for all oil sales. On December 7th, 2002, the third member of the axis of evil, North Korea, officially dropped the dollar and began using euros for trade. Venezuela, not a member of the axis of evil yet, but a large oil producer nonetheless, is also considering a switch to the euro. More importantly, at its April 14th, 2002 meeting in Spain, OPEC expressed an interest in leaving the dollar in favour of the euro.

If OPEC were to switch to the euro as the standard for oil transactions, it would have serious ramifications for the US economy. Oil-consuming economies would have to flush the dollars out of their central bank holdings and convert them to euros. Some economists estimate that with the market flooded, the US dollar could drop up to 40% in value. As the currency falls, there would be a monetary evacuation by foreign investors abandoning the US stock markets and dollar-denominated assets. Imported products would cost Americans a lot more, and the trade deficit would be magnified.

It is foreign demand for the US dollar that funds the US federal budget deficits. Foreign investors flush with dollars typically look to US treasury securities as a means of secure investment. With a large reduction in such investment, the country could potentially go into default. Things could turn very bad, very quickly.

In May 2004 an additional 10 member nations will join the European Union. At that point, the EU will represent an oil consumer 33% larger than the United States. In order to mitigate currency risks, the Europeans will increasingly pressure OPEC to trade in euros, and with the EU at that stage buying over half of OPEC oil production, such a change seems likely.

This is a scenario that America cannot afford to see eventuate. The US will go to any length to fend off an attempt by OPEC to dump greenbacks as its reserve currency. Attacking Iraq and installing a client regime in Baghdad may have a preventative effect. It will certainly ensure that Iraq returns to using dollars and provide a violent example to any other nation in the region contemplating a migration to the euro.

An American-backed junta in Iraq would also enable the US to smash OPEC's hold over oil prices. The US or its client regime could increase Iraqi oil production to levels well beyond OPEC quotas, driving prices down worldwide and weakening the economies of the oil producing nations, thus lessening their likelihood of abandoning the dollar. It would have the short term effect of reducing the profits of domestic oil companies, but the long term effect of securing America's economic hegemony.

The frequently offered canard of the Left that this war is being fought to secure oil revenues for American oil companies may have some truth to it. However, a more plausible explanation may be that the Bush administration is waging war to protect the dollar and smash the OPEC hold over international oil prices. It's a war whose purpose is bigger than Halliburton or Exxon: it's a war being fought to maintain America's position in the world.

Attending the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, George Bush Senior told the world that, "the American way of life is not negotiable". As cruise missiles rain on Iraq, we are learning just how 'non-negotiable' that way of life really is. Source:  ATrueWord.com

www.iranmania.com Tuesday 16 April 2002 - IranMania.com

Please note that this is a user submitted article, and has not been commissioned by IranMania. It is 'user opinion'. IranMania does not accept responsibility for the accuracy of submitted articles.

Can we learn from our fathers' mistakes?

Why did the Iranian modern middle class go into an alliance with the Mullahs against the Shah? Why cannot secular minded Iranians agree on a political platform even though they all want the same things?

It is high time that we Iranians start to ask and answer these questions regardless of our political opinions if we want to find a way out of our current impasse. In any country, any nation, democratic or semi democratic, military dictatorship or theocratic tyranny, there is always an inner sanctum of power, a control chamber where the state's vital interests, its very existence is protected.  In a democracy, the membership of that higher council is elective. In Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt, they have elections but the military top brass are the final arbiters of power and therefore in charge of distinguishing the country's best interests. In pre revolutionary Iran, the secular intellectuals were in charge of the control chamber, the "deep state". In any moment of serious crisis the consensus of the secular intellectuals had the final and conclusive word on the course of the events. The Iranian secular leadership was far more competent than their counterparts in similar societies .The 1979 Iran or even 1960s Iran was far ahead of Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Brazil, Venezuela, Malaysia or Thailand in terms of economic development, the material basis of modernization. Political development, the building of the intellectual basis of the institutions of civil society did not however materialize. The question then becomes why was not democracy institutionalized in Iran while education and economic development clearly flourished? There has been a range of answers so far:  The institution of monarchy and the personality of Mohammed Reza Shah were the biggest impediment to democracy in Iran or Mohammed Reza Shah was a megalomaniac by nature since he liked to fly airplanes and would always take his picture with Damavand in the background. (See Marvin Zonis, "The Majestic Failure"). Or the all too familiar conspiracy theory: Mohammed Reza Shah was groomed to be a dictator at the pay of the British and the Americans since the moment of his birth. (See the fictitious memoirs of Hossein Fardoust by the IR intelligence service).  These infantalizing, patronizing and ideology-ridden readings of history fail to answer one basic and simple question. Supposing they are right why did the builders of the common secular consensus, the very architects of the Pahlavi State let it happen. Where were they? Why did not they stop it? It is therefore logical to consider that perhaps the secular state itself with or without the Shah had underlying design flaws when it came to the distribution of power or the production of a democratic consensus. I believe that the lack of institutionalization of democracy in Iran during the Pahlavi State can be traced to the value system of the secular intellectuals themselves. I believe that the social milieu into which Iranian institutions of civil society were borne and within which they operated had everything to do with their failure. The social institutions of the Enlightment, an independent judiciary, a parliament, a free press can only exist if there is a consensus in society that individual humans as its members are "persons." In the beginning of the Pahlavi era with an illiteracy rate of over 95%, neither the intellectuals looked at the majority of people as "persons" nor the majority of people thought of themselves as equal human beings to intellectuals.  That was the curse of our history. In her 1926 memorable Travel diary to Iran, "Passenger to Tehran", Vita Sackville-West, a member of the famous Bloomsbury group and a keen social observer makes an interesting comment: "This country is like the sands of its deserts, you can mold them any way you wish but the mold breaks the moment you loosen your grip. The reason is they have never experienced the 19th century when the foundations were built." 

During the reign of Reza Shah, the intellectuals were convinced that democracy could wait until there actually was an Iran. As a result the secular intellectuals were the planners and Reza Shah was the muscle, the raw executive power behind economic modernization. The relations between Mohammed Reza Shah and the intellectuals were different. At the outset, as Iran was occupied, they looked at the Shah as a figurehead, a symbol of the continuation of the sovereign state. As the threat to the country's national integrity subsided, the modern middle class and their delegates, the intellectuals started to treat the Shah as an independent arbiter of their differing views regarding the future path of the country.  The Shah was not the dominating power but the umpire, the power broker who maintained the balance of the secular consensus. The attempts at building of grassroots genuine party politics in Iran were short lived and failed because of two main reasons: First, the country as a whole was still culturally and politically underdeveloped. Meaningful debates on substantive issues were nonexistent and parties would only exist as the expression of the political ambitions of their founders. Second, the material basis of Iran's modern middle class was weak. As a result power politics in the sense of independent nongovernmental civic entities exacting authority and demanding their agenda did not exist. Politics was more a case of the intellectuals theorizing and expecting change from the state. As the institutions of the Enlightment failed to materialize, the intellectuals started to become disillusioned with the feasibility of the whole project itself rather than looking for the underlying faults. As a result, the modern middle classes were attracted by the ideals of communism in its various guises. The Stalinist Tudeh party was a body blow to the secular consensus for not only it robbed it from some of its best talents in every field of humanities but also it imported the violent, ideological, uncivil discourse of third worldist Marxism to Iranian politics. The events of the 28th Mordad and the fall of Mossadegh were the definitive coup the grace, the one cataclysmic event that sealed the fate of the secular alliance. From its very beginning the motto of the constitutional movement was "The idea of legality and progress," "Andisheh Ghanoun va Taraghi". Mohammed Mossadegh represented "Ghanoun", the political development side of Iranian modernization, the ideal of democratic legitimacy. Mohammed Reza Shah represented "Taraghi", the economic development side of modernization, the ideal of material progress. On the surface, Mossadegh and the Shah looked as opposites. In reality they complimented each other. No two men ever needed each other more than Mossadegh and Mohammed Reza Shah. For one was the body and the other the soul. One was critical logic and the other instrumental rationality. Mossadegh was the consummate communicator, political tactician and crisis manager. Mohammed Reza Shah was a builder, the aloof, calculating long-term strategist. The secular alliance needed both.  Their failure to work with each other for the common good of Iran destroyed each of them in turn and blew up the secular alliance. Mohammed Mossadegh was arguably one of Iran's most honest, secular minded, patriotic and capable politicians. However by virtue of being a nineteenth century trained jurist, Mossadegh had very little understanding of the post war international politics and modern economics. He actually believed that he could defeat Britain by not selling them Iranian oil. In his memoirs he makes claims such as: " Reza Shah's building of the trans Iranian railway was a British plot. The project of sending students to Europe was a mistake for they all came back as scoundrels. Iranians do not need freight insurance for they trust each other." Mossadegh's first year in power, was one of the best years in Iran's history. The whole of Iran united behind Mossadegh and Mohammed Reza Shah and together they accomplished one of Iran's proudest moments. The Nationalization of the oil industry. More important than the nationalization itself is how they did it. There was no hostage taking, no hate rallies, and no terrorist bombings. The Jews, Bahais or Armenians were not singled out as the enemy's fifth column. In a manner befitting a proud, noble, old nation, they fought in the world's courts of justice and public opinion and they won. Mossadegh's second year in power, 1953 was the year of Iran's shame. For the one man who was the symbol of democracy in Iran, Mossadegh, closed the Majlis, the Senate, the Supreme Court and ruled by decree. And the symbol of Iran's national sovereignty and the country's best technocrat, the Shah, formed an alliance with foreigners against his own prime minister. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi has been universally condemned and blamed for the failure of the secular state. The reality is that Mossadegh is as much responsible as Mohammed Reza Shah. Mohammed Reza Shah did nothing wrong when he signed the edict removing Mossadegh from power. The constitution clearly gave him that right in the absence of the Majlis. The whole story of the CIA and MI6 involvement in the removal of Mossadegh is true but aggrandized way out of proportion. Regardless, had Mohammed Reza Shah faced Mossadegh alone and defeated him without foreign interference of any amount or nature, Iran's history would undoubtedly be different. The involvement of foreign powers as insignificant and minuscule as it was made all the difference as far as the legitimacy of the Shah and the future disposition of the secular alliance were concerned. The economic boom which started in the 1960s mainly as a result of the Shah's and the technocratic elite's managerial expertise actually made matters worse since it laid bare the non existence and the necessity of the civic institutions of the Enlightment. The whole modernization paradigm in Iran can be compared to a stool standing on the two pillars of economic progress and political development. The more emphasis on linear economic buildup in the absence of democracy resulted in the instability of the whole system. As a result those secular forces that supported the Shah lost their faith in the whole system. They either retreated from politics altogether or worse they stayed on but became cynical participants in a macabre game of make believe.  On the side of the secular opposition to the Shah, from the late sixties onward the whole discourse was characterized by almost a complete lack of concern for the ideas of the Enlightment. Instead, attention was focused with what extremist political ideologies had to offer for emancipation from the domination of the West. Sociopolitical institutions were no longer discussed as a key to progress. If and when there was talk of civil liberties, it was clear from the context that it was meant only to signify the desire of the protagonists of this or that ideology to be able to have everything their own way. The whole social milieu of the Iranian middle class became slanted and paradoxical. In one hand, the modern middle class loved the end products of economic modernization: material comfort, modern education and a cosmopolitan life style. On the other hand, they hated the very system that had produced them because of the lack of the other necessary ingredient: civil liberties. The dilemma of the modern middle class was not just political, it extended itself within every sphere of social activity: gender relations, family relations, etc. The Iranian modern middle class attempted to resolve its identity crisis, its spiritual dissatisfaction by going through a devotional metamorphosis, a metaphysical reconfiguration. On the political side, to hide their role in the creation of the secular alliance, Iranian intellectuals created the "Myth of 28th Mordad" as the secular version of the "Karbala Syndrome". The whole semiotics, screen play, Manichist set up of the legend of 1953 as portrayed by lay Iranian intellectuals in the 70s is reminiscent of a "Tazieh" play. Mossadegh became the secular saint, the infallible, the Mazloum, the Shahid, the latter day Imam Hussein. Mohammed Reza Shah became the Shiaa villain par excellence, the usurper, the tyrannical modern Yazid. It did not matter how many dams, roads, universities, power plants the Shah built. It did not matter what the creation of OPEC did for Iran and the whole region. It did not matter that Iranian Armed Forces became the fifth in the world. It did not matter that for the very first time in our entire post Islamic history, women and religious minorities enjoyed full citizenship rights. It did not matter that the Pahlavi State succeeded where Amir Kabir and Abbas Mirza had failed To carry the flag of patriotism, to be an authentic Iranian; you had to defy the Shah. Lock, stock and barrel. On the social side, "Cultural Authenticity" was hailed as the solution to Iran's identity crisis. Cosmopolitanism became Westoxication, "Gharbzadegi." The opening of the Iranian culture to the world and the resulting scrutiny became "Cultural Invasion." To top it off, the intellectuals became suicidal and labeled themselves "Cultural Traitors," those who sold their ancestral faith to the devil of western modernity. When a half literate, apprentice village Mullah, Ali Khamenei calls the whole Iranian intelligentsia, "A sick plant imported from abroad." Do not blame him. We the secular intellectuals taught him. The exchange of the ideals of the Enlightment for "Cultural Particularism " became the grounds for the odd coalition of the secular middle class and the political clergy to topple the last bastion of modernity in Iran, the Pahlavi State. It did not however lead to the successful assumption of power by the secularists. The reason is obvious, in the same way that Political Shiism has never surpassed its Karbala syndrome and is doomed to remain a creed of protest, the 70s version of Iranian ethnic nationalism could not surpass its Mossadegh myth and therefore remained the party of the honorable vanquished. Bazargan's unwillingness to face off Khomeini when he was in control of all the levers of power is clear indication of the defeatist mind set. In the whole fervor of the 1978-1979 Iran, three men of the secular alliance understood the depth of the tragic faith that the Iranian modern middle class faced and had the courage to stand up against the overwhelming flow. Gholam Hossein Sadighi when he asked the Shah not to leave Iran. Shahpour Bakhtiar when he put a last ditch effort to stop the inevitable. Abbas Amir Entezam when he opposed the passing of Velayat Faghih though the establishment of the assembly of experts. All three of these men were isolated or banned by their colleagues from the remnants of the secular alliance. While in the past hundred years, we secular middle class Iranians have been busy with the demons of our past, the creations of our culture and collective conscience: the Iranian Enlightment, the Myth of Mossadegh and Cultural Authenticity; another metanarrative, a new global mega reality has been happening right under our nose. If one takes a country's economy as a proxy for its competitive advantage amongst nations then we have miserably failed. The general profile of Iran's economic predicament at the beginning of the Twenty first century is exactly as it was at the turn of the Twentieth century. It is as if the collapse of the Oriental monarchy of the Qajars, the rise and demise of the Pahlavi State, the succesfull institutionalization of Political Islam and now its decay have not in the slightest measure changed the destiny of the Iranians from relying on a mono product economy for their survival. We are still an insignificant, miniscule, marginal link in the global economic order. The consequences of this predicament in the next decades will be catastrophic for Iran and will test the entire existence of our culture and nation. What we have witnessed in the past twenty years is that economic globalization and the telecommunication revolution has made all kinds of third worldist Marxism, chauvinist nationalism and ethnic religious nativism simply obsolete. The claims of those inside or outside Iran who brandish "Islamic Reformism" as a substitute to or a parallel project with the ideals of the Enlightment is entirely bogus. It is hard to believe that serious people still talk about Islamic modernism when the dramatic failure of the two hundred years old project of the construction of Political Shiism and Velayat e Fafghih as an ideology of governance out of the medieval faith of a nation is in full view of history. "Islamic Reformism" is yet another trap to plunge the Iranian polity even deeper into an exclusively religious discourse. If there is an iota of self-respect in the common travails that we Iranians have endured in the last two hundred years, it is certainly not in the sophistry of Ali Shariati or his reincarnation, Haj Hossein Dabagh circa AbdolKarim Sorush but in the works of Mohammad Ali Foroughi or AbdolHossein Zarinkoub or Ehsan Yarshater. If Iran has done anything where two hundred years from today, our children may proudly look back at it, it is not in the acts of hostage taking or terrorism but the trans Iranian railway, the Tehran University, the nationalization of oil, the creation of OPEC. We do not have a choice but to rebuild the secular alliance where our fathers left it. We are condemned to learn the art of disagreement if we are to survive.

www.jihadunspun.com Mar 15, 2003 Source: Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

The Bush administration's drive to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is so aggressive that even before a war has started its repercussions are being felt in every corner of the world, says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

The Argentine, who won the 1980 Peace Prize, views President George W. Bush's plans for attacking Iraq with great alarm. "Bush is setting the world on fire," he said.

Mr. Perez Esquivel, a native of Buenos Aires, is an architect, sculptor and teacher. He won the 1980 prize for his resistance to Argentina's Dirty War against leftist rebels. Imprisoned and tortured, he was freed with help from Amnesty International and the Pope.

At 71, he leads the Latin American human-rights group Servicio, Paz y Justicia, and travels widely on behalf of the antiwar movement. He has been in Toronto and Ottawa under the auspices of the church group KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives.

After visiting Iraq last year for a firsthand look at what 12 years of sanctions and U.S. bombing attacks have done to its battered infrastructure, Mr. Perez Esquivel scoffed at the notion that Iraq poses any significant threat.

A U.S. attack, on the other hand, would open "a Pandora's box, threatening to set free the demons of death and destruction," he wrote recently.

"The chief danger in the world today is not Saddam Hussein," Mr. Perez Esquivel said. "It is the United States."

Like other critics of U.S. policy, he perceives in the United States an angry, isolated country inflicting lasting damage on itself. Mr. Perez Esquivel reaches for some words by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by President John F. Kennedy at the United Nations in 1962.

"What Lincoln said more than a century ago is that if the United States doesn't defend life, then it faces the prospect of self-destruction."

Yet unstable as the planet is, Mr. Perez Esquivel fears surging anti-Americanism will make it far more so. Across Latin America, he says, the antiwar sentiment, which has prompted big demonstrations in half a dozen countries, is vigorously feeding long-term resentment over U.S. policies on trade, tariffs, militarization and debt.

"What's happening with Iraq is not isolated, it's part of a global phenomenon. When we see the installation of U.S. military bases throughout Latin America, when we look at [American interference] in countries such as Venezuela and Colombia and Panama, we have to ask ourselves what's going on.

"Lots of people think it and won't say it, but I will say it: The United States is seeking to control the world. That's why we are seeing the reaction in so many countries."