Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
I distinctly remember my visit to Iran a few weeks after the deposition of the Shah and the takeover of the historic country by the Islamic revolutionaries led by Ayotallah Khomeini. The streets of Tehran where still reverberating to the unceasing chants of “Allah-O-Akbar”, “Khomeini Rahbar”. Still very much the most telling symbol of the success of the revolution, was the American Embassy besieged by the revolutionaries, mainly by Khomeini’s Pasdarans, with scores confined to the embassy premises. We had heard of the handwringing by President Jimmy Carter, a good man, trapped in the murky waters of hostage politics with his people baying for Khomeini’s blood, the Site high priest who ending his long years in exile in Iraq, repaired to Paris and thence returned to Qom, a holy city of Shias in Iran, and from there to Teheran to confirm the ouster of the Shah and the enthronement of Khomeini as the Supreme leader.
It was some three weeks after the revolution that I landed at a newly built hotel in Tehran, only 10 rooms of its 225 rooms occupied, including one by me; these were the dark days for the industry, the owner of the hotel confided; his hotel built at prime location, abutting Shahrahe-e-Pahlvi, was expected to play host to guests who, a year earlier, were expected to participate in one celebration or the other connected with the King Reza Shah Pahlvi’s rule.
Alas, the celebration had been denied to the Shah by the excited mobs who had taken charge after Khomeini’s grand success. In time the American hostages at the US Embassy were released, Khomeini’s regime very much in charge and a new Iran, shorn of all the glitz and glamour of the Shah, was coming to terms with a more austere life, with the omnipresent Pasdaran, for the most part, successfully enforcing the writ of the Islamic regime.
New to the Islamic discipline, most of Teheran now virtually went to bed by 9 p.m. as I learnt on the second day of my stay there. A couple of dinners attended by me were cut short, for me to be able to return to my hotel by 9 p.m.; I was mobile, courtesy the London Correspondent of the paper for whom I used to write from New Delhi for nearly two decades.
Over the years I saw Iran’s Islamic leaders ensuring that the country became more and more isolated, not by design, but more by the isolationist policies it pursued. God has been kind though to the country by endowing it with substantial resources including large reserves of oil. And it is its oil wealth that has helped the country to stand up to the many challenges thrown to its existence by forces inimical to it, headed by the US and some of its allies in the neighbourhood.
I had occasion to visit the country few years later, for the fourth time, well into the Khomeini era and, frankly, was surprised to see that while the apparent opulence of the Pehalvi era was dead and gone people had not lost their sang froid. There had been protests by moderates, students and a section of the civil society against harsh regimentation of Iranian society, with the Pasdaran making things more difficult than they need have been. But Iran, regardless, was building up its muscles; Israelis, their American patrons and the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia, were daggers drawn, waiting for Teheran to err.
Iran in due course chose to take the nuclear route, claiming initially that they would develop nuclear energy for peaceful purpose only; the country’s foes dismissed the peaceful pretensions as hogwash. The truth lay somewhere in between. And successive Iranian regimes, particularly the last one headed by former president. Ahmedenijad, adopted a more cantankerous stance which led to open confrontation with the US, Israel and the Saudis on the one side and Iran on the other. Intransigence on both sides saw the US marshalling all its resources, to enforce international sanctions against Iran.
The sanctions in the event have hit the Iranian economy very hard, its oil exports in particular. Prolonged sanctions have affected the country’s economy badly over the past three years, hitting even ordinary Iranians very badly. Negotiations conducted at various levels failed to unravel the problem, with President Ahmedenijad choosing to stand up to the US posturing and consistently refusing to fall in line.
It is only after the recent Iranian Presidential poll brought moderate Hssan Rouhani to the presidency, that prospects of a thaw in Iran US relations took a hopeful turn.
On his first visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session late last month Mr. Hassan Rouhani gave a significant boost to efforts to convert the thaw into something more purposeful.
The visit was capped by the historic phone conversation that the Iranian leader had with President Obama, who had addressed the General Assembly the same day as Rouhani. The phone conversation between the two on September 27, was indeed the first diplomatic contact between the Presidents after 34 years of icy cold relations between their two countries. Fortunately, for the future of the talks the supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has been very pessimistic of a two-way dialogue between his country and America, but has backed President Rouhani’s overtures. The Rouhani visit has in fact been blessed by the Supreme leader, giving the President the permission to show ‘heroic flexibility’, which by itself was quite an advance of Khamenei’s known position.
Going back to the Obama-Rouhani telephonic conversation, the US President assured Rouhani that his country was not seeking regime change in Islamic republic, an issue of much concern to Iranians, and a much indeed assurance from the US which in recent years appears to have made it its business to determine what form of government or who was best suited to govern a nation. Rouhani in turn was conciliatory on the nuclear issue and called on the UN to support a new project, the world against the violence and extremism. The Iranian Foreign Minister Mr. Javad Zarif, had separately met Secretary of State John Kerry and other Ministers of P5+1 group to pursue the modalities to fast track their nuclear dialogue.
The US Iran rapprochement could in time prepare the ground for an unprecedented diplomatic initiative led by principal Asian countries like China, Japan, Korea and India all of which have substantial abiding interest in Gulf security but whose interests till now have been nudged aside by the hegemonistic US approach. As of now President Obama and Rouhani can be expected to invest a lot of their time, thinking and prestige in taking their ties forward. America’s obsession with Israel may, mind you, yet upset all such calculations. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has already indicated his disapproval of the initiative.
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