It is not surprising, then, that Iranians are not thrilled by President Obama's rhetoric of "peace and dialogue," as they can easily see who is pulling the strings of the Jundallah-MKO terrorist activities from behind the scene. "What's going on in Iran today -- a sustained campaign of terrorism directed against civilians and government installations alike -- is proof positive that nothing has really changed much in Washington, as far as U.S. policy toward Iran is concerned."6
But what is to be made of President Obama's apparently contradictory overtures toward Iran? What accounts for his simultaneously extending a hand for friendship and a fist for continued antagonism?
Charitable and optimistic interpretations tend to blame the President's opponents for his doublespeak on Iran: the President does have a real plan for a genuine conversation and rapprochement with Iran; but to bring this about he has to occasionally make some tactical Iran-bashing statements in order to appease his powerful opponents lest they should torpedo his entire plan. Hence, his conflicting statements.
Whether this generous reading of the President's mind is true or false can never be conclusively proven. Nor can such wishful speculations about the President's "true" feelings or inner desires be of any analytical value for political or policy purposes. What matters -- at the end of the day -- is what he does or says, not what he quietly thinks to himself. And what he does and says in relation to Iran is pathetic.
He seems to want to eat his cake, and have it too: continuing with George Bush's policies while employing slick rhetoric and pretending he is different! He serves as the smiley-face mask for the same militaristic policies left behind by George W. Bush and his Neoconservative handlers.
Iranians see through this fraud very clearly. For example, Iran's most powerful leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently stated: "The nations in the region hate the United States from the bottom of their hearts because they have seen violence, military intervention and discrimination. . . . The new US government seeks to transform this image. I say firmly, that this will not be achieved by talking, speeches and slogans."7
Many of Obama's fans, both at home and abroad (including, by the way, many in Iran), who were indignant of his predecessor's unrefined personality and militaristic policies, seem to be in denial that Obama's so-called "change" is mainly about style and rhetoric, not substance. This is true not only of foreign but also domestic policies. Just note how his neoliberal, supply-side economic response to the ongoing economic crisis is more friendly to Wall Street rackets than any other President's in US history -- President Reagan included.
A major problem with wishful interpretations of President Obama's conflicting statements on Iran is that they tend to perpetuate the illusion that he can bring about meaningful change in the US policy toward Iran or, for that matter, the broader Middle East. In reality, however, while the resident of the White House may posture as Commander-in-Chief and tweak policy around the edges, US foreign policy in this region is determined largely by two other sources of power, or special interest groups.
These two powerful special interests are (a) the highly influential beneficiaries of military spending and war dividends or, as the late President Eisenhower put it, the military-industrial complex; and (b) the equally powerful proponents of Greater Israel (from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coasts), known as the Israel lobby. Evidence shows that both of these groups view their interests better served by war and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
There is an unspoken or tacit alliance between these two extremely powerful interest groups: the armaments lobby and the Israel lobby. There is no formal or legal framework for the alliance; it is largely based on a convergence of interests on war and international convulsion in the Middle East.
To say that the military-industrial complex thrives on war and militarism is to state the obvious. Arms industries and other powerful beneficiaries of war dividends need an atmosphere of war and international tensions in order to promote the sale of armaments and maintain continued increases in the Pentagon budget, thereby justifying their lion's share of the public money. Viewed in this light, unprovoked US wars abroad can been seen as reflections of domestic fights over national resources, or tax dollars.
This helps explain why since World War II powerful beneficiaries of war dividends have almost always reacted negatively to discussions of international cooperation and tension reduction, or détente.
For example, in the face of the 1970s tension-reducing negotiations with the Soviet Union, representatives of the military-industrial complex rallied around Cold Warrior think tanks, such as the Committee on the Present Danger, and successfully sabotaged those discussions. Instead, by invoking the "communist threat," they managed to reinforce the relatively weakened tensions with the Soviet Union to such new heights that it came to be known as the Second Cold War -- hence, the early 1980s dramatic "rearming of America," as President Reagan put it.
Likewise, when the collapse of the Soviet system and the subsequent discussions of "peace dividends" in the United States threatened the interests of the military-industrial conglomerates, their representatives invented "new external sources of danger to U.S. interests" and successfully substituted them for the "threat of communism" of the Cold War era. These "new, post-Cold War sources of threat" are said to stem from the "unpredictable, unreliable regional powers of the Third World," from the so-called rogue states, from "global terrorism," from "Islamic fundamentalism," or more recently from Iran's "impending nuclear weapons."
Just as the powerful beneficiaries of war dividends view international peace and stability as inimical to their business interests, so too the hardline Zionist proponents of Greater Israel perceive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors as perilous to their territorial ambitions. The reason for this fear of peace is that, according to a number of United Nations resolutions, peace would mean Israel's return to its pre-1967 borders.
But because proponents of Greater Israel, which includes the current Israeli government, are unwilling to return to those internationally-agreed-upon borders, they sabotage peace efforts and avoid genuine dialogue with Palestinians. By the same token, these proponents view war and socio-political convulsion (or, as David Ben-Gurion, one of the key founders of the State of Israel, put it, "revolutionary atmosphere") as opportunities that are conducive to the expulsion of Palestinians, the geographic recasting of the region, and the expansion of Israel's territory.
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