The lure of victimization narratives is a little hard to pin down, though it is universal. No matter how much power Republicans acrue, they always seem to feel victimized by the still-ascendent liberal culture, by rational or compassionate argument, and indeed by anyone who disagrees with them. Victimization is an assertion of moral righteousness, sometimes proven more pure and righteous in its defeat by forces of darkness than by its triumph. Christianity is a victimization narrative par excellence- of a savior tragically unrecognized in his own day, callously sold out and executed by the ruling powers, but ultimately, though the intercession of miracles, energetic preaching, and what have you, ready to save you if only you too believe this story. Victimization can be as callous and unthinking an ideological postition as its opposite- domination- excusing any extremity and moral lapse in the service of the restoration of what was lost or been suppressed. Indeed, victimization narratives exist in a complex dance with domineering ideologies, and are frequently used by them, as suggested above. The Nazis, after all, were victimized by the Jews.
But how much more intoxicating is all this if you really are a victim? Iran, in its long history, has played many roles. But over the last few centuries, that of victim has been predominant. Its early cultures, before and after the Indo-European invasions of the second millenium BC, usually played second fiddle to the Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian cultures to the west. Then came the high point of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the mid-first millenium BC, which spread over the entire Middle East, from Afghanistan to Egypt and Greece, and was memorialized extensively in both Greek and Jewish literature. Cruelly truncated by the invasion of Alexander the Great, Persia then went through extended domination by the Greeks in the Seleucid Empire, followed by somewhat cosmopolitan domination by the Parthians, a Scythian tribe from the East, before regaining most of its former extent under the Sassanian Empire, which was truly Persian in origin and culture again. Only to be brutally crushed by the Arab invasion. Gradually, Persian culture re-asserted itself, forming the backbone of the Islamic Golden Age, which whithered amid the Mongol invasions and a reversion to doctrinaire Islam. One hardly knows which oppression to bemoan first.
 |
| The Azadi tower. Take that, Brandenburg gate! This is perhaps the most durable and iconic bequest of the second Shah's rule, adopted by all sides in Iran, whether protesting for or against the powers that be. |
The coronavirus lockdown has brought me one consolation, which is this lengthy tome on Iranian history, borrowed just before the boom came down, and which the library shows no sign of wanting back. Amanat takes up the story at 1500 CE with the rise of a militant Shiite ruler, Ismail I, who set the tone for Iranian culture up to today: a full-on victimization passion play, with oppressors ranging from Abu Bakr and Yazid I to the United States, heart-rending mourning, and self-flagellation. The story of Iran is one of a small country with big ambitions, which it occasionally fulfills. Why didn't Persia remain a large empire and culture, like Rome did, even after its formal fall? On the one hand, there were too many other competing cultures about. The Persians could not quite put together a world-leading coalition. The Achaemenids, under Cyrus the great, came closest, setting a cosmopolitan standard that was widely attractive and powerful. At least the Jews gave it good press. But it fell apart amid civil war and the usual bane of early empires- dysfunctional or non-existent methods of transferring power. The Safavid dynasty, begun in 1501, set Shi'ism as the national religion of Iran. This had the twin effects of being highly motivational to the "base", while being rather isolating vs the wider world, including the Sunni majority across Islam. The course was thus set for Iran to be a small-to-mid-sized power, a box they are still trying to break out of today, to little effect.
Over the last few centuries, Iran's major antagonists have been the much greater empires of Russia, Great Britain, and the US. While there have been occasional raids from, and forays to, the East, towards Afghanistan and India, generally relations in that direction have been calm, and Persian culture has had significant influence in Afghanistan and Mughal India. On the other hand, expansionism and colonialism from the West and North have been devastating. Iran was barely able to hang on to its territorial and cultural integrity at the worst of times. Russia dealt Iran a comprehensive military defeat in 1826, took parts of the North, and threatened the rest of the country. Through the nineteenth century, Iran tried its best to play the big powers off against each other, playing its part in the great game. But just as often, the British and Russians would make their own agreements to carve up the local countries into spheres of influence, if not zones of occupation. They also engaged in destructive loans, saddling Iran with unpayable debts and increasing foreign ownership of its infrastructure, customs, and other means of paying them back. Russia sponsored a pro-shah coup in 1908. Britain especially forced Iran into a series of bad trade deals, privileged treatment, and forced imports, killing off the Iranian silk industry, among much other economic and cultural damage. And once Britain smelled oil, and switched its navy from coal to oil, (during world war 1), its regard for the integrity and interests of Iran fell even further. Russia and Britain each occupied large parts of the country during both world wars, without so much as a by-your-leave.
What saved Iran was an unexpected favor from Russia. The communist revolution led to an immediate evacuation of Russia's occupation of Northern Iran and cancellation of its debts, and, at least for a brief period, much friendlier relations. But it also led to simmering communist political and guerrilla insurgencies for the next century. Iran kept being knocked about between the great powers, with the US taking an increasing role during and after world war 2. The US had previously been one of the friendlier countries to Iran, providing critical financial advice and political support during its constitutional phase, during the Shuster appointment as treasurer, back in 1911. And the US was naturally thought to be supportive of constitutionalism, rule of law and democracy. But world war 2 changed all that, making the US more or less the inheritor of the British empire. When the first Reza Shah government finally collapsed and a nascent constitutional system arose, one of its first and most popular pieces of business, under Mohammed Mosaddegh, was nationalization of the oil industry. Britain, which ran the Iranian oil fields outright, sharing a paltry 16% with Iran, was outraged. The US, caught in the middle, was unfortunately more sympathetic to Britain than Iran. The US offered a 50% deal, in line with others in the region. This would have been a good compromise, but Mosaddegh had painted himself into a corner. And made many enemies across the political spectrum, not being, at base, a particularly good politician. His ouster, amid a coup staged explicitly by the Iranian military, but with support from the British and Americans, was not a big surprise at the time. Only in retrospect, after the subsequent regime of the second Shah dragged on, decade after decade, with unstinting US support, no matter the excesses of the secret services or oppression of the people, and with the backdrop of the US's brutal wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, did the narrative of the great Satan take shape. It was an understandable, yet also facile, and ultimately misguided response to yet another episode in Iran's long and often tragic history of international relations.
We won't get into the next parts of the story in this post, but reflect that size matters in international relations. The Shah stuck with the US through thick and thin, creating a rare stable environment for Iran internationally. No one questioned Iran's sovereignty, or its position in the cold war. None of its neighbors attacked. But when that sponsorship fell apart amid the Islamic revolution, and Iran started pissing off each of its neighbors near and far, things did not go so well, and remain perilous today. On the other hand, the US played a large part in the Shah's failure to manage internal affairs, losing sight of our principles (as we also did in Vietnam, then again in Iraq) and blindly funding a despot. Our best cases from this period were the various countries (South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan) that got away belatedly, through popular protests, out of US-sponsored dictatorships and towards democracy. Is that the best we could have done?
- Some notes on Iran's process of conversion to Islam.
- Studies in Shiite propaganda.
- Another dysfunctional country failing to deal effectively with the virus.
- And now, for a bit of science.
No comments:
Post a Comment