Iran presents one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for America and the West, yet very little is known about what the country’s goals really are. Vali Nasr examines Iran’s political history in new ways to explain its actions and ambitions on the world stage, showing how, behind the veneer of theocracy and Islamic ideology, today’s Iran is pursuing a grand strategy aimed at securing the country internally and asserting its place in the region and the world.
What is the big idea behind your book?
Vali Nasr: Iran’s unending antagonism towards the United States is both a challenge and an enigma. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was fiercely anti-American, and that attitude has since been enshrined in the country’s politics. I argue that Iran’s seeming bellicosity towards the United States has its roots in ideology but that is no longer an adequate explanation. Rather, we have to Iran’s national security mindset for explanations. This of course demystifies Iran. Its actions are no longer those of an anachronistic theology and, regardless of their merit, reflect calculations like those other states around the world. I look to Iran’s history and how its rulers have come to understand it, and their own experiences with foreign relations, war and peace immediately since the revolution to understand how Iran sees its national security and why it thinks confrontation with the United States would serve its aims. There is a grand strategy at play here, and that is the big idea behind this book.
If it is national security that accounts for Iran’s actions, then why is Iran still so insistent on ideology?
VN: Every country relies on a political culture and a mental framework that would rally support for its strategy among its population. History has taught the Islamic Republic of Iran that ideology could perform that function. After all, it was ideology that first set revolutionary Iran on its current course. But now ideology is the handmaiden to the grand strategy that Iran is pursuing. Iran’s rulers still think that executing that strategy requires ideology. That is what they learned during the long war with Iraq, when ideology unified the country in the service of national defense. It was then that ideology ceased to be an inspiration for strategy and turned into a tool in its repertoire.
You mentioned that history and recent experiences have shaped Iran’s outlook. What events are you referring to?
VN: The Hostage Crisis of 1979-80 embedded anti-Americanism in state and society in Iran, it became a persistent feature of political discourse in the country, drilled into the population through media and ubiquitous murals across the country. At the outset, however, anti-Americanism was a slogan, not a strategy. Iran then did not have a clear conception of its national security or any inkling of how to pursue it. Those would emerge in time, especially through the crucible of Iran-Iraq war that stretched through the 1980s, and again in response to 9/11, the Global War on Terror and its reflection in America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Iran-Iraq war started in September 1980, very soon after the revolution. It lasted eight years and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. The toll on the country’s economy was in hundreds of billions of dollars. In the first phase of the war, Iraq occupied Iranian territory. Revolutionary Iran received no sympathy or support, and ultimately survived the trials and tribulations of the war alone. Iran’s leaders understood the nature of threats Iran faced through the prism of their war-time experiences, and it was then that they embraced their grand strategy to secure the country. The mindset of Iran’s rulers cannot be understood without taking stock of the impact of the war and the lesson they learned through it.
The second formative influence on Iranian rulers’ thinking was 9/11 and the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran believed then that once the U.S. was done with Iraq, Iran would be the next target. It therefore resolved to first ensnare America in a quagmire in Iraq, and then push it out of Iraq and the Middle East. It was then that anti-Americanism moved from a rhetorical ideological flourish into a national security imperative. Protecting Iran meant deterring America from waging war on Iran and persuading it to abandon he Middle East altogether.
How has all of this impacted Iran?
VN: No country can go through decades of war and confrontation, and the then with a superpower, without being shaped by it. To mobilize the population, the ruling order has relied on ideology, which has in turn empowered those who articulate and promote it. The war footing has strengthened the hand of the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards that today dominate in politics, society and economy. There has been deep impact on Iranian society too. Decades of economic sanctions and international isolation has exhausted the population, which is increasingly cynical about the Iran’s unending resistance to the United States. The economic and social costs of Iran’s grand strategy have been showing in the form of angry popular protests and political apathy at time of elections. This of course raises questions about the long-term viability of that strategy.
Essentially, I argue that we must understand the Islamic Republic of Iran today, how its looks to its population at home and how it acts abroad, not in terms of its founding ideology, but primarily as product of the evolution of a grand strategy that is driven by the leadership’s conception of national security.
About the Author
Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His books include The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, and (with Ali Gheissari) Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty. His writing has appeared in leading publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.