Opinion: US should respond carefully to Iran crisis

Iran is not the Philippines, circa 1986, and America should avoid overt calls for the overthrow of the Tehran government.

HDS GreenwayJune 21, 2009 08:32Updated May 30, 2010 11:58

REUTER'S EDITORS' NOTE: Foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran. Supporters of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi walk during a protest on a street in Tehran June 20, 2009. Mousavi said on Saturday he was "ready for martyrdom" in leading protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic and brought warnings of bloodshed from Iran's Supreme Leader. (Reuters via Your View)

BOSTON — After years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israeli invective, and Israel’s threats to bomb Iran, it seems almost impossible that 30 years ago I was able to fly non-stop from Tel Aviv to Tehran on Israel’s national airline, El Al.

Israel didn’t have an actual embassy in Tehran, but it had a trade mission that operated as an embassy, and there was a close alliance between Israel and the Shah of Iran. The reason: both were suspicious of the Arab world in between.

It has always been Israeli policy to try to reach out to a non-Arab state on the far side of the Arab world — Turkey serves that function today — much the way France reached out to Russia in the early years of the last century because they both had Germany to worry about. But those were in the days of the Shah and the Czar respectively, and revolutions ended both alliances.

We tend not to remember now, given 30 years of hostility, but President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger tried to build Iran up into what they hoped would be their surrogate policeman in the Persian Gulf, giving Iran advanced weapons as a bulwark against Soviet Russia. Presidents Ford and Carter continued the policy.

When former CIA director Richard Helms was our ambassador to Iran he told me the Russian ambassador had made a fuss to the Shah, asking how he could possibly accept a spy as America’s ambassador? The Shah answered: “At least I know the Americans have sent me their top spy.”

Today, Israel flirts with the idea of an anti-Iranian coalition with Arab states. And the United States today seeks Russian help in building sanctions against Iran. It is also largely forgotten that the Shah toyed with the idea of having a nuclear weapon.

Such are the vicissitudes of alliances and nations, but some things do not change. Iran is heir to an ancient Persian culture and the majority of its people may be deeply religious Muslims, but they are not Arabs. Iranians are a proud people with a profound sense of their own history.

Iran follows the Shiite branch of Islam, while the vast majority of Arabs are Sunni. The suspicion and hostility between these two branches of Islam continues. Although most Arabs may not have been unhappy to see Saddam Hussein go, they were horrified to see Shiites empowered in Iraq, which had always been run by Sunnis.

Our great ally in the region, King Abdullah II of Jordan, warned of a Shiite crescent stretching from Iran across Iraq to link up with the Shiite majority in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia worries because its own Shiite minority happens to inhabit the eastern regions of the kingdom where the oil is.