War, we are regularly reminded, is chaos. Yet the very same people who remind us of this are also keen to tell us just how events will unfold. The absence of information from Iran, a country the size of Western Europe locked under an internet blackout for the better part of two months, has not stopped a welter of pundits and commentators, many of whom have barely lifted a finger to understand the nation’s history and culture, from making judgements of alarming clarity. It is difficult not to conclude that the certainty expressed is in inverse proportion to the knowledge possessed.
The much-referenced “lessons of history” are certainly not lessons of Iran’s history. We are warned to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and on occasion Libya. When pundits do venture to make a comment on Iran, specifically, it is often ill informed and or simply incorrect. The Iranian polity has not always been held together by “force”, it is not in imminent danger of “balkanisation”, and the country’s name was not changed to Iran from Persia in 1934 – Iran has long been the indigenous name for the country.
Nor is there much point drawing analogies with the Iran-Iraq War without recognising the tremendous changes that have taken place in the intervening 40 years. Among the most egregious errors has been the suggestion that the Islamic Republic was on the verge of a “liberal turn” before the war started, or that we were on the verge of an agreement prior to the attack. Iran in 1980, in the high tide of revolution, was a very different polity from that which we find today. History is not static and if there is a lesson to be learned, it is that developments are contextual and contingent.
Political “science” strays too easily into political astrology, with comments so general as to be meaningless. Iran or the Iranians (few bother to distinguish between the state and wider society), are “proud”, “resolute”, “resilient”, and on occasion very fond of “martyrdom”. They are at various times “pragmatic”, “ideological”, “rational” and “irrational”, determined to survive and suicidal, all depending on the argument. They are at once great strategists and reckless gamblers, both cunning (a very old trope) and anarchic (another old trope), though the current analysis seems to favour the former over the latter. Iranians are sophisticated, educated, rebellious and subdued, though wider society has lately faded from view as the state, the leadership of the Islamic Republic, has moved to centre stage.
Indeed, one depressing development has been the growing awe and admiration of the state. With it, the aspirations, demands and suffering of the people has receded, if not disappeared, from discussion. Because information coming out of Iran is controlled, the Islamic Republic enjoys an asymmetric advantage in the narrative war. It can suppress information about damages it sustains, while the damage it inflicts is in the open for all to see (and report). These manipulations are aided by Western media’s attachment to underdogs and loathing of Trump. A good recent example was the regime’s missile attack on Diego Garcia on 21 March, which was more performative than real. The Islamic Republic’s strategy has caught the imagination. But it is not at all clear that it is as coherent (or as “cunning”) as some project – or that it will yield the results it seeks.
A generation of analysts have grown up with and made careers from the continued existence of the Islamic Republic. They are apparently struggling with the notion that it may be approaching its end game. They argue, despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least the condition of the political economy before the war, that the Islamic Republic will not only survive this war but that it will thrive in it. So vocal has this view become that an attentive Iranian leadership has absorbed it into its own ambitions for the future. Far from simple survival, it now demands among its suggested peace terms reparations and a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Missing from any of these analyses is the Iranian people. Having been obscured by the prolonged internet blackout, they have been deprived of a voice by their own government, and by those abroad who find their positions inconvenient to the arguments they seek to make. That many are conflicted by the fate of their country should be obvious, but the fact that they clearly also loathe the regime and “want the job done”, sits uneasily with many commentators in the West. If the Iranians have not been completely written out, they have certainly been written off.
If any good is to come from the catastrophe and chaos of war, it will come from the people not the state, from the very part of the equation that is hidden from view. It is to the patriotism of the people not the nationalism of the state that we should look to. Political systems, as Iranians are fond of reminding anyone who might listen, come and go. Societies and their cultures remain. If there is a resilience to be found – and hope for the future – look for it here.
[Further reading: “I don’t think the United States would fight for Taiwan because I don’t think it can”]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentI like Ansari’s article, including this one. I especially agree with his criticism of the ‘pundits’ in the news. They simply regurgitate the question asked of them. I wish they would have philosophers and scientists as pundits on the news, plus pundits who would tell it as it is. As to ‘wars’, they come and go very much like plate tectonics where similar to continental plate renewal and recycling wars do the same with cultures and genes. We will always have them. But as to the Iranian people, having grown up there as an Armenian, Iranians/Persians will always prevail as they have done throughout history. They eventually with their patience, cunning, poetry and culture will assimilate the invaders time and time again as they have done in the past. The Iranians go back to Zarathustra and beyond, with thousands of years of history, surely they can wrestle with an adversary who is not even 250 years old. Bingo.
Yes, there will be human cost, as always, but that is part of nature too.