Right Wing Itches to Strike Iran (AlterNet)

[marmar]

Right Wing Itches to Strike Iran

By John Tirman, AlterNet. Posted May 26, 2007.



The hard right in the U.S. has tried to exploit the arrest of Middle East scholar Haleh Esfandiari to create a reason for America's conservatives to attack Iran.

The case of Haleh Esfandiari's imprisonment in Iran is sparking the kind of commotion that periodically grips America's intellectual class, and, more ominously, is providing reasons for America's right wing to attack Iran.

Dr. Esfandiari, 67, was born and raised in Iran, but has spent much of her professional life in the United States, now as the much-respected director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a leading think tank in Washington, D.C. At the end of a visit to her ailing mother in Tehran last winter, she was detained, and recently was arrested and now is in prison awaiting trial. A citizen of both America and Iran, she has been charged with trying to foment a "velvet revolution" in Iran -- soft, non-violent regime change. She and everyone associated with her deny the charges.

Editorials have been lambasting Iran's Intelligence Ministry, which many see as responsible for this, and a number of important public intellectuals are calling for action. Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and a specialist on the region, wrote in his highly regarded blog, Informed Comment, "I had been planning to go to a conference in Iran in July, hosted by some French scholars, but I have cancelled in protest against this detention of my friend. I don't see how normal intellectual life can go on when a scholar at the Wilson Center can't safely visit Iran."

A boycott was rumored but apparently is not actually afoot, as Ali Banuazizi, the eminent scholar at Boston College and past president of the Middle East Studies Association, told me. "Boycotts punish too many innocent people," he says, "but letters and statements send a signal." A strongly worded letter that Banuazizi helped craft, and is signed by a Who's Who of Iran scholars in the U.S., protested the arrest and imprisonment, rightly noting that "in her capacity as the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, Dr. Esfandiari has been a staunch advocate of peaceful dialogue between Tehran and Washington in resolving their disputes."

Noam Chomsky, possibly the most influential intellectual in the world, also weighed in with a sharp rebuke, as have several others.

...(snip)...

In this hostile climate, some elements in Tehran are saying, in effect, "we want nothing to do with America," and they are sending that message with harsh actions. Engagement by American intellectuals, athletes, NGOs, and cultural groups has proceeded for several years now, and can be viewed as at worst harmless and at best building bridges of dialogue. It was precisely such activities during the Cold War that lowered tensions and empowered a peaceful conclusion to that far more dangerous confrontation.

Very few serious analysts of the situation in the Gulf believe that hostile American action will result in a more placid outcome. Many in the U.S. military are vehemently opposed to air strikes, not least because of the catastrophe in Iraq. The Tehran state is sturdy and, like it or not, democratic in many respects. The NGO and academic engagement must continue, just as we must continue to object strenuously to unwarranted arrests. Neither tactic, however, is aided by Washington's contemptible and counterproductive strategy of regime change. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/audits/52384/?page=1