Insights: Reading about Iran
Often while reading various histories of the region I’ll come across a passage a or two that is relevant to current events. Sometimes I’ll wonder if policy makers in the US government have ever read the same passage and if so did it have had any impact on current policy. Over the past four months, I’ve read several books about Iran and there are several times where I have thought to myself, boy I wish President Trump, Pete Hegseth, or some other official of influence would have read this passage and maybe they would have re-thought their strategy with Iran (I question whether or not any of these folks read to be honest). Here are some of the more relevant passages from Michael Axworthy’s Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic.
“Like others before him, Saddam and his generals hoped that attacks on civilians would demoralize the Iranians and induce them to rebel. But the history of air campaigns against civilian targets shows fairly consistently (although there are exceptions) that they tend to have the opposite effect, reinforcing a sense of solidarity between civilians and troops, and a sense of national resistance, often independent of political feelings about the national leadership. It also strengthens a general feel of bitter hostility against the perpetrators. This happened in Iran too.” (in reference to the Iran-Iraq War) pp. 247
Axworthy later expounds on how the psyche of the Iranian people, even those who disliked the Islamic regime but begrudgingly respected what it had achieved.
“Before the revolution and the war, Iran’s history for decades and centuries had been a history of humiliation, powerlessness, foreign invasion, occupation; of foreign interference and foreign domination, and Iranian politicians and governments that had connived at foreign interference. It is difficult for non-Iranians fully to grasp the deep frustration and resentment at that. Now, for once, the country had set up its own government by its own efforts, had rejected foreign meddling and foreign threats, had defended itself for eight years despite great suffering against tough odds and had come through. Iran was now a real country, with real independence, not looking to any other country for support, advice, help or guidance. The confidence and pride in that achievement, and the anxiety les the country slip back into dependency, go a long way to explain what for many foreigners seems inexplicable about contemporary Iran and the behavior of Iran’s leadership since 1988. And it does not just apply to supporters of the Islamic regime, but also many opponents of the regime and even some of those most bitterly opposed among the Iranians in exile.” pp. 294
Axworthy, who has been covering Iran for nearly thirty-years in both government and academic positions, provides a meaningful argument of the futility of expecting revolution and regime through an air campaign.
