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Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Revives Iranian Right
By Suzanne Maloney, Pacific News Service, June 26, 2001

Until very recently, Iran's Islamic Revolution seemed to be in danger of fading to invisibility. But the uprising among Palestinians, and the failure of any and all peace attempts have strengthened conservative elements within the region as a whole. PNS Commentator Suzanne Mahoney is a research associate with The Brookings Institution.

The city of Tehran wears its message of martyrdom with a heavy grace.

Billboards of sad-eyed young soldiers and austere, bearded clerics hang over highways and dominate the cityscape -- elaborate testaments to Iran's long, futile war with Iraq and its even more bitter antagonism toward its chosen nemeses, the United States and Israel.

The billboards are the most visible remaining sign of revolutionary fervor in Iran's fading Islamic Republic. Domestic friction and international isolation have eroded the government's claim to righteousness, and public frustration has fueled a movement to reform the Islamic system.

In recent months, however, both the propaganda and the position of Iran's hard-liners have been given new life by the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Echoes of "Al Aksa intifada," as the past nine months of violence between Palestinians and Israelis is known, reverberate throughout the politics of the Middle East, and nowhere more so than in Iran. Here, the intifada has reinvigorated one of the core principles of domestic political accord and regional activism -- reformers and conservatives alike have found common cause in rallying round the Palestinians, while Iran's long-standing rejection of U.S. efforts to broker peace has been vindicated by the failure of those efforts and by the growing militancy across the Muslim world.

In today's agitated environment, Iranian rhetoric that only recently sounded absurdly obsolescent is suddenly appealing. For example, Tehran's dismissals of the very possibility of peace and its absolute rejection of Israel's existence sounds responsive chords among newly appreciative Arab audiences.

And while its long-standing support for militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas may earn the Islamic Republic top billing in the annual U.S. report on international terrorism, it also provides a powerful mantle of religious leadership.

In short, Iran is no longer the regional outcast, but now helps set an increasingly angry agenda.

Yet, while the escalating cycle of regional violence may have enhanced the power of Iran's Islamic regime, it has also endangered the slow process of systemic reform that appeared to offer the government its best chance for longevity.

This is because regional tension helps Iran's conservatives reassert control by imposing a fresh ideological orthodoxy and validating their Manichean worldview. Although many reformers share the revolutionary antipathy toward Israel, some -- including President Mohammad Khatami -- have also expressed grudging support for the idea of Palestinians participating in peace talks.

When those talks imploded and violence erupted, Iranian moderates found themselves quickly marginalized as betrayers to a divinely sanctioned cause, and their notions of civil society dissolved by a resurgent, belligerent right wing.

An equally serious consequence of the intifada is that it has slammed the door on Iran's precarious project of rehabilitating its international image.

Official Iranian exhortations to violence have drowned out President Khatami's soothing salesmanship, his "Dialogue Among Civilizations" initiative, and negated the generally pragmatic trend that has characterized Iran's foreign policy during his administration.

Although Iran's vociferousness has clearly struck a chord with its neighbors, such regional support has only intensified American and Israeli concerns about the threat posed by Tehran. If the reform movement helped the Islamic Republic recede ever so slightly from the top of their security agenda, the intifada has shot it back there with a bullet.

As a result, the regional violence has scuttled the fragile beginnings of rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran. Despite expectations that Iran's gradual change and the Bush Administration's ties to the oil industry might generate a thaw, U.S. sanctions intended to deter investment in the energy sector are set to be renewed for another five-year term this August. For the time being at least, Iran will remain branded by Washington as an outcast.

And in the long run, this isolation is the real danger for the Islamic Republic and for its disproportionately young population. Underneath the glowering imagery of martyrdom that emblazons its streets, Iranians are focused on today's life, and they are impatient for a better future. Raised in a revolutionary culture stepped in sympathy for the oppressed, many are genuinely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Nonetheless, they are weary of their government's relentless recitations on a conflict far away from their everyday concerns. Half a million young Iranians join the ranks of the unemployed each year, and most would prefer jobs to more talk of jihad.

This was the message of the 21 million Iranians who cast their ballots for a second Khatami term earlier this month. Despite their palpable disillusionment in the pace and scope of his reform program, the population turned out in surprisingly large numbers to reaffirm Khatami's course of greater moderation at home and abroad.

The regional conflagration, and its utility within Iran's polarized politics, further intensifies the challenges to the reformist agenda of civil society, political participation, and eased international tensions. But it is clear from this vote -- and from the past four years -- that the shimmering image of Jerusalem will not be enough to satisfy Iran's burgeoning public demands. Today, the children of the Iranian revolution aspire to a more vibrant future.


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