05 May 2009
Is Power Politics Good for Iran?
Despite its sloppily edited text, Amir Taheri’s OpEd article in the May 4, 2009 Wall Street Journal, “As the U.S. Retreats, Iran Fills the Void,” clearly observes a transformation in the behavior of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In the end, the Khomeinist regime is enjoying the exercise of the political power that flows from exogenous endowments (traditionally, birthrights; in Iran’s post-Shah existence, oil resources and religious fundamentalism).
The Great Satan and the rest of the secular West should be glad that Iran’s government may become a more conventional rival for strategic influence in the Middle East. We are more expert and historically more often successful, not to mention less drained, in that competition than in battles for spiritual allegiance.
And yet, the West’s concern for the future of Iran will ultimately have to be, What’s in it for the people of Iran? Will its middle class always concede political power to unmeritorious elites? For how long will Iran be a potentially unstable society waiting to establish an order that benefits the material welfare of its population? Until then, religious fundamentalism and, now, regional power politics, divert resources from Persians’ general well-being.
Despite its sloppily edited text, Amir Taheri’s OpEd article in the May 4, 2009 Wall Street Journal, “As the U.S. Retreats, Iran Fills the Void,” clearly observes a transformation in the behavior of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In the end, the Khomeinist regime is enjoying the exercise of the political power that flows from exogenous endowments (traditionally, birthrights; in Iran’s post-Shah existence, oil resources and religious fundamentalism).
The Great Satan and the rest of the secular West should be glad that Iran’s government may become a more conventional rival for strategic influence in the Middle East. We are more expert and historically more often successful, not to mention less drained, in that competition than in battles for spiritual allegiance.
And yet, the West’s concern for the future of Iran will ultimately have to be, What’s in it for the people of Iran? Will its middle class always concede political power to unmeritorious elites? For how long will Iran be a potentially unstable society waiting to establish an order that benefits the material welfare of its population? Until then, religious fundamentalism and, now, regional power politics, divert resources from Persians’ general well-being.
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