An interpretation of Iran

Foreign Policy interviews Ali Ansari, a history professor at the University of St. Andrews, with regard to this week's state of the union speech. Some excerpts:

So it’s a simplification to say that the Iranians are directly, in a sense, the Shiite militias. In fact, they’ve been by and large a force for restraint and moderation.
With his speech, Bush is heading down the route of saying they’re (i.e., Shiites and Sunnis) basically all the same and they all hate us, which is an awkward argument to make. It’s going to lead to more problems.

In Iran, the more sober voices are saying they’d actually like it much better if the Americans stayed and provided a much more stable structure, rather than leaving, creating a vacuum, and letting Iraq disintegrate into a sort of non-state in the middle of the Middle East. And you’d have the Syrians, Turks, Iranians, Jordanians and Saudis all seeking to influence the outcome of any struggle there. I think it’ll be fairly vicious. Whether it’s an epic battle on the scale Bush is saying is a different matter.

So Iran would rather have stability and order. At the moment, Iran has this slightly incoherent strategy, but the broad thrust of it is, “We can irritate the Americans enough to get them out, but we don’t want them to go too quickly—not until they’ve given us a bit more stability. It’s in our interests to have a peaceful western border and not to allow the Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians and perhaps others to move in a big way.

Ultimately, the United States is going to have to get to grips with the reality of Iran. Whether talks will happen in the future or not is another matter, but I don’t see it happening in the near term. It’s a great pity. The United States missed a great opportunity with the Iraq Study Group’s report. At the moment it seems that, given a choice between a simple roundtable and ignoring Iran, the United States has opted for the choice of ignoring Iran. And it’s a great pity, because it’s going to make life more difficult.

Also, it’s actually Ahmadinejad’s political and economic incompetence that is causing the problems in Iran.

It would embolden some groups in Iran. Their view is that they’ve got the United States on the run, and one more push and Iraq will fall in their lap. In many ways it’s just as fanciful a notion as what you get from any in the conservative movement in the United States. So, you’ve got two particular groups of people, one in Washington and one in Tehran, thinking along the same lines.