Daily Times

The diplomatic ties between Iran and the United States have been terminated since 1980. Pakistan and Switzerland mediate contacts between the two countries. US interest section of the Swiss embassy in Tehran, and Iranian Interest section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C serves this purpose. A glance at history reveals that political relations between Persia (now Iran) began when the shah of Persia, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, officially dispatched Persia’s first ambassador, Mirza Abolhassan, to Washington D.C. in 1856. In 1883, Samuel G W Benjamin was appointed as the first official diplomatic envoy to Iran by the United States.

The US had little interest in Persia, and relations between the two countries remained cordial until World War II. In 1952 and 1953, with the nationalisation policy of the Anglo Iranian Oil company, by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, led to the Abadan crisis. Established by the British, the company shared profits-85 percent for the British and 15 percent for Iran-butthe company withheld the financial record from the Iranian government. The nationalisation was widely supported by the masses in Iran, and parliament unanimously agreed to nationalise its holding of, what was at the time, the British Empire’s largest company. The British retaliated with an embargo on Iranian oil supported by major international oil companies. Economic conditions in Iran started to get worse, President Truman pressed Britain not to invade Iran, and that gave a notion that the United States stood with Iran.

However, as the cold war intensified, and Truman was replaced by Republican Dwight D Eisenhower, CIA, through a covert operation, Ajax, organised a coup d’état to overthrow the Mossadeq government. That was to counter Soviet Union’s attempt to set up separatist states in the Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, along with its demand for military rights to the Dardanelles.

United States’ hegemonic nature and a relentless quest for superiority have proved to be very costly for the country

Following the coup, the Shah government was re-installed, and the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, maintained close ties with the United States during most of his reign, until he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979. After the Islamic Revolution, relations between the two countries took a bumpy ride. The US embassy hostage crisis in 1979-81, the Iran-Contra scandal in 1985-86, and the shooting of an Iranian plane in 1988 by USS Vincennes, killing 290 people on board, created an outburst of resentment and anger across the country.

United States’ hegemonic nature and a relentless quest for superiority have proved to be very costly for the country. The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan are bitter chapters in the history of the United States. The decades long Afghan war, despite the loss of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, is still out of the hands of the United States. They have indulged themselves in a war that they could not end. President George W Bush denounced Iran as part of an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address, and following the fear of clandestine nuclear weapons programme, which Iran denies, sanctions were imposed by the UN, the US and the EU. In 2013, President Obama and his Iranian counterpart spoke by phone, the first such top-level conversation in more than 30 years. In 2015, after a flurry of diplomatic activity, Iran agreed to a long-term deal on its nuclear programme.

Since the inception of President Trump, a lot has changed in world politics. In May 2018, the US president abandoned the nuclear deal, and imposed sanctions on Iran and countries that traded with it. Relations between the two countries start to get worse following the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and B-52 bombers in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s Supreme Leader rejects the offer of negotiations with a message for his nation that they should be calm and there is not going to be any war.

This is more of a civilisational war rather than a political or an economic one. The fact is that a civilisation based world order is emerging. People and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question: who are we? Now politics is not only used to advance people’s interest but also to define their identity. The west thinks that their civilisation is universal, and the rest of world should follow them; however, the stance in non-western regions is opposite. This has resulted in Islamphobia, religious fundamentalism and chaos around the globe.

To avoid the clash of civilisation, the west needs to understand that their civilisation is not universal but unique, like five other civilisations of the world. World leaders should understand the multi-civilisational character of the world in order to avoid a global war of civilization, which would not be an ordinary war; rather, it would be the end of the world.

Repeating the mistakes of the past, and learning no lessons from the history, the old hunger for hegemony and superiority has once again surfaced, but Iran like Iraq or Afghanistan is not going to be a sweet mushroom; rather, it might be an Amanita ocreata-a death angel for the US.

The writer is a freelancer