Iranian soldiers participate in military manoeuvres at Sistan-Baluchestan province, some 50 kms east of city of Zahedan near the Pakistani border, 19 August 2006 (STR/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]One of President Hassan Rouhani’s key election pledges last summer centered on foreign policy, and his message was plain: there is something inherently wrong with Tehran’s foreign and security policy priorities. In many ways, he has started delivering on that promise of change, and the initiation of a process of détente toward Western countries, particularly the United States, is a strong start.
Yet months after he arrived in the presidential palace at Saad Abad, Rouhani and his moderate government have still to convince a skeptical Iranian public that they are capable of taking charge of relations with the outside world. The skeptics say that Rouhani’s détente towards the US has only been possible because other centers of power in the Islamic Republic—principally Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—backed him out of necessity, and that Rouhani does not have the political clout to bring about the kind of transformation he promised in his election campaign.
The skeptics still see Iran’s priorities vis-à-vis the rest of the world as misguided, often full of ideological bluster and showmanship yet often failing to secure the nation’s basic interests. In one glaring example, the Islamic Republic of Iran sees fit to send warships to the Atlantic Ocean, yet it cannot properly monitor its own national land borders. A case in point is the roughly 560-mile (900-kilometer) long Iran–Pakistan border in the lawless province of Baluchistan, that has for too long been the embodiment of failed governance in Iran.
Since February 6, five anguished Iranian families have been waiting to hear about the fate of their sons, military conscripts who were kidnapped by a terrorist group based in Pakistan while serving on the border. At the time of writing, the latest reports suggest that the terrorists, from the group Jaish Al-Adel, have killed one of the soldiers and are threatening to kill the others if Tehran fails to meet their demands. Those Iranian warships on the high seas—or anything else on the long list of Iran’s military muscle-flexing exercises—have been of no use in helping to return these unfortunate young men.
To say the entire episode has been hugely embarrassing for Tehran is an understatement. The kidnappers hit the border post, which appears to have been little more than a makeshift tent, in broad daylight, and filmed the entire operation for good measure. Iran’s powerlessness in the face of a hit-and-run raid by a band of miscreants has made its boastful deployment of warships thousands of miles away stand out as a case of misplaced priorities in Tehran.
It is, of course, well within Iran’s right to operate a blue-water (i.e., non-coastal) navy and have its young sailors gain experience operating in the world’s oceans. But it is still difficult not to see the timing of such Iranian behavior as a case of poor prioritization. And this, in turn, takes us back to Tehran and the power play that is presently unfolding in the senior ranks of the Islamic Republic. There is little doubt that Rouhani was not the mastermind behind the idea to send warships to the Atlantic at a time when he was deeply engaged in attempts to lessen tensions with the US.
In fact, his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, got himself into hot water when he appeared to publicly disparage Iran’s military prowess, saying the Americans “are not fearful of our few missiles.” Iran’s powerful men in uniform, particularly the senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were flabbergasted by Zarif’s comment but opted not to hit back. In the meantime, the IRGC commanders will continue to depict themselves as the real guardians of the nation, and military muscle-flexing is part of their theatrics. The challenge for Rouhani, Zarif and the rest of the moderate government that came to power in August on a platform of policy reorientation, is to keep the pressure on the hawks in Iran and force them to be more accountable for their misplaced priorities and actions.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
