CONSIDER the general perceptions about Iran as the sun sets on 2006 and compare them with those in 2002. Four years ago, President Bush, primed by the neo-conservative ideologues, declared Iran, together with Iraq and North Korea, as the axis of evil in world politics. A year later as he reduced Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to rubble, the main question was the order in which he would repeat his spectacular regime change in Iran and Syria.

When Iran initiated a covert initiative the same year to open a dialogue with the United States to forestall military intervention, it was spurned. Three years on, the issue is if the region can at all be stabilised without engaging Iran, which may not now repeat the “concessions” offered under the duress of the events of 2003. Iran is coming into its own as a major regional power.

The journey to that status is by no means easy; it needs comprehensive power embracing political, economic, cultural and military spheres, an optimum balance of soft and hard power. In Iran’s case, there are added obstacles to overcome: hostility of the United States and Israel, the constant threat of international sanctions designed to terminate its nuclear programme, disconnect with globalised economy, deep-seated distrust of Iran in the Arab states and, above all, scarcity of sources for the procurement of sophisticated weapon systems.

All these and other factors pose the question as to how far Iran has recovered from the dislocations caused by the Islamic revolution and the eight-year war it had to fight with Iraq. The Islamic revolution itself continues to be a dynamic process involving an endless struggle between factions labelled in a rather facile manner as conservatives and reformists. How this internal tension is resolved has implications for Iran’s neighbours. Insofar as the complexion of Iran’s regime shapes its worldview, it remains a determinant of their policy towards Iran.

Portrayal of Iran as a nation threatening its neighbours is not supported by the main thrust of Iranian policy since the revolution. Iran’s military posture has always been defensive and its dominant doctrine is to build up effective deterrence against external threats. This is what has determined its rearmament policy since the war with Iraq. It has never invaded any other country and its army, air force and navy have concentrated primarily on enhancing their capability to make a potential invader pay a prohibitive cost.

At the secondary level, it also aims at sending a strong message to the neighbours that they should not become complicit in anti-Iran military adventures. Perpetuation of a dual system — the regular forces and a highly motivated force called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — is not just a domestic imperative; it also makes a clear statement of the kind of war — conventional and unconventional— that Iran would wage if invaded. The pattern of Iranian defence expenditure since the Iraq war supports the view that the two objectives mentioned above remain unchanged.

Iran has not so far pursued any ambitious programme of modernising its 350,000 strong army. Having lived through the two final years of the Iran-Iraq war, I was expecting a much higher outlay on armoured formations than has been the case. The Iranian navy has remained a determined force for coastal defence with additional capability to disrupt the supply of strategic commodities from the region in an existential situation for the country. The air force has had serious procurement problems and has, therefore, concentrated on air defence. The three “regular” forces are backed up by 120,000 strong IRGC which has its own navy and missile wing. Together, the two systems create an effective mix of traditional and asymmetrical defence against outside military intervention.

Iran has, however, invested lavishly in missiles and achieved results that enhance its deterrent power and enable it to project power beyond its frontiers. Uzi Rubin, Israel’s foremost expert on missile development, has written about the deliberate transparency of Iran’s acquisition of missiles; Iran wants friends and foes to know that it can hit back in an ever widening circle.

Pakistan is clearly ahead of Iran in this field but there are remarkable similarities in the strategies of the two countries. The Shahab series of Iranian missiles seem to have come of age. Shahab I and Shahab II with a range of 300 and about 600 km respectively provide a broad quantitative base. Shahab III, which the Iranians keep improving upon, has a range extending from 1,500 km to 2,000 km.

Iran has been working with ordinary and storeable liquid as well as solid propellant ballistic missiles. An important claim made by Iran is that of the successful serial production of a 400km per hour underwater “missile” which gives a strong punch to its shore-based defence capability. There has been speculation about clandestine acquisition of BM 25 missiles with a range of 3,500km but it remains unconfirmed. Apprehensive of pre-emptive strikes by the United States and Israel, Iran has mixed mobile launchers with hardened fixed launch sites. It is developing an indigenous space programme and that may include plans to extend the reach of Iranian missiles beyond the Middle East theatre.

Iran’s real gain has, however, come from the transformation of the strategic space in its neighbourhood. The IRGC is well trained to take advantage of this change. The heroic resistance of Hezbollah, in particular its use of Katyusha rockets on a large scale, was a notable demonstration of this process. A quieter but eventually more significant Iranian nexus is with militias and emerging political forces in Iraq. President Bush is still procrastinating about the increasing calls in the West for opening a serious dialogue with Iran but it would be difficult to ignore Iran’s salience to regional stability. In fact, Washington may have to give up its 25-year old policy of regime change in Tehran and once again consider Iran as “the prized trophy of American diplomacy”.

The draft circulated by Britain, France and Germany on December 20 for a Security Council resolution for sanctions against Iran is less stringent and more sensitive to Russian reservations. It invokes Article 41 of Chapter VII that does not include military action. There is, however, undiluted emphasis on banning items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to Iran’s enrichment-related, reprocessing or heavy water-related activities, or to the delivery systems such as ballistic missiles. The gap is still wide as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stands by his promise of celebrating Iran’s “full nuclearisation” soon, probably a mastery of the fuel cycle.

In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, there were wild expectations that Iran was already under siege and that this would trigger off an internal explosion. As in the case of Iraq, some of the anti-regime Iranian expatriates fuelled the hope that a large section of the people especially the disaffected youth would revolt. What actually happened was that after Khatami’s second presidential term, the people elected Ahmadinejad with a large majority.

Now once again far too much is being read into the shift of opinion seen during the election to the powerful Assembly of Experts and the municipal bodies. Iranian democracy provides for such shifts without endangering the essential post-revolution framework of power. Hashemi Rafsanjani’s success against the candidate preferred by Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is significant as long as one remembers that Rafsanjani had never been banished from the power elite. There is no erosion of the pre-eminence of the Rehbar, the supreme leader, Khamanei and that means continuity in Iran’s security and foreign policy.

In the stressed regional environment, Iran would be well advised to restore some of the “reformist” impulses of the Khatami era. The conservative backlash against him might have gone too far. Iran’s demographic profile is dominated by its youth and its aspirations cannot be brushed aside. Fresh stirrings amongst the students who played a pivotal role in the revolution need to be accommodated in the national policy. It is all the more important if Iran wishes to emerge as an influential actor in the fast-changing regional politics.

The region needs to evolve its own brand of modernity as a unifying factor. The Iranian revolution should continue to meet the demands of our times. The latest elections indicate that the people do not favour a return to the orthodoxy of the years when the Islamic Republic fought against counter-revolutionaries and then an invading Iraqi army. The Iranian state is still threatened but it has assets and resources today that should give it much greater self-assurance. It should explore ways and means by which unfinished tasks such as modernisation of its oil and gas infrastructure are fulfilled.

Pragmatists like Rafsanjani can help and their presence in the top echelon of power can facilitate the emergence of Iran as a major regional power, at peace with itself and with its Arab neighbours. An enhanced role in regional affairs depends upon Tehran reassuring other regional states that it does not seek an ideological confrontation. Iran must be seen to be healing the ethnic and sectarian rifts that were deliberately fuelled by the invaders in Iraq and not allow them to detract from the universal content of its Islamic revolution.

The writer is a former Pakistani ambassador to Iran. tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

PEACE and security has become a vexing problem in Afghanistan. There are fears that if the situation is not brought under control soon, the country could sink deeper into chaos with devastating consequences.

In recent months, insurgency-related violence has erupted even in the capital Kabul, the only place in Afghanistan where President Hamid Karzai has been able to establish his writ with the support of the occupying forces.

This development is a source of considerable anxiety even to the commander of Nato’s International Security Force (ISAF), General David Richards, who has warned that if the state of security in the country does not significantly improve most Afghans would support the Taliban.

It is believed that the majority of Afghanistan’s 31 million people oppose the Taliban who had enforced a puritanical form of Islam on them when they ruled the country. However, now most of the Afghans who have become disillusioned with the Karzai government and its failure to maintain peace in the country, even with the help of the occupying forces, yearn for a return to the days of security that was provided to them by the Taliban.

The Taliban are reportedly putting up fierce resistance to the occupying forces in Afghanistan and are increasing their strength by recruiting unemployed youth and others, including those who do not subscribe to their peculiar religious thoughts. According to western intelligence reports, the ongoing struggle against the occupying forces is being funded by the drug trade.

This indicates that the current resistance movement, though spearheaded by the Taliban, is not entirely religious in essence as portrayed by the western media. Needless to say, the people of Afghanistan, regardless of their political and religious affiliations, are within their rights to oppose the occupation of their country by alien forces and struggle for its liberation from them.

Regrettably, Pakistan is being accused constantly by the Afghan leadership for providing a sanctuary to the Taliban in Fata and allowing them to launch attacks on Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai, who never misses an opportunity to blame Pakistan for violence in his country, in his latest diatribe said that Islamabad, being a key ally of the US-led war on terror, should stop backing the Taliban who were fighting the US-backed administration in Afghanistan.

Baseless anti-Pakistan propaganda by sections of the western media as a result of the persistently negative Afghan statements has been a regular feature after the invasion of Afghanistan by US-led forces in 2001. However, perhaps it is for the first time that key US establishment figures, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have publicly commented on this issue acknowledging the presence of the Taliban in the tribal areas of Pakistan and their activities. Implicit in their statements has been criticism of the Pakistan government’s handling of the situation in the desired manner.

America’s director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has said that the government of Pakistan would soon have to decide what it should do about the tribal authorities who had failed to prevent the Taliban and Al Qaeda from moving back and forth across the border.

In actual fact, peace, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan are of strategic importance to Pakistan and form the cornerstone of its foreign policy. It does not, therefore, stand to reason that Pakistan would allow the Taliban to destabilise the situation in Afghanistan.

Most of the on-going violence in Afghanistan is of an indigenous nature and, therefore, the Taliban problem is on the side of Afghanistan itself. President Hamid Karzai should not be oblivious to what is happening in his own country.

Looking for scapegoats to explain the continuing violence in Afghanistan will not lead to any viable solution of the problem.

The presence of the Taliban and their sympathisers in the tribal areas in Pakistan cannot be ruled out. However, Pakistan is fully conscious of the fact that if they are allowed to use its territory for carrying out attacks across the Afghan border it would not only pose a serious threat to its own security interests but also create many other complications. It has, therefore, already deployed over 80,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan to prevent illegal movement in either direction and also enlisted the support of the tribes in the border areas for this purpose.

President Hamid Karzai, nevertheless, clings stubbornly to his ill-founded belief that the Taliban enjoy Pakistan’s support in carrying out attacks on Afghanistan. He is aware of the tenuous nature of his allegation against Pakistan but he is economical with the truth only to cover up the fatal flaws in the strategy exhibited by the occupying forces thus far to put down the growing resistance against them by the insurgents. Regrettably, instead of adopting a sensible stance, Karzai has opted to act in a manner that is dangerously shortsighted.

There is also another problem of considerable dimension that has a direct bearing on the allegation made by Hamid Karzai against Pakistan. There are still over three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan who, taking advantage of the long porous border between the two countries, cross it without any difficulty. Moreover, under an agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan the divided Afghan families are allowed frequent visits, back and forth, without following a cumbersome procedure. This has placed Pakistan in a quandary. Under the circumstances the only viable proposition to resolve the matter is that the Afghan refugees in Pakistan be sent back to their country as early as possible.

Recently, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri visited Kabul in connection with a proposed peace jirga of tribal leaders on both sides of the Durand Line. This jirga is to be held under a plan that was agreed on by President Pervez Musharraf and President Hamid Karzai at a White House summit that was hosted by President Bush. The proposed peace jirga is evidently aimed at reining the Taliban by involving their tribal elders. It would, however, be a futile exercise.

The jirgas that include local elders of social standing in the community are no doubt a time-honoured tribal tradition to resolve local problems but to expect them to deal with a complexed and intricate issue like the growing insurgency against the alien occupying forces in Afghanistan is unrealistic. The Taliban have already made it clear that their struggle will continue until the unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces from Afghanistan.

The writer is a former ambassador

DEAR Mr President: Your interview in The Washington Post made headlines across the country on Wednesday because you continued to talk about “victory” in Iraq — a hint that you may increase the number of American troops there.

But it caught my eye for a different reason. In it (after expressing some “befuddlement” at the suggestion that you do not read books), you explained that the most recent book you read was “King Leopold’s Ghost,” about the plundering of Congo a century ago. This pleased me because I wrote that book.

Sometimes college history classes that read “King Leopold’s Ghost” invite me in for a seminar. Before you ask Karl to call me, however, let me just say that I regret that I’m not going to be able to do that in this case. The Christmas season is a busy time, after all, and I’m going away for a while. Instead, let me just raise a few follow-up questions with you here.

First, as you now know, the long effort by King Leopold II of Belgium to bring Congo under his control was driven by his avid quest for a commodity central to industry and transportation: rubber. Does that remind you of anything?

What’s more, the king justified his grab for Congo’s natural resources with much talk about bringing philanthropy and Christianity to darkest Africa. Now what did that remind you of?

Leopold cleared at least $1.1 billion in today’s dollars during the 23 years he controlled Congo, and his businessmen friends made additional huge sums. Much of the money flowed into companies with special royal concession rights to exploit the rain forest. Final question, for extra credit: Do those companies remind you of anything? If you mentioned Halliburton or DynCorp, you’re right again.

As a reader of history, you must have been interested, I’m sure, in something else in the Congo story: the case of another world leader facing his own Abu Ghraib scandal.

As you noticed, Mr. President, King Leopold II was a master of public relations. He was really his own Karl Rove — which saved money on staff salaries at the royal palace in Brussels. For years the press at home and abroad dutifully praised his efforts to bring “civilization” to Africa; a whole shipload of Belgian journalists went to Congo in 1898 to enthuse about the opening of a new railroad.

But, like you, he got into big trouble through photographs. These were mainly taken by a British missionary named Alice Harris, and they showed Congolese being whipped, chained as hostages and with their hands cut off by Leopold’s soldiers. Through the efforts of a British journalist named Edmund Dene Morel, whom the king liked about as much as you like Seymour Hersh, these photos were splashed on front pages all over the world.

Are there other similarities between your situation and Leopold’s? That’s for you to decide. I hope you don’t end up like him. Statues of Leopold in Congo have long been toppled, one in Belgium was recently mutilated, and streets named after him there are having their names changed. And all this despite the fact that his family remains in the monarchy — something that may well be the case for your family here as well.

If you send those additional troops to Iraq and don’t swiftly withdraw the ones now there, I suspect that even the efforts of the twins, when their turns in the Oval Office come, or of Jeb’s kids, when they get there, will not be enough to stave off a similar judgment on you 100 years from now. It’s true that you’ve not slashed the population of Iraq in half, as Leopold and those who immediately followed him did in Congo, but that’s small comfort.

For your next assignment, Mr President, how about a different sort of reading? Ask Laura to stuff your Christmas stocking with books about people who’ve had the courage to change their minds. One former tenant of the house you live in, Lyndon B. Johnson, entered politics as a traditional segregationist but ended up doing more for civil rights than any American president of his century. Another, Dwight D. Eisenhower, spent half his life in the US military but gave us (a little late) an eloquent warning about the military-industrial complex.

Another ex-military man, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps, won the Medal of Honour twice, but then ended up denouncing the oil companies and agribusiness corporations he realized that he had been fighting for in US interventions in Central America. History is filled with such people, and I wish you many inspiring hours reading about them. And, in the coming two years, I hope you’ll act on their example. — Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service

EASTERN Europeans follow the leftward turn in Latin America with a mixture of deja vu and bittersweet nostalgia. The headlines are familiar — nationalisation of foreign corporations, free access to medical services, state-financed homes for the poor, farming cooperatives, rallies against US imperialism, and state-owned film studios to provide revolutionary propaganda.

That’s how communist regimes started in central and eastern Europe 60 years ago, enforced by the Soviet Union but supported by progressive forces. The injustices of former regimes were abolished: villages got electricity and healthcare, universities were opened to working-class children, adults stopped kissing the hands of priests.

However, the price of social justice was high: one-party rule, inflexible economic structures, ageing leaders and a lack of wider opportunities for the younger generation.

In this sense, the present situation in Latin America has echoes of eastern Europe’s rejected past. And people in the former communist countries are hardly getting reliable media coverage of the peaceful revolutions of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. The governing Socialists of Hungary share the Blairite concept of a “new left” based on less state intervention and more market competition.

A Hungarian Socialist MP recently told me that he had two political idols: Che Guevara and Margaret Thatcher. This was not a joke — just a logical consequence of a country offering a neoliberal version of capitalism as the sole solution to the crisis of the socialist system. Che is a T-shirt figure even in Budapest, but much of his writing has never been translated into Hungarian.

On the other hand, Latin America’s left turn follows the failure of its neoliberal experiments. Latin Americans have had enough time to experience the consequences: the widening gap between rich and poor, the growth of social misery and ruthless exploitation by western corporations.

Hungary is currently facing two scandals. A western-owned corporation tried to distribute rotten meat carrying forged expiry labels. Then it was revealed that a German firm had transported thousand tons of domestic garbage to illegal Hungarian depots. This was shocking news for Hungarians, but Latin America has suffered similar treatment by US companies for decades. In the “ideal” world of the free market garbage, pollution, crime and exploitation move automatically from developed countries to less developed ones. That’s why, contrary to neoliberal dogma, less developed countries need strong government and regulation.

So the ruthless capitalist past of Latin America is now the present and near future for eastern Europe. Meanwhile, nationalisation of energy, free education and healthcare, redistribution of funds to the poor and many other reforms are offering a better future to Latin America. Of course, Venezuela is far from being a “socialist state” in the way that Hungary was before 1989, but the redistribution of wealth is in the right direction.

The social interest in eastern Europe is similar: more equality, better chances for domestic enterprises instead of foreign corporations, generous social services. But unhappy memories of party dictatorship in eastern Europe mean the word “socialism” still has negative associations for many people. Only a small leftist minority in Hungary genuinely thinks any kind of socialism could now replace capitalism there without economic disaster. Thus the two peripheries of the developed west — Latin America and eastern Europe — are currently choosing diametrically opposed social models.

It’s not for people like me to give advice to the leftwing leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia or other Latin American countries. I can only speak about my hopes for their future. But the experiences of eastern Europe shouldn’t be forgotten. One hope is that the reasonable nationalisation process only goes as far as the energy sector and other international or monopolistic corporations, since what is really needed is a mixture of state control over the whole economy and enterprising spirit at the individual level. Small- and medium-size enterprises are best kept in private or cooperative hands, though of course kept under public control through taxation and regulation of working conditions.—Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a Hungarian Socialist member of the European parliament.