The ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, once described the three duties of a noble Persian (in the days before their empire was founded) as being to shoot bows, ride horses and tell the truth. Alas, among those who govern Iran nowadays, all three traditional practices seem much decayed. Sorting out what is going in the Middle East is difficult enough at the best of times, but Iran’s disingenuous pronouncements are piling chaos atop confusion. The question is: Is this just stupidity or are they being clever and devious?
The answer to this question is that the government of President Ahmadinejad is being very stupid but thinks itself clever.
Most people, with little effort, can remember encountering somebody who thought they were being marvellously devious and subtle and yet had little idea that most people could see right through them. Somewhere, in our own school days, most of us got the sense that we should be a bit more honest after being gently reminded that most people only have two grandmothers who can die at convenient moments; and that few dogs will eat homework more than once. Some people never learn this lesson, and many of them go on to long and unfulfilling careers in petty crime and similar enterprises.
Most of us have more difficulty with sociopathic leader types like the murderous Californian Charles Manson and Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate Cult, or some spokespeople from terrorist groups like the Tamil Tigers, all of whom confidently expect you to implicitly believe whatever tripe they are serving up. The remarkable self-assurance of a huckster has deceived more than a few people who innocently set aside their defences. Most of us, fortunately, remain somewhat more wary and suspicious of somebody trying to sell us something.
Somewhere beyond this is the current government of Iran. Their ability to deliver complete tripe and to expect us to believe it is quite astounding.
The Iranian government has several constituencies and audiences for its messages. They include its own people (much lied to) and the government’s supporters within Iran and other factions within that same government. They must also communicate to allies, the Arab street, the world generally and the major powers in particular. It must woo the press and feed it – often through its own agents, many of whom are media stringers working in Lebanon and elsewhere. Iran must occasionally act diplomatically, but will also posture by snarling abuse at the Saudis, sending bellicose threats to Israel and bristling like a porcupine when the US gets particularly irritated.
There is also the religious message to send, not least to a domestic Iranian audience. It is now clear that Ahmadinejad is sincere in his hope that he can create the conditions for the Mahdi to arrive… a sincerity that irritates and alarms many Iranians. Also, religion is the ideology of the Iranian government and it tends to couch many of its communications in the requirements of Islam.
The regime wishes to appear strong to all audiences; it must appear to have friends, a plan and a future. There are ever so many enemies to intimidate domestically and abroad who devoutly want an end to this government and for its leaders to receive the rough justice they richly deserve.
To compound all their communications problems the Iranian government is…. well, to be charitable… they’re stupid. Bret Stephens, the Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal (and a man who has met Ahmadinejad), has pointed out on several occasions that dictatorships are in the business of manipulating fear, which means they are very good at understanding it. It means, however, that they are not very good at understanding other things. Supreme leaders who deal out fear seldom get their own convictions tested or their impressions corrected by clear-thinking advisors. Remember the enormous mistakes made by Mao, Stalin and Hitler, and one can get plenty of illustrations of the principle at work.
A government, convinced of its own genius, which must balance all these considerations has its work cut out for it. Alas, Ahmadinejad and company are too much like the kid who thinks he can persuade his teacher that he has three ailing grannies and a dog that regularly dines on homework assignments.
The challenge for the rest of us is to sort out what among Iran’s communications are completely unreal and what are partially real. With such a barrage of lies, distortions and half-truths; this is no easy task.
First, like Hitler and his ‘wonder weapons’ promised to the German people in the last 12 months of the war, the Iranian government has been trying to convince its enemies and its own people that the genius of Iranian science is producing marvellous new weapons. These weapons demonstrate the superiority of the regime’s leadership and the lethality of its defences, and they let the people bask in the glow of accomplishment and security. Among the weapons Iran has announced that it has created in recent years have been:
- The Hoot Super-cavitation torpedo – supposedly tested in 2005 and with an underwater speed of 360 km. Funny, it may have taken the Russians decades to develop the first Va-111 Shkval super-cavitation torpedo but the genius of Iranian science reversed engineered it (from a news story) in months! So why is Iran not manufacturing and exporting them to an eager world market?
- The Bavar 373 Air Defence Missile: The Iranians had been lusting to get their hands on Russian S-300 (aka ‘Grumble’) SA-10 Surface to Air Missiles which are a long-range weapon with a very high kill probability against a wide spectrum of targets from AWACs aircraft to low-flying helicopters and cruise missiles. The problem is that after Putin first met Ahmadinejad the Russians started dragging their heels on delivery although they sell the missile to many other nations and they have out-right refused to complete the deal since 2010. The Iranian response is to build their own ‘much improved’ version of the S-300. The Russians have introduced and built more anti-aircraft missiles than the rest of the world put-together, it is unlikely Iran will surpass them in technical skill.
- The Razm 120mm mortar system: The essence of the mortar is that it is light and adaptable but accurate enough and pays for this by being short-ranged. The master-scientists of Iran, however, have made improvements where the rest of the world has not by introducing a rocket-assisted mortar bomb for a dramatic increase in range. Gunners all over the world who are familiar with the ballistic nature of mortars are scratching their heads about this amazing technical masterpiece.
Iranian technical genius extends to many other indigenous weapons systems that have been filmed for display to an appreciative domestic audience and awed observers elsewhere in the world. Only unkind cynics note that some films of missile tests seem to have gone to a photo-shop before release, or wonder how such a cash-starved economy can keep funding such advanced projects.
In 1986, as the murderous war with Iraq dragged on into its sixth corpse-strewn year, Ayatollah Khomeini stated that Iran should have its own nuclear weapons. Twenty-six years later, the World is still wondering when Iran will declare it has the bomb. Sadly, the Iranian nuclear weapons program has run into more than a few unexpected hurdles such as vicious computer viruses, landmines attached to the cars of leading researchers, sabotaged enrichment centrifuges, unexplained large explosions inside laboratories, etcetera; all very unfortunate, to be sure.
The great Samuel Clemens wrote several amusing essays about the nature of lying, but observed the nature of a successful lie is to keep it simple and stick to it. While making no judgements about the personal veracity of Iran’s leaders, they have earnestly declared that Iran has a nuclear program for peaceful purposes. Setting aside the bloodthirsty promises about what the peaceful nuclear program shall do to Israel or the United States, this one principle has largely been followed.
As evidence of their nation’s peaceful atomic intentions, the Iranian Parliament recently decided that Iranian flagged oil tankers (which belong to their nationalized oil company) should be converted to nuclear propulsion as an economy on fuel… when carrying crude oil to other far distant nations. Strangely enough, apparently the needs for peaceful maritime nuclear engines would require a high degree of enrichment of uranium fuel. Should one take this as another proof of the peaceful intentions of Iran and the products of its native scientific genius – except that none of the many other nations shipping oil and other bulk cargoes around the world for the last 60 years have seen the necessity for outfitting their commercial vessels with nuclear engines.
Syria has not been a happy nation… ever. However, the results of the so-called Arab Spring have seen a Saudi-financed, Turkish-backed Sunni Muslim Brotherhood insurgency against the Iranian-supported Shi’ia minority dictatorship of the Assad family. All contending parties seem adept at handling explosives and small arms, but the truth seems a much more unstable commodity. Enter Iran, in support of a country it fondly imagines to be a client state.
In early July, the world’s capitals were stunned by news that the Russians, Chinese and Iranians would be staging joint military exercises in Syria sometime this summer – a determined show of force in support of the beleaguered Assad regime and a dramatic escalation of the crisis. However, among those capitals were Moscow and Beijing, who had no idea that their armed forces were on the road to Damascus. It seems that few people checked the origin of the story… the Iranian Fars news agency.
Iran, perhaps feeling apprehensive in a world that really does not love its government, has been claiming that Russia and China are close friends. China, however, is nakedly pragmatic in its own interests and has no friends, only business partners and clients. Russia has a long and complex history with Persia and, long-term players that the Muscovites are, looks forward to maintaining that history when the Revolution is over. Accordingly, the Russians are being as friendly as one’s banker might be when one’s credit line is almost maxed out – not amicable at the moment but willing to preserve future options.
One final example of the current Iranian willingness to be economical with the truth is that the Basiji Press (an Iranian government news agency) announced in late May 2012 that a recently discovered Gospel of Barnabas will trigger the end of Christianity. For those unfamiliar with this gospel, it was discovered in the 16th Century and purports that Christ forecasted the arrival of Mohammed. Funnily enough, what is known of this Gospel is that it is rife with anachronisms and the oldest versions of it seem to have been written in Arabic characters… who knew? It would take a real idiot to treat something as farcical as this seriously.
The Iranian people are a great and ancient one, with many talents and much to offer the world. But in the last 33 years, they have been ruled by a government that murders its prisoners, hangs teenaged girls, has run their economy into the ground (no mean trick for a major oil exporter), and has spread terror throughout the world. Yet, what must be really irritating even beyond the regime’s cruelty and corruption is their stupidity and incompetence. It is no shame to be ruled by hard and vicious dictators, but a dictatorship as full of nincompoops as this? It is no wonder you can meet so many Iranians so red-faced with embarrassment these days, and that’s the truth.
