The Iranian attack against Israel, in retaliation for the bombing of its consulate in Damascus, is the latest episode in a long historical process of confrontation between the Islamic regime installed in Tehran in 1979 and the West. It has been almost five decades of confrontation. Since the Shia clerics overthrew the last shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, and seized power, the slogan has been “Death to America! Death to Israel!” The rhetoric against “the great Satan” and “the little Satan” has not changed. Continue printed on the walls.
The Islamic revolution caused an earthquake that profoundly altered the balance in the Middle East. It had a huge impact. A theocracy was born in a country with a very extensive geography, great economic and demographic weight, successor to the Persian empire, and with notable hydrocarbon reserves. It was compared to what the French Revolution meant for Europe. After the initial perplexity and a certain innocence, the view of Islam in the Western world changed. It was, in effect, the starting point of a very articulate, uninhibited and violent Muslim fanaticism that has manifested itself in various forms up to the present day.
The victory of the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini – who lived in exile near Paris – was also, in part, the Iranian version of the anti-imperialist struggle. Behind what happened in 1979, the explosion of anti-Western resentment, was the humiliation suffered by the 1953 coup, orchestrated by the CIA and the British secret services. The plot brought down the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadeq, after Parliament had decided to nationalize the oil industry. Thanks to the hand of Washington and London, the Shah saw his power strengthened and thus became, definitively, a pawn of Western interests.
The destabilization caused by the Islamic revolution was immediately felt in the US election. The long hostage-taking in the American embassy in Tehran was one of the reasons why Democratic President Jimmy Carter was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The Iranian theocracy dramatically exacerbated, both ideologically and materially, the geopolitical threat that had already loomed over Israel since its independence in 1948. The ayatollahs caricature Israel as the vanguard of a neo-colonialist domination led by the United States and that is why they urge the total destruction of the Jewish State.
Also Iran’s Arab neighbors, such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the petro-monarchies of the Gulf, were very sensitive from the beginning to the danger emanating from Tehran. Saddam Hussein – then a useful tool of Washington, Paris and other capitals – launched an eight-year war against Iran, in the vain hope that the theocratic regime would collapse and that he could seize disputed rich regions to the south. The calculation was wrong, for Saddam and for those who helped him.
Terrorism has been one of the resources most used by the Iranian regime, either directly or through allied groups, to confront Western enemies and local rivals. Actions are counted by the dozens over the years. Especially deadly were the attacks in 1982 and 1983 in Beirut, first against the US embassy and then against the US and French troops that made up the multinational force of the UN. There were hundreds of victims. The terrorist offensive has had very diverse and distant scenarios. Just a few days ago, Argentine justice confirmed Iranian responsibility for the anti-Israel attacks committed in Buenos Aires in 1991 and 1994, in which more than a hundred people died, a terrorist attack never seen in the South American country.
In parallel with the lashing out at the West, Iran has expanded its regional influence with subordinate forces and allies, whether in Syria, Iraq – especially after the disastrous 2003 US invasion –, Lebanon, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. The regime in Tehran is thus coming to this clash with Israel, of an unprecedented gravity, as a consolidated regional power and which, moreover, seems to be on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon. This fact, with unpredictable consequences, would mean, once again, as much or more than 1979, a before and an after in the Middle East and in world stability. Although there is strong internal opposition, especially from the youth, and a tough economic environment, the Ayatollahs are still there and have the world with woe in their hearts.
