Iran, Islam and U.S. Foreign Policy: An Exclusive Interview with WCU Lecturer Kamran Beigi
WCU: Perhaps you could first start off by telling us a little bit about yourself.
Beigi: I was born in Iran. I finished high school in Iran, and came to the U.S. in 1975 when I was 18. At the time Iran was a peaceful country on a path to progress and modernity. Then we had a radical revolution. I finished my engineering degree in New Jersey. I worked as an engineer, and started to write and was published in London. I went to graduate school at Cornell, received my Master’s in public policy and began work on my Ph.D. there. Because I was very active in Iranian affairs, I worked for the son of the late Shah as the communications director until May 2001. 9/11 happened which changed everything. I was with him for six years. I [now] work part time as an engineer and dedicate the rest of my time to issues relating to Iran particularly and the Middle. East. The issues of terrorism are something that is a moral obligation to do something about, especially for somebody like me who is from Iran.
WCU: Is the Middle East capable of democracy?
Beigi: Democracy is a Western invention. Just like technology in the West, it has been exported to the East and they have put it into good use. The Western intellectual product can also be put to good use. On the other hand, the concept of individual freedom, or the modernity as a whole or the concept of John Locke – American principles, as I like to call them – the freedom, the free market, the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to choose your own life, and be responsible for the consequences of your own actions. These ideals are natural. These are not an artificial invention for a time period. So these ideals can spread to the rest of the world easier than technology, a computer, or a car. Just like technology, a computer, or a car can make life easier, [it] has contributed to the well being of the people of the world, whether in the United States, or India, or Pakistan. The concept of individual responsibility can also benefit the people of the world. However, importing a car is much easier and simpler than the idea of democracy. The car can take a long time, but eventually people learn how to drive it. Democracy and a lot of American policy makers, intellectuals make that mistake. They only look at the superficial aspects of democracy. They look at the rule of the majority and elections and think that that constitutes a democracy. Democracy requires a responsible citizen. Importation of the car is very simple, but what is more difficult is to get to the idea that what kind of conditions led to the invention of a car. Why is it that the Chinese were the first to discover gun powder, but they only used it for celebrations – creating noise and light? But why did Western minds use it to create dynamite and blow up mountains and make roads? Why was it a Western mind that was the first to conquer Everest, when Mt. Everest is in the middle of India and Nepal? It is not the car itself that I want to get at; it’s the concept and the idea that intellectuals, they have inquiry that is behind the creation of the car that led to the invention of the car. It’s the same with democracy. It is not just like importing an assembly plant and making cars; you need to have that confidence, that way of thinking that led to the invention of the car so they can come up with their own inventions. Democracy is the same. Its major points are the responsible citizen, educated citizens who can cooperate, who have the tolerance and they are able to recognize and respect each other. Until these issues have not been institutionalized in any country, they cannot democratize. So the difficulty that we have of promoting democracy in the Middle East region is not that it is something innately or naturally incapable of democratizing, it’s that there are some important factors, and we should concentrate on promoting those factors before democracy can flourish.
WCU: Some would say that Saddam Hussein was the barrier to democracy in Iraq, and since we removed him, democracy has not really been taking shape there. How would you respond to that?
Beigi: Saddam Hussein was not the only barrier to democracy. A lot of people in the Middle East said as soon as we had elections in Iraq, that we could declare democracy had been established. Democracy needs to be institutionalized. It is not like a press conference where you do it once and it’s over. Iraq was not ready for a full-fledged democracy, not as much as Iran is today. Iran should have been the first target. As long as the Iranian regime is in power, we will not meet any benchmarks in Iraq. The Iranian regime does not want to have a democratic Iraq because that’s not good for them. In order to promote democracy in Iraq, you need to think about the Iranian regime in Iran.
WCU: Do the Iranian people desire democracy?
Beigi: Yes they do. The evidence of that are the demonstrations by the labor, by the students, by the books they write, by the movies that they make. This shows that they understand the idea and they desire to be free.
WCU: Do you see a difference between the moderates and the hard-liners as the media puts them in Iran?
Beigi: As far as democratization or reform is concerned, no, absolutely not. They are all different players on the same team and they switch positions. One day they have to play a moderate and they play a moderate. One day they have to play a hard-liner, and they do so.
WCU: In one of your reports to Congress, you talked about political Islam. What exactly is political Islam, and how do we confront it?
Beigi: That’s the million-dollar question. Political Islam is when some social thinkers think that in order to confront the West and in order to deny the West, they politicize their religion, only to achieve their own economic goals. And since religion is a touchy subject, they were able to reach the hearts and minds of some people who were willing to be violent in promoting those ideas. That’s how the Islamic regime came to power in Iran. The best way to confront political Islam – we first need to talk about the necessity of confronting it. It’s a real thing; it is threatening Western civilization; it is threatening humanity. They openly talk about how they want to wipe Israel off the map. They openly talk about destroying America. And they openly challenge the West. So these elements are threatening the world. How do you confront them? By showing to the people of the Middle East or the Islamic countries, that the ideas that these political leaders are promoting do not have a solid base in their religion and also show the political motivation to delegitimize them.
WCU: What are your views on the Bush Doctrine of promoting democracy in the Middle East? How effective has it been thus far? Can it be effective in the future?
Beigi: I think it’s certainly imperative. I admire President Bush for his courage, for his moral courage to promote democracy. But I want to define that. By promoting democracy, unlike some of the leftist intellectuals have tried to spin it, this is not imposing American way of life on people who resist it. This is actually giving opportunity to the people of the Middle East to be able to choose for themselves to be free. So this is not an imposition. Those who deny their freedom are imposing their ideas on the people of the Middle East. The idea has not been so successful so far because of many difficulties. It has not been successful because the Islamic regime in Iran has been fighting it tooth and nail to defeat the project and they have won the battle so far. They are going to lose the war because the idea of freedom is a natural and universal idea.
WCU: Do you think that the conflict between Iran and the United States can be resolved without violence?
Beigi: If you mean the people of Iran, many independent reporters who have gone to Iran, they have actually reported that the Iranian people are a natural ally of the United States. They admire America, particularly and precisely because of American ideals. And in fact there is a long history. America has always been on the side of the Iranian people in their quest for freedom, going back to the [Iranian] Constitutional Revolution of 1906, where the Russian and British empires were helping the regime to stay in power and Americans were helping Iranians to promote democracy and freedom. So there is a long history. The Iranian people love Americans for their standing for freedom, for their ideals, and for what they have achieved. Iran is the only regime in the region that the regime is opposing to the United States, but the people love America. That does not happen to any other country. Now if you talk about the Iranian regime and the United States, no there is absolutely no way. There are two completely different ideas. One of them has to give in. Either it is the idea of progress, modernity, freedom, or the idea of imposing an artificial version of Islam on the entire world. Both of these cannot coexist. The negotiations that some of the Democratic candidates have said is completely useless to this regime because they do not want to negotiate. There is nothing that they can gain from negotiations. They want to eliminate the West; they want to eliminate Western ideals; they want to destroy America. There is nothing to negotiate. They don’t want to negotiate either.
WCU: Some say that the Shah’s reign and America’s support of the Shah was an ugly chapter in Iranian history because they claim the Shah was a tyrant. How would you respond to those claims?
Beigi: First of all, during the Shah, we did have some leftist terrorists who were in prison. Some of the present rulers of Iran, the terrorist rulers, were in prison. A lot of human rights organizations and Jimmy Carter made a big noise about violations of human rights in Iran. Why are they silent today that the regime is killing students by the hundreds? Why does nobody talk about the torture in Iranian prisons today? Executions, assassinations. Number two, most of those claims come from the misconception of the distorted fact of the 1953 coup that you may have heard about. This is 1953, at the height of the Cold War. Right after the Yalta agreement, the world was divided into the Western bloc and the Eastern bloc by the Soviet Union. Iran had a prime minister that was appointed by the Shah. The Iranian Constitution said that the Shah would appoint the prime minister and the parliament would approve him. [Mohammad] Mossadegh was the prime minister. He started to defy the British and Western powers and he wanted to be similar to the non-ally movement that there is today. He refused all the good offers from the West for Iranian oil. The Iranian oil was boycotted. The British would not buy. And the Iranian economy was in a really difficult position. Mossadegh refused all reasonable offers. He dissolved the parliament. Shah wanted to dismiss Mossadegh, but Mossadegh refused and he wanted to dismiss Shah. Shah left the country. There was a popular uprising and the CIA was on the side of the uprising people against the prime minister and wrongfully took all the credit for it. Now what you see on the left press on a daily basis is that the CIA overthrew a democratically elected prime minister who was promoting democracy in Iran. They forget that this was 1953. They forget it was the height of the Cold War. They forget that you had no choice; you could not be non-ally that you had to be either West or East. And they forget that Mossadegh had no future. Iran had to either become a Western Soviet bloc or be on the side of the United States. And we cannot forget the Yalta agreement. The Yalta agreement was not made as a joke. So most of the idea originates from that. In fact there was a book written by a New York Times reporter, that if you read the entire book, there’s not a single citation in it. [The book which is] half fiction [and written] by Stephen Kinzer, promotes the idea that [since] Mossadegh was overthrown the Middle East has lost the chance to democratize. This is not realistic. You do not understand what democracy means if you talk like that. The Shah was trying to promote modernity. In order to do that you need to have first a bureaucratic infrastructure. Then you need to have economic infrastructure. Then, only then, you can work on social infrastructure. Only after they build roads, a national economy and integrate them, only then, after education is the requirement for democratization, for participation of the people becomes necessary. So Shah was working on that, and with a country like Iran with some of the religious leaders opposing modernity, opposing progress on the basis that it was going to corrupt our virtues, Shah had to be autocratic. So he was autocratic in many ways. But there was no other way, and that’s when the radicals took over. Those who complain about the Shah – they should raise their volume much more over what is going on in Iran today. They are silent.
WCU: Thank you for your time.
Beigi: Thank you!
Related posts:
