Few occasions have symbolised the energy of Iranian tender energy fairly as successfully as an activist in Chicago final April urging his attentive American viewers of ‘trainee protesters’ to chant ‘marg bar Emrika’ (‘loss of life to America’). The bizarreness of the episode, footage of which was extensively shared on social media, was made all of the extra acute by the dawning realisation that the chanting individuals had little concept what they had been being taught. There appeared at that second to be few limits to the attain of Iranian tender energy, as Ayatollah Khamenei, chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran, thanked college students on Western campuses for his or her ‘help’.
There might be little doubt that the devastating conflict in Gaza has been a (modest) boon to the picture of the Iranian state overseas, even when it has did not galvanise its personal inhabitants in help of the Palestinian trigger. Most Iranians, drowning in an ocean of home issues, are bewildered by the obvious attraction of the Islamic Republic past its borders.
Some elements of that attraction might be simply defined, particularly the expansion of Iran’s regional affect. Western fatigue and indecisiveness have created a vacuum within the Center East that the Iranians, properly versed within the diplomatic arts, have been solely too eager to use. An appreciation of regional languages, tradition, a shared faith (however the frictions between Shi’ism and Sunnism) and, above all, private networks, have labored to Iran’s benefit. These have been helped by a liberal disbursement of funds and arms – and a willingness to thumb their noses at america.
This final level has proved vital in enhancing Iranian status, particularly because the US has proved reluctant to answer its provocations, a lot of which have taken the type of rocket assaults by Iranian-backed native militias towards US and different Western forces within the area. The notion of American weak spot has inspired some states, reminiscent of Saudi Arabia, to hunt their very own ‘peace’ with the Islamic Republic, drawing away from an explicitly Western orbit within the course of.
This affect nonetheless has its limitations. Because the Chilly Conflict within the Center East has every now and then turned scorching, Arab states have proven themselves reluctant to accede to all of Iran’s calls for. It was notable that when Iran determined – unusually – to flex some laborious energy in direction of Israel in April 2024, numerous key regional states, not least Jordan, had been unwilling to present it a free hand.
Responsible fools
But when Iran has labored laborious to domesticate its regional affect – albeit with combined success – it’s a lot more durable to clarify its persevering with attraction within the West, to which it has completed little or no to domesticate affection and really a lot to impress hostility. One reply after all lies in its express and infrequently daring antagonism in direction of Western governments, which appeals to many disaffected and disenchanted constituencies whose antipathy in direction of the US, and capitalism extra broadly, trumps all.
The late Fred Halliday described this because the ‘anti-imperialism of fools’. On this telling, Iran turns into the plucky hero towards a Western hegemony so malign and incompetent that Iran’s personal misdemeanours are both justified or defined away. Requested, in 2015, whether or not the ‘loss of life to America’ chants had been proof of an Iranian need to destroy the US, then secretary of state John Kerry replied: ‘I’ve no particular data of a plan by Iran to really destroy us.’
Certainly, the sense that the West owes Iran for previous misdemeanours (actual and imagined) extends to many in workplace, and if the ghost of 1953 (the Anglo-American coup which overthrew prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq) hangs heavy within the public creativeness, few admire simply how distant the present regime is from Mosaddeq’s secular liberal beliefs. Guilt in regards to the previous interprets into beneficiant interpretations at this time.
One notable current instance of this in motion was the general public angle to the abrupt and unjustified incarceration of the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Even when we settle for the notion that Britain owed Iran cash for undelivered tanks contracted earlier than the revolution, there was no ethical or authorized justification for the kidnapping of a non-public citizen in pursuit of this declare. But all through the tragic saga the muted criticism of Iran was as nothing in comparison with the opprobrium unleashed towards the British state, which at occasions might need led some to conclude that it was the Overseas, Commonwealth and Improvement Workplace that had kidnapped her.
Phrase affiliation
Such positioning, after all, has much less to do with Iran’s innate attraction and extra to do with a normal antipathy in direction of the US and the broader Western world. It’s in sum a push relatively than a pull issue. It nonetheless doesn’t clarify the broader attraction that Iran enjoys regardless of its personal finest efforts to both ignore or insult the West. It’s at finest an observer of a course of from which it undoubtedly advantages. Why? For this we want a deeper dive into the West’s relations with Iran, or extra precisely ‘Persia’.
A great way to discover this proposition is to begin with a primary train in phrase affiliation. For those who ask somebody what they may instantly affiliate with the phrase Iran, the doubtless response can be ‘Islam’, ‘mullahs’ and, very presumably, ‘extremism’. For those who then requested the identical particular person what they may affiliate with Persia, the response is more likely to be extra unique, civilised and even romantic. Persia conveys a set of sentiments which I typically summarise as: cats, caviar and carpets. Each phrases relate to the identical place, however one – Persia – pertains to the normal Western title and studying of the nation. That is ironic when one considers that the Iranian authorities insisted on the native appellation Iran in all worldwide correspondence in 1934 as a result of they believed Persia conveyed a picture of decadence and decay.
Very similar to the traditional Greeks, from whom most of the central concepts about Persia descend, Western appreciation of Persia is nuanced and respectful. Persia is a part of the inspiration delusion of the ‘West’. Consider the centrality of ‘marathon’ races, invented as a part of the fashionable Olympics, and now a characteristic of the sporting calendar of virtually each main Western metropolis. Reimagined in 1896 to make a reference to the glories of historic Greece, it principally marks a Persian defeat. (To understand how curious that is one merely wants to exchange ‘marathon’ with one other important battle.)
This classical inheritance is essential to any understanding of the connection between Iran and the West, particularly when one recognises simply how most of the Western political and mental elite would have learn Classics as a part of their normal training. Westerners ‘knew’ Iran – or at the least thought they did, and positively appreciated the inherent sophistication that got here with its longevity. The Iranians – Persians – had been an historic nation which, for all its foibles, commanded some respect.
This was additional strengthened by biblical instructing by which the Persians had been offered in a constructive gentle via the dominant function performed by Cyrus the Nice within the liberation of the Jews from Babylon. If the Classics conveyed an aura of oriental despotism, within the Bible Persia had a distinctly enlightened high quality. Cyrus specifically – strengthened in flip by Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (an incredible favorite of many Enlightenment thinkers) – turned a byword for simply authorities and liberalism. The title Cyrus was in style amongst North American Puritans and stays so within the US at this time. At the least two (very totally different) presidents in current reminiscence – Barack Obama and Donald Trump – have been recognized because the ‘new’ Cyrus, the latter by Evangelical Christians within the build-up to the 2020 elections when Trump-Cyrus ‘prayer cash’ had been accessible for buy.
Folks energy
Western travellers to Iran within the fashionable interval (after 1600) had been frequently upset that the truth didn’t appear to match their Persian expectations. However even this by no means fully eradicated Persia’s inherent romance. George Curzon could have painted late-Nineteenth-century Iran as a decrepit and ageing relative, however it was a relative nonetheless, whereas the famous Persianist Edward Browne was charmed by ‘the versatile and refined wit’ of the Persians, at the same time as he ridiculed the notion put about within the British press that the shah, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1848-96), was a descendant of Cyrus.
As extra travellers arrived within the twentieth century – Iran was as soon as a part of the ‘hippy path’ – the nation’s distinctiveness proved as fascinating because the familiarity of Persia. Moreover, there remained refined areas of familiarity between Iran and the West, not least in language – Persian is an Indo-European language and as such comparatively accessible to Europeans – and tradition, the place Iranians appeared remarkably open-minded, iconoclastic and possessed of a literary oeuvre so huge that it exuded ‘civilisation’.
Iran advantages from the truth that Persia is a part of a broader Western creativeness. There’s a reservoir of cultural goodwill that affords Iran a advantage of the doubt that may be refused others. It’s a uncommon type of political capital that, whereas not wholly spent, is being denuded at some tempo. Not least because the tempo of protests and violent repression will increase, and the gulf between the revolutionary state and extraordinary Iranians turns into unignorable.
We’d all study from Edward Browne, whose Yr Amongst the Persians (1892) taught him to not confuse the individuals with the federal government, a mistake he felt the British authorities had been making and which many proceed to make. If there’s any profit to be given, it needs to be reserved for the long-suffering individuals of Iran. They’re the true producers of the nation’s cultural energy.
Ali Ansari is Professor of Historical past on the College of St Andrews. His newest guide is Iran (Polity, 2024).
