War on Iran would have disastrous consequences that would destabilize everything
倫敦亞非學院(SOAS)學者Arshin Adib-Moghaddam接受訪問，提到伊朗核武問題以及分析未來以色列攻打伊朗的結果。他認為伊朗根本沒有核武問題，而是西方國家刻意捏造，打壓伊朗在國際社會的影響力。而伊朗政府事實上，相當願意配合國際原子能組織的調查。反而在伊朗核子議題上，以色列的立場比美國還要強硬。
另外教授提出ㄧ個觀念，打破傳統遜尼vs.什葉的迷思。他指出，若伊朗遭受外國勢力入侵，屆時周邊國家如土耳其、亞塞拜然、伊拉克甚至沙烏地都不會有興趣介入戰爭。許多鍵盤評論者或是一些學者低估這個區域人民的凝聚力，這種向心力不光來自穆斯林的歸屬感，同時也有來自族群、文化、語言與家族間的層面。
最後，教授提出警告，若伊朗遭受入侵，到時整個區域的國家都會被捲入在這場衝突中，進而影響世界經濟與西方國家，全球因此會進入大對決時代。
News.Az interviews Arshin
Adib-Moghaddam, Reader in Comparative Politics and International Relations at
the prestigious SOAS, University of London.
How would you estimate
Iranian foreign policy aimed on reducing international pressure on Iran?
Since the revolution of 1979, Iranian
foreign policy accentuates the norm of independence. It is geared to the idea that Iran has the material and
ideational capability to position itself as a major power in the international
system. Yet the country has had serious
difficulty to implement this strategic preference primarily due to the
opposition of the United States.
At the same time, Iran has very
close strategic relations to China and Russia, who have been increasingly bold
in the United Nations Security Council and who are not interested in any
escalation with Iran, not at least because of their own economic interests in
the country. Europe and the United States have effectively disqualified
themselves from the Iranian economy and for every western company that
renegades due to the irrational sanctions regime, there is a Chinese company
taking its place. Iran plays with this emerging multi-polar system. To that
end, the country has also extended its foreign policy orbit toward emerging
powers in the international system, primarily India, Venezuela, Brazil and
South Africa.
How serious is Iranian
nuclear problem at the moment?
In essence there is no nuclear problem
in Iran. There is a functioning, IAEA
supervised security regime which has given the organization unprecedented
access to the country’s nuclear sites. I have written and talked about this
issue extensively. Iran is very willing to
compromise on the enrichment issue if the sanctions would be gradually lifted.
At the heart of the nuclear issue is the power politics of the Netanyahu
administration in Israel which is continuously pushing for confrontation with
Iran.
This helps the administration to
divert attention away from domestic dissent – many Israelis in the anti-war
movements are interested in normalization with the country’s neighbors - and
the continued colonization of Palestinian territory. Whenever the Obama
administration moves towards some sort of compromise with Iran, the Netanyahu
administration steps in to increase the pressure on the negotiating team. President Obama is not a war president, Netanyahu is. As such, I called the Iranian nuclear “problem” a
mirage; a convenient tool to constrain Iran’s regional power.
Iran's supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei summoned top Iranian military chiefs for what he called
"their last war council." "We'll be at war within weeks,"
he told the gathering. Is the war so real indeed?
I haven’t heard about this meeting
beyond news sources that are close to Israeli politics. At this critical moment
and on a hotly contested subject such as Iran, one has to be particularly
careful with media representations about the country. This is the argument of my book Iran in World Politics which
discusses the way some sections of the international media misrepresent what is
happening in Iran. This is an immensely
complex country after all, ancient, combative, post-revolutionary, and
culturally diverse; as I mentioned to a colleague from the United States at a
recent conference: Iran, Persia has been around for a while and the idea of the
country can’t be reduced to a few platitudes.
I mean at the height of the
post-election demonstrations in 2009, an editorial in the British Daily
Telegraph seriously argued that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
smokes “bejeweled pipes” and wears coats “said to be woven from hair of
specially bred camels”. This is the level of journalism that one encounters at
times and it has been seriously detrimental to a better understanding of
Iranian politics, economics, culture and society.
Are you sure that such Muslim
countries in the Iranian neighborhood as Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq and others
will support military invasion to Iran?
I think many commentators and even some
intellectuals seriously underestimate the people-to-people bonds that permeate
central/western Asia. These are based not only on Muslim affiliations but additional
layers of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and family ties. Unless there is not an understanding that the security of
Azerbaijan is linked to the security of Iran, and that the security of all
regional countries is entirely interdependent, exactly because of geographical
proximity and those common layers that I just mentioned, until this is not
realized there won’t be a functioning security architecture that could sustain
lasting peace in the area.
I don’t think that any of the states in
the region, even Saudi Arabia which has played a particularly divisive role in
the Persian Gulf, has an interest in a military confrontation between Iran and
the United States. Certainly, Iraq after
Saddam Hussein is emerging as a potentially close ally of Iran, and Turkey too
has repeatedly tried to resolve the nuclear issue and has opted out of the
western sanctions regime at least partially. Iran is a transnational culture as
much as a nation-state; as such the country permeates the whole region. This is why a war on Iran would have disastrous consequences
that would destabilize everything.
Azerbaijan as a neighbor of
Iran is concerned about rumors on possible war in the region. What could be
consequences of the war for the whole region?
War on Iran would unleash a protracted
series of crises situations that would affect the security of all states in the
region, the world economy and the west. To my mind it would have the potential of a global conflict;
it would be Armageddon.
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, a world renowned expert on
Iranian affairs and the author of Iran in World Politics: The question of the
Islamic Republic. His newest book is A Metahistory of the Clash of
Civilisations: Us and them beyond Orientalism (Columbia/Hurst, 2011).
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