Interview by Jonathan Shainin at Equator:
Jonathan Shainin: I want to start with the question of Iran’s role in the American imagination. To what extent do the US policy and intellectual class remain haunted by 1979?
Vali Nasr: 1979 was a historic event both for the Middle East and for the US, in part because Iran had been a vital ally. American policy towards the Global South was based on close alliances with authoritarian regimes to keep communism at bay – but the US failed to anticipate that these regimes might be vulnerable to a different kind of uprising. The Shah had successfully contained the communist threat, so the revolution caught everyone off guard. Iran also endangered the American position in the Middle East in entirely new ways. It wasn’t a Soviet threat to the Persian Gulf or to global energy supplies; it was an unforeseen revolutionary instability. What if Saudi Arabia or Egypt caught this ‘fever’?
For decades, American military and foreign policy had been geared towards containing communism – and it had done a good job, though with a lot of blood on its hands in many places. It was completely unprepared to deal with Islamism as an ideology, which was indigenous to the Middle East, not a Soviet import.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.