IRANIAN DIPLOMACY SHOOTS ITSELF ON THE LEG
By Dr. Alireza Noorizadeh*
LONDON In an interview with the Tehran-based Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Iranian academic Askar Khani, a foreign-policy expert who heads the US and European section at Tehran’s Centre for Strategic Studies, spoke openly of the underlying reasons behind Iran’s repeated failures in the field of foreign affairs.
Khani said Iran’s repeated inability to secure its foreign-policy objectives in the international arena was mainly because the country’s diplomatic machine was being run by a group of incompetent civil servants who have managed to interject and impose themselves in key foreign-policy decision-making positions.
It is a known fact that at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, having developed a well-trained and experienced diplomatic staff of around 1,200 people, had positioned itself as one of the country’s most modern and efficient bureaucracies.
While the previous regime was universally chastised for its failures on the domestic front, even its harshest critics acknowledged its overall achievements in the realm of foreign affairs and its general success in having correctly identified and secured Iranian national interests abroad.
Hence, the outcome of the revolution and subsequent turmoil has proven most calamitous for this ministry. Apart from executing former Foreign Minister Abbas Ali Khal’atbari a highly seasoned and internationally respected diplomat who had a major hand in the signing of two important treaties pertaining to the Shatt al-Arab and the (Persian) Gulf, numerous ambassadors and experienced diplomats who graduated from leading universities around the world were also cashiered and, in some cases, arrested and imprisoned.
This so-called policy of "cleansing", that began under the stewardship of post-revolutionary Iran’s first three foreign ministers, Karim Sanjabi, Ebrahim Yazdi, and Sadeq Qotbzadeh reached its most destructive apex under Ali Akbar Velayati’s 16-year reign as the Islamic regime’s fourth foreign minister.
During this time, not only were the last remnants of qualified diplomats discharged from foreign service, the doors of the ministry were also opened to hundreds of "velayati’s", unqualified friends and cronies, particularly from the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence services, to such an extent that more than 10,000 people are today employed by that same ministry.
Under the "Velayati" regime, academic qualifications, expertise in international affairs and specialised knowledge of a particular region were no longer conditions for overseas postings. These requirements were replaced with only one simple criterion: allegiance to the Velayati, or the supreme leader Ali Khameneh’i and the country’s intelligence organisation.
It is no wonder that in Lebanon, where current Iranian ambassador Mohammad Ja’ffar Sanjabi is a relatively experienced diplomat with reasonable qualifications, former Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officers, like Hajj Hosseyn Niknam, are in charge of the embassy.
In Dubai, the head of security at the Prime Minister’s Office was appointed as the top Iranian diplomat, while the consul-general in Hamburg was boastful of the fact that he had himself executed some 11 opponents of the revolution!
The appointment of Kamal Kharrazi in place of Velayati in the aftermath of President Mohammad Khatami’s resounding election victory in 1997 provided an initial hope that positive changes would take place in the Foreign Ministry.
However, Khani says that all that transpired since then was the removal of one gang and its replacement with another. This time, the so-called "New York gang", composed entirely of people who had worked with Kharrazi during his tenure as ambassador to the UN in New York, replaced the so-called "Rostam Abad gang" named after the place where Velayati grew up and from where he recklessly recruited many of his unqualified friends and cronies to serve as diplomats.
Excerpts of Khani’s interview with ISNA expand on some of the underlying reasons for Iran’s continuing failure in the sphere of international relations.
Khani says that all important tasks abroad are handled by members of the "New York Gang", a group that has more to do with blood ties and personal relationships than any specialised qualifications.
This type of open cronyism weakened morale and created a great deal of resentment among the rank-and-file at the Ministry, he observed.
More fundamentally, Khani believes that the Foreign Ministry simply failed to successfully implement the policy of "detente" and "dialogue among civilisations", which have been the flagships of Khatami’s foreign-policy agenda.
Moreover, according to Khani, the inadequacy of the Foreign Ministry in tackling its anointed tasks led to a situation whereby such issues as preserving Iran’s interests in the Caspian region and pursuing the Islamic Republic’s reparation claims against Iraq have been totally neglected.
Khani said the ministry’s failure to secure an acceptable legal regime for the Caspian Basin was tantamount to a violation of Iran’s territorial integrity.
At the same time, the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s failure to pursue the payment of sizeable war reparations due from Iraq, a sum calculated by the UN to be in the region of $100 billion, is yet another unforgivable act of negligence for whom only the "New York Gang" could be held responsible.
Khani concluded his interview with ISNA by asserting that while in medicine the failure of a surgeon can only result in the death of one patient, failure in diplomacy affected the lives of an entire nation. ENDS IRAN DIPLOMACY FAILURE 22602
Editor’S note: A prolific journalist, commentator, novelist and poet, Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh was political editor of the Tehran daily "Ettela’at" during the months before the Islamic revolution of 1979. Based in London, he also the general secretary of the Centre for Arab-Iranian Studies and the editor of its Arabic-language newsletter, "Al-Mujes An-Iran".
The above article, wrote for the English-language Daily Star of Lebanon was published on 20 of June.