On top of the world

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of "the Green Revolution" that shook Iran.

The entire world watched in shock as a government crackdown quickly replaced the excitement generated by massive peaceful demonstrations, led not just by men, but euphoric women donning green scarves and demanding their basic human rights.

The brutal regime was thought to be in its last days, but it is clear that this was just wishful thinking. A full 12 months of developments culminated in new sanctions against Iran from the UN Security Council June 9, but among the most telling events was an attempt by two midsize powers, Turkey and Brazil, to broker a deal to exchange nuclear fuel with the Iranian regime.

A year ago, the protesters' demands seemed rather reasonable, and significant numbers of mainstream Iranian religious and political authorities joined the fray. These people were not calling for radical changes - like a return to the Shah - but rather for Mir-Hossein Mousavi (himself an alumnus of the 1979 Islamic Revolution) to become president. In Iran, freedom and democracy are relative, and some freedom is better than none.

After the callous crackdown, the venue for protest shifted from the streets of Tehran to the gates of Iranian embassies worldwide and into cyberspace. Along with these shifts, the developments have been fast and furious. Iran admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was building a second uranium enrichment plant. More sanctions followed. Then there were threats from Israel that it would stage a military strike against Iranian nuclear installations. This was followed by more pressure from the West. Then came the peculiar May deal penned by Iran, Brazil and Turkey, which was made moot within days as the UN Security Council's permanent members announced they had agreed on new sanctions.

The strongest of the developments in the short term are clearly the sanctions in the form of UN Resolution 1929. This agreement includes a list of Iranian companies in an attempt to draw clear lines between companies that should be open for international business and others that are blacklisted. The sanctions seek to economically isolate the regime's Revolutionary Guard, an increasingly autonomous and powerful faction with close ties to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The most interesting of the developments, however, and the one with longer-term implications, remains the Iran-Brazil-Turkey meeting in May, which lays bare each country's regional and international ambitions. Make no mistake: These countries seek to assert themselves on the world stage and pose themselves as alternatives to the long-standing dominance of the traditional great powers.

The pairing of Brazil and Iran is admittedly a strange one. One nationality dances to the rhythms of the samba in little less than miniature bikinis, while another's idea of a festival is a group of black-clad men beating themselves until they bleed. In reality, their decision to cooperate is quite straightforward, and it comes down as it so often does to money and power.

During the 1990s, Brazil had its eye on Iran and tried to sell it nuclear hardware and know-how. Potential deals were scuppered (luckily) by U.S. intervention. Nonetheless, the two countries continued to develop and strengthen economic ties. The Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras is currently exploring in Iranian waters, and Iran, while possessing both oil and natural gas reserves, remains desperately in need of technological assistance and development of its refining capacity.

What the peace-loving, democracy-promoting and human rights-respecting Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva ignores are Iran's ambitions to become a regional superpower. That may be because this is a trait that his country shares, albeit in a different region.

Turkey brought its own similar ambitions to the table. In recent months, the politically savvy Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems able to capitalize on every opportunity to play to public opinion in the Muslim world. The trend began in January with his outburst at the World Economic Forum in Davos and continued through the rhetoric that followed the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla that killed nine Turkish activists.

These public performances have allowed Erdogan to become the favorite leader in the Arab and Muslim worlds, never mind that he is not an Arab and that he managed to insult every Arab state in a recent speech as he emphasized that "Turkey is not a tribal country."

Until recently, Turkey has played a unique role in the Middle East as it successfully managed to maintain friendly relations with both Israel and Iran. A walk through Istanbul's Ataturk Airport finds Iranians and Israelis waiting to board flights at adjacent gates. However, these days, Turkish papers are filled with pictures from the flotilla and coffins draped with the Turkish flag. Arabs demonstrating against the Israeli-imposed closure on the Gaza strip carry Turkish flags in lieu of their own national symbols. Erdogan is making a play to reassert Turkish influence in Arab lands, most of which was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years.

With Iranian and Turkish ambitions in the Gulf and the Middle East now apparent (and Brazil finding ambitious like-minded partners on the opposite side of the globe), it is high time both the Arab world and the permanent members of the UN Security Council (in particular, the West) take notice.

In the Arab world, this shift continues to point to a lack of homegrown leadership. Iran and Turkey are successfully filling a vacuum. The West has at the same time ceded influence with its continuous insistence on applying double standards on issues concerning Israel like settlements in the West Bank, the blockade on Gaza and the peace process in general.

Should the status quo in the Arab world and the West continue, populists like Erdogan and Ahmadinejad will continue to have success in hijacking causes like the Palestinian issue. The addition of Brazil to the mix represents a global challenge to traditional great powers, and Brazil fancies itself an eventual permanent member of the Security Council.

Without alternatives, such desperate acts of phony populist heroism will continue to blur the vision of the masses in the Middle East, just like popular Brazilian and Turkish television soap operas already do.

A year after the Green Revolution, the internal dynamics of Iran remain much the same, but in the regional and international arena, for better or worse, great change is afoot.  

- The author is program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and was formerly director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Metropolitan University Prague. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Lamis Khalilova can be reached at
features@praguepost.com