The Persian Puzzle by Kenneth M. Pollack

Author:Kenneth M. Pollack [Pollack, Kenneth M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588364340
Published: 2004-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

To the Brink

In 1996, all of the trends that had been brewing for the past four years threatened to come to a violent head. As far as the Iranian leadership was concerned, with Khamene’i and the radicals firmly in charge, the United States had declared war on Iran. Washington had imposed comprehensive trade sanctions, it was pushing for other nations to do the same, and it had unveiled a new $18 million covert action program against them. In their minds, the ghost of Kim Roosevelt was no doubt resurrected once more. It is also unclear whether they recognized that these American actions were largely a response—and a reluctant one at that—to Iran’s own aggressive effort to drive the United States out of the Gulf and derail the Middle East peace process. Nor is it clear that this was relevant to them even if they did. As far as Tehran’s hard-liners were concerned, including Khamene’i, they had been locked in a life-or-death struggle with the United States for decades, and this was simply another round. Consequently, in response to what they perceived as American escalation, the Iranians stepped up their attacks on America and its allies in the Middle East.

Their first target was Israel and the new government of Shimon Peres, who had succeeded Rabin as prime minister. If anything, Peres was more devoted to the cause of peace than Rabin had been, and this did not suit Iran at all. Besides, the Iranians were certain that Israel had been behind both the imposition of the comprehensive sanctions in the spring of 1995 and Gingrich’s drive to ramp up the U.S. covert action program in the fall. In late February, HAMAS and PIJ launched four suicide attacks on Israel in nine days, killing fifty-nine Israelis. The blow to Israel, so soon after Rabin’s death and at a time when the peace process was moving unsteadily, was devastating. Although HAMAS was determined to halt the peace process and had few constraints on when and how it would act to do so, PIJ’s participation in this coordinated series of blasts points to Iran as the ultimate moving force. In the words of Israeli terrorism expert Meir Litvak, “Whereas Hamas was always an independent Palestinian movement [albeit one with considerable Iranian support], Islamic Jihad became an instrument of Iranian policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict.”1

Then it was Hizballah’s turn. Back in 1993, Israel and Hizballah (under heavy Syrian pressure) had reached an agreement defining the limits of their guerrilla war in southern Lebanon; Israel agreed to avoid attacking Lebanese civilian targets if Hizballah agreed to confine its own attacks to the Israeli soldiers still occupying a narrow security zone in southern Lebanon. In March 1996, Hizballah suddenly stepped up its attacks on Israelis in Lebanon, doing so with a twist: it began to launch the attacks from civilian locations. There was no reason to suspect that Hizballah was responding to orders from Damascus, and in general, Hizballah is less closely tied and less responsive to Syria than to Iran.

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