16.03.07
Iran and «the Axis of Evil»
(nr 277)
NUPI-rapport | Oslo, NUPI | 103 sider |
ISBN 82-7002-197-0
Rapporten tar for seg den iranske opposisjonselitens reaksjoner på "onskapens akse"-metaforen og deres refleksjoner rundt amerikansk retorikk om terrorisme.
>> Summary
The rhetorical device of the «war on terror» rests on the assumption that «terrorism» is everything that They do to Us and never anything that We do to Them. The linked device of «the Axis of Evil» exploits both recent history and religious eschatology to persuade Western populations that all their enemies are not only evil but also united under a single umbrella of collective responsibility for the attack on the WTC. If, therefore, a war is fought against Iran, it will be fought not against a member of the community of nations but against «the cowardly terrorists of the Axis of Evil». We set out to discover what our sample of the Iranian oppositional elite has to say about this.
The majority either considered that it was the political context that determined whether an act was terrorist (violent resistance to oppression is legitimate), or that it was merely a label for the acts of the other side. Explanations of Islamic terrorism focused on local and global structural factors. Although flirting with conspiracy theories that seem to exculpate al-Qaida, however, the respondents roundly condemned the attacks, not least in terms of their having no positive consequences. Whereas al-Qaida was explained mostly situationally, American behaviour was explained dispositionally, as political pathology. Respondents wanted the US to make a greater effort to understand and talk to the Muslim world. Attitudes to the Afghan war were mixed, but the (then imminent) war on Iraq was seen overwhelmingly in terms of American hegemony and Israeli interests and was expected to be extremely destabilising.
The respondents feared an American attack, and regarded their membership in «the Axis of Evil» as a stab in the back after Iranian help in Afghanistan. This demonisation was seen overwhelmingly in terms of American geopolitical designs, ignorance and downright irrationality – an expansionist superpower that is dangerously out of control. The WTC attack initially caused a strengthening of Iranian national unity and a more coherent foreign policy, but most of the respondents regard «the Axis of Evil» as killing the nascent dialogue with the USA and coming as a godsend to the conservatives and the ultras.
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