In the name of God
The Hollow Drum
These days the country is awash with militarism. From morning to night, television broadcasts parades of military forces and bluster aimed at the world. In the universities, the Basij is constantly being shoved in the students' faces. In politics, the garrison parties flex their muscles, and the country's Leader now formally wears a chafiyeh (the checkered keffiyeh scarf of the Iran–Iraq war fighters) around his neck, meaning that he is at war. In his speeches he praises militarism and challenges the world to a fight. It is just like a hollow drum beating in the nation's ear from morning to night. What is all this weaponry and militarism for? Why flaunt all these military parades, cannons and tanks before a hungry people? Ostensibly, the regime claims that it has become a regional power, that the world, and especially the Americans, are afraid of it, and that not even a lion can stand in its way. Underneath, of course, it wants to make the nation understand that it is very strong and at the height of its power, so the nation should put any thought of opposition out of its head and the opponents should know their place. After all, a regime that claims to slap America in the face has no fear of a handful of opponents at home. Is this really so? Has the Islamic Republic really become a regional power?
Is the country truly stable and secure? To examine this question, allow me to start with foreign policy for now and, quite simply, look at Iran's relations with its neighbors. I will leave the examination of power in domestic politics, which is a long story in its own right, to a separate article. There the drum is even hollower, and we recently saw how a simple protest by students at Amirkabir University pricked this inflated bag of wind.
I will begin with Afghanistan, our weakest neighbor. For more than a decade Afghanistan has been trampling Iran's right to the waters of the Helmand (Hirmand), and Iran does nothing. The Helmand River rises in the mountains around Kabul and flows for more than a thousand kilometers through Afghan territory before entering the Sistan plain. This second-largest river of Iran ultimately empties into Lake Hamun. Some one thousand villages, along with the city of Zabol, lie on this plain. Sistan was known as Iran's granary, and in the Islamic era its tribute at times exceeded that of Egypt. These compatriots of ours, descendants of Rostam and Ya'qub-e Leys, number more than half a million. For centuries they have worked the land with pride and honor, and the dominant economy of the region is agriculture. When Afghanistan built the Kajaki Dam on the Helmand, with a capacity of more than one billion cubic meters, the dispute over the Helmand's water became serious. Finally, in 1352 (1973), an agreement known as the Hoveyda–Shafiq agreement was signed between the two countries' prime ministers of the time. This agreement is very clear and unambiguous. In short, it obliges Afghanistan to release half of the river's water to flow toward Iran. The agreement contains a clear table showing how much water must flow toward Iran in each month of the year. In the event of drought and reduced water behind the dam, it stipulates that water must still reach Iran at a ratio of roughly one-half. Iran's share as set out in the agreement both meets the water needs of the farmers of the Sistan region and keeps Lake Hamun alive, so that no environmental problem arises. But, and a hundred times but, the Afghan government is throwing its weight around with Iran and has cut off the water. When the Taliban government was in power, it officially rejected the agreement and Iran did nothing. Because Taliban rule coincided with years of drought, the people of the region were simply told that drought was the main reason the river had dried up. But even after Mr. Karzai's government came to power, the Taliban fell and the drought ended, the story remains the same. In Mr. Khatami's time, when Hamid Karzai came to Iran and the issue of the Helmand's water was raised, Afghanistan referred it to a joint commission to be formed later, and Iran's president accepted. Two months ago, the Speaker of Iran's Majlis, on a trip to Sistan, falsely attributed the absence of water in Iran's stretch of the Helmand to the security problem in Afghanistan. What remains, of course, is the scorched face of the Sistan plain and the even more scorched faces of the poor people of this land. Mr. Khamenei should be asked for whom he has tied that chafiyeh around his neck. When he cannot even force the government of Afghanistan to implement an agreement this clear, who in the world is he flexing his muscles at? Has he ever thought about our half-million impoverished compatriots in Sistan? Does it even matter to him how a people whose nobility and honor are proverbial in history have today fallen into the abyss of poverty and ruin? If only, out of the twelve thousand dollars they gave to each Lebanese family, they had given just one thousand to Sistani families. Then they would not have to walk several kilometers with gasoline cans in hand to earn a few tomans by selling gasoline across the border. Nothing can be expected of Mr. Khamenei's appointed government and his chosen president. This president is currently busy staging shows in the provinces, clowning for the world press, writing letters to this person and that, and organizing conferences for racists, so nothing sensible or intelligent can be expected of this government. But since responsibility for this government rests entirely on the shoulders of the Leader, he must answer. He must explain to the nation of Iran and to our Sistani compatriots why he cannot implement the Hoveyda–Shafiq agreement and make Iran's share of the Helmand's water flow permanently in the Sistan plain. Forgive me if my pen has grown a little harsh. But believe me, whenever I think of the heartbreaking sight of the dry Helmand River and the even drier Lake Hamun, I am overcome. Three years ago, when I went to give a lecture at the University of Zabol, I went up close to the border line, visited several villages and spoke with their people. I am sure that if you had been in my place, you too would have felt a lump in your throat, and you would be beside yourself whenever you remembered it. I will never forget one Sistani student. I asked him how people make a living, and where their income comes from now that the river has dried up and farming income is gone. Tears welled in his eyes, he lowered his head and said that because of poverty many families resort to doing anything, and his voice broke.
Let us turn to the Persian Gulf and the affair of the three islands: Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa. Security and sovereignty over these three islands rest with Iran, but the residents of Abu Musa are from Sharjah and must be able to come and go freely. Some years ago the then governor of Abu Musa, which falls under Hormozgan Province, ineptly refused entry to some of the island's Sharjah residents. A furor followed, and the United Arab Emirates raised a claim of sovereignty over all three islands. During the long years when Mr. Velayati was Iran's foreign minister, he repeatedly invited the UAE foreign minister to Tehran for negotiations. The UAE minister would barely come as far as Shiraz and refused even to come to Tehran. Instead, at every meeting of the Arab countries and every session of the six Persian Gulf states, they have drafted and signed document after document declaring these three islands Arab. Four years ago, at the Arab summit in Beirut, they drafted and signed yet another document claiming that these three islands are Arab. The Syrian government and the Palestinian leaders signed this document too. These are the very people Iran's leaders champion so fervently. In return, our rulers have sacrificed our national interests on the world stage for the sake of these very gentlemen. In any case, the UAE government, in collusion with all the Arabs, now claims these three islands. It quite casually uses the word "Gulf" instead of "Persian Gulf" at every meeting and in every official document, without facing any serious protest from the Iranian government. The regime has never declared this baseless claim closed once and for all. If there is any protest, it comes from the nation, and especially from the young, who, as we saw, gave National Geographic magazine a hard time. Meanwhile, the country becomes more dependent every day on the UAE, and especially on the sheikhdom of Dubai. From the country's merchants to its banks, from ordinary people's capital to the second and third families of officials, everyone is in Dubai, and for now this degree of dependence on Dubai has silenced the regime. The Islamic Republic cannot firmly assert Iran's right in the Persian Gulf and tell the UAE once and for all to stop raising this baseless claim. In the Persian Gulf, a bone remains lodged in the wound.
With Iraq, however, the problem is even more serious. The 1975 Algiers Agreement, which settled the country's western borders and especially the Shatt al-Arab (Arvand Rud) waterway, is in a state of limbo. Saddam Hussein himself signed the initial agreement with the Shah of Iran in Algiers in 1975. His foreign minister, Saadoun Hammadi, and Iran's then foreign minister, Khalatbari, signed the final document. But this same gentleman reneged on the agreement in 1359 (1980) and attacked Iran. During the first two years of the war, Iran succeeded in driving the enemy from its soil. It then continued the war for another six years in the hope of taking Basra, but it lacked the strength. Iran suffered about 265,000 dead and more than half a million disabled (and Iraq probably as many), and both sides suffered billions of dollars in damage. Beyond that, the outcome of this bloody and fruitless eight-year war was the acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598. That resolution required the parties to withdraw behind internationally recognized borders, an elastic, indeterminate term that does not decisively settle the status of the 1975 agreement. For this reason, at the first postwar meeting between Velayati and Tariq Aziz (the two countries' foreign ministers) in Geneva, the Iraqis stated explicitly that they did not accept the 1975 agreement and that a new agreement had to be written. Unfortunately, Iran very nearly accepted this condition. Fortunately, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the world's ultimatum to the Iraqi regime and the subsequent attack by the allies under American leadership set Iraq on a course that ended with its occupation by the Americans and the British in 2003. Saddam's regime fell, he himself was eventually executed, and a government elected by the people now governs Iraq. Yet Tehran's rulers have so far not uttered a single word about the need to implement the 1975 Algiers Agreement. The centerpiece of the 1975 agreement is the thalweg line (the line of the deepest channel), rather than the median line, as the border between the two countries in the Shatt al-Arab. Iraq has violated this and continues to violate it. But Iran keeps silent. It is far less keen on securing Iran's right in this waterway than on stirring up trouble in Iraq or confronting the Americans there. Once or twice, Iraq's current leaders have complained to Iran's leaders that they cannot talk about the 1975 Algiers Agreement for now because the Iraqi people are sensitive about it. It is not clear why Tehran's rulers do not show the same sensitivity toward the people of Iran. In any case, the 1975 Algiers Agreement is a good agreement. It clearly and specifically settles Iran's western borders from Khorramshahr to the Turkish border. Since the Treaty of Zohab in the reign of the Safavid Shah Safi, this is the first time that this section of Iran's border has been settled within a firm and unambiguous legal framework, and no one has the right to retreat a single step from it. Unfortunately, Tehran's rulers have so far failed to implement this agreement.
But the most important loss in Iran's foreign policy toward its neighbors is in the Caspian Sea, where the Russians have trampled Iran's rights through bullying and extortion. Under international law, the status of lakes shared by several countries is determined by the agreements between them. The status of this, the world's largest lake, was determined by the 1940 agreement between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Imperial Government of Iran. Both regimes have since fallen. The Russian Republic has accepted all the obligations of the Soviet government, just as it took over the Soviet seat at the United Nations and its veto in the Security Council. The Islamic Republic is likewise bound by the obligations of Iran's previous government. I have to spell out this self-evident point of international law because some years ago the newspaper Pravda brazenly claimed otherwise. It argued that because the socialist Soviet state had fallen, the Russian Republic bore no responsibility for fulfilling that state's obligations in the Caspian. Under the 1940 agreement between the two countries, the Caspian is treated like an open sea. Each side has a coastal border strip, and the rest of the sea, both the surface and the seabed, is free and international. Political sovereignty over the sea is also divided 50/50 between the two countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we came to share this sea with four countries: Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The first blow came when these newly founded countries, together with Russia, announced that they did not accept Iran's 50-percent political sovereignty and that a new legal regime had to be defined for the Caspian. They violated Iran's legal right, and Iran consented. After that, the Russians put forward a highly unjust and bullying plan. Under this plan, the surface of the sea becomes common and open to shipping, meaning that international borders are removed. This is of no use to Iran, which barely has a few small fishing boats on the Caspian. But Russia and Kazakhstan are the two nuclear powers on this sea. Under this plan, their warships can come right up to the ports of Anzali, Nowshahr and Torkaman and all our Caspian coastal cities, drop anchor and threaten our entire coastline. Under the same plan, Iran has been deprived of its right to the seabed, which has now proven to be rich in oil and gas. The Russians say they will draw a line connecting the two ends of each country's coastline. The seabed between that imaginary line and each country's coast will be that country's share. In this way Iran's share of the seabed comes to only 8 percent, and a part with no gas or oil resources at that. For a long time now Iran has been begging for a 20-percent share of the seabed. Mr. Kharrazi, the foreign minister in Mr. Khatami's government, went to Moscow and bowed and scraped a great deal, and only then did Russian President Putin grudgingly promise to work toward a 16-percent share for Iran. Again, that is 16 percent without the main oil and gas resources. Worse still was the summit of the leaders of the five Caspian littoral states in Turkmenistan. Mr. Khatami was speaking about forming a technical and legal commission to study and draft a new legal regime for the Caspian. Putin cut him off imperiously and sharply. He said these things take too long, Iran wanted to stall, Russia could not wait, and it would settle the matter through bilateral agreements with each country. After leaving the meeting he announced the same to reporters. He added that in the summer (summer 2003) he would hold a military exercise in the Caspian, which amounted to a threat and an act of bullying, and he did just that. As usual, Iran's president did only one thing: he grew so agitated that his back gave out and he was confined to bed at his residence for 24 hours, and that was all. Russia then set about concluding bilateral agreements. Now we are left empty-handed, consoling ourselves that with our stalling policy we have not signed anything. Three years ago, when these issues came up, I could not sleep for three nights. I was furious, and I felt that the Russian president had insulted not just our president but the entire Iranian nation. I raised the issue in a harsh article on my own website, Alliran (ALLIRAN.COM). Then, in a lecture at the Faculty of Engineering of Shahid Chamran University, I explained to the students that the Qajars are the symbol of incompetence and ineptitude in Iranian history. Yet these same inept Qajars at least fought these very Russians for years over the Caucasian provinces in two wars, and only when they were defeated did they accept peace. They also fought the British for nearly 60 years over the Herat region, and only when they lacked the strength did they accept the Treaty of Paris and the separation of Herat. Tehran's rulers, by contrast, have not made even one public protest against the Russians' severing of a large part of the Caspian from Iran and their violation of the 1940 agreement. Of course, a month after that lecture I was arrested. The Alliran site was shut down, and its director and several staff members, including my son, were arrested. After enduring solitary confinement they were given suspended prison sentences, and I myself have for now been sentenced to six years in prison. Interestingly, I later heard that the authorities had even instructed newspapers not to write anything about this matter or about Iran's rights in the Caspian. Mr. Khamenei is the country's Leader and the person chiefly responsible for all the regime's policies, especially foreign policy. I truly do not understand what debt he owes the Russians that he hands everything in the country over to them like this. These are the same Russians who, ever since they rose to power under Peter in the late
Safavid era, have been our worst neighbor and have committed more aggression against our territory than anyone else, and still do. Is there really this much ignorance in our foreign policy? For the sake of enmity with America, must the country be handed over to the Russians on a platter? Must they be allowed to sit at every international negotiation with an Iranian blank check in their pocket and win concessions for themselves? Must they then have a presence in every pillar of our security and military organizations, while from all this nuclear-energy hocus-pocus the profit goes into the Russians' pockets and the smoke gets in the eyes of the Iranian nation? Is there really this much ignorance in the foreign policy of the Leader and his regime that, for the sake of enmity with America or any other godforsaken hole in this world, they sacrifice our national interests to an aggressive power like Russia? If so, and the ignorance runs this deep, then in the words of Imam Hossein one must say, "Ala al-Islam al-salam" (Farewell to Islam). Truly, woe to the country and the nation of Iran. And if there is some other calculation at work, why is it not announced clearly so the nation can understand the reason for these actions? Sometimes I wonder whether the Russians are so present in our security and military apparatus that they can impose these things on the country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, their scientific brains in physics, mathematics, chemistry and other sciences went to the Western countries. Some of the dregs of the KGB and the professional killers of their security service ended up in Iran. On top of that, others from Eastern Bloc countries such as Romania joined them. In any case, whatever lies behind the curtain and whatever is going on will sooner or later come to light. But for now one thing is clear. By order of the Leader and his henchmen, the country has been handed over to the Russians on a platter. And just as in the Qajar era, when they took the Shah himself and his crown prince under their protection, they are now protecting the Leader and his crown prince, Agha Mojtaba.
In my view, the regime puts on all this militarism and thuggery, outwardly for the world and inwardly for the people of Iran. In response, the Iranian nation should place just one demand before Mr. Khamenei and his regime: implement the 1940 agreement and recover Iran's rights from the Russians. Until they have done this, all their other claims and bluster are just hot air.
Rest assured that, as things stand, history will judge the Islamic Republic, and especially Mr. Khamenei personally, more harshly and bitterly than the Qajars for incompetence and for squandering the country.
Regards,
Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara
23 Dey 1385 (13 January 2007)