From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Economist articles
Date: 20 Dec 1992 15:17:31 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

lran, Iraq, irrational
 
A declension that needs to be broken.
 
Like a numerically uncontrolled machine tool, the Iraqgate
scandal grinds on in Britain and America, showering
sparks and shards in every direction. That is as it should be. It is
disgraceful that, during the Iran-Iraq war and right up to the
Iaqi invasion of Kuwait, the British and American govern-
ments systematically broke their own rules and lied to their
people in order to build Saddam Hussein's Iraq into the bully
it became. But, by concentrating on the past, the shower of rev-
elations should not be allowed to divert attention from present
dangers, including the danger that, in Iran, history may be
about to repeat itself.
 
The politics of the Gulf is driven by two enduring facts. One
is that the region contains 66% of the earth's proven oil reserves,
which gives many outsiders an interest in what happens there.
The other is that history and geography have made Iran and
Iraq, the two most populous countries of the region, into natu-
ral competitors (with Saudi Arabia forming the third, weaker,
point of a vicious triangle). When one goes down, the other
goes up. And when one rises too far, those interested outsiders
strive to take it down a peg or two. That is why, when Iran
looked set to win the Iran-Iraq war, America tilted towards Mr
Hussein. When Iraq later trampled on Kuwait, the tilt came to
seem excessive and foolish, but it made sense at the time. No
body knows where Ayatollah Khomeini's armies would have
stopped if they had overwhelmed the Iraqis.
 
Now that Iraq has indeed been laid low, Iran is following
the way of the Gulf and rising again. It is selling nearly 4m bar-
rels of oil a day and applying much of the revenue to rearma-
ment. Its new Russian submarines are potential mischief-mak-
ers in the neck of the Gulf, but it is also procuring tanks,
missiles and modern aircraft. A lot of outsiders are convinced
that it is trying secretly to build or buy an atomic bomb, though
the evidence is murky.
 
Iran, arguably the victim of Iraqi aggression in l980, is enti-
tled to a sound defence. But it is plain folly for the rest of the
world to connive again in the arming of a country intent on an
aggressive and adventurist foreign policy. In recent months
Iran has increased the bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie,
a British novelist it accuses of blasphemy; picked a fight with
the Gulf Arabs by pressing a claim to disputed islands in the
Gulf; and appointed itself enemy of attempts to make peace
between the Arabs and Israel. It is accused by countries as dif-
ferent as Jordan, Egypt and Algeria of being both inspirer and
co-ordinator of a variety of plots and insurgencies.
 
Is this the sort of customer to flog your best weapons to?
Since the Gulf war, western goverments have regretted arm-
ing Iraq and made pious noises about the need for arms con-
trol in the region as a whole. They no longer sell weapons to
Iran, and the G7 is considering imposing tight new restrictions
on sales to Iran of high-technology equipment with military
applications. All this is splendid, as far as it goes. But it does not
go far enough, for Iran still has access to other armourers, in-
cluding Russia, China and North Korea. And pinching off
these sources of supply will not be possible until western arms
salesmen make some additional sacrifices.
 
In particular, they need to sell fewer arms to Saudi Arabia.
Since the war, and despite reduced circumstances, the Saudis
have been stuffing themselves on almost every imaginable
kind of kiIIing-machine. The rate of purchases far exceeds both
Saudi Arabia's needs and its ability to assimilate the sophisti-
cated weaponry it is buying. Western governments are happy
to feed this appetite because, they explain, Saudi Arabia has
genuine defence worries. Strengthening Saudi Arabia, more-
over, is a way to keep Mr Hussein at bay and to box in Iran.
 
The good the war did, and how to waste it
 
It sounds plausible. But boxing-in (first of Iraq by Iran, then of
Iran by Iraq) was the failed philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s.
All it did was aggravate the regionaI arms race. Since the Gulf
war there has been a chance for something new. Iraq, after all, is
already defanged and under embargo. This removes at a stroke
the chief military threat both to Saudi Arabia and to Iran. Bet-
ter stilI, the old vicious triangle has been broken just when Rus-
sia is starting to question the wisdom of selling arms to an Iran
already being a nuisance on the southern rim of Russia's Is-
lamic fommer possesions.
 
It is not yet clear which way this Russian debate will go. But
it will be much harder to urge restraint on the Russians, and to
persuade Iran that its rearming is unnecessary, if America and
its allies continue to pour weapons into Saudi Arabia. A large
American arms sale (to Taiwan) has already pushed China out
of talks with America, Britain, France and Russia about curb-
ing the arms trade in the Middle East and elsewhere. The com-
mercial opportuniy in Saudi Arabia should not be allowed to
destroy a unique arms-control opportunity in the Gulf.
 
The Economist - November 21st 1992
 
Arrows In The Heart of Iran
>From The Economist - 3 October 1992
 
Unwisely, the late Ayatollah Khomeini told his flock to go forth and
multiply. Iranians obeyed him with such enthusiasm that the population
grew by two-thirds in 14 years: from 36m before the revolution to 60m
today.
 
True, in those early revolutionary years, there was not much else to do.
The arrival of strict Islamic law banished most forms of entartainment,
and those that remained could be enjoyed only by families. Couples could
no longer court openly. Or even study together : for several years the
universities were closed.
 
But there was more to it than that. The ayatollah told his people that
every Iranian child born served as "an arrow through the heart of America".
The war with Iraq, and its devastating casualties, added impetus to the
task. It became a sacred duty to marry the widows of "martyrs" and enable
them to produce yet more soldiers for the ayatollah's "army of 20m" that
was to spread Islam throughout the world.
 
The problem for Iran's leaders is how to turn the message on its head:
each child born today is a shot through the heart of Iran, adding to
unemployment, homelessness and illiteracy. The health ministry admits
that 37% of Iranian children under seven are now malnourished. Although
the rate of population growth has come down - to 2.7% now compared with
3.3% three years ago - the girls born in response to Khomeini's call for
more Muslims will soon reach marrying age; 45.5% of the population is
under 15.
 
Send the women to work
 
Iran's vice-president, Massoud Roghani-Zanjani, who is in charge of planning
and budget matters, says that the regime should put niceties to one side
and, at a stroke, remove all the incentives that have been introduced
since the revolution to encourage reproduction. He argues that the
swiftest and most effective way of checking the population explosion is to
encourage women to take paid jobs: if a woman both loses her wages and adds
to her bills by having a child, she will probably be less inclined to
have one.
 
A family-planning programme was introduced several years ago but the message
does not seem to be getting through. Iran's minister of health, Muhammad
Reza Malezadeh, says that free sterilisation is available at 400 hospitals
and that 200,000 people took advantage of it in 1991. But he admits that
a survey of women in rural areas found that nearly half the women who
were on the pill were in a muddle about it. And the religious families
who harkened most attentively to Khomeini continue to believe in early
marriage and to oppose the notion of careers for women.
 
At the end of the day it is up to the clerics who started the problem to
solve it. Foremost in the war on population growth is Ayatollah Makarem
Shirazi, a senior theologian at Qom seminary. He agrees that the Koran
encourages large families: having many children is seen as a sign of
Allah's blessing and a reward for being a good Muslim. But the argues that
another important obligation in Islam is the instruction "to take account
of time and place" - and that present conditions in Iran call for zero
growth. Conditions may change but, for today, says the ayatollah. "The
man who stood proud and said I have seven children must learn that he
must apologise instead."
 
 
 

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