“We began to get reports that the crowds were pulling down all monuments to the Shah and his family…During the afternoon we received word that five or six such statues – major landmarks which had stood for several decades – had been destroyed. They were killing the Shah – symbolically.”
You don’t have to read US Air Force General Robert Huyser’s Mission to Tehran (from which the above paragraphs come) very long to see some intriguing parallels between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011. Following the chaos described by Huyser that greeted the Shah of Iran’s fall, slowly but surely, extremist mullahs and their acolytes laid the basis for a takeover of the country.
Examiner Columnist Michael Barone has his own thoughts on the similarities between Iran then and Egypt now, which you can read here.
In both cases, a long-time, autocratic, pro-US leader was displaced from power, following large-scale demonstrations. In both cases, the departure of those leaders created political vacuums that various players – not all of them friendly to the Western world – were eager to fill.
In Iran, the US hoped that it might work out some kind of accommodation with the various social forces and institutions that could have taken over the running of the country.
In retrospect, as Huyser’s book shows, the US does not seem to have had a preference for (or anxiety towards) any particular faction, just as long as its members were anti-Communist in orientation — 1979 being a particularly frigid moment in the Cold War.
A similar confusion about who is a friend and who is a foe in Egypt reigns today, according to Michael Barone. Some in Washington want to reassure the public that the West has nothing to fear from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – a very optimistic view of that organization.
For those who suspect Egypt may go the same way as Iran, what specific parallels could one look for, in terms of internal developments in Egypt, that would strengthen their case?
Thanks to Huyser’s book, we have several potential parallels we can consider. I want touch on just two here:
–In Iran, some observers thought the Shah’s fall would provide enough of a symbolic victory for activists opposed to the political status quo that they would subsequently quiet down. That did not happen.
Iran’s religious extremists did not relax their efforts to seize power. They declared war against the tottering state institutions that the Shah left behind. As the Ayatollah Khomeini exhorted his followers after the Shah’s fall, “You have forced the main traitor into disgraceful escape. Keep up the struggle [against what was left of the Shah’s regime].”
To many of those who protested in Tahir Square, because of his pro-US views and his position towards Israel, Mubarak was only “the main traitor.” Who will they pursue next?
–As Iran’s armed forces struggled to maintain order after the Shah’s departure, and keep the economy running in the face of strikes, it became difficult for them to police the country’s borders.
The Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters used this as an opportunity to smuggle weapons into the country. As law and order broke down, thefts of weapons from army depots also became common. Weapons were stockpiled in mosques, and kept handy for when the Ayatollah gave the command for a direct confrontation with all who opposed his efforts to impose his own government on Iran.
With this in mind, frequent news stories in the weeks and months to come about weapons being smuggled into Egypt would be ominous indeed.
General Huyser’s analogy of the Shah’s departure representing the firing of a starting gun is apt. It marked the start of a race for political power.
It applies to a post-Mubarak Egypt, too. In Tahir Square, the starting gun has also sounded. At the end of this political race, who will be the winner?
