Iran's Power in Context

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Olivier Roy, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 130. Antiimperialism in practice became anti-Americanism, a slant that is all the more extraordinary given the record of Russian/Soviet predatory behaviour in the region. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for example, expressed this view on Iran TV Channel on 8 May 2008. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a broadcast on Iran TV News Channel on 3 June 2008. See Emil Hokayem, ‘To Counter Iranian Ambitions, the Gulf Needs Greater Self-Confidence’, The National, 14 August 2008, http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080814/OPINION/152591015/1002-36k- and Shibley Telhami, ‘It's Not About Iran’, Washington Post, 14 January 2008, p. A21. Richard Haass, ‘The New Middle East’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 6, November–December 2006, p. 6; and Ray Takeyh and Vali Nasr, ‘Getting Iran Inside the Tent’, International Herald Tribune, 7 December 2007, p. 8. This exact formulation is repeated in Ray Takeyh and Mark Brzezinski, ‘The Time For Threats and Insults is Past’, International Herald Tribune, 12–13 January 2008, p. 4. For a gross exaggeration of Iran's power and importance see Robert Baer, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower (New York: Crown, 2008). Condoleezza Rice, ‘Rethinking the National Interest’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 4, July–August 2008, p. 18. See also Thom Shanker, ‘Gates Sees Iran As Still-Serious Threat’, New York Times, 9 December 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/world/middleeast/09gates.html. Mohhamad-Bager Zolgadr, deputy chief of the Armed Forces, quoted in the Iranian newspaper Farhang-e Ashti, 26 August 2008, BBC Monitoring, 1 September 2008. This claim has been made repeatedly by Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council 2005–07, and quoted in various sources: Islamic Republic News Agency website, 28 September 2005, BBC Monitoring, 29 September 2005; Aftab-e Yazd, 7 July 2008, BBC Monitoring, 9 July 2008; Islamic Republic News Agency website, 11 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 13 October 2008; and Ali Larijani, Islamic Republic News Agency website, 26 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 27 June 2008. Mohsen Rezai, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, and others have made similar observations. Jihad al-Khazin, ‘Religious Sermon’, Al Hayat website, 25 September 2008, BBC Monitoring, 29 September 2008; Joseph Kechichian, ‘Can Conservative Arab Gulf States Endure a Fourth War in the Persian Gulf?’, The Middle East Journal, vol. 61, no. 2, Spring 2007, p. 303. Shahram Chubin, Iran's Nuclear Ambitions (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006); Emily Landau, ‘Now Is the Time to Talk’, Haaretz.com, 15 July 2008, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1001243.html. Interview of Benjamin Netanyahu by Tobias Buck and Lionel Barber in Financial Times, 7 October 2008, p. 7. Ze'ev Schiff, ‘Israel's War with Iran’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 6, November–December 2006, pp. 23, 25–6. Richard Norton, ‘Why Hizbullah is Winning’, Middle East Journal, vol. 61, no. 1, Winter 2007, p. 147. Saul Singer, ‘Whatever Palestinians Discuss, The Real Issue is Iran’, Daily Star (Beirut), 20 June 2008; and David Brooks, ‘Present at the Creation’, New York Times, 6 November 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/opinion/06brooks.html. Emile El-Hokayem and Matteo Legrenzi, ‘The Arab Gulf States in the Shadow of Iranian Nuclear Challenge’, Stimson Center Working Paper, 26 May 2006, p. 8; Marina Ottoway and Mohammed Herzallah, ‘The New Arab Diplomacy: Not With the US and Not Against It’, Carnegie Papers, No. 94, Middle East Program, July 2008, p. 15; and Olivier Roy, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, p. 252. For a discussion of Egypt's ailing government and the Saudis’ vain efforts to fill this vacuum, see ‘Saudi Arabia: Can it Make Peace in the Wider Region?’, Economist, 11 October 2008, p. 51. Sari Nusseibeh, ‘The One State Solution’, Newsweek, 20 September 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/160030;, Isabel Kershner, ‘Memo From Jerusalem: Support For 2-State Solution Erodes’, New York Times, 3 September 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/middleeast/04state.html; Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, ‘Into The Lion's Den’, New York Review of Books, 1 May 2008, pp. 57–60; Olivier Roy, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, p. 140; Marina Ottoway, Nathan Brown, Amr Hamzavi, Karim Sadjadpour and Paul Salem, The New Middle East (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008), pp. 15, 17. For an overview see Ottoway and Herzallah, ‘The New Arab Diplomacy’. See ‘Coalition of the Unwilling’, Economist, Special Report: The Arab World, 19 October 2006, p. 24. Ottoway et al., The New Middle East, p. 30; Rami Khouri, ‘Why Everyone is Negotiating in The Middle East’, Agence Global, 21 July 2008, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18449/why_everyone_is_negotiating_in_the_middle_east.html. Olivier Roy refers to the end of a Sunni Iraq as ‘Shattering the Middle East Balance of Power’, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, p. 108. Henner Fertig, ‘Conflict and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf: The Interregional Order and US Policy’, Middle East Journal vol. 61, no. 4, Fall 2007, p. 633. See Henner Fertig, ‘Conflict and Cooperation’, p. 639; and Vali Nasr, ‘When the Shi'ites Rise’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 4, July–August 2006. This trend has been most marked in the case of Saudi Arabia, which seeks greater independence in foreign policy. Ottoway and Herzallah, ‘The New Arab Diplomacy’, p. 10. See Karen de Young, ‘Iraq Finds its Arab Neighbors Are Reluctant to Offer Embrace’, Washington Post, 16 May 2008, p. 109. For a good discussion of the ‘structural’ aspects of GCC–Iran relations see El-Hokayem and Legrenzi, ‘The Arab Gulf States in the Shadow of Iranian Nuclear Challenge’; and Ottoway and Herzallah, ‘The New Arab Diplomacy’. With Iraq taken out of the balance, some states are also reluctant to entrust their future to Saudi Arabia. On Arab suspicions regarding a possible grand bargain, see Fouad Ajami, The Foreigners Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2007), pp. 213–14; and El-Hokayem and Legrenzi, ‘The Arab Gulf States in the Shadow of Iranian Nuclear Challenge’. ‘Nuclear Fallout’, Economist, 8 December 2007, p. 57. Ottoway et al., The New Middle East, pp. 35–7. Abd Al-Bari Atwan, ‘Arabs Urged to Build Strong Military to Counter Iran’, Al Quds Al Arabi website, 27 September 2008, BBC Monitoring, 29 September 2008. Abd al Rahman Al-Rashid, ‘Iranian Threat, Now it is Europe's Turn’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 10 July 2008, BBC Monitoring, 14 July 2008. Tarik Al-Humayd, ‘The Iranian Freedom Armies’, Asharq Al-Awsat website, 28 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 30 October 2008. Jameel Theyabi, ‘Arabs Between Washington and Tehran’, Al-Hayat, 14 July 2008, http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/07-2008/Article-20080714-2215194b-c0a8-10ed-0007-ae6d646c153a/story.html. Payman Tajrishi (ed.), Iran website, 15 December 2007, BBC Monitoring, 16 December 2007; Hanif Ghaffari, Resalat website, 20 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 25 February 2008. Shariatmadari Keyhan website, 2 April 2008, BBC Monitoring, 4 April 2008. Resalat website, 21 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 26 February 2008. Larijani Fars News Agency, quoted in MEMRI, no. 426, 12 March 2008. For a discussion of Iran's risktaking, see Shahram Chubin, ‘Iran's Risk-Taking in Perspective’, IFRI Proliferation Papers, Winter 2008. With respect to the coarsening of Iran's language, it is worth noting Larijani's comment that the United States should attack Iran ‘only if it wanted to see Israel in a wheelchair’. Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Roula Khalaf, ‘Dismay as Top Nuclear Official quits’, Financial Times, 22 October 2007, p. 5. The term ‘Palestinisation’ was coined by Jahangir Amuzegar in ‘The Ahmadinejad Presidency: Preparing for the Apocalypse’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 60, no. 2, Spring–Summer 2007, p. 49. ‘Ahmadinejad: Iran's “International Mission” to Limit Israeli Power’, Deutsche-Presse-Agentur, 4 October 2007, http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12677. See David Menashri, ‘Iran's Regional Policy: Between Radicalism and Pragmatism’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 60, no. 2, Spring–Summer 2007, pp. 153–67. See ‘Leader's Message on Condemnation of the Zionist Regime's Crimes Lebanon’, Center for Preserving and Publishing the Works of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, 1 August 2006, http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=218&Itemid=26. Cited in Amin Tarzi, ‘The World's Ninth Nuclear Power: Iran's Ambitions in the Middle East and Beyond’, Turkish Policy Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 63. Said Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Islamic Republic News Agency website, 15 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 16 October 2008. Ali Larijani, Islamic Republic News Agency website, 24 September 2008, BBC Monitoring, 25 September 2008; and Islamic Republic News Agency website, 15 October 2008, BBC Monitoring,17 October 2008. See Delphine Minoui's interview of Ahmadinejad's adviser and intimate Mojtaba Rahmandoust in Le Figaro, 29 August 2006, p. 3. For a similar view of Iran's policy in Lebanon, see the well-informed Iranian commentator Sadegh Zibakalam, Daily Star (Beirut), 17 June 2008. Michael Slackman, ‘Arab Leaders Grow Doubtful of a 2-state Solution’, International Herald Tribune, 23–4 February 2008, p. 3; Jon Kimche, ‘Mideast Peacemaking: Keep Hope Alive’, International Herald Tribune, 18 November 2008, p. 11. Yahya Rahim-Safavi, military adviser to the supreme leader, Fars News Agency website, 26 September 2008, BBC Monitoring, 29 September 2008. See also Mohammad Reza Djalili, ‘La Politique Arabe de l'Iran’, Contrario, vol. 5, no. 2, 2008, p. 136. See Ali Larijani, Peygham-e Emrooz, 6 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 12 February 2008; Brig.-Gen. Dr Ezatollah Ghafarizadeh, Head of Ground Forces Office of Research and Strategic Studies, Keyhan website, 23 April 2008, BBC Monitoring, 28 April 2008; Hizbullah News website, 3 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 5 February 2008; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic Republic News Agency website, 10 March 2008, BBC Monitoring, 11 March 2008. Hashemi Rafsanjani, interview with al-Jazeera, 28 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 1 July 2008. Quoted in Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner, ‘As Israelis Pull Out of Gaza, Hamas Celebrates With its Rocketry’, New York Times, 4 March 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?ref=middleeast. ‘Egypt Sees Iran “On a Surge” in Arab World’, BusinessIntelligence Middle East, 17 June 2008, http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=21421&t=1. Asriran.com, 11 Aban 1387, quoted in Iran Early Bird, 2 November 2008. See Fred Lawson, ‘Syria's Relations with Iran: Managing the Dilemmas of Alliance’, Middle East Journal, vol. 61, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 41–2. Patrick Seale, ‘The Syrian–Lebanese Embrace’, International Herald Tribune, 24 October 2008, p. 8. Vali Nasr, ‘In Tehran's Setbacks, an Opportunity in Iraq’, Washington Post, 19 June 2008, p. A19. Ibid. Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Voice of IRI, 9 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 10 June 2008. See also Nazila Fathi and Richard Oppel, Jr, ‘US Troops Causing Instability: Iran's Religious Leader Tells Iraqi Premier’, New York Times, 10 June 2008; and ‘A Partnership With Iraq’, Washington Post, 15 June 2008, p. B06. Hashemi Rafsanjani, interview with al-Jazeera, 28 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 1 July 2008. Ali Larijani, IRI News Network, 12 September 2007, BBC Monitoring, 13 September 2007. See also ‘Iraq Wants US Curbed in Attacking its Neighbors’, International Herald Tribune, 30 October 2008, p. 6. See Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: Norton, 2006). For a more sceptical look at the Shia impact on regional politics, see Michael Broning, ‘The Myth of the Shi'ite Crescent’, Daily Star (Beirut), 21 May 2008; Pat Proctor, ‘The Mythical Shia Crescent’, Parameters, vol. 38, no. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 30–43; and Roger Shanahan, ‘Bad Moon Not Rising: The Myth of the Shi'a Crescent’, Lowy Institute Analysis, September 2008, available at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=893.Iran Early Bird, 2 November 2008. This has since coloured Arab perceptions of Iran as a revolutionary state. See Fertig, ‘Conflict and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf’, p. 629. For a discussion of Iranian opposition to US bases in the Middle East (Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), see Hashemi Rafsanjani, interview with Al Jazeera, 28 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 1 July 2008. For a discussion of Iran's idea of defence cooperation see Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, ‘We Consider Our Neighbours as Our Allies’, Islamic Republic News Agency, 29 August 2008, http://www2.IslamicRepublic NewsAgency.ir/fa/news/view/line-17/0808292026183234.htm. Former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Yahya Rahim Safavi has reassured the GCC that Iran ‘is not covetous of their lands and is even prepared to sign a joint defence pact with them’, ISNA website, 23 May 2008, BBC Monitoring, 26 May 2008. Keyhan, 9 July 2007. The GCC saw these statement as ‘irresponsible … grave … hostile’. See Al Arabiya TV, Dubai, 7 August 2008, BBC Monitoring, 8 August 2008. For criticism of these statements by Iranian reformists, see Mardom Salari website, 9 August 2008, BBC Monitoring, 15 August 2008. Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran TV news channel, 3 June 2008, BBC Monitoring, 4 June 2008. It is regrettable, he says, that some countries subordinate the interests of the region to those of the United States. See Voice of IRI, 8 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 12 February 2008. See Report of Mehr News Agency, 4 October 2007, BBC Monitoring, 5 October 2007. The more pointed threats came in an editorial in Keyhan, 26 January 2008, quoted in MEMRI, no. 1828, 27 January 2008. Iran has an Arabic-language TV network, Al-Alam, aimed at an Arab audience. GCC Secretary General Abdurrahman al-Attiyah, quoted in ‘GCC Chides Iran Over Facilities on UAEclaimed Island’, AFP, 16 August 2008, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKWFwdIofnq7X_3btkzLUy7tfwQ. See also Nicole Stracke, ‘Where is the UAE Island Dispute Heading?’, Gulf Research Center, 25 September 2008, http://www.grc.ae/?frm_action=view_newsletter_web&sec_code=grcanalysis&frm_module=contents&show_web_list_link=1&int_content_id=54549&PHP SESSID=5bf9fe1d73e0b01a40d421df cce31333. For background detail on the Gulf states’ differing responses to Iranian policies, see Dalia Kaye and Frederic Wehrey, ‘A Nuclear Iran: The Reactions of the Neighbours’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 2, Summer 2007, pp. 111–28. See Akbar Ganji, ‘The Latter-day Sultan’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 6, November–December 2008, pp. 45–66. Although there is a broad agreement on the necessity for ‘regime security’, there are very different notions within the Iranian regime of how this is to be achieved and, indeed, how and in what direction the regime should evolve. Thus foreign policy in practice can vary from Khatami's relatively moderate policies to Ahmadinejad's confrontational approach. Khatami is not alone in not seeing Middle East politics in zero-sum terms. Rafsanjani and Mohammad Qalibaf (mayor of Tehran and probable presidential candidate) have criticised this approach as applied to Iraq and elsewhere, noting areas of common, overlapping interests with the United States and others. Mehr News Agency, 12 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 13 February 2008; Scott Macleod and Nahid Siamdoust, ‘A Gentler Iran’, Time, 19 March 2008, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1723711,00.html. Confrontational policies clearly serve factional ends as they tend to strengthen hardliners; see Sanam Vakil, ‘Tehran Gambles to Survive’, Current History, December 2007, especially p. 420. See Tim Guldimann, ‘The Iranian Nuclear Impasse’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 3, Autumn 2007, pp. 169, 175. Roy, The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, pp. 126–7; see also Guldimann, ‘The Iranian Nuclear Impasse’, pp. 171–2; Ali Ansari, Iran under Ahmadinejad: The Politics of Confrontation, Adelphi Paper 393 (London: Routledge for the IISS, 2007). Sayyid Ali Khamenei, ‘Leader's Address to Executive Officials’, The Center for Preserving and Publishing the Works of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, 30 June 2007, http://english.khamenei.ir/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=198&Itemid=31. IRI Network, 9 September 2008, BBC Monitoring, 10 September 2008. Shariatmadari has said that ‘a brief study of the performance of the reformists reveals that in many periods their positions were completely in line with the foreign enemy’, Keyhan, 3 February 2008, BBC Monitoring, 4 February 2008; and Keyhan website, 13 January 2008, BBC Monitoring, 18 January 2008. See Marlo Sogham, ‘Iran's President and the Battle for the Arab Street’, Radio Free Europe, 2 October 2008, http://www.rferl.org/content/Iran_President_Battle_Arab/1293381.html; Dan Morrison, ‘Persian Populist Wins Arab Embrace’, Christian Science Monitor, 21 June 2006, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0621/p06s01-wome.html. Economic Research and Policy Department, Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ‘Annual Review 1383 (2004/05)’, September 2005, available at http://www.cbi.ir/default_en.aspx. Quoted in Elliot Hen-Tov, ‘Understanding Iran's New Authoritarianism’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, Winter 2006–07, pp. 172, 178. See also Mohammad Reza Bahonar, Aftab-e Yazd, 27 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 3 November 2008. By one estimate, Iran's oil income averaged $21bn per year between 1997–2004, totalling $173bn, but between 2005–08 the total reached $200bn. Associated Press, ‘Iran Feels Economic Pain as Oil Prices Fall’, International Herald Tribune, 31 October 2008, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/31/news/ML-Iran-Feeling-the-Pain.php. An Iranian source goes further, asserting that the government's oil income in the past three years has exceeded the ‘entire country's oil revenue in the history of Iran's oil’. E'temad-e Melli, 13 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 15 October 2008. The IMF's figures tell a similar story, with oil revenues of about $17bn in 1999/2000 increasing to an estimated $66bn in 2007/08 and government revenues from oil going from 10% to 21% of GDP. See Islamic Republic of Iran: Selected Issues, IMF Country Report no. 08/285 (Washington DC, August 2008), p. 40. Other sources include Iran: Facts and Figures, Annual Statistical Bulletin, OPEC, 2007. The figure $54bn is from Ann Fifield, ‘Oil Price Fall Puts Squeeze on Iran's Cash’, Financial Times, 23 October 2008, p. 4. Robin Hughes, ‘Iran Replenishes Hezbollah's Arms Inventory’, Janes Defence Week, 3 January 2007, p. 17. Associated Press, ‘Iran Feels Economic Pain as Oil Prices Fall’. Notes Graham Fuller, ‘despite considerable financial resources of its own, the loss of Iranian funding would significantly constrain [Hizbullah's] range of activities, especially its anti-Israeli guerrilla campaigns, even if the loss would not bring it to its knees.’ Graham Fuller, ‘The Hizbollah–Iran Connection: Model for Sunni Resistance’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, Winter 2006–07, p. 143. One source estimates that Iran contributed $150 m to Hamas during the second half of 2008; see ‘Iran Pledges to Continue Support for Hamas’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 26 May 2008, http://aawsat.com/english/print.asp?artid=id12877. For a discussion of Iranian contributions to both Hizbullah and Iraq (amounting in the latter case to $10 m in grants and $2bn in soft loans) see Barbara Slavin ‘Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts its Influence in the Middle East’, USIP Special Report 206, June 2008, pp. 11, 15. One assumes that Iran is also actively funding at least some Afghan warlords, if only as an insurance policy (as it did the Northern Alliance earlier). The oil price slide, according to OPEC, is a ‘dramatic collapse – unprecedented in speed and magnitude’. Carola Hoyos and Javier Blas, ‘OPEC Cut Fails to Stop Oil Price Slide’, Financial Times, 25–6 October 2008, p. 44. Nader Habibi, ‘The Iranian Economy in the Shadow of Economic Sanctions’, Middle East Brief, no. 31, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, October 2008, http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB31.pdf. For a discussion of Iranian economic mismanagement see Najmeh Bozorgmehr, ‘Iran Banks Struggle with Credit Shortages’, Financial Times, 5 November 2008, p. 6. Associated Press, ‘Iran Feels Economic Pain as Oil Prices Fall’. See Gareth Smyth, ‘Iran Worried by Oil Price Falls’, Emerging Markets, 12 October 2008; Mehr News Agency, report published by Hezbollah News website, 28 October 2008, BBC Monitoring, 5 November 2008; John Leyne, ‘Iran Economy Facing “A Perfect Storm’’’, BBC News, 24 October 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7687107.stm; Hossein Aryan, ‘Falling Oil Compounds Iranian President's Problems’, Global Security.org, 29 October 2008, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2008/iran-081029-rferl01.htm. Hade Nile, ‘Tehran Begins to Feel the Pain of the Finance Crisis’, Washington Times, 5 November 2008; Bernard Guetta, ‘Couteaux tirés a Teheran’, Le Temps, 18 October 2008, p. 2. ‘UAE Banks Stepping up Pressure on Iranian Firms’, Bnet, October 2008, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmafp/is_200810/ai_n30943305. Robin Wright, ‘Using Banks to Stay a Step Ahead of Tehran’, International Herald Tribune, 1–2 November 2008, pp. 15–16; Orde Kittrie, ‘How to Put the Squeeze on Iran’, Wall Street Journal, 14–16 November 2008, p. 13. See also Roger Stern, ‘We can Beat Iran – But Not by Fighting’, International Herald Tribune, 10 January 2008, p. 6. A recent report by the US National Intelligence Council suggests that a drop in oil prices to $55–60 would put ‘significant pressure’ on the regime to choose between subsidising populist economic programmes and ‘sustaining and funding … intelligence and security operations and other programs designed to extend its regional power’. Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington DC: National Intelligence Council, November 2008), pp. 45–51. See Karim Sadjadpour, ‘How Relevant is the “Iranian Street?”‘, Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, Winter 2006–07, pp. 157–62; Simon Romero, Michael Slackman and Clifford Levy, ‘Rich Oil Countries Face a Tighter Future’, International Herald Tribune, 21 October 2008, pp. 1/8; ‘An Axis in Need of Oiling’, Economist, 25 October 2008, pp. 63–4; ‘The Party's Over’, Economist, 22 November 2008, p. 48. ‘Ordinary Iranians might take issue with the proposition that Iran wants to be a hegemon on the cheap’, says Kuwaiti analyst Samir al-Frey. ‘They would differ on the price Iran is paying.’ Samir al-Frey, Middle East Institute Conference, Washington DC, February 2008. Anthony Cordesman, Conventional Armed Forces in the Gulf: An Overview, Working Draft (Washington DC: CSIS, 23 June 2008), http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080623_gulfmilbal.pdf. With antiquated technology, diminished production and growing domestic consumption, some analysts predict that Iran may not have any oil available for export within five years. Roger Stern, ‘The Iranian Petroleum Crisis and United States National Security’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), vol. 104, no. 102, January 2007, http://www.pnas.org/content/104/1/377.full.pdf+html. The irony of Tehran relying on Saudi Arabia is not lost on observers; see Jean-Michel Bezat, ‘The Drop in Oil Weakens Several Producing States’, Le Monde, 26–7 October 2008, p. 13. Fouad Ajami uses this phrase in The Foreigners’ Gift, p. 253, in reference to Iraq. See Tariq Alhomayed, ‘Iran and Israel: The Escalation Continues’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 1 July 2008, http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=13258. Mark Mazzetti quotes Iraqis trained in Iran: ‘Iranians believe they are superior to everyone’ in ‘US Report Details Iranian Role in Iraq’, International Herald Tribune, 20 October 2008, p. 4. Vali Nasr's characterisation of Iran in 2004 still seems applicable: ‘Iran is currently a tired dictatorship teetering on the verge of collapse’. Vali Nasr, ‘Regional Implications of the Shia Revival in Iraq’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer 2004, p. 20. For a persuasive analysis, see Geoffrey Kemp, ‘Our Imaginary Enemy’, National Interest, May–June 2008. Says Kemp, ‘Having the capacity to cause damage may give Iran a strong hand to play in regional geopolitics but this does not mean it can be a regional hegemon’, pp. 33–4. Additional informationNotes on contributorsShahram ChubinShahram Chubin is a Senior Non-resident Fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The opinions expressed in this article are his own.