THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060496
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 69 lines
Saddam Hussein has been punished by U.S. missile strikes for his assault on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. President Clinton, enjoying an election-season boost in the polls, has declared the mission a success.
But it all leaves Nouri Maanavi with a hollow feeling.
The complexities of Persian Gulf politics, so baffling to many Americans, are dear to Maanavi's heart. Now a professor of management at Norfolk State University, he was a high-ranking admiral in the Imperial Iranian Navy.
He left Iran in 1979 after its U.S.-backed monarch, the shah, was overthrown by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolutionaries.
Maanavi fears the U.S. attacks on Iraq will only inflame an already vehement anti-American mood among the masses in the region that will linger long after the current Kurdish hostilities and the U.S. election are over.
Among the consequences, he predicts, will be the further spread of international terrorism.
The stated reason for the U.S. action was to punish Saddam for attacking the Kurds inside a U.N.-protected zone. ``Now he knows that there is a price to be paid for stepping over the line that the United Nations resolutions imposed,'' Clinton said afterward.
The problem is that the good-guy-vs.-bad-guy rhetoric coming out of Washington doesn't match the reality on the ground, Maanavi said. Rather than protecting innocent Kurds against Iraqi aggression, the United States has bumbled into a long civil war in which one Kurdish faction is backed by Iraq and the other by Iran.
``American policy in that region, to be honest with you, has never been the cause of uniting these people,'' Maanavi said. ``Different administrations have used the Kurdish movement sometimes against the shah, sometimes against Khomeini, sometimes against Saddam Hussein.''
Against that backdrop, he said, the U.S. action will be viewed by many in the region with a cynical eye.
``At the moment what Mr. Clinton is doing may sound beautiful,'' he said. ``It may make Americans happy. It shows the strength of our armed forces. But in the long run, all the people in that region will hate us. We will not have the support of the masses.''
Maanavi believes U.S. policy in the region is fundamentally flawed by a double standard: While proclaiming itself an upholder of democracy, the United States aligns itself with dictatorial regimes in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It once even backed Saddam Hussein during his war against Iran.
``We have to have a global democratic policy,'' he said. ``If democracy and free enterprise is good for America, it should be good for everybody in the world.''
There are democratic forces everywhere looking to America for hope, Maanavi said - including Iran, where millions are in misery under the Islamic regime.
``In Iran, the masses of people hate the government,'' he said. ``Inflation is killing them. They have destroyed the education system, the economic system, industry. People are really suffering. The rate of inflation is 1,000 percent a year. I have four brothers who are doctors living there. Even the richest people, it's difficult for them to make a telephone call, it's so expensive.
``Iran is on the way to becoming another Bangladesh.''
One of the fundamental democratic precepts the United States should be fostering in the region, Maanavi believes, is separation of church and state.
``The totalitarian system there is mainly based on religion,'' he said. ``We have to urgently tell these people the only way to create a democratic society is to separate their religion from their politics.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Nouri Maanavi fears U.S. intervention in Iraq has made a bad
situation worse.
KEYWORDS: IRAQ SADDAM HUSSEIN U.S. NAVY
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