The Devil We Know
Dealing with the new Iranian superpower
By Robert Baer, Scribe Publications, 277pp
Reviewed: 4 April 2009
The Devil We Know seems written to shock the American public: “Nearly everything the average American has been told about Iran is wrong”, says Baer. The view of Iran as a terrorist state ruled by mad mullahs has been out of date for many years. Behind the posturing of President Ahmedinajad, the Iranian regime is a rational actor with clear aims based on a substantial culture and history, and pragmatic tactical flexibility.
Comparing Shia Islam to Sunni Islam, Baer draws parallels between the Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity. Shiism is hierarchical, scholarly and disciplined, whereas Sunnism is individualistic and infinitely schismatic. Hence Shiite tactics, including terrorist actions, are purposeful and disciplined toward a political objective, whereas Sunni extremists such as Al Qaeda are more often motivated by irrational desire for revenge or “cleansing” destruction. Talking to the Shia is useful.
Sunni regimes such as Pakistan or most Arab states are endemically corrupt and incompetent, he asserts. The Shia regime in Iran, and its proxies including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iraq, are far less corrupt and demonstrably more capable of maintaining effective and popular administration. Baer calculates that Western support for Sunni regimes is money down the drain. He presents a compelling analysis of the extension of Iranian influence over most of the Middle East, including non-Shia territories such as Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria.
Baer is no moralist. His assessment is based on what he has observed to work and not to work in the contemporary Middle East. He spent years in the CIA cultivating proxy actors in the Middle East who would serve the interests of the USA. Now he proposes that the only way to halt the profligate waste of American resources in a losing battle with Iran is to come to reasonable terms with Iran.
His prescription would USA mean abandoning several shibboleths: Israel would lose its apparently divine immunity and be required to return to its pre 1967-borders. Patronage and protection of the Arab oil states would have to be shared with Iran. Terrorism punishment objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan would have to be abandoned and those states allowed to fail on their own terms.
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