America’s Iran Hysteria

There is one major problem with bold, sweeping pronouncements such as this. They are almost always wrong because of its essential flaw of ‘lumping’ a variety of incidents or ideas into one grand theory. 
The simple truth is that Iran is not behind most of the turmoil in the Middle East and US policy makers should revise their mental model or they will be doomed to failure as a workable national strategy shouldn’t rely on emotions. 
It demands a detached, rational calculus. There are only three countries in the world without diplomatic relations with the US and they are North Korea, Bhutan and Iran (since Cuba was ‘defrosted’).
Yet, since 2014, the US State Department officially dealt with nine-tenths of the globe’s most abusive regimes, according to the Human Rights Risk Atlas.
However, Washington is filled with Iranophobes and the demonization of Iran is almost a national sport. It rests on three inflated assumptions about Iran’s menacing nature: i) that it is on an eternal quest to develop and perhaps employ nuclear weapons (especially against Israel); ii) that it massively supports regional “terrorists” and their proxies; and iii) that it regularly exhibits an unquenchable desire to establish its regional hegemony by force of arms. 
All three suppositions are based on another faulty assumption: that Iran has a straightforwardly dictatorial system of fundamentalism led by irrational “mad mullahs.”
Iran has a sizeable protected Jewish community and in the country with Islam as the state religion, the President regularly tweets Rosh Hashanah greetings for the Jewish New Year. Iran also sets aside one mandatory seat in its parliament for a Jew, three for Christians, and another for a Zoroastrian. 
Certainly, hardline fundamentalists chant “Death to America!” But it is also a country with an increasingly young, educated populace that holds remarkably positive views of Americans, unlike the citizens of Washington’s allies like Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. 
The recent statement of the US Secretary of Defense Mattis asserts that Iran’s shadow hovers over every regional crisis in the Middle East. This is simply false as the following demonstrates:
•    The Arab Spring and the subsequent chaos in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Iran didn’t start or significantly influence the uprisings in those countries.
•    Turkey’s decades-long war with separatist Kurds in its southeast provinces. Again, not Iran.
•    The ongoing spread of al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria and on the Arabian Peninsula. Iran actually abhors such groups, and certainly wasn’t behind their rise.
•    Or, if you want, take Yemen, since supposed Iranian meddling in the Middle East’s poorest state happens to be one of the favorite drums Washington’s Iranophobic hawks like to beat. And yet a range of credible reports suggest that the much-decried collusion between Iran and the Houthi rebels, who are the focus of the Saudi war in that country, is highly exaggerated.
Iran is a significant regional power and a player and unashamedly supports proxies, funds partner states, and sometimes intervenes in the region, even sending in its own military units to Iraq and Syria. 
But, so does Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Yemen), Russia (Syria) and the US (more or less everywhere). Hence, who is destabilizing whom (and why) invariably turns out to be a matter of perspective.
The State Department and other government agencies regularly label Iran as the world’s leading “state sponsor of terrorism”. However, to tag Iran as #1 on any terror list is misleading indeed and begs some questions: Which terrorists? What constitutes terrorism? Or, do those “terror” outfits truly threaten the U.S. homeland?
In 2016, the State Department’s annual survey of worldwide terrorism labeled Daesh (ISIS) and not Iran, Hezbollah, or the Houthis, as “the greatest [terror] threat globally.” 
How can the US claim that Iran is the “greatest sponsor”, if Iran has proven thoroughly hostile to and deeply invested in the fight against Daesh and other al-Qaeda-linked groups in Iraq and Syria?
Obviously, Iran supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. But lumping regionally focused nationalist organizations like Hezbollah with genuine global jihadist groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda is deceptive and deliberately so.
Hezbollah is largely fixated on Israel but is fighting Daesh in Lebanon and in Syria. Hence, Hezbollah isn’t sending its operatives to crash planes into American buildings.
In fact, there are more foreign Daesh volunteers from Belgium or the Maldives than from Iran. In reality, most of the top sources of Daesh’s foreign recruits are from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan - “friendly” American “partners.” 
A Pentagon assessment concluded in 2014 that Iran’s military strategy is ultimately defensive in nature and based on a feeling of being threatened and with good reason. When it comes to American power, from the 1953 CIA-British coup that installed the Shah as well as Washington’s support of Saddam Hussein in the imposed war of 1980-1988, and the present administration’s all-in support for the autocratic Saudis in an anti-Iranian partnership, Iran has legitimate reasons to feel threatened.
 
In 40 years, US policy toward Iran hasn’t achieved any of its goals. Foreign policy hawks, Democrats and Republicans alike, will argue against this, as with the Cuban embargo, Iranian isolation has long outworn any imagined usefulness.
Iran only wants international legitimacy, security, and a reasonable degree of regional power (not world domination.
In conclusion, US policy in the Middle East is confused, contradictory, counterproductive, and dangerous. It could leave Washington involved in a war with Iran: another war that it can’t win.
The US doesn’t require more enemies as its hands are already full enough without creating more “existential” threats. The Trump administration has a unique opportunity to normalize relations with Iran. But don’t hold your breath!