The Charming Prince from Persia

by Eze Eluchie

The sophistry and finesse required to maintain an edge over ones adversaries without resort to violence has always been a revered art form cultivated by civilizations across the ages. From the individual, to the community to the State level, those who have mastered this art have always been able to come out of seemingly impossible situations with all the benefits available and leaving their opponents wondering what truly happened.

At the level of interaction of States, whilst efforts continue to be made to document and codify approaches and steps of International Diplomacy, real success in this field is not usually attained via formal education but come about, like all art forms, from innate origins. And like all art forms, an individual or State acquires a definite edge if the art of diplomacy is ingrained and rooted in traditional ethos, values and daily life.

With recorded civilization and mastery of their environment dating back thousands of years and having attained globally renowned expertise in architecture, mathematics and the sciences, textile/rug manufacture and public administration and human management, the Persians, precursors to modern day Iran, are one people whose genealogy and history is steeped in diplomacy and can thus be appreciated as having mastered the art of international diplomacy.

Faced with the need to bolster national pride and present themselves as an alternative to a western hegemony that threatened to derail the prevailing sway held by theocrats in the Middle East, it was convenient for the leadership in Iran to present Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a boisterous brash-talking infant terrible who derived enormous pleasure in keeping the west on edge with his every comment and conveniently whipped up patriotic fervor amongst ordinary Iranians to extreme heights.

The leadership in Iran had however not contemplated the response in the form of excruciating sanctions that were beginning to bite hard and serve to stoke the embers of domestic discord and popular disenchantment.

What to do?  Replace the ‘infant terrible’ with a Prince that will charm the pants off the waist of the international community and try to turn back the hands of the clock without giving the international community anything of substance in return.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and his inner council quickly drafted one of their ‘Crown Princes’, an acknowledged leader in the art of ‘diplomacy’ (using diplomacy here in its real context and not the dictionary definition), Hasan Rowhani, who had in a previous assignment as Chief Negotiator for Iran in its nuclear proliferation talks, openly boasted in his published memoirs, about his success at hoodwinking and bogging down entities adverse to Iran’s development of nuclear capabilities whilst surreptitiously ensuring that the Persian enclave recorded all the successes it desired towards attaining its quest.

 And like magic, the cosmetic change of titular leadership worked. In the course of the first international outing of the Charming Prince from Persia to the 68th General Assembly of the United Nations, everybody seemed to be falling over everybody to have a glimpse and probably shake the hands of the Prince from Persia. Red carpets were rolled out, phone calls were exchanged and even black-bow-tie Evening Balls and high profile interviews were conducted – and in all these events, the Charming Prince did not fail to continually flash that handsome grin which swooned those unfamiliar with, or who choose to blind themselves to, the reality that nothing had changed in Iran since the departure from office of Ahmadinejad.

The immediate neighbors and age old acquaintances of the Iranians, who share common history and antecedents steeped in ‘international diplomacy’ were quick to see through the charade and have been screaming at the top of their voices to the world to be extremely skeptical of the amiable mien being displayed. The new found camaraderie and previously unfathomable coalition between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which has called for more circumspect evaluation of Iran under Hasan Rowhani deserves greater consideration and attention. The call for caution in dealing with the new-Iran seems however to be falling on deaf ears of a world overwhelmed by tension and violence-fatigue in the Middle-East and reluctance to engage in more conflicts in a region already stretched by strife.

The West appears to be, once more, pandering and dealing with 'international diplomacy' at a level and scope which it has quite little appreciation and understanding of.

There appears to be need, in this instance, to follow the hunch of Iran’s neighbors, lest we have a new, and perhaps more sinister repeat of the North Korea nuclear proliferation debacle.

Picture: President Hasan Rowhani of Iran