Asharq Al-Awsat, London, September 26
“October surprise” has become a code phrase for outside intervention capable of affecting the outcome of an American election, which is always held in November. The term was coined by Gary Sick, a former CIA analyst who served as an adviser on Iranian affairs in Jimmy Carter’s administration in the late 1970s.
According to Sick, who later wrote a book about his theory, Carter lost the November 1980 presidential election after the Islamic Republic delayed the release of American diplomats held hostage in Tehran as part of a secret deal with the Republican Party in exchange for promises from Ronald Reagan’s campaign. No evidence of such a deal has ever emerged, but the hostages were indeed released only on the day Reagan took office.
The delay appeared suspicious because Carter had already negotiated their release with Iran’s clerics and accepted all their demands, particularly a pledge not to prosecute the hostage-takers or those behind them.
Curiously, in 2009 an “October surprise” worked in the opposite direction, when an alliance of pro-American Islamist politicians and clerics fueled a popular uprising in Tehran in the hope that incoming Democratic President Barack Obama would lend them support, much as Carter had done against the Shah in February 1979. They were disappointed when Obama declined even to express sympathy for protesters who were being brutally suppressed.
Over the past week or so, the phrase has resurfaced in connection with the coming US midterm elections. One theory is that the remaining Khomeinist clique in Tehran could engineer a surprise designed to ensure President Donald Trump suffers a crushing defeat at the ballot box, perhaps through a new round of attacks on Iran’s neighbors that sends gasoline prices soaring.
Another possibility is that the clique might follow Trump’s own script and appease him by handing him another imaginary “great victory” to add to the one he claims over Greenland. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump renewed his threat to annihilate Iran, only to claim later that American officials had held a “very good” three-hour meeting with Iranian leaders and that another meeting was planned for the “very near future.”
Military historian Victor Davis Hanson offers another possibility: Trump could decide to take even greater action against Iran than before, forcing Tehran’s leaders into unconditional surrender and thereby helping Republicans in the November 3 elections.
In another scenario, Hanson suggests that the “October surprise” could be a massive uprising across Iran aimed at installing a new governing team seeking peace with the United States.
Yet another possibility, discussed particularly in the Israeli media and also supported by Hanson, is an invasion of Iran’s western provinces by Kurdish militants based in Iraq. Such an event could shake Iran’s military establishment, expose its inability to defend the country’s territory and perhaps provide the first spark of a popular revolution.
The problem with all these “October surprise” theories is that they stop when the election ends, with little thought given to what comes afterward.
The original October surprise may have helped Reagan win the presidency, but what did Iran gain from it? Twelve years of hostility followed under two Republican presidents, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including the first direct military confrontation between Iran and the United States in April 1988, when half of Iran’s naval fleet was sunk, and more than $1.3 billion in damage was inflicted on its offshore oil facilities.
Three months later, Washington shot down an Iranian passenger aircraft, killing 290 people. Nor did the Americans gain much. The mullahs continued taking American hostages throughout the region and carried out the terrorist attack on a US base in Lebanon that killed 241 Marines, the largest American military loss since World War II.
Now return to the present. Suppose the mullahs take some action that causes Trump to lose the election. What incentive would he then have to seek an accommodation and enter history as a leader inclined to placate and appease his enemies?
And who can guarantee that Democrats, if they win, would revive Obama’s pro-mullah strategy? Nor can anyone guarantee that Democrats would secure a congressional majority large enough to override vetoes and constrain a wounded Trump.
Conversely, suppose Tehran suddenly changes course to please Trump and help him. Would Trump really be naïve enough to trust the turbaned Pinocchio that has already deceived seven American presidents over nearly half a century?
The best “October surprise” would actually be for Washington to recognize that this confused and costly strategy is unlikely to work. Under its current regime, Iran will not—and cannot—cease being a source of destabilization and an exporter of ideology and terrorism.
The fundamental reason for America’s failures toward Tehran is the assumption that it is dealing with a normal nation-state rather than an instrument for spreading a particular ideology. Washington, and others dealing with the Islamic Republic, have consequently fallen into the trap of half-measures: diplomacy pursued without full seriousness, sanctions imposed incompletely, and now a large-scale war without decisive force.
They promised to lift sanctions but never truly did. They promised to build trust through diplomacy but stopped halfway. They threatened “maximum pressure” but stopped before the foundations of the regime began to crack. They boasted of seeking regime change but ended by signing an agreement with a regime that had not changed.
From Tehran, meanwhile, we have heard claims about establishing a new world order in alliance with China and Russia and turning the Islamic Republic into an “Islamic superpower,” even as rival factions pursued the dream of an attractive deal with the “Great Satan” by any means available, often devious ones.
In the end, perhaps the only October surprise will be no surprise at all.
Amir Taheri (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)