I’m going to go existential for a moment – we’re damned if we and we’re damned if we don’t. Yet that is not the end of philosophy or thought.
I.
I don’t know if any overt support for the Iranian dissidents from Obama would help them or not. Caution is likely the best avenue, yet this might be a pivotal moment in history and may alter the structure and appearance of the Middle East and other actors within the international system.
We’ve been the Great Satan for the last 30 plus years according to Iranian propaganda / state media and that rhetoric will be used as a justification for any actions that the ruling junta takes against the dissidents – regardless of what the US in fact does or does not do. Most states do not like outside interference with internal politics but as the Obama administration is trying to engage with Iranian regime, the line of where internal and external policies end becomes muddled. The boogeyman of American “intervention” will be used no matter what and foreign journalists are being expelled and their consulates called to the foreign ministry about interfering with Iran’s internal affairs. (The expulsions will happen even they have not yet passed; just wait for this purging of media always happens during political tumult with rigged elections).
Mousavi is labeled a “moderate” but he was vetted by the Guardian Council for religious and political orthodoxy before standing for election and has been a high ranking government official. He’s also been associated with Hezbollah. Clearly not a great departure from Ahmadinejad and no doubt this drives part of Obama’s stance – simply one cog replacing another in the apparatus while not wanting to appear to favor one side over the other yet trying to deal with the seemingly intractable nuclear issue and terrorism issue (plus Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Caucuses, the AfPak conflict and the flow of oil) as well as advanced the status quo desire for liberalization and human rights in Iran (hope and change, anyone?).
II.
There are several intrinsic concepts in political science. One of the primary concepts used is legitimacy the other is realism.
Realism is an ancient (Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes) school of thought in Poli Sci that basically holds that the only actors are states (their internal workings are a black box and totally irrelevant) and every, but everything is secondary to state security and power. States are self-interested, power seeking rational actors that maximize their chances of survival. Think of a zero sum game of Risk where any cooperation is done to leverage one’s position. A powerful, but crude theory. A derivative is Neorealism where the international structure acts a constraint on state behavior, i.e., only those states whose behaviors/outcomes fall in a certain range will survive.
Legitimacy can take many forms and legitimacy in one area doesn’t necessarily flow to another, i.e., it’s discrete and finite, but could understood as “consent of the people to be govern”. As the demonstrations, protests, violent suppression, etc indicate the election of Ahmadinejad is not seen as valid by many in Iran. The 1999 protests were nowhere near this scale (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17tehran.html)
- A senior ayatollah “slams the election, confirming split” (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iran/story/70155.html): "A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God." Fairly good evidence of a rift at the top of the hierarchy.
- Kevin Sullivan at Real Clear World flat out says that Iran is no longer a theocracy, “Iran hawks prefer to label the Iranian police state as simply “The Mullahs,” but the legitimate clerics in this dispute are the ones standing with Mir-Hossein Mousavi against ONE Mullah and his secular police apparatus. If the election has been rigged in such a fashion, then what you are in fact seeing is the dropping of religious pretense in the “Islamic” Republic of Iran. This is a secular police state in action” (http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2009/06/iran_no_longer_a_theocracy.html),
- Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh detail how Ahmadinejad has placed Revolutionary Guards all over Iran to forestall the Islamic Republic’s eventually succumbing to a “soft regime change” or an “orange revolution” (Ukraine 2004) if hardliners weren’t firmly in control of the country (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/opinion/17pletka.html). “In the most dramatic turnabout since the 1979 revolution,” they wrote, “Iran has evolved from theocratic state to military dictatorship.”
- In a World Cup match in South Korea, 6 players wore green in solidarity with people and Mousavi. The green bands were ordered to be removed in the 2nd half. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8105722.stm
- A pro Ahmadinejad rally looks super well attended http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/17/ahmadinijad-sucks-at.html until you know about the previous use of the clone tool in Photoshop http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/10/iran-you-suck-at-pho.html (July 2008)
If these separate example strands are bundled and analyzed en toto it looks like the White House (State dept, etc) need to take some steps back in the course of engagement. There is no status quo ante since the election outcome and unrest indicate that neither is Iran the same county that it was before the election nor has it the same government / regime since the regime is not seen as internally legitimate via the prima facie unrest.
One thing that must happen is for cracks to develop in the security apparatus and there have been reports that many of those being violent at the rallies are speaking Arabic, not Farsi. Did the regime import Hamas (Gaza / West Bank) and Hezbollah (Lebanon) militants to help with crowd control? Both of these groups are proxies for Iran and receive money and training from Iran. Makes me wonder…. If this is the case, it might well change the perception of Israel/Palestine and Lebanon situations among some of the Iranian public at large.
Yet, the protests that are being covered appear to be mainly in Tehran and seem to be concentrated among the university students. That protest base needs to be broadened across socioeconomic groupings for the demonstrations to really challenge the ruling elites via strikes. That’s what ultimately toppled the Shah in 1979.
III.
"These elections are an atrocity," he said. "If [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad had made such progress since the last elections, if he won two-thirds of the vote, why such violence?" The statement named the regime as the cause of the outrage in Iran and, without meddling or picking favorites, stood up for Iranian democracy.
The President who spoke those words was France's Sarkozy, not the US’ Obama. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124520170103721579.html). Obama has expressed concern but appears to have the same interchangeable cog / no real choice viewpoint in spite of the mass unrest (so much for the community organizer roots and power to the people). But in choosing not to choose, a choice was made by default to maintain the agenda of making some sort of bargain about the nuclear program. The popular uprising has made this script difficult to follow. He video-taped a message for the Iranian new year festivities, why no taped message now? In the past, other administrations were able to separate issues of engagement and legitimacy – think USSR and human rights. The same could happen here.
Granted there are no ready means to assure that the dissenters will be successful or that the US could assure success, but a tepid response undercuts our postures and as the Washington Post observes, “there is a connection between the regime's internal character and its external conduct.” This is written in terms of Iran, but could apply equally to the US. For Iran, the current powers are “determined to hold on to power -- and, probably, to terrorism and nuclear ambitions -- no matter what anyone thinks, even [their] own people” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061602822.html) while for the US it’s moral equivalence. In his June 16th comments, Obama invoked the CIA’s involvement in the 1953 Iranian coup yet in his recent Cairo address he stated his commitment to “governments that reflect the will of the people.” There are clear manifestations that the government in Iran does not reflect the will of the people, yet his words and attitude display the opposite. Does President Obama really want to follow the lead of Kim Jong Il and Hugo Chavez and recognize Ahmadinejad and his “election victory” in Iran?
Why continue on this course? Obama is as invested in engagement as the Ayatollahs are because it is the cornerstone of the Administration’s plan to remake the Middle East. That plan is based on the idea that it is better to bargain (buy off might be better, if more crude) Teheran than to fight it. And that "buyoff" going forward depends a number of things ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian roadmap to Iraq and Afghanistan, as I mentioned above. The state of play, amoral as it is, was succinctly expressed in Roger Cohen’s advice to Obama in the NYT, “I’ve argued for engagement with Iran and I still believe in it, although, in the name of the millions defrauded, President Obama’s outreach must now await a decent interval.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15iht-edcohen.html?_r=1) It’s not a question of engagement, but when.
IV.
Cohen advises Obama “to await a decent interval” before engaging meanwhile Pletka observes that “the Iranian people will have suffered the consolidation of power by a ruthless regime and the transformation of a theocracy to an ideological military dictatorship. That Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/opinion/17pletka.html).
Helping the Iranian people change a government they apparently want changes won’t reduce US standing in the world; rather, standing by silently or cooperating with object of the loathing lessens US standing and tarnishes credibility. It’s rare when the French show up the United States on moral clarity and the exercise of liberty. The Iranian protests have the potential – given the structural issues facing Iran – to go beyond Mousavi and that’s why the suppression is occurring. The Iranian people are cognizant of the corruption and controlling nature of the government; they are seeking self-determination. It’s larger than non-interference after US arrogance – it’s freedom, choice, hope, change.
“We are seeing in Washington that the multiculturalism impulse — one does not use Western paradigms to judge others — is far stronger than the supposedly classical liberal idea that human freedom is a universal concept that trumps culture. In other words, multicultural foreign policy is a sophisticated and politically-correct version of the old, far more intellectually honest realist notion that we let the bastards do what they want to their own people, and then deal with the thug that emerges in the real world of mutual self-interest.” (http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/voting-present-on-iran/)
What Victor Davis Hanson describes as the realist notion above is part of the concept of realism I mentioned above. It appears that Obama’s foreign policy script is taken from the realist playbook but fails to see that there are 3 factions from across the governing elites (and military & security) vying for power in Iran: 1) the nothing has changed group 2) the advocates of keeping the regime intact and soften the image and 3) those seeking regime change. There is no unitary actor, much less a legitimate one. By acknowledging Ahmadinejad, Obama is being arrogant and trying to forestall the change the Iranians are seeking! What the President should acknowledge is the bloodshed, the democratic principles being suppressed, support for the bravery of the demonstrators. No need to congratulate a dubious victor. But that’s not his game to the detriment of many as the Guardian details all the regime opponents and journalists who have been arrested. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/fresh-iran-protests-planned1
When Robert Kagan titles a must read piece, “Obama, Siding with the regime” it’s time to (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061601753.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns) reconsider things. He ends his piece, “We'll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate.” The fates he mentions are those of Ford – not meeting with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of détente – and George H.W. Bush – whose NSC advisor Brent Scowcroft raised a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. At least the Soviets and Chinese didn’t have an apoplectic messianic figure to inspire them via a radical Islamic theology.
If we’re going to be blamed (or worse) for interfering by the Iranian regime, we may as well have earned it by cheering on the Iranian people. Kennedy and Reagan certainly would have had something inspirational to say. What these events have shown is that the Iran we have is the Iran we’ve had since the 1979 revolutions and the power grab should reveal, even to the casual observer, that “dealing with” Iran, aka engagement, takes nuance, flexibility and cynicism, some of which are not really being displayed (or considered) for fear of embracing the foreign policies of his predecessors. Realism is ugly and often counterpoised to the American ideals and produces policy headaches that span generations for its insights are strong, but of limited practicality.
The current regime may survive but it has been altered as has aspects of the society more generally. Will the alterations produce any meaningful change? I fear not, but the situation is still fluid.
