Iran’s regime, “Dead man walking!”
A day or two ago Rep. Dana Rohrabacher accused President Obama of “Cream Puff” diplomacy in the face of the fishy Iranian election results and the subsequent internal protests. I argued, in response to that accusation, that rather than being passive, weak and ineffectual the “hands off” approach taken by President Obama remains the only US response which does not threaten to give the current Iranian regime both the gasoline and matches with which to incinerate the current opposition movement.
On Thursday James Taranto in a WSJ editorial wrote “We’re all Neocons now – Obama’s timidity on Iran leaves him increasingly isolated. “Each day President Obama’s blasé business-as-usual attitude toward Iran seems more out of touch with reality.”
Taranto went on to report:
“Even while supporting the president’s approach, senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.”
Today Rafia Zakaria (no relation to Fareed Zakaria as far as I know) in an editorial in the Daily Times of Pakistan observes:
“Indeed, American neo-conservatives within the Republican Party finally have something to harp on about. After years of an unabashed hate-fest against Iran, neo-cons previously used to championing the obliteration of Iran have spent the past week appearing on American news channels in paroxysms of delight over the darling democracy-loving Iranian public.”
However, echoing my belief that American meddling in this infant uprising would likely serve only to provide the regime with a veneer of justification by which to crush it, Ms. Zakaria goes on to state:
“Not once in the past several months of President Obama’s presidency has the world had more occasion to celebrate the end of Bush than over this current cataclysm over the Iranian election. While the Obama administration takes pause to measure its words and recognize how the inevitable malign of American intervention may impose on Moussavi’s supporters, the neo-conservative has suddenly awakened with heretofore-unseen concern for the Iranian people. Sudden recognitions of the “advanced” nature of Iranian society have emerged from mouths who had just months earlier refused to recognize the barest humanity of the Iranian people.”
We are experiencing a convergence of multiple significant changes which will fuel the impetus of the Moussavi supporters. First and foremost the Iranian economy was devastated during Ahmadinejad’s tenure and has fatigued the Iranian public who cannot help but see increased militarization in the face of a flailing economy as a threat to their individual and collective economic wellbeing. Second, Ahmadinejad’s apparent inability to appear in any venue without spewing his anti-semetic, pro-nuclear, anti-American has lead Iran to become increasingly isolated, a diplomatic state which does nothing to remedy their isolation and therefore economic woes. Finally there is an increasing rift between the theocracy and the needs of the people.
While this is all occurring internally, externally just days before, President Obama lambasted Israel for continuing to build new settlements on occupied Palestinian lands. Some pundits even speculated that the removal of Special Envoy to Iran Dennis Ross was a response to Ross’ connection to Israel. In the arab world these events were the first time in many young Iranian people’s memories that any significant opposition to Israeli designs has been mentioned by the US. A watershed event spotlighting the changes in rhetoric and undeniable signaling of the United States’ desire to dialogue. This changed the global climate of relations with Iran right before their elections making it hard for Ahmadinejad to sell his usual routine in which he directed hatred toward the infidel United States in order to deflect attention away from Iran’s domestic problems most of which are exacerbated byhis own failed diplomatic missteps.
Ms. Zakaria puts it nicely when she states:
In optimistic terms then, the emergence of a visible opposition movement in Iran may well signal a shift away from the fire and brimstone rhetoric of hatred that had defined both the United States and Iran in recent decades. Both Bush and Ahmadinejad relied on the verbiage of hatred, on the convenient political trick of focusing attention on an enemy that is without rather than within.
Obama’s America is waking up to confront the wreckage of many internal problems ignored, and if Moussavi’s Iran ever comes to fruition, it may well find itself confronted by similar ailing and ignored sores festered into fatal wounds.
On Friday Fareed Zakaria was interviewed on CNN as ever, his response was well thought out and insightful:
CNN: As you’ve seen the situation in Iran develop over the last week, what are your thoughts?
Fareed Zakaria: One of the first things that strikes me is we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.
CNN: There have been protests in Iran before. What makes this different?
Zakaria: In the past the protests were always the street against the state, and the clerics all sided with the state. When the reformist president, Mohammed Khatami, was in power, he entertained the possibility of siding with the street, but eventually stuck with the establishment. The street and state are at odds again but this time the clerics are divided. Khatami has openly sided with the challenger, Mir Hossein Moussavi, as has the reformist Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. So has Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament and a man with strong family connections to the highest levels of the religious hierarchy. Behind the scenes, the former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now head of the Assembly of Experts, another important constitutional body, is waging a campaign against Ahmadinejad and even the supreme leader himself. If senior clerics dispute Khamenei’s divine assessment and argue that the Guardian Council is wrong, it is a death blow to the basic premise behind the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is as if a senior Soviet leader had said in 1980 that Karl Marx was not the right guide to economic policy.
CNN: What should the United States do?
Zakaria: I would say continue what we have been doing. By reaching out to Iran, publicly and repeatedly, President Obama has made it extremely difficult for the Iranian regime to claim that they are battling an aggressive America bent on attacking Iran. In his inaugural address, his New Year greetings, and his Cairo speech, there is a consistent effort to convey respect and friendship for Iranians. That is why Khamenei reacted so angrily to the New Year greeting. It undermined the image of the Great Satan that he routinely paints in his sermons. In his Friday sermon, Khamenei said that the United States, Israel, and especially the United Kingdom were behind the street protests, an accusation that will surely sound ridiculous to most Iranians. The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag.
CNN: But shouldn’t we be more vocal in our support for the Iranian protesters?
Zakaria: I think a good historic analogy is President George H.W. Bush’s cautious response to the cracks in the Soviet empire in 1989. Then, many neo-conservatives were livid with Bush for not loudly supporting those trying to topple the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But Bush’s concern was that the situation was fragile. Those regimes could easily crack down on the protestors and the Soviet Union could send in tanks. Handing the communists reasons to react forcefully would help no one, least of all the protesters. Bush’s basic approach was correct and has been vindicated by history.
Let’s take a look at the alternative response. What if, since assuming office, President Obama in Bush style had indicated he would never consider engagement with Iran, and with swagger repeated the Bush rhetoric of spreading freedom and democracy to the Muslim world. What if John McCain had one the election and rallied the neocons with calls for tough action or even regime change. Would this in any way have given pause to Ahmadeniad or Iran’s supreme leader? Not in the least. What has given pause to Ahmadenijad and the Ayatollah has been the shift away from the blend of belligerence, righteousness and aggression that characterized the Bush era and was so easy to dismiss and caricature.
The death blow has been dealt to the ideological theocrats in Iran and the confluence of factors both domestic and global will cause change. Will the change be immediate? Fareed Zakaria responds:
“… regimes can last a long time, and this regime can definitely endure if they are willing to use force, impose a strict crackdown on protests, and arrest the leaders of the opposition. Only time will tell, so we will have see what develops.”
But let’s not forget, as the unrest spills into a second week and the popular uprising continues, how much good has come from the restraint that Obama has exhibited thus far, contrary to the claims of critics like Robert Kagan, who took to the Washington Post on Wednesday to argue that the abandonment of Bush-era “idealism” has somehow undermined the Iranian opposition and benefited the regime.
Make no mistake change is on the way, though we may just have to wait for the current regime to bleed out slowly rather than drop like a bad guy in a Spaghetti Western.
