Our Common Foe
Obama should
support the Iranian people by speaking out against their
oppressors
by Michael
Rubin
National Review
July 20, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2399/our-common-foe
Tear gas was still wafting through
the streets of Tehran when, at a June 23 White House press conference, The
Huffington Post's Nico Pitney conveyed an Iranian's question to President
Obama: "Under which conditions would you accept the election of [Mahmoud]
Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in
the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators
there are working towards?"
Obama avoided a direct answer,
saying only that the Iranian government should "recognize that there is a
peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity,"
and expressing hope that the clerics would take it. The president's
implicit acceptance of Ahmadinejad is a mistake. Obama may express concern
about how the election was handled, but to Iranians, the real issue is a
much broader question: the regime's very legitimacy.
In the Islamic Republic, elections
are not democratic. The Guardian Council, a group of strictly
traditionalist mullahs, must approve all candidates for office, and in the
most recent election, it allowed less than 1 percent of would-be
candidates to run. Why then hold elections? To demonstrate public support
for the regime. As Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Guardian
Council, explained two days before the vote: "The enemies have always
tried to question the legitimacy of the regime by trying to reduce public
participation in elections. The people must blind the eyes of the enemies
by vast participation in elections."
The Iranian rulers' equation of the
election with a blessing of their regime's legitimacy makes neutrality
difficult. To accept the election is to endorse theocracy. Indeed, this is
how young Iranians marching on the street frame the question. The clumsy
disfranchisement of former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi's supporters
may have sparked the recent unrest, but the protests turned into something
bigger when demonstrators began chanting, "Death to the dictator!" --
meaning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the "supreme leader" who claims authority
from God. Such cries are calls for the downfall of the theocracy
itself.
So why has Obama sought to chart a
neutral course? His attempt to walk a tightrope between the desire not to
meddle and the imperative to express American outrage at brutal scenes on
Tehran's streets is based on two false assumptions -- one legal and the
other strategic -- as well as a misplaced moral concern.
The president's first mistake, an
exaggerated respect for international rules, appears to stem from his
advisers' interpretation of the Algiers Accords. These were the Jan. 19,
1981, agreement that led to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's release of the
hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In a last-minute Iranian
addition to the agreement, which was accepted by Warren Christopher, the
Carter administration's deputy secretary of state, the United States
pledged "not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or
militarily, in Iran's internal affairs." That sounds pretty categorical,
but Obama should pay the prohibition no heed.
Christopher was negotiating under
intense time pressure to obtain the hostages' release, a goal achieved the
next day, minutes after Reagan's inauguration. Subsequently, Washington
and Tehran used the accords only as a means to regulate financial claims.
To be sure, the Iranian government sometime cites the Algiers Accords to
declare U.S. policies -- for example, the Clinton administration's
economic sanctions -- illegal, but every U.S. administration has treated
such claims as baseless.
Only under George W. Bush, amidst
his administration's efforts to boost radio broadcasting into Iran and its
internal debate over funding for Iranian democracy and civil-society
groups, did the State Department accept Iranian interpretations of the
Algiers Accords and question whether policies under consideration were
compatible with it. The debate over that question was fierce, but it ended
when former national security advisers consulted by the State Department
said the department's interpretation of the Accords was inconsistent with
those of previous administrations.
In any case, even if the Algiers
Accords do somehow prohibit rhetorical assistance to Iranian civil
society, Obama need not worry: As a mere executive agreement not ratified
by Congress, the Accords do not rise to the level of a treaty. The United
States has no legal obligation to accommodate the Islamic Republic's
concerns.
Obama's second mistake has been an
excessive caution about seeming to incite the protests. On June 15,
breaking two days of White House silence after their eruption, Obama
declared, "We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United
States' being the issue inside of Iran." Such concern is misguided. With
Iran's economy tanking and a young population disdainful of clerical rule,
the Iranian government routinely promulgates wild theories about foreign
meddling as a way to shirk responsibility. Iranians are nationalistic, but
they are not stupid, so these oft-repeated lies have no credibility. True,
U.S. endorsement of a candidate before elections would backfire, but no
U.S. policymaker has ever suggested such a thing. Speaking for the broader
principles of liberty, justice, and free and fair elections does not
undercut the protesters.
Part of Obama's reticence may be
reflect his advisers' tendency to conflate the Islamic Republic's
longstanding and somewhat limited "reform movement" with Iranian civil
society as a whole. True, many of the pre-2009 reformists have said that
U.S. assistance taints them. On the op-ed page of the New York Times, for
example, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan blamed Bush's advocacy of
democracy for a backlash that culminated in Ahmadinejad's 2005 victory.
This theory conflicts with claims from unsuccessful candidates in the 2005
election that Ahmadinejad won that vote through widespread fraud -- claims
whose credibility the most recent election has heightened. Regardless,
Derakhshan showed his and the reform movement's true colors when he
endorsed the regime's use of forced confessions from dissidents. As the
liberal American journalist Laura Secor wrote in 2005, "Iran's reform
movement, for all its courage, was the loyal opposition in a fascist
state." It is unwise for Obama to permit this small group, rather than the
much larger and more moderate body of Iranians who oppose the theocracy,
to guide U.S. policy.
This does not mean that all
dissidents want U.S. assistance. Journalist Akbar Ganji voices a common
complaint when he says that U.S. assistance provides an excuse for
government repression. Yet when Ganji was sent to prison for six years,
Bush had not yet taken office. Obama should realize that the Islamic
Republic's repression predates any U.S. support for the Iranian people.
The 1988 massacre of more than 3,000 imprisoned dissidents -- described in
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's memoirs -- had nothing to do with
Washington and everything to do with the character of the Iranian
regime.
Then there is the Obama
administration's misplaced moral concern, which rests on the idea that
offering rhetorical support for the Iranians would burden the White House
with responsibility for their welfare. The root of this worry is George H.
W. Bush's entreaty in 1991 that the Iraqi people rise up against Saddam
Hussein. The Iraqi government massacred tens of thousands in putting down
the subsequent rebellion while the United States watched. But the supposed
parallel with the present Iranian situation is faulty, because the Iranian
crackdown began before Obama made any statement and grew in strength while
he waffled. And as the case of Solidarity and martial law in Poland
demonstrated in 1981, the risk of a crackdown does not necessarily
outweigh the benefit of providing moral support to a protest movement:
There, what in the short term was a setback eventually proved a watershed
and was followed by positive and lasting change.
Obama's initial neutrality neither
kept the Iranian government from calling the demonstrators foreign agents
nor spared them a harsh crackdown. In a nationally broadcast sermon on
June 26, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called the protest leaders "worthy of
execution" and declared, "Anyone who fights against the Islamic system or
the leader of Islamic society, fight him until complete destruction."
Security forces continue to arrest students and professors and harass
Iranians working at foreign embassies in Tehran. Precedent suggests that
Mousavi himself may be destined for exile, a premature death, or both.
While U.S.-based Iranian academics praise Obama's hands-off approach, many
ordinary Iranians have used Twitter to appeal for the world's moral
support.
The protests have shifted the
paradigm on Iran, and this should make Obama reconsider his approach.
While every president since Carter has reached out to the Iranian people,
Obama has made recognizing the legitimacy of Iran's theocracy a
cornerstone of his policy. In his March 20 message for the Persian New
Year, he declared, "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran
[as opposed to simply "Iran"] to take its rightful place in the community
of nations."
The street protests may be ending,
but the larger battle over the Islamic Republic's legitimacy is just
beginning. Certainly, 30 years after the revolution, the failure of the
Iranian people to embrace theocracy highlights the regime's vulnerability.
It is hard to preach that "our nation is united, and unity in Iran is a
role model for the entire world," as Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of
staff of the Iranian armed forces, did in January, when people chant
"Death to the dictator!" in the streets.
As the White House makes policy, it
should not give to Tehran what the Iranian people withhold. Obama may face
calls to engage the mullahs over Iran's nuclear program, for example, but
U.S. interests and moral leadership need not be mutually exclusive.
Diplomacy is no panacea, and talk is a tactic, not a strategy. Rushing
into negotiations -- and bestowing legitimacy on the regime -- rewards the
Islamic Republic for its nuclear program and thereby encourages its
continuance. The irony is that the forces suppressing the Iranian people
-- the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards -- are the very forces
that command and control the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
Recognition that the American and
Iranian peoples have a common foe should form the basis of a long-term
strategy that seeks the triumph of the Iranian people over a destabilizing
and unpredictable regime.
Michael Rubin, a senior editor
of the Middle East
Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a
senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate
School.
Related Topics: Iran, US policy Michael
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