I have
been deeply supportive of Iran’s Green Movement. I wrote glowingly about it,
highlighted it on television, and showcased its advocates. But I do not think
there is much evidence that it was likely to overthrow the Iranian regime. To
believe that, one has to believe that the government in Tehran is deeply
unpopular with a majority of Iranians, holds onto power through military force
alone, and is thus vulnerable to a movement that could mobilise the vast
majority in Iran who despise it. None of this is entirely
true.
The Iranian regime has many, many opponents. But it also has millions
of supporters. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have actually lost the presidential
election of 2009. But it was a close contest in which he got millions of votes.
What little polling has been done in Iran, coupled with the observations of
people who have been there, all suggest that the regime has considerable public
support in rural areas, among the devout, and in poorer communities. Newsweek’s
Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the government for four months on trumped-up
charges, believes that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains the
single most popular political figure in Iran. -- Fareed Zakaria
By Fareed Zakaria
As Barack Obama goes through one of his most difficult periods as
president, you might wonder what it would have been like if the other guy had
won. We will never know, of course, but in one area, John McCain provides us
with some clues. He would have tried to overthrow the government of Iran. In a
speech on June 10, later published as a cover essay in The New Republic, McCain
urged that we “unleash America’s full moral power” to topple the Tehran regime.
The speech highlights one of the crucial failings of McCain’s world view, one in
which rhetoric replaces analysis, and fantasy substitutes for foreign
policy.
By now, it’s become something of a mantra among neo-conservatives
that we missed a chance to transform Iran a year ago. Reuel Marc Gerecht,
writing in The New York Times, compares Iran’s Green Movement to “what
transpired behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s” and accuses Obama of being
passive in the face of this historical moment. Bret Stephens, a columnist for
The Wall Street Journal, imagines that a more forceful Western response could
have set off a revolution.
I have been deeply supportive of Iran’s Green Movement. I wrote
glowingly about it, highlighted it on television, and showcased its advocates.
But I do not think there is much evidence that it was likely to overthrow the
Iranian regime. To believe that, one has to believe that the government in
Tehran is deeply unpopular with a majority of Iranians, holds onto power through
military force alone, and is thus vulnerable to a movement that could mobilise
the vast majority in Iran who despise it. None of this is entirely
true.
The Iranian regime has many, many opponents. But it also has millions
of supporters. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have actually lost the presidential
election of 2009. But it was a close contest in which he got millions of votes.
What little polling has been done in Iran, coupled with the observations of
people who have been there, all suggest that the regime has considerable public
support in rural areas, among the devout, and in poorer communities. Newsweek’s
Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the government for four months on trumped-up
charges, believes that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains the
single most popular political figure in Iran.
McCain reveals a startling ignorance about the Iranian regime when he
argues, in his speech, that it “spends its people’s precious resources not on
roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all Iranians — but on
funding violent groups of foreign extremists who murder the innocent”. While
Tehran does fund militant groups, one of the keys to Ahmadinejad’s popularity
has been his large-scale spending on social programmes for the poor. The regime
lays out far more money on those domestic programmes than on anything
abroad.
The comparison of Iran’s Green Revolution to the velvet revolutions
of Eastern Europe is mistaken. In 1989 dissidents had three forces on their
side: nationalism (because communism had been imposed by force by a foreign
power), religion (because communism repressed the church), and democracy. The
Green Movement has only one: democracy. The regime has always used the
religiosity of the people to its advantage. But it’s also become skilled at
manipulating nationalism.
In May, the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty was awarded
to Akbar Ganji, one of the bravest advocates of nonviolent agitation and secular
democracy for Iran. Ganji was jailed for six years in Evin Prison, mostly in
solitary confinement, for his writings against the government. In his acceptance
speech, Ganji explained that US foreign policy does have an impact on Iran’s
freedom movement but not quite in the sense that neo-conservatives
mean.
“Even entertaining the possibility of a military strike, especially
when predicated on the nuclear issue,” Ganji said, “is beneficial to the
fundamentalists who rule Iran. As such, the idea itself is detrimental to the
democratic movement in my country”. The regime bends international issues to its
favour, and has become vocal about what Ganji calls the “gushing wound of
Palestine… [which] worsens the infection of fundamentalism.” He pointed out that
Tehran continually reminds Iranians of America’s “double standards” in opposing
Iran’s nuclear programme while staying silent about Israel’s arsenal of atomic
weapons.
Ironically, those hoping to liberate Iranians are the very same
people urging punitive sanctions and even military force against Iran. Do they
think that when the bombs hit, they will spare those who wear
green?
(Fareed Zakaria is the Editor of Newsweek and the author of The
Post-American World The views expressed by the author are
personal)
Source: Hindustan Times
9:22 PM
Sultan Shahin
0 comments:
Post a Comment