Once cast as part of the ‘axis of evil’, Iranians have shown they are real people, not collateral damage in waiting
So Dick Cheney was right. In the end, the Iraqi people did respond to American soldiers with flowers. The only trouble was, it was their shipping out, not their digging in, that the Iraqi people celebrated. Today, as US forces marked their formal withdrawal from the towns and cities they invaded more than six years ago, the Iraqi people showed the kind of spontaneous joy the former vice-president once imagined would welcome the 173rd Airborne Brigade. There were streamers and balloons, pop concerts in the park and, yes, flowers – garlanding the abandoned checkpoints of the US military in petals.
Now, as Iraq recedes, it is the country next door that looms ever larger. Handled the wrong way, Iran threatens to define Barack Obama the way Iraq defined George W Bush.
There are some who believe Bush’s mistake was not to have shifted his aim eastward: that if he was looking for an oil-rich state in the Persian Gulf with links to terrorism and dreams of weapons of mass destruction then Iran, not Iraq, should have been his target. That kind of talk makes others nervous. They fear that the US might one day repeat the Iraq calamity, with the ayatollahs cast in the role of Saddam Hussein.
Those worriers will hardly find it comforting that the men who agitated for invasion in 2003 are back on the warpath once more: Paul Wolfowitz castigated Obama in the Washington Post earlier this month for taking “a neutral posture” towards the street protesters in Iran, calling on the president to throw all his prestige behind the uprising and against the regime. He wasn’t calling for regime change in Tehran, exactly, but Wolfowitz spoke about Iran’s rulers the same way he once spoke about Saddam.
Is that a sign of things to come? Put simply, have the events of the last three weeks in Tehran made the prospect of US-led action against Iran – up to and including the use of military force – more or less likely?
At first glance, those advocating regime change seem to have had a boost. The world has just watched a three-week infomercial exposing the brutality of Iran’s leaders. If it’s not allegations of a stolen election, including the black comedy of Monday’s announcement from the Guardian Council that, yes, there had been an error in the count and therefore Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vote would be revised upward – it’s the violence that has followed.
One western diplomat says opinion in the chancelleries of Europe has hardened, even among those once well-disposed towards Tehran: “They have seen the face of this regime – and it’s not pretty.”
What’s more, those eager for confrontation might find an all too willing partner in Iran’s rulers. Professor Ali Ansari, a noted authority on the country, predicts that a regime that now “suffers from a serious domestic legitimacy problem – and which knows it – will seek a foreign foe, something to rally the country around.” He predicts “acts of provocation”, and only hopes Israel is wise enough not to take the bait.
Above all, those pushing for regime change could find international public opinion more receptive than it would have been a month ago. Three weeks of YouTube footage, including the blood-spattered image of Neda Soltan, the female protester shot dead in cold blood, has surely created a well of public sympathy from which any advocate of action against the mullahs could draw. One can imagine the arguments as, in 2011, President Obama, backed by his loyal ally Prime Minister Cameron of Britain, addresses the United Nations demanding a united show of strength to save the benighted people of Iran.
But the events of the last few weeks could point in the opposite direction too. Officially the US and UK say they want a change in policy, not regime – and, despite everything, that door is not closed. Indeed, it’s possible that the supreme leader’s Mugabe-like attacks on Britain – casting London and the BBC as the puppet masters behind the uprising – are a diversionary tactic by an elite that does not want to attack the US. Yes, Ali Khamenei has slammed Britain – but he has pointedly failed to rebuff Obama’s outstretched hand. In other words, a policy change by Iran is still possible.
But the deeper point relates to public sentiment, especially in the US. Seven years ago, Bush cast Iran as part of the “axis of evil”, a faraway, abstract place clothed in black and bent on destruction. Now the world’s people have read Iranians tweeting, minute by minute, on their aching desire for freedom. They have heard that Tehranis climb each night on to their rooftops to shout “God is great” – a subversive reminder to Khamenei that he is outranked by another supreme leader. They have seen, at last, that Iranians have a human face.
In this, an unexpected but eloquent source has been, of all things, Comedy Central’s satirical Daily Show. Incredibly, the programme had its own correspondent in Iran. Brilliantly sending up the grammar of flak-jacketed TV reporters, he has been ushering real Iranians into American living rooms – listening in mock frustration as they refuse to conform to the stereotype, telling him: “We don’t hate Jews, we don’t hate Americans, we don’t hate anybody.” Even the goatherd in a remote village shows a stunning knowledge of US geography; a market trader correctly identifies the US speaker of the House. As anchor Jon Stewart put it on the eve of the election: “The evil, despotic, apocalyptic death cult we know as Iran appears to be one of the more vibrant democracies in the Middle East.”
Of course, educated folk will insist they have long been familiar with Iran’s human face. They will point to art exhibitions such as Made in Iran, now in London, or Iran Inside Out in New York, movies including the new Shirin and the much-admired Persepolis, or memoirs such as Reading Lolita in Tehran. What’s different about the last few weeks, however, is that this exposure to the complexity, variety and sheer humanness of Iran’s people has become mainstream.
This could cut both ways. Some Europeans and Americans might feel such empathy for the green revolutionaries that they join the neocon call and demand their governments act to rescue the Iranians from tyranny. But it’s more likely that many would recoil from a shock and awe bombardment that would kill thousands of the very people for whom they now have a strong affinity. There was, alas, too little feeling for the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan: they were always faceless, even in death.
All of which leaves Obama engaged in delicate diplomatic footwork. He must stand up for democracy, condemning the suppression in Iran as “outrageous”, even as he gives the ayatollahs no excuse to crack down on the protesters as foreign agents, and all the while ensuring the western offer to Iran of rapprochement in return for compromise remains on the table. It is subtle work. But now that the world’s people have seen the human face of Iran, nothing less will do. The street protesters of Tehran may have failed to topple their rulers. But in this – in showing the world that the people of Iran are human beings, not collateral damage in waiting – they have been a glorious success.
Keeping hope alive in Iran
Mousavi’s criticism of the Iran regime is no longer about the election – it’s about the future of the opposition movement
No election since the inception of the Islamic Republic has left the Iranian nation so divided in all its components as the one that took place on 12 June. It has divided the clergy in Qom, the leading political conservative or principalist actors in Tehran and the state institutions. It forced the supreme leader to side with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a great cost to his own position and the ruling clergy, undermining the very agreed consensus among the top officials. Statements issued by losing candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi are a sad reflections of the Iranian reality couched in the language of hope for millions who are waiting in expectation that something might be done. “Not all is lost” is the core of their messages.
Both candidates are frank about the difficult predicaments they are in, and yet they want to keep the newly formed opposition movement united and act within the law. They want their supporters to use every opportunity to express their disapproval of what they consider an illegitimate government.
By emphatically saying all is not lost, it seems that they are banking on creating a democratic movement based on the constitution and preparing the ground for the next election, or for a time the ruling bloc exhaust itself with its radical policies.
The pragmatics among the conservatives are concerned about the handling of the election by the Guardian Council and the supreme leader’s office. “Ahmadinejad pulled wool over the supreme leader’s eyes” a leading conservative clergy is quoted as saying. Mousavi may well be banking on the fact that the conservatives would soon start to fight each other, as has been the case the in the past. Some may see this as a pious hope.
The election has also brought to light the depth of maturity in Iran’s civil society: calm, rational and pragmatic about change. Would the civil society keep its hope alive, or would it turn into a cynical, demoralised and depoliticised mass? This is the danger for Mousavi, Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami, the former president. That is why they are threading a fine line between remaining loyal to the constitution and at the same time containing the radicalisation of a movement that no longer wants to take the supremacy of the clergy for granted.
Mousavi made an interesting remark in his statement that illustrate the dynamism of the Iranian situation: “At the beginning, the objective for us all in participating in the election was to bring back religious rationalism to the management of the country, but en route we were guided towards higher objectives.” He goes on to conclude: “The rulers will have to understand that peoples’ votes and will are above them all, which they no longer can ignore.”