From Boston
Review
Most Iranians, I believe, share a broad outlook on American foreign
policy: they think that Iran is valued only for its vast energy
resources and its role in regional politics and that Iranian culture
and economic development and the peace, welfare, and basic rights
of Iranian citizens are largely irrelevant to American policymakers.
I write this as an Iranian intellectual, not as a politician,
and I offer these critical observations about U.S. policies with
an eye toward more constructive proposals.
In particular, Iranians would endorse three basic propositions about the past 50 years of U.S.-Iranian relations:
American policy has focused on advancing America’s own economic interests and military supremacy. Because
American strategic discourse has accentuated the role of military,
security, and intelligence organs inside Iran, the agents who control
those organs have been the main interlocutors for U.S. policy, while
other political agents have been marginalized. The military concerns
had roots in the Cold War. After the Soviet collapse, Iranians had
hoped to see significant changes in U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and
the Middle East. But the approach remained the same. And since the evil
of 9/11, the “war on terrorism” has only entrenched this approach and
eclipsed other possibilities.
American policy has been a major factor in modern Iran’s stalled political and economic growth. Of
course, underdevelopment and despotism have deep roots in Iranian
history, and are to a great extent the product of domestic cultural,
social, religious, and economic factors. But Iranians will never forget
the 1953 U.S.-supported coup that toppled the nationalist, moderate,
democratic government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq and ushered in a closed,
dictatorial political system. Iranian society lost one of its most
important historical opportunities for the establishment of a
democracy.
In the
1970s the same U.S. interests produced the Nixon Doctrine, which
promised military aid to strategic allies. Ostensibly to combat the
spread of communism in the Middle East, the United States strongly
supported the Shah’s regime, hoping it would act as a regional
gendarme, regardless of its extensive violation of Iranians’ civil and
human rights. As a result of this policy, efforts to foster democracy
and protect human rights were completely overshadowed. After the 1979
Iranian revolution, the same stance turned the American government into
a full-blown supporter of Saddam Hussein and his aggressions over the
course of his eight-year war against Iran. The ruinous losses suffered
by Iranian society pushed aside the ideals of freedom and justice that
had inspired the 1979 revolution and brought national-security
considerations to the fore. From the early 1990s on, the same
preponderance of security and military considerations led to the
American policy of dual containment and the economic sanctions on Iran.
The Bush administration’s policy continues along this trajectory.
The
Clinton administration did take some positive steps—as, for example,
when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described U.S. conduct
toward Mosaddeq’s government as a mistake. But even during that period,
the continued economic sanctions against Iran ultimately undermined the
reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami. Some recent remarks
by U.S. statesmen, too, have helpfully distinguished Iran’s cultured
and peace-loving people from its repressive and fundamentalist state.
Unfortunately, the impact of these welcome observations has been
significantly diminished by the Bush administration’s escalating
belligerence.
American policy has fostered a military mentality in Iranian political life. In
the very first years after the Islamic revolution, a group of Iranian
citizens occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took its diplomats
hostage. These radical forces cited American policies toward Iran to
justify their conduct. In fact, radical forces in Iran—especially some
of its security and military forces—have always used accusations of
“enemy conspiracies” to justify repressive policies. Today, politicians
with close ties to the military establishment have taken control of the
Iranian government and are trying to manage the cultural and political
arena in the style of a police state. These policies are, in turn,
aggravating hostilities and allowing the Bush administration to justify
its belligerence. Thus the vicious cycle continues.
The
United States, by invoking the threat of a “Shia Crescent” or “Crescent
of Crisis” extending from Iran (which is 90 percent Shia) through Iraq,
Lebanon, and Syria, perpetuates the cycle by imagining a unified
political enemy, and perhaps creating that unity in reality. The war
that is now underway in Iraq—inflamed by al Qaeda and the former
Baathist power holders—is much more a dispute between Iraq’s ethnic and
religious communities over power and resources than a war between
Islamic sects. Sunni and Shia religious teachings never endorse the
abduction and murder of innocent people in streets and marketplaces or
the destruction of religious sites.
Shias
number more than 140 million in the Middle East. They constitute 75
percent of the population of Bahrain, 45 percent in Lebanon, 35 percent
in Kuwait, 60 percent in Iraq, 10 percent in Saudi Arabia and Oman, 15
percent in Syria, 20 percent in Turkey, and 42 percent in Yemen. They
have numerous, varied, and deep national attachments. Not all Shias
favor Islamic governments: after the formation of an Islamic republic
in Iran, some of the most senior Shia clerics in Lebanon and Iraq
announced that the conditions did not exist in their countries for the
establishment of a religious state.
Politicizing
the Shia identity will only increase tensions in the Middle East, and
may even destabilize North Africa and parts of Central Asia. Of course,
some Islamic extremist groups see their political life as hinging on
these polarizations. But encouraging these forces would only bring them
from the fringes of the Middle East’s political arena to its volatile
center.
* * *
The
disastrous war in Iraq is the natural outcome of America’s military
approach to the problems of the Middle East. In Iran, this approach is
rapidly bringing the Bush administration to the brink of military
confrontation with the government. But an attack against Iran would be
morally and legally indefensible, and will produce calamitous results.
In
saying this, I defend the nation of Iran, not the domestic or foreign
policy of its current repressive, despotic government. But opposition
to the current regime must not lead to a blanket endorsement of U.S.
foreign policy.
What
could justify military action against Iran? Under international law,
governments have the right to take military action to repel an armed
attack and to preempt a certain and imminent attack. But the United
States has not been attacked by Iran, and is clearly not in any
imminent danger of armed attack.
A
more likely rationale is provided by the preventive-war doctrine
formulated by the Bush administration in 2002. Preventive wars are said
to be critical wars of last resort, directed at a “gathering threat”
that might in the future dramatically change the balance of power to
the advantage of the enemy. There are fundamental doubts about the
justifiability of preventive wars, but even if we accept that such wars
are justifiable in exceptional circumstances, such circumstances do not
exist today. Even if the Iranian government is trying to produce
nuclear weapons—despite its claims to the contrary—expert assessments
put that goal at least five years away. In the meantime the
international community can use non-military options to prevent Iran
from developing nuclear weapons. In the words of the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei,
I don’t see a military solution of the Iranian
issue. First of all, as far as we know, what Iran has now today is the
knowledge. We do not know that Iran has the industrial capacity to
enrich uranium. We don’t know, we haven’t seen indication or concrete
proof of a nuclear weapons program. So I don’t see that people talk
about a military solution. I don’t know what they mean by that. You
cannot bomb knowledge, as I said before. I think it would also be
completely counterproductive.
And
setting aside the Iranian government’s political poses, the Bush
administration’s concern with Iran as a regional aggressor reflects a
double standard. Based on the figures of the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, in the years between 1988 and 2005, Iran’s
annual military spending ranged between 16 percent and 73 percent of
Israel’s spending. During this period, Iran’s military spending was
also far less than Saudi Arabia’s and Turkey’s. If we look at per
capita spending, calculated in a January report of the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2005 Iran spent by
far the least in its region: approximately five percent as much as
Israel, eight percent as much as Saudi Arabia, and less than half as
much as Turkey.
On
the nuclear side, Israel has about 100 to 200 ready-to-launch nuclear
warheads. The January report of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies put Iran’s nuclear-weapons manufacturing capacity
years away: “If, one day, Iran has 3,000 operational centrifuges, the
IISS estimates that it would take a minimum of 9 to 11 months for it to
produce 25 kg of high-grade enriched uranium which would be enough for
making one explosive weapon. On the most optimistic assessment, that
day is two or three years away."
Iran
is not a serious military threat to any country in the region, nor has
it upset the regional balance of power. Setting aside the
sensationalist rhetoric of Iranian leaders, any realistic look at the
Middle East and Iran must conclude that Iran’s military activities are
primarily driven by fear and designed to preserve the regime. If the
American goal is to achieve a just peace and reduce regional tension,
inflaming the regime’s fears seems unlikely to succeed. The only
legitimate way for Iran to develop nuclear technology for non-military
purposes is to bring such activities under the supervision of the
relevant international bodies, especially the International Atomic
Energy Agency. The voluntary suspension of enrichment activity by the
Iranian government until a comprehensive agreement is reached is the
most rational and least costly way of preventing the escalation of
tension and the outbreak of a ruinous war against Iran.
I
believe this is possible. Through its official propaganda, the Iranian
regime is trying to convince the world that there is consensus within
Iran on its nuclear policies; in truth they are formulated by Iran’s
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nearly all leading Iranian reformists
and reformist groups have expressed opposition to these policies,
either through open letters or confidential letters to Khamenei himself
calling for the suspension of enrichment.
The
voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment by the Iranian government
will only yield lasting results, however, if it is a part of a broad
set of initiatives that guarantee security, peace, and economic
development in Iran and the Middle East. Unilateral action against Iran
in the absence of an overall plan for regional peace and security will
be seen by most of the people of the region as aimed at safeguarding
Israel’s supremacy and imposing an unjust peace on Palestinians and the
broader Muslim world.
Some
people have tried to justify military action by claiming that the
Iranian government endangers regional stability, specifically by
obstructing the Palestinian–Israeli peace process. But the hollow
slogans of Iran’s fundamentalist rulers are not preventing a just peace
between Palestine and Israel. Statements favoring the destruction of
Israel and denying the Holocaust are unwise and destructive, with
serious negative consequences for Iran at the international level. But
the root cause of much regional instability and violence, and of the
troubling growth of fundamentalism, is the Palestinians’ appalling
situation and the painful conflict between Israel and Palestine. There
is no peace plan on the table today because the parties involved do not
even have a common framework for dialogue. America’s unilateral support
for Israel, its attempts to impose Israel’s power without considering
Palestinians’ basic human rights, the setting aside of the Oslo
Accords, and the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon have, in practice,
removed the possibility of achieving any kind of agreement in the near
future. The Israeli government’s opposition to a genuinely independent
Palestinian government and to a right of return for Palestinian
refugees helps perpetuate the crises and makes peaceful life impossible
in the region. If the U.S. government places on its agenda the
establishment of two independent states in two independent
lands—Palestine and Israel—no government can oppose such a plan.
Regional
instability and insecurity, as well as extremism and fundamentalism,
are fueled by pervasive poverty, illiteracy, and corrupt and
dictatorial states that, more often than not, enjoy the support of
Western countries, especially the United States. As long as these root
causes remain, there will be instability and insecurity in the region.
Some
may want to justify an attack on Iran with the claim that the Iranian
government supports terrorism. This is another double standard: the
fact is that some of America’s allies in the Middle East are more
likely than Iran to be secretly supporting terrorist groups, such as al
Qaeda, and Islamic fundamentalist groups, such as the Taliban.
A
final justification for military action might be the extensive
human-rights violations in Iran. The Iranian state is certainly guilty
of violating many of its citizens’ basic rights; responsible members of
the international community ought not to view these violations with
indifference. But a military attack is not a just or effective
response. Military intervention may be a valid humanitarian response to
genocide, or crimes against humanity. But nothing so extreme is going
on in Iran, and the Iranian government’s human-rights violations are
much less severe than those of many of America’s allies in the Middle
East.
And even if the
rights violations were more severe, any case for military action must
also take the consequences into account. First and foremost, an attack
would be calamitous for the innocent people of Iran and the region. As
in Iraq, where civilian deaths outnumber military ones by a factor of
15, the vast majority of victims in this war will be civilians.
Politics must be aimed at reducing the pain and suffering of human
beings. Any policy that increases human beings’ pain and suffering and
violates their sanctity and dignity is morally repugnant.
A military attack on Iran would also yield
terrible political consequences. It would foster the growth of
fundamentalism in the region, which would be bad for the United
States and other Western countries and even worse for the Islamic
world. Fundamentalism—with its inhuman view of women, hatred
of freedom and democracy, and denigration of human rights—is
a significant factor in the underdevelopment of Islamic communities.
Fundamentalists largely reject Western art, morality, philosophy,
culture, and science, though they make an exception for technologies
of violence. This narrow-minded view of some of humanity’s
great achievements is particularly harmful to Muslims. But a military
attack on Iran would reignite the conviction that the Judeo-Christian
West, led by the United States, is assaulting the world of Islam,
from Afghanistan and Palestine to Iraq and Iran; and it would
encourage the view that fundamentalist methods are the best way
to fight the non-Muslim invaders. Western governments must not
equate the battle against fundamentalism with a battle against
Islam—as President Bush does when he describes the “war
on terror” as a “crusade,” or when he speaks
of “Islamic fascism.” It not only isolates moderate
and democratic Muslims; it also provides fertile ground for fundamentalists
among them.
We
can already see this dynamic at work. After the 1997 election of
Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran, civil society, human rights, and
political freedoms became the dominant concerns in Iranian political
life. The current U.S. military threat has given the Iranian government
a freer hand in repressing Iran’s budding civil society in the name of
national security, provided a pretext to entrust key political posts to
military and security officers, and so eclipsed democratic discourse
that some Iranian reformists see themselves caught between domestic
despotism and foreign invasion.
Political change in Iran is necessary, but it must not be achieved by
foreign intervention. Any U.S. military attack is likely to involve
“regime change.” Iran’s rulers know this and are likely to become far
more vicious, severe, and repressive if they are forced to prepare to
fight to the very last breath. In the historical memory of Iranians,
regime change is accompanied by killings, the seizure of property,
repression, and human-rights abuses. And if the regime change occurs
through U.S. intervention, it will be far more destructive than any
structural political change instigated by domestic forces.
In
addition to its crushing effect on political life, the fire of war will
also destroy Iran’s economic infrastructure. The people of Iran are
still paying the cost of the eight-year-long war with Iraq, a war that
not only overshadowed Iranians’ struggle for freedom but also derailed
Iran’s economy for many years. A U.S. military attack would undo
everything good that has happened since the end of that destructive war.
* * *
What,
then, should be done about Iran? Iran’s largest problem is its domestic
politics. I believe that a consensus exists among leading Iranian
intellectuals and democrats that the current government is incapable of
fulfilling Iran’s national interests and having a constructive
relationship with the international community.
But
regime change is the duty of Iranians. And it must proceed not by
military means but through a sustained, nonviolent civil campaign. The
campaign must protect individuals, groups, and professions. And it must
aim to bring about free elections and a constitution that recognizes
basic political and civil rights and creates checks on institutional
power by establishing freedom of expression, the right to form trade
unions and political associations, a separation of powers, a guarantee
of the political neutrality of the judiciary and the armed forces, the
rule of law, and fair trials.
Three
decades of experience in southern and eastern Europe and Latin America
demonstrates that a democratic transition will not occur through
violence. Where force during the period of transition has produced
sectarian conflict, authoritarian systems have reemerged. The aim of
free and fair elections is not to replace unelected despots with
elected despots. Getting agreement on the rules of political activity
from the start—an agreement to respect those rules in the exercise of
power—is more important than holding any single election.
Iran’s
democracy movement must also reject a strategy of revenge and
elimination. Faced with death or revenge, a political regime will have
no inclination to negotiate and will not submit to the peaceful
alternation of power. Iran’s leaders must have hope for their own
personal and political futures. If Argentine generals, the leaders of
the Pinochet regime, South Africa’s apartheid rulers, and eastern
European Communists had come to the conclusion that democracy meant
death, they would likely have resisted change with all their might, and
history might well have taken a very different course.
A
successful democratic transition in Iran will require favorable
international conditions to increase the bargaining power of domestic
pro-democracy forces.
First,
the international community must understand that the Iranian government
is grappling with extensive economic and social problems: widespread
youth unemployment, administrative corruption, drug addiction, rampant
inflation, and, for many Iranians, the lack of social and psychological
security. Solving these problems hinges on economic growth. And
economic growth requires foreign investment and a transfer of
technology and know-how. But foreign investment in Iran fell from $482
million in 2003 to $100 million in 2004 and $30 million in 2005. For
Iran’s oil industry to maintain its current level of production, it
will need at least a billion dollars of foreign investment per year, as
well as the transfer of the relevant technology. The international
community can provide economic assistance while making it conditional
on the Iranian government’s respect for human rights and democratic
standards.
Second,
the United Nations can supervise the allocation of economic projects to
domestic and foreign contractors through the ILO, UNCTAD, and UNDP. The
Iranian government has been giving these contracts to its own forces to
strengthen its control over the economy and create allies against
Iran’s movement for democracy and freedom. If international agencies
decide that the Iranian government has acted unlawfully in allocating
contracts, they can prevent new contracts with foreign companies. This
supervision is particularly necessary in the oil industry.
Third,
the international community can support Iran’s work force and
strengthen its civil society by making its commercial arrangements with
the country’s public sector conditional on the creation of a right to
form independent trade unions. In Iran, neither public-sector nor
private-sector workers are allowed to have independent associations to
represent their interests. Just as the international community concerns
itself with Iran’s nuclear activities and demands that they take place
under the oversight of UN treaties and agencies, it must also work to
bring Iran’s labor standards into compliance with international laws.
The international community must not forget that the International
Labor Organization, like the International Atomic Energy Agency, is an
agency of the UN.
Fourth,
the international community must ban exports to Iran of technology used
for control and repression. The Iranian state has easily obtained
up-to-date technology for filtering Web sites and tapping telephones,
for example. These technologies have been instrumental in repressing
Iran’s democracy movement by allowing the state to control the media
and to paralyze the free flow of information.
Fifth,
to establish long-term stability in the Middle East, the international
community must devise an overarching policy for the region grounded in
the principles of non-aggression and economic development. Purging the
entire Middle East of nuclear and biological weapons should be an
important element of any plan.
In
response to such international support, leading Iranians, Iran’s
freedom lovers, and the Iranian people in general must continue to
pressure the regime to abandon its nuclear dream. Even if the Iranian
regime only pursues nuclear energy, given the country’s poor technology
and weak control, the Iranian people and neighboring countries will be
in constant danger of human and environmental disaster. If Iran’s
nuclear program becomes focused on creating weapons, the dangers will
be much greater. But external pressure that would inflict hardship on
Iranian men, women, and children is unacceptable.
The
international community can offer to exchange economic assistance for
democratic reform and make investment and (non-military) technology
transfer conditional on free and fair elections, thus strengthening
Iran’s budding civil society and supporting internal efforts to
establish democracy. But taking these steps, and making them work
constructively, will require a fundamental reorientation of prevailing
American policy discourse about the Middle East. The threat of military
action must give way to the idea of changing the current regime’s
conduct and structure, making it accept the rule of law, hold free and
fair elections, reform discriminatory laws, and recognize the Iranian
people’s right to determine their own political destiny.
The Iranian and American governments
have many common interests in the Middle East and can more effectively
help bring regional peace and stability through cooperation. It
will not be easy, but one thing is certain: lasting peace and
stability cannot be established through violence. <
Translated from the Persian
by Nilou Mobasser.
Akbar Ganji is
Iran’s leading political dissident. He has been given over
a dozen human-rights awards, most recently the British House of
Commons Press Gallery Speaker Abbot Award. Since his release from
prison in 2006 after serving a six-year term for exposing
human-rights abuses, he has been on a world speaking tour raising
awareness about the human-rights and pro-democracy struggle inside
Iran. He is working on the third installment of his “Republic
Manifesto,” which lays out a strategy for a nonviolent
transition to democracy in Iran, along with a book of dialogues
with prominent Western philosophers and intellectuals. He plans
to return to Iran, where, he has been told, he will be re-arrested
upon his arrival.
Originally published
in the May/June 2007 issue of Boston
Review.
Copyright © 2007 Akbar Ganji. All rights reserved.
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