It is hard to do serious political analysis of a contested political environment when one is, in effect, “rooting” for one of the contestants. In 1979, much of the public commentary in the United States about the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah was characterized by disbelief that a stalwart American ally could be swept away so quickly and unexpectedly. Today, much American commentary on Iranian domestic politics is characterized by varying degrees of eagerness to see the Islamic Republic go the way of the Pahlavi dynasty—or, in a formulation that some neoconservatives prefer, the way of the Soviet Union.
Although this blog is focused on Iran and its geopolitics, not on the Islamic Republic’s internal politics, analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran. A growing number of analysts are arguing that there is now, in effect, a domestic “race for Iran”, pitting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration against an increasingly emboldened “opposition” and a deeply disenchanted public. Under these circumstances, it is argued, the United States and its partners should not now engage with the Iranian government, lest they “legitimate” a regime that is falling apart. Some go even further, arguing that active encouragement of “regime change” in Iran should now take precedence over diplomatic efforts to deal with the nuclear issue.
Flynt Leverett will appear on C-Span’s Washington Journal on Sunday, January 3, from 7:30-8:00 am to discuss recent developments in Iran. We will also be publishing our assessment of internal Iranian developments and their implications for U.S. foreign policy in greater detail next week.
At this point, we would note that much of the current discussion of Iranian affairs in the United States is disturbingly reminiscent of the shift in America’s Iraq policy, starting during President Bill Clinton’s tenure, to embrace regime change in Baghdad as Washington’s explicit and overriding goal. The futile pursuit of regime change in Iraq—which did not occur until a full-scale U.S. invasion in 2003—inflicted substantial damage on America’s strategic position in the Middle East. That damage was compounded by the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the myriad strategic consequences of those events for the regional strategic environment. The damage that would be done to U.S. interests in the Middle East and globally by failing to pursue serious, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic, carrying out military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets, and enshrining regime change as the primary goal of America’s Iran policy would be even worse.
In an op-ed published in today’s Washington Post, Ray Takeyh offers a paradigmatic example of what is becoming conventional wisdom about Iranian politics among American foreign policy elites. Ray compares the Islamic Republic today to both the Shah’s regime and the Soviet Union in their final days. Strikingly, he argues that “the regime’s most momentous and disastrous decision was its refusal to offer any compromises to an angered nation” after the June 12 presidential election. In Ray’s view, relatively modest steps at that time would have assuaged popular resentment, but now “such concessions would be seen as a sign of weakness and would embolden the opposition. The regime no longer has a political path out of its predicament.”
This is factually incorrect. A week after the June 12 election, protests diminished to a small fraction of what they had been. The Iranian leadership took several important steps in the wake of the election, including replacing the unpopular Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi as head of the judiciary with Sadeq Larijani (brother of the Parliament Speaker) and the closing of Kahrizak prison, where abuse of detainees was clearly documented (earlier this month, 12 officers at Kahrizak were criminally charged over their involvement in the deaths of prisoners). These and other actions in fact worked to mitigate the political controversy generated by the June 12 election and, by October, Iran had the United States and the rest of the P-5+1 at the negotiating table.
Over the past weekend, protests flared again—largely because of the coincidence of the seven-day mourning observance for the late Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri with the Shi’a holy day of Ashura. But, the protests have not been sustained and, yesterday, crowds at least as large as those on Ashura mobilized in Tehran to show support for the Islamic Republic.
Protests may flare again in Iran in coming months. But, drawing analogies between the Islamic Republic today and the Shah’s regime in 1978 or the Soviet Union in 1990 is profoundly misplaced. As we will argue next week, if one wants to draw an analogy between the Islamic Republic and another important country whose political order is grounded in a particular ideology and experiences periodic political conflict, a better analogue—and one much more useful as a guide for American policy—would be the People’s Republic of China. Tiananmen Square—where far more protestors were killed than have died in Iran since June 12—did not portend the collapse of the People’s Republic. It would have been foolhardy in the extreme for U.S. policymakers to act as if that were the case. Why are so many who should know better arguing that this weekend’s protests in Iran portend the demise of the Islamic Republic?
The inability of American diplomats, intelligence officers, and policymakers to understand what was happening in Iran in the late 1970s was one of the most colossal analytic failures in U.S. foreign policy since World War II, and did real damage to U.S. interests in the Middle East. It would be equally tragic if wishful thinking and a rush to judgment about Iranian politics diverted President Obama and his national security and foreign policy advisers from advancing U.S. interests in the region at a critical time through the pursuit of serious, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic.
Best wishes to our readers for a Happy New Year.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
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@ Eric A. Brill
A fantastic comment. Yes, almost many analyst forget the occasion of the conflict, the election result. It is interesting that Musavi recently himself retreat his ask for nullifying the election knowing there is no proof of evident. Other reformists retreat before. Even persons like Abtahi who are now free on ball have not reject his statements during the so called show trial. Myself listed all claims against the election and confute every single one, hopefully it will be released soon in English.
By the way the interior ministry never released the result of every single ballot box, in this election it did! The post election conflict arose rather of the polarizing the society by the candidates, the conflict was for many political scientists in Iran foreseeable.
@ simon taylor
Of course the regime has supporter and those who try to image an isolate Islamic republic are mistake. We see no You Tube videos about masses of buses, sandwiches and so one for bringing the people. Indeed organize a state sponsor rally is much easier, but it shows than Islamic republic is still popular for many Iranian and it shows regarding the last opposition rallys that there is no possibility of revolution, though no military forces were engaged.
I am appalled by the fact that your analysis do not take into consideration that before the Ashura demonstrations continuous threats were made by the authorities and security forces were everywhere cordoning off the streets and accesses to where the demonstrators were expected to gather. They were beating people even before they got to Enghelab Avenue. While in the case of the government organized demonstration people were bused from all around Tehran, government offices were closed and everyone was expected to gather at designated points and those not present were to be severely reprimanded even threatened to lose their jobs if absent. For those coming by their own will they were distributing free drinks, sandwiches and 10 thousand toomans ($10). The regime even went on to bring along prostitutes and common law criminals from prisons to inflate their numbers. Your analysts have just fallen to government propaganda. They should know that if the government allowed a peaceful march by the opposition there would be millions in the streets.
To “Another Iranian”:
You wrote: “as an Iranian who lives in Iran, I must say that [An Iranian] is a government agent. Reverse his statement and it would be an almost accurate description of what I witnessed.”
In other words, you witnessed a small pro-government rally and a massive opposition rally — second in size only to the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Wow– that certainly is a difference! Any photos?
To Iranian,
It strikes me that two objective tests can readily be conducted to validate (or not) the June 12 election results. You may be the person most qualified to respond to this, but I welcome as well a response from anyone else:
First, opposition candidates charged that their observers were barred from many polling stations. Assuming here that that occurred, it would be interesting to compare the proportion of Ahmadinejad votes from an “unobserved” polling station with the proportion of Ahmadinejad votes from an “observed” polling station in an area with similar demographics and voter profiles — the more such apples-to-apples comparisons, the better. If the proportions were much the same, a “no harm, no foul” response to this charge might be appropriate; indeed, even more could be made from such a finding: Ahmadinejad’s supporters could fairly argue: “See, we had many opportunities to commit electoral fraud at these ‘unobserved’ polling stations, but we did not do so. That strongly suggests that we did not commit electoral fraud at all.” If, on the other hand, “unobserved” ballot boxes contained a materially higher proportion of Ahmadinejad votes, the protesters might well have a valid point here.
Second, opposition candidates charged that the official vote counts ultimately released by the Interior Ministry varied (in Ahmadinejad’s favor) from the vote counts conducted in the field (i.e. at polling stations), either because Interior Ministry officials added, destroyed or changed ballots once the ballot box reached Tehran, or, according to some Moussavi aides, because those Interior Ministry officials simply fabricated new vote counts without even bothering to falsify the ballots from the polling station involved. Assuming here that that occurred (and assuming further that, as I understand to be the case, the Interior Ministry reported ballot-box-by-ballot-box results, rather than merely a single total for each candidate), it strikes me as easy enough simply to compare (1) the final, official count from a particular ballot box; and (2) the “field” count from the same ballot box (provided, of course, that opposition observers were present throughout the day and evening at the polling station involved). If an “official” count showed more votes for Ahmadinejad than are reflected in the notes of the opposition’s observer(s) at that polling station, then, rather than rely on the on-site notes from Ahmadinejad’s observer at that polling station (assuming those notes show a field count matching the official count), the disagreement might be resolved by checking the electronic record of the email or text-message sent on election night from that polling station to election headquarters in Tehran. I understand that such electronic messages were sent from thousands of polling stations on election night, and it strikes me as fair to assume that the candidates’ observers were present when such a electronic message was composed and sent, in order to ensure that the message reflected the vote count just witnessed by those observers.
I doubt that any such “tests” have been conducted, by either side, but it strikes me that each type of test would be entirely objective, quite persuasive, and easily constructed based on data that, I suspect, is still available and cannot easily be altered.
Your thoughts?
To “Iranian”:
Thank you for your comment. You should note, though, that being “an Iranian who lives in Iran” would disqualify you in the eyes of those (many) who believe that reliable comments on Iran can be made only by someone whose judgment is entirely unfettered by residence in the country or any other source of actual knowledge.
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k_w, please tell us more about that.
“In 1979, much of the public commentary in the United States about the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah was characterized by disbelief that a stalwart American ally could be swept away so quickly and unexpectedly. Today, much American commentary on Iranian domestic politics is characterized by varying degrees of eagerness to see the Islamic Republic go the way of the Pahlavi dynasty—or, in a formulation that some neoconservatives prefer, the way of the Soviet Union.”
Just as previous commentary fed the belief (quite accurate, as it were) that the Shah was an American stooge, current pro-demonstrator commentary will lead to the same belief (accurate or not) about the opposition. It has the same effect as North Vietnam encouraging anti-war protesters here. Making them seem like traitors, when in fact they were absolutely right about the war.
AFAIK, it was Montazeri’s office that let information leak to Al-Shiraa about the regular meeting of a reconciliation commission of Iranian and American officials (and about the Iran-Contra deal). This act stopped the negotiations and prolonged the Iraq-Iran war.
The phenomenon that Iranian politicians use to differenciate between rhetoric and actual policies has never been understood by the West.
If one looks at the footage on PressTV it is clear that the anti-Mousavi protests in Iran were massive. The pro-Mousavi Ashura protests were very small in comparison and I think Mousavi’s statement and his partial retreat can be linked to this fact.
as an Iranian who lives in Iran, I must say that the above Iranian is a government agent. Reverse his statement and it would be an almost accurate description of what I witnessed.
Finaly this website take the notice of the Iranian domestic affairs huge impact in the international scene.
Having witnessed truly massive demonstrations opposing the Vietnam War, and their inability to change US policy, I am skeptical of using Iranian demonstrations to predict much of anything.
The Leveretts are right to point out that public commentary is characterized by eagerness, and perhaps wishful thinking, that the regime might self destruct. The analogy to the conventional wisdom of 1979 that asserted that the Shah’s regime was impregnable is striking. Back then it was called “group think.” We witnessed the same phenomenon during the run up to the Iraq War. Why should the foreign policy community now suddenly change its pattern of thinking as a herd to thinking independently?
Fortunately the Leveretts are offering independent thinking. The American public deserves better than herd thinking. I welcome the discussion of Iranian internal politics.
If necessary, the regime will order the Revolutionary Guards to shoot down the opposition, and that order will be carried out. It is quite correct to say that the proper analog is Tiananmen Square. I have been blogging to this effect for some time. The opposition, dear to our hearts though it is, does not command majority support in Iran, anymore the Tiananmen students did in China.
Once again, WigWag provides a litany of reasons why a pragmatic and non-confrontational approach to Iran is not an option and why a military action is.
The only people he convinces are himself, the Israel lobby and their puppet politicians.
Perhaps they should be told in a louder and clearer voice: NO MORE WARS!
As an Iranian who lives in Iran, I see the situation somewhat differently. First of all, the “pro-government”, “pro-regime”, pro-Islamic Republic”, “pro-establishment”,…demonstrations that were held on Wednesday in Tehran and simultaneously in all other major cities in the country, were truly massive. I actually witnessed the rally in Tehran and I must say I was stunned by the size, the slogans, and the amount of anger directed towards Mousavi and the “Green Movement”.
It was by far the largest gathering the city has ever witnessed, except for the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini where many people from other cities gathered in Tehran to participate. I think anyone interested in Iranian affairs should definitely look at the footage (which was not shown on any of the major western news networks), because I believe it was a defining moment in Iranian politics.
The “green” rally on Ashura was very small in comparison. I think Mousavi will now try to distance himself from these groups which are now widely believed to be extremist and foreign backed, but it seems far too late. He has lost his credibility and the reformists will need a long period of time to regroup.
The fact that such a massive rally took place in Tehran, the only city in which Mousavi was able to stage major protests after the elections, reveals that he is a spent force. Most reformist politicians in Iran now seek to distance themselves from Mousavi and the “greens”.
I’d just like to make sure everyone here has read the September 2009 World Polling Organization poll of Iran that found very high trust among Iranians of the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s victory, high favorability for Ahmadinejad himself and very high satisfaction with Iran’s current system of government (all over 80%). Large protests are still consistent with these protests drawing from an angry and motivated segment of society that is still a minority.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep09/IranUS_Sep09_rpt.pdf
The fact is that there were elections in Iran and since then there has not emerged a convincing argument that there was a huge campaign of fraud that reversed the result.
The opposition protesters have a very difficult road ahead of them to make substantial change in Iran’s government. Primarily because while everyone wants “change” as many Iranians want its government to be more religious as less.
The current strategy of holding confrontational protests over mistreatment in previous protests also is not likely to convert the apparent majority who do not believe the government is illegitimate over to the opposition side.
I like the picture.
Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann-Leverett and Ben Katcher thank you for producing such a provocative and informative blog and thank you for your willingness to entertain opposing points of view at your site. I hope all three of you have a very happy New Year and that 2010 brings the best of luck to all of your endeavors.
This post is perfectly emblematic of everything wrong with the perspective on Iran that the proprietors of this blog cleave to. Their ideological blinders are so firmly set in place that they can’t differentiate between China in the 1960s and Iran in 2009-2010.
The Leveretts insist,
“…a better analogue—and one much more useful as a guide for American policy—would be the People’s Republic of China. Tiananmen Square—where far more protestors were killed than have died in Iran since June 12—did not portend the collapse of the People’s Republic. It would have been foolhardy in the extreme for U.S. policymakers to act as if that were the case. Why are so many who should know better arguing that this weekend’s protests in Iran portend the demise of the Islamic Republic?”
But Iran is not China. While it is impossible to know whether the events in Iran portend the demise of the Islamic Republic, it is far more reasonable to conclude that they might than it was to conclude that the massacres in Tiananmen Square portended the end of the regime in China.
What are some of the differences?
1) There is a history of regime change in modern Iran. In 1925 Reza Khan overthrew the very unpopular Qajar Dynasty. In the 1940s he abdicated in favor of his son. In 1951 the enormously popular Mohammed Mossedeigh was elected President of Iran. He marginalized the Shah and nationalized Iran’s oil fields. He was overthrown by the British and Americans who used clandestine means during operation AJAX and the Shah’s power was restored. In 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah. Since 1921 power changed hands in Iran at least four times and it was five times if you count the change in power from Reza Khan to his son.
In modern China there is no precedent for regime change. Since the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Tse Tung defeated the Kuomintang led by Chang Kai Shek in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party has been in charge of the government continuously and without interruption. In short there is a history of regime change in modern Iran; there is no history of regime change in modern China.
2) It is true that the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1979 were instigated primarily by students as are the demonstrations currently taking place in Iran. But it is also true that Iran in 2009-2010 has a dramatically higher proportion of its population that is educated, has middle class aspirations and speak English and other foreign languages than China ever had. This almost certainly makes revolutionary change far more likely in the Iran of the 21st century than in China of the 1960s.
3) The Chinese Students during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations were fighting for a democracy that they had never had. The Iranian students are fighting for a democracy that they believe was taken away from Iran twice; first by the overthrow of Mossedeigh and now by the Mullah’s refusal to seat the man they believe legitimately won the election. It is entirely reasonable to believe that those fighting to restore a democracy they feel they were robbed of will fight more vigorously than those seeking to achieve a democracy that they never had.
4) There is a substantial Iranian expatriate community living in the United States and Europe and this community is in continuous contact with friends and family members in Iran. The result is that Iranians are keenly aware of the opportunities, freedoms and economic prospects available in the West. During the time of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations few Chinese had close family members or friends living in the West and few westerners had ever been to China.
5) During the time of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations there were no cell phones, no digital cameras, no “You Tube” no twitter, no e-mail, no internet and no social networking sites. Iranian demonstrators are availing themselves of the benefits these technologies provide to those who wish to oppose the government. The bottom line is that all of these technologies make the goals of the Iranian demonstrators more easily achievable than the goals of Tiananmen demonstrators.
6) As everyone knows, Iran is a religious society where the clergy exercises great influence. The Iranian regime, by committing atrocities during ‘Ashura, by ridiculing the late Ayatollah Montazeri and by marginalizing moderate religious authorities in Quom may have antagonized a portion of the Iranian population to whom all of this matters. The Chinese demonstrators never had a similar advantage.
7) Requirements for social modesty imposed by the Iranian regime on Iranian women have antagonized millions of Iranian women who resent the infringement of their rights. This institutionalizes a large class of people who object to the regime regardless of how they may feel about other aspects of its politics. This type of issue was never relevant in China so it never could be used as an inducement to encourage the population to seek regime change.
8) Given its enormous oil resources, everyone in Iran believes that the nation should be far wealthier than it is. Millions of middle class Iranians believe that the nation is being economically mismanaged. Despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party mismanaged the Chinese economy for years, by the time of the Tiananmen demonstrations the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping were already beginning to be implemented.
9) After the Tiananmen Square demonstrators were routed by the Communist government no significant additional demonstrations took place. The brutal action by the Chinese Government was successful at cowing the demonstrators into submission. Despite the best efforts of the Iranian Government; despite jailing, beating and in some cases killing and torturing Iranian demonstrators, the government has not succeeded in quelling the demonstration; they reoccur at increasingly frequent intervals.
10) Because of Chinese military power and its possession of nuclear weapons, Western nations were reluctant to intervene to assist the Tiananmen demonstrators. Chinese military power deterred western intervention in the same way that the west was deterred from intervening in Hungary or Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. As Hillary Mann-Leverett has herself indicated,
“To this day, the Islamic Republic is deficient in conventional military power. Literally, Iran has no ability to project conventional military power beyond its borders.”
Because Iran is militarily weak and still does not possess nuclear weapons the West may be more inclined to intervene covertly and overtly to assist the Iranian freedom fighters. It is hard to know for sure, but the success or failure of the Iranian freedom fighters in their quest to achieve regime change may be dependant upon how much help they get from the West. An analogy that the Leveretts may want to reflect on is how likely it is that the American revolutionaries in the 18th century would have been sucessful had the French not intervened on the side of the Americans.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann-Leverett are certainly right that there is no assurance that the current imbroglio in Iran will lead to regime change. But their suggestion that the fact that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations didn’t lead to regime change in China is evidence that the current demonstrations won’t lead to regime change in Iran is seriously flawed and does not hold up to scrutiny.
By exaggerating the similarities between Iran and China the whole edifice on which the Leveretts construct they recommendations collapses.