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The wrong way to fix Iran
By Charles A. Kupchan and Ray Takeyh
03/02/06 "Los
Angeles Times" -- 02/28/06 -- THE BUSH administration
quietly orchestrated a major shift in U.S. policy toward Iran this
month, requesting $85 million from Congress to help bring about
regime change in Tehran. Washington is now seeking not just to
contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions but also to topple the Iranian
government.
The war in Iraq has made all too clear the high cost of using
military force to attain regime change. Accordingly, the
administration is taking a page from Eastern Europe, where the
United States used radio broadcasts and direct assistance to
opposition groups to help undermine authoritarian governments and
promote democracy. Administration officials explicitly cited
Poland's Solidarity movement as a model.
Although democratizing Iran is a worthy objective, the
administration is making a mistake in embracing a strategy for
regime change based on the European experience. Conditions in Iran
bear little resemblance to those that accompanied the downfall of
dictatorial regimes in Europe, making it likely that the
administration's new strategy will backfire and only strengthen
Tehran's hard-liners. Instead of isolating Iran and seeking to
undermine the regime from the outside, Washington should engage
Iran, bringing about a natural process of political reform from
within.
Across Eastern Europe, the opposition movements that toppled
communism — and have more recently brought democracy to places such
as Georgia and Ukraine — were avowedly pro-American. Dissidents were
only too happy to receive assistance from Washington and to identify
themselves with U.S. policy. Alignment with the U.S. remains a
valuable political asset for Europe's new democracies.
Not so in Iran. A pronounced suspicion of the U.S. spans the
political spectrum. The Bush administration's rhetorical — and now
financial — support for the Iranian people only makes life more
difficult for the democratic advocates it is intended to buttress.
Iranian conservatives continue to respond to U.S. "interference" by
cracking down on dissidents whom they portray as a "fifth column."
Even those reformers with pro-American inclinations have been forced
to cover their backs by denouncing American belligerence.
In Eastern Europe, the regimes felled by democratic revolt were
brittle and illegitimate; they had long been discredited in the eyes
of their citizens. In contrast, Iran's current regime enjoys
considerable popularity. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been
quite adept at wrapping himself in the mantle of nationalism. The
Bush administration fails to appreciate that its coercive diplomacy
on the nuclear issue is undercutting its effort to drain support
from Iran's leaders.
The centralized regimes of Eastern Europe also maintained tight
control over the media, so U.S. broadcasts and the covert
distribution of information played a vital role in fostering
democratic debate. Such measures will prove far less effective in
Iran, where access to cellphones, the Internet and satellite TV is
widespread. Although Iran does not have a free press, domestic
debate is reasonably pluralistic.
The U.S. has a stake in Iran's internal power struggles, and the
administration is right to want to undermine Iran's reactionary
clerics. However, the best way to do so is to offer the Iranian
people not radio broadcasts in Farsi but the realistic prospect of
integration into the international community. Doing this gradually,
starting with the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, the
U.S. can encourage Tehran to embrace decentralization,
accountability and transparency — political practices that
ultimately will bring down Ahmadinejad and his firebrand
conservatives.
Moreover, Washington would be investing in a repository of goodwill
within Iran, essential to nurturing a new generation of reformers
that sees the U.S. as a prospective partner rather than the Great
Satan. Coercive threats are needed to persuade Tehran to abandon its
efforts to acquire the technology to produce nuclear weapons. But
those threats must be accompanied by credible promises of political
normalization should Tehran veer from its belligerent policies.
Otherwise, only the hard-liners — who rely on external demons and
isolation from the international community to justify their monopoly
on power — benefit.
Eastern Europe's would-be democrats knew that the West was waiting
for their countries with open arms, encouraging them to take the
earliest opportunity to discard their repressive regimes. In a
region still beset by deep distrust of American motives, Iran's
progressives now need the same assurance.
CHARLES A. KUPCHAN is a professor of international affairs at
Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations. RAY TAKEYH is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Rel
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
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