James Forsyth
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Even a week ago, few would have dared predict that opposition to an Ahmadinejad victory would bring so many people onto the streets, or that the regime would reveal through its actions how weak it considers itself to be. The last few days have shown that history is on the side of progress in Iran. Even the carefully controlled elections that the government permits — the Council of Guardians gets to bar any candidate it wants to — have given the population a sense of its rights and a sense that power ultimately stems from their consent.
The sight of a new, more moderate Iran emerging has not though been greeted with delight by Western leaders. No one has proclaimed the birth of an era of freedom in the region; no one wants to extol the universal appeal of democracy. President Obama has not lit a candle in support of those who have taken to the streets as Ronald Reagan did for the Polish strikers in 1981.
So why not? This silence is born of three things. First, Western governments do not want to let the Iranian regime turn this into an Iran vs the West story. From the Supreme Leader down, the Iranian state is trying to portray the opposition as agents of foreign influence; vocal support in these circumstances would hardly be helpful. Second, Obama wishes to distance himself from the Bush administration’s rhetoric, and made clear his willingness to deal with the current Iranian government. But the most important reason is the nuclear question. As a US State Department spokesman told the press on Monday when pressed on the administration’s failure to condemn the Iranian government’s actions, ‘We have to look at our own national interest too — nonproliferation is a very important priority in this administration.’
If Iran did not have nuclear ambitions, these protests would have served as proof that the best course of action is to let the regime hang itself. It — like pretty much every other fundamentalist government — has failed to deliver for its people. Its own figures show that unemployment is 17 per cent and inflation 25 per cent: the real numbers are almost certainly far worse than this. No amount of populist rhetoric can cover up discontent with this kind of economic situation for long.
But if time is running out for the regime, it is even shorter for those who want to stop Iran going nuclear. Iran can, according to the International Atomic Energy Authority, already operate 4,000 centrifuges and has produced more than a ton of low-enriched uranium. With further enrichment, this will be sufficient for the country’s first nuclear bomb. Iran has already crossed what was once considered to be the red line that would trigger either an American-led or Israeli strike.
The consequences of attacking Iran would be horrendous. But the result of Iran going nuclear should not be underestimated. It would spark an arms race across the Middle East. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that Saudi Arabia has a deal with Pakistan to buy a bomb off the shelf if Iran goes nuclear: a Shiite bomb must be countered with a Sunni one. Iran would also step up its support for disruptive, violent groups across the region — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shiite extremists in Iraq, and Hamas in Israel/Palestine. The international community would have little leverage on a nuclear-armed Iran and thus little hope of moderating its behaviour. Peace and stability would be further off than ever.
It would be foolish to think that these domestic disturbances will cause Tehran to rein in its aggressive, hegemonic ambitions. Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader know that the nuclear programme commands wide support and is their best chance to rally the population behind them. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that a Mousavi victory would have made anything but a cosmetic difference to Iran’s nuclear policy. A European diplomat who was used as a back channel by the Americans, to impress on the Iranians that Obama is serious about his offer of talks, says that on the nuclear issue ‘Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are two pieces of the same wood, with one in a slightly darker shade’.
For all the inspiring scenes these brave demonstrators have generated, we are still faced with the alarming prospect of a theocracy on its last legs acquiring a nuclear weapon. There is an obvious danger that the regime might attempt to engineer a confrontation, one that might easily escalate, that would allow it to pose as a patriotic government defending the country against foreign threats. Equally, the concept of mutually assured destruction relies on both sides having something to lose. The thought of what this regime might do in its final hours is not an attractive one.
So what should the West, and more specifically the Obama administration, do now? However tempting and satisfying it might be, aggressive support of the demonstrators would be counterproductive. But solidarity with them is not. For years, Western governments have begun statements on Iran with praise for its culture and people in an attempt to make clear that the issue is with the government, not the country per se. There is now a chance to put flesh on that. Obama and others should make it clear that the problem is not with Iran having the bomb but this Iranian regime having one. During the Bush years, this kind of language made diplomats queasy. It was talk of regime change, which seemed a precursor to war. But now the policy can be recast in a different light. Indeed, given that Iran now has the ability to enrich uranium — meaning that it is only a matter of time before it produces a bomb — regime change is the most realistic option.
At the time of writing, it looks like the Ahmadinejad regime will pull through this crisis, if only because jettisoning him would place the Supreme Leader in danger of going next. At that point, the West faces the question of whether it should do business with him.
During the presidential campaign, Obama made much of his willingness to engage in direct diplomacy with Iran. But five months into his presidency, nothing has really happened. Indicative of this is the fact that Dennis Ross — who after much bureaucratic wrangling had been appointed the ‘Iran czar’ — was on Tuesday confirmed to be moving to a different post. Insiders say that Obama has set a deadline for progress in talks of the end of this year, which makes it all the more depressing that the administration has done so little in its first five months in office. The word in Washington is that the delay was in part deliberate: the new administrati on had no desire to give Ahmadinejad a boost before polling day. But there will now be even more domestic pressure on the administration not to negotiate with him. Time is running short and direct diplomacy will have to be pursued — for moral, diplomatic and political reasons — before other options can be considered.
However uplifting the demonstrations have been, the nuclear issue has not gone away. Obama now faces a finely balanced choice. If diplomacy does fail — and the willingness of Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, to entertain Ahmadinejad this week hardly suggests that a breakthrough at the UN is likely — and Obama did order a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he would run the risk of rallying the population to the regime. Much of the damage that the Islamic Revolution has done to itself over the past three decades would be reversed. But if Obama allows Iran to go nuclear, the world will then face a regime in its death throes, armed with nuclear weapons. Taking the view that the regime in Iran would fall before any damage was done would be incredibly risky. If that judgment was wrong, the devastation would be on a quite horrendous scale: there is no margin for error with nuclear weapons.
The main lesson of the past week is the power of democracy to reshape the Middle East. The anger with which the Iranian people responded to the fixing of an election that was, in any case, never free and fair shows how potent the idea of power coming from the people is. Those who argued that the influence of the ballot box would, in time, produce a more moderate, more successful Middle East have, in a small way, been vindicated by these events. But the regime’s nuclear ambition could crush these democratic hopes.
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