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Iran: Regime Change, Not Reform

Nicholas M. Guariglia - 6/29/2007

Negar Azimi, who once proclaimed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "the people's choice", showcases equal lunacy and bluster in a recent New York Times article, entitled "Hard Realities of Soft Power." Azimi sheds light on the daily work of David Denehy, the senior advisor to the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, who oversees U.S. funds for democracy promotion in Iran. The "democracy fund," as it is called, totals $75 million - more than the $1.5 to $11 million that was previously granted.

Azimi veers off with intellectual chicanery of the worst kind: equating opposition to oppression with the oppression itself. Azimi pontificates "the democracy fund faces criticism, not only from Iranian officials but also from some of the very people whose causes it aims to advance. Could this ambitious program actually be doing more harm than good?" What a chasm it is between Azimi's truth and concrete reality.

It seems as though one cannot have a serious conversation about the Iranian problem without an assortment of strawmen accusations hurled in the direction of those seeking a more confrontational approach. If it is the nuclear program one is speaking of, mischaracterizations are thrown into the motley and the faux choice is deduced into a "to bomb or not to bomb" proposition. If one is debating the nuances of diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, humbly suggesting self-defense against Iranian terrorist surrogates in Iraq, after years of allowing them a free shot at our soldiers, is tantamount to starting another war (as if the war is not already underway, and the decision to wage it against us has not already been made).

Worse still is the misguided belief that reform, and not regime change, is a course worth pursuing. This apparently appears to be the position of the Bush administration, and when it fails, as it invariably will - the Islamic theocracy in Tehran is not designed to "reform" - commentators like Negar Azimi chastise the entire enterprise hubristic. Azimi recalls that Iranian dissidents like Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and former prisoner Akbar Ganji refused to meet President Bush, and postulates this as proof that our Iran policy is too aggressive, too hostile, and backfiring.

But this underscores a misunderstanding of the problem and solution. Ebadi and Ganji are reformists, distrusted for their laxity by most genuine Iranian dissidents, for devolving into positions of neutrality and toothless commentary of things they otherwise wish were different. Reform has not and will not work with the regime; it was attempted during the stint of Mohammad Khatami, the great "reformist", whose presidency oversaw some of the most brutal and blood-spattered crackdowns on dissent and political opponents in Persian history.

Azimi quotes one of these reformists, who requested to the State Department that their plight against the Iranian regime no longer be mentioned in presidential speeches (for fear of retaliation from Khamenei's mercenaries and government agents). This dissident whined, "The propaganda campaign surrounding (the U.S.-funding of Iranian opposition) has meant that many of our partners are simply too afraid to work with us anymore." Good. Now we know which Iranian democrats are easily frightened and intimidated by the mullahs, and which are not.

Contrast these cries of "too afraid" with the student leader (and friend) Amir Abbas Fakhravar, who recalls crying of happiness the moment he heard President Bush label the Islamic Republic evil. Contrast this aversion to "government retaliation" with Natan Sharansky's story, the famous Soviet prisoner who describes scenes of jubilation and elation throughout the gulags upon news Reagan had castigated their captors evil, as well.

And therein lies much of the problem: the administration speaks of freedom in Iran, but the disconnect between its rhetoric and policy is gargantuan. If we were serious about avoiding a conflict with the mullahs, if we were serious about change in Tehran, we would stop toying around with the "reformist" movement, and cease wasting our time with these (admittedly) scared do-nothings who make a career of political activism, which brandishes little results, only to die unfree or in exile because they never wanted to stick their neck out for change during their lifetimes.

Our expenditures for the Iranian resistance should be used far more efficiently, as well. Of the $75 million allocated to the dissidents, $36.1 million has gone or is going to preexisting television and radio programs like Radio Farda, which serve more as items on pop culture and music stations - "Fair and Balanced," with commentators criticizing the U.S. and playing as ventriloquist for the ayatollahs - than it does as a propaganda tool in fomenting revolution. I have no way of confirming the accuracy of Condoleezza Rice's quote in Azimi's piece, where the Secretary of State, speaking highly of the foolish program which encourages Iranians to study in the United States, said "I've read that it is forbidden in some quarters to play Beethoven and Mozart in Tehran… We hope the Iranians can play it in New York or Los Angeles."

If this quote is precise, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, it exposes the deeply-flawed logic of Ms. Rice, who, I think it is clear to most, is in way over her head. How does this administration expect to democratize Iran without, at the very least, openly stating this as its goal? Why waste time being coy? Why bother to stoke ethnic tension against the regime, or use secrete channels for subsidies, or third party contacts, or the most incompetent of incompetent bureaucracies in the Western Hemisphere? (Of course, I reference the Central Intelligence Agency.)

A visiting professor once hosted a round-table discussion on Iran at my university (there was no table, and it probably would have been rectangular had there been one). The discussion, unsurprisingly, morphed into a critique of the Bush policy as not conciliatory enough. We were, the professor beseeched, ignoring the great traditions of rapprochement and detente, not understanding the predicament from the Iranian point of view. After all, the Israelis have nuclear weapons, as do the Indians and Pakistanis; after all, the United States ousted two powers bordering Iran, in a sense cornering the mullahcracy. "Wouldn't we feel the need to act in the manner the Assembly of Experts has acted?"

Given that the talk centered almost entirely on how best to manufacture better behavior from the clerical fascists, suggestions concentrated on concessions vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program and their killing of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost no thought was given to the inherent nature of the regime itself. The professor's proposal did not differ from Negar Azimi's thesis; namely, that the more we assist democratic opposition in Iran, the harder the regime comes down on them. This is true to an extent, but fails to see the forest for the trees. Is that not all the more reason to support the resistance? Did Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel not experience torture chambers and dungeon-ridden beatings? Did their movements not once begin in humble shipyards and small stage theaters?

The professor had it all wrong, and I let her know it. Azimi has it wrong, too. And, as this is written, the Bush team has it wrong. Everything from who we are supporting to how we are supporting them must be changed. Our objective should not be encouraging Iranians to travel to New York and listen to Beethoven, but for them to listen to their music of preference in their own country. This will require forgoing hopes of "reform" and siding exclusively with democratic revolutionaries like Fakhravar, or union leader Mansour Osanloo, or political prisoner Ahmed Batebi (imprisoned in 1999 for protesting the regime; his wife, Somaye, was kidnapped by government thugs this year and has not been heard from).

These courageous freedom fighters are discouraged with the United States, not because we support their cause too much - they do not blame the cause of the mullahs' barbarity on their resistance to it, as Azimi shamelessly does - but because overt Western support is scarce. Proxy conflicts from Gaza to Lebanon to Iraq are orchestrated by the Iranian and Syrian tyrannies, and we have yet - still, to this date, at this late hour - to do a damn thing about it. If we truly wanted to avoid a military showdown with Khamenei and the "people's choice" Ahmadinejad proper, we would encourage their internal overthrow with all the power at our disposal.