Why there is no ‘color revolution’ in Iran

Faramarz/TehranLive.org

In spite of the skepticism I expressed yesterday, circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the election in Iran was stolen. That injustice has propelled bright, young Iranians out on the streets, fighting and dying because they want a better Iran. But they appear outmatched against a government that controls the security services, the media, even the ability to send text messages.

What should the U.S. do? My inclination is say, “nothing.” The Iranians are smart, capable people and surely able to organize a revolution by themselves. (They did it in 1979, after all.) And how much do we want to stick our neck out for a guy (the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi) who was prime minister of Iran in the 1980s? Those were not exactly the glory days of U.S.-Iranian relations, or for Iran generally.

That hasn’t stopped various American commentators arguing that we need to DO SOMETHING, and that the White House response thus far has been too tepid:

Like the rest of the world, we were impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians. We continue to monitor the entire situation closely, including reports of irregularities.

I think that statement was exactly as tepid as it should have been. Making a strong statement against Ahmedinejad isn’t going to do any good, and would impotently inject Washington in this fight when it should be all about Iranians and what they want. For better or worse, the days have long passed when the U.S. had the moral authority to be any help to democratic revolutionaries.

At the same time, I realize that thinking like that seems heartless, the moral equivalent of averting our eyes when an old lady is mugged on the street next to us. This is going to be one of the U.S.’s great foreign policy challenges in the coming years, one I believe President Obama is genuinely interested in: how to work for justice around the world without tainting it by tying it in with our economic and geopolitical interests. But we haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

And anyway, if we wanted to get involved, it’s way too late. Over the last couple of decades, the U.S. has actually gotten good at nudging along regime change through elections. In Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, U.S. advisers harnessed popular rage at the theft of an election and provided a variety of technical assistance to help engineer revolutions. There is a formula, but it has to be put in motion well before the election is stolen. As one American friend (who has been involved in these sorts of things) put it, describing what should have happened in Iran:

“In the absence of any kind of independent election monitoring effort — domestic or international — all the opposition has is claims. If there were documentation (not from their own partisan observers), there could be a communications strategy to tell people about them, a legal strategy to flood the courts with evidence of violations, an organizing strategy to coordinate and channel public reaction (and prevent counterproductive violence) and a political strategy to persuade security and political forces to switch sides. Simple as that!”

But that raises the question, why didn’t this happen in Iran? Obviously it’s a less permissive environment to operate in than Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. The groups involved in those cases – USAID, the National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Open Society Institute – aren’t in Iran. The U.S. has no embassy in Tehran. My friend points out Iran also lacks the civil society, youth groups or opposition media that are the necessary conditions for a revolution to take place. The $400 million we were secretly spending in Iran to “destabilize the country’s religious leadership” appears to have gone toward military rather than political destabilization. Maybe it’s too soon after the U.S. presidential transition to have gotten a plan in place, or maybe President Obama doesn’t share his predecessor’s enthusiasm for regime change, given the decidedly mixed results that Ukraine and especially Georgia have produced. Or, most likely, the U.S. is just waiting until there’s a real opportunity to get rid of the Islamic Republic altogether, rather than just getting behind a guy, Mousavi, who was, after all, involved in the 1979 revolution.

Exuberant observers suggest that what is happening now is in fact putting the entire Islamic Republic in danger of losing its grip on Iran. (Andrew Sullivan compares it to the fall of the Soviet Union.) I doubt that’s the case. But if so, it appears to be something the U.S. intelligence community failed to anticipate and to nudge along. And if so, that’s a good thing. If the Iranians pull this off, it will be their victory, and theirs alone.