Opposition Protest in Tehran (June 18)

There are two somewhat competing storylines that have been floating around the edges of the news coming out of Iran and both demonstrate how little we learn from history — and how little we know about Iran.

Several prominent analysts have argued that the vote in Iran was NOT substantially rigged and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the choice of the majority of Iranians voting last weekend. Their arguments come down to this: Westerners viewed this election through a narrow lens that fails to capture the ethnic and cultural dynamics of Iranian politics. A first glance it’s a reasonable assumption since the U.S. hasn’t even had an ambassador in Tehran since 1979. But on closer inspection the evidence mounted by these analysts melts.

Steve Kornacki does a great job debunking a lot of this stuff over at the Politicker. But even if you don’t buy his logic it’s impossible not to conclude that millions of Iranians think the election was stolen. Millions of people did not pour into the streets in 2005 when Ahmadinejad was first elected in a run-off and what protests there were gained little traction. Most significantly they did not draw any reaction from the guy who’s really in charge — the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This time is different.

The Ayatollah has responded every day this week so far as massive street protests in Tehran have, despite the hard-core totalitarian attempts to block all information sources, become the greatest threat to the existence of the regime since the revolution in 1979. Khamenei’s actions tells us far more about what really happened to the vote count than the suppositions of experts based in Western capitals.

So there is little doubt at this point that the election results were preordained. Even if Ahmadinejad might have won reelection in a runoff the mullahs weren’t going to take any chances. But their overreach (declaring a landslide win for AhMad hours after the polls closed in a nation where 40 million paper ballots must be hand counted stretches one’s credibility just a bit) has created a situation that is fraught with opportunity and danger for both the regime and the reformers.

Tehran Rally (June 18)

The government has already allowed its troops and militias to kill more than a dozen citizens and there’s no reason to believe that the Ayatollah or the Revolutionary Guard will let things go much further. The risk to them of performing a bloody post-Tiananmen-style Chinese crackdown is limited. After all Iran is still a pariah in much of the West due to its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The country has lived under that kind of pressure for 30 years while polls and anecdotal reporting from Western journalists have long indicated a strong national pride among the people. Stoking that pride is what effective governments do best and Iran has, if nothing else, had an effective government in that way.

In the West everyone’s hoping that somehow this people power will force reform. Perhaps, but two analysts from the American Enterprise Institute make a compelling case that the real power no longer lies even with the Ayatollah but with the military. If that’s the case the military solution will likely not include reform.

All of which makes the other storyline both predictable and sad.

American politics has devolved to the lowest common denominators: Fear and blame. In this case the right-wing blogosphere has been on fire with posts that the stolen election in Iran is the result of Barack Obama’s changes to American foreign policy in the Middle East. Right. Because George Bush’s policies in the Middle East were so effective….

But it’s not just the usual bunch of neo-con knuckleheads — now Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are said to believe Obama should speak more forcefully in support of the Iranians filling the streets. The problem for the Administration is the same one every White House has faced since 1979 — how to engage with Iran. Chest-thumping didn’t work (just ask W) but neither did cozying up to the reformers (Bill Clinton can tell you about that). So what’s a Prez to do?

It’s worth remembering who’s generally complaining — the Old Guard. Their solutions are almost always on the “get tough” side — especially those members who are Democrats that ran for President. Democrats are always told the great risk of appearing “soft” — as opposed to the apparently not-so-great risk of appearing “stupid.”

In the real world America has no capacity to change what is happening and will happen in Iran. We don’t like to hear that but it’s true. We can bellyache all we want but history has repeatedly shown dictators can get a lot of mileage out of being on the other end of a shouting match with the U.S. Certainly Iranian leaders have used this reality to help themselves repeatedly over the past 30 years. This time is no different.

As much as it hurts our tough-guy can-do just-nuke-em mentality, doing nothing more than “expressing concern” is probably the smartest play for us. The people of Iran, no matter how oppressed, have to sort this out for themselves. If the Revolutionary Guard crushes the demonstrations the world will condemn them and we will join. Pathetic, right? But what’s the alternative? Send in the troops? Please. There’s a brutal military dictatorship for every day of the month. That’s life.

The Soviet Union didn’t fail because we attacked it nor, despite plenty of heated rhetoric, because we bullied it into oblivion. The West provided the ammunition (we beat them economically) and the Soviet people used it.

After 30 years we sadly have no such ammunition to offer the Iranian people (the economy there isn’t anywhere near as bad as the Soviet one was) other than our eyes and our ears. Words of encouragement and words of condemnation don’t matter to the mullahs. Only the people of Iran can find, and use, what does.