Matt Yglesias

New Protests in Iran

Former US Embassy in Tehran

Looks like the Iranian government isn’t quite out of the woods yet:

Police firing tear gas and wielding batons clashed Wednesday with anti-government demonstrators in Tehran who sought to turn a rally commemorating the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy into a renewed protest against the disputed June 30 election, news reports said.

The protesters had turned out to display opposition to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose victory in Iran’s disputed elections last June provoked Iran’s biggest political crisis since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Note that this comes at exactly the time the American right is trying to argue that anti-regime Iranian-Americans and Iranian-American political organizations are somehow tools of the Iranian regime simply because they—like all sensible people everywhere—reject neoconservative foreign policy. But it’s all the same to Michael Goldfarb and Jeffrey Goldberg.

Trent Franks: U.S. is “wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force” Against Iran

Time for the debate again I guess:

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) has introduced legislation emphasizing the threat of military strikes against Iran and expanding unilateral, extraterritorial sanctions against Iran. The bill declares “the United States is wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapons capability.”

Among other things, it’s just false to say that the United States is “capable” or “willing” to “military force” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. Obviously, we could degrade their research program by blowing some stuff up, but that would likely lead the Iranians to intensify their efforts. But there’s no way to use air power to fully halt such a program. For all we know, bombing will accelerate the pace of advances by changing the Iranian political calculation.

Neoconservatism’s Tradeoffs Problem

One of the signature elements of neoconservative foreign policy is a complete refusal to set priorities or talk about tradeoffs. Whatever problem we happen to be talking about right now needs to be met with bold and decisive action, casting caution to the wind, irrespective of how that impacts other things around the world. Matt Duss brings us a great example, the contradictions between the neocon approach to Russia and the neocon approach to Iran:

At an American Enterprise Institute event today — “Should Israel Attack Iran?” (yes, they’re obviously trying to get peoples’ attention) — former Ambassador Martin Indyk revealed an interesting wrinkle to the story of Eastern European missile defense system, which the Obama administration canceled last month, a move conservatives have heavily criticized as — what else? — appeasement.

Recounting recent meetings with Israeli national security officials, Indyk said that “the Israelis were upset at the way that Bush had offended Russia with missile defense” in Eastern Europe. The Israelis, like many Americans and most of the rest of the world, saw the deployment of untested missile defense technology in Poland and the Czech Republic as needlessly provocative of Russia, whose support is seen as necessary for any effort to bring Iran’s nuclear program under control.

A simple point but an easy one. Right-wing Israelis can easily afford to hope for the United States to take a neoconnish line on Iran. And right-wing Poles can afford to hope fro the United States to take a neoconnish line on Russia. But the desires of right-wing Israelis are in significant tension with those of right-wing Poles. And officials in the United States of America can’t realistically take a maximalist line on every point of geopolitical tension. Regional powers basically have their priorities set for them by circumstances. But the hegemon has the luxury of deciding what it cares about. That luxury, however, doesn’t eliminate the basic need to decide.

Mehdi Karroubi

Michael Slackman profiles Mehdi Karroubi and his emergence as the key figure in the Iranian dissident movement:

Once a second-tier opposition figure operating in the shadow of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his fellow challenger in Iran’s discredited presidential election in June, Mr. Karroubi has emerged in recent months as the last and most defiant opponent of the country’s leadership. [...]

But for all its success at preserving authority, the government has been unable to silence or intimidate Mr. Karroubi, its most tenacious and, in many ways, most problematic critic. While other opposition figures, including Mr. Moussavi and two former presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are seldom heard now, Mr. Karroubi has been unsparing and highly vocal in his criticism of the government, which he feels has lost all legitimacy.

The regime seems uncomfortable arresting Karroubi due to his long association with the Iranian revolution. That said, there’s relatively little a leader can do without followers. And as the excellent report “Accelerating Slide into Dictatorship: Human Rights in Iran since 12 June 2009″ details, the costs of being an average opposition supporter now look very high.

Give Up Your Nuclear Weapons Program Or Else We’ll Damage Your Nuclear Weapons Program!

I understand the argument that the United States should give up on diplomacy with Iran and then follow that up with a hysterical overreaction and an unprovoked military assault. I disagree with it, but I understand what it’s proponents are saying. But when I read this kind of thing from Jeffrey Herf in The New Republic, I’m really baffled:

This brings us to the one policy option that Tehran truly fears–and thus the only one that gives these negotiations any realistic chance of success: a credible threat of military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United States, perhaps joined by Britain and France, or Israel. If the Iranian leadership believed that such an attack was a real possibility, it, or some parts of it, might be persuaded to change course.

The idea that the threat of a bombing raid that would partially damage the Iranian nuclear program would inspire the Iranian government to voluntarily give up the nuclear program makes no sense whatsoever. Suppose I wanted Herf to give me $10. I figured maybe I could offer him various incentives in exchange for the $10. But it turns out that Herf is irrational or whatever and hell-bent on holding on to his $10. Reaching into his pocket and stealing $7 might have some merit as a response. But threatening to steal $7 in hopes of persuading him to give me $10 would be ridiculous.

I assume Herf actually understands this and just wants to see the United States launch an illegal preventive military attack on Iran. But he thinks that conclusion is likely to be unpalatable to his audience. So the idea that the credible threat of an attack is likely to produce a diplomatic win serves as basically the sugary coating to make the warmongering go down more sweetly.

IAEA Staff Pushing for More Aggressive Report on Iran

One interesting aspect of the Iran nuclear debate has been the behind-the-scenes disagreement from various western intelligence agencies as to what exactly the Iranians are doing. Everyone agrees that their enrichment activities could be helpful in building a nuclear weapon, but the US intelligence community reached the judgment some time ago that Iran was not actively researching warhead construction. Israeli intelligence hotly disputes this, with the French and German intelligence agencies somewhat closer to the Israeli position than the American one. More recently, British intelligence came around to agreement with France and Germany. But Mohammed ElBarredei, head of the IAEA and the guy who tried to warn the world that the Bush administration was full of it on Iraqi nuclear issues, has been in the US camp. Today, however, comes word that the IAEA staff seems to think ElBarredei has this wrong and they’ve concluded that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear weapon.

The Qom Facility and International Law

Spencer Ackerman interviews some experts on the subject of whether Iran’s Qom nuclear facility could really have any non-weapons purpose and the basic consensus is that realistically it couldn’t. If the facility is of the scale that we’re being told it is, it’s too small to be something any reasonable person would want for electricity generation purposes. The trouble, as I was told yesterday by a European diplomat with experience on the legal aspects of such matters (and on the merits much more hawkish views on Iran than I have) is that these kind of appeals to common sense don’t have any clear legal force in terms of Iran’s commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

You can look at the economic logic of a civilian project and make inferences about what’s really motivating it, but that’s not what the standard is. The good news (again in legal terms) is that the UN Security Council has more-or-less carte blanche to regard situations as a threat to international peace based on their judgment, so it’s not as if legally-grounded international action is hamstrung by these considerations. But it’s a bit of a problematic situation; the fact of the matter is that the NPT gives countries a lot of latitude in terms of their nuclear activities.

Still Marching in Iran

Iran has some kind of regular anti-Israel parade day (because, obviously, that sort of thing does a huge amount to alleviate Palestinian suffering…) but this year it went a bit awry:

Conservatives had warned against using the annual pro-Palestinian march, known as Quds Day, as an excuse for renewed protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election in June plunged Iran into its worst internal crisis in three decades.

But the protesters turned out anyway, wearing green, the color of opposition, and often walking alongside larger groups of state-sanctioned marchers bearing huge banners denouncing Israel. The protesters even flouted Iran’s support for pro-Palestinian militants, chanting “No to Gaza and Lebanon, my life is for Iran.” And when officials shouted “death to Israel” through loudspeakers, protesters derisively chanted “death to Russia” in response. [...]

The opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami joined the crowds, drawing appreciative cheers and chants of support. Later, Basij militia members tried to attack Mr. Khatami and Mr. Karroubi, but defenders fought them back, opposition Web sites reported.

Meanwhile, Ahmadenijad took the occasion to opine that the Holocaust “is a lie” designed to bolster support for Israel. Earlier this week a prominent anti-regime ayatollah in Iran stepped up his rhetoric accusing the government of being a “military regime” and urging clerics to preach resistance.

US to Scrap Eastern European Missile Defense

Vltava River, Prague, Czech Republic (cc photo by kruhme)

This is welcome news if true:

Washington will scrap plans to put anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and is looking at alternatives including Israel and Turkey, a Polish newspaper reported Aug. 27, citing U.S. officials. The U.S. plan, intended for defense against attacks from Iran, has met with fierce objections from Russia, which regarded the eastern European bases as a threat to its own security.

Per Robert Farley, this plan never made any sense largely because it’s proponents actually couldn’t make up their mind as to whether they meant this as a provocative anti-Russian move or not:

No one could ever conclusively argue why these bases were a good idea; they were supposed to deter Russia, but at the same time weren’t aimed at Russia, and couldn’t possibly have stopped a Russian attack. They were supposed to defend from Iranian missiles, even though no one could ever figure out a plausible reason why Iran would fire ballistic missiles at Europe. Eastern European missile defense was, in short, insane; it was conceived by missile defense fanatics in the United States, and abetted by policymakers in Poland and the Czech Republic who wanted a clear signal of US commitment to their defense.

Poles and Czechs wanting a clear commitment from the United States is understandable, but there are other ways we can offer that. The best approach to dealing with Russia on these big strategic issues is to move forward with bilateral nuclear arms reductions. If we can come up with workable theater missile defenses in key regions, that’s great, but then we should honest-to-God not get them mixed up with the issue of Russia.

Iran Interested in Nuclear Talks Without Preconditions

Laura Rozen:

Iran’s ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna has said Iran is ready to talk with Western powers about its nuclear program without preconditions and based on mutual respect, according to wire reports citing the official’s appearance on Iranian state television Tuesday.

Who knows what will come of this, but I think it’s time to take yes for an answer and get down to business.

Maybe Underpants Gnomes Will Prevent Iran from Importing Gasoline

Supertanker Ab Qaid (wikimedia)

An international embargo on Iranian gasoline imports is an idea that Iran hawks like to bring up again and again. Apparently Iran, despite being a large oil exporter, is actually a net importer of refined petroleum products, meaning that an effectively enforced blockade on Iran-bound gasoline would force the regime to ration fuel. And now the idea seems to be back in the news as the Obama administration is discussing it with folks in Congress. But the fly in the ointment is that for this to work China and especially Russia have to agree to it, and I agree with Spencer Ackerman that this seems unlikely:

Why would Russia and China agree to such a package? And why would, say, the United Nations agree to a move that would push the Iranians to dare the international community to confront it militarily over a global economic chokepoint? The smart people quoted in Sanger’s piece make the case for the sanctions by saying that the Iranian regime is more vulnerable to sanctions now, after the theft of the June 12 elections exposed popular anger and antipathy toward it, but not how to make those sanctions feasible.

I suppose one question for the folks pushing this line is how badly do you want it? What are you willing to give the Russians to get them on board? The US-Russian bilateral relationship, after all, has many aspects to it. But the very same people who are most vehement about the idea that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat to civilization tend to also be the most vehement about the idea that we should admit Ukraine and Georgia to an anti-Russian military alliance, that we should spend billions of dollars on attempting to undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent, etc. I would think that if people really believed some of the things they claim to believe about Iran, that they’d be more eager to trade some horses.

Russia and China aside, what I think we need to hear more about here is the Iranian opposition. In general, I’m pretty skeptical about sanctions. If it’s the case that the opposition actually wants sanctions, the way the ANC did during apartheid, then that’s something we should take very seriously. But I would imagine that if Iran finds itself short of gasoline that the security services and the governing elite won’t be the ones without enough fuel to get around.

Biden on Israel/Iran

Israel Air Force F-15s (wikimedia)

Over the weekend, Joe Biden made some news with these remarks on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran:

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

This is being read by some, including Marc Lynch, as a “green light” for an Israeli attack. Like Robert Farley I think the most straightforward reading of what Biden said is rather different, he’s trying to distance the United States from any possible Israeli military action by making it clear that what Israel does or doesn’t do is decided in Israel rather than in Washington.

The main problem with this, I think, is that probably nobody’s going to believe it. Already you see many Americans taking Biden’s statement that the U.S. doesn’t control Israeli policy to “really” mean that the U.S. is encouraging Israel to attack.

Leading Iranian Clerics Call for New Election

It had been looking to me like the Iranian opposition was running out of steam, but this seems to give some new life to their movement:

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.

It seems difficult to maintain legitimacy while denying the will of the people in the name of theocracy when leading religious authorities are coming out against you. Not that pure logic is enough to defeat a dictatorship, but legitimacy does matter.

Iran and the End of History

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve sort of let myself get distracted away from the news out of Iran, which has taken a turn for the worse lately. But I did like this post from Peter Juul at the Wonk Room:

While I can’t read minds (I’m no Charles Xavier or Emma Frost), I think Roger Cohen hit the dynamic on the head in another recent column: “…the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails.”

These two Irans – the vibrant, diverse coalition that voted for change and then demonstrated in the streets versus the authoritarian, rule-by-force regime – will remain in conflict no matter if the government manages to disperse street protests in the short run. Khamenei and his successor(s) may be able to hold onto power by force for years, but they must do so now knowing large swaths of the population find their rule illegitimate and their system discredited. A

The End of History Comes to Iran

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve sort of let myself get distracted away from the news out of Iran, which has taken a turn for the worse lately. But I did like this post from Peter Juul at the Wonk Room:

While I can’t read minds (I’m no Charles Xavier or Emma Frost), I think Roger Cohen hit the dynamic on the head in another recent column: “…the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails.”

These two Irans – the vibrant, diverse coalition that voted for change and then demonstrated in the streets versus the authoritarian, rule-by-force regime – will remain in conflict no matter if the government manages to disperse street protests in the short run. Khamenei and his successor(s) may be able to hold onto power by force for years, but they must do so now knowing large swaths of the population find their rule illegitimate and their system discredited. As Cohen wrote earlier, “Whatever happens now, all is changed in Iran.” We can only hope that the change is positive for the Iranian people, and that it comes sooner rather than later.

One way to think about this is in terms of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. The geographical scope in which Shi’a Islamism and velayat-e faqih could possibly become the dominant form of government is obviously pretty limited because there aren’t that many Shia Muslims in the world. But despite that limit the Islamic Revolution represented the only real example I think you could come up with of a true ideological alternative to liberal democracy in the world. And part of what we’ve seen over the past several weeks is the collapse of that alternative.

The Mullahs haven’t been willing to contest the basic democratic idea that he who gets the most votes ought to win the election. Nor have they been willing to actually permit fair voting. They can, plausibly, get away with this just as lots of autocrats (most importantly, though hardly exclusively) get away with all kinds of things. But when that’s done, it’s just unmasked as rule by force and by fraud rather than some genuine alternative political model that people can embrace.

Pitneygate

History's greatest monster

I thought I might just quote Jason Zengerle on the folks hating on the White House’s semi-coordinated back-and-forth with the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney:

Pitney solicited questions from Iranians that they wanted to ask Obama. The White House made sure Pitney got a chance to ask one of the questions–without knowing what the question would be. And, as I’ve pointed out, it was a very good and tough question–a question that Obama answered (or failed to answer) in a way that made him look bad. Yes, the whole arrangement was a violation of Washington protocol, but then the uprest in Iran–and the way news of that uprest is being spread over the Internet–is a violation of protocol as well, isn’t it? If Obama wanted to take a question about Iran from an actual Iranian, the only way he could do so was to call on a member of the media who has a direct line to Iranians–and that’s Pitney. It’s not like he asked Obama “Why are you so awesome?” (or “Have you really quit smoking?”). It seems like the focus should be whether the question was good and whether we learned anything useful from the response Obama gave to it. I’d say yes on both counts, so this really shouldn’t be a controversy.

This is, note, the second time a HuffPo reporter has asked a question at a White House press conference, asked a question that was a lot more substantive and interesting than many of the questions from the old-school media, and then prompted a freak-out. I think it would be worth asking who would be better off had that exchange not taken place and Obama instead called on someone else. I’m having trouble finding the answer.

The reality is that there’s a lot of status anxiety among the special class of reporters who do things like attend White House press conferences. In my experience, the kind of reporters who conduct in-depth investigations or write long features or correspond from war zones are facing a lot of economic anxiety about the continued stability of their careers. But the kind of reporters who basically sit around and in virtue of the fact that their employers are important get to ask not-very-interesting questions of powerful politicians and then dutifully write the answers down (or record the answers on tape and have an intern transcribe them) are facing a kind of crisis of prestige and authority. It turns out lots of people can do the job perfectly well, even people who haven’t “paid their dues” or gotten a job at an established media outlet.

Iran’s Dissident Soccer Players Banned for Life

Banned for Life

One of the more noteworthy twists in the Iranian political crisis was the moment when several players on Iran’s national soccer team showed up for a World Cup qualifying match wearing green armbands in solidarity with the opposition. Since state television couldn’t very well refuse to cover the game, it was a rare opportunity for dissidents to get national TV coverage. And now the players in question are done for:

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been “retired” from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday’s match against South Korea in Seoul. [...] Karimi is one of Iranian football’s best-known stars, having played for the German club Bayern Munich. Ka’abi played for Leicester City for several months during the 2007/8 season. Hashemian and Mahdavikia play for the German teams Bochum and Eintracht Frankfurt. [...] Iran’s hardline media have since linked the protest to the arrest on Saturday of Mohsen Safayi Farahani, who headed the country’s football governing body under the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. He is one of several dozen opposition politicians, intellectuals and journalists to have been detained.

One of the things The Lives of Others does very well is illustrate how a dictatorial regime that prefers to stay in power through “soft” methods can use the threat of destroying people’s careers. Instead of being put on trial and executed, becoming a martyr for the cause, you can just be rendered unemployable in the field of your choice in a decision nobody has to publicly defend but everyone understands. You become, then, not an imprisoned hero, but perhaps just an apparently pathetic person—in the movie it’s a theater director who can’t direct—a cautionary tale rather than an inspirational example.

Analogies Department

Via Jim Henley, an analogy from Jim Lobe:

But to illustrate this obvious fact more sharply, consider the following thought experiment. In 1963, as King delivers his famous speech to the March on Washington, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev delivers a public message of his own to the protesters. “We would like to tell these brave voices of freedom,” Khrushchev says, “that they have the full support and solidarity of the USSR. The Soviet Union and the United States Communist Party are ready and willing to perform any measures within our power to help our American brothers and sisters obtain their rights from this oppressive regime. And although Dr. King pretends that he holds no hostility toward the American capitalist system of government itself, and wishes only to secure the ideals of the American founding for all of its citizens, we all know that he and his supporters really yearn for complete regime change in Washington. We in Moscow will do whatever it takes to help you achieve this goal.”

The analogy is not perfect, but I do think it’s illustrative.

Beyond pure partisanship, I think the characteristic error of conservative thinking on this sort of issue is overlearning from the distinctive experience of Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries. Precisely because the people of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, etc. perceived themselves as not only victimized by repressive government but specifically dominated and exploited by Russians dissidents were relatively well-disposed to collaboration with U.S. geopolitical strategies that were, at the time, primarily anti-Russian in orientation. By contrast, the primary strategic orientation of the United States in the Persian Gulf region is not merely hostile to theocracy or Ahmadenijad but to Iran. Iran would like to be the dominant power in the region, and we want it not to be. A similar situation exists in, say, China where patriotic Chinese people may deplore the human rights conduct of the People Republic, but are going to largely share the PRC’s geopolitical aspirations and be deeply skeptical of becoming (or being seen as) tools of American strategy in East Asia.

To this end, it’s instructive to note the difference between the post-Communist experience in Eastern Europe and the post-Communist experience in Russia. Poles and Lithuanians experience the fall of Communism the way Americans experience it—as a good thing, that unambiguously made the world a better place. For Russians, however, there’s a schizophrenia about the idea that while the end of Communism is in most respects a good thing, it also represented Russia “losing” a geopolitical contest with the United States, which is a bad thing. Consequently, Cold War nostalgia is a real political force in Russia, whereas nobody in Hungary is going to pine for the good old days.

Engagement With a Post-Crackdown Iran

Ali Khamenei doesn't seem very interested in what the outside world thinks of him.

With the possibility of brutal suppression of the current round of protests very real, the question naturally arises as to what such a turn of events would mean for Barack Obama’s proposed policy of engagement with Iran. Robert Farley comments:

If the regime survives, it will be because of the loyalty and brutality of its security forces. With that brutality on display on US televisions (if only rarely) it will be much more difficult for Obama to build any domestic support for talks. Moreover, it’s not clear that he should; knowing that the Iranian regime was repressive before these latest incidents, and acknowledging that many US allies in the region don’t even bother with the fiction of elections doesn’t change the fact that it’s an ugly bit of business. I’d rather, other things being equal, not have my President engage with Iran while the current group of thugs is in power. Finally, I do think that the repression has opened greater opportunity for what might be termed a non-interventionist coercive strategy; this is to say that more and tougher sanctions against the regime are on the table now than was the case two weeks ago.

I would add to that the observation that a regime win would simply make me much less confident that engagement will work. The hope behind an engagement strategy was that the Supreme Leader might be inclined to side with the more pragmatic actors inside the system—guys like former president Rafsanjani and former prime minister Mousavi. With those people, and most of the Iranian elites of their ilk, now in open opposition to the regime, any crackdown would almost by definition entail the sidelining of the people who might be interested in a deal. Iran would essentially be in the hands of the most hardline figures, people who just don’t seem interested in improving relations with other countries.

Under the circumstances, the whole subject of American engagement may well wind up being moot.

George Will Calls Right-Wing Iran Attacks on Obama “Foolish”

George Will may not know much about climate change or bicycle commuting but I think he’s mostly been a voice of reason on foreign policy issues relative to most conservative pundits. Today was no exception as he called out his colleagues for “foolish criticism” of the President’s approach to Iran:

The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

Eric Cantor’s Selective Embrace of Human Rights

Torture for me, but not for thee.

Eric Cantor loves human rights:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the minority whip who has put out blistering statements about the White House’s response, spoke loudly and emotionally about “America’s moral responsibility to speak out on the protection of human rights wherever they are violated” — hint, hint. “I urge President Obama to follow the lead of this House,” Cantor said.

Adam Serwer wonders where this commitment was when “Cantor voted against the military appropriations bill that banned cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terror detainees.”

Specifically, according to the State Department’s official human rights brief on Iran:

Common methods of torture and abuse in prisons included prolonged solitary confinement with sensory deprivation, beatings, long confinement in contorted positions, kicking detainees with military boots, hanging detainees by the arms and legs, threats of execution, burning with cigarettes, sleep deprivation, and severe and repeated beatings with cables or other instruments on the back and on the soles of the feet.

Now to be clear, neither the scale of abuses nor the intent of the abuses is equivalent in the United States and Iran. But when it comes to techniques, it’s hard not to notice the fact that several of the methods condemned here, most notably including sleep deprivation, stress positions (”long confinement in contorted positions”), and shackling (”hanging detainees by the arms and legs”) were specifically authorized by the Bush administration. Many of the others, though not specifically authorized, appear to have become widespread in several detention facilities in part as a result of the administration’s general habit of throwing out the human rights rulebook. These bad actions don’t justify bad actions on the part of the Iranian regime. But whenever you read about these kind of techniques being applied in Iran or North Korea, it’s immediately apparent to everyone that it’s torture, it’s cruel, it’s inhumane, and it’s wrong. It’s also cruel, inhumane, and wrong when authorized by Dick Cheney.

Mike Pence’s Dangerous Game

Who will tell the Iranians that Mike Pence (R-IN) is a fool?

Tom Ricks watches a Mike Pence (R-IN) appearance on Fox News and comes away fearing for the lives of Iran’s brave protestors:

I just hope that Iranian protestors know not to take this clown seriously.

This problem goes to the essence of strategy: A “tough” stance that Fox’s anchors are pushing might feel good, but it likely would be unproductive. A sober stance of the sort that Obama has taken is more difficult but likely more effective in the long run.

For quite some time now I’ve been trying to emphasize the point that Pence is not an intelligent man. It’s good to see Ricks notice this as well. But I think it’s important for people in the journalism game to get a bit more interdisciplinary on this. Oftentimes people are inclined to grant the benefit of the doubt. A Ricks might say “well, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about on national security, but maybe his energy ideas make sense.” Ask around, though, and you’ll see it’s not the case. He’s just got dumb ideas on all sorts of topics. And it’s worth aggressively making that point. It’s all well and good to “hope” that Iranian protestors recognize that he’s a “clown” and shouldn’t be taken seriously. But the odds are actually pretty good that foreigners will take the situation at face value—he’s one of the highest-ranking and most prominent members of a major political party, so surely his pronouncements should be taken seriously. Right? Because if such a high-level party leader were, in fact, a “clown” then people would hear about that. Right?

How Regimes End

Protests in Iran

Douglas Muir has a very interesting post running down some of the political science on “protestor versus regime” scenarios. Unfortunately, it ends on a somewhat depressing note:

And finally, the government is both willing and able to use massive force: China, Burma, Armenia. In these cases, the government wins. There is, in recent history, not a single clear counterexample. If the government keeps its nerve, and the men with guns stay loyal, and the regime is willing to escalate without limit — the government wins.

Relevance to Iran: Looks pretty high right now. While there are some reports of unease among the security forces, it appears the police and the military are holding steady.

Until and unless this changes, Ahmadinejad looks quite secure — green paint and massive street protests notwithstanding.

One hopes this will prove wrong.

Iran’s Political Crisis and the Nuclear Issue

Hussein Moussavi (Wikimedia)

Back before the Iranian elections, when it suddenly began to appear that Ahmadenijad might lose, hawkish Israel groups started circulating oppo information on Hussein Moussavi and the right more generally was preparing to build an argument about how there’s really no difference between the two of them. Then came the apparent fraud, and the politics switched to criticizing the Obama administration for not intervening more forcefully on Moussavi’s behalf. But Eric Trager, working off the older talking points, published a brief article Tuesday titled “Who Is Mir Hossein Mousavil Really?” arguing that he’s no good.

I think he winds up badly overstating the case, but I do think it’s worth underscoring that on the key foreign policy issues between the United States and Iran it’s really not clear how relevant Iranian domestic politics are. As Joe Klein reports:

In truth, the reformers I spoke with seemed as unyielding as Ahmadinejad, if more politely so, when it came to discussing what Iran would be willing to concede in negotiations with the U.S. They were adamant on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted for peaceful purposes under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. None of them, except Mousavi, was willing to acknowledge that weaponization of uranium might be in the works and therefore be a subject for negotiation. (Mousavi told me that if such a program existed, it would be negotiable, but he didn’t say, and may not know, that it actually exists.) The reformers were unanimous in the belief that Barack Obama’s conciliatory words were not enough, that the U.S. had to take palpable actions before talks would be possible. I asked each of them what steps Iran was prepared to make for peace. The answer was always the same. “It’s natural that the first step should be taken by the Americans,” said Karroubi, the most progressive of the four presidential candidates. “We didn’t stage a coup against your elected government,” he said, referring to the CIA’s participation in the 1953 overthrow of the Mohammed Mossadegh government. “We have not frozen your assets. We don’t have sanctions against you.”

Recall that there are two issues here. One has to do with the construction of nuclear weapons. Iran is not permitted to do this under the NPT, Iran denies that they are working on this, Iranian opposition politicians mostly deny weaponization is a possibility, and Mousavi says that he would bargain about weaponization.

The other issue has to do with enrichment. The United States and Israel have been pushing the idea that Iran should eschew the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium. The Iranian position, which I believe is legally correct, is that they have the right to such enrichment under the NPT. Uranians will point out that Germany, Japan, and others have fully mastered the fuel cycle without having the United States bomb them or the international community sanction them.

I think the realistic hope for a diplomatic deal has been that the Iranians will be allowed to enrich, but that inspectors will be in place to provide confidence that weaponization is not happening. If you think about the possibility of political change in Iran, I think that makes a deal more likely in one sense and less likely in another sense. On the “more likely” side of the ledger, a more liberal Iran is less likely to just decide it doesn’t care what anyone thinks and wants to build a nuclear weapon, never mind the consequences. But on the “less likely” side of the ledger, I think that the more political change you see in Iran, the less likely it is that Iran will agree to onerous inspections to monitor their nuclear activities. If Iran becomes a democracy just like Germany and Japan and South Korea, it seems plausible to think that they’ll insist on being treated the same as those countries and basically just trusted not to break the rules.

Shirin Ebadi Supports Obama Approach on Iran

Objectively pro-Ahmadenijad? So says Bob Kagan. (Wikimedia)

As conservatives continue to criticize Barack Obama’s rhetoric on the Iranian political crisis, Iranian dissidents and human rights leaders continue to support Obama. Shirin Ebadi, for example, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts as a human rights lawyer and advocate in Iran. For her trouble she’s been persecuted in the press, threatened with physical violence, etc. And as Spencer Ackerman points out she thinks Obama’s doing the right thing:

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said she has no complaints about Obama’s rhetoric. “What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard,” she said in a telephone interview from Geneva. “I respect his comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient.”

There’s been an effort made to fit this into some grand tableau about “idealism” in foreign policy, but the simple fact of the matter is that the time for the United States to do something on behalf of the Iranian opposition would be when Iranian opposition leaders ask us to. Simply inserting ourselves more directly into the situation in order to feel more self-righteous about it would be horrible. The people protesting on the streets in Iran are running very real risks to their lives and their families. We owe them more than thoughtless rhetoric.