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A Realist By Any Other Name

Since June 12, U.S. realists and idealists have had an Iranian field day. The realists have dismissed the Green Movement, proclaimed a stolen election fair, and urged President Obama to toss aside human rights concerns and repair relations with Tehran in the American interest. The idealists have rained renewed fury on Ahmadinejad, called for his […]

Since June 12, U.S. realists and idealists have had an Iranian field day. The realists have dismissed the Green Movement, proclaimed a stolen election fair, and urged President Obama to toss aside human rights concerns and repair relations with Tehran in the American interest.

The idealists have rained renewed fury on Ahmadinejad, called for his overthrow and urged Obama to bury outreach and back Moussavi.

Both are wrong. ~Roger Cohen

Cohen then goes on to say that the U.S. should pursue engagement and give the Turkish-Brazilian deal “skeptical consideration,” which is to say that on the main points of contention in the Iran policy debate right now Cohen has sided quite clearly with the realists. He doesn’t like that some realists have dismissed the Green movement, even though these realists were apparently right all along that the Green movement was unrepresentative and was growing weaker as time went by. Those of us who said this did not take any pleasure in the weakness and setbacks of the Iranian opposition, but we refused to pretend that emotionally-satisfying boosterism for a protest movement that was not going to succeed was an acceptable substitute for critical thinking about what U.S. Iran policy should be.

Cohen doesn’t like that some realists have argued that Ahmadinejad would have avoided a run-off even without fraud, but there is reason to believe this is correct and there is not much evidence supporting the “coup” interpretation of last year’s election. Since a large part of the argument against engagement hinges on whether or not the Iranian government is seen by most Iranians as legitimate, it is very important to make the correct determination about the extent of the government’s support at the last election. If Cohen starts from the assumption that fraud changed the election’s outcome, he will also assume that there is a much broader base of support for the opposition protesters than there actually seems to be. This distorts everything else in his analysis, and causes him to find fault with the realists who have been almost entirely right on the most important points of contention for the last year.

It could be that the U.S. could speak out about abuse and pursue engagement at the same time, but what if making engagement the priority provides the U.S. with leverage and influence to improve the treatment of dissidents that it currently does not have? Even if it required some temporary silence on the subject of government abuses (at least in public), wouldn’t that move towards Cohen’s goal more effectively than condemning abuses while simultaneously trying (and failing) to engage with Iran’s government? Would it be acceptable to Cohen for the government to try to end the isolation that Cohen says “only serves the horror merchants” before engaging in a lot of public criticism of human rights abuses? If isolation “only serves the horror merchants,” doesn’t engagement serve the interests of dissidents and the regime’s other victims? What if engagement leads to significant long-term improvements in the treatment of dissidents, but comes at the price of briefly suspending public criticism? Is that a trade-off sympathizers with Iranian dissidents could make, or will they insist on putting their anti-regime rhetoric ahead of getting the policy right?

Cohen has been right on Iran more often than he has been wrong, but supporters of engagement aren’t going to get anywhere with Cohen’s odd brand of anti-realist realism that is mixed with his anti-idealist idealism.

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