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Implications Of February 11

There is not much yesterday that happened in Iran that most people in the West should find encouraging. Green movement sympathizers were confronted with the reality that the regime was able to disperse, divide and control protesters fairly effectively. As they had already done before, government forces dominated public space and dictated its use to […]

There is not much yesterday that happened in Iran that most people in the West should find encouraging. Green movement sympathizers were confronted with the reality that the regime was able to disperse, divide and control protesters fairly effectively. As they had already done before, government forces dominated public space and dictated its use to the dissidents. It is remarkable that protesters were able to do as much as they did, which is to their credit, but the lopsided nature of the contest became even more clear than it had been last year. “Recovering realists” such as Richard Haass now have even less of an argument than they did before that internally-driven regime change is now the best hope for U.S. interests. That hasn’t stopped Haass from repeating his call for siding with a protest movement that is, if anything, even weaker than it was a month ago. Haass stated that it was not a “decisive moment,” but when there are no decisive moments things tend to work on behalf of the status quo. The regime can afford to wait, but the protest movement at some point has to make some tangible gains or be slowly whittled away over time.

Advocates of sanctions and/or military strikes remain at odds with the interests of the Iranians in the streets. What they propose to do would make the lot of these people even harder and add to the burdens they already bear. Unfortunately, according to the twisted logic that seems to govern our Iran policy debate sanctions and/or military action have become much more likely now that the possibility of internal political change has receded that much more. There is no good reason why this should be the case, but supporters of sanctions and/or bombing have not needed good reasons so far. Our Iran policy debate is severely limited by the unrealistic goal of halting Iran’s nuclear program, and our options keep being reduced to the push for sanctions or military action for that reason. The third option of domestic political change was never likely to occur, and once that became clear the same dead-end answers were there waiting to be given.

Those of us who have been skeptical of the size and potential of the Green movement should also find yesterday’s events discouraging. The case for real, sustained engagement with Tehran is more compelling now than it was before. Nothing has better demonstrated the lack of U.S. influence than the meaningless debate here at home over how best to aid the Green movement when the U.S. has no leverage and no means to help them. Cutting ourselves off from Iran has achieved none of our government’s goals, it has failed to alter the Iranian government’s behavior in the slightest, and it deprives the opposition of the political and economic oxygen that such movements need to flourish. What is most discouraging about yesterday, then, is that there will be even fewer people who will be willing to pursue a policy of engagement.

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