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Pawlenty and Iran

While protesters were killed and tortured, Secretary Clinton said the Administration was “waiting to see the outcome of the internal Iranian processes.” She and the president waited long enough to see the Green Movement crushed. ~Tim Pawlenty We can all agree that the Green Movement was crushed, but what exactly could the administration have done […]

While protesters were killed and tortured, Secretary Clinton said the Administration was “waiting to see the outcome of the internal Iranian processes.” She and the president waited long enough to see the Green Movement crushed. ~Tim Pawlenty

We can all agree that the Green Movement was crushed, but what exactly could the administration have done that would have prevented or positively affected this outcome? Iran hawks view the Iranian regime in the worst possible light as ruthless, uncompromising tyrants, but they also seem to think that they would be responsive to a harsh scolding from foreign leaders. Oh, and sanctions. We shouldn’t forget sanctions. Pawlenty has a comical amount of confidence in sanctions as an effective instrument of foreign policy. If they have not been successful to date, he takes it for granted that all that will needed is even more sanctions.

The choice in the summer of 2009 in responding to the Iranian crackdown was between full-throated denunciation that would have changed nothing, and which could very well have made things worse for the opposition, and exercising restraint by saying very little in the knowledge that the U.S. could not lend any support that would have been constructive. On the whole, the Green movement didn’t want U.S. or foreign help. As Hooman Majd wrote in January 2010:

U.S. President Barack Obama has so far expressed only moral support for Iranians fighting for their civil rights and has rightly articulated the unrest in Iran as a purely Iranian affair. Lacking relations with Iran, Obama can do little to help the green movement, but plenty to hurt it. Coming out squarely on the side of the opposition in Iran is likely to undermine its credibility, and perhaps even lend credence to the government’s assertion that the movement is a foreign-inspired plot that will rob Iran of its independence.

As it was, Western expressions of support for the Green movement premised on the idea that the movement was intent on toppling the current regime were genuinely harmful to the movement’s chances.

The Green movement is not the only thing Pawlenty gets wrong in his remarks on Iran. He seems to believe that the administration had a serious engagement policy with Iran, but it was never a genuine attempt to engage with the Iranian government on the nuclear issue or on anything else. It was mostly done for the benefit of other states in order to organize a new round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, and to that very limited extent it achieved its misguided goal. When Brazil and Turkey attempted to mediate the dispute, the administration slapped them down. Further, he absurdly concludes that the reason that U.S.-Saudi relations have been in a nosedive this year is Saudi dissatisfaction with the Iran engagement policy, when it is fairly common knowledge that the Saudis and all of the Gulf states have been reacting to Obama’s treatment of Mubarak.

Pawlenty then veers into the realm of sheer fantasy:

When [Assad goes], the mullahs of Iran will find themselves isolated and vulnerable. Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally. If we peel that away, I believe it will hasten the fall of the mullahs.

There is no reason to suppose that Assad’s fall would hasten the collapse of the Iranian regime. It might present a serious blow to Iranian influence in the region, and it could curtail Iran’s ability to wield influence in Lebanon, but that wouldn’t make Iran much more isolated. There’s no way of knowing what would replace Assad in any case, and it is possible that a future Syrian government would find some advantage in continuing the economic and military ties between Syria and Iran that Assad has increased. Regardless, Iran would still have diplomatic and economic ties to many other significant powers, not least of which include Russia, China, and India. Such a setback in foreign affairs would not trigger regime collapse, and it is foolish to expect this.

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