fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Confronting Iran, Alienating and Harming the Iranian People

Quin Hillyer disagrees with me and argues that Santorum is right on Iran policy: Yes, Iran is indeed a country that must be confronted. And yes, one can oppose the regime while befriending the people. Indeed, to say that one is doing both is almost redundant. For many years now there has been a very […]

Quin Hillyer disagrees with me and argues that Santorum is right on Iran policy:

Yes, Iran is indeed a country that must be confronted. And yes, one can oppose the regime while befriending the people. Indeed, to say that one is doing both is almost redundant. For many years now there has been a very sizable percentage in Iran, especially among younger Iranians, who admire the West and yearn for freedom.

I appreciate Hillyer’s response, and I’ll be glad to explain what he called a “sort of strange line” in my previous post. I wrote:

Santorum’s statements last Thursday were typical of someone hostile to Iranian national interests, but one who nonetheless insists on presenting himself as a friend of the Iranian people. He insisted that “Iran is a country that must be confronted.”

Santorum and Paul were debating sanctions on Iran last week. In order to have any chance of coercing changes in Iranian regime behavior, these are sanctions that are going to have a significant adverse effect on the Iranian economy, which punishes the Iranian population for what its government is doing or may do in the future. Hawkish members of the Senate are now proposing sanctioning Iran’s central bank. Barbara Slavin points out that this will have negative effects on the population and possibly on the global economy:

Sanctioning the Central Bank would punish ordinary Iranians, something the Obama administration has said it wants to avoid, and could undermine what had been a growing international consensus against the Iranian nuclear programme. It could also jack up oil prices at a time when the global economy is teetering on the verge of a second recession.

Even when limited to the imposition of sanctions, confronting Iran exacts a significant toll from the Iranian population, it makes it more difficult for the Iranian middle class to flourish, and creates opportunities for the government to consolidate its power. In practice, confronting the Iranian government entails harming the Iranian people and undermining the opposition’s political struggle against the regime. Gasoline sanctions have not achieved the desired results, and the Iranian government has been able to turn them to its advantage at the expense of middle-class Iranians, many of whom are supportive of the Iranian opposition’s demands. As The Wall Street Journal reported last month:

Much of the opposition to the president’s 2009 re-election came from Iran’s middle class and merchants, many of whom criticized the president’s populist economic policies and believed his religious views bordered on heretical. It is this segment of the population—which owns the factories and the cars—that is feeling the most pain from the subsidy cuts, argue these analysts, while Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power base, the poor, is in the position to gain.

U.S. policy towards Iran is certainly not benefiting the Iranian people, and to the extent that Iranians perceive U.S. policy as an effort to prevent them from exercising their national rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty they resent our intrusion into their affairs. Even Green movement leaders have attacked Ahmadinejad for being too willing to make concessions to the U.S. on the nuclear issue, and Mousavi personally has a long history of supporting Iran’s right to enrichment.

The nuclear issue is one area where the regime and the population are generally on the same side, and by confronting Tehran on the nuclear issue the U.S. helps the regime at home. According to one survey of Iranian public opinion last year, U.S. favorability plummeted between 2008 and 2010, and 68% of Iranians perceived the U.S. to be the greatest threat to their country. Confronting Iran alienates the Iranian people and fosters anti-American sentiments. The survey also found majority support for developing nuclear weapons, which is more support than these surveys usually find, and very limited support for making any deals on the nuclear program.

What makes Santorum’s claim of friendship for the Iranian people harder to take seriously is his statement that they were free prior to 1979. Not only would most Iranians today reject this, but as far as political freedom is concerned it simply isn’t true. Viewed from the U.S., the Shah was clearly preferable to what came after him, but there are remarkably few Iranians in the country who would agree.

Obviously, I disagree with the basic assumption that Iran must be confronted. Iran currently poses no threat that cannot be deterred, and even if it had a nuclear weapon it could still be deterred. Regardless, there is a contradiction between confronting the Iranian government on an issue where it has popular support and claiming to be on the side of the Iranian people. Confronting Iran comes at the cost of strengthening the regime at home, sabotaging the Iranian middle class that has been at the heart of the opposition, and rallying the majority of Iranians behind the government against unwanted foreign interference.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here