Credit: Gozaar
The announcement of a new civil society initiative in the Middle East comes at a time when the administration is facing criticism from Capitol Hill and democracy and human rights activists over its reluctance to support reformers in Iran.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman this week told lawmakers that cuts or denial of funds to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Freedom House, and the International Republican Institute did not reflect any shift in policy.
But legislators said the administration should do more to highlight its support for democracy and reform advocates. “It might not be a bad idea to let people know verbally, out loud, for all the world to see, including them [reformers in Iran], the kind of support, at least talk, that we appreciate what they are doing and that we are inspired by their courage,” said Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House of Representatives Middle East Subcommittee.
Some analysts suggest that regime change will not improve prospects for checking Iran’s nuclear aspirations, claiming that the Green opposition largely shares the ruling hardline faction’s foreign and security policies.
A recent speech by former culture minister Ataollah Mohajerani, appeared to confirm such suspicions and his claim that “the green movement has no expectations whatsoever” of Western support for Iranian democracy and human rights will be taken as endorsing a stand-off approach.
But, at a recent seminar in Brussels, a prominent representative of the Green movement insisted that the opposition does not want nuclear weapons. Domestic political considerations are clearly a constraint on what Green movement leaders can state publicly without playing into the hands of hardliners ready to denounce them as unpatriotic dupes of the West.
Furthermore, as Jackson Diehl notes, liberal Iranians like scholar Mehdi Khalaji are adamant that Mohajerani does not represent the Green opposition.
“The true leaders of this movement,” Khalaji argues, “are students, women and human rights activists, and political activists who have no desire to work in a theocratic regime or in a government within the framework of the existing constitution.”
But the Green revolution is a diverse movement, said Mohsen Kadivar, a former activist in Iran’s Islamic revolution, who criticizes the administration for neglecting the internal opposition.
“The U.S. administration has focused on nuclear energy. I don’t hear anything about human rights and democracy,” said Kadivar, an Islamist-turned-dissident who recently served a one-year jail sentence for sedition in Iran. “The main issue for Iranians is not nuclear energy. The main issue for Iranians is human rights and democracy.”
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