The new U.S. consensus on Iran favors ‘‘crippling’’ economic sanctions designed to derail a nuclear weapons capability, but also to possibly facilitate a democratic breakthrough, writes Brookings’ Suzanne Maloney.
While the Islamic Republic’s “democratic pretenses have always been offset by its underlying authoritarian impulses, the modest role accorded to representative rule bolstered the regime’s stability and legitimacy,” she argues.
But that was then.
The emergence of a broad-based mass opposition following the June 12 presidential election is “a truly significant development”:
The resulting turmoil has confronted Iran with an almost unprecedented array of complex and interconnected internal challenges. On the street, the passionate, disciplined outpouring of outrage continues to percolate and, with further provocations and/or coherent direction, could evolve into a powerful and even a revolutionary force.
Unfortunately, she argues, the prospect of crippling the Iranian economy is a dangerous fallacy. Expectations of sanctions’ capacity to halt or reverse the regime’s nuclear program are overblown.
“The time horizon for sanctions to revise the calculus of the Iranian elite may be more protracted than the world is prepared to wait,” Maloney concludes.
The green opposition has shown incredible resilience and an amoebic capacity to re-form and re-surface despite severe repression and lack of (or perhaps because of the lack of) coordinated leadership.
With Mir Hossein Mousavi’s leadership largely symbolic [and morally tarnished by past human rights abuses], “the opposition has gone viral,” writes Gary Sick.
“Like the Internet that is its nervous system, it exists in small nodes and decisions emerge almost spontaneously”:
A close friend of mine in Tehran says that the opposition is like “fire under the ashes.” It smolders and pops up at the least opportunity, with the slightest puff of oxygen. If there were a free demonstration, he adds, where people could come without fear, there would be three million people in the streets of Tehran tomorrow demonstrating against the regime.
Sanctions may not change the current leadership’s nuclear ambitions, but could impact internal developments, writes Shlomo Avineri, professor of political science at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and former director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Iran’s vibrant civil society, now highly motivated and more mobilized than ever, may bring about internal change. This may be violent or partially negotiated, and it will not institute a western-style democracy in Tehran. But internal change in Iran could revolutionize Middle East politics. After all, what are called revolutions in the Arab world have been nothing but military coups, while Iran did go through a genuine popular revolution that brought down the Shah. It may happen again.
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