Silence Is Golden
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As John has already said, U.S. involvement in the Iranian election controversy in any form is unwise. Except for the most generic statements condemning violence and urging peaceful resolution to the crisis, Washington should say nothing, and I mean nothing. After all, whose interests do we serve by having our government speak up? The casual assumption is that condemning foreign election fraud, of which there was probably a great deal in Iran, is both some kind of moral imperative and a strategically wise thing to do in order to aid Mousavi, which in turn is based on another questionable belief that Westerners are somehow obliged to aid him and his supporters. The first part of this is very dubious, and the second is clearly wrong.
Western policing of other nations’ elections, like our annual lectures to other states about the state of their human rights record, is getting very old. We readily assume not only that their elections are in some way our business, but we also usually identify with one side as being somehow more valid, genuine or representative of that country’s people. In Lebanon, the right people won, so the structural biases built into the Lebanese system are not only tolerated in the West, while similarly crude biases in the Iranian system are decried as outrageous, but the fruits of the Lebanese system are celebrated as a great triumph for freedom and light. The absurdity of avidly cheering Mousavi’s supporters, who voted for a man likely instrumental in the creation of Hizbullah, a few days after avidly cheering the so-called “crushing defeat” of Hizbullah in Lebanese elections earlier in the week should be apparent to everyone, but it is not clear to many people at all. Bhadrakumar’s commentary is invaluable in cutting through a lot of unthinking pro-Mousavi chatter:
Mousavi’s electoral platform has been a curious mix of contradictory political lines and vested interests but united in one maniacal mission, namely, to seize the presidential levers of power in Iran. It brought together so-called reformists who support former president Mohammad Khatami and ultra-conservatives of the regime. Rafsanjani is the only politician in Iran who could have brought together such dissimilar factions. He assiduously worked hand-in-glove with Khatami towards this end.
If we are to leave out the largely inconsequential “Gucci crowd” of north Tehran, who no doubt imparted a lot of color, verve and mirth to Mousavi’s campaign, the hardcore of his political platform comprised powerful vested interests who were making a last-ditch attempt to grab power from the Khamenei-led regime [bold mine-DL]. On the one hand, these interest groups were severely opposed to the economic policies under Ahmadinejad, which threatened their control of key sectors such as foreign trade, private education and agriculture [bold mine-DL].
For those who do not know Iran better, suffice to say that the Rafsanjani family clan owns vast financial empires in Iran, including foreign trade, vast landholdings and the largest network of private universities in Iran. Known as Azad there are 300 branches spread over the country, they are not only money-spinners but could also press into Mousavi’s election campaign an active cadre of student activists numbering some 3 million.
The Azad campuses and auditoria provided the rallying point for Mousavi’s campaign in the provinces. The attempt was to see that the campaign reached the rural poor in their multitudes who formed the bulk of voters and constituted Ahmadinejad’s political base. Rafsanjani’s political style is to build up extensive networking in virtually all the top echelons of the power structure, especially bodies such as the Guardian Council, Expediency Council, the Qom clergy, Majlis, judiciary, bureaucracy, Tehran bazaar and even elements within the circles close to Khamenei. He called into play these pockets of influence.
Were we to see a similarly bizarre alignment of the old guard and reformers in another context, quite a few Westerners might denounce the reformers’ alliance with the corrupt and well-connected. Oddly enough, the theme of corruption, which figured so prominently in Ahmadinejad’s attacks on Rafsanjani and Mousavi, has vanished entirely from any discussion of the political realities in Iran. There is undoubtedly a great desire to make the Mousavi forces seem more virtuous, and there is probably reluctance to endorse a criticism that Ahmadinejad has made, but just because someone’s enemies use the charge of corruption opportunistically and hypocritically doesn’t mean that the charge is baseless, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the charge doesn’t have a political impact. How would the election controversy look if we viewed it as a contest between Iran’s Huey Long and the representatives of an entrenched economic elite? Would Western sympathies shift at all? Would Westerners be less inclined to champion the cause of Mousavi as a result? Either way, we should all reflect on how easily we are biased in favor of one side or another in a foreign election based on partial, tendentious or misleading characterizations of the vying factions.
We pick sides like this all the time, and when we do it is almost always arbitrary, ill-informed and mistaken. For various reasons, one side in a contest is deemed to be more “pro-Western,” which occasionally even has the virtue of being true, and this side’s victory is then lauded as a great step forward, and anything preventing that victory is deemed inherently suspicious and illegitimate. In many cases, there really is fraud being perpetrated by the other, “anti-Western” side, and I don’t doubt that this is true to some extent in Iran, but the truly incomprehensible thing for so many Westerners is the possibility that the authoritarian populist whom Washington loathes actually commands majority support in his own country and could probably win without fraud. Why would such a person commit fraud and use violence to increase the scale of a victory that was already in his hands? Ask Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. They know the answer, and the answer is fairly straightforward. The reason for doing this is to acquire and consolidate power. One way to do this is to provoke the opposition, bait them into resistance and then pose as the defender of social and political order. The Kremlin has been doing this to Russian liberals for the better part of a decade. If these were people deeply concerned about legitimacy as we think of it, they would have respect for the law. There is, however, no contradiction between seeking democratic mandate and engaging in lawlessness. The two are more allied than we like to believe. Indeed, what are we seeing from the protesters except an expression of the conviction that they are the rightful majority, which entitles them to disregard the formal law so long as they are fighting for the recognition of their votes?
According to the conventionally circulated myth of the last two decades and more, democracy is supposed to yield more reasonable, acceptable governments whose members are more like us and who are not as hostile to us. If this does not happen, it can only be explained by fraud or taken as proof that such-and-such a state is not a “real democracy.” On the contrary, again and again from Russia to Venezuela we see that these states are democracies, but they do not possess meaningful liberal, constitutional orders. Majoritarian democracy by itself looks rather unpleasant and unattractive, and this will simply not do for an entire establishment that has raised the word and the increasingly amorphous meaning of that word into idols. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t also fraud, but that there is an important difference between lawbreaking, illiberal democrats who abuse the levers of power to benefit their faction and those who want to destroy representative democratic elements in their political system.
Andrew has called for Obama to demand an inquiry into the election. If Khamenei has already done this, for whatever reason, Obama’s call to do the same would be redundant and possibly even harmful. I suppose it would be potentially harmful only if we assume that a goal of U.S. policy should be to ensure that Iran has had a fair election, but if that is not one of Washington’s goals its public statements on the election outcome would then simply be irrelevant. One of the great problems with a foreign policy that takes global “leadership” as a given is that it seems to compel the U.S. government to have an official view on every event and crisis around the world. The idea that there are events that have nothing to do with us, and which we have no business concerning ourselves with, is so alien to our policymakers that I am fairly sure that it never occurs to them. Certainly, if it ever did, they would dismiss it immediately as unacceptable “inaction” in a “time of crisis.” Discretion sometimes truly is the better part of valor.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Frankly I find the whole thing eerily reminiscent of the “We are all Georgians!” now rhetoric of the McCain campaign. Certainly no one wants to see widespread violence, police brutality, and things spiraling out of control. But its not immediately apparent why our interference, with a country whom we have no real good-will with, would yield anything positive.
For the most part I think the wait and see attitude of the Obama administration is arguably the most restraint we’ve seen a President have in a long time, and I get the feeling, like his dismissive attitude towards Venezuela, that it will anger all the blowhards demanding that we bomb the “Axis of Evil” right off the stage. Theres alot to criticize Obama for in regards to foreign policy, but his “Who cares?” attitude to most of the menagerie of “evil” countries is probably his best position.
“Theres alot to criticize Obama for in regards to foreign policy, but his “Who cares?” attitude to most of the menagerie of “evil” countries is probably his best position.”
Quite right. I hope he resists pressure to do or say something just for the sake of doing and saying. It seems to me that the surest way to help things spiral out of control and maybe even plunge the country into civil conflict is to hold out hope to Mousavi’s people that the U.S. will in some way act on their behalf. The Hungarians and the Iraqi Shi’ites after them were led to believe such false promises, and they rose up only to be slaughtered. There are few things worse than that sort of passive-aggressive meddling.
w00t! I totally agree with you. On the one hand, I’m completely absolutely caught up in the drama.
On the other hand, I’m thinking, “Hey, wasn’t all the pundits just saying last week that no matter who gets elected, its gonna be pretty much the same nuke policy?” Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show had a guest who mentioned the paradox that during Mousavi’s earlier stint as Prime Minister, dissidents were being executed.
Well, hopefully there will be a peaceful and just resolution. Just gotta remember that even if the Iranians gets the guy who they actually wanted, it might not be the dude we want.
no matter which guy becomes president.
Ah, how we’ve all been looking forward to you writing this post, Daniel.
While I confess that, like joypog above, my heart is caught up in the drama, my head knows the best policy is the admirable restraint shown by Obama. And a further part of me has been quietly enjoying knowing the President will be earning a grudging respect at the American Conservative.
I also look forward to claims from the mainstream Right that Obama “lost” Iran due to his “weakness” when there is no revolution, or when there is a revolution that goes wrong (Colour Revolutions never went wrong under Bush, you see). If liberal democracy does happen to flower (ha ha), it will of course be due to Bush and not this lily-livered do-nothing.
By contrast, I imagine there will be many intelligent (if amoral) observers from Beijing to Moscow to Damascus watching in fascination as an American president doesn’t actually make a fool of himself by praising a sponsor of Hezbollah as the second coming of Mahatma Gandhi.
That’s not to say I don’t support the demonstrators. Good luck to them, and God bless their bravery. But we (in the UK and everywhere else) need Obama to make the right distinctions and decisions.
The article by Bhadrakumar was interesting, and I would recommend anyone to read it, but the sub-editing is insane. When the article says “Khatami” the reader is (except in one case I think) advised to read “Khamenei”. Or am I crazy?
The election as power struggle between rival Rafsanjani-business/IRGC-security power bases has the ring of truth, and I wish this sort of thing was explored and reported more thoroughly. I did take exception to many of his characterisations: Ahmedinejad didn’t actually win and it’s too easy to dismiss young middle-class Tehran as the Gucci crowd. And “tens of millions” of Basiji? Please. Does no one have any intuitive sense of numbers? Well, I guess we can’t rely on the atimes copy editing.
As to what will happen, presumably the White House are keeping their fingers crossed for the victory of a Rafsanjani plutocracy they can (possibly) do business with. But can they keep quite long enough? It’s fascinating.
Dan, this post sure was a buzzkill. Making a guy step back and think about who and what he’s cheering on. Darn you anyway.
Excellent post. I know absolutely zip about Iran and I need to admit that. Thanks for the wakeup call.
The whole situation reminds me of the old Bloom County cartoon (top one on the page) …
http://www.caracarn.com/bc/index.cfm?opus=807
… where way too many of us are at the same intellectual level as Binkley, including the talking heads on the cable news channels.
[...] this Larison piece is a solid read, and this is sage [...]
So what do you think of his comments? I mean, I agree with you, but realisitcally he was going to say SOMETHING, and I think given that he did a decent job of avoiding the most serious pitfalls.
I hear what you’re saying, but let’s throw out the emotion of the deal, and picking which side is virtuous. Let’s talk about our true interests, especially concerning what President Obama wants to do. Mousavi said that he backs discussions with Iran and the UN Security Council. Ahmadinejad is against them. Mousavi says:
“With Mr. Obama, the tone [of the U.S.] has changed. There is now talk of exchange and dialogue, which is a good sign. If this trend continues, it will help improve the situation.”
http://www.smartmoney.com/news/on/?story=ON-20090529-000843-1750
Isn’t it enough to root for Mousavi and his bloc for that reason alone?
Obama’s statement here seemed appropriate and reasonable for the most part. No speculation on what happened, criticizing the violence and re-stating basic principles about his diplomatic approach–this seemed all right to me on the whole. One might quibble here or there, but I don’t see much that I would criticize. Stressing non-interference and respect for the Iranian people was good.
Right on.
Probably the worst thing that can happen to a faction involved in an internal power struggle or domestic upheaval is to be in any way associated with the interests or influence of a foreign power. During the French Revolution, the Jacobins were enormously successful at demonizing the Queen as an Austrian agent, which carried a lot more weight than ordinary anti-royalist invective. (although perhaps not as much as incest) While it would not be terribly risky for Obama to denounce any percieved fraud, he should certainly stay away from hailing the protestors as champions of American values or some such. This is not just a tactical mistake but a moral one as well. We tend to forget that other humans do not regard themselves as faceless participants in a vast pro-Western International vangard. The Iranian dissidents see themselves, rather, as committed patriots trying to save their nation from corruption as misrule. We should honor their self-image by maintaining a rhetorical distance.
As it happens, our aggressive posture towards Iran will probably make the vaunted “secular revolution” or “hipster uprising!” everyone seems to be waiting for less probable, because a nation which feels the pressure of external threats tends to value power over liberty, international strength over domestic house-cleaning, and hasty re-consolidation over thorough dispersal.
i knew there was a reason i kept loading your blog…i was waiting for this post.
doing absolutely nothing about Iran sounds like a really good plan right about now.
Those of you who suffer from the illusion that the Obama administration is not meddling in the internal affairs of Iran ought to view this video: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22839.htm. Not all things that glitter are gold… especially Obama’s silence.
I don’t know whether the administration is interfering covertly in Iran or not. That is not what I was talking about here in any case. After the “color” revolutions, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if Washington is providing funding or aid on the sly to opposition forces, but at the moment I have no reason to believe this is the case.
How strange. Everyone seems to think that calling for a fair election and giving people an opportunity for democracy is the same as supporting Thug #2. That is not what this is about. It is about supporting freedom and democracy, Look at Bush second inaugural. “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”What did Reagan say: “We call upon all free people to join in urging the Government.. to reestablish conditions that will make constructive negotiations and compromise possible.” Thats all he needs to say. No one is advocating dropping a couple of A teams in the countryside or starting a bombing campaign.
But from the above I guess it is OK for them to slaughter as many people as they like so we can resume negotiations without preconditions. We don’t want to meddle in their affairs after all. That hope and change thing? Fuggetaboutit.
I agree that Obama throwing his weight in behind Mousavi is a bad idea right now, for the fact that foreign support of a political group in a country usually removes a large basis of its popular support. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t at some point become involved in the conflict, especially if popular support for Mousavi breaks into widespread violent. Isolationism is really not a valid position to take anymore. The idea that the US does not need to have an opinion for every crises outside America unless it directly impacts us is silly. Globalization has seen to it that everyone’s economies, and thus their standards of living, are interdependent. Iran has 10% of the world’s remaining oil reserves, it is the US’s best interests to make sure that it has a good, stable relationship with the country. If that means not doing anything in hopes the democratic system will out and stability will return, that’s all well and good. But doing nothing, no matter what, because it’s none of our business is a silly opinion, from an ethical, or pragmatic standpoint.
I wrote something about this over at mansizedtarget.com. The neocons are so eager to relive the moral clarity of the Cold War they have forgotten that most Third World countries’ elections are referenda on who will oppress whom. Have they forgotten these are Muslims we’re talking about having an election through a process managed by Mullahs in an Islamic Republic? This is hardly the Velvet Revolution or Solidarity in Poland. It’s more like the Beer Hall Putsch or the Night of the Long Knives or some other unsavory episode of political violence that hardly led to a new awakening of freedom.
It is somewhat encouraging to thing some Iranians are fed up with their regime. But the same enthusiasm, impatience with oppression, and sense of national reawakening was equally present in 1979.
I also think it’s comforting to think the election had to be rigged. Really? We’re talking about Muslims in a country run by crazy Mullahs for the last 30 years.
Dude, Francisco, really? The fact that young Iranians use cel phones and Facebook, that their friends and family help them get information out, and that Saberi photocopied records (journalists would never do that without government coordination) is proof that Obama is meddling in Iran? Give me a frigging break. If Saberi was a spy, why did they release her?
I sent this article to one of my relatives in Tehran. She responded as follows:
Dear Behzad ,
I finally managed to read your article. In my opinion the election in Iran was between bad and worse ,… so we chose the bad !
there was no guarantee that if mousavi has been elected ,he would be better than ahmadinejad ! but at least we could look at him without the feeling of disgust !!! at least he is educated ….at least he doesn’t say Big lies !!! at least he has an educated wife who is everywhere with him and supports him.and I personally like his ideas and reforms.
about “Gucci rally ” …!!! it wasn’t like that ! people form different level of socioeconomic classes can be fined in mousavi supporters! you really should be here and see it for yourself to understand what I mean. they all came and come and will come for their hearts and for what they believe in .. nothing else.
I don’t know what will happen in the future , but I believe that what ever will happen , it doesn’t matter much,… because the most important thing had happened.people has fined out that they can decide what they want ,…. they can be united and they can fight for it.it was a huge step for our nation. and it scares the country leaders . nothing else matters.
boos
Mojdeh
[...] don’t think Daniel Larison’s points are entirely wrong. I said downblog that the US government should keep its mouth shut. [...]