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Democratic
backlash
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
TEHRAN - The Bush administration may be
openly contemplating giving economic incentives to
Iran's ruling clergy in exchange for
denuclearization, yet the US Congress is singing a
different tune, that of regime change, as seen by
a house committee's recent approval of a bill that
for all practical purposes shuns any chance of
US-Iran dialogue.
On April 13, the House
Committee on International Relations
overwhelmingly passed HR 282 titled "Iran Freedom
Support Act". It calls for financial support of
anti-government groups, as long as they meet some
criteria, tightening the sanctions regime on Iran,
and penalizing foreign companies doing business
with Iran and/or investing in Iran. While it is
unclear whether the US Senate will follow suit and
adopt this bill when and if it is passed in the
House of Representatives, it is nonetheless
instructive to point out some of the salient
aspects or consequences of this bill and to
contextualize it in terms of overall US-Iran
relations.
First, this bill sets aside any
hesitations regarding interference in Iran's
internal affairs and seeks to make "transition to
democracy" the US government's central focus on
Iran. Second, it broadens the purview of current
sanctions on Iran by prohibiting sales to Iran of
"advanced conventional weapons" in addition to
"chemical, biological or nuclear weapons". Third,
the bill authorizes the president to "provide
financial and political assistance to foreign and
domestic individuals, organizations and entities
that support democracy" in Iran. And fourth, it
calls for a complete halt of Iran's nuclear
program and the "supply of nuclear fuel" to Iran.
Regarding the latter, it is
noteworthy that the Bush administration of US
President George W Bush, much like the
Europeans, has tacitly consented to the recent
Russia-Iran agreement for the return of "spent
fuel" from the Bushehr power plant to Russia.
Hence, if adopted into law, the above-mentioned
bill would dictate a policy change on the part of
the Bush administration and its atomic diplomacy
toward Iran. Yet, such a change would collide with
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime which,
even in its proposed revised format, allows Iran's
import of nuclear fuel for its reactor.
On
the other hand, the Bush administration is
currently engaged in a highly sensitive and
delicate concert with Europe on Iran, which can be
quickly derailed if Europe's "package approach" is
undermined by a congressional intervention that
makes dialogue and political and security
cooperation with the current regime in Iran
impossible, in the light of last November's Paris
Agreement between Iran and the so-called European
Three (EU-3 - Britain, Germany and France), which
calls for precisely such a cooperation.
Of course, US history is replete
with episodes of legislative interference in
what is usually referred to as the executive
branch, namely the foreign-policy turf, but what is so
striking about HR 282 is that it appears on the surface
to be completely in tune with the
Bush administration's singular focus on Tehran's regime as a
member of the "axis of evil", or to
paraphrase President Bush in his latest State of the Union
Address, the "world's primary state sponsor of
terror".
Yet, as stated, increasingly,
given the geopolitical realities and the mix of
shared or parallel US-Iran interests in the
Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the
Middle East, the White House appears more and more
willing to go multilateral vis-a-vis Iran when, in
fact, HR 282 saddles US policy back on the
unilateralist track almost by definition.
Not only that, the US government has
pledged itself, since signing the Algiers
Agreement with Iran in 1981, not to interfere in
Iran's internal affairs, yet that appears to be
not the least inhibitive of Congress's singular
march to democratize Iran - even if it means
collaborating with certain opposition groups, such
as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, deemed as "terrorist"
both by the State Department and the EU (in their
joint Paris Declaration of November 5, 2004).
There is no doubt the democratic process in
Iran needs to be deepened and much remains to be
done in all areas of freedom of speech, political
pluralism, and the like. Yet it is far from
clear that in the light of the United States' unhappy
history in Iran, harking back to the 1953 coup and
the subsequent quarter of a century of one-man
dictatorship, such initiatives by US Congress will
actually end up serving this objective.
Instead, it has the likely potential of
causing a political backlash against the
democratic forces in Iran struggling for a more
open polity in a difficult regional milieu, by the
mere fact that the US government via this bill has
targeted these groups for alliance for a major
regime change inside Iran.
At
present,
there does not appear to be any significant
momentum toward regime change in Iran, and the
best that can be realistically hoped for is
incremental democratization, through a selective
"rationalization" of the political and judicial
process and the strengthening of Iranian civil
society.
Unfortunately, HR 282, by
calling on the US president to tap into the funds for
the "greater Middle East" to implement the objectives
of this bill, introduces yet another blow
to the legitimacy of this project, recently adopted
by the Group of Eight nations under the rubric of
partnership for progress. In other words, this
pending bill risks the entire edifice of Bush's
Middle East policy, and not just his evolving Iran
policy.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD,
is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11",
Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with
former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2,
2003. He teaches political science at Tehran
University.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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