TEHRAN - Washington's latest policy of
putting more pressure on Iran through securing
additional funding for "democracy-promoting"
activities inside Iran has been greeted with
official and popular rejection, even open
derision, in Tehran.
"I think the
Americans have no idea of what they're talking
about," said Mamak Nourbaksh, a teacher of English
literature. "No one is going to touch them [the
funds], no one will work with them."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
request for extra funds marks a nearly eightfold
increase in the US government's current
expenditure on Iran and
signals the beginning of a new period of concerted
diplomatic pressure by the United States against
Iran, a country that President George W Bush
included in his infamous "axis of evil" speech in
2002.
In seeking an additional US$75
million from the US Congress to fund Iranian
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote
democracy, human rights and trade unionism, Rice
is broadening the range of non-military options at
Washington's disposal to weaken from within
Tehran's clerical regime.
Of the new
outlay, $50 million will go toward Farsi radio
broadcasts; another $15 million is earmarked for
increasing participation in the political process,
including measures such as expanded Internet
access. The Bush administration hopes to spend $5
million to fund scholarships and fellowships for
young Iranians, and the State Department said $5
million "would go to public diplomacy efforts
aimed at Iran, including its Persian-language
website".
"The United States will actively
confront the aggressive policies of the Iranian
regime," Rice said. "At the same time, we will
work to support the aspirations of the Iranian
people for freedom and democracy in their
country."
Such pronouncements are greeted
with open skepticism by ordinary Iranians who have
seen the infrastructure of neighboring Iraq and
Afghanistan sustain significant blows by US
invasions, after which they have lagged far behind
the touted recovery schedules. Iranians also have
not forgotten the support offered by Washington to
their arch-enemy Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq
War of the 1980s.
One of the militantly
anti-clerical-regime groups that could stand to
benefit from the new windfall is the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a Marxist-Islamist
organization that is hated within Iran because it
sided with the Iraqi dictator against Iran during
the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.
The MEK has
been registered by the State Department as a
terrorist organization for the past 10 years, but
now neo-conservative factions of the Bush
administration are lobbying hard to remove it from
the list. Should the MEK end up benefiting from US
pro-democracy largesse, it would send a clear
message to people inside Iran that Washington
funds groups that engage in terrorist activity.
Some reports quote unidentified US officials as
saying that the MEK would not receive any of the
new funds.
"Most of the groups which will
be suckling from this new taxpayer teat include
designated terrorist organizations such as the MEK
and ancien regime agonists, all with their
own agendas which are not limited to outreach to
Iranians, as these groups have little if any
traction or credibility in Iran today," said
Donald Weadon, an international lawyer
specializing in Iran.
As much as $50
million of the planned allocation is directed at
media planning, with the stated intention of
extending the government-run Voice of America's
Farsi service from a few hours a day to
around-the-clock coverage. But the idea that
Iranians would turn more pro-US if only they had
access to free media belies the reality that,
unlike Saddam-era Iraq, in Iran the people already
have relatively unrestricted access to satellite
stations and news on the Internet.
"If the
Danish cartoons and most recent Abu Ghraib
pictures are timed to promote another war in the
Mideast and inculcate the 'clash of civilizations'
mindset in the public," said Cyrus Safdari, an
independent Iranian analyst, "then Madame Rice has
a really bad sense of timing in seeking to 'reach
out to the people of Iran' - who don't need $75
million to watch ... 'a few bad apples' from the
US torturing people in Abu Ghraib."
Nevertheless, the announcement comes at a
time when an increasing amount of evidence points
toward the fact that the Iranian government is
cracking down on access to information. The
British Broadcasting Corp's popular
Persian-language service has been blocked after
the Iranian government accused the British Foreign
Ministry-funded medium of being anti-Iranian. And
many Farsi dailies have switched to a more
nationalistic, less critical coverage of the
government after the Danish-cartoon protests and
the concomitant polarization.
"If the
money goes to improve and expand VOA's Persian
service, this would also be money well spent,"
said Professor William Beeman, an Iran specialist
at Brown University. "However, Sam Brownback's $3
million [1] appears to have been sucked up by
private parties with no possibility of public
oversight.
"As a taxpayer, I would
certainly object to more money being spent in this
way - particularly if it goes to private
commercial broadcasters where there is no open
accountability as to operational activities or
content. This would be a deeply irresponsible use
of US public funds," Beeman said.
The US
has a history of covert operations aimed at
destabilizing the Tehran regime that went awry. In
1980, eight US commandos were killed at the
beginning of an operation to rescue American
diplomatic hostages held by the new revolutionary
regime in the US Embassy in Tehran. After a US
airplane and helicopter crashed, it was decided to
call off the mission, but not before holding
hostage for three hours 44 Iranians whose bus had
stumbled on the scene.
More recently, in
1996, an $18 million covert action aimed at
unseating the government of then-president Hashemi
Rafsanjani had its secret cover blown even before
it started. Washington insiders, concerned at the
potentially disastrous effects it would have,
leaked the story to the mainstream press,
prompting a furious backlash from the authorities
in Tehran, which authorized a $20 million
counteroffensive.
Washington's new
initiative might end up backfiring and contribute
to the further stifling of civil society in Iran,
if experience can be trusted. NGOs are regarded
suspiciously by the Iranian government and are
often accused of being agents of foreign
influence.
Rice failed to make clear how
the funds would be disbursed to groups inside
Iran, given that Washington has lacked a direct
diplomatic presence in Tehran for the past 26
years.
Some American analysts have also
reacted with skepticism at the initiative,
pointing out that it may be a case of too little
too late. "One suspects there are no shortage of
potential Iranian Chalabis [2] ready to set
themselves up in a nice apartment in London's West
End with some copiers and fax machines and the
requisite bank accounts to reap the windfall,"
said James Russell, a senior lecturer at the Naval
Postgraduate School's department of national
security affairs.
Despite other secret
efforts the US Central Intelligence Agency has
mounted in recent years, including a $2 million
campaign in 1995 based largely on radio broadcasts
denouncing the clerical regime, the CIA's analysts
see little hope of creating a new generation of
pro-Washington leaders for Iran.
Notes 1. Senator Sam
Brownback, as chairman of a US Senate Foreign
Relations subcommittee, successfully campaigned
for a $3 million appropriation for 2005, mandated
by Congress, to help pro-democracy activists
inside Iran. This was in addition to the
approximately $10 million annually allocated for
such activities.
2. Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi
exile, received millions of dollars from the US
while being courted as a possible successor to
Saddam Hussein.
Iason
Athanasiadis is an Iran-based
correspondent.
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