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2 How to get real regime change in
Iran By Stephen Zunes
democratic governments over the
past few decades, concluded that the changes were
catalyzed not through foreign invasion, and only
rarely through armed revolt or voluntary
elite-driven reforms, but overwhelmingly by
democratic civil-society organizations using
non-violent action and other forms of civil
resistance, such as strikes, boycotts, civil
disobedience, and mass protests.
In
apparent recognition of this trend, the US
Congress last year approved US$75 million in
funding for a Bush administration
request to support various
Iranian opposition groups. However, most of these
groups are led by exiles who have virtually no
following within Iran or any experience with the
kinds of grassroots mobilization necessary to
build a popular movement that could threaten the
regime's survival. By contrast, most of the
credible opposition within Iran has renounced this
US initiative and has asserted that it has simply
made it easier for the regime to claim that all
pro-democracy groups and activists are paid agents
of the United States.
Despite the
increased repression of recent years, Iran has
witnessed a growing civil-society movement and
increasing calls for greater freedom. Indeed,
those in the Iranian regime correctly recognize
that the biggest threat to their grip on power
comes not from the US but from their own people.
Civilian-based insurrections have played a
critical role over the past century in challenging
Iranian rulers, such as during the Constitutional
Revolution of 1907 and the overthrow of the shah
in 1979. Iran's clerical leaders, faced with
growing dissent - particularly among youth, the
middle class, and urban dwellers - realize that
they may be next.
In an effort to head off
such a popular uprising and discredit
pro-democracy leaders and their supporters, Iran's
reactionary leadership has been making false
claims, aired in detail in a series of television
broadcasts during the third week of July, that
certain Western non-governmental organizations
that have given workshops and offered seminars for
Iranian pro-democracy activists on the theory and
history of strategic non-violent struggle are
actually plotting with the Bush administration in
offering specific instructions on how to overthrow
the regime. On several occasions, Iranian
authorities have arrested and tortured these
activists, forcing them to sign phony confessions
allegedly confirming these allegations.
Some Western bloggers and other writers,
understandably skeptical of US intervention in
oil-producing nations in the name of "democracy",
have actually bought into these claims by Iran's
hardline clerics that prominent non-violent
activists from Europe and the US - most of whom
happen to be highly critical of US policy toward
Iran - are somehow working as agents of the Bush
administration.
These conspiracy theories
have in turn been picked up by some progressive
websites and periodicals, which repeat them as
fact. The result has been to strengthen the hand
of Iran's repressive regime, weaken democratic
forces in Iran, and strengthen the argument of US
neo-conservatives that only military force from
the outside - and not non-violent struggle by the
Iranian people themselves - is capable of freeing
Iran from repressive clerical
rule.
Historically, individuals and groups
with experience in effective mass non-violent
mobilization tend to come from the left and carry
a skeptical view of government power, particularly
governments with a history of militarism and
conquest. Conversely, large bureaucratic
governments used to projecting political power
through military force or elite diplomatic
channels have little understanding or appreciation
of mass popular struggles.
As a result,
the dilemma for US policymakers is this: the most
realistic way to overthrow the Iranian regime is
through a process the United States cannot
control.
The US government has
historically promoted regime change through
military invasions, coups d'etat and other kinds
of violent seizures of power by an undemocratic
minority. Non-violent "people power" movements, by
contrast, promote regime change through empowering
pro-democratic majorities. Unlike fomenting a
military coup or supporting a military occupation,
which are based on control over the population and
repression of potential political opponents,
non-violent civil insurrections - as a result of
being based on a broad coalition of popular
movements - are impossible for an outside power to
control.
As a result, the best hope for
Iran comes from Iranian civil society, which,
despite the repression from its government and the
negative consequences of sanctions and threats
against its country from Washington, is quite
capable of eventually bringing down the regime and
establishing a more just and democratic society.
Freedom will some day come to Iran. When it does,
however, it will be in spite of - rather than
because of - the policies of the United States.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of
politics at the University of San Francisco and is
the Middle East editor and advisory board member
of Foreign Policy In Focus. He is the author
of Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the
Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage, 2003) and
the principal editor of Nonviolent Social
Movements: A Geographical Perspective
(Blackwell, 1999). Published with
permission of the International
Relations Center
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