WASHINGTON - As United States President Barack Obama attempts to navigate the
treacherous currents of the ongoing political crisis in Iran, he faces a heated
attack from neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who are urging him
both to offer unequivocal support to the protesters supporting defeated
presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and to scuttle his planned
diplomatic engagement with Tehran.
So far, Obama's cautious stance has earned praise from Iranian activists, area
experts and much of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, who warn that
an enthusiastic US embrace of the protesters would threaten to delegitimize
them.
"What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up
to them to make their voices heard," Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian
human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi told the Washington Post on Thursday. "I
respect [Obama's] comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is
sufficient."
Still, the right-wing attacks have put a great deal of political pressure on
the president to take a more activist stance, and may pave the way for a
domestic political backlash against him if the Iranian government ultimately
represses the protesters and keeps hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in
place after he won a disputed term for another four years.
Leading the charge have been prominent congressional Republicans, such as
Senator John McCain and Representative Eric Cantor, as well as neo-conservative
pundits such as Robert Kagan, whose Washington Post column on Wednesday argued
that Obama's "strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the
government's efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in
league with the opposition's efforts".
Similarly, influential neo-conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer called the
administration's rhetoric "disgraceful" and claimed that Obama was offering
"implicit support for this repressive, tyrannical regime".
Those calling for a firm pro-Mousavi stance "are playing with dynamite",
according to Patrick Disney of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a
group that has been supportive of the protesters.
"At best, such grandstanding would give the hardliners in Iran a reason to
paint the reformist camp as a stooge of the West; at worst, it could incite the
crowds even more and risk blowing the top off an already tumultuous situation,"
Disney wrote in the Huffington Post.
Perhaps more significantly, many hawks in the US are already looking beyond the
current political crisis - which some argue will inevitably end in defeat for
the protesters - to argue against any diplomatic outreach to Tehran.
They have held up the regime's alleged rigging of the elections for Ahmadinejad
and its repression of demonstrators as evidence that the Islamic Republic's
leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is too brutal and aggressive to be
negotiated with.
"Rarely in US history has a foreign policy course been as thoroughly repudiated
by events as his approach to Iran in his first months in office," wrote
neo-conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens on Wednesday.
"Even [former president] Jimmy Carter drew roughly appropriate conclusions
about the Iranian regime after the hostages were taken in 1979."
But underlying this consistent criticism of Obama are a number of tensions in
neo-conservative attitudes toward Iran. Among hawks, the protesters' prospects
of success remain a matter of debate - as does the question of what the
opposition's ultimate goals are.
A growing sentiment on the right - increasingly held outside neo-conservative
circles - holds that full-blown regime change in Tehran is the only acceptable
resolution to the Iranian problem.
However, Mousavi and his supporters have never called for overthrowing the
Islamic Republic, but rather have co-opted the rhetoric and iconography of the
Islamic Revolution for their cause.
Moreover, Mousavi - like all candidates in last week's presidential elections -
is adamant that he would continue Iran's civilian nuclear program, although he
has suggested that Iran would be willing to negotiate on the issue of nuclear
weapons.
Barring a drastic reversal resulting in outright regime change - which few
experts believe is likely to occur - the US would be likely to face a similar
strategic calculus on the nuclear issue whether Mousavi or Ahmadinejad were
president.
It is because of this that some neo-conservatives have suggested that an
Ahmadinejad victory is preferable, since his confrontational stance makes it
easier to rally popular support for harsher measures - such as sanctions or
ultimately military force - against Tehran.
"If I were enfranchised in this election ... I would vote for Ahmadinejad,"
Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes said this month. "I would prefer to
have an enemy who's forthright and obvious, who wakes people up with his
outlandish statements."
This line of thought is echoed by many in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and his Likud party have historically had close ties with US
neo-conservatives.
On Tuesday, Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad intelligence agency, told the
Knesset (parliament) that "[I]f the reformist candidate Mousavi had won, Israel
would have had a more serious problem because it would need to explain to the
world the danger of the Iranian threat, since Mousavi is perceived in the
international arena as a moderate element."
For those who view any continued Iranian nuclear progress as an intolerable
threat to Israeli or US interests, a reformist victory that stopped short of
regime change might therefore be the worst possible outcome, since it would
preserve what neo-conservatives view as an intrinsically totalitarian and
expansionist regime while undercutting support for hawkish anti-Iran policies.
For this reason, neo-conservatives have been somewhat hesitant in their embrace
of Mousavi, with many of them offering support for the protesters while
maintaining that he is little different from Ahmadinejad and that it is
Khamenei who wields real power.
One notable exception has been Michael Ledeen, a long-time proponent of regime
change in Tehran now based at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
who suggests that Mousavi has been radicalized by the events of the past week
and bears little resemblance to the moderate seen on the campaign trail.
"Does Mousavi even want to change the system? I think he does, and in any
event, I think that's the wrong question," Ledeen wrote on Monday. "He is not a
revolutionary leader, he is a leader who has been made into a revolutionary by
a movement that grew up around him."
Ledeen also attacked as "embarrassingly silly" the views of Danielle Pletka and
Ali Alfoneh, two fellow neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute.
In a Tuesday op-ed in The New York Times, Pletka and Alfoneh dismissed the
opposition movement as "little more than a symbolic protest" that had been
"crushed" by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
For Ledeen, by contrast, "The most powerful leaders in Iran are facing a life
and death showdown" and Mousavi's aim is to bring down the Islamic Republic
itself.
However, Ledeen's positions on Iran have always been idiosyncratic, even among
neo-conservatives. He has maintained for years that the Islamic Republic is on
the verge of collapse and that Iran's populace is secular-minded, pro-US, and
merely waiting for an opportunity to throw off its rulers.
Perhaps due to perceptions that Ledeen is "crying wolf" about the end of the
Islamic Republic, other hawks seem less inclined to share his confidence in
revolution in Iran. Most are preparing to stake out a hard line against Tehran
whether it is Mousavi or Ahmadinejad who ultimately emerges as the victor.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
