THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 195, October 19, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
A LEVER OF CHANGE IN IRAN
By Dr. Michael Rubin
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: U.S. PROMOTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN IRAN -- U.S.
GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF EFFORTS TO DEVELOP & STRENGTHEN AN INDEPENDENT CIVIL SOCIETY & DEMOCRATIC
POLITICAL SYSTEM WITHIN THE BORDERS OF IRAN: A VITAL TOOL TO ENCOURAGE IRANIAN MODERATION &
AVERT MILITARY ESCALATION OR A NUCLEAR IRAN
FULL STORY:
Last Thursday, October 18, 2007, two dozen political activists and organizations signed a statement drafted by the
National Iranian-American Council calling on the U.S. Congress to cut off Iranian civil society funding. The signatories
-- who ranged from representatives of billionaire philanthropist George Soros to the group titled "The World Can't
Wait/Drive Out the Bush Regime" -- argue that such funding, rather than aiding democracy, has precipitated an Iranian
crackdown on dissidents. These political activists are wrong. Should democracy funding be cut, not only will
independent civil society be eroded but a vital tool to encourage Iranian moderation will be removed, speeding the slide
toward confrontation.
The U.S. federal money invested in Iranian civil society is minuscule, not enough even to build half a "Bridge to Nowhere."
The congressional appropriation has grown from $1.4 million in 2004 to $66 million this year.
Of this, $36 million disappears into the coffers of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The U.S. State
Department applies an additional $5 million each to visitor exchange programs and to translation of the Department's Web
sites into Persian. Only $20 million is available for Iranian democracy activists.
To blame democracy programs for Tehran's crackdown on dissidents, as opponents of the congressional funding have, is
moral inversion.
Iranian authorities need little excuse to stifle dissent. In 1998 and 1999, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry coordinated a
"serial killing" campaign against leading intellectuals. Revolutionary authorities shuttered several dozen newspapers before
the U.S. Bush administration took office. Tehran's crackdown on Iranian bloggers began in 2004.
Nor do all Iranian dissidents see outside assistance as a kiss of death: Since December 2005, bus drivers in Tehran have
struggled to organize the Islamic Republic's first independent trade union. For the past three months, their leader, Mansour
Osanlou, has been in Tehran's Evin Prison. In an August, 2007, radio interview, his wife pleaded for more outside support.
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa has spoken out, but neither President George W. Bush nor any of the candidates seeking
to succeed him have grasped this potential Gdansk shipyard moment.
Some Iranian reformers do condemn outside support. But this is no surprise. In Iran, reformers, by definition, seek to perfect
theocracy, not implement democracy. When Iranian students rose in July, 1999, to demand freedom of speech and assembly,
the reformist Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, supported their expulsion and incarceration. In the words of writer
Laura Secor, the reformers are "the loyal opposition in a Fascist state." To base U.S. strategy toward Iranian civil society
upon those who seek to subordinate popular sovereignty to unelected clerics is like filtering efforts to protect Darfur
refugees through their Janjaweed oppressors.
Recent efforts to end democracy funding have been sparked by the arrests this year of four Iranian-American scholars
accused of seeking a "velvet revolution." Tehran's actions were widely condemned and show how little confidence the
Iranian regime has in its own population. They also demonstrate how effective democracy support can be. Popular regimes
don't panic over ineffective programs and incarcerate 67-year-old grandmothers for months.
The National Iranian-American Council has suggested that, rather than encourage civil society, Washington should
support more cultural exchange. In practice, this gives Tehran veto power. The regime constrains cultural exchange with
the same fervor with which it limits discourse. At the height of Iran's "Dialogue of Civilizations," the U.S. State Department
offered Iranian passport holders 22,000 visas; by contrast, the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued U.S. passport holders only
800 visas, limiting their issuance to those whom Tehran deemed sympathetic to its positions.
The Islamic Republic doesn't like ideological or political competition. Neither, apparently, does the NIAC. As the group
lobbies to cut off funding of programs meant to foster Iranian civil society, it has accepted a six-figure grant from the
National Endowment for Democracy to train Iranian nongovernmental organizations, perhaps those less threatening to the
Islamic Republic. The NIAC's leader, who often trades on his access to Iranian authorities, should explain why it is okay for
him, but not his competitors, to accept such money.
Successful democracy promotion must have teeth. As tensions rise between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic
Republic's nuclear program, Congress should work to avoid escalation to military conflict. An Iranian constitutional
democratic republic, in substance as well as form and therefore truly accountable to its own citizenry, would invest in better
schools, hospitals, wages and infrastructure, and it would not divert billions for uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles.
Empowering Iranian civil society presents the best hope to avert military escalation or a nuclear Iran. The last thing Congress
should do is narrow the remaining policy options by de-funding support for Iranian democracy.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
American Foreign Policy -- Constitutional Democracy:
U.S. Promotion of Constitutional Democracy in Foreign Countries
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff
advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense (2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of
History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of
Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Washington Post, October 19, 2007, and can be
found on the Internet website
maintained by the Middle East Forum, a think tank which seeks to define and
promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for
Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional
democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S.
interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 19, 2007
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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