Global Policy Memo
Commentary and Counterpoint on World Affairs
Posted by Josh Goodman on December 30, 2009 at 2:59 pm
filed under Middle East
Tagged Ahmadinejad, green movement, Iran, Israel, revolutionary guard, Sanctions, settlement freeze
Max Fisher in The Atlantic Wire raises the question of whether there’s anything the U.S. can do to aid the Green Movement in Iran, and provides a rundown on the most common answers. Here’s a rundown of the rundown:
- U.S. Intervention Harms Protesters The Washington Note’s Steve Clemons cautions, “The United States needs to be very cautious — and not do anything on the ground in Iran that would allow the incumbent government to to evade “the death to the dictator” chants directed at it by distracting the country with evidence of credible external interventions.”
- Only Finely Targeted Sanctions Would Work Spencer Ackerman reports the White House’s growing fear that sanctions could hurt the protesters. . . . Ackerman notes that sanctions limited to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are considered more viable. “
- ‘The Case For Doing Nothing’ Foreign Policy’s Stephen Walt makes it. “First, we do not know enough about internal dynamics in Iran to intervene intelligently, and trying to reinforce or support the Green Movement is as likely to hurt them as to help them,” he writes. “Second, this is an especially foolish time to be rattling sabers and threatening military action. . . . If you’d like to see a new government in Tehran, in short, we should say relatively little and do almost nothing.”
- Inaction Not An Option Jules Crittenden explains. “Even the hawks that everyone is using as strawmen know we’re not going to be invading Iran, and this would be a particularly bad time to launch air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. That said, signaling that you’re ready to deal with the thugs once their crackdown is done, so that they can continue thumbing their nose at you, is ridiculous,” he writes. “What [Obama] needs to develop is what everyone thought he had when they voted for him. Moral courage. His Afghanistan move was a halting step in that direction. [...] So he needs to figure out the right balance of covert action, direct and indirect pressure, and public condemnation. It’s his job. And it’s 3 a.m. wakeup time again.”
Crude or interventionist attempts to support the Green Movement or to interfere with Iran’s sovereignty are likely to be unwelcome and to backfire, as Stephen Walt points out, and will also play into the Iranian regime’s thus far laughable attempts to portray anti-regime protests as part of a foriegn-backed plot (or in the more colorful language of Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, a ”nauseating masquerade that the Zionists and Americans organized and bought a ticket for, and for which they are the only spectators”). On the other hand, the U.S. should not abandon its role as a the moral leader of the free world and sponsor of democratic movements around the globe, especially as the regime in Iran, a self-declared foe of the United States, continues to reveal its brutality against its own citizens and its detachment from reality. So how to bridge the gap?
President Obama should continue speaking out for human rights in Iran and forcefully criticizing the violent crackdowns, arrests, and killings of opposition members. At the same time, the President should highlight the pressure that the Obama administration has put on the Israeli government, which has led Israel to declare a 10-month settlement building freeze — a little publicized U.S. diplomatic achievement which is currently going to waste, causing domestic strife in Israel without creating any discernable benefits for the peace process, negotiations with the Palestinians, or other international relations. Pressure on Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza pending a deal for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is another option. While U.S. posture toward Iran and toward the Israeli-Arab situation are not (and should not be) directly linked, a dual rhetorical focus would undermine the claims of U.S.-Israeli collusion against Iran, and the perceived plausibility of a U.S.-sanctioned military strike against Iran, while providing moral support to the protesters in Iran. The predicted sanctions, meanwhile, which are tied to Iran’s nuclear program, should indeed be targeted narrowly against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and other entities tied to the regime, in order to not antagonize Iranians in general.
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Антон Павлович
on March 18, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Here’s a rundown of the rundown:
U.S…..
хоть книги не читай……
Kylie Batt
on May 3, 2010 at 1:11 pm
В этом все дело….
Max Fisher in The Atlantic Wire raises the question of whether there’s anything the U.S…..