The wrong way to fix Iran
THE BUSH administration quietly orchestrated a major shift in U.S. policy toward Iran this month, requesting $85 million from Congress to help bring about regime change in Tehran. Washington is now seeking not just to contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions but also to topple the Iranian government.
The war in Iraq has made all too clear the high cost of using military force to attain regime change. Accordingly, the administration is taking a page from Eastern Europe, where the United States used radio broadcasts and direct assistance to opposition groups to help undermine authoritarian governments and promote democracy. Administration officials explicitly cited Poland's Solidarity movement as a model.
Although democratizing Iran is a worthy objective, the administration is making a mistake in embracing a strategy for regime change based on the European experience. Conditions in Iran bear little resemblance to those that accompanied the downfall of dictatorial regimes in Europe, making it likely that the administration's new strategy will backfire and only strengthen Tehran's hard-liners. Instead of isolating Iran and seeking to undermine the regime from the outside, Washington should engage Iran, bringing about a natural process of political reform from within.
Across Eastern Europe, the opposition movements that toppled communism -- and have more recently brought democracy to places such as Georgia and Ukraine -- were avowedly pro-American. Dissidents were only too happy to receive assistance from Washington and to identify themselves with U.S. policy. Alignment with the U.S. remains a valuable political asset for Europe's new democracies.
Not so in Iran. A pronounced suspicion of the U.S. spans the political spectrum. The Bush administration's rhetorical -- and now financial -- support for the Iranian people only makes life more difficult for the democratic advocates it is intended to buttress. Iranian conservatives continue to respond to U.S. "interference" by cracking down on dissidents whom they portray as a "fifth column." Even those reformers with pro-American inclinations have been forced to cover their backs by denouncing American belligerence.
In Eastern Europe, the regimes felled by democratic revolt were brittle and illegitimate; they had long been discredited in the eyes of their citizens. In contrast, Iran's current regime enjoys considerable popularity. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been quite adept at wrapping himself in the mantle of nationalism. The Bush administration fails to appreciate that its coercive diplomacy on the nuclear issue is undercutting its effort to drain support from Iran's leaders.
