Do not forget Iran. Remember Neda. If there are green-clad protests in Tehran this weekend — to mark the first anniversary of the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole — they will doubtless again be crushed with casual brutality by the thugs of the Basij militia, the secret police and the Revolutionary Guard.
Faced with violent repression, the green movement is a long way down — but not out. Iran will never again be the country it was before the election of June 12, 2009. In the great demonstration three days later, everything was changed. In the subsequent repression, a terrible beauty was born. The historical process may take years, but one day, as the economy worsens and discontent spreads to more sections of society, the movement will be back in force, though perhaps in a different form. Eventually, there will be statues in Iran of Neda Agha-Soltan — the young woman shot dead in one of the early mass demonstrations — and other memorials to the martyrs of this struggle for freedom.
We should also never forget that this is a self-generated movement from within a Muslim society, dedicated to transforming the contemporary world's longest-running and still most formidable Islamist regime into something very different.
If you want to get a sense of the agony and ecstasy of Iran over the last year, read "Death to the Dictator!" by Afsaneh Moqadam. It tells the story of the stolen election and attempted green revolution through the experience of one young man, Mohsen, who is caught up in the excitement of the protests but then detained, tortured and repeatedly raped by his jailers. The larger political narrative is vividly and knowledgeably woven around this central biographical thread. One thing that emerges very clearly is the vital role of women, which Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has also written about. Mohsen's mother herself joined the protests, independently of the men in her family, and we understand that for her this was a double emancipation. "Afsaneh Moqadam" is a pseudonym, and some names and details have been changed to protect those involved, but I have spoken to the author and am left in no doubt that this harrowing account is closely based on a true story.
Then go on YouTube to watch the American film "For Neda." The film is a bit too schmaltzy for my taste, but well worth seeing, with some brave reporting by Saeed Kamali Deghan, who returned to Iran to film interviews with Neda's family. Despite the regime's efforts to block it, many people in Iran have reportedly viewed it online.
Finally, look at Amnesty International's latest report on Iran, with its sober catalogue of arrests, torture and numerous executions.
Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and other Western powers this weekmanaged to push another round of sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. Despite being watered down at the behest of Russia and China, these do further tighten the screws on the regime, including some of the leaders and enterprises of the Revolutionary Guard. But the sanctions are related only to the nuclear issue, not to human rights.
Two questions arise: What is the best way to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb? And how will possible strategies on the nuclear issue interact with the country's tortured internal politics? I doubt very much whether any sanctions acceptable to China will be strong enough to stop Iran from getting to the nuclear weapon threshold. They will, however, worsen the country's economic situation and therefore potentially increase the social discontent that feeds opposition.
Some say the West should have responded more favorably to the recent Turkish-Brazilian proposal to take a chunk of Iran's low-enriched uranium outside the country. I don't think that would have stopped Iran moving covertly to the nuclear weapon threshold, and many regime opponents in Iran would not welcome such readiness to shake their oppressors' bloody hands.
Bombing Iran, as advocated by hotheads in the United States and Israel, almost certainly would produce a wave of patriotic solidarity with the regime. At the other extreme, ever more foreign policy sages in Washington now say privately (and a few argue publicly) that we must learn to live with — and "contain" — a nuclear Iran. But the risk of sparking a Sunni-Shiite nuclear arms race in the Middle East is very grave, while such a "success" would also strengthen the Ahmadinejad regime at home.
With no good alternatives, what remains is the hope of getting a more responsible government in Iran. To be sure, the leaders of the green movement do not differ as much as we might like from the regime's position on the nuclear issue. But a more popular and legitimate government, reengaging with the world, would create a very different dynamic and set of linkages around the nuclear issue.
