Timothy Garton Ash
He writes a regular column in the Guardian, which is widely syndicated in Europe, the Americas and and Asia. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/ash.html
Posted on 11/23/2005 9:41:51 PM PST by F14 Pilot
Visiting Iran, I found a regime wedded to violence and a society eager for peaceful change. We must address both
The young lecturer in Isfahan was visibly frightened. "Keep your voice down," he muttered to his friend as we talked politics in one of that magical city's many teahouses. Mahmoud, as I shall call him, went on to blame his people's troubles on American and European skulduggery - an old Iranian pastime. So what, I asked him, did he think America and Europe should do about Iran? Mahmoud gulped. There was a long silence as he communed with his tea-glass. Then, leaning towards me and lowering his voice, he said with quiet intensity: "Stick together. Understand what is happening in Iran. Have a consistent policy."
As the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets again to consider the Iranian nuclear programme, we need to work out what to do about Iran. The crunch will not come quite yet, mainly because the Bush administration has so many other problems on its plate. The last thing Washington needs is another Iraq. But some sort of a crunch will probably come in the first half of next year, perhaps with Iran being referred to the UN security council. So, don't be scared - be prepared. And that whispered message from Isfahan is a good place to start our preparation. First, understand what is happening in Iran. This is much easier for Europeans than Americans. We have embassies there. We do business there. We can travel there. As senior American officials freely admit, there is no country in the world they have less contact with. So there's a particular obligation on us Europeans to go there, to look and listen, and then to share our findings with our American friends. The weakness of western policy is so often that it does not start from a realistic analysis of the country the west is trying to change. That's why I travelled round Iran for two weeks earlier this autumn, having many uncensored conversations with people like nervous Mahmoud. (My longer report is on www.nybooks.com).
If you see it at first hand, you will have no doubt that this is a very nasty and dangerous regime. I will never forget talking in Tehran to a student activist who had been confined and abused in the prison where Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten so severely that she later died of her wounds. Half the Iranian population are subjected to systematic curtailment of their liberty simply because they are women. Two homosexuals were recently executed. The backbone of the political system is still an ideological dictatorship with totalitarian aspirations: not communism, but Khomeinism. The Islamic republic's new, ageing-revolutionary president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a subordinate but still important part of that power structure, has just revived Ayatollah Khomeini's call to wipe Israel off the map. According to an official spokesman, some 50,000 Iranians have signed up in a recruitment drive for "martyrdom-seeking operations". Elements connected to the regime have almost certainly supplied weapons across the frontier into southern Iraq, where they are used to kill British soldiers. And, yes, the mullahs probably are trying to get nuclear weapons.
So, as this argument about Iran develops, let's have none of those confused and/or dishonest apologetics on the European left that, out of hostility to American policy, try to pretend that the other side (Pol Pot, Brezhnev, Saddam) is not half as bad as Washington says it is. Taking our lead from George Orwell, it's entirely possibly to maintain that Saddam Hussein ran a brutal dictatorship and that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong way to remove him. Now it's right to say that the Iranian mullahs run a very nasty regime and that it would be a huge mistake to bomb them.
For the second thing you find if you go there is that many Iranians, especially among the two-thirds of the population who are under 30, hate their regime much more than we do. Given time, and the right kind of support from the world's democracies, they will eventually change it from within. But most of them think their country has as much right to civilian nuclear power as anyone else, and many feel it has a right to nuclear arms. These young Persians are pro-democracy and rather pro-American, but also fiercely patriotic. They have imbibed suspicion of the great powers - especially Britain and the United States - with their mother's milk. A wrong move by the west could swing a lot of them back behind the state. "I love George Bush," one young woman told me as we sat in the Tehran Kentucky Chicken restaurant, "but I would hate him if he bombed my country." Or even if he pushed his European allies to impose stronger economic sanctions linked to the nuclear issue alone.
Our problem is that the nuclear clock and the democracy clock may be ticking at different speeds. To get to peaceful regime change from within could take at least a decade, although president Ahmadinejad is hastening that prospect as he sharpens the contradictions within the system. Meanwhile, the latest US intelligence assessment suggests that Iran is still a decade away from acquiring nuclear weapons. But significant, non-military action to prevent that outcome clearly has to come sooner; for as soon as dictators have nukes, you're in a different game. Then, as we have seen with North Korea and Pakistan, they are treated with a respect they don't deserve.
This is where we need to hear the other half of the message from my friend in Isfahan: stick together and be consistent. If Europe and America split over Iran, as we did over Iraq, we have not a snowball's chance in hell of achieving our common goals. To be effective, Europe and America need the opposite of their traditional division of labour. Europe must be prepared to wave a big stick (the threat of economic sanctions, for it is Europe, not the US, that has the trade with Iran) and America a big carrot (the offer of a full "normalisation" of relations in return for Iranian restraint). But the old transatlantic west is not enough. Today's nuclear diplomacy around Iran shows us that we already live in a multipolar world. Without the cooperation of Russia and China, little can be achieved.
And we have to be consistent. Consistent in our policy to Iran, embedded in a kind of Helsinki process for the whole region. Consistent in advocating an international set of rules governing the use of nuclear power, not just for Iran but for others as well. Consistent, too, in recognising that our policy must be addressed as much to the people as the regime. For every step we take to slow down the nuclearisation of Iran, we need another to speed up the democratisation of Iran. At every stage, we need to explain to the Iranian people, through satellite television, radio and the internet, what we are doing and why. Isfahan is not just the increasingly notorious location of a nuclear processing plant; it's also a beautiful city where many critical citizens live. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a reckless leader, but there are many other Mahmouds in Iran. We must listen to them. In the end, it's they, not we, who will change their country for the better.
wow...let's hope...godspeed
Okay, so they're saying that we can't bomb them, and we have to put up with their supplying weaponry that is killing our soldiers, and they're pursuing nuclear weapons that their govt would possibly use against Israel. What part of the disconnect from reality am I missing here?
ping
Timothy Garton Ash
He writes a regular column in the Guardian, which is widely syndicated in Europe, the Americas and and Asia. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/ash.html
Europe must be prepared to wave a big stick (the threat of economic sanctions, for it is Europe, not the US, that has the trade with Iran) [This first part sounds good but...] and America a big carrot (the offer of a full "normalisation" of relations in return for Iranian restraint).
The author must have slept through U.S. Iran-policy during the Khatami years beginning in 1997. Hello!!! We're still trading rugs, pistachios and other goods with Iran to the tune of $150Mil annually thanks to Clintonian "avoid conflict at all costs" politics which included other, more shortsighted gestures beyond sanctions relief. The truth is every single American carrot, and there have been many, offered to Tehran has been accepted without the agreed upon reciprocations. Iranian politicians do not conduct foreign policy as we understand it in the West. Their international relations agenda serves the Supreme Leader’s ambition to create an Islamic empire. Thus far they’ve managed to extort concessions from the West while increasing their Islamic fundamentalist footprint across the ME and Europe. Although some of the authors experiences are worth reading, particularly his conversations with Iranian youths assuming he transcribed them genuinely, his conclusions are definitely disconnected from reality…
Here’s a connection to Iranian reality for you beyond this author’s ephemeral experience… Back in June of this year there was a large official banner near Vali-e Asr Square. It was campaign propaganda and it read “Ahmadinejad: The freedom that exists in Iran does not exist any where else in the world” There was graffiti scribbled underneath it and it read “Freedom to Kill”
F14 - do you agree with me on this or have you become a vocal advocate for appeasement of the world's most active state sponsor of terror? Feel free to jump in and think about your homeland's future at anytime... That is what these forums are for, are they not?
Patience is a virtue in dealing with foreign regimes, . . . and we can have faith in the Founding Fathers' desire not to engage in foreign campaigns.
not in the 21st century! not any more... sorry
This is so true... thanks for posting.
.. but to agree very many people will have to jump over their shadows. Let's hope the transatlantic trench is not getting deeper and people in iran, usa and europe see the need of a more constructive relationship between muslim countries and the western world.
BTW playing the economic card is not appeasement or weakness. There's diplomatic options of much higher efficiency than GIs and nukes. If one knows only WWII as an example in history you certainly compare everything to that event.
I know of a much faster way to change that country for the better- turn it into a sheet of glass.
LOL! You're right. I think Charlie has a nicer nose.
Have you ever heard the saying "My country right or wrong". This is what the article is about, there are many Iranians who want regime change, but they want to do it them self's and like in East Europe it is a slow process.
But by striking at Iran we will force them to back a government that they would rather not support. When you strike at countries you force them to band together.
If the Palestinian at not carried out so many suicide bombings in Israel Sharon may not have been elected
We won the cold war by facing the Warsaw pact with determination and not by bombing them.
A good example to learn from
good point!
Here's the clincher. If the Iranian people ascribe responsibility for their current situation to the policies of the West, then by default they're role is inconsequential. Western policies, sometimes hurtful and other times helpful are primarily a reaction to the policies of the Iranian regime. This is typically how liberal democracies formulate their foreign policies. Reactionary policies, no matter what their origin are inconsistent. While "patients" is the word of the day while a democratic consensus is developed on how best to confront the Iranian regime, the Iranian people's nationalism should not be a roadblock to a decisive policy that pressures the country into changing for the positive. Then, leaning towards me and lowering his voice, he said with quiet intensity: "Stick together. Understand what is happening in Iran. Have a consistent policy." Great advice Mahmoud but when the pressure builds up on the regime and the Iranian people, put the blame where it belongs, on the Iranian regime.
The truth is every single American carrot, and there have been many, offered to Tehran has been accepted without the agreed upon reciprocations. Iranian politicians do not conduct foreign policy as we understand it in the West. Their international relations agenda serves the Supreme Leader’s ambition to create an Islamic empire. Thus far they’ve managed to extort concessions from the West while increasing their Islamic fundamentalist footprint across the ME and Europe. Although some of the authors experiences are worth reading, particularly his conversations
In the above you laid out brilliantly what the article author "whizzed" on by. And it's a very crucial point to making sense of what all else the author is saying.
If the Iranian people ascribe responsibility for their current situation to the policies of the West, then by default they're role is inconsequential. Western policies, sometimes hurtful and other times helpful are primarily a reaction to the policies of the Iranian regime. This is typically how liberal democracies formulate their foreign policies. Reactionary policies, no matter what their origin are inconsistent.
Exactly.
Great advice Mahmoud but when the pressure builds up on the regime and the Iranian people, put the blame where it belongs, on the Iranian regime.
This of yours brings to mind my own experiences in the San Francisco Bay Area, the radical, vociferous anti-American left. The people there, have never seen any other argument or facts except those posed, lectured, and taught by the "ruling regime" in the Bay Area. The "differences" are brought up only as an example of anti-orthodoxy evil. (Dittos, the argument in Iran.)
The difference is however, those in the Bay Area actually have the freedom to look at other opinions, thoughts, policies. But, are their brains so wired to leftist orthodoxy that they are at same time "victims of it". (Great article this morning I read about the Oslo syndrome.)
Does the average Iranian even HAVE the opportunity and freedoms to "look" for alternative views/religion? Not "very" in Iran, as I understand it. Or is the problem the same as the one I posed in re SF Bay Area.
Courage is a difficult thing. I could not begin a campaign of slitting the throats of the Islamist thugs at all levels. After the courageous begin, maybe others would participate. A lot of things can be accomplished at 2:00AM.
I recently saw a documentary on Isfahan. It's one of the most beautiful, intriguing places on earth. One of these days, Iran will be free of the Ayatollahs. Then I will go to Isfahan.
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