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9/11, Nine Years Later: The Internet, the Koran, and the Need for Vocal Moderates

Friday, September 10th, 2010
Rachel Kleinfeld


Rachel Kleinfeld is the CEO of the Truman National Security Project.

by Rachel Kleinfeld

On September 11, 2001, I had just arrived in Bucharest for dissertation research. I was conducting an interview when the planes hit. As I ran around the city, trying to find a television with news in English to learn what was happening, a Turkish worker noticed my Jewish visage, stopped me in the street, and told me that the Jews had done it. The conspiracy theory only gained ground. A week later, as I walked to Bucharest’s old synagogue for Rosh Hashana services, I was harassed for the terrorist attack multiple times by passers-by.

Again it is Rosh Hashana, and again, September 11 looms – this time, with the backdrop of Koran-burning and anger at plans for a mosque.  As we step into a new year, I wonder what, if anything, has been learned. Prejudice against Muslims has grown in America.  We even have our own bin Laden – a Florida pastor who has decided that God wants him to burn the holy book of the Islamic “infidels.”

Did I just say that – comparing a pastor ekeing out a living selling furniture on e-bay, to the mastermind terrorist?  Yes. The pastor knows that his act will bring about the deaths of scores, if not hundreds or thousands, in sectarian violence from Afghanistan to Africa. The ripple effects will be felt in violence against Christian missionaries who have lived among the Afghan people for decades. It will be seen in violence against Christian communities living along the violent belt that marks the split between Christian and Muslim Africa. And it will be felt by the innocent Muslims who are caught in the inevitable backlash.

Twenty years ago, this would not have happened. A pastor leading a flock of fifty could indeed have decided to burn Korans – but no one would have known, outside, perhaps, of his townspeople. The internet’s ability to super-empower individuals, to spread YouTube videos to millions instantaneously, to fan the flames of a 24 hour news cycle hungry for controversy, has allowed a single man with the tiniest of pulpits to receive direct messages from the President of the United States and the General in charge of a distant theater of war. It is the same phenomenon that allowed Osama bin Laden to gain an international following while camped in Sudan, Afghanistan, and the borderlands of Pakistan.

The new media reality is not something we yet know how to handle. How can a country be responsible for every action of every person within its borders – when a single ideologue can catch fire and affect the deepest fibers of our foreign policy?  How can our leaders communicate when the same words are heard in radically different ways by voters at home and listeners abroad – and yet both listen to the same speeches?

But at least we, as a foreign policy community, are talking about what to do in this new media reality. There are other cultural shifts we are not acknowledging. One of the most significant is that we are living through another period of worldwide religious revival. Across all major religions, numbers are growing, and intensity of belief is deepening. The anomie and confusion of modern life pushes some to slow food and organic gardening, others to deepen their faith and intensify their search for a higher order. The effects of this spiritual revival are being felt in country after country, from America to Turkey. This deepening of faith causes fights within religions as much as between them. Ironically, if there is a clash of civilizations, Jones, the Florida pastor, and bin Laden would actually have more in common than the moderates within both Islam and Christianity.

But there is a crucial difference. Christian pastors from around the world have denounced Jones, loudly. He has received personal calls from the heads of other Christian groups—as well as the head of the former church he founded in Germany –  asking him not to desecrate the Koran. Our countries’ political leaders have spoken against his actions in the most public of fora – and so have those within his faith. There are terrific Muslim organizations that also condemn violence within their religion. They need to be helped by those within their faith. They need to be joined by politicians and others within Islam, who are the only ones with standing to effectively speak against the violence in their own ranks. The difference in tone and denunciation between Jones and bin Laden is striking – and disturbing, nine years after 9/11.

As a Jew, I have my own tribe, my own faith and beliefs. But as a Jew with a particularly Jewish-looking mug, I know enough to be worried by increasing religiosity that is married to increasing intolerance. The internet is super-empowering the world’s most intolerant leaders, and as the current religious revival continues, this trend is only going to get worse. It is going to continue to be a particular problem in Islam, until moderates feel strongly enough to speak out just as unequivocally and publicly as Christians are condemning Jones. It’s time we, as a foreign policy community, look this reality in the eye, and address it directly.

Photo credit: rutty’s photostream

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Why You Shouldn’t Read This Park 51 Post

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

I am about to make a circular argument, one that will eventually prove why I shouldn’t be writing this post in the first place.  But bear with me — to explain why shouldn’t apply fingers to keyboard, I must.

Today, we’ve learned that Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, and NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen have both come out strongly against the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center’s plan to burn Korans to commemorate 9/11.  You might remember this Center from such books as “Islam is of the Devil” (seriously) and such blog postings as “Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran” (for a hilarious read, check out author “Fran’s” assault on apostrophes).

Both Petraeus and Rasmussen have correctly surmised that burning a Koran would “inflame public opinion and incite violence… [and] put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan” (Petraeus), and stand “strong in contradiction with all of the values we… fight for” (Rasmussen).  Indeed, the damage may have already been done, as ABCNews reports the “Death to America” chants are echoing in Kabul. (The latest indications are that the church is “praying” about this Koran burning business, and appeals to a Deity might provide sufficient political cover to back off. UPDATE: Whoops, maybe not.  Looks like they’re going to burn away.)

Amidst all this, a deeper question remains:  Why is General David Petraeus spending time commenting on the actions of a tiny, extremist church in the first place?

Could it possibly be because during the slow August news cycle, cable news wrapped the country in the “debate” about Park51, the “controversial” mosque located somewhere in the vicinity of 9/11’s Ground Zero?  And we’re looking for the next headline-grabbing story on controversial Islam?

Ratings might sky-rocket, but America suffers.  Despite victims’ families’ legitimate discomfort, it somehow seemed obvious that two centuries of protected speech and open practice religion in America should make this a no brainer.

Extensive coverage of Americans’ discomfort with Islam only serves to promote division and delegitimize America’s core values. Consider this New York Times article, which explains polling numbers behind New Yorkers’ suspicion of Park51.  It includes this gem:

“My granddaughter and I were having this conversation and she said stopping them from building is going against the freedom of religion guaranteed by our Constitution,” said Marilyn Fisher, 71, who lives in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. “I absolutely agree with her except in this case.”

Nevermind that freedoms of speech and worship exist precisely for these hard cases.

But sadly, as the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks of the world exploit division for their own gain, Islam is continually projected in a negative light.  This narrative becomes a perpetual motion machine that promotes (and implicitly endorses) extremist views amongst an increasing percentage of Americans.

The only answer, of course, is to ignore non-issues and deny the whack jobs of Dove World Outreach Center their fifteen minutes of ill-gotten fame.  David Petraeus could stop wasting time on otherwise unnecessary press releases, and I could stop typing.

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What No One Is Paying Attention to in the Rolling Stone Article

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

The now-infamous Rolling Stone article that earned Gen. Stanley McChrystal a one-way trip out of Afghanistan has attracted attention for what it says about the White House.

And in a way, that’s a good thing.

Because once you get past the name-calling scandal, the article is really a takedown of counterinsurgency strategy and, by extension, a subtle get-out-of-Afghanistan-now message. In an attempt to categorize the debate about whether to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, here’s Hasting’s characterization:

COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps.

[...]

The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.

Or this:

After several hours of haggling, McChrystal finally enlisted the aid of Afghanistan’s defense minister, who persuaded Karzai’s people to wake the president from his nap. This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we’ve backed – a danger that Eikenberry explicitly warned about in his cable.

To sum up, you have a questionable description of COIN, followed by a single opinion from someone whose stated qualifications are that he went to college with McChrystal (who knows if Macgregor has any COIN expertise) deriding the entire concept.

It’s one thing to report on who McChrystal is, what he’s said, where he comes from, and the difficulty of mission he’s trying to accomplish. But it’s quite another to falsely characterize his mission as a Sisyphean task from the get-go. Clearly, the president, having consulted and deliberated for three months, believes that there’s significant reason to hope counterinsurgency can bring about hard-fought American security.

For a better discussion of COIN, I’d encourage you to read papers like this, by David Kilcullen, author of the Accidental Guerilla and an actual COIN expert. In the paper linked above, Kilcullen properly characterizes COIN as difficult and far from a guaranteed success, but forwards a thoughtful framework for how COIN practitioners might organize their efforts to bring about the best chances of sustainable security.

…you may now return to your regularly scheduled name-calling.

Photo credit: The US Army’s Photostream

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Head Scarves, Minarets and the Arizona Immigration Law

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

I’ve been following the story of a Muslim French woman who was given a ticket in April for driving while wearing her hijab, or veil.  She was issued the ticket for driving with obscured vision. Yesterday, it jumped into mainstream American media over at the Washington Post. The story is the high water mark in a public debate on Islam in France that’s been brewing for over a decade.The incident underscores France’s uneasy relationship with its sizable Muslim minority. Depending on your source, 10 to 12 percent of French citizens are of Arab or Muslim extraction, or nearly six million total (it’s difficult to verify these numbers because the French census, rigidly adhering to the country’s secularism, does not permit racial or religious background information from being collected).

French Muslims’ growing prominence has become particularly notable in the south, for obvious geographic reasons. Jean Marie Le Pen’s racist and xenophobic National Front consistently draws its base of support in this region (it’s no coincidence that Le Pen calls Marseille home). If you’re not terribly familiar with French politics, don’t write them off — they’ve been around a lot longer and are much better organized than America’s far-right Tea Party. In the regional elections this March, the party took home 12 percent of the total vote and over 20 percent in Le Pen’s home base.

The National Front creates problems for center-right French President Nicolas Sarkozy, son of Hungarian parents and a first-generation citizen himself. Essentially, Sarko wants to channel France’s xenophobia through a different mechanism — his. Sarko’s ruling UMP party in January offered a draft law to ban the veil and partial ban on burka (the entire Islamic dress for women), which he champions as defending France’s secularism and women’s rights. Sure, that’s plausible, but the debate is really a sop to racists.

What’s difficult about the issue is that I actually think there is a public safety concern. I can see how wearing a veil while driving might reduce your vision in ways a helmet would not — the hijab is loose cloth and could cover one eye while turning your head. A concerted effort should be made to balance religious freedom and public safety, while being mindful that bans on clothing are distinctly ill-liberal.  Even conservatives should have a problem with the government telling you want to wear.

France is unfortunately not alone — Belgium passed a similar law (25 percent of Brussels follows Islam, five percent countrywide), and Switzerland (five percent) voted last year to ban construction of minarets on mosques. It would seem, therefore, that Europe is developing something of a trend in largely symbolic anti-Islamic legislation.

But what do head scarves and minarets have to do with the recently signed “immigration law” in Arizona? Just substitute “Hispanic” for “Muslim” and “U.S.” for “Europe” and you’d get the picture. With 15 percent of the country now claiming Hispanic origin, the Arizona law is the same type of symbolic legislative effort that channels voters’ racism. The thing is, some 60 percent of Americans support it nationally.

So where do we go from here? If progressives scream “racism” at the top of their lungs, the legislation’s supporters will concoct non-racial justifications. The best answer, in the U.S. at least, is to pass comprehensive immigration reform before we tread too far down Europe’s path.

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Book Review: The Flight of the Intellectuals by Paul Berman

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Elbert Ventura


Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He formerly served as the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Elbert Ventura

Paul Berman may be our most romantic public intellectual. His prose, febrile and epigrammatic, can be intoxicatingly lyrical. He doesn’t so much make arguments as launch crusades. He is a careful scholar, building his cases with close reading and creative exegesis, but the cool erudition barely conceals the hot idealism. “Let us be for the freedom of others,” read the last line of Terror and Liberalism, his most widely read book. Details, word choices and footnotes matter, but it is the sweeping idea that animates his work.

It’s fitting that the cover design for his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, features a Minimalist array of lines, black and white. For those are the terms in which Berman thinks. It’s what makes the arrival of each new Berman book an event – you expect lines to be drawn, challenges issued. It’s also what can get him in trouble.

The Flight of the Intellectuals is a book-length elaboration of a long essay Berman wrote for The New Republic in 2007 about the Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan. What’s gotten Berman riled up is the admiring reception Western intelligentsia has given Ramadan, who is viewed by many as the leading reformist voice for Muslims today. Ramadan has urged Muslims in the West to participate in the social and cultural life of their new homes instead of turning inward. But to Berman, the attention he has won is undeserved, even odious. For beneath the veneer of moderation Berman spies ghosts of extremism past and present.

The first third of The Flight of the Intellectuals is vintage Berman, as he traces Ramadan’s genealogical and ideological roots. What he finds is a questionable birthright. “Tariq Ramadan is nothing if not a son, a brother, a grandson and even a great-grandson – family relations that appear to shape everything he writes and does, and that certainly shape how other people perceive what he writes and does,” he opens the second chapter. Ramadan’s grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. His father, Said Ramadan, was al-Banna’s secretary, also a major figure in the Brotherhood. In the Brotherhood, Berman sees a wellspring of dangerous ideas: the imposition of Islamic law, the utopian restoration of the Caliphate, the cult of jihad, the veneration of martyrdom.

In Tariq Ramadan, Berman sees that strain of Islamism. He hears Ramadan’s calls for rationalism, universal values and a more modern Islam, but picks out discordant notes in the background of Ramadan’s thought. Take women’s rights. Berman homes in on Ramadan’s refusal, in a televised debate with then-French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, to condemn the Islamist practice of stoning women who commit adultery, calling instead for a more modest “moratorium.” Berman also flags Ramadan for his past statements on Jews: For instance, Ramadan in 2003 published an essay accusing six “French Jewish intellectuals” (one, in fact, was not Jewish) of abandoning their universalist principles in championing Israel – a thesis that Berman rightly lashes him for. No less troublesome for Berman is Ramadan’s whitewashing of his forefathers’ record. In Ramadan’s telling, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood is a “man of democratic temperament…committed to rational judgment and scientific truth…a peaceful man, patient and practical,” Berman recounts with raised brow.

The Lonely Rebel

Berman contrasts the adulation of Ramadan by Western intellectuals with their shabby treatment of another controversial voice: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Somali-born writer’s story has been rehearsed countless times: flight from a forced marriage, asylum in the Netherlands, renunciation of Islam, death threats from Muslim fanatics. Along the way, Hirsi Ali has established a reputation as a scorched-earth critic of Islam. It has earned her the adoration of the American right – and suspicion from the left, which sees her Islam-or-enlightenment stand as unhelpful.

Berman is at his most indignant here. Dubbing Hirsi Ali a “rebel soul,” he denounces the left for turning its back on someone whom he considers a true liberal voice emerged from the Islamist wasteland. Berman is appalled that Hirsi Ali, who has to travel with bodyguards because she has been marked for death by Islamists, cannot find succor in the same intelligentsia that once circled their wagons for Salman Rushdie. And it’s not just Hirsi Ali: Berman ends his book with a litany of liberals who have dared to challenge Islamist fascism and have seen their lives threatened for it. “Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class,” he writes. Where are the liberal intellectuals to defend them?

That, as the title suggests, is what Berman’s book is really about. Joining Ramadan in the crosshairs are Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, two champions of Ramadan, both critics of Hirsi Ali. But they also stand in for an entire intellectual cohort, one that Berman now finds suffering from a loss of nerve. “[I]n recounting these quarrels, I have, by the logic of my own narrative, ended up trotting out the dread word courage. This may be the heart of the matter,” he writes.

The particulars of Berman’s case against Ramadan seem, at times, to be a stretch. He gets across the point that Ramadan is a slippery figure – but others have already noted that. Upgrading the charge from slippery to sinister requires some heavy lifting and much hair-splitting on Berman’s part. All too often, Berman mistakes telling footnotes, vague wordings and conspicuous omissions for smoking guns. It’s an impressive prosecutorial performance, but it’s not enough to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Berman’s book amounts to something else: a radical’s attack on a squishy moderate. For Berman, Ramadan, who modulates his rhetoric depending on his audience, is the kind of ally we don’t need. Pick a side, stand your ground – the ambiguous, the pragmatic, the double-talkers need not apply. Berman dismisses the defense of Ramadan by intellectuals: that he is a valuable critic of Islam from within. And indeed, his indignation at Ramadan’s hedging about Islam’s problems can be contagious – you occasionally find yourself shaking your head (if not quite your fist).

Berman and Liberalism

But Berman’s exacting outlook is ultimately problematic. Hirsi Ali, strident and surrounded by bodyguards, is the model warrior in his war of ideas. It’s a needlessly steep standard – and a counterproductive one. Living under fatwa may be testimony to a critic’s courage, but that’s not the same as a critic’s effectiveness. If the true goal is to modernize Islam and promote liberalism, an effective critique, not just an angry one, is necessary. Berman’s impatience and his insistence on choosing sides get in the way of a clear-eyed assessment of what we need to win the war of ideas: courage, yes, and anger even, but also reason, canniness and humility.

In the years since 9/11, Berman has emerged as one of our foremost liberal hawks. He has been frequently lumped with Peter Beinart (The Good Fight), and Beinart in turn has harked back to the liberals of the Americans for Democratic Action and the anti-Communist left – Niebuhr’s liberals – as his and his intellectual allies’ forebears. But that’s not quite where Berman’s thought takes you. All you need is a minute with Berman’s urgent and certain prose to realize that there is little skepticism here and none of the ironic disposition. He is less a liberal of the Niebuhr variety than a lefty in the mold of an Irving Howe. In his words one feels the force of conviction of the Old Left, the romance of the battle, the thrill of the lonely stand. Indeed, The Flight of the Intellectuals recalls a similar challenge to the intellectual class: Howe’s “The Age of Conformity.” Like Howe, Berman sees himself as an observer and critic of the liberal intellectuals. Replace “conformity” with “cowardice,” and you have Berman’s updated critique of liberalism gone soft.

Berman’s is a necessary voice, but it’s a voice that can only be fruitful in equipoise with the skeptical one of Niebuhrian liberalism. Berman’s untrammeled moralism can leave us stranded (literally) in the dunes of endless desert. But liberal doubt can also lead us down an equally dangerous path of moral complacency and atrophy. What is Berman to liberalism and liberalism to Berman? Each in the end keeps the other honest.

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics | 3 Comments »

Confronting Iran: The Case for Targeted Sanctions

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Pirooz Hamvatan


Pirooz Hamvatan is the pseudonym for a Washington, D.C.-based analyst focusing on Iranian domestic and security issues.

Ali K


Ali K is currently a business student in the U.S. and a supporter of Iran’s Green Movement who was severely beaten by the Basij militia during a peaceful demonstration in Tehran last year.

by Pirooz Hamvatan and Ali K

The following is a guest column from Pirooz Hamvatan, a pseudonym for a Washington, D.C.-based analyst focusing on Iranian domestic and security issues, and Ali K., currently a business student in the U.S. and a supporter of Iran’s Green Movement who was severely beaten by the Basij militia during a peaceful demonstration in Tehran last year.

Congress is on the verge of sending a petroleum sanctions bill to President Obama that has wide bipartisan support in Congress. But far from posing a serious challenge to the regime, the bill could in fact inadvertently undermine long-term U.S. interests by weakening the Iranian civil rights movement and strengthening President Ahmadinejad and his cronies.

The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009, currently in conference committee, will direct the president to impose sanctions on any entity providing Iran with “refined petroleum products” worth $200,000 or more per transaction, or $1 million per year. The bill defines refined petroleum products to include diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and aviation gasoline.

The new bill aims to cripple Iran’s economy in response to Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program. But the sanctions being proposed are not the right answer. Such a sweeping measure would end up only hurting ordinary Iranians, especially the middle class that the U.S. must shore up to improve Iran’s chances for reform.

Instead, our top priority should be helping to increase the space for the Iranian civil rights movement. That means moving beyond the limited focus on “solving” the nuclear issue. An Iranian government that is more accountable to — and representative of — its moderate majority would not pose a security threat to the U.S. and its allies. Rather than heavy-handed sanctions, the Obama administration should consider restrictions that are more targeted, which would hit the ruling regime where it hurts, and increase the possibility of change from within.

The Wrong Path

Introduced in the House by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and in the Senate by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the sanctions bill currently in conference aims to limit Iran’s access to gasoline in the hopes that the suffering population will pressure the regime to give in to Western demands. But if the end goal is to induce Iran to be a more responsible regional actor that doesn’t threaten U.S. security interests, then petroleum sanctions are likely to achieve the opposite effect.

Just look at the experience of the last couple of decades. In 1995, in response to Iranian pursuit of nuclear technology and support of terrorism, President Clinton issued two executive orders prohibiting American investment in Iran’s energy sector and banning U.S. imports of most Iranian goods. The following year, Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (PDF), calling for sanctions on foreign firms investing more than $20 million per year in Iran’s energy sector. Although such measures have impeded the development of Iran’s economy, they have not caused the Islamic Republic to change course on its nuclear program or its funding of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, in order to achieve their foreign policy and domestic goals, Iran’s leaders have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to let the Iranian people suffer.

Just as important, history has shown that crippling sanctions undermine the middle class — the very people who are the backbone of civil society and the voices of moderation. International sanctions on Iraq weakened its population, making them more reliant on, and more vulnerable to, Saddam Hussein’s regime. Gasoline sanctions on Iran could have a similar effect, exacerbating inflation, lowering the quality of life for the middle class and pushing more people below the poverty line.

Gasoline sanctions would also distract Iranians from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s own mismanagement of the economy — an important issue mobilizing people around the Green Movement — and divert blame to the U.S. Iran is already facing a 20-percent inflation rate, a crippled domestic industry, unemployment of over 11 percent (with 24 percent of 15-to-24 year-olds unemployed), and one of the worst rates of brain drain in the world. Many Iranians are still seething over the fact that, since becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad squandered unprecedented oil revenues that the Islamic Republic accrued as a result of high world oil prices. Amid all of this, Ahmadinejad has backed a controversial measure that would phase out government subsidies on gasoline and is likely to increase inflation. The Iranian people are already facing enough hardship without the U.S. adding to their woes and diminishing the pro-American sentiments of a wide array of Iranians.

Nor will the sanctions loosen the regime’s grip on power. Ahmadinejad’s faction would, in fact, fare better than the majority of the populace. Masters of smuggling, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members would still be able to bring in gasoline through Iran’s porous borders, perversely enriching themselves even more.

The Right Path

But if broad sanctions are a heavy-handed tool that could only risk the development of Iran’s civil rights movement, what options do U.S. policy makers have to challenge the regime?

A preferred approach would be something more targeted against those responsible for Iran’s actions: the members of the ruling regime. Congress should consider the following:

  • Pass a bill calling on the U.S. State Department to identify Iranian human rights abusers (primarily from within the Revolutionary Guards; the Basij, the regime’s volunteer militia; and the judiciary) and impose travel bans on them. The bill should also seek the cooperation of our allies in enforcing the ban as widely as possible and place pressure on key countries like Dubai to block entry to these individuals. The list of targeted offenders should be made public in order to show the Iranian people that the U.S. is on their side.
  • Pass a measure calling for human rights abusers’ assets to be frozen. Because Iranian officials have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the U.S. financial system, the U.S. Treasury may not have much of a role to play here. Rather, such a measure would simply be a first step in convincing banks in Europe and the United Arab Emirates — where many regime insiders’ assets are squirreled away — to enforce restrictions.

What specific effect will travel bans have on hardline officials and their mid-ranking employees? Besides being a major inconvenience, it would hurt their pocketbooks. This is because a large number of these individuals have side-businesses in which they smuggle goods from places like Dubai, Thailand, Indonesia and Syria — buying, for example, electronic goods and bringing them back to Iran through Revolutionary Guard-controlled customs stations without having to pay import duties. They then sell these goods at highly marked-up prices in the isolated Iranian market. A strictly enforced travel ban — including on individuals working for these human rights abusers’ front companies — would close off a lucrative source of income.

To be clear, the overall intent of this plan is not necessarily to deal a significant economic blow to the entire hardline establishment — that would be next to impossible. Neither will it convince, in the short term, current Iranian leaders to change course on the nuclear program — no outside pressure will. Rather the strategy is to increase the disincentives for individuals to participate in or condone oppressive behavior, with the goal of helping the Green Movement flourish.

At the same time, it is important not to target certain high level officials who may have the capacity to play a role in moving Iran toward reform. For instance, while it may be justified to sanction Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani for allowing hardliners to abuse Iran’s legal system to persecute reformers, his brother Ali Larijani — the pragmatic conservative Speaker of Parliament and bitter Ahmadinejad rival — has not been complicit in human rights abuses, and thus should not be snared by the sanctions net. This nuanced targeting will send a signal to the regime’s officials that they will be left alone if they refrain from abusing their fellow citizens.

Moreover, certain Iranian leaders are sensitive to international accusations of human rights abuses. This is not for altruistic reasons, but because they want the Islamic Republic to be seen as a role model to the Islamic world, and not simply another run-of-the-mill Middle Eastern dictatorship.

To be sure, human rights sanctions alone may not alleviate the pressure currently being placed on Iran’s Green Movement. Regime hardliners could blame the U.S. for fomenting post-election unrest and paint Iran’s dissidents as Western spies. Republican Guard members and Basijis could continue their human rights abuses regardless of travel bans and asset freezes. But that is the status quo in Iran. There is little cost to the U.S. if human rights sanctions don’t work — and much to gain if they do.

A Broader, Pro-Reform Agenda

Human rights sanctions are not a silver bullet. They will not bring the regime to its knees. But neither will gasoline sanctions. Fortunately, it appears that the Obama administration is asking Congress to slow down its push for unilateral gasoline sanctions as the U.N. Security Council deliberates over its own sanctions during the next few months. Meanwhile, targeted sanctions against human rights abusers is being pushed by Sen. John McCain, though not as stand-alone legislation but as an amendment to the flawed gas sanctions bill.

A human rights sanctions package can be an effective part of a broader effort to help Iran’s Green Movement chart its own course toward a better future for Iranians. Other essential pieces to this strategy would include:

  • Rep. Jim Moran’s (D-VA) Iranian Digital Empowerment Act, which seeks to help get information-sharing software and filter-breaking technology into the hands of Iranian reformers.
  • Rep. Keith Ellison’s (D-MN) Stand With the Iranian People Act, which (in addition to calling for human rights abusers to be sanctioned) calls for suspension of U.S. government funding to entities that sell censorship and surveillance equipment to the regime, and seeks to ease restrictions on American charities that want to work in Iran.

Bills focusing on the Islamic Republic’s human rights abuses have an excellent chance of passing in Congress because they are politically appealing — they help legislators look tough on national security while promoting American values of freedom and democracy. Moreover, they avoid the danger that is inherent with sweeping economic sanctions: that of harming the people they were intended to help.

Moreover, U.S. passage of human rights sanctions could lead allies in Europe to follow suit. Although the U.N. Security Council is unlikely to do so — China and Russia are adamantly opposed to interfering in others’ domestic affairs — if the U.S. and European allies banded together to pressure countries like Dubai to enforce travel bans, sanctions would have a greater chance of success.

In the end, it is important to remember that the members of the Green Movement are fighting for reform within the Islamic Republic system. Their demands include an independent electoral commission, the release of all political prisoners and freedom of speech. Acknowledging that it is up to the Iranian people to chart their own course, the U.S. can best protect its own security interests by helping to level the playing field in Iran, allowing the moderate, peace-loving majority of Iranians to continue their journey toward a better future for their country and the broader Middle East.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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Four Things Obama Needs to Do in the Middle East

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Shadi Hamid


Shadi Hamid is the deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

by Shadi Hamid

In a recent piece, I discussed the growing sense of “Bush nostalgia” among Arab reformers. Such nostalgia has less to do with George W. Bush and more to do with the period of democratic promise the Middle East experienced in 2004-5, partly a result of aggressive, but short-lived, efforts to put pressure on authoritarian regimes.

For its part, the Obama administration has shown little real interest in democratization in the Arab world, falling back on the “pragmatic” neo-realism of the Clinton and first Bush administrations. Compared to the destructive policies of his predecessor, President Obama’s approach seems a breath of fresh air. But his foreign policy vision, while certainly sensible, has so far been remarkably conventional and unimaginative. Perhaps that’s what was initially needed. Now, however, is the time for bolder, more creative policy making. Here are four things Obama can – and should – do in the Middle East to advance U.S. interests and ideals:

  • Recognize the region’s changing balance of power. Traditional allies like Egypt and Jordan (two of the world’s largest U.S. aid recipients) are losing influence. Increasingly authoritarian, erratic and perceived as excessively pro-American, they have little credibility with Arab audiences. On the other hand, emerging powers like Turkey and Qatar are pursuing independent foreign policies and maintaining positive relations with both the West and the “rejectionist” camp (Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah). Not surprisingly, both countries, seen as “honest brokers,” have played a major role in mediating regional conflicts and supporting dialogue efforts, including on the Syrian-Israeli, Israeli-Palestinian, Hamas-Fatah and internal Lebanese tracks. The U.S. should encourage their efforts, keeping in mind that they may be uniquely well-positioned to exert influence on Iran and Syria.
  • Promote Turkish accession to the EU. Turkey is the closest thing the Middle East has to a “model,” one of only two countries in the world led by a democratically elected Islamist party. According to a 2009 survey, 64 percent of Arab respondents in seven countries believe “Turkey’s EU membership prospects make Turkey an attractive partner for reform in the Arab world.” Considering its growing regional importance, the U.S. cannot afford for Turkey to turn inward and become embroiled in conflict between its secularist military and Islamist-leaning government. For a time, Turkey’s desire to join the EU provided incentives to implement wide-ranging legal and political reforms. However, as the EU drags its feet on accession talks, and Turks lose hope in EU membership, the reform process looks less encouraging than ever. Turkey must, however, remain enmeshed in Western institutions and partnerships. The Obama administration should use its leverage with European allies to ensure the accession process moves forward.
  • Begin strategic engagement with nonviolent Islamist groups. In most Arab countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, are the largest, most influential opposition groups. But Obama has so far failed to engage them, despite his emphasis on “dialogue” with diverse actors. Engagement would serve several purposes, discussed in detail here, including information-gathering, improving our credibility with Arab publics and putting pressure on autocratic regimes to open up. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or another senior official, could begin by giving a major speech on the U.S. and political Islam (something which the Clinton administration did on several occasions), stating unequivocally that the U.S. will accept democratic outcomes, even if that means the election of Islamist parties. The State Department should also issue a directive explicitly permitting State Department employees, including ambassadors in the region, to meet with and incorporate members of Islamist organizations in their programming.
  • Embrace “positive conditionality.” The U.S. gives hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Arab authoritarian regimes. Rather than cutting aid, which is unlikely to be politically viable, the U.S. could offer large packages in additional assistance, conditioned on meeting a series of explicit benchmarks on democratization. If the country failed to meet these benchmarks, the aid would be withheld and carried over to a reform “endowment” for the next fiscal year. This way, the more governments rejected the aid, the greater the incentive would be to accept it in future years.

None of these four “steps” are particularly revolutionary. But that’s the point: the Obama administration could take action immediately – if it had the political will. With the troop drawdown in Iraq, and the Iranian nuclear threat, there may be a temptation to wait for a better time. But, in the Middle East, the better time, sadly, never seems to come.

If anything, a confluence of factors appears to be converging, suggesting the time to act is now. There are critical elections in Egypt and Jordan coming up in 2010 (and 2011). For the first time in Egypt, there is an inspiring national figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, who seems capable of uniting a notoriously fractious opposition behind a common vision for reform. Egypt, along with Algeria and Tunisia, will be facing succession struggles sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, internal tensions in Turkey seem to be rising, with the threat of escalation looming in the background. In other words, this is a difficult time of transition in the Middle East and the U.S. will need to do considerably more than just tread water.

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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Democracy as a Free Lunch for Islamofascists

Monday, April 12th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

As I am sure you have noticed, one of the big conservative talking points in recent months has been that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats despise democracy because they have (sic!) used “revolutionary methods” to (sic!) “cram down” health reform against the manifest wishes of the American people, who wisely oppose socialism. Fortunately, Republicans are determined to help Americans “take back their country” in November.

But at the very same time, bless them, conservatives can’t help but express some long-held negative feelings about this small-d-democratic claptrap. One sign is their great hostility to any efforts to encourage higher levels of voting (though this is typically framed as opposition to “voter fraud,” evidence for which is completely lacking). Another is the Tea Party theory that there are absolute limits on the size and cost of government that either are or should be enshrined in the Constitution or enforced by the states, regardless of the results of national elections. And still another involves periodic bursts of outrage over people who don’t pay income taxes being allowed to vote.

This last meme got a boost very recently when estimates emerged that 47 percent of U.S. households won’t have any 2009 federal income tax liability.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” sneered Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Sean Hannity chipped in with alarums about the implications of “half of Americans not paying taxes.”

One conservative site took the AP story on this data and added this helpful subtitle: “Tax Day Is Just Christmas For Many.”

Another had an even more suggestive title: “Let’s Make You Spend More on Me,” along with a chart showing upward federal spending trends. This interpretation is clearly just a hop, skip and jump from the “culture of dependency” rhetoric most famously expressed by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in his speech comparing subsidized school lunch beneficiaries with stray animals who shouldn’t be encouraged with free food. And in retrospect, Bauer showed some unorthodox brilliance in galvanizing conservative anger about socialist “free lunch” redistribution toward kids who are literally receiving free lunches.

Now the various conservative “analysts” of the free-lunch, free-rider phenomenon rarely go to the trouble of acknowledging that most of that lucky 47 percent not owing federal income taxes (which represent less than half of federal revenues) pay high and very regressive federal payroll taxes, not to mention even more regressive state and local sales and property taxes. Nor do they note that most non-federal-income-tax-paying households are either retirees living on savings and retirement benefits or working poor families with kids (the beneficiaries of those child tax credits that conservatives are always promoting as “pro-family” policies). And I’ve yet to see even one concede that the 47 percent figure is a temporary spike attributable to the recession and to short-term tax credits that will expire with the economic stimulus program.

While the reverse-class-warfare subtext of some of the conservative angst about alleged tax-and-benefit freeloaders is pretty clear, there are those who would link it to an even more lurid, culture-war theme. Check out this remarkable weekend post from National Review’s Mark Steyn, who compared our system of “representation without taxation to” — no, I’m not making this up! — Muslim oppression of non-Muslims. Gaze in awe:

United States income tax is becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith. Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, the non-believers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity, and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

So there you have it: socialism and Islamofascism nicely bound up in the policies of that madrassa-attending elitist, Barack Obama.

However you slice it, the conservative commitment to democracy sometimes seems limited to those “real Americans” who think right and vote right. At a minimum, progressives should not let them combine such attitudes with pious invocations of the Popular Will.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerkate/

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Terrorism in Russia

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Nearly 36 hours after the attacks in Moscow’s subway system, reports indicate that nearly 40 are dead and more than 70 have been injured. As of this writing, no group has claimed responsibility, though heavy suspicion has fallen on Muslim separatist groups based in southern Russia’s Caucasus region, the primary source of terrorism in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. More on that in a second.

There were two bombings, conducted quasi-simultaneously (about 40 minutes apart) at two busy metro stations in Moscow’s city center. The Lubyanka station is located near the headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service (the legacy organization of the KGB), which points to a message the attackers may have been hoping to convey; the second scene at the Park Kultury Station is located a few stops to the south along the same metro line. If you’d like to see some interesting citizen-journalism of the attacks’ aftermath, click over to the NYT’s The Lede blog.

Much has been made of the attackers’ identity — two women dressed in black robes with explosives and shrapnel packed underneath their garments. Female suicide bombers have been used by Chechen separatists dating back to 2002 and are commonly — and disturbingly – referred to as ”black widows.” Furthermore, female suicide bombers are hardly a new phenomenon. If memory serves, they’ve been used as long ago as the early 1990s by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Terrorist groups — even those with no formal ties to one another — observe each others’ tactical successes and adopt the effective ones. The use of unsuspecting women has made the rounds in terrorist circles, even if Western audiences still find the tactic shocking.

It’s important to appreciate the dynamic nature and motivations of the Caucasus’ separatist groups over the last decade and the Russian government’s response to them. Boris Yeltsin first installed the then-little-known ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin as prime minister in 1999, and Putin vowed to crush the Chechen separatist movement. In the early-to-mid 2000s, the group was a relatively structured militia that was responsible for mostly large-scale terrorist attacks. The group most famously conducted the 2004 siege at the Beslan school that killed over 300 people, many of whom were school children; it was also responsible for the 2002 siege at a Moscow theater.

In large part, Putin was responsible for successfully dismantling the organizational hierarchy behind those acts, killing leaders like Shamil Basayev and Abdul Khalim Sudalayev in 2006. He used victories like those to consolidate power behind the Kremlin, saying political power-grabs like eliminating the direct election of regional governors were necessary to defeat terrorism. Can you imagine if Bush had eliminated the election of state governors after 9/11? Just a bit of a stretch, right?

But as often happens with insurgent organizations, cutting off their head rarely kills them. Moscow’s success only caused the resistance to morph over the last four or five years from a top-down military-style structure to more of a flat, non-hierarchical, Islamic-based motley crew. Here’s an excellent run-down on the insurgency’s changing nature and motivation from WaPo’s Philip Pan late last year:

Russia has long blamed violence in the region on Muslim extremists backed by foreign governments and terrorist networks, but radical Islam is relatively new here. In the 1990s, it was ethnic nationalism, not religious fervor, that motivated Chechen separatists. That changed, though, as fighting spilled beyond Chechnya and Russian forces used harsher tactics targeting devout Muslims.

In 2007, the rebel leader Doku Umarov abandoned the goal of Chechen independence and declared jihad instead, vowing to establish a fundamentalist Caucasus Emirate that would span the entire region. After Moscow proclaimed victory in Chechnya in April, he issued a video labeling civilians legitimate targets and reviving Riyad-us Saliheen, the self-described martyrs’ brigade that launched terrorist attacks across Russia from 2002 to 2006.

It would appear on the surface that the Kremlin has failed to appreciate this change. In my mind, the new shape and motivations of the Chechen insurgency would call for more of a counter-insurgency style strategy that has been adopted by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, Putin has vowed a continued heavy hand, saying, “The terrorists will be destroyed!” This is of course what any national leader must say to placate a fearful and confused domestic audience, but may begin to ring a bit hollow in light of Putin’s similar rhetoric of 1999:

“Putin said [before these attacks], ‘One thing that I definitely accomplished was this [stopping the Chechen threat],’ and he didn’t,” said Pavel K. Baev, a Russian who is a professor at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

“My feeling is this is not an isolated attack, that we will see more,” Mr. Baev said. “If we are facing a situation where there is a chain of attacks, that would undercut every attempt to soften, liberalize, open up, and increase the demand for tougher measures.”

In my next post, I’ll take a look at how the U.S. has responded to the attacks.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Rebranding Terrorism as Resistance

Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Now that the Obama administration has chastised Israel for expanding settlements in East Jerusalem, it should turn its attention to Mughrabi Square.

Palestinian students gathered earlier this month to dedicate a square in the West Bank town of El Bireh to the memory of Dala Mughrabi, a young woman responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The 19-year-old Mughrabi led a Palestinian terror squad that landed on a beach near Tel Aviv in 1978. In the ensuing massacre, 38 Israeli civilians were killed, including 13 children. An American photographer, Gail Rubin, was also slain.

According to the New York Times, the event was organized by the youth wing of Fatah, the ruling party led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Amid Israeli protests that it would violate their pledges to refrain from “incitement,” most top Palestinian leaders skipped the ceremony. But not all, as the Times reported:

“We are all Dala Mughrabi,” declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s main decision-making body, who came to join the students. “For us she is not a terrorist,” he said, but rather “a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.”

The incident was overshadowed by the uproar over Israel’s announcement – during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden — of plans to add 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.

U.S. officials reacted furiously, calling the announcement an “insult” and demanding apologies from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Some observers see the U.S. outrage as contrived and likely counterproductive. After all, the settlement freeze announced last year by Netanyahu had explicitly exempted East Jerusalem. Others, like my colleague Jim Arkedis, saw the rebuke as essential to reestablishing America’s credentials as an “honest broker” in Middle East peace talks.
In any case, U.S. leaders ought to be at least as upset by the glorification of terrorists as they are by Israel’s settlement policies. Apparently emboldened by the settlement furor, Abbas told U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell this week that Palestinians have a “national right of resistance” to Israeli occupation.

Rebranding terrorism as “resistance” not only undermines prospects for a just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it also validates the barbarous crimes against humanity perpetrated by al Qaeda and other extremist groups. That’s why U.S. leaders must categorically reject Palestinian attempts to justify attacks on civilians and to make martyrs out of murderers.

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Leaving Iraq

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Take a minute to soak in Tom Ricks’ column in NYT today. Here are a two key excerpts:

IRAQ’S March 7 national election, and the formation of a new government that will follow, carry huge implications for both Iraqis and American policy. It appears now that the results are unlikely to resolve key political struggles that could return the country to sectarianism and violence.  If so, President Obama may find himself later this year considering whether once again to break his campaign promises about ending the war, and to offer to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for several more years. Surprisingly, that probably is the best course for him, and for Iraqi leaders, to pursue.

[...]

The political situation is far less certain, and I think less stable, than most Americans believe. … All the existential questions that plagued Iraq before the surge remain unanswered. How will oil revenue be shared among the country’s major groups? What is to be the fundamental relationship between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds? Will Iraq have a strong central government or be a loose confederation? And what will be the role of Iran (for my money, the biggest winner in the Iraq war thus far)?

Ricks goes on to advocate slowing down the U.S. withdrawal, which can really only occur if the Iraqis offer to re-open negotiations on the status of forces agreement (SOFA). It was signed in the waning days of the Bush administration and establishes December 31, 2011, as the date when “all United States forces shall withdraw from Iraq.”

While the future in Iraq certainly continues to look murky and Ricks’ suggestion should be kept in mind, I don’t think we’re quite at the point of seriously debating a change to the SOFA just yet. Let’s wait until the March 7th elections have passed and the mood of the country and new government shake out until we think about it. After all, it’s not our call anyway — as the SOFA clearly states, “The United States recognizes the sovereign right of the Government of Iraq to request the departure of the United States Forces from Iraq at any time,” and that’s a politically weighty sentence to revisit if you’re a brand new Iraqi government.

That’s why I don’t think the announcement of General Odierno’s contingency plan to delay withdrawal is much of a definite harbinger at this point. That’s what the military does — it plans for things. They’re the best Boy Scouts (motto: Be Prepared) in the world. And just because it plans, doesn’t mean the commander-in-chief is about to put those plans in motion. After all, we have a plan on the books to attack Iran. And I’ve got $20 that says we have a plan to attack Canada.

But then again, invading Canada would make winning the hockey gold medal a lot less fun.

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High Noon in Tehran

Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Iranians are bracing for violent clashes in the streets of Tehran today, the Islamic Republic’s 31st anniversary. Both the government and the opposition Green Movement are calling for demonstrations to mark the occasion.

Reza Aslan, a PPI friend and contributor, says the regime’s increasingly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent has brought Iran to the verge of civil war. Other observers fear a Tiananmen Square-style massacre that could cripple the democratic opposition, which flared up after last summer’s rigged elections.

Meanwhile, Iran’s rulers are promising rude surprises for their external critics, too. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warns of a “telling blow” Thursday, while Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, threatens a “punch” for the United States and other countries that have worked to end Iran’s nuclear program.

Such cryptic belligerence no doubt reflects the regime’s desire to distract the world’s attention from its increasingly shaky position at home. The mullahs’ old tactic of whipping up paranoia and striking defiant poses against supposed U.S. or Western plots is wearing thin. A broad cross-section of Iranian society seems focused instead on the Islamic Republic’s metamorphosis into an Islamic police state.

“The Islamic Republic is nothing but an economic-religious-military complex that applies its coercive power not through political institutions but through a military and security apparatus under the direct supervision of Ayatollah Khamenei,” said Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at a congressional hearing last week. No “engagement” with opponents for this regime; instead, it has unleashed its vast security apparatus on Iranian society. Scores of anti-government protestors have been killed and hundreds more imprisoned. Prominent regime opponents have been subjected to totalitarian-style show trials, and the government has announced plans to execute nine protesters. The government is relentless in policing the internet, jamming foreign broadcasts and blocking contacts with the outside world.

Ahmadinejad underscored his contempt for global opinion last weekend in announcing that Iran will begin enriching uranium to higher levels, bringing it much closer to fuel that can easily be “weaponized.” He also threatened, implausibly, to build 10 more nuclear plants over the next year. In any case, Ahmadinejad’s latest antics should have been an embarrassment to China, which has been blocking tougher sanctions because, it claims, the regime is ready to deal on enrichment.

How should the United States react to these and coming provocations? Not by intensifying efforts to “engage” the regime in talks focused narrowly on the nuclear dispute. Washington needs to broaden its angle of vision to encompass the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and democracy. Twice before, in 1953 and 1979, America failed to side with such popular aspirations, sacrificing our own ideals to the logic of superpower rivalry. It was a bad bargain then, and we can’t afford to make the same mistake again.

Leaders of the Green Movement have made it clear they neither expect nor need America’s help in their struggle. But without offering direct support to democratic reformers, the United States should be more vocal in defending human rights in Iran. And, together with our European partners, we should justify stricter sanctions on human rights grounds as well as nonproliferation.

And as Khalaji noted, “The threat to regional peace and Iranian democracy are the same: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).” The Corps is in charge of Iran’s nuclear program, and is Khamenei’s chief instrument for political suppression. It also funnels Iranian aid and arms to extremist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Shia militants in Iraq and other Sunni-majority countries.

Of course, Washington should keep probing for signs of Iranian tractability on the nuclear issue. But the United States should be wary of doing anything now -– either by overreacting to its bluster, or rushing to engage in high level talks –- that would boost the sagging prestige of the Iranian leadership and the IRGC. Over the long haul, political change inside Iran is our surest guarantee of safety.

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