Michael Rubin: Iran ... The Case for “Regime Change”
[Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, lectures at the Naval Postgraduate School and Johns Hopkins University.]
What to do about Iran, especially now that the international community can no longer deny the nuclear ambitions of the theocratic state that has implicitly promised to destroy Israel? It appears that hopes for a self-generated revolution from below against the Islamic Republic have been dashed for now: the regime succeeded in containing massive protests planned for February 11, the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that brought it to power, and is proud of its methods, which included arresting student leaders and family members of prominent activists, “texting” warnings to the cell phones of Iranian activists, and blocking e-mail and multimedia messaging in order to prevent opposition coordination or handheld video of paramilitary abuse leaking to Western media.
What else might be done? Unquestionably, engagement of the kind promised by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and attempted during the first year of his presidency has failed utterly. Not only did Obama reach out to Tehran in his first interview as president, asking the Iranian leadership to “unclench their fist,” but according to Iranian press accounts, he also sent two letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seeking dialogue. In a message sent on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, Obama broke a 30-year diplomatic formula: rather than speak directly to the Iranian people, he elevated the Islamic Republic to be their rightful representative. And he remained shamefully silent as the post-election protests in June 2009 rose to a boiling point. Obama’s aides also advised him poorly about the reality of the Islamic Republic: it was embarrassingly naïve for the United States to act on the presumption that Washington’s silence would lead Tehran to refrain from accusing the United States and other Western powers had manipulated protesters. The Islamic Republic’s leadership has always been xenophobic and has never accepted accountability for its own failings. Conspiratorial thinking runs deep. Take Neda Agha-Soltan, the 16-year-old girl whose murder at the hands of a pro-government gunman was caught on film and became emblematic of the June protests. The state-controlled Iranian press has reported that Neda’s murder was actually a British plot, and the Iranian government subsequently demanded that London extradite Neda’s true murderers.
The White House no longer has any rational excuse for its failure to perceive the truth about the perspective of an Iranian leadership that sees diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy employed to lull adversaries into complacency. Indeed, while the West may find itself longing for the supposedly reformist views of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 until 2005, his own aides still brag about how they used the so-called Dialogue of Civilizations to advance their nuclear acquisitions. On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami’s spokesman, counseled sitting president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to accept the Khatami approach: “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.” What Khatami’s apologists do not explain was that he believed he owed his allegiance not to the principles of reform but to velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the Jurists,” the foundational basis of the Islamic Republic.1 Khatami’s goal was not to move away from the Islamic Republic but rather to preserve it—and the same, by the way, could and should be said of Mir Houssein Mousavi, the candidate who had the election last June stolen from him and in whose name, in part, the “Green” movement arose.
Many Iran-watchers are quick to discount the importance of the regime’s core ideas. The anti-sanctions activist Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, argued in his 2007 book, Treacherous Alliance, for example, that the Islamic Republic was a normal state, not beholden to ideology. This is nonsense. While the frightening messianic rhetoric that pours from the mouth of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not be shared by either Iran’s educated elite or much of Iran’s clergy, those in control of government policy continue to embrace the same brand of Islamic radicalism from which Ahmadinejad’s noxious ideas flow. It is certainly true that Iranians are more cosmopolitan than the peoples who surround them. But the professors hanging around the bookshops across from Tehran University, the families shopping in the trendy shops around Vanak Square, and the young people flirting in fast-food joints around Tajrish Square in northern Tehran do not make nuclear policy. Command and control over an Iranian bomb will rest solidly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commissars in the Office of the Supreme Leader, and these are the most extreme elements in Iranian society. While journalists write knowingly about reformers, hardliners, and pragmatists in the Iranian cabinet and parliament, the goings-on among factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are almost entirely unknown to us—and that is the only factionalism that matters. Simply put, if the Islamic Republic gains nuclear weapons, neither the White House nor the Central Intelligence Agency can have any confidence that the regime’s most radical elements will not be in control of them.
This is why some analysts advocate military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such strikes can delay the program, albeit at high cost in terms of blood and treasure. They would, however, also strengthen the regime, as I believe the Iranian people would rally around the flag. There is precedent for this rallying effect. The Ayatollah Khomeini might never have consolidated the Islamic Revolution in the first place had the Iraqi army not invaded Iran a year after he took office; the war was a godsend to him because it provided a nationalist glue that his pan-Islamist theories could not. The other weakness of air strikes is that if they did not topple the regime, they would delay but not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions; after a delay of a few years, the nuclear program would recover.
The key to resolving the problem, therefore, becomes removal of the Iranian regime itself. Is that possible? Yes.
History offers lessons in what not to do. Iranians may dislike their government, but they dislike foreign invaders even more. Even limited U.S. military action would likely strengthen the regime even if the initial effect would be to cause it to teeter. This does not mean that military action might not be necessary; an Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons is the worst possible scenario. But we should not count on military action providing a death blow to the regime...
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What to do about Iran, especially now that the international community can no longer deny the nuclear ambitions of the theocratic state that has implicitly promised to destroy Israel? It appears that hopes for a self-generated revolution from below against the Islamic Republic have been dashed for now: the regime succeeded in containing massive protests planned for February 11, the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that brought it to power, and is proud of its methods, which included arresting student leaders and family members of prominent activists, “texting” warnings to the cell phones of Iranian activists, and blocking e-mail and multimedia messaging in order to prevent opposition coordination or handheld video of paramilitary abuse leaking to Western media.
What else might be done? Unquestionably, engagement of the kind promised by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and attempted during the first year of his presidency has failed utterly. Not only did Obama reach out to Tehran in his first interview as president, asking the Iranian leadership to “unclench their fist,” but according to Iranian press accounts, he also sent two letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seeking dialogue. In a message sent on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, Obama broke a 30-year diplomatic formula: rather than speak directly to the Iranian people, he elevated the Islamic Republic to be their rightful representative. And he remained shamefully silent as the post-election protests in June 2009 rose to a boiling point. Obama’s aides also advised him poorly about the reality of the Islamic Republic: it was embarrassingly naïve for the United States to act on the presumption that Washington’s silence would lead Tehran to refrain from accusing the United States and other Western powers had manipulated protesters. The Islamic Republic’s leadership has always been xenophobic and has never accepted accountability for its own failings. Conspiratorial thinking runs deep. Take Neda Agha-Soltan, the 16-year-old girl whose murder at the hands of a pro-government gunman was caught on film and became emblematic of the June protests. The state-controlled Iranian press has reported that Neda’s murder was actually a British plot, and the Iranian government subsequently demanded that London extradite Neda’s true murderers.
The White House no longer has any rational excuse for its failure to perceive the truth about the perspective of an Iranian leadership that sees diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy employed to lull adversaries into complacency. Indeed, while the West may find itself longing for the supposedly reformist views of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 until 2005, his own aides still brag about how they used the so-called Dialogue of Civilizations to advance their nuclear acquisitions. On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami’s spokesman, counseled sitting president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to accept the Khatami approach: “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.” What Khatami’s apologists do not explain was that he believed he owed his allegiance not to the principles of reform but to velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the Jurists,” the foundational basis of the Islamic Republic.1 Khatami’s goal was not to move away from the Islamic Republic but rather to preserve it—and the same, by the way, could and should be said of Mir Houssein Mousavi, the candidate who had the election last June stolen from him and in whose name, in part, the “Green” movement arose.
Many Iran-watchers are quick to discount the importance of the regime’s core ideas. The anti-sanctions activist Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, argued in his 2007 book, Treacherous Alliance, for example, that the Islamic Republic was a normal state, not beholden to ideology. This is nonsense. While the frightening messianic rhetoric that pours from the mouth of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not be shared by either Iran’s educated elite or much of Iran’s clergy, those in control of government policy continue to embrace the same brand of Islamic radicalism from which Ahmadinejad’s noxious ideas flow. It is certainly true that Iranians are more cosmopolitan than the peoples who surround them. But the professors hanging around the bookshops across from Tehran University, the families shopping in the trendy shops around Vanak Square, and the young people flirting in fast-food joints around Tajrish Square in northern Tehran do not make nuclear policy. Command and control over an Iranian bomb will rest solidly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commissars in the Office of the Supreme Leader, and these are the most extreme elements in Iranian society. While journalists write knowingly about reformers, hardliners, and pragmatists in the Iranian cabinet and parliament, the goings-on among factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are almost entirely unknown to us—and that is the only factionalism that matters. Simply put, if the Islamic Republic gains nuclear weapons, neither the White House nor the Central Intelligence Agency can have any confidence that the regime’s most radical elements will not be in control of them.
This is why some analysts advocate military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such strikes can delay the program, albeit at high cost in terms of blood and treasure. They would, however, also strengthen the regime, as I believe the Iranian people would rally around the flag. There is precedent for this rallying effect. The Ayatollah Khomeini might never have consolidated the Islamic Revolution in the first place had the Iraqi army not invaded Iran a year after he took office; the war was a godsend to him because it provided a nationalist glue that his pan-Islamist theories could not. The other weakness of air strikes is that if they did not topple the regime, they would delay but not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions; after a delay of a few years, the nuclear program would recover.
The key to resolving the problem, therefore, becomes removal of the Iranian regime itself. Is that possible? Yes.
History offers lessons in what not to do. Iranians may dislike their government, but they dislike foreign invaders even more. Even limited U.S. military action would likely strengthen the regime even if the initial effect would be to cause it to teeter. This does not mean that military action might not be necessary; an Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons is the worst possible scenario. But we should not count on military action providing a death blow to the regime...