[Mb-civic] SUGGESTED READ-FW: Will Washington SupportDemocracyinIran?

[Robin McNamara]

Hey Richard

What are you going tocall the show " the Iranian way "

Peace
Robin
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "richard haase" <hotprojects at nyc.rr.com>
To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Mb-civic] SUGGESTED READ-FW: Will Washington 
SupportDemocracyinIran?


> which is why we need to get everybodys money for shows michael lol
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robin McNamara" <olhippie at tampabay.rr.com>
> To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 8:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [Mb-civic] SUGGESTED READ-FW: Will Washington Support
> DemocracyinIran?
>
>
>> Right On Michael !
>>
>> Peace
>> Robin
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
>> To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 3:12 PM
>> Subject: [Mb-civic] SUGGESTED READ-FW: Will Washington Support Democracy
>> inIran?
>>
>>
>> This is a worthwhile article about the current situation.
>> For certain the current regime in Iran was/is far more dangerous to world
>> security than Iraq ever was.
>> Planning a pushover our neocons sure blew it. They picked on the local
> bully
>> ignoring the monster.
>> Michael
>>
>> ------ Forwarded Message
>> From: Golsorkhi <grgolsorkhi at earthlink.net>
>> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 14:06:52 -0500
>> To: <michael at michaelbutler.com>
>> Subject: FW: Will Washington Support Democracy in Iran?
>>
>>
>> ------ Forwarded Message
>> From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 17:07:39 -0500
>> Subject: Will Washington Support Democracy in Iran?
>>
>> Will Washington Support Democracy in Iran?
>>
>> by Michael Rubin
>> Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Issue Brief
>> February 13, 2005
>> http://www.meforum.org/article/680
>>     ?
>> After a first term marked by schizophrenic Iran policy initiatives, the
>> Bush White House will soon develop a coordinated policy to promote
>> peaceful regime change in Iran. The Bush administration is heartened by
>> the apparent success of the Iraqi election and believes that Iranians
>> are ready to exert their democratic rights.
>>     ?
>> Bush policy is motivated by the grave and growing threat from the
>> Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program, and the realization that
>> neither Iran nor the European Union are sincere in preventing Iran's
>> acquisition of nuclear weaponry. The Islamic Republic's potential
>> threat to American security emanates from Tehran's determination to
>> develop satellite launching capability which could well substitute as
>> an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system as well as from
>> the regime's continued sponsorship of terrorists.
>>     ?
>> A new U.S. policy will also recognize that the dichotomy within Iran is
>> not one of reformers versus hardliners within the Islamic Republic, but
>> rather proponents of democracy versus proponents of theocracy. Even if
>> Iranian acquisition of nuclear capability is inevitable, the threat
>> comes from the nature of the regime rather than from the Iranian
>> people.
>>     ?
>> As hardline ideologues consolidate power in Tehran, Iran will mark a
>> number of important anniversaries which might spur ordinary people to
>> agitate against their government and for democracy as they call for a
>> new national referendum on the future of Iran.
>>
>> A Stalemated Iran Policy
>>
>> In his January 20, 2005, inaugural speech, President George W. Bush
>> declared, "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their
>> chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude." Less than two
>> weeks later, Bush argued in his State of the Union address that "the
>> victory of freedom in Iraq will...inspire democratic reformers from
>> Damascus to Tehran." Such statements are not mere rhetoric, but mark a
>> new willingness to advance democracy in Iran.
>>
>> During Bush's first term in office, the U.S. government lacked an Iran
>> policy. The State Department, Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency,
>> and Treasury Department twice failed to reach consensus on a National
>> Security Policy Directive. Neither then-National Security Advisor
>> Condoleezza Rice nor the President forced the issue. As a result,
>> American policy was schizophrenic. While Bush labeled Iran as part of
>> the "Axis of Evil" in his January 2002 State of the Union Address,
>> Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage described Iran as a
>> "democracy."1
>>
>> With no clear White House policy direction, Senate Republicans likewise
>> took contradictory positions. While Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) dined
>> with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations,2 Sam Brownback
>> (Kansas) introduced an Iran Freedom and Democracy Support Act which
>> would have created a $50 million fund to support opposition satellite
>> stations and civil society.
>>
>> State Department lawyers, meanwhile, argued that non-interference
>> clauses in the 1980 Algiers Accords, the agreement which had led to the
>> release of the U.S. embassy hostages, prohibited funding of opposition
>> media. Retired National Security Advisors, though, disputed the State
>> Department's line.3 In recent weeks, the White House legal office has
>> opined that nothing in the Accords prevents assistance to Iranian
>> democrats.
>>
>> New National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley's decision to remove
>> Richard Haass protégé Meghan O'Sullivan from the Iran portfolio (she
>> retains her position as senior director for Iraq at the National
>> Security Council) also bodes well for a more activist policy,
>> especially as the new National Security team again reviews Washington's
>> policy - or lack thereof - toward Tehran. O'Sullivan had long been both
>> dismissive of Iranian dissidents and a proponent of engaging the
>> Islamic Republic.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why Now?
>>
>> The Bush administration's new focus on Iran is a reflection not only of
>> the President's sincere conviction that the Iranian people deserve
>> freedom and liberty, but also of the belief that the United States
>> cannot live with a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran. While many
>> European officials and American academics describe Iranian politicians
>> like former president and current Expediency Council chairman 'Ali
>> Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as a pragmatist,4 U.S. policymakers do not
>> dismiss his December 14, 2001, threats to initiate a nuclear first
>> strike against Israel,5 nor do they dismiss as rhetoric banners reading
>> "Israel must be uprooted and erased from history," draped over
>> medium-range Shihab-3 missiles in a September 22, 2003, military
>> parade.6
>>
>> The Islamic Republic's potential threat to American security is just as
>> serious, though, both because of Tehran's determination to develop
>> satellite launching capability which could well substitute as an
>> intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system,7 and because of the
>> regime's continued sponsorship of terrorists. American officials
>> continue to blame Iranian intelligence for planning the 1996 bombing of
>> an American military barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.8 The 9/11
>> Commission's bipartisan intelligence review found that the Iranian
>> regime lent passive support to many of the 9/11 hijackers, between
>> eight and ten of whom transited Iran in the year before the attack.9
>> Washington also takes seriously reports that Iranian authorities have
>> sheltered senior al-Qaeda figures in Revolutionary Guard bases near the
>> Caspian town of Chalus.10
>>
>> While some editorialists and politicians argue that Washington should
>> support the diplomacy of the European Union troika of London, Paris and
>> Berlin, many European diplomats and analysts privately acknowledge that
>> they believe Tehran's acquisition of a nuclear bomb to be inevitable, a
>> tacit admission that European diplomacy is a charade. American
>> officials may not be so blunt, but many believe their European
>> counterparts care more about the preservation of the Nuclear
>> Non-Proliferation Treaty than they do about Iran going nuclear. If the
>> European Union allows the Islamic Republic to negotiate acquisition of
>> nuclear capability, then they need not admit the emptiness of the
>> current non-proliferation regime.
>>
>> Even if Iran's acquisition of the bomb is inevitable, to American
>> strategists, the question is not whether the United States can live
>> with a nuclear Iran, but rather whether the United States can live with
>> a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran. To many Bush administration
>> officials, the danger is not necessarily that the Islamic Republic
>> would use its nuclear weapon against the United States, but rather that
>> the feeling of immunity from retaliation that a nuclear capability
>> might lend regime ideologues would lead to an increase in terrorism in
>> the Middle East and Europe, and violent attempts to subvert Iraq and
>> Afghanistan. Iranian authorities, for example, ignored numerous Turkish
>> diplomatic demarches, and only scaled back support for Kurdistan
>> Workers Party [PKK] terrorists operating in Turkey after the Turkish
>> Air Force bombed the Iranian border town of Piranshahr.11 Had the
>> Islamic Republic enjoyed a potential nuclear retaliation capability,
>> Turkish authorities could likely have not forced an abandonment of
>> Tehran's PKK support. Meanwhile, American authorities are increasingly
>> concerned by the resurgence of the Revolutionary Guards within the
>> Islamic Republic's political class. Revolutionary Guard influence has
>> been most recently evidenced by their effective veto of Turkish
>> commercial involvement in the communications sector and Tehran's new
>> airport.12
>>
>> Such concerns - and the unwillingness to assume that regime ideologues
>> will not try to act upon their deeply-held beliefs about the United
>> States and Israel - are responsible for the current debate about the
>> efficacy of military action. While targeted strikes on nuclear and
>> ballistic missile sites might not eliminate the Islamic Republic's
>> capability, the question is whether they could delay Tehran's nuclear
>> ambitions beyond the lifespan of the Islamic Republic.
>>
>>
>>
>> Are Iranians Ready for Democracy?
>>
>> The best option from an American point of view would be a peaceful
>> transition of power leading to an Iranian abandonment of the Islamic
>> Republic's more threatening convictions. The relevant question
>> therefore becomes whether the Iranian people are ready for democracy
>> and, if so, when they might rise up and demand real rather than
>> cosmetic rights. No one in Washington seeks to use military force to
>> oust the Iranian regime, and rumors that the U.S. government even
>> considered lending support to the Mujahidin al-Khalq are without basis.
>> Democracy advocates within the Bush administration are likely to ask
>> whether they can take any actions which would catalyze the Iranian
>> people's ability to replicate last year's peaceful revolutions in
>> Georgia and the Ukraine.
>>
>> Both anecdotal and statistical evidence indicate the Iranian people are
>> ready for change. While some outside analysts continue to speak of a
>> dichotomy between hardliners and reformers, most Iranians now accept
>> that the political tension within Iran is between regime and dissident.
>> On December 6, 2004, students heckled Mohammad Khatami, chanting "Shame
>> on you" and "Where are your promised freedoms?"13
>>
>> In August 2002, the Tarrance Group, a professional polling outfit,
>> conducted a survey of Iranian public opinion. They randomized the last
>> four digits of every Tehran telephone exchange, and surveyed residents
>> rich and poor. Just 21 percent of the statistically-representative
>> sample of more than 500 people said that the Guardian Council
>> represented the will of the Iranian people, while only 19 percent
>> supported a politically-active clergy. The poll also found significant
>> economic malaise, perhaps motivating the disillusionment with their
>> leadership. Only 16 percent felt that their economic situation had
>> improved during the Khatami years, while 68 percent said their family's
>> financial situation had declined since the Islamic Revolution.14
>>
>> A quarter century of theocracy has moderated the Iranian people. While
>> studying in Iran in 1996 and 1999, many Iranians told me they supported
>> Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini less out of an endorsement of his views
>> than out of a reaction to the dictatorship of the Shah. While American
>> and European intellectuals may criticize Bush's "Axis of Evil" rhetoric
>> as simplistic, the fact remains that there is a correlation between
>> Bush's moral clarity and the willingness of Iranians to take to the
>> street, as they did en masse in July 1999,15 October 2001,16 November
>> 2002,17 and July 2003,18 and at a number of more localized
>> demonstrations.19
>>
>>
>>
>> Historic Opportunity: The Call for a Referendum
>>
>> Iranians, inheritors of a 2,500-year-old culture, are far more
>> historically aware than many in the West. Recent democratic
>> developments in Iran coincide with a number of symbolic anniversaries.
>> December 2005 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of Iran's
>> Constitutional Revolution when merchants, liberals, clergy, and
>> nationalists rose up to demand basic rights in the face of an
>> autocratic ruler. After a year of struggle, the Shah granted the
>> Iranian people a constitution. In December 2006, Iranians may ask why
>> their forefathers had rights today's Iranians no longer enjoy.
>>
>> On April 1, 2004, Iranians marked a more recent anniversary - the
>> 25-year anniversary of Khomeini's declaration of an Islamic Republic.
>> On that day, Khomeini announced the results of a referendum asking a
>> simple question: "Do you want an Islamic Republic." Ninety-eight
>> percent of Iranian voters said "Yes." "By casting a decisive vote in
>> favor of the Islamic Republic," Khomeini told an enthusiastic crowd,
>> "you have established a government of divine justice." Increasingly,
>> though, a growing and disparate number of Iranian groups are suggesting
>> that Iran is ready for a new referendum.20 Many Iranians suggest a
>> simple question, "Theocracy or democracy." The Tarrance Group poll
>> found that 71 percent of Iranians would favor such a poll.21 While it
>> is not likely that the Islamic Republic's leadership would ever consent
>> to an internationally-supervised referendum - they understand the
>> contempt with which most of their charges view them - such a referendum
>> would better focus international attention on the fundamental issue of
>> the Islamic Republic's lack of legitimacy and moral bankruptcy.
>>
>> Into this tinderbox was inserted the success of Iraq's January 30,
>> 2005, elections, that country's first free poll in a half century. It
>> is a juxtaposition Iranians - many of whom believe themselves to be
>> culturally superior to their Arab neighbors - cannot miss. In June
>> 2005, Iranians will march to the polls to elect a president. Under the
>> terms of the Islamic Republic's constitution, the new president will
>> have only limited power and will remain subordinate to the unelected
>> Supreme Leader, Ayatollah 'Ali Khameini. While the unelected Guardian
>> Council in Iran severely limits the choice of candidates in Iran,
>> Iranians have already noted the full range of candidates allowed to
>> compete in Iraq's elections. Many European, American, and Arab
>> commentators sought to correlate voter turnout with election legitimacy
>> in Iraq. The same standards might be applied to Iran, where many
>> Iranians may choose to stay home as Iranian pilgrims in Iraq estimated
>> that 80 percent of their compatriots did during the February 2004
>> Majlis elections.
>>
>> After four years of policy ambiguity, the Bush administration will
>> finally make a concerted approach to change the status quo in Iran.
>> European officials may calculate they can live with a nuclear Islamic
>> Republic of Iran, but they are wrong. If the current regime goes
>> nuclear, Iran will unleash a new and potentially devastating wave of
>> terrorism which will end any hope for stabilization in Iraq and
>> Afghanistan, and peace in the Middle East. The White House is right to
>> pursue democratization as a solution. Europe would be wise to hope for
>> its success because the alternative for Washington might not be
>> acceptance of a nuclear Iran, but rather military action.
>> ---
>> Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
>> is editor of the Middle East Quarterly. He served as an Iran and Iraq
>> staff advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense between 2002
>> and 2004.
>>
>> Notes
>>
>> 1. Robin Wright, "U.S. Now Views Iran in More Favorable Light; a Top
>> Official Makes a Distinction between the regime in Tehran and those of
>> fellow 'axis of evil' members North Korea and Iraq," Los Angeles Times,
>> February 14, 2003.
>> 2. Robin Wright, "Activity Heats Up as U.S. and Iran Flirt with Closer
>> Ties," Washington Post, February 1, 2004.
>> 3. Michael Ledeen, "Act on Iran," Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2002.
>> 4. Reuel Marc Gerecht, "Going Soft on Iran," Weekly Standard, March 8,
>> 2004.
>> 5. Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, December 14, 2001.
>> 6. Ron Kampeas, "As Palestinian Picture Improves, Ominous Signs About
>> Iranian Nukes," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 22, 2004.
>> 7. "Iranian 'Sputnik' Could be Trojan Horse for Tehran's Ballistic
>> Missile Program," Aviation Week Group, November 28, 2004.
>> 8. The 9-11 Commission Report, p. 60.
>> 9. The 9-11 Commission Report, p. 240. Also see: "Iran's Link to
>> al-Qaeda: What the 9-11 Commission Found," Middle East Quarterly (Fall
>> 2004).
>> 10. "Nearly 400 al-Qaeda members and other terror suspects in Iran,"
>> Agence France Presse, July 15, 2004.
>> 11. "Iran Accuses Turkish Jets of Bombing its Territory," Associated
>> Press, July 18, 1999.
>> 12. Karl Vick, "Politics on Collision Course at Shuttered Iranian
>> Airport," Washington Post, August 10, 2004.
>> 13. "Students Heckle Iranian President," BBC News, December 6, 2004;
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4072887.stm
>> 14. Public Opinion Survey in Iran, August 23-28, 2002, Tarrance Group.
>> 15. "Fateful Moment in Iran," New York Times, July 14, 1999.
>> 16. "Tehran Gripped by Pro-Western Street Violence," Independent,
>> October 27, 2001.
>> 17. "Iranian Student Protestors Call Referendum on Hard-Line Rulers,"
>> New York Times, November 29, 2002.
>> 18. "Student Leaders Seized by Vigilantes in Iran," New York Times,
>> July 10, 2003.
>> 19. See reporting, for example, of the Student Movement Coordination
>> Committee for Democracy in Iran, www.daneshjoo.org
>> 20. Eli Lake, "Iranian Democrats Establish a United Front," New York
>> Sun, December 7, 2004.
>> 21. Public Opinion Survey in Iran, August 23-28, 2002, Tarrance Group.
>>
>> ---
>> You may freely forward this information, but on condition that you send
>> the text as an integral whole along with complete information about its
>> author, date, and source.
>>
>> ------ End of Forwarded Message
>>
>>
>> ------ End of Forwarded Message
>>
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