Bush's ugly choices in Iran

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

The Iraq kick-the-can search for WMD notwithstanding, evidence for another nuclear threat to world peace is growing in Iran. Only part of the problem is Iran building nukes under the pretence of an oil rich economy needing nuclear power while rejecting UN International Atomic Energy monitoring. But Tehran has moved to enrichment after apparently discovering domestic uranium. The only question appears to be Òhow long?Ó Given repeated failures to appreciate the speed of such developments in Iraq and North Korea, alarm is justified.

For all of this is in the hands of a regime that has for more than two decades declared the U.S. its enemy, plotted the deaths of American military in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and through its surrogate, HisbÕallah, is a major obstacle to settlement in Israel-Palestine. Furthermore, PersiaÕs traditional cultural role from the Black Sea to China plays a critical regional role for war or peace [in Afghanistan, for example]. Without a stable, peace-dedicated Tehran regime, there is no hope of stability in the region, nor with its opivotal role in OPEC, in the whole energy-based world economy. [Iran was the principle founder of OPEC].

The growing repugnance of the Iranians for the MullahsÕ obscurantist regime is increasingly clear. A population approaching 70 million [probably now bypassing Egypt and Turkey, its two large Islamic neighbors], more than half of whom are minors, is chaffing at the bit from its antimodernist strictures, its mismanagement of the economy leading to massive unemployment, and the winds of change now sweeping the area. Unlike protests which led to the student massacre of four years ago July 9th, unrest has now spread beyond Tehran and beyond the students to the middle classes in provincial cities.

Yet any revolt faces formidable opposition. The Mullahs in all their false piety have not flinched from using thugs ø apparently including foreign mercenaries. In a crunch, the radical elements of a regime which has already cost the lives of thousands of dissidents and inflicted barbarous punishments such as stoning and amputation, may not hesitate at more repression.

However, one of the critical factors militating toward the end of the regime is the presence of 2.6 million Iranians in a Diaspora since the Islamic revolution of 1979 ø more than a million and a half in the U.S.. Not the impoverished refugees of other crises areas, they are talented, entrepreneurial and independent. Their relatively elaborate TV-radio propaganda offensive from California is critical in the war for the loyalty of the Iranian masses.

But the revolt still remains inchoate. It is conflicted with small but armed and fanatical opposition groups øevidenced by their activities in Iraq and France ø in the hands of anti-democratic elements, even combinations of radical Islamicists and secularists under cult figures. No dominant charismatic figure has yet emerged inside Iran or on the outside. The former ShahÕs son, perhaps a gifted young man, is not likely to be acceptable to a population which has been propagandized intensively against the Old Regime.

That means, as Assad Homanyoun, whose Washington-based Azadegan Foundation, one of many expatriate organizations working toward regime change, points out, overthrow has to come from the military.

And as the current about-face in U.S. policy in Iraq demonstrates, in the chaotic aftermath of these Mideast tyrannies, unless the organized military ø whatever its failings ø is not used, it becomes another impediment to progress toward a democratic regime. Throughout the long Persian history regimes have changed only through military coups [or neutralization at U.S. behest alas! during the overthrow of the Shah].

Reports out of Iran indicate the traditional army ø as distinguished from the IslamicistsÕ militiaÑ is neutral. But it has indicated it will not be used to quell the student protests. Currently a much publicized visit by the Iranian general staff chief to his close brethren in Turkey, is generally billed as a reinforcement of both Turkey and IranÕs opposition to the creation/growth of Kurd irredentist forces in Iraq. [Ironically, TurkeyÕs refusal to permit transit of U.S. forces during the war has led force majeure to increased American reliance on the organized northern Iraq Kudish locals, much to the chagrin of both Tehran and Ankara.] But there must also be more than a little exchange on the problem of Islamic radicals between TurkeyÕs militantly secular soldiers and the Iranian.

Should Washington, as events spin out of control in Tehran, lean toward acquiescing in military takeover, there will be great opposition not only from the human rights lobbyists. Our cantankerous European Union allies, again hypocritically based on their ÒdemocraticÓ aspirations but more on their commercial interests, call for a hoped for transition among the so-called regime moderates. Such a diplomatic conflict, as Engles would have had it, would be an Iraq redux although probably this time outside the UN, and more a farce than a drama.