PERSIA AS POLAND:

Solidarity With Iran: Free people are the only real stability. (MICHAEL MCFAUL AND ABBAS MILANI, February 23, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

On Friday, there was a coup d'état in Iran. By preventing thousands of democratic candidates from participating in the parliamentary elections, the clerics eliminated yet another relatively independent institution of political power. Their next target is the presidency. If President Mohammad Khatami is replaced in 2005 through a similar faux electoral process, then the concentration of monopoly power in the hands of a clique of despotic clerics will be complete.

Contrary to common perception, Iranian society is today one of the most pluralist, and the Islamic regime one of the most fragile, in the region. Even after the election, the prospects for a democratic breakthrough are greater there than elsewhere in the Middle East. Iran occupies the same place in its neighborhood as Poland did in communist Europe in the 1980s. Like Poland then, Iranian society is organized, hostile to the regime, pro-democratic and pro-American, while Iran's rulers--like their Polish counterparts 20 years ago--have no legitimacy, are deeply corrupt, and seem ready to use any means necessary to survive. At the risk of stretching the analogy, last Friday's "coup" in Iran is the equivalent of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's crackdown against Solidarity. Just as in Poland after December 1981, inside Iran the era of compromise and negotiation is now over. [...]

The Bush administration and our European allies cannot be tempted into an agreement with Khamenei or his surrogates. If the past is any indication, the clerics will break any agreement they have signed out of expedience. Already there are signs of their bad faith on their promise to come clean on the extent of their nuclear program. There is even a theological concept--Tagiye--to justify such double-dealings with the "infidels." Nor can they help in Iraq, where Iran's mullahs have in fact little influence over clerics such as Ayatollah Sistani. The only way they can influence events in Iraq is through the thousands of agents they have sent over the borders.

Most importantly, signals of rapprochement would send a demoralizing signal to Iran's democratic forces. Negotiations over weapons inspectors are absolutely necessary, but the interlocutors in such discussions must be elected officials, not unelected clerics. Beyond this limited engagement, President Bush must initiate a more sophisticated strategy for engaging Iranian society--without appearing to legitimize the regime. He must make public statements to assure democratic forces inside Iran that the U.S. is still on their side. President Bush should meet publicly with Iran's genuine democratic leaders, while avoiding imposters claiming to represent the Iranian people. American NGOs must engage more directly with Iranian civil society. Iranian students, scholars and entrepreneurs must be allowed greater interaction with American counterparts. Iran's democratic movement would benefit from contact with the West--with Western societies, ideas and economies. The same strategy and organizations that helped support Polish society in the dark days after December 1981 must be deployed in Iran.

The future of Iran, and of its potential democracy, must be determined inside Iran. But the U.S. can play a crucial role by making clear that democracy is the paramount foreign policy goal in Iran. Arms control negotiations with the mullahs may serve American short-term interests, but at the expense of more lasting gains. If Iran becomes a liberal democracy, surely the Iranian nuclear threat to the U.S. will disappear definitively. After all, did not Poland's Solidarity ultimately do more to end the Cold War than any Soviet-American arms control agreement?

Democratic rhetoric is a superweapon.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 23, 2004 4:08 PM