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Iran: Engagement the only option

M. Serajul Islam
JOHN Bolton. President Bush’s Ambassador to UN in New York, did not particularly endear himself to the Muslim world for his views and actions while in office. In fact, he enraged the entire Muslim world by his neo-con views and defended President Bush's "you are with us or against us" view with passion and conviction till the Senate denied him congressional approval in 2006 for a new term.
It was, therefore, hardly a surprise that in his recent post-editorial "Time for an Israeli attack" that appeared in the Washington Post's July 2nd edition. Bolton wrote that "Israel's decision on whether to use military force against Iran's nuclear weapons programme is more urgent than ever." While trashing President Obama's overtures towards Iran, he urged Israel to go ahead and take out Iran's assumed nuclear capabilities. He argued that the recent events in Iran proved that the clerics were again firmly back in power and there is no way that there would be a peaceful regime change in Iran and that it is the right time now for a military strike against it. Bolton went on to suggest that Iran has been working for the last twenty years to acquire nuclear weapons and only “the most theologically committed to negotiations still believe that Iran will renounce its nuclear programme”, a comment aimed at ridiculing President Obama.
One would have thought that with the end of the Bush era and emergence of Obama, people like Bolton would be history: it does not seem to be so. The events in Iran have acted as a catalyst to bring these individuals and forces back. The election in Iran may not have been to the satisfaction of the west. But then, for a president who has not led his country very badly in the first term re-election should have been a normal event and hardly one to take the west by the extent of surprise it has.
As the demonstrations turned violent leading to few deaths, “breaking stories"
by the western media suggested widespread opposition in Iran against the ruling clergy and that their stranglehold on Iran was under serious threat. The media hype encouraged and influenced most of the western countries to believe that President Mahmoud Ahmedejine had not won the election fairly although the disturbances were mostly in Tehran. Even after a partial recount was ordered by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that made no difference to the results, western leaders kept up issuing statements against the election.
Britain led the charge: Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned that Iran must answer satisfactorily serious questions of election irregularity. Obama, who on election day in Iran, said "we are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran" later expressed critical views of the election as the western media reported the spread of violence. Surprisingly, the concerns and criticisms came only from the western countries while others either congratulated Ahmedejinc's re-election or remained silent.
The western countries overlooked a few crucial facts and jumped to too many conclusions. For example, they failed to see that Moussavi's past is hardly one to convince anyone that if elected he would end the clergy in Iran. As Prime Minister, from 1980-89. he has been responsible for many of the allegations of human rights violation for which the west has been targeting Iran ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The western media has also failed to tell the world that on the nuclear option there is little to choose between Ahmedejine and Moussavi, as there is between the generations in Iran. They have also failed to mention that Iran is surrounded by nuclear weapons states on all sides, with the one most critical of her for her alleged nuclear pretensions, namely Israel, which is also the most dangerously armed with nuclear weapons. John Bolton and people like him forget that in the present day, people are capable of forming their independent
opinion, blanks to the information revolution and the internet. Iranians, old and young, know about Israel and its nuclear capabilities and when the focus is on Israel, Iranians, both old and young, have no reason to fight or differ.
The views of Bolton and others like him notwithstanding, the elections have brought to surface genuine democratic aspirations within Iran. Majority of Iranians today are citizens who have grown up in a world that did not see the regime of the Shah and the struggle of the people of Iran to overthrow that regime. They have grown up without the hatred for the US and increasingly with a feeling that Iran must interact with the west for its own future. For the clergy, these dcvel opments have come as a wake-up call that Iran must change to take care of the aspirations of a new generation of Iranians who have grown up with full knowledge of the world outside and very appreciative of what is happening in that world.
The post election developments have revealed divisions within the clergy that could also eventually change Iran from within, in its own time and pace. Former President Rafsanjani, a very powerful cleric, has openly confronted Ahmedejine. His daughter was arrested and released as a supporter of Moussavi. The Supreme Leader and the Grand Council have taken decisions that have been conciliatory towards the supporters of Moussavi. We have nevertheless also seen that despite their inner differences, the Iranian clergy is united in their stand against the West's interference in the politics of their country and that once conviction was backed with the authority of the state, the demonstrations died down as Iran's situation returned back to normal. Even Bolton acknowledges this with the opening sentence of his op-ed where he writes: "Iran's hard-line Mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards are unmistakably back in control...” These developments in Iran as a consequence of the election will certainly place
Ahmedejine under pressure from within to accept President Obama's offer of engagement. In fact, the controversy surrounding the election will now create pressure upon Ahmedejine to be flexible to accommodate the views of Moussavi supporters in negotiations with the US. President Obama can ensure this by following up on his offer towards Iran made before the election by ignoring views of people like Bolton and the media hype following the election.
The recent events in Iran bring back to memory the Tiananmen massacre of June 4th 1989 in China. The West expected then that with their encouragement, Chinese communist leadership would fall making China a western style democracy! Articles portraying Ziang Zemin as worthless, who would be blown away if the struggle continued, appeared in western newspapers for years after the Tiananmen Massacre till
China proved convincingly its capability of dealing with its development efforts, both political and economic. Today, China unequivocally speaks for itself with its success.
With Iran, the west should not make the same mistake as it did with China following Tiananmen in assessing reality. The foundations of the Iranian clergy have deep roots in the society, the current demonstrations notwithstanding. One must not forget that the candidature of Moussavi was approved by the Clergy together with that of Ahmedejine. Moussavi, if elected, would have represented the clergy as devotedly as Ahmedejine on all issues including the nuclear issue. If the west is seriously concerned about Iran turning into a nuclear weapons state, the best way to deal with it is to engage with it because, despite the post-election disturbances, there is no reason to
believe that those who supported Moussavi would also support the west in their effort to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, if the leadership there should so decide.
Iran is not Iraq. Despite the recent disturbances, Iran is united against external interference in its internal affairs. Hence Bolton’s recommendation to take on Iran militarily can be taken seriously only in a fit of madness. Obama should set the disturbances aside and continue to follow the path of engagement with Iran that he set for his administration with his Cairo speech in June. He may be pleasantly surprised to find Ahmedejine more accommodating as a consequence of the post-election developments in Iran.
The wnter a a former Amhassado' to Japan and Director Centre for Foreign Affars Studies