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On Iran, democracy, and nuclear weapons
Like many of you, I'm sure, I remain preoccupied with the events in Iran. It's impossible to know exactly how events will evolve or what the medium-term significance will be, but the turmoil is as gripping as it was unexpected. In terms of Iran's people having a government that is more responsive to their wishes -- and in particular, one that is open to the sort of relaxation of tensions that the Obama administration has sought -- my hopes are with the anti-Ahmadinejad forces.
But we shouldn't succumb to the illusion that Ahmadinejad's defeat and Mousavi's triumph (or more broadly, the triumph of the anti-government demonstrators) would produce a dramatic shift in Iran’s foreign policy, and especially its nuclear energy program (and any nuclear weapons ambitions it may have).
For one thing, Moussavi himself has been a supporter of the nuclear program for many years, and the Times reported today that it was he who authorized the purchase of Iran's first centrifuges back in the 1980s. For another, public opinion surveys in Iran have shown that the vast majority of Iranians support the nuclear program. This means that a lot of the people wearing green and marching in the streets are not going to subsequently demand that Iran abandon its efforts to master the full fuel cycle.
Even if Iran were to become a full-fledged liberal democracy, it would not necessarily abandon its nuclear ambitions, including the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. Right now, five of the world's nine nuclear weapons states are democracies (the United States, France, Great Britain, India and Israel), so being democratic hardly precludes wanting a nuclear arsenal.
The good news is that the history of the nuclear age demonstrates that nuclear weapons do not enable their possessors to conquer or threaten others with impunity, and thus don't provide much in the way of an offensive or coercive capability. Having tens of thousands of nukes didn't permit the United States or Soviet Union to blackmail other countries during the Cold War, having a handful of nukes hasn't enabled Kim Jong Il to dictate to anybody, and having a sizeable nuclear arsenal doesn't allow Israel to tell Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, or its various other adversaries what to do.
In fact, nuclear weapons are good for only one or two things: 1) protecting your own territory (and maybe the territory of especially close allies) against conquest and occupation, and 2) making it hard for others to coerce you. As IAEA head Mohammed El-Baradei said of Iran yesterday, "They want to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world, 'Don't mess with us,'" adding that "it is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about regime change."
So while I continue to hope that the reformist forces triumph, we shouldn’t be under any illusions about the short-to-medium term impact of the "revolution" on the major issues that currently divide us.
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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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I imagine that they act as a
I imagine that they act as a kind of conflict dampener as well, preventing potential conflicts between nuclear states from escalating into full-on conventional wars a la the 19th and early 20th century.
Good point in your main post, though - and I think it carries a greater point as well. With some exceptions (meaning when the state is effectively a personality cult centered around one leader), foreign policy is usually an institutional process among states, with the main overarching goals (nuclear supremacy, secure the waterways, etc) carrying over beyond any particular individual in power. In Iran's case, their nuclear program represents a move that is representative of the interests of the parties controlling the state, and even of the population as well.
where's the beef?
you seem to be saying that iran's nuke program is a weapons program.
all you need now is evidence.
too bad we'll have to shock and awe them and invade them to find out that we've been lied into another war.
but nevermind all that: the main thing is, to close hormuz and get those pipelines built to israel...
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it's nice to see you're so confident about america's continued hegemony... we'll have to see how well america holds together after a couple years of gasoline at $10 or $15 a gallon.
looks to me like the looters have got the bit in their teeth, and while they will attempt to prolong their opportunities to loot, the survival of america isnt that high a priority --not when the gulfstream's fueled up and the laptop's already stuffed with billions-- especially in light of the threat peak oil poses to america, which was built, as you know, from the ground up on cheap oil.
i gather you dont see the installation of a black president as an attempt to preempt urban unrest, and you dont see haim saban's ownership of univision, or sotomayor's appointment to the supremes, as attempts to preempt hispanic unrest.
i'd think any realistic appraisal of america's future would take all the above into consideration...
it's nice to see you're so
Reasonably well, I would guess. For one thing, at those types of prices, extracting "heavy oil" from areas like Venezuela's Orinoco Belt as well as the major shale formations in the US is profitable. Barring that, we could always convert coal into fuel - the Germans were doing that as far back as World War 2.
Peak Oil is overrated. Its sole claim to disaster is the claim that this will all happen overnight, so that we don't have time to adjust.
check oil production figures for the last few years...
oil production vs price, drills working, dollar index
how are you gonna maintain a growth-based, petroleum-based economic system once global oil production has peaked, and it becomes necessary to spend trillions on wars to secure oil supplies?
would you like to explain why crude oil and lease condensate production has been flat for the last four years, despite a doubling of drills and a seven-fold increase in price?
would you like to speculate on peak oil's role as reason for the existence of the PNAC project, speculate also on PNAC's call for "a new pearl harbor" in september of 2000, and the miraculously coincidental attack that materialized after the signatories of that document were installed into government positions high enough to make their "new pearl harbor" happen?
would you like to speculate about the necessity to deny the existence of peak oil if peak oil was your motive to commit 9/11, which kickstarted the PNAC project, which is, in one aspect, an oil acquisition project?
would you like to explain why
Because the price isn't high enough to start drilling in the shale and heavy oil areas. Hell, the latter was starting to occur last summer - investment was riding in to invest in "heavy oil" like Canada's tar sands and the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela. That was severely curbed when the bottom fell out on prices.
some things we need to know...
please post urls confirming that heavy oil, shale oil and tar sands production will rise to replace depletion and reduced production from the old conventional giants like ghawar, cantarell, burgan, daqing, the texas fields, alaska, and the north sea.
please explain how you're gonna produce more oil from canadian tar sands when production is already bumping up against water constraints.
please explain how you're gonna produce the shale oil in the rockies when the colorado and green rivers are already stressed and the desert cities downstream from the shale are already running low on water.
please post information about energy return on energy invested, and why, if you got a trillion barrels of shale oil or tar sands, but it takes a trillion barrels-worth of energy to recover it, we should bother.
please explain, that if the energy returned on energy invested is 2:1, your trillion barrel reserve just dwindled to 500 billion, and if your EROEI is 1:1, there's no sense in producing the oil in the first place, and if the EROEI is less that 1:1, you're pouring energy down a rathole.
please explain that we can turn northern alberta, half of utah and colorado and the orinoco river basin into heaps of mine tailings and ponds of toxic waste, and we wont have enough energy to clean the planet up after ourselves once we're done milking every drop of oil out of the sand and rock.
finally, you can explain how, if we've produced a hundred parts per million increase in co2 so far from burning fossil fuel, we can burn another couple trillion barrels of oil, the rest of the coal, and the rest of the natural gas without destroying the climate, raising the sea level by maybe 70 or 80 meters, and chasing 70% of the israelis into the hills of the west bank...
OMG!!!
another reason to start a land and oil acquisition project! ...global warming as motive for 9/11! ...who'da thunk it?
which also might have something to do with the israeli americans of the AEI and their exxon allies being the world's foremost deniers of global warming, to the point that the royal society of the UK sent exxon a nastygram about their global warming denial project.
please post urls confirming
There's 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in the Green River Formation alone - larger than Ghawar's estimated barrels available (the original field was assessed at 170 billion barrels, but that was obviously too small, and the Saudis are tight-lipped on the actual info regarding the field).
Shale oil production amounts to heating the shale until it breaks up into constituent parts that can then be separated. It's a matter of heat, and we have plenty of power sources available should the price go high enough.
Besides, it doesn't have to completely replace the conventional fields - all it has to do is smooth out the transition process from a transportation sector highly dependent on extracted oil to one that is not so dependent. That's the biggest problem with most of the Peakists; they tend to think that prices are going to rise so far so fast that the world economy is going to collapse before it can adjust to the change. That didn't happen last summer - people adjusted to the rise to more than $4 a gallon for gasoline.
Bring in water from other areas. Canada has no lack of fresh water, even if the local supplies are tight in Alberta.
Shale oil is largely produced through pyrolysis, so I don't need a lot of fresh water - I just need a lot of heat.
Because talking about EROEI is a red herring - we'd be converting plentiful supplies of energy that we can't use for a specific purpose (coal-, nuclear-, or other-generated electricity) for energy in a form that we can (petroleum).
Peakists always talk about EROEI as if it is the end-all, be-all. By their logic, light bulbs are a waste of time, since the amount of energy output you get in light is less than the energy you put in in terms of electricity.
If I need energy in a certain form, and I can afford to produce it because the prior form is cheap (like electricity), then it's hardly a waste of time.
Your claim about a "trillion barrel reserve being reduced to just 500 billion" is bullshit as well, because you're making the assumption that the energy I have to spend will be in the form of oil.
All that energy does is serve to smoothen out the transition from an oil-dependent economy to a less-oil-dependent one. The danger of Peak Oil was never in the fact that there is a peak, but in the possibility that the Peak might come and cause oil supplies to plummet faster than the economy could adjust.
I'm simply pointing out that the claim of Peak Oil being some massive threat is bullshit. I made no comment on the effects of climate if we remain an oil-dependent economy, and in fact, I'm in favor of getting away from oil dependency. My point was simply that it's not the dire threat you make it out to be, and many of your claims are regurgitated nonsense (especially the EROEI claim, which is a red herring).
more questions
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if you're gonna have to spend billions building water pipelines to alberta, how does that affect the cost of producing the oil? ...where is all the contaminated water gonna go?
what percentage of the shale oil in place can be economically recovered, if the price of oil goes up to, say, $200 a barrel?
given the damage caused by $140/barrel oil, what's $200/barrel gonna do?
how many nuke plants will it take to recover a trillion barrels of shale oil?
would it be better to use that nuke energy for generating electricity to fuel electric powered cars?
energy is energy: you can use the nuke energy to make electricity to fuel cars, or you can use nuke energy to heat the rocks to make the oil to fuel the cars.
how much damage to the environment will we have done by the time we produce whatever amount of shale oil is producible?
how much of the produced energy will it take to clean up after ourselves?
you're gonna have to figure out some way to make energy without damaging the climate, and you say you're "in favor of getting away from oil dependency"...
how do you do that?
would it be better to use
I'm all for it.
This is assuming that we extract every last drop of oil in the shale. I don't think that will happen - what I think will happen is that shale oil will be extracted, but it will primarily serve as a way of easing the transition to an economy less-dependent on oil. Witness what happened last summer - it spurred greater investment in the Orinoco Belt, but it also led to greater use of public transit.
Easy. Let's say oil prices rise significantly over the next 20 years. That's a lot of pressure to drill in less easily accessible areas, like shale and "heavy" oil, but it's also significant pressure towards reducing dependency on cars in general. So, your society starts adjusting to less oil availability. The main purpose of the shale oil is to "smooth" the transition, by ensuring that there aren't any major supply shocks.
Let's say oil prices rise
Let's say oil prices rise significantly over the next 20 years. That's a lot of pressure to drill in less easily accessible areas, like shale and "heavy" oil, but it's also significant pressure towards reducing dependency on cars in general. So, your society starts adjusting to less oil availability.
So, on the one side we have the (possibly strawman) argument that oil supplies will collapse so suddenly that society also collapses and the survivors will be killing each other for food like rats in destroyed cities. On the other side we have the (possibly strawman) argument that things will change so slowly that we'll just adapt to the changes without a hiccup and everything will be fine.
I want to point out possible problems with the equilibrium we get after we adapt to low-oil. Unless we get cheap alternative energy, we'll be poor at best.
The money price for energy is a proxy for the resources we use up to get it. Energy lets us make stuff, we use energy to make steel and aluminum and plastic and such. When 1/2 of the stuff we make has to go to getting energy instead of 5% then we have about half as much stuff left over for everything else. Also there's the question how much energy we can get from the alternative methods before we run into some limiting factor. Growth slows as we approach the limit and we use more and more resources to get the last little bit of energy.
Result -- poverty. The USA could easily become a third-world nation. The whole world could be third-world. That isn't so bad if you happen to be part of the elite, in fact it solves the servant problem. If you aspire to stay middle class it becomes difficult.
The USA has so much waste that we could easily survive on much less energy. We could for example produce much less beef and so have many more calories available for human food. Our proxy for that is beef prices, as beef gets more expensive we will learn to eat less of it and less of it will be produced. When consumers use more wheat and rice and corn and less food that needs to be refrigerated or frozen, they will need less energy to run refrigerators. As summer electricity gets more expensive they will use less air conditioning. Etc. We can give up our tremendously expensive education systems and concentrate on ways to show people whatever they need to know when they need to know it. We can give up most of our fantastically expensive medical system and concentrate on the parts that do the most good. We can give up our incredibly expensive military and concentrate on a relatively cheap navy and a set of militias that can protect our borders etc.
The more energy we wind up with and the cheaper it is to collect the richer we'll be in most other respects too. When you argue that oil supplies that are not currently worth using will become worth using when the price goes up enough, you're arguing that poverty isn't that bad. And true, it isn't, if we sink slow enough to notice what's most important and cut out the rest quickly enough.
Energy might get expensive quickly enough that we have big sudden dislocations that we don't know how to handle. That could cause a lot of hardship. Maybe we can put enough investment into technologies that can only ever give us very expensive energy, and that will smooth out the shocks. But it will leave us poor. Unless we can get reasonably cheap energy, reasonably quickly, we're heading for the destruction of the middle class and a general lifestyle that most of us would probably not prefer.
And that's what bothers me about oil shale etc. If you invest in oil shale you're betting that energy prices will stay high enough long enough that we're all going to be in a lot of trouble.
exxon denies peak oil, too...
uh huh...
...but your real point, which you seem to be too squeamish to post, is that peak oil couldnt possibly have been the neocons' motive for doing 9/11, and couldnt possibly have been exxon's motive for signing up with the neocons.
but your real point, which
Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that you're one of those Truther jackasses on 9/11.
I find your attempts to pigeonhole my motives rather amusing.
and once again, you've run afoul the logic of 9/11.
if 9/11 was the trigger for the PNAC oil acquisition project, that means that there are no viable replacements for oil on the horizon... or maybe it's only a reflection of the disproportionate importance israel has in the american scheme of things.
maybe the PNAC project's sole purpose is to secure israel, and exxon signed on with the AEI after seeing the advantages of... what? ...an oil acquisition project paid for by the american taxpayer?
...doesnt that put us right back at square one, with the PNAC project being both a land and oil acquisition project?
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exxon started a nuke power project in the 60s, but something happened on the way to electric cars... and now it's pretty much too little, too late.
it's kinda hard to defeat the logic...
...especially in view of the fact that the prime suspects controlled the investigation, the media and the political system.
...and i spose you could also speculate on the necessity of getting the oil acqusition project started early enough so peak oil would still be deniable...
...not the mention the necessity of grabbing oil for israel's proxy american armies so israel can be secured before those armies expire from peak oil.
.
motive, means, opportunity... it's all there... and when you throw in character and prior convictions... well, what the hell?
Nuclear Complacency
The record of countries that have had nuclear weapons for decades is not a reliable guide to what new nuclear powers will think they are good for.
In point of fact, many ideas to employ nuclear weapons tactically were explored during the Cold War by both sides. It is a mistake to take for granted that they were never actually used in that way. There was nothing inevitable about this outcome; among the factors contributing to it, dumb luck was prominent.
The most recent country to acquire a deployable nuclear arsenal now keeps a considerable part of the American intelligence community awake at night for fear that parts of that arsenal are not entirely secure. By coincidence, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was a long time objective of that country's security services, which developed it and maintain it with very limited input from the civilian government -- a situation very similar to that which might exist should Iran succeed in developing nuclear weapons. Protecting territory and enabling resistance to external coercion? Only if one takes everything at face value, and discounts the value nuclear weapons might have for military services in weak societies, ensuring their permanent indispensability.
The foundation, the very root of anti-proliferation thinking since nuclear age began is the idea that the more countries acquire nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that one or more of the things will go off. I understand where the "death to Israel" crowd that seems to follow Prof. Walt around everywhere he goes is coming from, but he knows enough to know better. There is no good reason for the complacency about nuclear proliferation he displays here.
The foundation, the very root
Maybe. But nukes are a certain step beyond simply using conventional weaponry, and a state that makes the decision to use one will have all kinds of thorny diplomatic issues afterward unless it was a case of facing total annihilation at the hands of an enemy.
I'd rather everyone have nukes than the alternative, which we've seen a variety of states without nukes develop - biological weaponry.
The foundation, the very root
The foundation, the very root of anti-proliferation thinking since nuclear age began is the idea that the more countries acquire nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that one or more of the things will go off.
That's true. And the USA has based our strategy for a very long time on the idea that we should keep thousands of nukes ourselve while as much as possible we disarm everybody else. And the rest of the world is less and less willing to cooperate with us on this.
But it isn't so bad. The world can handle one or more nukes going off. It will be a catstrophe but an affordable one. It appears that this is what is needed to get real disarmament. After a small nuclear war the whole world will be ready to accept nuclear disarmament for everybody, and the whole world will be ready to accept whatever it takes to make that happen. Currently the USA is stopping that. After the first real nuclear war, I hope by small nations which don't have a lot of bombs, then the USA will get out of the way.
But it isn't so bad. The
You keep bringing this point up without any proof, in spite of the fact that historically we fired off not one but two nuclear weapons, and tested hundreds more, and it didn't lead to worldwide disarmament no matter the cost.
Brett, when we dropped bombs
Brett, when we dropped bombs on japanese cities nobody knew what to think. It was unprecedented, and that precedent has never been followed. They were little bombs that didn't do all that much damage. And the media were primitive. And also, we had just won WWII, our bomb production was on a continent that didn't have foreign armies unlike anybody else, and we were the only ones with nukes. What would anybody have done about it if they disapproved?
One modern bomb on a city today and it will be a whole new ball game. I can't prove to you what will happen, I can only give my best guess.
My best guess is that in every nation where it matters what the population thinks, there will be a giant movement for worldwide disarmament. That includes USA, EU, india, australia, japan, and the smaller east asian nations etc.
In nations where it's uncertain whether it matters what the population thinks there will also be a giant movement for worldwide disarmament. This includes china, russia, indonesia, iran, egypt, etc.
In USA and practically nowhere else there will be a concerted effort by the military and "conservatives" to wage a propaganda war to make the world safe for nuclear weapons. They will argue that the USA is better off with nuclear weapons than without them. This will fail. People will look at the news from the city that got bombed, the medical services completely overwhelmed, large numbers of people subject to low-level radiation, a measurable amount of worldwide fallout etc, and they will disagree.
Take it from there.
I could be wrong. Nobody has any data whatsoever to predict from. I'm confident in my dataless prediction but I could be wrong. Do you have a better prediction?
Iranians dont want nuks
The Iranians and Ahmadinejad fully agree that nuclear weapons would NOT help them (which is why they've offered to place additional limits, beyond their NPT obligations, on their nuclear program (such as opening it to multinational participation) -- these are not the actions of a country which seeks nukes.
Brazil Argentina etc
Lots of developing nations will go nuclear and they won't accept the monopolization of nuclear fuel production in the hands of a select few. The conflict with Iran is not about nukes -- that's just the pretext. The conflict is between the developing and developed world over control of the nuclear fuel cycle, the sole source of reliable energy in the near future.
Interesting.
Interesting.
For some remarkably frank talk
on the nuclear issue from a source I would have thought unlikely but probably misjudged, listen to this:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/20534?in=10:16&out=11:14
Absence of Major Political Differences
Professor Walt remarks:
For your amusement another absence of political difference: Comparing and Contrasting Anti-Zionism.
"In fact, nuclear weapons are
"In fact, nuclear weapons are good for only one or two things"
First, nuclear weapons have never been in the hands of religious fanatics (hanging gay people, sentencing women to death for defending themselves from being raped). Neither the Soviet Union nor North Korea were/are run by religious fanatics.
Second, it would start a nuclear arms race in Arab countries in the middle east who feel threatened by Iran.
Third it would signal to any dictator in the rest of the world that they have nothing to fear from developing a nuclear weapons program.
Fourth it would enable Iran to increase your already large support of terrorism without any fear of reprisal.
"Even if Iran were to become a full-fledged liberal democracy, it would not necessarily abandon its nuclear ambitions, including the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons."
If that were the case then we wouldn't really care that much if they had them, but since it isn't the point is moot.
Nonsense
Funny how "The Arabs" feel threatened by a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program and not the actual, existing nukes of Israel (speaking of religious fanatics armed with nukes...)
Incidentally, the same Arab countries already have their own nuclear programs. Egypt was caught violating the NPT by failing to disclose nuclear experiments. Traces of Highly-Enriched uranium have been found in Egypt recently. You just don't hear about it because Mubarak is an ally.
You also don't heard about how Mubarak resorted to shooting voters in the streets in order to keep them away from ballot boxes -- where as Iran's election get wall-to-wall coverage.
Sorry Dave123?
Did you really write "nuclear weapons have never been in the hands of religious fanatics"?
Err what about the religious fanatic Bush and his criminal gang? What about the Israeli religious fanatics?
"Funny how "The Arabs" feel
"Funny how "The Arabs" feel threatened by a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program and not the actual, existing nukes of Israel (speaking of religious fanatics armed with nukes...)"
Well since Israel has had them for 40 years and didn't use them in 1973 when they were invaded, I think the Arabs are pretty secure in not caring about Israeli nukes.
Why don't you ask them what
Why don't you ask them what they think, instead of assuming you know based on what you think they ought to think?
samson option israelis
the problem with israeli nukes is that use of them will demonstrate the ultimate bankruptcy of zionist philosophy, and will jeopardize jews' reputation as the most holocausted people on earth.
not good PR.
not good at all.
i refuse to believe we're all bad
it just seems to me, though, if you're a crazy man and gotta terrify people, including yourself, into superhuman performances, you oughta stick to music.
...but what do i know?
it's hard to find words to express...
...my contempt for israelis who think they can get away with anything forever.
The June 12 Revolution: there's no going back . . .
The Weekly Standard
From The June 29, 2009 Issue:
The June 12 Revolution
Whatever happens in Tehran, there's no going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic.
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
The modern Middle East has had numerous "game-changing" moments, when history turned. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muhammad Ali's conquest of the Nile Valley in 1805, and the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 introduced Europeans and European ideas into the region. The British discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina in 1925, the awakening of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936, and the God-father-like victory of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo in 1954 further accelerated tradition-crushing Westernization and gave birth to nationalism, pan-Arabism, and contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. The Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the birth of Iraqi democracy two years later buried secular pan-Arab dictatorship, politically inflamed the Islamic identity, and set the stage for the growth of representative government in a more religious Middle East.
The Iranian presidential election of June 12 may soon rank with these history-making events. We may well look back on it as the "June 12 revolution" even if--especially if--the regime cracks down on the supporters of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, the candidate who ran second to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the dubious official vote tally. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which almost destroyed the Islamic Republic and forged the reputation and character of then-Prime Minister Mousavi, most Iranians have been exhausted revolutionaries. More like sheep than foot-soldiers of a dynamic faith, Iranians have largely veered away from confronting their increasingly unpopular rulers.
Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions. They've had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. The election has given a wide variety of Iranians--many of whom would not voluntarily associate with each other because of religious, political, and social differences--a simple and transcendent rallying cry: One man, one vote! . . .
Raised on a diet of mostly Western thought that the creation of the dictatorial Islamic Republic has only amplified, Iranians have had quite a bit of democratic conditioning, that prelude to representative government that "realists" believe a people must experience before they can handle democracy. As Khosrokhavar revealed in his astonishing book Avoir vingt ans au pays des ayatollahs ("To Be Twenty in the Land of the Ayatollahs"), Western ideas--especially feminism and the right of individuals to define themselves--are more powerful today in the deeply conservative holy city of Qom than they were 30 years ago. Khamenei began to realize in the 1990s what Khomeini instinctively knew from a richer understanding of Islamic law and the human condition: A majority of Muslims can do the wrong thing if given a chance.
Khamenei acted so crudely and rashly on June 12 because he'd already seen this movie. What's happening in Iran now is all about democracy, about the contradictory and chaotic bedfellows that it makes, about the questioning of authority and the personal curiosity that it unleashes. Khamenei knows what George H.W. Bush's "realist" national security adviser Brent Scowcroft surely knows, too: Democracy in Iran implies regime change. Where Iranians in the 1990s could try to play games with themselves--be in favor of greater democracy but refrain from saying publicly that the current government was illegitimate--this fiction is no longer possible. Khamenei has forced Mousavi and, more important, the people behind him into opposition to himself and the political system he leads. Unless Mousavi gives up, and thereby deflates the millions who've gathered around him, a permanent opposition to Khamenei and his constitutionally ordained supremacy has now formed. Like it or not, Mousavi has become the new Khatami--except this time the opposition is stronger and led by a man of considerable intestinal fortitude.
Everyone in Tehran may have crossed the Rubicon. It was always questionable whether the office of the velayat-e faqih would survive Khamenei; he has now pretty much guaranteed that it will not. If it turns out that Mousavi has actually had one of those life-changing epiphanies that sometimes happen on the Iranian "left"--the cases of Abdullah Nuri, Iran's boldest clerical dissident who was interior minister under Rafsanjani and Khatami, and Saeed Hajjarian, a dark lord of Iran's intelligence service who became a source for some of the nation-rattling exposés about domestic assassination teams in the '90s, come to mind--who knows what could happen if Khamenei were so stupid as to rerun the election fairly. . . .
No matter what happens, the Islamic Republic as we have known it is probably over. All regimes need some sense of legitimacy to survive, and the Islamic Republic has rested on two pillars. One is the belief that the people of Iran continue to back the Islamic revolution and the essentials of the political system that has developed since. Cynics may say that the regime has never really believed this, that dictatorships always only pretend that they are popular but really know they are unloved. Although cynicism isn't uncommon among Iranians, the illusion of representative government backing the Islamic revolution has been inextricable from Iran's identity since 1979. The ruling elite, in their domestic and foreign propaganda, have prided themselves on the image of a country that is both more religious and more populist than any other Muslim country in the Middle East. Khamenei's speeches, unlike Khomeini's, often focus on the God-fearing, virtuous Iranian people as a source of his strength and the strength of the entire Muslim world. Khomeini really did think of himself as a long-awaited Shiite manifestation of God's will. The Iranian people weren't important to his ability to communicate with the Almighty. By contrast, Khamenei is somewhat humble and earthbound. He needs the Iranian nation's approval in ways that were utterly foreign to his predecessor. If Iran collapses into just another military dictatorship, this populist raison d'être goes with it. . . .
It's not difficult to foresee the Islamic Republic spiritually unraveling. If it does, the most important experiment of Islamist ideology since the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood will have proven itself--to its own people, to the clerical guardians of the faith, and to the world--a -failure. Unless Mousavi withdraws and leads his followers in a renewed quietist retreat, the Islamic revolution, which shook the Muslim world 30 years ago, will now become either a real laboratory of democracy or a crude and violent dictatorship that might rival the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria in its savagery. Either outcome would be momentous.
It's a pity that President Obama has trapped himself in a doomed outreach to Khamenei. Even if Mousavi wins the present tug-of-war, he'll probably support Iran's continued development of nuclear weapons. He was in office when the Islamic Republic first became serious about building the bomb; his powerful backer, Rafsanjani, is the true father of the nuclear program; and there is little reason why Mousavi would want to anger a pro-nuclear Revolutionary Guard Corps that had refrained from downing him.
But for there to be any chance that Iran will cease and desist from its nuclear quest, Mousavi must win the present struggle. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei triumph, they will not relent. For them, and for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, nuclear weapons are the means to become global players and secure the power they can no longer confidently draw from their own people. Triumphant, the Revolutionary Guard, who have overseen all of the Islamic Republic's outreach efforts to Arab extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, will surely get nastier abroad as they become more vicious at home.
The principal issue right now inside Iran isn't the nuclear question. It's what it has been since Khomeini died: How do you escape from a religious revolution? Mousavi might, just might, have an answer. Even if he is not our friend--and turns out to be in many ways our enemy--we should all pray that he wins. President Obama would do well to be just a bit more forceful in defending democracy for a people who must surely have earned his respect. Iranians will forgive the president his "meddling." He does carry, after all, the name of the man--Hussein, the prophet's grandson--who long ago defined Shiism's boundless admiration for those who defend their people and their faith from tyranny.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
© Copyright 2009, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/649ktodb.asp
Where Is Iran Heading
Where Iran is Headed?
Current impasse in Iran will NOT end in the 1979 type Iranian Revolution. It is heading towards the Tiananmen Square type resolution. Why?
It matters NOT whether that the Islamic regime was truthful in its claim that Ahmadinejad got reelected with 62% of the votes cast. Pertinent to the impasse and its outcome are what four key groups believe or pretend to believe about the legitimacy of the election results.
First, there are those Iranians who voted for Ahmadinejad. They may think that, if anything, Ahmadinejad votes were under-counted. They have no interest in undermining the legitimacy of the election results or that of the regime. Second, there are those Iranian who voted for Moussavi because they thought that he would a better president than Ahmadinejad. They may not regard the announced results as valid, like to see a re-run, but are not interested in undermining the Islamic regime. Third, there are those Iranians who dislike the Islamic regime and all its “approved” presidential candidates. Their objective is to drain the Islamic regime of any and all legitimacy, and hasten its downfall. They may or may not have voted at all. If they voted, they must have cast their votes for the candidate that they thought would deepen fractures in the Islamic regime. They are now “supporting” the “opposition” as a tactical move. Finally, there is the West and its Press. For the time being, their interests coincide with those of the third group of Iranians. They support Moussavi, the “reformists”, the “moderates”, the “peaceful” dissenters -- everything and anything that keeps up the fun and elevates the disputes.
The first two Iranian groups are led by the two main clerical factions in the Islamic regime, and the third one lacks leadership. One faction in the Islamic regime is led by Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi who heads the Haqqani Seminary in Qom and is a prominent member of the Assembly of Experts -- the assembly that can dismiss, elect, or re-elect the Supreme Leader. This faction is puritanical and its members are not reputed to be corrupt. Ahmadinejad is backed by this faction. Another faction is headed by Ayatollah Rafsanjani who heads the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council. The Rafsanjani faction is more pragmatic, and its members are reputed to be financially corrupt. This faction backs Moussavi. To stay on top, the Supreme Leader -- Khamenei – performs balancing acts by playing the factions against one another. In a televised presidential debate, Ahmadinejad charged that Rafsanjani-Moussavi, et. al. have created an aristocracy in Iran and are corrupt. Following the debate, Rafsanjani fired a letter to the Supreme Leader warning him that Ahmadinejad’s allegations posed a “danger” to the Islamic regime. That warning remains unheeded. The corruption allegations exposed and deepened the factional rift, boosted voter turn out, and may have earned Ahmadinejad additional votes. Un-retracted, the corruption charges would have led Moussavi, et.al., to contest election results even if the balloting had gone to a second round and Ahmadinejad had won, not with a two-to-one margin, but by a single vote. And, Moussavi’s claim of electoral fraud would have been supported not only by those Iranian who voted for him, but also by the third group of Iranians, the West and its Press, Arab rulers and their Media, etc.
Much to the disappointment of the third group of Iranians and the West and its Press, current impasse in Iran is not going to end in the disintegration of the Islamic regime. The regime has roots that, unlike those of the Shah’s regime, than run deep throughout Iran. The Revolutionary Guard, unlike the Shah’s army, is not going to disintegrate when faced with persistent civilian unrest. To be sure there has been violence in recent days, with a number of fatalities or “martyrs”. However, the victims have been exclusively from the foot-soldiers of the “opposition”. The leadership of the Islamic regime is not in a panic mood. The Iranian Students News Agency ( http://isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1357903&Lang=P) , reports in Farsi that on June 17, Khamenei received representatives of the four presidential candidates, heard their concerns and offered them guidance, but then proceeded to exchange recollections with the four representatives, e.g., Karoubi’s representative – an “opposition leader” - recalled how Khamenei had officiated his wedding thirty years ago, and Khamenei reaffirmed that he had a lot of respect for his late father-in law. Compare Khamanei’s conduc with that of the Shah during the last months of his reign. During the period, the Shah made daily calls to the US and British ambassadors to Tehran to be reassured of the US and British support!
Okay, the impasse will not end in the regime’s downfall, but it must find a resolution. How is it going to be resolved? Who will win? And, who will end up losing?
The resolution of the impasse depends primarily on Khamanei’s actions, but also on those of leaders of the two factions. Khamanei controls most levers of power. As the Supreme Leader, he has been Commander-in-Chief for close to twenty years. Ever since appointed by Khomeini in the late 1980’s, Khamanei has been Tehran’s Friday Prayer Leader. He appoints members of the Guardian Council – the body whose responsibilities include vetting candidates, overseeing elections, and adjudicating election disputes. He appoints members of the Expediency Council – a body that is not stipulated in the constitution and has an advisory role, i.e., is used as a sounding board by the Supreme Leader. Khamanei does not have direct control over the Assembly of Experts – the body that elects or re-elects the Supreme Leader every ten years, and has the power to dismiss the Leader. However, Khamenei has made sure that no single faction in the Assembly can command a plurality of votes needed to mount a challenge to him and his position.
It is instructive to study how Khamanei manages disputes. After removing Rezaei – one of the four presidential candidates in 2009 -- from the Revolutionary Guard Command, Kamanei appointed him to the Expediency Council. Khamenei merely admonished Karoubi – another presidential candidate of 2009 – for attributing his loss in the 2005 presidential election to irregularities. Khamanei selected Rafsanjani to head the Expediency Council shortly after conceding the 2005 presidential election to Ahmadinejad. Later on, Rafsanjani was elected to the Assembly of Experts, and now heads that Assembly. Khamanei gives consolation prize to those who lose power in the Islamic regime, but do not go on to undermine the regime’s legitimacy.
Let us see where we are in the Iranian standoff. The Guardian Council approved four candidates – Ahmadinejad, Moussavi, Karoubi, and Rezaei – to run for president, oversaw the election, and declared Ahmadinejad as the winner. Khamanei congratulates Ahmadinejad on his re-election. The losing candidates allege fraud and tap into public discontent to mount mass demonstrations. Khamenei orders the Guardian Council to investigate the alleged irregularities, consoles calm, but does not order a crackdown of the “opposition”. The “opposition” pretends that it wants a re-run, knowing full well that a “re-run” means admission of fraud by the regime, while offering no assurance that it will be a one-time affair. The “opposition” leaders, particularly the experienced ones, know that a “re-run” is not on the cards. They press their “re-run” requests till they get assurance that they will retain their seats at the regime’s table and their key concerns will be addressed (e.g., Ahmadinejad’s corruption allegations shall not stand!). Khamanei has reaffirm the election results and signaled the beginning of a Tiananmen Square type crackdown in Iran.
That the Iranian impasse would end in the Tiananmen Square type crackdown should not have been in doubt to begin with. However, the scale and scope of the crackdown remains to be determined. The more “opposition” leaders that advise followers to refrain from further demonstrations, and the more such advise is heeded, the smaller will be the scale and scope of the unfolding tragedy. The outcome of Iran’s Tiananmen Square will not be different from that of China’s -- the regime will prevail.
Who will be the winners and losers of Iran’s Tiananmen Square experience? The main losers will be those foot-soldiers of the “opposition” that have fallen – or will fall – victims of violence. The “opposition” leaders that remain publicly defiant will lose their seats at the regime’s table, as those Chinese leaders that persisted in support of dissidents in 1989. Those Iranians that joined the “opposition” expecting to undermine the regime and facilitate its downfall will suffer disillusionment. The West and its Press will stick to its moral high ground, and congratulate itself for standing up for human rights, peaceful dissent, etc., etc. As in China, Iran’s Tiananmen Square will be used by the West to irritate the regime if and when it suits its purposes. And, Iran’s response to such irritations will be similar to that of that China’s.
There will be debates in the West as to the impact that Iran’s Tiananmen Square should have on the West’s policy towards Iran. Some will argue that the event weakens the case for “engagement” lest it confers legitimacy on the Islamic regime, knowing full well that the Islamic regime has never craved a legitimacy that is the West’s to confer. Others will say that the West should treat Iran the way it treated China, i.e., treat Iran’s Tiananmen Square no different than China’s, accommodate Iran’s aspirations as China’s were accommodated, treat Israel in the Iran-West equation the same way that Taiwan was treated in the China-West equation, etc. (The only difference is that Israel’s Lobby is a lot more powerful than the Taiwan lobby ever was.)
No government of Iran will be
No government of Iran will be in power for long if it accepts a restriction on Iran's nuclear program that other non-nuclear weapon signatories of NPT (e.g., Japan, Brazil,etc) have not conceded to. Nor does any provision of NPT make responsibilities and privileges of the signatories conditional on whether or not the signatory governments have the endorsement of the United States, Israel, etc., etc.
Sorry Professor?
Did you really write "the history of the nuclear age demonstrates that nuclear weapons do not enable their possessors to conquer or threaten others with impunity"?
Isn't that exactly what the US did to Japan? Isn't that exactly what the Israelis have been doing to Iran - threaten them with impunity?
Did you really write on Iran's "nuclear ambitions, including the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons"? For someone with your academic record this is either base demagoguery or crude propaganda. As you well know Prof. Walt, not only is there no proof that the Iranians want a nuclear weapon, there is actually proof they don't, including the Supreme Leader's fatwa.
We're in trouble when leading academics can't get their facts right!
"reformists"???
I find it highly ironic that Mousavi -- a former Prime Minister who was in charge at the height of terror, and who is in league with Rafsanjani, considered to be the locus of corruption and nepotism -- is labelled a 'reformist' whilst Ahmadinejad, who was reviled as an "outsider" and who had the guts to openly accuse top regime members of corruption and work for the poor, is called...what? A dictator, tyrant etc?
Oh, and there's no actual evidence of election fraud in Iran, as verified at IranAffairs.com
Mousavi is a 'reformist'?
Does anyone else find it highly ironic that Mousavi, who is aligned with Rafsanjani (considered to be the locus of corruption and nepotism) is labelled a "reformists" when in fact it was Ahmadinejad who had the guts to openly accuse top regime members of corruption?
Mousavi is not a 'reformist'
Why is Mousavi, who is in league with the likes of Rafsanjani (considered to be a locus of corruption and nepotism) labelled a "reformist" when it was Ahmadinejad who had the guts to actually accuse top officials of corruption?
Theres no actual evidence that the elections were fraudulent (See IranAffairs.com) only wishful thinking.