La tentación democrática

Andrés Hoyos
El Espectador - Colombia
23 - 06 - 09

No soy profeta y por lo tanto ignoro si el actual movimiento ciudadano iraní logrará conducir al país por caminos de cambio perdurable o si el régimen prevalecerá. Espero que por lo menos se evite el peor de los desenlaces: una sangrienta guerra civil. Lo que sí sé es que todo provino de unas elecciones muy esperadas cuyo resultado fue cuestionado, es decir, de la tentación democrática. El régimen iraní obviamente se equivocó al interpretar el alcance de los cambios sociodemográficos del país y no previó los efectos de la educación que adquirieron los jóvenes, fenómenos ambos que predisponen a la insumisión. El reino de Dios, por lo visto, es susceptible de ser minado por el conocimiento y la técnica.

Una parte muy importante del funcionamiento de cualquier régimen político es su flexibilidad ante los inevitables contratiempos que enfrenta. La democracia contemporánea, pese a todos sus defectos, está diseñada con esta flexibilidad en mente y es de lejos el sistema que mejor resuelve los contratiempos, pues los mecanismos de cambio le son tan estructurales como los de permanencia. En contraste, el Estado teocrático de Irán es una sofisticada armazón de consejos y de círculos colegiados, y hasta contiene algunos contrapesos internos y un simulacro de democracia, pero no está diseñado para resistir una fuerte oposición ciudadana. Es como una olla a presión con la válvula de escape tapada. Le pasa lo que al resto de los regímenes autoritarios de variado cuño, que parecen modelos de estabilidad durante años para, de repente, verse sacudidos por perturbaciones que llegan a poner en peligro su supervivencia, así a veces les resulte posible volver a meter el genio del disenso en la botella. La estructura de una autoridad incuestionable, en esos casos, es la columna principal que sostiene el edificio político, y si ella se tambalea o se quiebra, todo puede derrumbarse. Las democracias, por el contrario, suelen ser sismorresistentes.

Hay que sumar a lo anterior un elemento reciente de gran importancia: la revolución en las comunicaciones. Con ella se materializa la vieja metáfora de los vasos comunicantes, encarnados en las comunidades de internet, los mensajes de texto y las cámaras de video y de foto fija que traen los celulares.

En Irán la élite está dividida, y el fin de semana pasado los manifestantes no acataron la sombría amenaza del ayatolá Khamenei, actual líder supremo, desafío que puede resultar definitivo. Aplica a la actual encrucijada iraní el perspicaz comentario de Lenin, según el cual la situación revolucionaria llega no cuando los de abajo no quieren seguir viviendo como antes, sino cuando los de arriba no pueden seguir haciéndolo. Lo otro que queda muy claro es que la democracia no se exporta a la fuerza, nace o deja de nacer de las entrañas de un país.

No debemos, ni por un momento, subestimar las repercusiones que promete tener el presente estallido, pues el potencial de contagio del fenómeno es muy grande. Un día de estos, por ejemplo, podrían empezar a llegar noticias perturbadoras de China, noticias que serían mucho más importantes que las de Irán. Pero esa es otra historia.

Obama's Obsolete Iran Policy

BRET STEPHENS
The Wall Streets Journal
30 - 06 - 09

President Obama's Iran policy is incoherent and obsolete. Maybe David Axelrod should take note.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama's consigliere was asked about Iran by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and NBC's David Gregory. Mr. Gregory asked whether there "should be consequences" for the regime's violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations. "The consequences, I think, will unfold over time in Iran," answered Mr. Axelrod.

Mr. Stephanopoulos quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that "this time, the Iranian nation's reply will be harsh and more decisive to make the West regret its meddlesome stance." Said Mr. Axelrod, "I'm not going to entertain his bloviations that are politically motivated." As for whether the administration wasn't selling short the demonstrators, Mr. Axelrod could only say that "the president's sense of solicitude with those young people has been very, very clear."

Bottom line from Mr. Axelrod, and presumably Mr. Obama, too: "We are going to continue to work through . . . the multilateral group of nations that are engaging Iran, and they have to make a decision, George, whether they want to further isolate themselves in every way from the community of nations, or whether they are going to embrace that."

Translation: People of Iran -- best of luck!

For a president who came into office literally selling the Audacity of Hope -- not just for Americans but for all mankind -- his Iran policy can so far be summed up as the timidity of "realism." That's realism as a theory of international relations that prescribes a foreign policy based on ostensibly rational calculations of the national interest and assumes that other nations act in similarly rational fashion.

On this reasoning, it remains the American interest to reach a negotiated settlement with Tehran over its nuclear program, whether or not Ahmadinejad was fairly elected. Likewise, it is in Tehran's best interests to settle, assuming the benefits for doing so are sufficiently large.

If this view ever had its moment, it was in the months immediately after Mr. Obama's inauguration. The administration came to town thinking that America's problems with Iran were largely self-inflicted -- a combination of "Axis of Evil" and "regime change" rhetoric, an invasion that gave Iran a reasonable motive for wanting to arm itself with nuclear weapons, and an unwillingness to try to settle differences in face-to-face talks.

In other words, Mr. Obama seems to have thought that a considerable part of America's Iran problem was simply an America problem, to be addressed by various forms of conciliation: Mr. Obama's New Year's greetings to "the Islamic Republic of Iran"; the disavowal of regime change as a U.S. objective; the offer of direct talks without preconditions; withdrawal from Iraq; the insistence, following the election, that the U.S. would neither presume to judge the outcome nor otherwise "meddle" in an internal Iranian affair.

What did all this achieve? Iran's nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of "meddling."

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be "realism"?

A more common sense form of realism would reach different conclusions. One is that the "bloviations" of Ahmadinejad are not just politically motivated, but are also expressions of contempt for Mr. Obama. That contempt springs from a keen nose for weakness, honed by the habits of dictatorship and based on an estimate -- so far unrefuted -- of Mr. Obama's mettle.

Second, as long as Tehran can murder its own people, scoff at a U.S. president and flout U.N. resolutions without consequence, it will continue to do so.

Third is that the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regime isn't its "isolation." (What kind of isolation is it when Ahmadinejad's "election" was instantly ratified by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev?) Nor is it its vulnerability to a gasoline embargo, vulnerable though it is. Its real weakness is its own domestic unpopularity, which has at last found expression in a massive opposition movement.

The fourth is that Iran's nuclear programs have now reached the stage where they can only be stopped through military strikes -- probably Israeli -- or an internal political decision to abandon them. The prospect of another Mideast war can't exactly please the administration. So how about trying to achieve the same result by leveraging point No. 3?

Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama's solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama's spine. If that means "democracy promotion" and tough talk about "regime change," well, it wouldn't be the first time this president has made his predecessor's policy his own.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

Is War between Iran and Israel Inevitable?

Erich Follath
Der Spiegel
24 - 06 -09

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may seem very different, but they are united in their apocalyptic religious visions. Their respective beliefs may be propelling them on a collision course with potentially horrific consequences.

A pair of more disparate twins hasn't existed since the muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger and the sharp-tongued, diminutive Danny DeVito played twins in the Hollywood movie of that name. One, the Israeli, is tall and thickset and often wears tailored suits. He is a gifted speaker and a militant anti-Iranian. The other, the Iranian, is short and slight and is almost always seen wearing an ordinary-looking beige windbreaker. He tends to be somewhat gauche and is a rabble-rousing populist and a self-declared enemy of Israel. The two men couldn't be more different.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 59, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 52, are twins in spirit, which is not to imply in any way that they are morally equivalent. Both men are convinced of the absolute validity of their beliefs, both are obsessed by what they see as their higher calling, and both are convinced that theirs is a Messianic mission -- a mission to "honor" a religion or "save" a people.

There is every indication that the coming nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran -- if, indeed, they begin in the next few months with Ahmadinejad still Iranian president -- will end in a stalemate by the end of the year. If that happens, US President Barack Obama will push for tougher sanctions against Tehran in early 2010, with the reluctant support of the Russians and Chinese. The leadership in Tehran will interpret this as an aggressive act and will likely speed up its uranium enrichment, meaning that Iran will only be a few months away from having the capability to build a nuclear bomb. At some point next spring, things could have proceeded so far that the Israelis could decide, even without Washington's approval, to launch attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities. The entire Middle East would see thousands of casualties, and the consequences for the global economy would be devastating.

To understand what motivates the Iranian president and the Israeli prime minister, and what convictions guide their policies, it is important to examine the deeply religious ideas that shape both Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu and practically destine them to clash with each other: the theology of the Islamic Haqqani school and the Jewish concept of Amalek. And to understand why Tehran and Jerusalem, with Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu at their respective helms, have embarked on such an alarming and potentially devastating course, it helps -- as this author has done -- to have personally met the people involved and to have studied their milieu during numerous trips to Iran and Israel over the past three-and-a-half decades. These experiences form the pieces of a puzzle, and although the resulting image is not all-encompassing and does not explain everything, it is at least an image based on a concrete search for evidence and on personal experience of the reality on the ground.

The Return of the Mahdi

Flashback: It is the late 1980s, and I am visiting the Iranian holy city of Qom. It is my first visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran, following earlier visits during the time of the shah and my reporting on his overthrow. "Do you want to meet Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, the head of the education department at the Rah-i-Haq Institute?" my guide asks. Not another holy man, I think to myself -- I have already had exhausting interviews with half a dozen Koran scholars today. It is hot and dusty in Qom, where Fatima, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, is buried in a giant mosque. But then my guide tells me that Mesbah Yazdi is considered to be one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers in Qom, and that he is an ardent student of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In the interview, Mesbah Yazdi proves to be cosmopolitan and admits to being a computer geek. Ideologically, however, he is an ultraconservative hardliner and a theoretician of the radicals, and his fixed mocking smile cannot conceal his cold nature. He openly advocates suicide bombings, calls for the carrying out of the fatwa imposed against author Salman Rushdi and demands "the blood of any person who insults Islam." And he considers "the Zionists" to be the fundamental source of evil on earth.

Mesbah Yazdi kept a low profile for years, except to control the fundamentalist Haqqani movement, a role in which an ambitious and deeply devout young man became his protégé. In 2005, Mesbah Yazdi called upon the faithful to vote for his former student, Ahmadinejad. It was an unusual step in the world of ayatollahs, who usually steer clear of mundane politics and keep their personal preferences to themselves. Since then, the ultraconservative cleric, who portrays himself as an infallible interpreter of the faith, has been viewed as Ahmadinejad's ideological and spiritual mentor.

As the son of a blacksmith, Iran's president was in his youth attracted mainly to Islamic social revolutionary theories. Ali Shariati, an Iranian philosopher who was educated in Paris and linked Marxism to religious, anti-colonial beliefs, influenced Ahmadinejad in his early years. But then, in his mid-20s, Ahmadinejad met Mesbah Yazdi and came under the spell of mystical fundamentalism. Ahmadinejad has long been an avowed supporter of the same ultra-religious school of Shia as Mesbah Yazdi. The Haqqani group, in its religious fervor, is reminiscent of the zealots of another religion, the born-again Christians (a group which includes, incidentally, former US President George W. Bush).

The so-called Mahdists around Mesbah Yazdi and Ahmadinejad believe that their Twelfth Imam disappeared from the face of the earth in the 9th century because Allah the Almighty hid him to put mankind to a test. They also believe that this Twelfth Imam, or Mahdi, will return to the earth, as will Jesus, who all Muslims see as an important predecessor to Muhammad. The Mahdi, in their view, will create a paradise on earth for believers and condemn blasphemers to eternal damnation. But he will only return when the world has undergone a catharsis, a whirling, gigantic, cleansing upheaval.

Could it take the form of a war between Muslims and heretics, perhaps? Possibly a nuclear war? And do some of the apocalyptically minded within the Haqqani school want to provoke this cataclysmic event to bring about the return of the Mahdi as soon as possible?