No lipstick for this pig

Yesterday’s Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)-hosted discussion about Iran’s Green Movement  critiqued the movement’s leadership and condemned current US Iran policy as riddled with misconception and opportunism.

Allreza Nader, a Senior International Policy Analyst at the Rand Corporation, focused on the internal dynamics of the Green Movement. Since the unsuccessful 2009 protests, there is a widening schism between the movement’s leadership and the Iranian rank and file. Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami (MK&K) have been effectively neutralized by the regime. The first two sit under house arrest, and Khatami does not represent what the Green Movement wanted. Many of the people who took to the streets seek an Iranian republic instead of an Islamic republic.  MK&K don’t support this goal. They want to throw Khamenei out but keep the system enshrined by Khomeini.  Khatami went so far as to deny a link between the Green Movement and other secular nationalist movements.

Iranians have lost faith in the Green Movement and in the reformist leadership, whom they don’t see as effective. Attitudes toward Khatami in particular have soured.  People ask why he isn’t under house arrest.  His advocacy of reform damages his reputation.  People see him as belonging to the regime.

Most Iranians feel that the Islamic Republic is not reformable.  They crave democracy and separation of religion from the state. This is the true Green Movement in Iran: not the leadership, but the rank and file who reject unreal reform and call for democratic norms to prevail.

Jamal Abdi, Policy Director at the National Iranian American Council, condemned Washington policymakers for forgetting the Green Revolution.  Those who remember treat the revolution either as a nuisance or  an opportunistic instrument to advance pre-conceived goals. The last time the Green Movement was invoked in the mainstream media, it was a Wall Street Journal article calling for more crippling sanctions on Iran. The thinking is that if we punish the Iranian people economically, they will join the movement.

This rhetoric, so common in Washington, shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation on the ground. The Green Revolution is not about angry bread mobs. It is about people demanding their civil rights. It is about the Iranian middle classes, fed up with eroding liberties. But the sanctions have weakened this same middle class, and distract them from demanding their civil rights.  The net effect of US policy on Iran has been damaging. We can put lipstick on this “ugly failed policy” of sanctions, but it has eroded the very middle class that could bring about real change.

Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, echoed Jamal Abdi’s criticisms of the US and expressed confidence in Iran’s future as a functioning democracy. The fact that the event was not focused on nuclear war or sanctions against Iran makes it unique in Washington circles.  Very few policymakers focus on what is going on inside Iran today. We are blind to the internal political realities. Our information is stale and limited. Inability to see what is going in Iran is a huge problem for good policy.

Why did the Green Movement fail? It was a historical moment, but it did not bring us the change we would like to see and that many Iranians would like to see. We need to understand what went wrong:  why did Egyptians keep coming back to Tahrir square, but Iranians went to their homes? How does that change?  How can Washington encourage that change?

The schism between the leadership and the rank and file is a good place to begin to understand what happened.  Iranians want more radical change than people like Moussavi were willing to support. But the US doesn’t know how to advance real change in Iran any more, and the current nuclear-focused policy is opportunistic and doomed to failure.

Don’t just blame the Obama administration for this.  It is doubtful that a Romney policy would be substantially different. Perhaps it would be worse. Perhaps the best thing the US can do in Iran is to recognize that we are not going to be the authors of change through sanctions or through any other policy mechanism.  When change happens, we are probably not going to see it coming. Iran will become a functioning democracy long before almost all of its neighbors, but we can’t know when that will be.