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Sick, a Columbia professor, is a former NSC Iran guy, someone who knows Iran as well as anyone in the U.S., and his Tumblr has gotten real. This post is an absolute beast. His topline is that the theft of the election represents a new phase in the history of the Islamic Republic, and he comes as close as a historian possibly can to saying that we’re witnessing the decadent phase unfold before us. Three major observations:
- The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.
- The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.
- With regard to the United States and the West, nothing would prevent them in principle from dealing with an illegitimate authoritarian government. We do it every day, and have done so for years (the Soviet Union comes to mind). But this election is an extraordinary gift to those who have been most skeptical about President Obama’s plan to conduct negotiations with Iran. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was quick off the mark, commenting that it is “likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.” Two senior Israeli officials quickly urged the world not to engage in negotiations with Iran. Neoconservatives who had already expressed their support for an Ahmadinejad victory now have every reason to be satisfied. Opposition forces, previously on the defensive, now have a perfect opportunity to mount a political attack that will make it even more difficult for President Obama to proceed with his plan.
The piece actually goes from raw to still-quivering after that. But I’m late for dinner, so I had better go.
Tags: looooooooong war
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Oh, the news media was already hammering away at Point Number Three this evening.
However, the fact that there are massive opposition-led protests and that the opposition is quite Westernized-looking — as our TV networks have been showing us — works against the neocon plan to nuke Iran until it glows. The neocons want us to think of the Iranians as subhumans with whom we have nothing in common and who therefore deserve a fiery death. It’s actually harder for them to sell that POV when our TV screens are showing us people who would not look at all out of place in any American town or city.
I guess that the people in the street aren’t quite the people who hold power in Iran. You might consider that those folk are a tad different than those on tv.
The people holding power in Iran don’t really need neo-con propaganda to paint them. They do a fine job of that themselves every time they kill people for having adulterous or homosexual sex or when they imprison their citizens for having religious convictions that don’t suit their masters.