Post by Queen of the Damned on Dec 31, 2009 20:07:41 GMT -5
Economist.com
Dec 30th 2009
From The Economist print edition
A floundering regime may have weakened itself with its latest bloody crackdown. Let’s hope so
AFP
AFP
NO ONE knows whether the Iranian regime’s latest bout of violent repression marks an ill-judged step towards its own much-merited demise or if it will cow the dissenters into sullen but long-lasting acquiescence. But the violence marks a change in the nature of the struggle that has been fought out since last June’s tainted presidential election. The regime may catch its breath before it embarks on another round of shooting and clubbing. But the prospect that it is losing its grip, perhaps even terminally, has now become a lot more credible.
For one thing, the government has become readier to kill its opponents. By its own initial count, 15 people were killed in demonstrations on December 28th, the day of Ashura, one of the holiest in the Shia Muslim calendar; one of the dead was a nephew of Mir Hosein Mousavi, the main victim of the stolen election in June (see article). For another thing, divisions within the clerical establishment have become deeper. Influential clergymen no longer want their religion to be tarred by a regime that would, among other things, punish mourners at services for Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali Montazeri, in religious terms the most distinguished of the foes of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It is understandable why so many clerics are nervous. The opposition remains largely spontaneous and without a clear leader, but its animus is now directed as much against the hitherto untouchable Mr Khamenei as against his buffoonish presidential protégé. The regime’s assorted opponents are becoming a lot readier to question the legitimacy of the entire system of clerical rule that the thwarted candidates for the presidency in June had wanted merely to improve.
The fate of Iran will be decided inside the country. Iranians remain quick to resent foreigners’ meddling, real or imagined, and the regime has eagerly sought to exploit such deep-seated feelings. So Barack Obama was right, after the June election when the protests were still young, to step cautiously into Iran’s argument, in the hope—forlorn, as it turned out—that his conciliatory hand might soften the regime towards both its own people and its supposed adversaries abroad.
Last weekend, however, the protests came of age. It is hard to gauge opinion in Iran, but one of the protesters’ wishes seems to be better relations with the outside world. So Mr Obama is right again—along with other Western leaders—to speak out forcefully in defence of the opposition. He cannot keep his hand of friendship outstretched while Iran’s rulers, with their own fists, are bashing so many innocent heads.
The nuclear conundrum is a separate matter. Iran’s turmoil is making it a lot harder, if not impossible, for the country’s negotiators to strike a deal, even if they wanted to. With the regime divided, any conciliatory gesture is too easily painted as weakness by one faction or another. The West has proposed a deal whereby Iran would send uranium abroad for further enrichment to feed some reactors for medical purposes in the country, but the government is nigh-certain to miss the end-of-year deadline for progress. With Mr Khamenei’s very being seeming to depend on hating and mistrusting America, that has led to renewed murmurings about American military action against Iran. That would be a mistake. Not only would a strike be of uncertain military value, but it would also inflame the entire region; even those Iranians who detest the regime might then rally to Mr Khamenei.
Why sanctions might help
So tougher economic sanctions seem sure to follow, with perhaps even Russia and China giving the nod at the UN Security Council. Some of Iran’s admirable dissidents, such as the exiled winner of the Nobel peace prize, Shirin Ebadi, argue that such sanctions would be mistaken, since they hurt the poor hardest and might help consolidate the regime. Sanctions are indeed a blunt and sometimes weak tool. But as Iran’s economy flags, one of the starkest changes wrought by its increasingly ugly regime is that Iranians are beginning to blame their leaders more than foreigners for their woes. The tide may indeed be turning against the supreme leader, his dreadful president and even the cracking carapace of clerical tyranny.
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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lets hope so...
