Since leaving government, this husband-wife tag team has been the principal critic of Bush's decision to refuse Iran's offer for a "grand bargain" after the invasion of Iraq. The pair continues to press for engagement with Iran, and maintains that the West overhypes the Green movement in this New York Times op-ed.
Such gadflies are useful. Bush could have changed history by being more open to Iran in 2003. Considering the West's intense desire to see the current regime in Iran overthrown, I do worry about the danger of selectively perceiving the political situation in Iran.
But that hardly excuses the Leveretts' selective and misleading portrayal of Iran's Green movement in their article. Here is their first salvo of stupidity: by focusing on the Greens' Ashura protests, people didn't realize that the Dec 30 pro-regime demonstration was actually much larger. Yeah, and I hear that Kim Jong Il gets big crowds too. It is easy for a villager to take money and hop on a bus to Tehran. It is a bit harder to take the streets and risk becoming the next Neda Agha Soltan.
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Watching the shocking footages of Ashura shows that if sometimes slogans and actions moved toward unacceptable radicalism, it is because of throwing innocent people of bridges and heights, shootings, running them over by cars and assassinations...Obviously if there has been any disrespect on the day of Ashura, we don't approve but we consider that the worst kind of disrespect is the murders of innocent people and mourners on the day of Ashura and in a month that killing is banned by Islam. – Mir Hussein Mousavi (read the full statement here)
Mousavi is actually excusing the protesters while excoriating the regime (this is the same message in which Mousavi said he was willing to die for the protesters). The reason that Mousavi is mentioned this at all is in response to hardline, pro-Khamenei clerics (the minority) that denounced the protesters as mohareb, or enemies of God, for protesting on a holy day. This is not a response to popular criticism.
More ridiculous is the Leveretts’ use of University of Maryland polling to gauge the “true” opinions of the Iranian people. I have no clue how the University of Maryland gets Iranian polling data. But who would denounce their rulers over the telephone to a stranger? How about during a time of mass arrests? I wouldn't rely to strongly on American-funded polling data in Iran to gauge current opinions on the street.
The best point that the article makes is that there is no clear leader of the current movement, and no clear demands. But the fact that someone as uncharismatic as Mousavi could spark such a movement shows that its roots are deeper than a simple stolen election. The rest of the article uses the past to predict the future: there is nothing in the Islamic Republic’s history to support projections…blah blah blah. NOTHING that has occurred in the past 6 months could’ve been predicted either.
The Leveretts finish with a facile comparison of Iran to China during Nixon’s opening. Last time I checked, the US and Iran don’t currently face a common threat from a superpower. China’s elite never claimed to derive legitimacy from popular elections, and Iran is not a country of illiterate peasants. Thankfully, newspapers are forced to restrict the word count of their op-eds, because having to read any more nonsense from this smorgasbord of disingenuousness would make me puke.
- Jon
| leverett_century_foundation.pdf |
Comments
Jon- From my perspective its hard to call the Leveretts' article "selective and misleading" because we don't actually know much about the green movement.
The reality is that the Greens face a exceptionally strong and exceptionally well organized Revolutionary Guard and I have set to see anything to indicate that they have to the structure necessary to actually challenge their control of the Iranian system.
While I agree with you that it's impossible to predict how this whole thing will turn out, I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this may well end in a Persian Tiananmen Square.
I think there is a good article to be written telling people to calm down and outlining the obstacles the Greens face. I just felt that the Leveretts struck out on this one. It is selective and misleading because how they treat evidence.
Comparing the size of the pro-government crowd with the anti-government crowd is not indicative of anything, and is misleading to readers who aren't following the situation closely.
To portray Mousavi as if he's trying to disassociate with the protesters, when he just said he's ready to die for them, is also misleading.
I agree with you that the Revolutionary Guard is the biggest obstacle to change in Iran. It is not mentioned once in the article.
I don't know if this will be Iran's Tiennamen Square. Those protests were more localized and student-based, only lasted 7 weeks, and faced a bureaucratized security state. Iran has a weak central bureaucracy and the Green movement is much broader based.
All we can do is wait and hope. But again, do you think Iran will be able to hold another election? What happens when Khamenei dies?
I'll go in reverse order on these.
I think your last point (by way of a question) strikes to the heart of what we see happening in Iran today. Khamenei isn't going to live forever, hell, he probably won't live out the decade. Most of what's going on in the Iranian upper echelons these days directly reflects that. It all about who will be the next Supreme Leader.
When I say Tiennamen Square, I don't mean a literal comparison. Instead I mean more of a breaking point where a push for greater democratization is exhausted and the oppressors consolidate control.
On Moussavi and the rest of the Green Movement: I think there is some evidence to suggest that elements of movement have more extreme interests than Moussavi.
I agree with you that Leveretts struck the wrong tone on this and that their evidence is iffy. The problem is I don't see the evidence on the other side to either
