I was in Los Angeles recently to speak at a conference at UCLA on Iran. There was sufficient disagreement about policy issues to keep most of the discussions lively. There was mostly consensus, however, on the prospects for change from the current regime. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment characterized the situation, the collapse of the regime is both inevitable and unpredictable. Sadjadpour noted that on each of the dimensions that underlay the ouster of leaders in Egypt and Tunisia—corruption, repression, and economic malaise—Iran is in even worse shape than those two Arab states were. Abbas Milani of Stanford observed that since the mid-nineteenth century, no Iranian head of state has survived the “wrath of the people.” He said that Supreme Leader Khamenei's legitimacy as a spiritually based leader has been weakened the more that he has weighed in directly on practical affairs of state and become increasingly dependent on the Revolutionary Guard.
Against a backdrop that makes change inevitable in the long run, the unpredictability comes from the lack of any clear path to change. The regime still has potent assets in the near term, including the Revolutionary Guard, which—unlike the Egyptian military—identifies more with the regime than with the nation. It also has the financial cushion of oil. Moreover, the Iranian opposition lacks clear leadership and a clear goal.
Several implications follow. First, given that there will not be predictions any more precise or reliable than for the political changes associated with the Arab Spring, the United States will need a policy that is not based on any such prediction but instead will be sound regardless of the future of the current regime.
Second, because as far as we know the clerical regime may yet be around for a good while, it would be a mistake to put relations with Iran on ice in an effort to outlast that regime.
Third, because the Iranian regime eventually will fall because of its own internal weaknesses and contradictions, U.S. policy toward Iran should not be looked at primarily as an instrument of instigating regime change.
Fourth, we should be aware of how U.S. actions are at least as likely to extend the life of the Iranian regime as to shorten it, given how the hardliners who are dominant in the regime use confrontation with outsiders as a source of political strength.
Image by Iranianrevolution
Comments
This may be a bit of an
apples and apricots argument. Tunisia and Egypt, like most of the target regimes in Arabia, are
secular autocracies. Iran is a theocracy operating under a set of dynamics the West
hasn’t seen since the fall of Constantinople. And wasn’t it “internal weaknesses and contradictions”
that brought down the Shah?
Maybe we shouldn't be listening to the siren-song of exile dissidents who have been promising "inevitable" regime-change for well over 30 years now. Yes, the regime may change but in the meantime we should be talking to and engaging Iran, and our existing policy of issuing them ultimatums in the hope of this "inevitable" regime change has not served us well, nor has it done anything AT ALL to improve the lot of the people of Iran (who, incidentally, continue to turn out at rates of over 80% to participate in their elections, and no, there was never any evidence of election fraud as poll after poll by US entities have found that 60% of the people did actually vote for Ahmadinejad. The exiles can scream "fraud" all they want but they have never substantiated it.)