Seeds of democracy planted in the Middle East are starting to bloom. Tens of thousands of Iranians demonstrated in Tehran in support of opposition candidate and former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi. He has appealed the results of Friday’s presidential election allegedly won by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in a landslide. The post-election protests are being called by some observers the most violent upheaval since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
There are streams of western optimism over the fact that Ahmedinejad – who is developing nuclear weapons in defiance of repeated U.N. resolutions and has publicly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” – is having political difficulties at home. But even in the unlikely event another election is called and then won by the more moderate Mousavi, the radical mullahs who rose to power in 1979 will still be running the show. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ultimately responsible for Iran becoming the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. And Ahmedinejad’s nuclear initiatives and threats against Israel could not proceed without Khamenei’s blessing.
Still, there is an opportunity for President Obama to reach out to ordinary Iranians, significant numbers of whom are becoming increasingly restive under Ahmedinejad’s tyrannical regime. Unfortunately, Obama not only promised to meet with Ahmedinejad, but to meet with him without preconditions, and made such a summit one of his major foreign policy goals. As Council of Foreign Relations senior fellow Michael Gerson points out, this leaves Obama “with little leverage to extract concessions, and little choice to move forward” – precisely when such leverage could best be used to U.S. advantage.
Iran is already diplomatically isolated. Obama should lead an international effort to impose harsh economic sanctions against Iran for its nuclear proliferation activities while strongly signaling support for pro-democracy elements in Iran. Obama should also demand that basic human rights such as freedom of speech and assembly be recognized for all Iranians, including members of the banned opposition Freedom Movement, before any sanctions are lifted.
In a surprise turnabout Monday, Khamenei ordered an investigation into the election fraud allegations, indicating that not even Iran’s Supreme Leader himself is immune to the power of a angry crowd of young, middle-class voters who oppose the current regime’s radically confrontational tactics. With protestors supplying the internal pressure, now is the time for the U.S. to apply careful pro-democracy pressure on Tehran as well.
