Islam and the West

أكد الدكتور أحمد نظيف، رئيس مجلس الوزراء، أن نجاح ٩ وزراء فى الجولة الأولى من الانتخابات البرلمانية دليل على وجود قاعدة شعبية مؤيدة للحكومة فى الدوائر الانتخابية، مضيفاً أن نجاح الوزراء كان «بتفوق شديد واكتساح».

Well, you heard it here first folks. According to Egypt's Prime Minister, Dr. Ahmed Nazif, the country's recent elections, and in particular the victory of 9 ministers in the first round, clearly indicate a "popular base of support for the regime" that is nothing less than "sweeping."

Al Masri al Ayoum, December 2, 2010.

President Barack Obama's November 10 trip to Indonesia was short and bitter sweet: short because he had to leave before the Merapi volcano spewed more dark ash into the skies (what a metaphor!); bitter sweet because his voyage unfolded amid growing doubts about his "Muslim world outreach." Whether those misgivings subside or multiply will depend less on the atmospherics of diplomacy and far more on the substance of US foreign policy.

In the 20th century, crackdowns against civil society frequently occurred under the guise of ideology. Since the demise of Communism, most crackdowns seem to be motivated... by sheer power politics. But behind these actions, there is an idea, an alternative conception of how societies should be organized. And it is an idea that democracies must challenge.
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Speech before the Community of Democracies, July 3, 2010

I couldn't agree more with our Secretary of State: the U.S. and its democratic allies must challenge the efforts of autocrats to disseminate an "alternative conception of how societies should be organized."

On Feb. 15, 1947, the Exodus 1947 set sail for Palestine with some 4,500 Jewish refugees, most of whom were survivors of the Holocaust. The organizers of this fabled expedition fully expected the British to forcefully prevent the passengers from disembarking. As things turned out, they got more than they bargained for: three people died, including a U.S. sailor bludgeoned to death resisting the King's Navy.

With 200,000 American troops committed to two wars in the greater Middle East and the U.S. president leading a major international effort to block Iran's nuclear program, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a strategic imperative.
-- Martin Indyk, New York Times, April 19, 2010.

Martin Indyk is a long-time friend of Israel who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv. He also directs foreign policy programs for Brookings, an institution with close ties to the Obama administration. And so when Indyk argues that there is a link between failed peace making and US security, and when our own Secretary of State makes a similar case, is it any wonder that the Israelis are worried? Never mind that Rahm Emanuel has declared that "our bond with Israel is... unbreakable." Writing in Haaretz, one Israeli pundit attributed these multiple signals to a "good-cop, bad-cop" strategy.

Fresh from his victory in the U.S. Congress, President Obama is seizing the initiative on foreign policy. Thus, instead of making up with Bibi Netanyahu, administration officials from the president on down have maintained a tough--and even obstinate--line with the Israelis. This cerebral president is now leading rather than responding, fighting rather than trying to simply reason with his friends and his adversaries.

February 11 has come and gone. The 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution did not witness a historic confrontation between a human rights movement struggling to be heard and a regime that used every trick in the book to mobilize its supporters. Bussed in and bought off, driven by their own volition or by a massive case of collective false consciousness, the regime's supporters came a million strong, to proclaim, repeat or dutifully mimic their love for the Revolution, for Imam Khomeini, and for his heir, Supreme Leader Khamanei.

On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to his native land aboard an Air France jumbo jet. Ten tumultuous days later the Islamic Republic was born.

THE Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington.
-- Flynt and Hillary Leverett, New York Times, January 5, 2010.

I can't think of a foreign policy op/ed that has provoked more heat than that of the Leveretts. Employing their characteristic, in-your-face style, they have done their utmost to discredit the idea that the Ahsura protests that broke out some three weeks ago signal an eminent fall of the Iranian regime.

I am not going to venture an analysis of the Leverett piece. Their many critics and few tepid supporters have been at it for weeks. But whatever their views, I suspect that the most important reason why the article has touched a raw nerve is this: it points to the capacity of autocracies to survive, not merely by using brute force, but also by protecting key constituencies. Hard-line Shi'ite ideologues in Iran, Alawites in Syria, Berbers in Algeria, and secularists in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia all rely--to one degree or another --on autocracy to defend them. The regimes that rule their fractious societies are nothing less than protection rackets that use (and magnify) the fears provoked by the uncertainties of democratic politics to maintain their power.

The Arab and Iranian protection rackets are mirror images of one another. Many Arab regimes are controlled by elites that offer protection to those segments of society--the military, women's groups, businessmen, labor unions and human rights organizations-- that want to keep Islamists at bay.

By contrast, Iran is ruled by a coalition of clerics and security elites who are determined to repress "counter-revolutionary" secularists. This policy does have organized support, even if it is among a small plurality of the population. Thus, even if most Iranians who have gone to the streets to demand political change still prefer to reform rather than dismantle the Islamic Republic, regime hard-liners view their quest for religious and political freedom as a first step towards regime collapse. Indeed, in a bid to isolate its opponents, the regime has used the state media to beam one deadly message to the wider populace:"between us and the opposition stands chaos!" Like it or not, in today's divided Iran this message may be working for the regime.

How then to undermine this protection racket in a manner that advances domestic peace-making and reconciliation? In Iran, the violent stand-off between regime and opposition--one for which the regime is primarily responsible--is undermining hopes for a compromise. But I would still predict that the most likely outcome--one that may be years away--is a negotiated solution that brings both sides back from the brink.

In the Arab world, opportunities for negotiating a different political future remain alive in some states, while they may be dying in others. Yemen--and perhaps even Palestine--could be slipping into the near-hopeless category. But in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait, a new generation of political activists is looking for an exit from the cul-de-sac of autocracy.

The Muslim World Initiative at the United States Institute of Peace has been working to help Arab activists envision this exit strategy. Indeed, during the week of January 18-22, the MWI will hold two public events that highlight opportunities for promoting political dialogue and consensus.

The first will take place on Wednesday, January 20, when USIP joins forces with the Project on Middle East Democracy and Georgetown University's Center for Democracy and Civil Society to host a remarkable meeting in the U.S. Congress--one that will showcase the aspirations of a new generation of Arab political activists.

The second will take place on the morning of Friday, January 22, when USIP will launch Pursuing Safety and Freedom: Reform and Security in the Greater Middle East. This exhaustive USIP Study Group Report calls upon the Obama administration to innovate policies that encourage oppositions to forge a common vision of democratic change, and regimes to pursue reforms that promote the free exchange of ideas across the ideological divide.

If this sounds like a PR plug for USIP-- so be it! The issues the Institute will raise at the two events are too important to be left to the polarized arena of competing op.eds and blogs. What is at stake is nothing less than need to forge a long-term strategy for mitigating the sectarian, ideological and religious strife that autocrats count on to sustain a clenched fist.

This is first and foremost a task that the citizens of the Middle East must undertake. But if they lead, then surely Washington can help by encouraging genuine political dialogues -- particularly in those Arab states whose rulers assume that their geo-strategic relations with the U.S. provide a blank check for sustaining the old protection racket.

It is high time for a little spin control. With pundits of every ideological persuasion re-presenting President Obama's Dec. 10 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in ways calculated to advance their own political agendas, we need --as Obama might say-- to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.

In his Oslo speech, the president presented nothing less than a dialectical argument, by which I mean a series of ideas, arguments or phases that appear as opposites, but which are eventually reconciled, thus producing a synthesis of contending ideas. But the problem with a dialectical vision is that if you think you can understand the whole of the argument by resting your case on any single part of it, you are going to end up misunderstanding -or perhaps misrepresenting--the overall message.

This is precisely the fate of Obama's Oslo speech. Seeking to congratulate the president for coming round to their point of view, his critics have found in his Nobel lecture ample proof that that President has finally grasped the hard verities that his critics have long understood.

Thus, for example, Bill Kristol announced on Fox News that the acceptance speech was "the most Bush like" of Obama's presidency, and that it "lays the predicate for a legitimate use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons." Jacob Heilbrunn chimed in, insisting that the speech "confirmed" Obama's "transformation from dove into liberal warrior." And Robert Kagan proclaimed that having given the "soft touch a try," Obama has come to the realization that "advancing democracy is not only a moral but also a strategic imperative."

Don't get me wrong. Obama's views have evolved. But his ideas stem from a world view whose roots run deep. The President has not woken up in a Kafkaesque nightmare to find himself turned into his most vociferous critics--whether they be on the left or the right. Spinners beware: when you try to add up the pieces, you will find an intellectually intricate vision whose simplification is at best a caricature, and at worst, a distortion.

This is a vision of contradictions and tensions. "The instruments of war do have a role," Obama states, "but this truth must coexist with" the fact that "war promises human tragedy." Indeed, "part of our challenge" is "reconciling...irreconcilable truths." Thus, he argues, the unilateral use of force is sometimes necessary, but "American cannot act alone." The denial of the human aspiration for freedom cannot serve "America's interests," but "engagement with repressive regimes" is necessary. When you "see the world as it is," Obama repeatedly asserted, you know there is "no simple formula."

Some pundits are now referring to "Obama's Doctrine." But thus far, the president has spelled out something that is closer to a philosophy than a geo-strategic policy. It has the merits of complexity and conceptual rigor, which is no small accomplishment. But it must also confront a world in which fast moving events often force the most visionary of leaders to make difficult choices between contending--and perhaps irreconcilable--goals. At the end of the day, the choices that Obama makes will surprise those who appear so sure that this president has embraced their truths.

THE most important moment in President Obama's Dec. 1 speech on Afghanistan came when he outlined his administration's exit strategy. "Additional American and international troops," he asserted, "will allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July 11, 20011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground."

These carefully crafted sentences were no doubt designed to send multiple signals: to an American populace wary of losing more young lives overseas, the President set a date for starting to withdraw American troops. But to those parties worried about a premature exit (who include the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan), he not only carefully noted that the withdrawal would "begin" in July 2011: he also promised a "responsible" strategy that would take account of "conditions on the ground." This is the administration's loophole, one that it may eventually find itself forced to wiggle through.

For the U.S. military, a conditional exit strategy may be the best it can hope for. Because legitimacy is part and parcel of national security, it is vital that the White House consider public opinion when choosing to send more young troops into battle. As the administration struggles to tackle a series of dire security challenges, it can hardly be blamed for forging a military strategy that is tempered -and thus perhaps constrained--by the logic of democratic politics.

Still, the essential question remains: can the White House achieve its goals with 30,000 to 35,000 more troops (including NATO)? Here there is reason for concern. The White House's implicit optimism rests partly on the assumption that a U.S.-led military surge in Afghanistan will produce some of the security and political benefits that came with the previous surge in Iraq. But as Juan Cole notes, the analogy doesn't hold. Indeed, the substantial differences between the two countries suggest that the gains achieved in Iraq will be hard to replicate in Afghanistan. Consider two of these critical differences.

Difference 1: The U.S. surge in Iraq had the implicit blessing of the Shi'ites, who constitute 60 percent of the population. Acting through the militias and the national security forces, by the time the surge began the Shi'ites had already managed to expel nearly all Sunnis from Baghdad itself. This development played no small role in convincing Sunni Arabs to back the U.S.-funded "American Awakening Councils," whose subsequent actions helped to turn the tide against non-Iraqi Islamist insurgents. Iraq's security gains were thus the product of a bloody civil war that our taciturn Shi'ite allies won through an effective alliance with the United States.

No such analogous opportunity presents itself in Afghanistan. There the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, constitute 42 percent of the population. While nominally represented by a Pashtun president, to secure his reelection Hamid Karzai's compatriots had to resort to corruption, intimidation and fraud. Indeed, precisely because Karzai and his allies cannot count on the wider Pashtun population, they must rely on an army in which Pashtuns constitute no more than one third of the troops, and in which Persian speaking officers from the minority Tajik community are, as Cole notes, "disproportionately represented." Given Karzai's waning legitimacy, this is hardly a promising recipe for an effective US-Afghani surge!

Difference 2: Constituting no more than 20 percent of the population, and facing a determined U.S.-backed rival, Iraq's Sunnis had little choice but to join a fragile if forward-moving process of political reconciliation. By contrast, Afghanistan's Pashtuns constitute a sizable plurality. They not only have the capacity to resist the central government, but also the motivation: deep antipathy towards the minority Sunni Tajiks, Shi'ite Hazaras and Uzbeks, who were the allies of the U.S. in the 2001-02 war against the Taliban. The latter's extremist Islamism mixes with Pashtun ethno-religious resentment to create a potent reason to oppose the efforts of Karzai and his American supporters to topple the Taliban.

Given these differences, the U.S. faces an uphill battle. The Afghan army is made up of 80,000 troops, the majority of whom are illiterate, poorly paid and not Pashtun. It is hard to see how Washington will train a 134,000 strong national army, one that can, in part or in whole, "stand up on its own" in the 18-month schedule the President outlined.

The Taliban are well aware of these facts and their strategic implications. Their best tactic may be to lie low and avoid major engagements with U.S. and NATO troops. Perhaps that is why most of the new U.S. troops will be positioned in Kandahar and Helmand provinces--the stronghold of Taliban. But if we take the fight to the enemy, do we not risk provoking greater Pashtun resentment, particularly given the sobering fact that very few members of the Afghani army come from those two key provinces?

If the answer to these questions is "yes," the conditions for a rapid exit starting in July, 2011 will not be met. And if, as President Obama has stated, "what at stake is the security of our allies and the common security of the world," we should be prepared for a prolonged or even delayed departure--a prospect that the Defense Secretary raised the other day, and which seems to be implicitly anticipated in the President's own speech.

Egypt, a country of some 82 million people, once was the intellectual, strategic and political hub of the Arab world. But today, Egypt is adrift. Cairo seems more crowded, more polluted and more chaotic than ever. The country is suffocating under a cloud of political ineptitude, apathy and cynicism, the likes of which I have never seen in Egypt.

I wish I could say that the problem has a clear source or one obvious remedy. Unfortunately, Egypt's malady has many causes and many symptoms. This illness is far from terminal, but left untreated, the patient will only grow more infirm.

Let's start with the government--or the lack thereof. As I mentioned to a long-time Egyptian colleague, the only thing worse than the absence of democratic or accountable government is the absence of governance itself. President Hosni Mubarak has been ruling since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981. After 28 years, during which he was "re-elected" by a parliament stacked with his allies in the National Democratic Party, (a body that is neither a coherent party much less an instrument of democracy), Mubarak is viewed by many Egyptians as a kind of absentee leader.

The prospect of his son Gamal effectively inheriting the presidency, which two or three years ago generated heated debate, no longer seems like a done deal. Instead, a contest has emerged among an expanding circle of palace cronies whose quasi-public squabbles only highlight the perceived weaknesses at the helm of the state.

A lack of effective leadership produces many sins. Consider the totally unnecessary decision to preempt Swine Flu by killing off 400,000 pigs in Egypt. This act produced a mammoth trash crisis, as Cairo's zabaleen (trash collectors) depend on food refuse to sustain the pig-raising industry. The pig slaughter not only upended the livelihood of 70,000 poor Egyptian Copts: it also signaled a gross insensitivity--if not hostility--by the state towards a Christian minority that constitutes 15% of the population.

The perception of state hostility has been magnified by documented reports detailing the failure of Egyptian security forces to stop violent attacks against Coptic worshippers. Human rights activists attribute such events to disarray at the very top: when Egypt's leaders do not lead, the security forces feel they have a free hand to indulge or manipulate sectarian tension. The result, some human rights activists fear, is a kind of creeping "Islamization" that elements within the state abet -- even as the regime expands repression of both secular and Islamist opposition groups.

In the latest example of such cynical divide and rule tactics, Egyptian authorities have banned the country's most prominent secular opposition leader, Ayman Nour, from traveling to the US, citing his plans to attend "political" meetings (God forbid!) as a justification. But Nour's real sin is this: having had the temerity in 2005 to lawfully challenge President Mubarak during Egypt's first technically competitive presidential election--and having spent 3 years in prison for doing so--Nour is now trying to forge a national opposition front to oppose Gamal Mubarak's "inheritance" of the presidential throne.

However courageous--and certainly legal--Nour's actions reflect (and in some ways magnify), long-standing personal, strategic and ideological splits within the opposition. While veteran leaders of the Kifaya ("Enough") Movement are trying to establish a new organization in advance of the 2010 parliamentary elections, there is no consensus as to whether elections should take precedence over other political objectives. Indeed, many secular leaders want to focus on basic human rights issues (such as freedom of speech or religion), rather than expend resources preparing for a poll which, even if only slightly competitive, might strengthen their Islamist rivals. This disarray is like music to the ears of the regime.

Still, the news isn't completely bleak. Well aware of the country's deepening crisis, a new generation of young Egyptian activists is trying to forge a fresh vision of political activism that transcends the old ideological, social and religious divides.

During my recent visit to Cairo, I heard some of these young people during a conference on "Emerging Leaders for Democracy." Listening to them, I realized just how many had been inspired by President Barack Obama's election. Indeed, most looked to his June 4 Cairo University speech as a harbinger of a new U.S. policy, one that they hoped would be based, at least in part, on a frank dialogue about human rights and democracy in Egypt.

Five months later, not a few of these aspiring leaders are now asking whether the President's fine words will be matched by fine actions. Certainly, they know that they must look first and foremost to themselves for answers. But they still wonder if their dreams matter to an administration that is focused on the security challenges emanating from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel/Palestine. So far, they can be forgiven for thinking that U.S. policymakers do not seem troubled by the growing chasm between a fragmenting state and a fractious society, many of whose young people yearn to be heard both at home and abroad.

President Hamid Karzai's last minute agreement to hold a second round of presidential elections on November 7 could be nothing more than a cynical ploy. The notion that the international community can work with domestic monitors to effectively prepare for such elections in the next 16 days, and that this run-off will produce a credible victor, is questionable.

Yet, even if motivated by a seemingly insatiable quest to remain in office, Karzai's decision represents a victory for the international community and for the United Nations in particular. I do not know of another more dramatic example of the U.N. intervening to reverse a fraudulent election. Yes, perhaps it took the resignation of Peter Galbaith. Yes, from the outset the U.N. was reluctant to act. But, in the end, it did the right thing.

The Obama administration deserves some credit for this turn of events. For no matter what course of action it takes in terms of increasing U.S. troop levels, or in terms of redefining the mission, no strategy can succeed if Afghanistan's people view their government as totally corrupt, illegitimate and ineffective. If the very national police, whose mission it is to provide security, are acting as predators, the struggle against the Taliban will have little chance of success. And if the U.S. is seen as supporting a president who has stolen an election, we might as well pack up our bags and go home.

Still, to use a metaphor that is not wholly appropriate for Afghanistan, we are hardly out of the woods yet. Indeed, because the rot in the country's political system should have been addressed two or three years ago (if not long before), the search for a quick electoral fix was always unrealistic. Why should Karzai--who the previous U.S. administration promoted, and who initially enjoyed widespread popular support--not assume that he had a free hand to consolidate his rule? Why should he fear that the U.S. would cease fighting the Taliban if he refused to act democratically? We have security interests, right?

These Realist calculations find an echo wherever the U.S. has tackled security challenges by advancing nation-building. In places as diverse as Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has faced a similar dilemma.

On the one hand, to consolidate the authority of emerging or weak states, it has backed election procedures, constitutions or laws that are far from perfect. (In 1996, as an election observer in Palestine, I saw this dynamic up close and personal). On the other hand, after delaying the effort to repair the damage ensuing from these flawed political arrangements, Washington has pushed for new initiatives (such as elections) that our allies have duly resisted or manipulated to protect their own power. When this dynamic then exacerbates social, political or ethno-religious divisions, state authority is once again jeopardized, and we are back to square one.

How can we help our friends (and their competitors) exit this corrosive cycle? It helps if leaders are ready to resolve their differences peacefully. Thus when President Karzai's chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, reacted to voter fraud by holding press conferences, rather than calling on his supporters to take up arms, he enhanced the prospects for a non-violent approach. It also helps if the U.S. uses its diplomatic, strategic or economic leverage to prod all parties towards such a solution. When Rahm Emanuel publicly stated that U.S. strategy would be partly conditioned on a credible "Afghan partner," he got Kabul's attention.

This hardly resolves the question of how best to use U.S. troops, an issue that Karzai has effectively thrown back in our faces by accepting a run-off. But whatever military strategy we adopt, no approach will work if Washington down-plays the long term challenges of governance, corruption and legitimacy.

Some say that this is "Mission Impossible." They point to the failures of local and foreign forces to pacify Afghanistan, or they argue that the heart of the problem lies next door, in Pakistan, a state whose intelligence forces have sometimes backed Islamist militants in a cynical ploy to justify subordinating civilian to military authority.

All of this is true. But the security problems that Afghanistan poses for itself, the region, and the international community will always resist one-dimensional solutions. Even if, as I have written, the pressures for the U.S. to both stay and leave Afghanistan are equally strong, the Obama administration must find an effective way to navigate between these competing logics. This will be a tough sell, as much (if not more) at home than abroad.

"It would be better if the administration focused on the regime's instability and ignored the nukes. This ought to be the goal of the "crippling" sanctions the Obama administration has threatened. Sanctions will not persuade the present Iranian government to give up its nuclear weapons program....But the right kinds of sanctions could help the Iranian opposition topple these still-vulnerable rulers."
--Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Sanctions would not affect the government but would impose many hardships upon the people, who suffer enough as a result of the calamity of their insane rulers."

"The government will say that critics of their policies are doing the foreigners' bidding" and will use sanctions as a pretext to silence opponents."

Mir --Hossein Mousavi and Ali Shakrouri-Rad, Iranian Opposition Leaders, Tehran.

You've got to hand it to Robert Kagan. Sitting at the virtual front lines of the struggle for democracy in Iran, he would have the Obama administration substitute a policy of regime change for diplomacy. Sound familiar? This is a somewhat lighter (and for our young soldiers, far safer) version of a policy pursued in Iraq by the previous administration. No, Kagan would not have us invade Tehran. Instead, he hopes that Iranians will take to the streets, shocking and awing the regime until it collapses.

Neo-conservatives of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your computers!

But what about the Iranian people? What would they lose, and what would they gain if the Obama administration followed Kagan's advise? Indeed, if his vision of a mass insurrection provoked by "crippling sanctions" had the unintended effect of strengthening the regime, would Washington's efforts to prevent Iran from building (and delivering) a nuclear payload be further delayed or even perhaps even aborted? Then, of course, everyone loses (including the Iranian people).

These cautions might explain why the leaders of Iran's opposition have repeatedly warned against the use of crippling sanctions. Mir Hossein Mousavi and his colleagues don't have the luxury of offering up their countrymen as fodder for testing what is (at best) an alluring hypothesis.

The are many problems with the punishing sanctions+opposition mobilization=regime collapse=a compliant Tehran formula. It is not merely that Iran's Revolutionary Guard leaders would probably find ways to circumvent an embargo on imported refined petrol, or that in doing so they would enrich their own coffers. Beyond such technical points is a basic question: what kind of political struggle will secure a brighter political future for the Iranian people?

On this score I believe that continued, non-violent resistance to the regime is both likely and necessary. It is likely because millions of Iranians, including many conservatives, will never forgive the electoral coup of June 12, 2009. It is necessary because only by denying the regime any shred of legitimacy can the opposition hope to compel Iran's rulers to retreat from their drive for absolute power. When the estrangement between the state and society is complete, a basis for moving beyond the status quo might emerge.

Such a prolonged struggle would not be unique. Consider Communist-era Poland, where after eight years of military rule, elements within the regime reached out to Solidarity. Judging from their statements and speeches, Iran's opposition leaders envision a similar struggle. They are not advocating revolution. Instead, their goal is to revive and redefine, rather than repudiate, many of the institutions and doctrines of the Islamic Republic.

For these purposes, Mousavi and his allies are waging a sophisticated campaign to broaden their ranks by making common cause with political leaders who are still loyal to the regime, but who are profoundly disturbed by its repressive actions. Such a complex campaign is unlikely to produce a democracy, but in time it could invite a process of political liberalization that would be far preferable to the consolidation of a post-Islamic Republic despotism.

If Iran's opposition leaders believe that tougher sanctions will undermine such a long- term strategy, many do agree with Kagan in one particular sense: the U.S., they argue, should boycott the current regime in Tehran. Talks, they claim, will only seal the victory of a junta whose right to rule the vast majority of Iranians have clearly denied.

While morally justifiable, in the long run a diplomatic boycott of Tehran would probably do more harm than good. Indeed, the struggle for a freer Iran will have little hope of success if the Iranian-U.S. cold war continues. Rather than provide the excuse they need to pummel their opponents --and, the same time, keep Iran at safe distance from the global community--Washington should keep Iranian hardliners off balance by offering full diplomatic relations. In return, Tehran would have to accept the strict system of nuclear safeguards and international supervision that Iran has long tried to evade.

If a diplomatic strategy begins to bare fruit, some of Iran's hardest hardliners might try to sabotage any deal with Washington. They support engagement, but not at the cost of realigning Tehran's foreign relations in ways that could benefit the country's democratic forces. This by itself is a good reason for pursuing the intricate poker game upon which Washington has finally embarked.

One of the emerging lessons of the Obama administration's foreign policy might be summed up as follows: The idea that presidential "direct diplomacy" with actors such as Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro is feasible or likely to produce results is, well, naive.

--Jackson Diehl, The Washington Post

Is the idea of "direct diplomacy" with our most troublesome rivals dead, at least for the moment? Perhaps. Is the idea of engagement still alive and kicking? I hope so.

By the end of 2009 the U.S. will have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, 21,000 of whom were deployed by the Obama administration.

This factoid must be considered against the backdrop of the presidential election held last week. According to Grant Kippen, the Canadian chairman of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission, electoral fraud may be sufficiently serious to affect the outcome of the poll. With presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah accusing President Hamid Karzai of "stealing" the election, there is a real possibility of post-election violence -- particularly if Karzai declares victory and thus prevents a run-off in October.

According to the constitution, everything in the country is determined by people's vote. People elect the members of the Assembly of Experts and then they elect the leader... Presidents, MPs, members of the councils are elected by direct votes....The title of Islamic Republic is not...a formality. It includes both the republican and Islamic nature.
-- Hashemi Rasfanjani, July 17, 2009

Friday July 17 may turn out to be one of the most fateful days in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Barely a month after Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad engineered an electoral coup, several hundred thousand people defied regime threats to hear former President Hashemi Rafsanjani give the single most important speech of his long career.

I've argued strongly for engagement with Iran as a game-changer. America renewed relations with the Soviet Union at the time of the Great Terror and China at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Operation Jackboot has not, as yet at least, involved mass killings. But the Iran of today is not the Iran of three weeks ago... Its Robespierres are running amok. Obama must do nothing to suggest business as usual. Let Ahmadinejad...writhe in the turbid puddle of his self-proclaimed "justice" and "ethics."
-- Roger Cohen, New York Times, July 2, 2009

Having witnessed the vicious repression of Iranian protesters, engagement advocate Roger Cohen has swung full circle. Prior to the recent events, he reminded his readers of an Iran embodied by millions of young people who want freedom and dignity.

If there is one thing successful revolutionaries hate, it's a mass movement. The "people" are a useful device for seizing power. Elements of the populace--bused in at the state's expense! --can be stage-managed to reinforce the message that the Leader is in charge. But under no circumstances can they take to the streets en masse to speak for themselves. This would run counter to law and order. Revolutionaries just love order.

This logic goes hand in hand with a brutal contempt for the masses themselves. Iran's president made as much clear the other day, when he referred to the hundreds of thousands protesting as merely "dirt and dust" (khas o khashak).

The Islamic Republic of Iran is dying a sad, angry death. In its place, we will probably get what one cleric has called the "Islamic Government" of Iran.

The difference is not merely semantic. The genius of the Islamic Republic -if we may call it that -- was that it blended competing notions of legitimacy, as well as a myriad of competing institutions. Unelected authorities, the most important of whom was the Leader, co-existed with quasi-democratic bodies such as the parliament (majles) and the office of the President. The latter was the only nationally elected leader, and from the outset the President's popular authority suggested a potential conflict with the authority of the un-elected Leader.