Berkley Center

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.

But there is another Iran. It is also youthful. It wants discipline, order and orders. It hates American culture, and despises, in particular, the liberal creed that is at the essence of Western democracy. Suddenly Cohen has discovered this Iran, and he is not only angry but also profoundly disappointed and disillusioned.

The Middle East will always break your heart. Sadly, autocracies do not rule merely through a clenched fist. They also endure by protecting those sectors of society that fear democracy. In today's Iran, the constituency for autocracy might constitute 20 percent of the population. But it is defended by an organized cadre of True Believers who are as ruthless as they are zealous.

In the Arab world, the "state as protection racket" usually operates with a more relaxed fist. Arab leaders have not emulated the Islamic Republic's neo-totalitarian drive to mobilize the "downtrodden" in a collective march to create a new (Islamic) society. Instead, they have kept out of the private lives of citizens while offering economic benefits in return for political quiescence.

To buttress this authoritarian compact, Arab regimes have sought to co-opt potential opponents from both secular and Islamist camps. This divide and rule strategy encourages opposition elites to look to the state—rather than to one another—as their ultimate protector.

The relative success of this protection racket helps explain the reticence of Arab rulers, as well as their potential opponents, to assail the vote fraud committed by Iran's leaders. Arab leaders do not want to see any regime—even a Shi'ite one—lose control over state-managed elections. Similarly, many secular Arab opposition leaders see in the Islamic Republic a frightening case of what happens when Islamist rulers can no longer guarantee the "people's vote." Thus, secular activists are hardly keen on toppling Arab autocracies, which for all their deficiencies, stave off the possibility of Islamist rule.

As for Arab Islamists, many would not welcome a popular revolution that is initiated by a secular-oriented movement. Indeed, they thrive by opposing—rather than conquering—ideologically bankrupt regimes. In the semi-authoritarian regimes of the Arab world, Islamists can have their cake and eat it too: they command social, legal and moral authority precisely because they do not wield formal political power.

In Iran, the rising cost of exercising formal power has splintered the original revolutionary family that created the Islamic Republic. Embarrassed by the regime's bloody tactics, more and more conservative clerics are distancing themselves from the state. As they do, the True Believers in Iran's Revolutionary Guard conclude that they have everything to lose by negotiating with the opposition. My guess is that Iran's hard-liners will only make superficial concessions, thereby widening the breach between state and society.

The current situation in Iran reminds me of the Polish Communist Party's 1981 crackdown on Solidarity. It took 9 years before the standoff between state and society compelled key military leaders to negotiate with the opposition. A similar logic may eventually prevail in Iran. But this will not come easily, as the issues that divide rulers from ruled (and ruled from ruled!) are not merely about power and money: they are existential questions of what kind of Iran—or Islamic Republic—Iranians want.

In the face of recent events, it is tempting to conclude that the best way for Washington to hasten a similar of dialectic of repression, alienation and reengagement of society and state is to boycott the former while defending the rights latter.

My colleagues Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani argue for a similar strategy. They rightly point out that given the current circumstances, Iran's democratic forces will view a hasty return to engagement as a betrayal. Now that the regime had been thoroughly de-legitimated on the home front, Washington and its Western allies should foster a global effort to isolate and punish Iran's emerging junta.

Perhaps. But it is far from clear that such a campaign will produce the domestic or regional benefits that Diamond and Milani envision. A boycott of Tehran might backfire by playing into regime hard-liners, who are eager to portray their opponents as a fifth column of Western interference. Such an outcome might do Iran's democratic forces no favor, while strengthening the regime's resolve to continue defying all international efforts to address critical security issues, not least of which is Iran's enrichment program.

The Obama administration's challenge is to chart a realistic middle course between a "business as usual" engagement strategy on the one side, and a "no business at any cost" isolation approach on the other. The U.S. must address its pressing security interests without undermining the long-term efforts of Iran's disparate opposition forces to forge a common strategy. Democracy will come to Iran, but only if the struggle for it is waged on Iranian soil, and by the sons, daughters and grandchildren of the Islamic Revolution.