Likelihood of Success

Inconvenient thoughts on Iran

Jun 19, 2009 Oppression, Orient, Stragety

Exciting times regarding Iran, right?

But I keep wondering why everyone forgets that it’s not as if they’re looking to put Shimon Peres on the Peacock Throne here, you know?  Mr. Roach agrees:

I can’t get too pumped about what’s going on in Iran. Perhaps on balance Mousavi would be better for the United States and the Iranian people. It’s hard to say. But lots of angry people in the streets does not mean he’s a great guy with a great plan to support a more liberal and decent regime in Iran. Muqtadr al Sadr used to get the crowds out too. Indeed, so did Khomenei. It’s just as likely, considering the people and history involved, Mousavi would spend much of his energy oppressing his erstwhile oppressors if elected. This is the way politics runs in the Third World.

We are talking about an Islamic poltical party in an Islamic state. Almost no one talks about how Mousavi ran the show in Iran in the 1980s as Prime Minister when Iran was America’s mortal enemy, and his track record then–-when Iran was supporting kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon and attacks on US ships in the Gulf–-is chiefly why the Iranians like him. Why should we think his vague anti-corruption platform means we’ll have a friendly regime there? Why do neocons lose their judgment every time some “color revolution” comes down the pike?

(Via A Guy.)  Well, look, the enemy of my enemy is still my friend.  If nothing is going to help with Iran until something gives, maybe something giving will help.  And it’s not as if the State Department, or the Obama Administration — which are tacitly, and not so tacitly, supporting destabilization of this regime right now — are neocons.  Hardly.

Do we say that we wish the Soviets had not been humiliated in Afghanistan now that we know we ultimately helped build up the Taliban movement by our support?  I am not sure what the answer to that is, but it I think it’s no.

Instability can be a scary place, and sometimes after the fact we wish we could go back to where the trains ran on time and we didn’t have to hear the screaming.  Sometimes — say, regarding Iraq — that wish gets a little too urgent and impatient and is, ultimately, terribly immoral.

You know, to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs, yes?

On the other hand, Roach is right about one thing:  Let’s not get all dewy-eyed about the next Persian prince.  It’s not likely that we’ll be comparing him to Lech Walesa, much less Thomas Jefferson, for all that long after he gets his turn… if indeed it comes to that at all.