Iran - Report

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 Persistence, not Passion, Needed in Iran - Report

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (IPS) - The Bush administration must be patient with
Iran, where growing popular unhappiness with the conservative leadership is
unlikely to lead to swift political change, let alone a popular
insurrection as some U.S. neo-conservatives have predicted, says a new
report.

Amid rising tensions over the country's nuclear programme and new charges
that it is sheltering senior leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist group,
including the son of Osama bin Laden, the Brussels-based International
Crisis Group (ICG) is calling on President George W. Bush to seriously
engage Teheran rather than to seek confrontation with it.

In its report entitled 'Iran: Discontent and Disarray', the ICG says much
more probable than a grassroots uprising is the rise of "conservative
pragmatists", such as former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, who have
supported opening up to the West for economic reasons while continuing to
resist far-reaching political reform.

"There should be no let-up in the world support for political reform and
greater respect for human rights," said Robert Malley, ICG's Middle East
programme director who served as specialist for the region on the U.S.
National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton.

In that respect, the report notes that the decision to award this year's
Nobel Peace Prize to human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi could be considered
particularly helpful.

"But the regime is not likely to collapse soon, so there is no serious
alternative to engaging it on urgent security matters," Malley added. "And
that engagement is going to have to address, as well as everybody else's
anxieties, Iran's own sense of strategic encirclement and nuclear
disadvantage," he said.

Iran policy has been a major point of contention with the Bush
administration virtually since it took power almost three years ago.

On the one hand, the State Department under its chief Colin Powell has
supported continuing with the gradual détente policy promoted under
Clinton. On the other, hawks based primarily in the offices of Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have opposed
engagement, arguing instead for a policy of isolation and confrontation.

The Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon marked the
hawks' ascendancy within the administration.

While contacts between Washington and Teheran -- which have not had direct
diplomatic ties since the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis 23 years ago --
picked up sharply during Washington's military campaign in Afghanistan in
late 2001, Iran's inclusion in the "axis of evil" described by Bush in his
State of the Union Address in January 2002 instantly cooled relations.

Still, the State Department maintained discreet contacts with the Iranian
government until mid-May, when U.S. intelligence concluded that a series of
al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia that left some 35 people dead, including
eight U.S. nationals, were planned and possibly ordered in Iran by senior
leaders of the group. As a result, the contacts were put on ice.

At the same time, tensions were rising over Iran's nuclear programme,
which, according to Teheran, is designed exclusively for civilian use.

But the United States believes that Iran intends to build a nuclear weapon
and has accelerated its efforts to do so. The issue has moved quickly to
the top of the agenda of the United Nations International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), which has given Teheran until the end of October to explain
a number of inconsistencies its inspectors have recently discovered.

At the same time, the Pentagon has declined to disarm and dissolve a
heavily armed Iranian rebel group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), which is
based in Iraq and was closely allied to the ousted regime of former
President Saddam Hussein.

Its failure to do so, despite the MeK's inclusion on the State Department's
list of international terrorist groups, is seen in Teheran as evidence that
Washington may be willing to use the group as a source of pressure against
the Islamic Republic.

A number of prominent neo-conservative thinkers close to the administration
hawks have become increasingly outspoken in favour of providing covert aid
to student opposition and exile movements in Iran, including one led by the
son of the former shah, in hopes of sparking a popular insurrection.

Several of them, including Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI), a think tank that enjoys strong influence with Rumsfeld
and Cheney, have formed the 'Coalition for Democracy in Iran' (CDI), which
is pressing Congress to approve a bill that would, among other things,
provide some 50 million dollars to opposition forces in Iran.

"We are now engaged in a regional struggle in the Middle East, and the
Iranian tyrants are the keystone of the terror network," Ledeen wrote
shortly after U.S. troops took Baghdad last April.

"Far more than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the defeat of the
mullahcracy and the triumph of freedom in Tehran would be a truly historic
event and an enormous blow to the terrorists."

The new ICG report confirms that students and others are indeed unhappy
about the prospects for political change in light of the refusal of the
conservative clerical establishment, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khameini, to support reforms sponsored by the twice-elected president,
Mohamed Khatami, and his allies in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis.

Popular frustrations are being taken out primarily on the reformers, who
have been unable to carry out their programmes, adds the report, pointing
to the huge drop in turnout in municipal elections earlier this year, which
resulted in major gains by conservative politicians.

But the problem is that this frustration is turning more to political
apathy. "Student protests persist, but they remain contained; most of the
public is reluctant to challenge the state security services directly,
sensing both that the regime would not hesitate to resort to violence and
that, for the time being at least, there is no readily available credible
political alternative."

Thus, "international policy-makers need to recognise that internal
paralysis is a far more probable outcome than radical change", the report
concludes..

In this context, argues the ICG, it makes sense for the West to take
advantage of any opening by the regime to economic reform, as well as to
engage directly -- as Europe has for some time -- in critical issues,
including security.

"Such contacts need to be encouraged and expanded," the report says, "as
they ultimately help to open up Iran's political space".

"The need is to strengthen Iran's civil society, and that can best be done
not by isolating the country but by maximising economic and cultural
contacts while continuing to urge political reform and more respect for
human rights," according to ICG analyst Karim Sadjadpour.
*****
+International Crisis Group
(http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=2324)
+International Atomic Energy Agency
(http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml)

(END/IPS

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