New options for Obama's Iran policy
Fox News, December 14, 2008
Alireza Jafarzadeh (Foreign Affairs Analyst)
The recent rise in
anti-government protests in Iran, coupled with escalating
political strife within the leadership of the ayatollahs’
regime, present President-elect Barack Obama and his foreign
policy team with options for a viable new Iran policy.
Tehran’s dysfunctional oil-based economy, already under a
plethora of UN, U.S. and EU sanctions, is reeling from the
drastic fall in oil prices. Meanwhile, Iran’s next
presidential election is fast approaching in June 2009, and
the political wrangling has never been more widespread.
The vicious infighting, widely known among Iranians as “the
fight among wolves,” will not produce a more dovish faction
as some trans-Atlantic advocates of Tehran assert. It is
likely to result in a more isolated, much weaker, albeit
more belligerent faction. This process presents a real
threat to the ayatollahs because it coincides with a rise in
anti-government protests which the regime has been unable to
completely suppress, despite ever harsher measures and ever
more executions and arrests.
Over the past few weeks, college students throughout Iran
staged anti-government rallies which reached their peak on
December 6 — Student Day. Students at Tehran’s Polytechnic (Amirkabir)
University protested, under the watchful eyes of the State
Security Forces, chanting “We are fighters, men and women;
fight us and we will fight,” and “The student movement is
prepared for an uprising.” In recent years Polytechnic has
been a hotbed of ferocious demonstrations. In December 2006,
students set Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s photos on fire during his
appearance as a speaker.
Acts of protest on other major campuses have also been
reported in recent days by sources of the Iranian
resistance. Students protested at the Journalism University
in Tehran, Azad University of Shahreyar, Sistan and
Baluchestan University, Azad University in the southwestern
city of Dezful, Boali Sina University in the western city of
Hamedan, just to name a few. As usual they were met with
deployments of the State Security Forces (SSF) and agents of
the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
At Shiraz University, protesters shouted “Long live
freedom,” and “No matter what happens, we stand to the end.”
Back in February, nearly 1,500 students defied the SSF,
which had surrounded the campus and cordoned off the area as
local residents gathered in nearby streets in solidarity.
Students shouting “We will not live in shame” took over the
administration building.
Similar protests have been staged by workers and teachers,
whose economic grievances quickly escalated to specific
political demands targeting the regime and its entire
leadership. Workers at Kiyan-Tire factory have been on
strike since April. Their recent protest rally in Tehran was
attacked by the SSF, and a number of workers beaten and
arrested. The protesters shouted, “Workers are ready to
rise. This is your last chance.” Local residents and youths
joined in support of the striking workers and clashed with
the SSF units.
The regime’s savagery, including public executions,
flogging, eye-gouging, and limb amputations, has not
deterred the populace. Still, state-controlled media report
a new suppressive measure almost every day. In March, the
U.S. State Department reported that in 2007, Iran’s “poor
human-rights record worsened, and it continued to commit
numerous, serious abuses… The law criminalized dissent and
applied the death penalty to offenses such as apostasy.”
In mid-November, Brig. Gen. Azizollah Rajabzadeh, chief of
police for greater Tehran, announced the conclusion of a
six-day security “maneuver” in the capital. Although billed
as a measure to fight “crimes” and “criminals,” the maneuver
clearly demonstrated the regime’s fear of the opposition.
Many local residents were baffled by the anti-riot tactics
and assortment of heavy weaponry, such as mortar launchers,
brandished by the State Security Forces. Rajabzadeh
announced that “30,000 SSF agents with 4,000 military
vehicles and 50 helicopters had guaranteed Tehran’s
security.”
Meanwhile Morteza Tamadon, Tehran’s governor, announced the
formation of yet another security organ called the “Council
for Providing Security.” According to Tamadon, “The new body
consists of thirteen other security councils working in
Tehran Province to ensure durable security for citizens.”
In recent weeks, the regime’s officials have been talking a
lot about the “sensitive” and “critical” conditions
engulfing their “system” at home and abroad. Calls by
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for unity are falling on deaf
ears. As usual, Tehran’s leaders have turned to belligerence
and rogue behavior at home and abroad, specifically with
regard to Iraq and the nuclear weapons program.
Until now, successive U.S. administrations have essentially
vacillated between outright appeasement and inconsistent
containment. But the ayatollahs’ admitted fear of the enemy
within presents the incoming administration with a clear
choice. Tehran’s ruling clerics are scrambling for survival.
The absence of a clear-thinking US policy benefits the
ayatollahs’ efforts to get the bomb and turn Iraq into a
sister Islamic Republic.
The United States should hit the mullahs where it hurts:
remove the politically-motivated and ill-advised terror tag
from the main Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin of
Iran (PMOI), as proposed by a large, bi-partisan group of
American lawmakers. This label has hamstrung the movement
for democratic change in Iran at a time when the unshackled
presence of all of Iran’s democratic opposition groups will
decisively change the balance of power to the detriment of
the ayatollahs’ regime.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
