By Azar Nafisi
Thinking of the dominant views among American policymakers on Iran, I am reminded of the great Persian poet Jalaledin Rumi’s story about a group of people trying to describe an elephant exhibited in a dark room. One felt the elephant’s back and claimed that it resembled a great throne. Another, touching its ear, declared it was in fact a huge fan. A third felt its leg and concluded it must be a large pillar.
The Islamic Republic has been with us for almost three decades, yet still it manages to amaze and confuse the experts. In the 1990s, Mohammed Khatami inspired the majority of Western commentators to believe Iran was on the verge of upheaval. But while Khatami may have distinguished himself from his predecessors by ushering in a milder version of the Islamic Republic, he was, and remains, very much a part of that system. Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has persuaded us that the same system is an imminent menace and must, therefore, be overthrown. Yet, while Ahmadinejad may be more repressive and violent than previous presidents, his reactionary tendencies are fundamentally a sign of the Iranian system’s weakness—not its strength.
The problem is that Western pundits are only feeling part of the elephant—the political one—and ignoring the most important part: the Iranian people themselves. If you take the long view of Iranian history and focus on the country’s people rather than its rulers, a very different picture emerges: that of an Iranian order in crisis.
Evidence for this proposition is everywhere. A cursory look at Iran’s publications and blogs shows that, although some Iranians—for a variety of reasons—support their regime’s nuclear ambitions, most are far more interested in trying to redress day-to-day problems such as corruption, the struggling economy, rising unemployment, political and social repression and a general lack of freedom. Few are well informed about the nuclear program, and most are embarrassed and disturbed by the image of their country in the world.
Discontent Within Iran
Indeed, Iran’s new international isolation and pariah status are deeply unpopular at home, and the fact that the government is emptying its coffers to foment revolution abroad rather than to support the welfare of the Iranian people has turned many of Ahmadinejad’s supporters against him. Lately, workers’ protests have escalated in at least 10 cities. Angry union leaders have held the president responsible for the weakening of the economy. In recent city council elections in Tehran, only two of 13 winners were supporters of Ahmadinejad.
This discontent has seeped upward to high levels of Iranian politics—for instance, to members of parliament, who, during Ahmadinejad’s presentation of the annual budget in December 2006, noisily protested the worsening economic conditions. There even has been serious talk about impeaching him. Since his election, Iranian hard-liners have openly divided into two opposing factions, creating a great deal of anxiety among conservative leaders who have been trying to mend the breach. Prominent reformist dissenters, such as Ayatollah Montazeri, have accused the government of using the country’s considerable resources to meddle in other people’s affairs.
Even Ahmadinejad occasionally has sounded dispirited. He recently conceded that 28 years of Islamic rule have failed to eliminate liberal elements from Iranian society. Almost 30 years ago, in his prophetic essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” Václav Havel wrote that “a specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called dissent.” That specter has now moved to Iran.
The fact that neither Khatami nor Ahmadinejad has been able to foster unity—even within the ruling elite—is a good indication of the crisis within the system. For over two decades, the main resistance to that system has come from within Iranian civil society. And it is Iranian civil society that will ultimately prove to be the Achilles’ heel of the Islamic regime.
Knowing this, our target must be the Iranian people more than the Iranian government. Openness and freedom are far more likely to come from a change of mindset than from regime change. We must realize that our best weapons against autocracy and terrorism are not military or even diplomatic but ideological and cultural.
The fight for Iranian democracy is not simply a political one; in this respect, Iran is very much like communist Eastern Europe and apartheid South Africa. The story of how those countries were liberated reminds us that human rights extend beyond the realm of government. In places where the state has politicized the cultural and social arenas as well as the most private aspects of citizens’ lives, resistance to a repressive system takes on an existential dimension: The struggle is not just for political rights but also for the right of individual citizens to live the way they choose.
Who in the West will champion these existential rights on behalf of Iranians? No government—no matter how liberal—can devote itself only, or even primarily, to the defense of human rights and personal freedoms abroad, so we must rely on other actors to push the cause of liberty. I am speaking, of course, of nongovernmental organizations or NGOs. What is needed is for human rights groups, activists and journalists to take up the cause of the Iranian people.
Values, Not Bombs
The secular journalist Faraj Sarkuhi, the former revolutionary and dissident Akbar Ganji and the reformists -Emadeddin Baghi and Ramin -Jahanbegloo owe their freedom to a great degree to the efforts of organizations like PEN (the worldwide association of writers), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders as well as to the attention of other journalists throughout the world.
In the case of a recent transportation strike—a strike that received little coverage in the U.S. press despite being brutally repressed by the Iranian government—Western labor unions played an important role in the release of the protest’s organizers. The progressive women who have staged two demonstrations since the start of Ahmadinejad’s presidency are in the midst of a campaign to garner 1 million signatures demanding equality and justice for women in Iran. U.S. feminist groups should be doing far more to support them in their struggle.
Of course, this is not to say that governments have no part to play. A firm and united stand by the international community on Iranian human rights will send a message to the regime that it cannot bend other countries to its will, while encouraging more moderate and dissatisfied elements within the ruling elite to voice their displeasure.
In taking such a stand, Western governments must carve a path between the extremes of appeasement and belligerence. On the one hand, displays of weakness from the international community—such as the U.N. Human Rights Council’s recent decision to stop monitoring Iranian and Uzbek human rights violations, even though executions in Iran are currently on the rise—suggest to Tehran that the West does not care about the fate of Iranian activists. “The council’s action amounts to an endorsement of crackdowns on human rights in Iran and Uzbekistan,” explained Peggy Hicks, the global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “It shows utter disregard for the human rights activists who are struggling in these countries.”
At the same time, the notion that Iran will be subdued into compliance with a handful of precision-guided missiles is as dangerous and fanciful as the belief that an invaded Iraq would serve as a model of enlightened democracy. Indeed, to attack Iran at this point would be to send a lifeline to the regime’s most militaristic elements, which would use an attack as an excuse to quash all domestic dissent.
Meanwhile, military action would damage the credibility of Iranian liberals. From studying the example of Eastern Europe, they have learned that the ends of democratic revolution must be the sum total of the means employed—that an open and democratic society can be reached only through open and democratic methods. Fortunately, we can help them.
The most important weapon in the U.S. arsenal is not its military might but its culture. Vigorously defending and promoting those values the United States long was thought to represent—freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of conscience—will do a great deal more than any missile to neutralize Iranian radicals. And, though this wide-ranging task is probably beyond the capability of American politicians, it is not beyond the capability of America.
Azar Nafisi is director of the Dialogue Project at SAIS and author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. This feature is adapted from an article that appeared in the April 23, 2007, issue of The New Republic.
Since this article was published in April, events have occurred that have strengthened its basic tenets: that peaceful nonviolent change from within Iran will secure the most desirable results for both the Iranian people and American interests.
While there has been no major change in U.S. policy toward Iran, Ahmadinejad staunchly refuses to negotiate the new pillar of his ruling legitimacy: the development of nuclear technology as a means to assert major power status for the Iranian nation.
Moreover, the media circus caused by Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University this fall revealed unease among certain academics and policymakers on how to deal with the unpredictably outspoken Iranian president. Had university president Lee Bollinger desired to create a forum to enlighten and inform his students, he should have invited Iranian dissidents, such as Akbar Ganji, to respond to Ahmadinejad’s rather absurd claims and to challenge him on issues such as his human rights abuses. Instead, Bollinger’s insulting introductory remarks only added to the tension and -hysteria surrounding the event.
Despite the Iranian president’s claims, repression has increased in Iran. This is exemplified by the brutal beatings and imprisonment of student activists, assaults on women’s rights activists, the resumption of stoning for the crime of adultery and the unexplained temporary imprisonment of four U.S. citizens.
Under such circumstances, military action against Iran would only strengthen the hard-line elements within the regime by justifying political repression. Now, more than ever, the United States and other Western nations need to keep diplomatic options open while remaining firm with the Iranian regime.
Despite the recent crackdowns on any form of freedom of expression, there still exists in Iran a dynamic civil society and a nascent pro-democratic movement. Moreover, a worsening economy and -Ahmadinejad’s failure to fulfill his populist election promise to alleviate poverty, followed by the recent imposition of rationing, has led to nationwide unrest. Creating a dialogue between democratic-minded citizens of the world and the Iranian civil society movement is an increasingly relevant and pragmatic approach to facilitating relations with Iran.
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