When the dust has fully settled, and the history of the revolution is Egypt transcribed, the U.S. government will be credited for its part in preventing wholesale bloodshed in an uprising that led to the easing Hosni Mubarak out of office. Having shifted towards the people of Egypt in their quest for their universal rights, and their thirst for democracy, the Obama administration helped the people Egypt accomplish a, hereto impossible, dream.
More importantly, the United States will be credited for having made a deliberate choice in being on the right side of history with the people of Egypt. To its credit, the Obama administration got this one right when it decided that our long-term strategic interests in Egypt, and the rest of the Arab world, trump the temptation of green lighting the suppression of dissent in the name of maintaining stability. With the moral support of the U.S., in just 18 days Egyptians accomplished what we have not been able to do in Iraq eight years, more than 4,400 American lives, and trillions of dollars after the venture began.
Not far from there, people of Iran have been watching the events in Egypt and Tunisia, with awe and envy. The brutal manner by which their 2009 uprising was suppressed has marred the consciousness of a large cross-section of Iranians who were determined to secure their universal rights through peaceful means.
Overcoming those fears, tens of thousands took to the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities on February 14th and were met, once again, with brutal force meted by the goons of the Basij and Revolutionary Guards. Reports trickling out of the country indicate that a broad cross-section of the population, young and old, women and men alike, showed up and met their worst fears as they were indiscriminately beaten up. This proves, once again, that the Green Movement has deep roots within the Iranian society, and remains very potent.
The deep level of dissatisfaction with the regime, and the yearning for change, is too strong to be suppressed forever, and the population keeps looking for excuses to show their disgust with the regime and vent out. Ayatollah Khamenei and his military dictatorship know this all too well. They will keep looking for excuses to unleash their mad dogs of torture and rape. If I were a betting man, I would bet my last dollar that, somewhere in Tehran, military planners are burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to lure the U.S. into a confrontation. That would be their Godsend reason for obliterating all voices resembling dissent, discrediting, and uprooting the Green Movement.
To its credit, the Obama administration has thus far avoided the bait, and has smartly stayed clear of traps set up by the Iranian regime. The U.S. Congress, however, appears to be leading us straight into one of those traps. Motivated by the vitriolic rhetoric of the neocons who still see Tehran as the "real prize," the U.S. Congress is escalating the anti-Iran rhetoric to a frenzied pace. The screening last week of Iranianum, a movie backed by the architects of the Iraq War, on the Capitol Hill was one step in that direction. Looking for their Iranian version of Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons have found a strange bedfellow in Mujahedeen Khalgh, aka MEK. Rhetoric broadcast from neocon think tanks indicate that they are determined to force the State Department to take the group off of its list of terrorist organizations, thus giving the group political legitimacy.
The rationale? The enemy of our enemy has to be our friend, as the MEK is the sworn enemy of the Iranian Government. However, what is entirely overlooked is that this group, best-known to the average Iranian who survived the eight-year war with Iraq as a "Saddam-collaborator clan," carries zero credibility with the population inside Iran. The real danger is that this group may accomplish its coveted goal of representing itself as the face of the Iranian opposition movement at the same time that it has absolutely zero credibility with the Iranian population and its Green Movement. The nightmare scenario that can easily follow is that the Iranian regime will find, in this, its much-needed reason for obliterating the Green Movement altogether.
Events in Egypt (and Tunisia) contain a valuable lesson in how bring about change in Iran. Throwing our moral support behind homegrown opposition groups that enjoy broad grassroots support, combined with the taking of a firm stance against human rights abuses of the regime will, sooner or later, bring about the desired change. Temptations to rely on foreign-based and foreign-financed straw men, who merely masquerade as opposition leaders, is a sure-fail policy. Iranians will get the job done by themselves. They only need the U.S. to maintain a steadfast position in protecting their universal rights.
Professor Ali Fatemi is the Chair of the Department of Finance at DePaul University.
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