Iran's Stolen Election Has Sparked an Uprising -- What Should the U.S. Do? by Stephen Zunes

[Douglas Carpenter]

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

This is an excellent and detailed article I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

Iran's Stolen Election Has Sparked an Uprising -- What Should the U.S. Do?

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted June 15, 2009.

link:

http://www.alternet.org/world/140639/iran%27s_stolen_election_has_sparked_an_uprising_--_what_should_the_u.s._do/?page=entire

Can the United States speed the process for greater freedom in Iran? Yes. By staying out of the way as much as possible.

"As the fraudulent outcomes in the presidential races of 2000 in the United States and 2006 in Mexico demonstrate, elections can be stolen without the public rising up to successfully challenge the results. There have been cases, however, where such attempted thefts have been overturned through massive nonviolent resistance, as in the Philippines in 1985, Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and Ukraine in 2005. It is unclear as of this writing how the people of Iran will react to what increasingly appears to be the theft of their presidential election. So far, protests have been scattered, lacking in discipline and therefore easily suppressed. A general strike is planned, however, and a more cohesive and strategic resistance movement may emerge."

snip:"So far, there are little indications that the diverse opposition in Iran has the organizational and strategic wherewithal to mount a massive nonviolent action campaign that could overturn the stolen election and bring greater democracy to that country. This stolen election may hasten that day, however. Iran today is not unlike Eastern Europe in the 1970s. The people may not be ready to overthrow the system, but the ideological hegemony which had previously maintained that system and stifled freedom of thought has largely vanished. Even among Iranians dedicated to the principles of the Islamic Republic, many now see their country essentially as a police state, recognizing that Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics are little more than corrupt self-interested politicians who have manipulated their people’s religious faith for the sake of their own power."

snip:"Despite claims by former President George W. Bush that the United States has always supported "liberty" and "democracy" in Iran, the history of U.S.-Iranian relations during both Republican and Democratic administrations has demonstrated very little support for a democratic Iran. In the early 1950s, the last time Iran had a democratic constitutional government, the United States joined Great Britain and other countries in imposing strict economic sanctions against Iran in response to the nationalization of the country's oil resources, which until then had been under foreign control. Taking advantage of the resulting economic collapse and political turmoil that followed, the CIA helped engineer a coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from exile to rule with an iron fist."

snip:"Some American neoconservative leaders argue that sustained air and missile strikes against Iranian government, nuclear, and military facilities would cripple the regime to a point that it would empower opponents to rise up against the government. In reality, Iranian opposition leaders emphasize that war and threat of war by the U.S. government would certainly unify the population around the regime and would be used to justify further repression."

snip: "Some Western bloggers and other writers, understandably skeptical of U.S. intervention in oil-producing nations in the name of "democracy," have actually bought into these claims by Iran's hardline clerics that prominent nonviolent activists from Europe and the United States -- most of whom happen to be highly critical of U.S. policy toward Iran -- are somehow working as U.S. agents. These conspiracy theories have in turn been picked up by some progressive websites and periodicals, which repeat them as fact. Unfortunately, such accusations do little more than strengthen the hand of Iran's repressive regime, weaken democratic forces inside the country, and strengthen the argument of U.S. neoconservatives that only U.S. intervention -- and not nonviolent struggle by the Iranian people themselves -- is capable of freeing the county. "

snip:"Despite the growing repression from its government, the negative consequences of sanctions and threats against their country, and Washington’s disinterest in their struggle, the best hope for Iran comes from Iranian civil society. It is the Iranian people alone who have the right and the capability to reform or bring down the country’s increasingly illegitimate regime and establish a more just and democratic society. Whether it will be in the short-term or the long-term, freedom will come to Iran. When it does, however, it will likely be in spite of -- rather than because of -- the policies of the United States."

link to full article:

http://www.alternet.org/world/140639/iran%27s_stolen_election_has_sparked_an_uprising_--_what_should_the_u.s._do/?page=entire