The Utility of Client States

Seeing lists like this one (posted on NIAC’s blog) makes me wonder about the use of client states:

11:59 am: According to Ahmadinejad’s website, as of today the following 35 countries have recognized him as the winner of the election:
-India -Tunisia -Malaysia -Lebanon -North Korea -Kuwait -Nicaragua -Comoros -Cambodia -Senegal -Cuba -Belarus -Sudan -Syria -Libya -Algeria -Turkmenistan -Iraq -Kazakhstan -Indonesia -Bahrain -Yemen -Sri Lanka -Ecuador -Russia -Azerbaijan -Qatar -Tajikistan -Armenia -Oman -Turkey -Afghanistan -Pakistan -China -Venezuela

(emphasis mine). That question – why have client states? – I find particularly troubling when a state that receive a great deal of military assistance takes a position, substantive or not, that contravenes U.S. interests. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are obvious examples of states that currently receive huge quantities of American military assistance. But they’re not alone. Qatar and Bahrain likewise receive significant amounts of U.S. military aid. All five countries host American troops and their governments benefit from American support – one can argue about the benefit the countries themselves receive, but those regimes doubtlessly benefit from the United States.

Of course, the United States has not articulated a clear policy regarding Iran in the wake of the June 12 election. That said, given the United States’ posture towards Ahmadinejad and Pres. Obama’s statements since Iran’s likely fixed election, it would be difficult to mistake a lack of policy for a desire that Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election be endorsed.

What is frustrating about these endorsements is that they have almost no substantive impact or value internationally, but the Iranian regime will certainly play them up domestically as part of its ongoing effort to quell post-election dissent and demonstrate legitimacy. The fight in the streets is over legitimacy; every lever that can be exercised to delegitimize the regime – in both political and spiritual terms – will be of use and benefit to the Iranians in the street.

NIAC Agrees with Kennedy

Kennedy gets a boost from NIAC. I tend to agree with Colin, though.

Back on the Street

After a week of relative quiet and less (and less reliable) news, Tehranis again took to the street yesterday. Yesterday’s demonstration occurred under the guise of an officially sanctioned memorial celebration for Mohammed Beheshti, a leader of the 1979 Revolution killed in a bombing on June 28, 1981.

Last week, Karroubi, the true reformist candidate in this year’s Iranian election, called off a mourning demonstration to honor protestors killed thus far that was set for Wednesday. Karoubi called of the demonstration because he was unable to secure a permit from the government. Apparently, the government refused to issue any demonstration permits to any opposition forces last week.

Karroubi’s willingness to play by Khamenei’s rules strikes a sour note. It seems to me that though the goals of the opposition are still ill-defined and are like disparate if not divergent, Khamenei’s legitimacy was uniformly in question. By submitting to permit requirements-and therefore giving up the street to the regime-Karroubi seemed to simultaneously be confirming legitimacy on the regime and ceding the regime the opposition’s best venue for direct action.

It is as unthinkable to me that the regime would allow any demonstration permits to be issued, as it is that the regime would have let the street demonstration gain a toe-hold after the June 12 election.

But the regime did issue such a permit. And the result, of course, were thousands of Tehranis once again in the street, ostensibly paying tribute to Beheshti, but in fact waving green and holding up V-signs as they continued expressing their outrage at the stolen election. I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine that Khamenai’s regime will issue any further demonstration permits-but then again, I didn’t think it would issue one for yesterday’s demonstration, either.

Without the street, the opposition’s tactics are severely restricted. The most effective tactic that remains is the strike. Mousavi issued a plain threat to the regime that should he be arrested, the nation should strike. It appears that he is reluctant to play the strike card before or until he is arrested. It is also unclear if the opposition has sufficiently broad-based support to conduct targeted, industry-specific strikes.

The street is the best forum for the opposition to make its strength and determination felt; it provides a means of disseminating information rapidly that does not rely on technology; it is also the best tactic to gain sympathy from factions of the Iranian Armed Forces and the IRGC. Two components necessary to this revolution’s success.

The End of the Opposition

I remarked to anyone who would listen over the weekend and on into Monday that if Wednesday passed in Iran without a large scale protest, then the opposition movement will have flamed out. Wednesday has come and gone and while there were those that attempted to stage protests they were few in number and savagely dispersed by agents, sanctioned or unsanctioned, of the Iranian government. All the news coming out today would suggest that despite some vague commitment from Moussavi, posted to his website, that he would not relent, the protests have lost momentum in the face of an increasingly violent crackdown.

I could be wrong. I have been before, and I really hope I am this time but it would appear that the government of Iran has created an apparatus of control and militancy that it effectively crushed opposition and closed the rest of the world off to its citizens. Operating under this debatable premise I want to focus on two things. With the opposition defeated, what now happens in Iran? What are the larger lessons from this incident for the citizens of other “limited” democracies?

What happen in Iran?
The short answer is I don’t know. Perhaps at not point since the revolution have the political rifts in Iran been more dramatically exposed and pronounced. For the U.S. this brief opposition has exposed potential officials that might be keen to a kind word or an offer of a handshake from the U.S. It’s also clearer who won’t be running to the negotiating table. This might sound insignificant, but from all the folks I’ve read and talked to we are simply blind in Iran. We don’t have good analysis or evidence about the overwhelming majority of operators in the country. We don’t know what their inclinations are and how hard-lined or reformist they might be behind closed doors. The information gained by their actions in recent weeks could exponentially increase our understanding of the government.

For those that participated in the protests and had hoped for change, they now are beginning to understand that change isn’t coming. I would anticipate a dramatic tightening of Islamic social norm enforcement, as happens periodically in the country, in an attempt to further stifle oppositional or revolutionary inclinations. I’d also anticipate some who have disappeared in the night will not be seen again and some will be seen, but only in a kangaroo court providing cursory justification to execute or exile them. It will take years for the opposition to muster the manpower and courage to oppose the government again and any promising voice part of the governing apparatus right now has been exposed and marginalized. Without a leader to rally behind, opposition and reformist groups will find it difficult to gather momentum again.

What have we learn in a broader sense?
We’ve learned that despite the proliferation of information avenues, a functioning and ruthless government can turn off the lights of international scrutiny. We’ve learned that opposition movements can be crushed with amazing expediency and brutality. We’ve learned that revolutions will be much harder to come by, despite the necessity or the will of the people. I’ve long argued that while the appearance of democracy has spread throughout the world, the efficacy of government to crush opposition movements deemed a threat to the existing power structure has become frighteningly advanced. I hold little hope for countries like Iran, or China, or North Korea. No matter the will of the people, the power structure is so entrenched, the security forces so lethal and organized, that no dramatic change will come. Instead the best they can hope for is a slow grind of change and the passage or time would seem to indicate is possible. That is of little solace to those that have lost loved ones in the here and now.

Engaging with a Post-Election Khamenei Regime

Matthew Yglesias writes about the possibility of an engagement strategy should Khamenei regime defeat the opposition:

I would add to that the observation that a regime win would simply make me much less confident that engagement will work. The hope behind an engagement strategy was that the Supreme Leader might be inclined to side with the more pragmatic actors inside the system—guys like former president Rafsanjani and former prime minister Mousavi. With those people, and most of the Iranian elites of their ilk, now in open opposition to the regime, any crackdown would almost by definition entail the sidelining of the people who might be interested in a deal. Iran would essentially be in the hands of the most hardline figures, people who just don’t seem interested in improving relations with other countries.

On this point, I think Yglesias is wrong. While engagement with a Khamenei regime that, should it survive, will have brutally repressed its people would be unappealing, the fundamental calculus of engagement remains the same. Engagement is not premised on Khamenei reaching out and working with the pragmatists within Iran (domestic pragmatists) but rather on the notion that he is a pragmatist – or, more precisely, self-interested. The first principle underlying engagement are that Khamenei’s-and by extension, Iran’s-most basic goal is to retain power. This goal supersedes all other, ancillary goals like extending Iranian influence in the Middle East or, perhaps, attaining regional hegemony. Indeed, it is Khamenei’s desire to retain power that is driving his brutal repression of his own people and fundamentally upsetting the mechanics of the Islamic Republic.

The engagement strategy basically recognizes that Iran’s regime desires survival. Survival is difficult when the United States and Israel threaten regime change. Reaching an accommodation with the United States whereby the United States recognizes the Iranian government and forswears regime change would do a great deal to ensure the Iranian regime’s survival. This is the carrot.

The stick, of course, is continued instability due to hostility with the United States and Israel, which threaten the regime’s survival. This instability also likely drives Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Thus, though Khamenei’s regime is becoming daily a less appealing partner in negotiations, its brutal repression does not fundamentally alter the forces which drive an engagement strategy. That repression may, in fact, demonstrate how off-base the neoconservatives’ Big Lie about a messianic and unstable Iran was.

To Answer Bret

In a comment Bret makes a few points: 1) that Neda has not served as a focal point for collective action; 2) that the information we manage to get out of Iran (via Twitter, Facebook and blog posts) is skewed because its produced by tech savvy Iranian youths and, because of limited access to such applications inside Iran, can only serve a limited role; and 3) that the regime is more capable than the Shah’s at disrupting collective action.

To begin with, I was not arguing that Neda's death in particular was serving as a focal point for collective action but rather, mourning demonstration in general could serve a similar function that which they served during the 1979 Revolution. That said, Bret’s point about Twitter and Facebook being more outwardly directed and only playing a marginal role in terms of organizing within Iran is well taken. In fact, Andrew Sullivan reported that Mousavi’s supporters have been distributing newspapers to disseminate information as was done during 1979 and Roger Cohen's first hand account indicates that crowds have been rallying through word of mouth. As far as how quickly information is being disseminated, I take that the Iranian regime felt it necessary to claim that Neda’s death was staged as a foreign plot and subsequently banned a public funeral to mean the Iranian regime, at least, believes that news of Neda’s death is both powerful and spreading quickly.

Finally, I too fear that this regime will be more adept and disrupting an uprising than the Shah’s regime. I don’t attribute this to the regime’s technological savvy, however. First, the 1979 Revolution occurred without the aid of cellphones and twitter; second, as described above, this uprising seems to be adopting similar low-tech communication methods as well as high-tech modes. The regime, I would say, has been generally ham-handed in its response thus far: Khamenei overplayed his hand at the outset by stealing the election and only compounded this error by declaring the results divine, only to have that questioned and be forced to walk back the outcome’s divinity by allowing the Guardian Council to investigate and acknowledge “irregularities.” Further, it strikes me as a foolish that Khamenei allowed the movement to gain a foothold and momentum before cracking down. Those false steps aside, that security presence in Tehran has, seemingly, effectively prevented gatherings of demonstrators since Saturday’s riots, thereby limiting the use of brutal tactics likely to inflame the populace.

Bazaaris Continued

Earlier today The Guardian reported:

Some shops in the city closed or placed black cloth over their doors as a symbol of condolence. Bazaar workers in Tehran and the city of Tabriz were reported to be on strike in protest at the election result. (emphasis added).

With today’s other events, it is likely that this bit information will be overlooked. Its importance should not be discounted, however. As I noted here, the Bazaaris represent an eminently important demographic in Iran – and one that has historically tolled the success or failure of uprisings. No other reports that I’ve seen have confirmed or elaborated on The Guardian’s report, but should it be true it would represent a significant boon to the Iranians rising in the street.

UPDATE: persiankiwi via Sullivan -- Tehranis to flood the Bazaar in a twist on the classic strike. Not quiet the same as the Bazaaris joining the movement but, I imagine, the Bazaaris have either signed up for this or it will become clear very quickly that they are not with Mousavi's movement.