June 12 Revolution Update
As Sunday morning dawns in Iran, Saturday may have been the start of the tipping point.
Roger Cohen:
Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution. He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura. . . . I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basijis. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted. . . . Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her. . . . I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.” Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, gunfire could be heard in the distance. And from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election. But on Saturday it seemed stronger. The same cry was heard in 1979, only for one form of absolutism to yield to another. Iran has waited long enough to be free.Hugh Hewitt:
The possibilities for the region if Iran became democratic are almost too great to imagine, with the greatest of them being the avoidance of any sort of conflict between Israel and the mullahs. CNN and FoxNews have gone wall-to-wall today on the turmoil, and it deserves every minute of it. President Obama's statement today was a big step in the right direction, and tomorrow's Sunday shows will hopefully provide more evidence of the Administration's decision to throw in with the forces for freedom.Reuel Marc Gerecht provides context and perspective:
The modern Middle East has had numerous "game-changing" moments, when history turned. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muhammad Ali's conquest of the Nile Valley in 1805, and the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 introduced Europeans and European ideas into the region. The British discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina in 1925, the awakening of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936, and the God-father-like victory of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo in 1954 further accelerated tradition-crushing Westernization and gave birth to nationalism, pan-Arabism, and contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. The Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the birth of Iraqi democracy two years later buried secular pan-Arab dictatorship, politically inflamed the Islamic identity, and set the stage for the growth of representative government in a more religious Middle East. The Iranian presidential election of June 12 may soon rank with these history-making events. We may well look back on it as the "June 12 revolution" even if--especially if--the regime cracks down on the supporters of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, the candidate who ran second to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the dubious official vote tally. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which almost destroyed the Islamic Republic and forged the reputation and character of then-Prime Minister Mousavi, most Iranians have been exhausted revolutionaries. More like sheep than foot-soldiers of a dynamic faith, Iranians have largely veered away from confronting their increasingly unpopular rulers. Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions. They've had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. . . . It's not difficult to foresee the Islamic Republic spiritually unraveling. If it does, the most important experiment of Islamist ideology since the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood will have proven itself--to its own people, to the clerical guardians of the faith, and to the world--a -failure. Unless Mousavi withdraws and leads his followers in a renewed quietist retreat, the Islamic revolution, which shook the Muslim world 30 years ago, will now become either a real laboratory of democracy or a crude and violent dictatorship that might rival the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria in its savagery. Either outcome would be momentous. It's a pity that President Obama has trapped himself in a doomed outreach to Khamenei. Even if Mousavi wins the present tug-of-war, he'll probably support Iran's continued development of nuclear weapons. He was in office when the Islamic Republic first became serious about building the bomb; his powerful backer, Rafsanjani, is the true father of the nuclear program; and there is little reason why Mousavi would want to anger a pro-nuclear Revolutionary Guard Corps that had refrained from downing him. But for there to be any chance that Iran will cease and desist from its nuclear quest, Mousavi must win the present struggle. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei triumph, they will not relent. For them, and for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, nuclear weapons are the means to become global players and secure the power they can no longer confidently draw from their own people. Triumphant, the Revolutionary Guard, who have overseen all of the Islamic Republic's outreach efforts to Arab extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, will surely get nastier abroad as they become more vicious at home. The principal issue right now inside Iran isn't the nuclear question. It's what it has been since Khomeini died: How do you escape from a religious revolution? Mousavi might, just might, have an answer. Even if he is not our friend--and turns out to be in many ways our enemy--we should all pray that he wins. President Obama would do well to be just a bit more forceful in defending democracy for a people who must surely have earned his respect. Iranians will forgive the president his "meddling." He does carry, after all, the name of the man--Hussein, the prophet's grandson--who long ago defined Shiism's boundless admiration for those who defend their people and their faith from tyranny.This is a defining moment. As a freedom-loving nation, we need to support the Iranian people who also yearn to be free. Many are being beaten, and many are being killed -- for freedom. While our President was eating ice cream . . . Neda died. But she will not be forgotten. Round Up: • Michelle Malkin -- Saturday in Iran: Deadly crackdown, Obama finally condemns; some foreign embassies reportedly accepting injured • Mark Steyn -- Neutrality Isn’t an Option: Subtitled, "You always have a dog in the fight, whether you know it or not," Steyn writes:
• Charles Krauthammer -- Obama Clueless on Iran -- buckle your seatbelts, Charles is not happy with our rudderless President:The polite explanation for Barack Obama’s diffidence on Iran is that he doesn’t want to give the mullahs the excuse to say the Great Satan is meddling in Tehran’s affairs. So the president’s official position is that he’s modestly encouraged by the regime’s supposed interest in investigating some of the allegations of fraud. Also, he’s heartened to hear that OJ is looking for the real killers. “You've seen in Iran,” explained President Obama, “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election . . . ” “Supreme Leader”? I thought that was official house style for Barack Obama at Newsweek and MSNBC. But no. It’s also the title held by Ayatollah Khamenei for the last couple of decades. If it sounds odd from the lips of an American president, that’s because none has ever been as deferential in observing the Islamic republic’s dictatorial protocol. Like President Obama’s deep, ostentatious bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, it signals a fresh start in our relations with the Muslim world, “mutually respectful” and unilaterally fawning. . . . There’s a very basic lesson here: For great powers, studied neutrality isn’t an option. Even if you’re genuinely neutral. In the early nineties, the attitude of much of the west to the disintegrating Yugoslavia was summed up in the brute dismissal of James Baker that America didn’t have a dog in this fight. Fair enough. But over in the Balkans junkyard the various mangy old pooches saw it rather differently. And so did the Muslim world, which regarded British and European “neutrality” as a form of complicity in mass murder. As Osama bin Laden put it:
The British are responsible for destroying the Caliphate system. They are the ones who created the Palestinian problem. They are the ones who created the Kashmiri problem. They are the ones who put the arms embargo on the Muslims of Bosnia so that two million Muslims were killed.How come a catalogue of imperial interventions wound up with that bit of scrupulous non-imperial non-intervention? Because great-power “even-handedness” will invariably be received as a form of one-handedness by the time its effects are felt on the other side of the world. Western “even-handedness” on Bosnia was the biggest single factor in the radicalization of European Muslims. They swarmed to the Balkans to support their coreligionists and ran into a bunch of Wahhabi imams moving into the neighborhood with lots of Saudi money and anxious to fill their Rolodex with useful contacts in the west. Among the alumni of that conflict was the hitherto impeccably assimilated English public (ie, private) schoolboy and London School of Economics student who went on to behead the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl. You always have a dog in the fight, whether you know it or not. . . . The mullahs stole this election on a grander scale than ever before primarily for reasons of internal security and regional strategy. But Obama’s speech told them that, in the “post-American world,” they could do so with impunity. Blaming his “agents” for the protests is merely a bonus: Offered the world’s biggest carrot, Khamenei took it and used it as a stick. He won’t be the last to read Obama this way.
Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side. And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters. Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging. Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamanei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election." Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election. . . . That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe. And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.Hope and Change indeed. We need to pray for our President -- for Wisdom. UPDATE: Excellent roundup by Jules Crittenden. Jennifer Rubin on Reuel Marc Gerecht on Obama:
To say then that there is no difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad now that a revolution is underway reflects a stubborn refusal to see what is unfolding. What started out as a choice between two pre-selected candidates has morphed into a battle for the future of Iran and of the survival of the Islamic revolutionary state. We’re not sure what would come after the mullah’s despotic regime, but everyone on the planet can now seen the true face of that regime, which, if it survives, will only become more aggressive, defensive and brutal in the aftermath of a crackdown. When the president speaks as if everything will simply pick up where we left off after the dust settles and the blood dries he expresses his obtuseness (both moral and strategic). Either way, what emerges on the other side won’t resemble the pre-June 12 Iran. And that is because, as he suggested, the whole world has been watching.