Lucia

de Vernai

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June 24, 2009

Given Our Recent Middle East Track Record, Hands-Off Sounds Good in Iran

It’s hard to believe, but it seems that not even Twitter could save the Iranian election outcome. Since June 12, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced a landslide victor over moderate reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest election fraud, evoking Article 27 of the Constitution, which allows for peaceful protest.

The internal crackdown on telecommunications sent the social media networks atwitter as regular status updates and Facebook pages devoted to fallen protestors reached across the globe. In the midst of all the chatter, President Obama seemed to be a man of few words. News networks wondered: Is he doing enough?

What exactly would you have the man do? Well reprimand him, thought the Congress as it passed a stern resolution about how the executive response just wasn’t enough. Well of course. Telling an agitated country it is a part of an Axis of Evil is a hard act to follow, especially in light of our own recent brilliantly planned, profitable and successful mission to the Middle East.

President Obama has been attacked for his careful rhetoric and not taking sides, just praising democracy. That’s probably because Obama can see a whole two months ahead and knows that supporting one of the candidates openly is shooting yourself in the foot with a nuclear weapon: The one that both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi support Iran having. Besides, the negotiations Obama insisted on during our election season are bound to go more smoothly when the guy sitting across the table didn’t just meddle in your country’s domestic politics and try to screw you out of the presidency.

Given our record of pushing our way of doing things in the Middle East, even when it comes to our impeccable democratic procedures, it’s probably the best idea to lay low for a while. Let’s pull Iraq together before we go after Iran, eh?

Twitter would have us believe that Iranians are exercising the freedom of political expression and electoral outrage that, having survived the election of 2000, we understand and sympathize with. Ideal as that sounds, the 30-word limit of Twitter cannot catch our tech-savvy generation up on the intricacies of Iranian political system: It is not a democracy. It operates based on rules of the Islamic faith imposed by the use of force, and if you don’t like it, prison will probably change your mind.

It is also worth mentioning that no matter what we do (or don’t do), historically it’s never good enough: When we got involved in the 1950s, or when we didn’t get involved in the 1970s, the U.S. was accountable for the results. Part of bringing democracy to the world is knowing when to let nations figure it out on their own. Not that we should turn a blind eye as innocent people are imprisoned, assaulted or killed, but that the essence of democracy is its origin with the people.

This is the Iranian’s struggle, and our understanding of political freedom, no matter how well intentioned, should not blind us to the reality of world affairs that point to American non-involvement as the wisest and safest option for Iranians.

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