Democracy Promotion in Iran

Michael Hirsch spends a few moments telling the now-familiar tale of text-messaging, jeans-wearing, makeup-sporting young Iranians, but then goes where these analyses generally do not:

Beneath the surface, though, one finds that the Islamic revolution is still alive and well. Too well, in fact. Although the revolution has curbed many of its excesses, it's become institutionalized. It is an old, familiar umbrella of oppression that now stays just distant enough to be tolerated, even if it is little loved. The clerics who still control Iran can upset lives at any time, however, and without recourse to legal appeal. Parnaz Azima knows something about this. Azima is an Iranian-American newscaster for Radio Farda, a Persian-language station funded by U.S. government money. When she returned to Tehran a few months ago to visit her ailing 94-year-old mother, she suddenly had her passport seized. Her crime? "Propaganda against the regime," she was told by mysterious interrogators from the Ministry of Intelligence who accused her of being part of George W. Bush's $75 million program to promote democracy inside Iran.

The president's effort, launched more than a year ago, has so far had the opposite effect of what Bush intended. Even though it's made little headway in promoting discontent with the regime, the mullahs have used it to intimidate reformers by tainting them as U.S. collaborators. "All the local democracy [groups] are complaining about it," said Azima.

This is what our "democracy-promotion" has wrought: A credible excuse for the Iranian government crush dissent and levy accusations of treason. Hirsch continues:

Young Iranians say it's still possible to have a life. As long as one doesn't cross certain known "red lines"—like openly criticizing the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the mullah state doesn't ruthlessly crush dissent. Instead, the government tries to nitpick and hound offenders out of the political arena. [...]

The success of this oppressive but subtly effective system should give the regime-change advocates in Washington some pause. From the evidence in the streets of Tehran, there is no indication that this is a government or a political system that's ripe for overturning. In fact most Iranians—government officials and opposition figures alike—tend to poke fun at the Bush democracy program. "If the Americans are willing to spend their budget inside [Iran] for the purpose they are pursuing, they should just give the money to us directly," Ali Larijani, the chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told NEWSWEEK with a laugh. "They are just distributing it through the wrong channels."

Whenever anyone talks about regime change in Iran, the standard liberal response should be "remember Cuba." Not only have the same tactics failed to bring democracy, but there's ample evidence that they've substantially contributed to the survival of the regime, and that Castro purposefully arouses our ire whenever he feels his hold on power slipping.