Hope, Faith, Her Vanity

by Eric Martin

Daniel Larison, riffing on a Hooman Majd post commemorating the one year anniversary of the controversial Iranian election that helped spawn the Green movement, says much of what I was saying at the time, and would like to reiterate now - only he does it better.  In particular, Larison discusses some of the "unassailable" conventional wisdom concerning the Green movement, its goals, its Western orientation and how the phenomenon should guide Obama administration policy.  There is so much of value in Larison's post that I will take the liberty of an extended excerpt:

...I [want] to address Majd’s observation about the “unassailable” ideas he describes. He is absolutely right that these were the prevailing, overwhelmingly dominant ideas at the time, and to some extent they continue to be the default view of Western Green movement sympathizers. Iran hawks and other opponents of engagement with Iran took shelter behind these “unassailable” ideas in order to ridicule Obama for “weakness” and “appeasement” or to position themselves as idealistic friends of Iran’s democrats rather than the shabby, amoral, deal-making realists. To assail these ideas was to be considered a supporter of the Iranian regime, an apologist for Ahmadinejad, and all the rest of the insults opponents of the Iraq war had hurled at them seven and eight years ago. One of the reasons why I kept making counter-arguments against claims that the Green movement was going from strength to strength was that these arguments seemed to be built mostly on exaggeration and emotion, and there was never much evidence to persuade a skeptic that these arguments were correct. You were supposed to believe in the power of the Green movement because it felt like the right thing to believe, or else you were just a heartless villain rejoicing in the deaths of protestors. That was more or less the quality of the debate...What mattered was demonstrating empty solidarity with a movement most Westerners misunderstood and one that many wanted to use for their own ends.

One of the reasons I spent as much time as I have over the last year attacking and questioning the claims of Green movement sympathizers here in the U.S., is that it was quite clear to me that isolating and vilifying Iran can only strengthen the hand of the Iranian government at home, split the opposition, and distract Iranians from domestic grievances by creating an external challenge to Iranian sovereignty and nationalism. Nonetheless, this approach of isolation and vilification was exactly what most Western sympathizers urged the administration to adopt. Because there was so much outrage at how the Iranian government had treated its dissidents, Green movement sympathizers wanted nothing to do with engagement any longer, and this ended up aligning them in the debate with Iran hawks who saw the Green movement as a useful short-cut to “solve” the problems they have with Iran. The goal of regime change was still there, but the heavy lifting was going to be assigned to the Iranian opposition.

One small problem with this was that this was not what the Iranian opposition wanted. As Majd explains, this is what Iranian exile groups and their Western supporters wanted the Iranian opposition to want, and it is what the exiles and Westerners claimed that they wanted. The exile groups were trying to turn what could have conceivably turned into a broader-based political protest movement into a politically non-viable anti-regime force. As Majd writes:

A raft of Iranian opposition groups and individuals, mostly abroad, have jumped aboard the Green train—in some cases even claiming the mantle of leadership—and their basic agenda (overthrow of the Islamic regime) invariably contradicts the Green Movement agenda (electoral transparency and civil rights). Statements of support from the much-despised Mujahedin-e Khalq, based in Paris, and the green wristband worn by the shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, were godsends to the government, which has from the start labeled the Green Movement a “velvet” or “color” revolution backed by foreigners. Green leaders have taken pains not to advocate the end of their government, since this is clearly the regime’s most potent charge against them. Though a few of their ranks may harbor seditious dreams, the movement writ large is about civil rights, not pro-Western revolution. [...]

By celebrating them as radical revolutionaries and ignoring or downplaying the insider credentials of many of the movement’s figureheads, Western admirers imputed their own hopes to the movement and thereby did some significant political damage to the movement by portraying it as a subversive, anti-regime force. It would probably have been better to remain completely aloof and skeptical than offer this sort of harmful “support.” On the whole, the administration responded wisely for the first few months by saying as little as possible, but gradually came under pressure to pay more attention to the Green movement from the usual quarters that are always insisting that the U.S. “do something” about everything on the planet. Of course, this is a crucial part of the problem with much of the Western sympathy for the movement: unless it is an anti-regime force, it is of no use to the U.S. and the West, and it is therefore of little interest. As we have seen in recent years in their reactions to political changes in Turkey, Japan, Brazil and other countries throughout Latin America, many democratists quickly lose interest in democratization abroad when it threatens to complicate things for the U.S.

The Green movement has been struggling for Iranian rights and for the sake of their own country. Perhaps someday they or their successors will have some success, but whatever happens it has nothing to do with us. Unlike many of the “pro-Western” movements Washington has enthusiastically backed in the last ten years, the Green movement is not interested in dragging their countrymen against their will into a Western orbit in ways contrary to their national interests. What we cannot seem to abide here in the U.S. is the idea that there is a political reform movement in Iran that has emerged and developed pretty much entirely on its own, does not owe Washington anything for its existence, and does not particularly harbor “pro-Western” inclinations on contested issues. For a lot of its sympathizers, it has to be pursuing the same goals of regime change and compliance with Western demands, or it doesn’t really count. I agree with Majd that the assumption that the Green movement somehow needs U.S. support is insulting to Iranians, and more than that it reflects the fundamentally self-absorbed assumption of so many of our politicians and pundits that every great political change in the world can only be brought about through the exercise of American power and influence.

Speaking of self-serving myths, Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett have a thought-provoking post discussing the evidence, or lack thereof, of electoral fraud in the infamous 2009 election:

Since manufactured claims about Iraqi WMD led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, no analytic line about developments in the Middle East has had a bigger impact on American foreign policy than the assertion that the outcome of Iran’s June 12, 2009 presidential election—held one year ago tomorrow—was a fraud.  Since shortly after the election, we have been subjected to a great deal of criticism (a disappointingly high percentage of it personal in nature) for arguing that no hard evidence of electoral fraud has been produced, and that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was, in fact, quite plausible as an outcome.  Of course, these are arguments that went against the conventional wisdom that took root among most Western Iran “experts” literally on the morning after the election.   

We stand by these judgments today.  We are certainly not in a position to vouch personally for the physical handling of ballots, the counting process, etc.—in other words, we are not in a position to conclude definitively that there was no fraud in Iran’s 2009 presidential election.  However, we continue to hold that no evidence of fraud has been produced, and that Ahmadinejad’s re-election, without fraud, was eminently plausible. 

We also believe that it should be incumbent on those who continue to assert that there was decisive fraud in the election to come up with hard evidence to support their claim—and not rely solely on “must have been” conjecture...

In that spirit, we want to highlight two pieces of analysis on the Islamic Republic’s presidential election that have informed our own thinking about this critically important event.... 

The first of these pieces is by Reza Esfandiari and Yousef Bozorgmehr, entitled “A Rejoinder to the Chatham House Report on Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election Offering a New Analysis on the Results”, see here.  The second is by Eric Brill, entitled “Did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Steal the 2009 Iran Election?”, see here. 

Worth a look if the subject matter interests you.

Comments

[Capn America]

I'm Iranian and I say f*** the Leveretts - they do NOT speak Persian, and think a government-sponsored tour of Iran was enough to tell them that Ahmadi is very popular. We will probably never know if the vote was rigged or not (or somewhat rigged), but anybody not blinded by bias can look at the events immediately following the end of election day (Sepah troops surrounding the Interior Ministry to lock it down during vote counting, bizarre results in Iran's ethnic minority territories, banning of foreign press from covering protests...) to know that SOMETHING was up.

[Eric Martin]

they do NOT speak Persian, and think a government-sponsored tour of Iran was enough to tell them that Ahmadi is very popular.

This is an untrue claim, and not the basis for their analysis. Try harder.

bizarre results in Iran's ethnic minority territories...

This is directly refuted in the cited reports.

[Ugh]

From the "Turkey" link:

If I were an Iranian protester observing American political discourse since the Green movement began, what would I notice? During the last 12 months, the voices who claimed they want to see democracy take root in Iran were vastly more concerned with the foreign policy of a free Turkey than an unfree Saudi Arabia. I would notice that the voluminous output of anti-Semitism in Saudi Arabia was ignored, while the demagoguery of Turkey's leaders was treated as evidence of a nascent Islamist rogue state and regional competitor.

I would conclude that the same voices professing solidarity with my cause are less concerned with political freedom than with geopolitical orientation.

Pretty much.

[Uncle Kvetch]

We will probably never know if the vote was rigged or not (or somewhat rigged)

Which is, based on the excerpt Eric provides here, exactly what the Leveretts are arguing.

[Capn America]

@Eric Martin:
This is an untrue claim, and not the basis for their analysis. Try harder.

Which part of it is untrue? Let me guess: they speak Farsi with a hilarious American accent?

This is directly refuted in the cited reports.
If by cited by the reports, you mean the reports showed that you can't mathematically prove the Iranian election was rigged, well, duh, you can't use statistical measurements to firmly prove or disprove anything. When we talk about statistical significance in scientific reports, we apply arbitrary confidence intervals (usually 95%). That still leaves 5% room for theoretical error. My argument on the ethnic vote isn't based on certain digits appearing too often in the vote tallies, but based on the fact that as an actual Iranian, I know that Azeris and Lurs will support the candidate with ties to their part of the country over the incumbent who hasn't done anything for them. It would be like if someone told you McCain won 50% of the black vote in 2008. Could you DISPROVE it based on vote tallies alone? Of course not, but nobody in their right mind would believe that 50% of black voters voted for him. That's why exit polls are so important, and Iran, of course, doesn't have them.

@Uncle Kvetch:
Which is, based on the excerpt Eric provides here, exactly what the Leveretts are arguing.

Please, these are the people who wrote an op-ed tauntingly called Ahmadinejad Won, Deal With It, presenting a laughably compromised phone survey of the Iranian electorate as the end-all of all discussion on the election results.

You want a fair and nuanced discussion of the Green Movement in Iran, its realistic power and potential? Read Hooman Majd or Mehdi Khalaji. People who actually know what they're talking about, not posers like the Leveretts or even the dozens of American op-ed columnists who think the Green Movement longs for the days of the Shah.

[Eric Martin]

Which part of it is untrue? Let me guess: they speak Farsi with a hilarious American accent?

Well, that's one wrong assertion, and then the other about basing their analysis on a govt. tour. You were 2 out of 2 there.

My argument on the ethnic vote isn't based on certain digits appearing too often in the vote tallies, but based on the fact that as an actual Iranian, I know that Azeris and Lurs will support the candidate with ties to their part of the country...

Right, which is why beginning on Page 11 onward in the first report cited by the Leveretts, the authors of the report explain away these claims.

You want a fair and nuanced discussion of the Green Movement in Iran, its realistic power and potential? Read Hooman Majd or Mehdi Khalaji. People who actually know what they're talking about, not posers like the Leveretts or even the dozens of American op-ed columnists who think the Green Movement longs for the days of the Shah.

Um, yeah. Did you see who I cited in this same post? That would be Majd, who I have cited on numerous occasions. BTW: Majd and Khalaji agree with the Leveretts on this matter.

[Eric Martin]

not posers like the Leveretts or even the dozens of American op-ed columnists who think the Green Movement longs for the days of the Shah.

Are there dozens that think this? Do you have links or cites to, say, half a dozen, let alone multiple dozens? I can't think of many off the top of my head.

[Capn America]

@Eric Martin:
Yes, they do a great job of "explaining away" these claims by making some key errors:

1) They claim that Mazandaran disproved the vote-for-your-own-candidate theory by voting for the conservative in the 1997 election. They do not note that the conservative candidate Mr Nateq-Nouri is himself an ethnic Mazandarani. I know many people from that province, and while the vast majority of them are pretty liberal (Mazandaran is a fairly developed part of Iran), many voted for Mr. Nouri for the sole reason that he would probably bring home some pork, to increase the value of his real estate holdings if nothing else.

2) The authors hold up Mehralizadeh's poor showing in E. Azerbaijan as another counter argument for the ethnic candidates winning their state. Okay, I follow Iranian politics fairly closely, and I have NEVER heard of this guy. In Iranian presidential elections, where 6-8 candidates typically run, even the die-hard tribal-minded people know to be pragmatic and vote for the candidate who actually stands a chance of winning.

3) They point to Karroubi's strong showing in Lorestan and Khuzestan as proof that there was some, but not dominant, ethnic voting. Actually, I would say his less than 10% results in parts of the country that Ahmadinejad has repeatedly insulted (and had attempts on his life made) and have grievances with the central government hints at the opposite, that the results may have been tampered with.

This sentence summarizes my problem with the paper:
"An element of ethnic rivalry and difference in support for the candidates is also evident in the fact that the Sistani part of Sistan va Baluchestan province (such as the city of Zabol) voted strongly for Ahmadinejad whereas the majority Baluch areas backed Mousavi." Yeah, that's one way to look at it - the other is that Ahmadi and co. didn't care enough about the border regions (where they're fighting separatists and drug lords anyway) to manipulate those votes, and plus, this makes Mousavi look like he has the support of drug dealers and separatists. Same reason why Ahmadi's vote in Kerman was ridiculously high - it's a lot easier to stuff ballots in rural parts of the country where the Sepah has a firm grip on the ballot box.

Also, the authors repeatedly claim that some Persians fear Azeri influence in the country, which is pure BS (at least from my experience) and points to the authors themselves possibly being chauvinists. Plus, even if a sizable number of such people existed, why would they vote against the more Azeri candidate in favor of the Persian candidate who has closely aligned himself with the most powerful Azeri person in the entire country, Supreme Leader Khamenei? It would be like voting for a white Democrat over a black Republican in a Senate race because you didn't want the black guy to win, and as a result giving Obama another Senate vote.

As for my claim about the op-ed columnists, well that's an exaggeration, but I have read many a low circulation paper where they really seem to think Iranians are rejecting Khomeini with the Green Movement.

Also, Majd has repeatedly compared the Green Movement to a civil rights movement in Iran with real potential, while the Leveretts see it as a joke. I'm sure they cite Majd to back up their claims, esp. re: Iran's nuclear program, where Majd has shown many times that most Iranians support Iran having nuclear technology (but not weapons), but I doubt that Majd agrees with them about the Greens having no popular backing.

[Eric Martin]

Also, Majd has repeatedly compared the Green Movement to a civil rights movement in Iran with real potential, while the Leveretts see it as a joke. I'm sure they cite Majd to back up their claims, esp. re: Iran's nuclear program, where Majd has shown many times that most Iranians support Iran having nuclear technology (but not weapons), but I doubt that Majd agrees with them about the Greens having no popular backing.

Few thoughts:

1. The Leverett's have never called the Green Movement a joke with no backing.

2. They have actually made the same claims as Majd wrt civil rights, not regime change.

3. Strange to assail the Leveretts perpsective, yet laud Majd's (whose most recent book I also enjoyed immensely).

[Capn America]

@Eric Martin:
Strange to assail the Leveretts perpsective, yet laud Majd's (whose most recent book I also enjoyed immensely).

Easy, Majd grew up in Iran, and is friends with Muhammad Khatami (I believe the two are even related by marriage). I have no idea what background the Leveretts have in Iranian studies (yeah I know they worked for various intelligence agencies as analysts - those analysts have a pretty strong track record of being wrong).

I've been meaning to read his latest book for a while now too. I don't agree with him all the time - I believe he purposefully stakes out positions that are more pro-regime just to shock his Western readers, and he makes the really annoying error of listening to cab drivers and ascribing to them the views of "average Iranian Joe" - but he definitely seems to know what he's talking about, and doesn't have the monarchist or communist or other baggage a lot of Iranian Americans have.

[Frank]

Weird how the Republicans react so differently to a student lead protest movement in Iran than a similar movement in the US during the 60s.

Lots of them still think the Kent state kids had it coming.

[Jacob Davies]

the voices who claimed they want to see democracy take root in Iran were vastly more concerned with the foreign policy of a free Turkey than an unfree Saudi Arabia

No question that Iran hawks are idiots over this whole thing. However, I would question whether it is fair to say that it is fair to describe "the voices" who said one thing about Iran as now saying something else about Turkey and Saudi Arabia, given the diversity of support in the West for the green movement, including substantial support among left/anti-war/liberal types. It might have been a more muted support than the (counter-)revolutionary fantasies of right-wingers but it was support all the same.

Western admirers imputed their own hopes to the movement and thereby did some significant political damage to the movement by portraying it as a subversive, anti-regime force

Where is the evidence for this "significant damage"? Is it plausible to think that significant numbers of Iranians were making their decision about the aims and goals of the green movement based on what American sympathizers said about it, instead of based on what the leaders of that movement were themselves saying in Iran?

demonstrating empty solidarity with a movement most Westerners misunderstood

Solidarity is never empty. Perhaps an article of faith, but I believe it. I think that expressing sympathy for an indigenous Iranian movement towards certain liberalizations is not an empty gesture. I think that young Iranians will remember that Americans paid attention to them, did not treat them like terrorists, expressed their solidarity. I think that is part of a process of reconciliation that will continue for the next several decades, and in that process, every step that takes us closer is useful.

I don't think that we have "nothing to do with one another". This is a small planet and getting smaller. The luxury of being able to completely ignore other countries is not really affordable.

I said at the time that I thought the mild official US statements were probably the right move. I don't think that the US would benefit from attempts to "punish" the regime for failing to heed the green movement or to directly support it. But I do think that on a personal level, it is a good thing when large parts of the population of two countries plagued by mutual misunderstandings and hostility learn a little bit about one another, and I think that's what happened. Larison may think that's worthless, but I don't.

[Eric Martin]

I've been meaning to read his latest book for a while now too. I don't agree with him all the time - I believe he purposefully stakes out positions that are more pro-regime just to shock his Western readers, and he makes the really annoying error of listening to cab drivers and ascribing to them the views of "average Iranian Joe" - but he definitely seems to know what he's talking about, and doesn't have the monarchist or communist or other baggage a lot of Iranian Americans have.

You know, that's pretty accurate. No objection there, other than to add as a side point that he's a pretty good writer to boot.

[Eric Martin]

But I do think that on a personal level, it is a good thing when large parts of the population of two countries plagued by mutual misunderstandings and hostility learn a little bit about one another, and I think that's what happened. Larison may think that's worthless, but I don't.

Well, I think he's complaining about the tendency of some to, rather than learn, project their own worldview on to the protesters. But, speaking for myself, I think learning more about Iran and the Iranian people is a definite positive.

Incidentally, JD, could you send me an email when you get a chance, I have a question.

[Nell]

Jacob, I appreciate your comment; it's a nuance that's welcome in the midst of a bout of (fully understandable) "I was proved fvcking right" analysis.

[Jacob Davies]

Thanks. Eric, I emailed the kitty, but in any case my address is [email protected]. (I doubt there is a spambot on the planet that doesn't have that address after 15 years...)

[Eric Martin]

For the record, I don't get the kitty mail. It goes to the dreaded publius. I think my address is in the about section FWIW.