Iran’s
regime could fall apart. What happens then?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the United Against Nuclear Iran Summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 25. (Darren Ornitz/Reuters)
Columnist
November 23, 2018 at 3:13
PM
We are now more than two weeks into a new sanctions regime
on Iran, and it will be a long time before it ends. The secretary of state,
Mike Pompeo, has listed 12
conditions that Iran needs to meet before that happens. They include a
permanent cessation of Iranian support for revolutionary groups abroad, as well
as a permanent halt to Iran’s nuclear program. By its own definition, the
Islamic Republic of Iran is a revolutionary regime dedicated to exporting its
form of radical Islam; it’s also a theocracy that relies on nationalist sentiment
to maintain its support. In other words, these conditions are not going to be
met anytime soon.
Instead of conceding, the Iranian leadership has buckled
down and prepared itself for another hit to the already weak economy. Difficult
times are indeed coming. Already, companies are shutting down.
Unemployment is rising.
Raw-materials prices are rising. Some think the government is strong enough to
survive, particularly because trade with China, India and Russia will continue.
But some in the Trump administration don’t really hide their hopes that the
regime will fall apart.
They might be right. The anarchic, leaderless protests —
women removing their headscarves, truckers going on strike— of
the past six months could spread. Nearly a year ago, protests against high
prices and corruption, and in favor of a secular state, erupted in
dozens of cities. Iran had a revolution before, and it could happen again. But
then what?
No one
is asking — and, as far as I can tell, no one is thinking about it at all. The
United States now has a policy that promotes regime collapse in all but name;
at the very least, it’s clear that this administration wants the Islamic
republic to fail. But although we have a lively debate about the merits of
sanctions, nobody seems to do much thinking about the future of Iran itself.
Nor does this administration seem to be thinking too much
about Iranians — which isn’t surprising, because Americans never have. In 2009,
the Obama administration could have put a human rights campaign at the heart of its Iran policy, promoting the people,
ideas, education and media that could have helped change Iran from within. In
2019, the Trump administration could do the same. But the former didn’t, and
the latter won’t.
At a similar stage in the deterioration of the Soviet
empire, the United States, together with Western Europe, did have a policy
toward what we used to call the “captive nations.” We educated the Central European economists who later led
their countries away from central planning. We ran successful and popular radio
programs that reached into the farthest corners of the U.S.S.R. We thought hard
not just about deterring Soviet aggression but also about reaching ordinary
Russians. None of it looked like much at the time, but when the regime finally
did collapse, it turned out to matter.
In the case of Iran, anything even resembling a regime
failure could have catastrophic consequences. Iran’s economy is
dominated by companies that are owned, openly or otherwise, by the radical Revolutionary
Guard Corps. Most banks are owned directly by the state. The judicial system is
dominated by clerics. And the educational system has also been twisted by
decades of radical religious ideology. At the same time, it is true that there
are important pockets of liberalism and a vibrant human rights movement, both
inside and outside the country. But the West — governments, charities,
nongovernmental organizations, media — does little to assist them, to speak to
them, to help them to win their arguments. Most of the time, we forget they
exist at all.
If we
want that “other” Iran to succeed, an Iran with a different vision of its place
in the world, we should be thinking about it, planning for it, preparing for it
now. If our interest in Iran reaches only to the promotion of failure, then we
deserve the chaos that could ensue if we get our wish.
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