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Disengagement With IranAfter its fraudulent election, Obama should harden his stance with Iran.

By Fred KaplanPosted Monday, June 15, 2009, at 7:14 PM ET

Read more of Slate's coverage of Iran's June 12 election and its aftermath.

It's time for President Obama to rethink his policy of "engagement" with Iran.

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Given the near-certainty that Iran's election was fixed and the documented fact that protesters are being brutalized, there is no way that Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could go to Tehran and shake hands with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, much less to expect that any talks would be worthwhile.

The issue here is not one of realpolitik vs. democratic idealism. Rather, it's a question about what course of action is simply realistic (in the conversational, as opposed to ideological, sense of the word).

A classic international realist, in the tradition of Henry Kissinger, might shrug off the call for a revision in outlook and policy. After all, it's nothing new or unusual for the United States, or any other power, to cultivate diplomatic relations with illegitimate regimes. If there hadn't been an election, Obama would have proceeded to open a dialogue. And the nature of the Iranian government, which isn't really run by the president, anyway, is basically the same now as it was last week.

But, in fact, something has changed. The blatant fraudulence of the election has mobilized the Iranian people in a way that hasn't been seen since the 1979 revolution, which led to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. The shah seemed to control Iran back then as tightly as the Islamic mullahs do today. The decisive moment in '79 occurred when middle-class merchants—the heart of the shah's political support—joined the students and the radicals in revolt.

What social group might now play the same role that the merchants played then? This is where today's situation differs from that of 30 years ago. There might very well be no such group. Rural conservative peasants form the main base of support for Ahmadinejad and the mullahs, and there's no reason to believe they'll join the young men and (especially) women protesting in the streets of the capital city.

Unless the violence widens the fissures in Iranian society to an unprecedented—almost unimaginable—degree, the agitation could simply peter out in the coming days and weeks as more and more protesters are beaten, detained, and even killed, with no effect on the regime's survival. In this case, it may well be, as a story in today's New York Times predicted, that the hardliners wind up more firmly in control than ever.

Yet reports have circulated in recent months suggesting that some Iranian clerics, even a few in high places, are displeased with Ahmadinejad's harsh rhetoric and his mishandling of the economy. Some evidence of electoral fraud has reportedly been leaked from dissidents from within Iran's interior ministry. The supreme leader has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate allegations of fraud—this after publicly ratifying the election's results (without, suspiciously, observing the three-day waiting period that Iranian law requires)—though it may be that this order is mere subterfuge and that the investigation will be just as fraudulent.

In other words, it is possible (how likely it might be, no one can say) that the popular revolts might sharpen the fissures within the circles of Iran's ruling elite. Of course, those circles are so opaque that few outsiders can tell whether there are fissures, much less what their boundaries are. Does the CIA or the National Security Agency know? I hope so, but I don't know.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed. He can be reached at .

COMMENTS

What Obama needs to do is make it known that any movement towards liberal democracy will be respected and supported by the United States, and that, should the people of Iran carry off a successful revolution, they will have our aid in establishing a functioning democratic government and trade relations with the West. However, this is Iran's fight at the moment and we probably will do more harm than good trying to insert ourselves. Best of luck to them, and confusion to their enemies. Hopefully, we'll see them on the other side having dealt with their issues in a way that also works for us. But if not, it is still not our place to step in directly.

-- quillsinister
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Better off to do nothing that will allow the mullahs to point to external interference.

One thing is clear about the Iranians, all of them are passionately nationalistic.

The nuclear power issue (as opposed to nuke weapons) was seen as a point of national pride and gave the hard-liners a standard that all Iranians could rally behind.

The last thing the USA and the west want to do is create another rallying point, especially when it seems that a sizable section of Iranian society is clearly acting and thinking for themselves.

The hard-liners may win this time but the internal problem is not going to go away, it will just get worse.

Leave them to it.

-- steelbucket
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