Haleh Esfandiari and Robert Litwak in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, "When Promoting Democracy Is Counterproductive":

... In the post-September 11 era, Washington has sent a mixed message as to whether the U.S. objective is to change the regime in Tehran or to change its objectionable behavior.

This unresolved tension in U.S. policy was exacerbated by the election of Ahmadinejad, in 2005, with his anti-Americanism and his harsh rhetoric about Israel. In advancing its $75-million program aimed at Iranian nongovernmental organizations, the U.S. government seemed to be operating on the assumption that the Islamic Republic was vulnerable to a civil-society uprising from below. But the administration has underestimated the regime's capacity to fend off any serious challenge at home through the largess of expanded oil revenues, which allow it to buy off key domestic constituencies, such as the urban proletariat and rural poor. Ahmadinejad has effectively played the nationalist card, using U.S. regime-change rhetoric to deflect attention from his government's poor performance. He has managed to cast himself as a defender of Iran's interests against an interventionist America.

Current U.S. policy precludes broad government-to-government talks with Iran and seems to permit only episodic ambassadorial discussions in Baghdad on Iraqi issues — meetings that serve as a forum for dueling talking points. U.S. law places formidable restrictions on the ability of American NGO's to operate in Iran. Meanwhile, while eschewing official contact, the United States attempts to financially support Iran's own nascent NGO's so that they can become agents of change within the society. Yet this program of democracy promotion has had the unintended consequence of further reducing the political space for open debate in Iran. In this new climate of intimidation, NGO's and journalists are subject to censorship and are defensively engaging in self-censorship. Prominent Iranian activists, such as the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, declared their opposition to the U.S. program because of continued sensitivity about foreign, particularly American, intrusion in Iran's domestic politics. The fact that the identities of Iranian recipients of U.S. aid are regarded as classified information by the U.S. government feeds the regime's paranoia and casts suspicion on all Iranian NGO's.

The intractable realities in the diplomatic arena and on the ground in Iran call for a change of approach to one that would reverse the current focus of U.S. policy: Governments should talk to governments, while Iranian and American NGO's should be permitted to interact in a transparent fashion without the intrusion of governments. If the United States is to have any chance of enlisting Iranian cooperation on issues of major concern — stabilizing Iraq and resolving the nuclear impasse — it must make clear that its objective is a change in Iranian behavior, not a change of regime. That would shift the onus to Tehran and force its multiple power centers to confront the consequences of Ahmadinejad's policies for Iranian interests. Although such a U.S. assurance is no guarantee of success, it is the prerequisite for a change in Iranian foreign-policy behavior, as well as for positioning the United States to win multilateral support for meaningful action at the United Nations if Iranian intransigence continues.

In tandem with a shift on the government-to-government level, the counterproductive democracy-promotion program aimed at Iranian NGO's should be scrapped in favor of a more permissive U.S. stance toward the operation of U.S. nonprofit organizations in Iran. ...

Iran's incarceration of scholars as part of a broader crackdown on civil-society activities has had a chilling effect both there and among Iranian-Americans. The practical possibilities for dialogue will depend largely on the political situation within Iran, where indigenous forces will dictate the direction and speed of change. U.S. policy should be guided by a recognition that the ability of outside actors to influence that potentially long-term process is severely limited.

Posted by Laura at October 16, 2007 12:58 PM