Empowering Iranians Who Oppose Regime Will Backfire
Letter to the Editor published in The Hill on August 1, 2007
In his op-ed "Empowering the democratic opposition in Iran" (July 24), Dick Armey was correct in stating that military intervention is not viable in Iran. However, his assertion that America and its partners should support democratic opposition and remove MEK from the terrorist list of organizations is highly misinformed.
Support for the MEK and removing it from the list of terrorist organizations will only backfire on the U.S. The MEK's strategy to invade Iran will never work, nor will any U.S. attempt to fund organizations set on undermining the existing Iranian regime.
Iranian reformists believe that democracy can't be imported. It must be indigenous. They believe that the best the U.S. can do for democracy in Iran is to leave them alone.
Noninterference in Iran's domestic affairs is a legal obligation of the United States. This was stipulated in the Algiers Accord that the United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis.
Aware of their own deep unpopularity, the hardliners in Iran are terrified by the prospects of a "velvet revolution" and have become obsessed with preventing contacts between Iranian scholars, artists, journalists and political activists and their American counterparts. One need not look further than the current situation of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, among others, who have been arrested and accused by the Iranian government of taking money from the U.S. government and acting as spies.
Rather than misappropriating funds that will never be effective, or relying on terrorist organizations to do its bidding, a wiser approach would be for the U.S. to directly engage Iran in smart, tough-minded diplomacy to get Iran to change its behavior.