Violence flares as Ahmadinejad wins Iran vote

[Miss Mia]

How should U.S. respond to Iran election?
Expert: 'Do nothing' is best or reformers may be tagged as West's allies

Gary G. Sick, who worked on Iranian affairs for three U.S. administrations, says the reelection of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad amounted to an internal political coup that stole victory from Mir-Hossein Moussavi. Sick says that it would be wise, however, for the Obama administration to say as little as possible about the election right now, so as to not undercut the Iranian opposition.

"No matter what was said or done by the administration, it would be interpreted as intervention and would actually undercut severely the position of the reformists as they would be tagged as ‘tools of the West,'" he says. He says it remains important over the long run to engage Iran in negotiations on making sure its nuclear program remains peaceful.

CFR's Bernard Gwertzman: The events in Iran over the last several days surprised almost everybody.  Almost everybody in the country thought it would be a very close presidential election with the chief challenger, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, having a good chance of winning.  The announcements of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "victory" seemed to come before the votes could have been counted. Do you think this was an internal political coup?

Gary G. Sick: I agree with you. I really do believe that the talk during the election campaign by Moussavi's people of a Green Wave was beginning to be interpreted as a Green Revolution.  And Iran and its leaders have been absolutely paranoid in the last several years, demonstrated by the arrest of several people who have been accused of having associations in the West and allegedly seeking something like a "Velvet Revolution" [term used in Czechoslovakia to mark the collapse of the communist government in 1989].

The fact that they've cracked down so hard in the last couple of days is a clear indication that they were worried about things moving outside their control. It was a huge gamble on their part and they didn't realize that this has been tremendously unpopular in the rest of the world and that it reduced their legitimacy.

They were really very foolish but it seems that they were willing to gamble because they were more concerned about their own power structure than about the way they are perceived in Iran or in the rest of the world.

-snip-

Starting back in the Ford administration, you were on the National Security Council staff dealing with Iran and other issues. If you were on the National Security Council staff today, what advice would you offer the current administration about proceeding with its announcements that it wanted to have a direct dialogue with Iran.  Should this lead it to have second thoughts?

First of all, if I were on the NSC, my first piece of advice would be to do as little as possible. There is a battle going on inside Iran. This is an issue that is going to be fought out by Iranians — there's nothing to be gained by external forces coming into this or trying to influence the outcome.

That would be a terrible mistake, and no matter what was said or done by the administration, it would be interpreted as intervention and would actually undercut severely the position of the reformists as they would be tagged as "tools of the West." So basically "do nothing for now" is not a bad piece of advice.

As regards to where we come out on this in the end, it's clear that the task of starting some kind of discussion or negotiations with Iran is going to be infinitely more complicated than it was before. It wasn't easy from the beginning — and anybody who thought it would be an easy task didn't understand the problem.

But now after this internal coup and all the coverage it has received, those people in the United States and particularly in Israel who really opposed the idea of having negotiations with Iran — who favored a pressure strategy to build up more sanctions and so on — are now going to use their clout in Congress and elsewhere to slow down or stop the process.

So it's not that we can't talk to the Iranian government — obviously it's going to be harder to talk to an Ahmadinejad government after it's stolen the election — but the real problem is a domestic one. The administration is going to have to overcome a whole series of domestic hurdles which previously had been in abeyance.

-snip-

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[JohnBrowdie]

What are we supposed to do?  Send in the military and force another election and tamper down the rioting?

strawman.  not biting.  there is no excuse for not vociferously supporting the democracy movement in iran.

[JohnBrowdie]

How should U.S. respond to Iran election?
Expert: 'Do nothing' is best or reformers may be tagged as West's allies

Gary G. Sick,

gary sick?  srsly?   :

[JohnBrowdie]

he finally spoke.  quite frankly, he would have been better off if he had left it alone.  a more flaccid, solipsistic, and ultimately useless
series of conflicting sentences would be impossible to find.

he's still preaching "hopey change" to the "youth" of iran;  the same people that are being beaten and killed in the streets of tehran
right now.  he steadfastly refuses to say anything that could even be construed as critical about Ahmadinejad, and then even (all but)
endorses his election.  everything will be just fine as soon as the mullahs that rigged the damn election in the first place finish their investigation,
and find no irregularities.  the mullahs were the ones that picked this guy out of obscurity in 2005 and made him president in the first
place.

PATHETIC PERFORMANCE.  shameful.

he was venomous in his attacks on George Bush (who was at least in theory his fellow american) during the election, but has jumped
happily into bed with this murdering, democracy killing, muslim tyrant. 

think about that for just a minute.  it's a crucial point.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran.  And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football -- or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television.  I think that the democratic process -- free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and need to be respected.  And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they're, rightfully, troubled.

My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place.  We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can't state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election.  But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed.  And I think it's important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I've always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad's statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy -- diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries -- is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity.  Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we'll see where it takes us.  But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we've seen on the television over the last few days.  And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was.  And they should know that the world is watching.

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

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