Apropos of some much appreciated thoughts and responses from my fellow writers, I would like to elaborate on the Green Revolution. As Andrew rightly notes, this is not a conventional political revolution. It coincides with long-running frustrations with economic imbalances and disparities between the liberties promised in 1979 and the realities of the Islamic Republic’s chimerical politics. However, these conditions hardly guarantee major change in foreign policy. Many Iranians believe in the Islamic Republic, or else the rigging of the results would not so inflame them. The blatant illegitimacy of uncompetitive elections in which the majority supposedly delivers power to a dictator rarely elicits mass protests. Though the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader keep truly radical candidates out of the races, Iranians who vote often have expectations that their votes will matter. The Greens are hostile to the Supreme Leader, but those among him who would sack him along with Ahmadinejad are few and hold little political clout. The elections and actions of the Islamic Republic may catalyze sociopolitical change, but this may not heraldregime change. Broader sociopolitical movements do arouse popular discontent, but they can become so diffuse as to require only political adjustments, not regime change. Not to imply moral equivalency between 2010 Tehran and 1960 Washington, but the Green Revolution seems more like the Civil Rights movement and radical ’60s left rather than an ideological or constitutional revolution. Khamenei can likely satisfy the Greens, and the demands of its leaders and advocates in the political and religious establishment, with adjustment of the existing constitutional arrangement, instead of actual regime change.
Why? Because the movement does not seek to depose the Supreme Leader but the President, Iran will remain an Islamic Republic. The protesters do not seek to undermine the government’s monopoly on force; they want more open Presidential elections to further socio-economic change. Concessions on elections and economic policy are the most optimistic outcomes for the Greens. They will not and wish not to create anything like a “Republic of Iran.” Even were Iranian elections to become more transparent and free, this would not challenge the primacy of the Supreme Leader in foreign policy and defense, nor the ideology of the Islamic Republic – the relevant factors in US-Iranian relations. If Mousavi became President and domestic reforms took place, the reformers would face significant pressure to follow nationalist Iranian policies to have legitimacy. To prevent conservative backlash and dispel fears that the Greens are Western tools, the Greens would be inclined to keep the hard-line on the Iranian nuclear program’s independence, which Khamenei has veto power over anyway.
Dan raises a good point that we do not seek to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program, and that reformists might be more open and compliant than Ahmadinejad, allowing compromise. However, we need not speculate how reformists might alter Iranian policy. The very reformist Khatami administration, from 1997-2005, coincided with the secret construction of the Natanz enrichment facility, the 2002 revelations about Iran’s nuclear program which triggered this crisis, and according to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, saw the most intense period of nuclear weapons research that continued until 2003. Now, even were we to attribute this to the Supreme Leader and IRGC, and not Khatami per se, this would not brighten prospects for reformist foreign policy now, as the reformists have little intention and dubious ability to unseat these bodies from their control of Iranian military and foreign policy. Regime change can alter some policy, and it certainly alters rhetoric, as Khatami’s case proved. However, major regime change does not seem likely, and Iranian history shows reforms are an unlikely catalyst for transparency, cooperation, and friendly intentions towards the US.
