[Originally published in the Rutland Herald.]
In Mid-June, the BBC reported that 57 Iranian economists, including many university economics professors, had strongly criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his “unscientific” economic policies, which have negatively impacted Iran. Implicit in their denunciation is the premise that the allocation of resources (read oil) to the nuclear program is having a major negative effect on Iranians, particularly those “of modest means.”
Americans may be surprised. In what they view as a tightly controlled country like Iran, would anyone be sufficiently foolhardy to speak up in this manner? Won’t such outspokenness against the country’s president end in disaster for the protesters?
Iran is a country with more than its share of thoughtful, pragmatic, independent, educated people. There is a strong intelligentsia with educational and philosophical ties to the West. Iran is not a democracy in our sense of the word, but is it freer than many think.
Additionally, there is room in their system for constructive dissent. When that dissent focuses on the currently deplorable condition of the Iranian economy, including inflation and the rising prices of food and housing, it is not only acceptable, it is powerful. It is powerful because the ayatollahs understand and are a bit anxious about Iran’s tradition of secular government. Iran still holds relatively free elections, and life there is not the model of religious orthodoxy that the ayatollahs would clearly like to see. Sure, they are in power, but there are always those masses out there, and if they are not happy, their power is in danger.
What should be clear from the economists’ tirade is that Iran is not the terrible threat it is often alleged to be. Internal discontent over mismanagement of income from its oil industry, the country’s premier natural resource, brings dissent. Even at its present level, this discontent produces the kind of instability that has to worry the ayatollahs.
If Iran were properly exploiting its oil resources, as well as the income from that sector of the economy, the country would be in far better economic (and political) shape that it now finds itself. With the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, there should be no problems. However, with only one refinery, Iran doesn’t even produce enough refined oil products for its own internal use. Those products are in short supply and far more expensive than they should be. Yet despite the oil income, there is no capital for a second refinery. Everyone in Iran knows this. These are not stupid people.
The current argument that Iran represents a threat to the United States does not appear to hold much water — probably not much more water than that Iran is an immediate threat to Israel. No, it would appear that, given the realities under which it is now functioning, Iran is vulnerable to just the kind of mischief of which President Bush so often fondly speaks. Our ability to manipulate world finances and deny capital input to Iran is pretty well established. In a world less full of American rhetoric, there should also be room for serious, highly effective sanctions from most of the rest of the world.
What America really should be doing is ratcheting down its hyperbole against Iran. President Bush’s proclivity to “confront the bad guys” does us only harm. His brand of puerile machismo is joyfully and thankfully replayed by the Ahmadinejad government to keep the faithful and not so faithful ginned up and in line. They need a common enemy. What would they do without Bush?
The one thing we don’t need to do is alienate regular Iranians. They are, after all, the ones who are our inadvertent allies in that their pressures on their own government will probably influence Iran to move in directions favorable to us. Anything we can do quietly and surreptitiously to exacerbate the tensions between regular Iranians and their government is in our favor. There is much potential there.
There is currently heavy pressure to take military action. It comes from Israel, some American conservatives, “Christian Zionists,” some neoconservatives (as if they haven’t already made enough of a contribution in getting us into Iraq), and even from Connecticut’s “independent Democratic” Sen. Lieberman (another Iraq hawk). On a more sinister note, al-Qaida through its Web sites and some Russians oligarchs through their Washington lobbyists are trying to influence us to bomb Iran. What we surely do not need is any kind of military action against Iran any time soon. If Iran had already tested an atomic weapon, it might be considered, but today it is absurd. The one immediate result of such action would be to unite regular Iranians (our inadvertent allies) against us, thus removing or at least mitigating whatever hope we might have for effective, internally instigated pressure for change in Iran.
We have time. We just need to use it wisely.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Beirut, Tehran, Berlin and Prague and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.
