Two days ago, massive anti-government demonstrations in nearly
every major city in Iran sent the Islamic thugocracy there an
unmistakable message: your time is short. Even in the capital city
of Tehran, demonstrators burned tires and disrupted traffic. The
mullahs did what they always do, and called out their
“Revolutionary Guards” to quell the disturbances. Many
demonstrators were arrested, and will be treated to the torture and
beatings that the mullahs think will staunch their desire for
freedom, and deter others. The mullahs cut off most international
telephone service to limit what the world hears about the
demonstrations. Despite their best efforts, the word got out. But
now the world’s media — not just the over-Rathered American media
— are inexplicably ignoring the story.
The situation in Iran has been accelerating for many months.
According to Michael Ledeen, resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, the mullahs recently conducted a poll that
found that only about 4% of the Iranian people thought the
government was legitimate. That’s probably about the same number
that the Brits would have gotten from a poll taken in Boston in
1775. The unrest in Iran is growing to equal the unrest in 1978 and
1979 when the mullahs’ own revolution overthrew the Shah’s
government.
Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah’s son, told me that this new round
of demonstrations is a bit different from those before. “What is
intriguing about this particular demonstration is that it comes
around the anniversary of the constitutional revolution of 1906.
The Iranian people have the same aspirations now as they did then.”
I had to look that one up. The Persian revolution of 1906 brought
about a constitutional monarchy modeled after Belgium’s. It was the
beginning of the successful westernization of Iran that the mullahs
reversed when Pahlavi’s father was overthrown. Pahlavi firmly
believes the Iranian people are “completely at odds with the
regime” of the mullahs. He said that the “game plan” was to make
these demonstrations continuous, and keep building the pressure on
the mullahs. That is very good news.
One of the ways for us to knock off the Axis of Evil off is to
help the oppressed peoples of those nations overthrow the tyrants
themselves. Where the threat is less immediate, and we can take our
time, this strategy is preferable because it spends less of our
blood and treasure. But in most of those countries — including
Saudi Arabia — the repression is so strong that the people have
little means of even organizing to rebel. But that does not mean we
should sit quietly and let dissidents such as those in Iran
fail.
It is tempting, but unwise, to think how we might help to
overthrow the mullahs forcibly. Ledeen and Pahlavi both counseled
against that. Ledeen told me he was unaware of anyone who was
arguing for direct intervention. Pahlavi said that Iran is a
“ticking time bomb” that may explode in the mullahs’ faces, but all
that Iran needs now is for President Bush to “stay on message.” He
credits Bush with being the first American president to distinguish
between the mullahs’ regime and the people of Iran. He believes the
people of Iran are “getting fed up” and may soon rid themselves of
the mullahs.
Our national security requires that we bring about the end of
the regimes that govern the Axis of Evil, and maybe a few more as
well. Tuesday’s
report in the Washington Post of the Rand study
labeling the Saudis as the source of much of the terrorism in the
world is a big step in the right direction. Our Most
Dispensable Ally was described by Rand as “active at every
level of the terror chain.” The Post also quoted the Rand
study as saying the Saudis were “the kernel of evil, the prime
mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East. It will be
a long time before we can effect enough change in Saudi Arabia to
move it from the “enemy” to the “ally” side of the ledger. But that
may not be so for Iran. Iran can again be an ally, perhaps soon,
and provide the lever with which we can move the whole Middle
East.
Iran was a reliable ally of the United States before the
theocratic thugs took charge. We must not think of Iran only as the
nation that held our embassy staff hostage for over a year. We
should think of Iran as a base from which freedom — the only
lasting antidote to terrorism — can be spread throughout the
Middle East. If Iran were free, its example would create enormous
pressure on Saudi Arabia, Syria and others. It’s pretty clear that
we can’t wait to overthrow Saddam by setting up a good example in
Iran, but the meaning of freedom would leak over its borders into
every corner of the Islamic world. Eventually even Saudi Arabia and
Syria would dispose of their despotic regimes peacefully or
otherwise.
So just what should we do? Ledeen rightly believes that we
should be acting more vigorously by helping fund the Iranian
opposition. We can, and should, also fund the opposition television
and radio broadcasts.
As Pahlavi noted, Mr. Bush is the first American president since
1979 to distinguish between the mullahs, who are our enemy, and the
Iranian people, who are our friends. The president should be saying
that loudly, and often. We should broadcast the news into Iran, and
send money and communications equipment — and other equipment they
may need — to the opposition groups. We should make it clear to
the Iranians that we remember them as friends, and invite them to
rejoin us. Right now, only Turkey stands as an example of
individual freedom in the Islamic world. If Iran were to join it,
we’d find ourselves well along the road to victory in the war on
terror.
P.S. While energetically ignoring this story, the media are
taking great pains to broadcast the satellite pictures of our new
airbase in Qatar. In those pictures you can identify — and count
— the KC-135s on the ramp. Next, I suppose, we’ll see the pilots’
home addresses, flight schedules and routes posted on the Internet.
Freedom of the press has no greater supporter than yours truly. But
this is not an exercise of the First Amendment. It is a despicable
and flagrant violation of the responsibility we all must have to
our nation and its fighting men in time of war. Whoever is
responsible for airing those photos should be made to ride one of
those KC-135s on its first fifty missions, and take the soldier’s
risk that he has increased tenfold.
