A protestor in Tehran, from Flickr user Green Movement

POMED's account of a recent Congressional hearing on what policy to pursue towards Iran, and most notably whether and how to support its opposition movement, made for some interesting reading. Several of those testifying — former Bush administration officials, regional experts, etc. — made the case of a human rights-based approach, with the US taking steps to challenge the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic's regime on human rights grounds. The approach being suggested by, if you compile the different witnesses' testimonies to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is basically:

1. Highly targeted sanctions to hurt the elite, esp. the IRGC;
2. Open support for the Green Movement, which can decide whether it accepts that support or not;
3. More funding for democracy promotion through the National Endowment for Democracy and other vehicles (although it's not clear who would eventually receive that money);
4. A commitment to continue to side with the opposition no matter what takes place in the negotiations over the nuclear program, so that no "betrayal" of the Green Movement takes places if the regime is willing to back down;
5. A public diplomacy campaign and commitment to internal regime change as an ultimate goal, which would also solve the nuclear issue.

I should add that Genevieve Abdo in particular was less gung-ho, and suggested that a reconciliation between the regime and opposition leaders could very well take place by the next parliamentary elections, which would leave the more radical elements of the Green Movement out on their own. I don't know much about Iran but I also see no reason a more democratic government in Iran would not be attached to a nuclear program considering the threats the country faces in the region. Logically, all of the larger Middle Eastern powers should pursue WMD programs of some sort, and indeed they all have (mostly chemical and biological for Egypt, Syria and Iraq and of course Israel's nuclear arsenal).

All of this to say: we are seeing considerable Congressional enthusiasm for a tough, democracy-driven (at least on the surface) policy towards Iran. Yet, at the same time, democracy is effectively absent from the relations between the US and Arab states (no, I will not count the State Dept. annual rights report). It is true that Iran's opposition is potentially much more credible than opposition movements in Arab countries, with seemingly real elite and popular traction. But that's also because in many respects are less democratic, and have less healthy political systems, than Iran's theocracy.

I am very supportive of the Green Movement, whatever it may actually be, and the goal putting an end to the militarization of the Islamic Republic, its corruption and its human rights abuses. I hope it's possible, and am conscious the US can influence this. But when I see US policy elsewhere in the region, I would warn Iranians: don't take this democracy talk too seriously. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan (invoked in the Congressional hearing for an uncompromising stand on Iran): don't trust, and verify.

Get your Muslim Brotherhood T-shirt while stocks last!

A conciliatory attitude by the new Guide, Mohamed Badie, has not protected the Muslim Brothers from another string of arrests. That they include people from five provinces and a key electoral planner — Essam al-Erian — and an organizational strongman — First Deputy Guide Mahmoud Ezzat — suggests that it's largely to do with forthcoming elections. This arrest is notable because Ezzat had not been arrested in years, as most top leadership rarely are. It may have also to do with the state noting his ascendancy, and wanting to send disruptions into the group: many have suspected in the past that the regime selects who it arrests in partly in function of the MB's internal politics, to allow an opportunity for rival factions to dominate.1 As for Al-Erian, one of the key planners of the MB's 2005 electoral strategy, it's clear he's long been one of the leaders most intent in contesting elections as widely as possible. 

Can the regime push the MB, by this fall, into a strategic withdrawal from the electoral field? Not a total one, but one that reduces the numbers of seats it has in parliament to around the level they won in 2000 (i.e. 17)? A few NDP and government figures have suggested that they expect the MB to return to the levels of that time, but it's a hard thing to guarantee unless you have very rigged elections. This is tricky this time around not so much because of the Obama administration, which has systematically downplayed the importance elections in its concept of democracy-promotion, but perhaps because Mohamed el-Baradei had focused much attention on the electoral system and may gain domestic and foreign traction over the next few months if he finds support for his project. So the alternative would be to push the MB into a deal whereby they present fewer candidates and restrict themselves.2

At this point the regime appears to be less looking for a deal with the Brothers than a kow-tow from them. The MB has already for all intents and purpose frozen its reform process, put aside its political party program, and reduced the influence of those most attached to the idea of a political party (aside from al-Erian). The next questions will be, will it drop its new policy of contesting all elections and not run for the Shura Council (most likely) and reduce its footprint in the next parliament (inevitable, but the question is how?)   

1. Some Brothers believe this was the idea behind the prison sentence handed to Khayrat al-Shater in 2007.   

2. With the caveat that it can't be about the Muslim Brothers' electoral strategy alone. It is also about the NDP's ability to impose discipline on its members to avoid the pattern of the last few elections where NDP independents ran against the party's official candidates, thus splitting the pro-government vote and giving candidates from the MB a fighting chance. I would venture that, for now, we have no indication that the NDP will be any more disciplined, since government policy has basically moved the intense competition for seats from the public competition into one inside the NDP.

* Geoff Wysner, at Words Without Borders, reviews the memoir Algerian White, by Assia Djebar.

Algerian White was written as a tribute to three men. Each was a friend of the author. Each was a writer himself, in addition to his regular profession. All three were killed in the space of less than a year, and the stories of each of their deaths are at the emotional heart of the book.

Read more. 

* Interesting cyber-publishing venture: An Iranian novella is translated thanks to a collaboration between three websites, excerpted and put on sale online. The translator writes about the process here. The story has a stream-of-consciousness, Kafkaesque quality: 

When I get to the hotel, the smiling deskman portends bad things and I am right. He gestures to a woman sitting on the couch in a corner of the lobby. And from here, I see only her salt and pepper hair and when I can almost see her profile, she sees me. There is no time to run away. Although I am really tired. I didn’t talk to a woman on the phone and I was not waiting for a woman. My thoughts are lining up. I see her hand come toward me and with no choice I shake her hand and start to say how are you, with no choice, and that is the way of life no choice, apparently. Automatically, without thinking, we go and sit down where the woman had been seated. So quickly you got to know the city. 

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Photograph by Maha Maamoun

One of our favourite art critics, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, reviews one of our favourite writers, Maria Golia, who has just published a book on the history of Egyptian photography, and finds that Photography and Egypt: 

..does not even try to jam its subject into an elegant or orderly art-historical narrative. Rather, it traces the development of photography in Egypt over the last 170 years through a chaotic and unruly field of social, political and economic contexts. Golia does not view the medium in isolation, nor does she focus solely on its aesthetic attributes or technological advancements. Instead she considers photography as a dynamic practice whose means and ends cannot be disentangled from the overlapping twists and turns of the country’s history.

 

Photograph by Hala Elkoussy

Golia also points out how Egypt is connected to the earliest beginnings of photography, and is one of the most photographed landscapes ever. We have been waiting expectantly for this book to come out--how can we get a copy? 

Q: Are you disappointed with Barack Obama? 

A: I have been disappointed by Obama in a number of respects. First of all I think it’s worth saying that Obama is still a significant improvement over [George] Bush. There’s been a very notable improvement in presidential rhetoric but a failure to apply that rhetoric in many cases. Obama has given a series of quite inspiring speeches but then has not built a policy around those speeches. In Accra, for example, he distinguished himself from [Bill] Clinton’s policy of embracing the so-called new generation of African leaders that turned out to be authoritarian dictators: Paul Kagame [in Rwanda] or Meles Zenawi [in Ethiopia]. Obama said Africa doesn’t need strong leaders, it needs strong institutions and spoke about the rule of law, free press, independent civil society and the like. That was an excellent message, well-tailored to the audience. But the Obama administration has put very little pressure on Meles or Kagame to reverse their authoritarian trends. Similarly, in Cairo, he talked about the importance of democracy and made clear that, unlike Bush, who promoted democracy until the wrong person won, until Hamas won in the Palestinian territories or until the Muslim Brotherhood did better than expected in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, Obama was going to respect whoever was the victor. It was suggested that he would even respect the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. A very important message but he then did not follow up by pressing [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak to democratise. Mubarak visited the White House and there was no public mention of democracy. There’s been no pressure on the Saudi royal family, no pressure on other autocratic U.S. allies in the Middle East to democratise.