Iran

As I wrote the other day one of the most consequential stories of the early 21st century will be the struggle of the rising nations of the world with modernity and all that it entails - free markets, the global information revolution and of course the other part of what of what the West has been exporting - political freedom, rule of law and democracy. 

As the "world watches" what is happening in Iran, I've been wondering how these extraordinary images are going over in Caracas, Riyadh, Beijing, Moscow and the corridors of power of other less than democratic governments.   The events of the past week have raised the issues of political freedom and liberty in ways that are not always easy for the West to do.   My sense is that whatever the outcome in Iran - and we have to hope for the best each day - these events, coupled with the rise of Barack Obama in the US, are putting some issues on the global table that may be uncomfortable indeed for many important nations in the world today. 

Much has been written about the how events unfolding in Iran are crossing some kind of internal Iranian Rubicon.  Fareed Zakaria has a new essay to this effect.  But there is a strong argument to be made that the world is crossing that Rubicon right along with the Iranians, and that we wiill all be in a new place together after these extraordinary set of events.   I won't argue that we will begin to see street demonstrations in other parts of the world now, but there can be no doubt that the inconvenient and of course critically important issue of political freedom has been introduced into the great global conversation in a way it has not been for a long, long time.  And where that takes us is still to early to tell, but we do know that this new place almost has to be better than where we've been.

From the House Resolution:

“The House of Representatives expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law; condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones; and affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.”

Like the addition of Internet and cell phone access as part of what we would like to see in Iran, and elsewhere. 

Berman's statement:

“This resolution is not about American interests,” Mr. Berman said. “It’s about American values, which I believe are universal values: the values of the rule of law; of participatory democracy; about individual liberty and about justice. And it is on behalf of those universal values not American interests that I urge this body to support this resolution.”

From Nico:

4:48 PM ET -- "All those close to Mousavi have been arrested." Via Jeremy, Mousavi's international spokesman Mohsen Makhmalbaf writes for the UK Guardian:

I have been given the ­responsibility of telling the world what is happening in Iran. The office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the Iranian people truly want as their leader, has asked me to do so. They have asked me to tell how Mousavi's headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly.

All those close to Mousavi have been arrested, and his contact with the outside world has been restricted. People rely on word of mouth, because their mobile phones and the internet have been closed down. That they continue to gather shows they want something more than an election. They want freedom, and if they are not granted it we will be faced with another revolution.

Thirty years ago we supported each other. When police used tear gas, fires would be lit to neutralise its effects. People would set their own cars on fire to save others. Since then, the government has tried to separate people from one other. What we lost was our togetherness, and in the past month we have found that again. All the armed forces in Iran are only enough to repress one city, not the whole country. The people are like drops of water coming together in a sea.

It's been a very busy week on the new tools front. On Monday, I wrote about "Social Media and the Iran Protests." On Tuesday, I wrote about how internet users around the world were hacking Iranian government sites, providing mirror proxies for Iranian activists, and even changing their locations to "Tehran" in a move straight out of "Sparticus."

Since then, the new-media blitz in Iran has only continued to accelerate. As foreign reporters leave the country in droves, citizen journalists there are taking matters into their own hands, uploading videos of beatings and shootings to YouTube and giving real-time first-hand accounts and organizing directions on Twitter.

These services, realizing how politically consequential they have now become, responded well to the situation. Twitter, heeding the pleas of many of its users and even the State Department, put off a critical scheduled update that would have interrupted service. YouTube made exceptions to its policy of banning violent material. From the New York Times:

“In general, we do not allow graphic or gratuitous violence on YouTube,” the company said in a statement. “However, we make exceptions for videos that have educational, documentary, or scientific value. The limitations being placed on mainstream media reporting from within Iran make it even more important that citizens in Iran be able to use YouTube to capture their experiences for the world to see.” 

Google, which owns YouTube, also just added Farsi (Persian) to its translator service, stating that they "hope that this tool will improve access to information in Iran and outside." Over half of Google's employees were born in other countries, which may help to explain their particular sensitivity on this issue. Finally, although the Iranian government has blocked Facebook, the social networking service added a Persian version today.

On Twitter, people around the world continue their outpouring of support - #iranelection is still the top topic, and a great deal of Twitter users (myself included) have made their icons green in a show of solidarity. For those that are not photoshop-inclined, you can even change it automatically by visiting helpiranelection.com, which turns your existing icon green (the "friendly web-geek" creator of this app is running this off of his own server at his own expense).

We will see where all of this leads. As I said myself, I don't think that the use of these new tools in and of itself constitutes a "revolution," as some have asserted. But it is very clear that, as the techniques and technologies of power multiply and evolve, so too do the methods of resistance. This organic, horizontal, distributed, and deeply democratic process stands in stark contrast to the autocratic theocracy that is the Iranian government.

Yesterday on FP.com, the Tufts Fletcher School’s Daniel Drezner wrote about the problems Russia is causing itself by being seen to meddle in Iran’s internal politics (in stark contrast to Obama's smart response).  Basically, he picks up on an Andrew Sullivan blog in which Iranians seem to believe that something like a Russian Coup is actually happening, and that the Russians are now very concerned about this and trying to backtrack, likely unsuccessfully.

I also think Drezner’s right on in terms of where things are headed, which is now in stark contrast to where the situation was just a couple days ago. Until recently, Obama was accurate in saying that there was little difference in terms of policy outcomes between an Ahmadinejad and Mousavi win (and he was certainly right to say it, so as to not pronounce an American favorite, thereby handicapping that person). Now, as Drezner rights, the situation in Iran is at a fundamentally different point (my emphasis):

I'm pretty sure a Rubicon has been crossed in Iran that can't be uncrossed.  This isn't 1999 and 2003 -- too many days have passed with the Khamenei regime on the defensive.  The regime as it existed for the past twenty years -- hemmed-in democracy combined with clerical rule -- is not going to be able to continue.  With the largest protests of the past week scheduled for tomorrow, I think this ends in one of two ways:  the removal of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei from power, or bloodshed on a scale that we cannot comprehend. 

Actually, come to think of it, those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive.  

Throughout the editorial and op-ed pages of major newspapers and all over the web - including here at NDN - the debate cotinues to rage inside the US about what our proper response should be to what is happening in iran.   All sorts of heavyweights have weighed in, and all in all I think this is a very healthy and needed discussion about what the goals of American foreign policy should be after the disapointing age of Bush.   I offered up a big picture analysis earlier this week which was front-paged for an entire day over at Huff Po, and am sure Sam and others at NDN will be weighing with more later today, but couple of things caught my eye this morning:

- Nico Pitney continues to be a must read over at Huffington Post.  He all sorts of new information and video this morning, including a report that the regime appears to have decided to crack down today.   He also offered up this fascinating nugget last night:

6:20 PM ET -- Mousavi spokesman on Obama. Via reader Heather, Foreign Policy speaks with Mousavi's external spokesman in Paris Mohsen Makhmalbaf:

FP: There has been growing criticism here in Washington that U.S. President Barack Obama hasn't said or done enough to support those demonstrating in the streets of Iran. Do you think Obama is being too careful? Or even that he is helping Ahmadinejad by being cautious?

MM: Obama has said that there is no difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Does he like it himself [when someone is] saying that there is no difference between Obama and [George W.] Bush? Ahmadinejad is the Bush of Iran. And Mousavi is the Obama of Iran.

FP: Would Mousavi pursue a different foreign policy than Ahmadinejad?

MM: As you may know, former President Mohammad Khatami, who is supporting Mousavi at the moment, was in favor of dialogue between the civilizations, but Ahmadinejad talks about the war of the civilizations. Is there not any difference between the two?

We [Iranians] are a bit unfortunate. When we had our Obama [meaning President Khatami], that was the time of President Bush in the United States. Now that [the United States] has Obama, we have our Bush here [in Iran]. In order to resolve the problems between the two countries, we should have two Obamas on the two sides. It doesn't mean that everything depends on these two people, but this is one of the main factors.

- I also liked David Ignatius' column today, and offer up this excerpt:

What's happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn't guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs.

This is politics in the raw -- unarmed people defying soldiers with guns -- and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on the ropes.

To understand why the regime is frightened, ask yourself this question: How many of the demonstrators in the mile-long parades along Vali-e Asr Avenue were Iranian nuclear scientists -- or their siblings, or cousins? We read that the oldest daughter of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is a nuclear physicist, but how many more?

And how many disgruntled Revolutionary Guards and war veterans?

Nobody knows, and that's the point: The regime must be frightened of the forces it has unleashed. The more it attacks its own people, the more vulnerable it becomes.

If you take a step back, you can see a similar process of ferment across the Muslim world these days. Muslim parties and their allies have suffered election setbacks over the past several years in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and Pakistan. The most extreme group of all, al-Qaeda, has alienated former supporters everywhere it has tried to put down roots.

The reasons for these political setbacks vary from place to place. In some countries, Muslim radicals have overreached and created a public backlash; in others, they have been seen as timid and corrupt. But there's a common theme: "The Muslim parties have failed to convince the public that they have any more answers than anyone else," says Marina Ottaway, the director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

President Obama was right to speak carefully about the events in Iran during the first week of protest. But it's time for him to express his solidarity with the Iranians who are so bravely taking to the streets each day. He can do that without seeming to meddle if he chooses his words wisely.

Obama should invoke the Iranian yearning for justice -- which was a powerful theme of the revolution. He should cite Iran's own rich history of political reform, going back to Cyrus the Great, whose declaration on good governance was chiseled in the Cyrus Cylinder in 539 B.C. He should cite the Iranian constitution of 1906, which established elections and basic freedoms. Democracy is not an American imposition but an Iranian tradition.

"We clearly have to be on the right side of history here," says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment and an informal adviser to the White House. But he cautions that "if we try to insert ourselves into the momentous internal Iranian drama that's unfolding, we may unwittingly undermine those whom we're trying to strengthen."

What we also need to begin debating, considering, is how much the President's remarkable recent Cairo speech has contributed to this uprising, and the success of the pro-western forces in the recent Lebanese election.  As I wrote in my Huff Post essay the President's own life story, words and inspiring "brand" has injected a very new and powerful dynamic into global politics, one we are only just beginning to understand.

From Nick Kristof's NYTimes column today:

The unrest unfolding in Iran is the quintessential 21st-century conflict. On one side are government thugs firing bullets. On the other side are young protesters firing “tweets.”

The protesters’ arsenal, such as those tweets on Twitter.com, depends on the Internet or other communications channels. So the Iranian government is blocking certain Web sites and evicting foreign reporters or keeping them away from the action.

The push to remove witnesses may be the prelude to a Tehran Tiananmen. Yet a secret Internet lifeline remains, and it’s a tribute to the crazy, globalized world we live in. The lifeline was designed by Chinese computer engineers in America to evade Communist Party censorship of a repressed Chinese spiritual group, the Falun Gong.

Today, it is these Chinese supporters of Falun Gong who are the best hope for Iranians trying to reach blocked sites.

“We don’t have the heart to cut off the Iranians,” said Shiyu Zhou, a computer scientist and leader in the Chinese effort, called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. “But if our servers overload too much, we may have to cut down the traffic.”

Mr. Zhou said that usage of the consortium’s software has tripled in the last week. It set a record on Wednesday of more than 200 million hits from Iran, representing more than 400,000 people.

If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an “Internet freedom initiative” pending in Congress. This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it.

I had more on this yesterday.

Yesterday on the NDN Blog, Simon, Sam, Dan, and I wrote quite a bit about Obama’s foreign policy philosophy, and I’d like to present a couple more takes on the subject. First, TNR’s Peter Scoblic applauds the Obama Administration’s response to Iran, and their ability to craft a middle ground between realism and idealism:

I don't accept the suggestion that if one is not an idealist, one is necessarily a cold-blooded realist. Although there are certainly those who believe that the internal affairs of other countries are irrelevant or unimportant, it is possible to care about human rights while questioning America's ability to influence the internal affairs of other countries and while doubting that our values and our interests are always synonymous. The United States has other priorities as well. Thus one can be skeptical of the efficacy and wisdom of diplomatic and military pressure in the name of human rights without being amoral. Moreover, although realism may be "cold," its ideological opposite, which puts the nature of regimes at the center of our foreign policy, is even more problematic. In this view, one espoused chiefly by conservatives and neoconservatives, the fact that a regime is good or evil becomes not simply a moral observation but a strategic guide. Idealism's concern with regimes, in other words, can rapidly deteriorate into a dangerous Manichaeism.
…

I think it is possible to have a foreign policy that harbors no illusions about the nature of enemy regimes, but that recognizes our limited capacity to change those regimes and therefore our need to engage them. I think it is possible to have a moral foreign policy that is not moralist. But how, exactly, do we pursue our idealist instincts without sabotaging the security of the United States and our allies? How can we be appropriately self-interested without being utterly selfish? These are the questions we're wrestling with right now. At first glance, the answers may seem to differ only in balance and degree. (Does one speak loudly and decry the evil of the mullah-cracy in order to support the protestors, or does one hold back, recognizing that interference could backfire not only against Mousavi's backers but against American interests more broadly?) But these are not simply tactical questions…they are the manifestations of fundamentally different worldviews, which is to say they represent different assessments of our strategic priorities and our capabilities.

Also, Stephen Walt over at FP.com convincingly rejects Andrew Sullivan’s call for Western governments to refuse to acknowledge Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, asking how far we would have to apply that standard. He is also (not surprisingly) pleased with Obama’s response to Iran:

Obama's measured response to the events in Iran strikes me as more sensible: we can and should deplore the abuses of basic rights and the democratic process, while making it clear that the United States is not interfering and remaining open to the possibility of constructive dialogue. Given our long and troubled history with Iran (which includes active support for groups seeking to overthrow the current government), any sense that we are now trying to back Moussavi is likely to backfire. Trying to steer this one from Washington won’t advance our interests or those of the reformists.  

Here's a hypothetical question for you to ponder. Which world would you prefer: 1) a world where Ahmadinejad remains in power, but Iran formally reaffirms that it will not develop nuclear weapons, ratifies and implements the Additional Protocol of the NPT, comes clean to our satisfaction about past violations (including the so-called "alleged studies"), permits highly intrusive inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, and ends support for Hamas and Hezbollah as part of a "grand bargain" with the West; or 2) a world where Mir Hussein Mousavi -- who was the Ayatollah Khomeini's prime minister from 1981 to 1989 -- wins a new election but then doesn't alter Iran's activities at all? 

This is hypothetical, of course, and almost certainly does not reflect the likely policy alternatives. But your choice of which world you'd prefer probably reveals a lot about how you conceive of the national interest, and the degree to which you think foreign policy should emphasize concrete security achievements on the one hand, or normative preferences on the other.

Finally, I hesitate to even link to this, but Robert Kagan embarrassed himself this morning in the Washington Post. Jonathan Chait at TNR does a fine job of dismantling his argument.

In 2007, Alec Ross and I wrote a paper called A Laptop in Every Backpack, which called for a new national committment in America to give every child a laptop computer.   In that paper he and I write:

A single global communications network, composed of Internet, mobile, SMS, cable and
satellite technology, is rapidly tying the world’s people together as never before. The core
premise of this paper is that the emergence of this network is one of the seminal events
of the early 21st century.  Increasingly, the world’s commerce, finance, communications,
media and information are flowing through this network.  Half of the world’s 6 billion
people are now connected to this network, many through powerful and inexpensive
mobile phones.  Each year more of the world’s people become connected to the network,
its bandwidth increases, and its use becomes more integrated into all that we do. 
 
Connectivity to this network, and the ability to master it once on, has become an
essential part of life in the 21st century, and a key to opportunity, success and
fulfillment for the people of the world. 
 
We believe it should be a core priority of the United States to ensure that all the world’s
people have access to this global network and have the tools to use it for their own life
success. There is no way any longer to imagine free societies without the freedom of
commerce, expression, and community, which this global network can bring.  Bringing
this network to all, keeping it free and open and helping people master its use must be
one of the highest priorities of those in power in the coming years.  

Been thinking a lot about these words these past few days.  Recall that among the first thing the Iranian Government did after the election ended was turn off text messaging, shut down Facebook and radically interrupt internet access.   Today they are attempting to shut down all global reporting from Tehran, and have been blocking Twitter and other sites not already shut off. I know Alec has been thinking about all this too as he is now senior advisor to Secretary Clinton on innovation and all things digital.

What should be the proper reaction of the UN, leading nations, NGOs to the turning off of basic communication services in a nation?  Isn't the ability to use these tools something approaching but not quite a human right of the 21st century, one that should not be denied to any person, anywhere?  Can one any longer imagine the concept of political freedom in a civil society without one's mobile device? Should the UN Secretary be calling on Iran to let reporters report, turn back on the internet, text messages and other web sites and social media?

Whatever one believes about what has and will happen in Iran, it seems like we should all agree that intefering with every day people's use of the modern global communications network should be more roundly condemned by the world's leaders, and the future price for such action should be high.

The New York Times has a very good account of State and its social media strategy:

The Obama administration says it has tried to avoid words or deeds that could be portrayed as American meddling in Iran’s presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath.

Yet on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the recognition by the United States government that an Internet blogging service that did not exist four years ago has the potential to change history in an ancient Islamic country.

“This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

The State Department said its request did not amount to meddling. Mr. Cohen, they noted, did not contact Twitter until three days after the vote was held and well after the protests had begun.

“This is completely consistent with our national policy,” Mr. Crowley said. “We are proponents of freedom of expression. Information should be used as a way to promote freedom of expression.”

The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.

Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.

Last month, he organized a visit to Baghdad by Mr. Dorsey and other executives from Silicon Valley and New York’s equivalent, Silicon Alley. They met with Iraq’s deputy prime minister to discuss how to rebuild the country’s information network and to sell the virtues of Twitter.

Referring to Mir Hussein Moussavi, the main Iranian opposition candidate, Mr. Crowley said, “We watched closely how Moussavi has used Facebook to keep his supporters informed of his activities.”

Tehran has been buzzing with tweets, the posts of Twitter subscribers, sharing news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis of how the White House is responding to the drama.

With the authorities blocking text-messaging on cellphones, Twitter has become a handy alternative for information-hungry Iranians. While Iran has also tried to block Twitter posts, Iranians are skilled at using proxy sites or other methods to circumvent the official barriers.

It is a new political day indeed.