Daniel Byman :: The Obama administration made a decision to engage Iran well before it seemed like Ahmadinejad even had a chance of being unseated as president, so it is no surprise that the doubts over the current elections are not leading the administration to change course. The brief hope was that a Mousavi victory would usher in a government that would end Iran’s nuclear program and welcome closer ties to Washington. This was always unrealistic: Mousavi himself was not a cuddly figure, the nuclear program is popular across Iran’s elite, and Khatami’s experience as president painfully showed that conservative forces could easily undercut any attempt to reach out to the United States. So we are back to dealing with a conservative regime, albeit one whose legitimacy is dented. The silver lining to the cloud of dashed democratic expectations is that the odds of engagement succeeding are probably similar if not better under the conservatives, however noxious their overall policies.

In addition to their genuine hostility to U.S. policy, conservatives feared that moderates would exploit the political benefits of improved relations with the United States, which would be widely popular in Iran. With Ahmadinejad’s victory, however, conservatives are in power across of Iran’s institutions: any benefit of improved relations would go to them. In addition, conservatives could be confident they would control the pace of any rapprochement. Moreover, Iran’s economy is also declining, and even a return of higher oil prices will not rescue it. Battered economically, and with doubts about the regime’s legitimacy after the fraud at the polls, perhaps the regime will look for ways to improve its political position—like opening up to the United States—that would take the wind out of rivals’ sails. (Okay, this is a big perhaps.)

Some of the same logic, of course, held years ago as well, and it is likely that the rivalries in Iran and pervasive hostility of the conservative elite will prevail. Predictions of a rapprochement are made constantly, and they so far have always been dashed. With Iran, the safe bet is always against improved ties to the United States.

Yet it would be a mistake not to try for fear of failing. To capitalize on the regime’s newfound legitimacy concerns, Washington will have to recognize that efforts by Tehran to reach out may be accompanied by hostile rhetoric or other actions designed to shore up the conservative base. In addition, Tehran will prove especially sensitive to calls for regime change or other challenges to its legitimacy. Separating rhetoric and reality will prove difficult, and, as we try to glean insights into the regime’s thinking, Iran’s nuclear program continues to move forward.

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J. Scott Carpenter :: Autocrats the world over rely on elections to provide them with a veneer of legitimacy. Quite why this matters to them so much is something I’ve never fully grasped. Still, when even a horrendously flawed electoral process yields results that the Supreme Leader must further manipulate, what’s left of the system’s legitimacy degrades precipitously. Moral authority—if not the state’s monopoly on force—is lost and proves difficult to recapture, especially in tough economic times.

President Obama should take advantage of this moment of regime weakness to increase pressure on Tehran. This will require him to side strongly with the Iranian people and recognize the farce that these elections were. It does not mean using the phrase “regime change.” Instead he and other democratic leaders from around the world should speak to the hopes of individual Iranians who were robbed of a better future when the Supreme Leader undercut his own sham process. The Khamenei regime promises nothing but more misery and malaise; we in the international community offer something much better: opportunity and access.

In doing this, one of Obama’s key target audiences should be European public opinion. For some reason, Europeans seize much more forcefully on images of the Basij beating old women and students than on the prospects of mushroom clouds over Warsaw. Of course, siding with the Iranian people won’t do much to sway either Moscow or Beijing, especially as the latter recently managed to sweep Tiananmen under a Chinese carpet, but stiffening European spines is a first priority to applying sanctions with any teeth.

Beyond recognizing the need to sharply change his rhetoric, the President should now realize his engagement strategy as defined so far is bound to fail. To this point, the strategy has been predicated on a direct approach to the Supreme Leader as the sole decision maker within the system. If we can get directly to the Supreme Leader, the argument goes, he can be convinced through a combination of carrots and sticks of the merits of accommodating the West’s demands on the nuclear file. Within this strategy has been the implicit belief that the nature of the regime doesn’t matter. After the past few days, however, it should be clear how preposterous such a notion is. A regime prepared to shoot its own citizens to preserve itself will not negotiate away its nuclear program to the “Great Satan” and can’t be trusted even if it did. Engagement with this regime simply will not work. So what is Plan B and when do we implement it?

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Hillel Fradkin :: There is little doubt that the Iranian regime has suffered some dents in its legitimacy, both through the election campaign and its outcome. During the campaign itself, the leading candidates—Ahmadinejad and Mousavi—flung charges against one another of such vehemence and character as to taint the regime, its history and legacy. As for the elections, the speed with which the results were announced—speed which seemed physically impossible given the number of ballots cast—called those results and the fairness of the election into question. So too did the announced landslide for Ahmadinejad, which confounded expectations of a much closer race and brought hundreds of thousands of Iranians into the streets of Tehran in protest. In the short term the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has compounded the problem of legitimacy by first blessing the announced results as a “divine assessment” and then turning—in response to the protests—to the Guardian Council to perform a legally permitted review of the conduct of the elections.

It is of course uncertain what its verdict will be, although the safest bet is that it will confirm Ahmadinejad as the winner. There can be little doubt that he will pursue a radical and revolutionary policy. But can the controversy over the elections be turned to the ends of American interests, especially the attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and even the interests of the Iranian people? Perhaps.

The necessary first step is for President Obama to speak out forcefully on behalf of democracy in accord with his own well-established statements in that regard. He should express his support for the Iranian people in stronger terms than he did in his Iranian New Year’s message. This would be tantamount to denying that Ahmadinejad was the legitimate representative of the Iranian government or its people.

Whether this would have some substantial and long-term effect within Iran itself—for example the “color” or “velvet” revolution which Iran’s leaders have claimed to fear and oppose—is very hard to know, but this is the most propitious time to try to find out. In the event that Iran continued to be disturbed by internal opposition, the United States would have laid the groundwork to lend whatever support was practicable.

Such an approach would require some alteration of current American policy. Practically speaking, it would mean an end to the effort to establish a dialogue with the Iranian government, which was unlikely in any case, and which now lacks the grounds of having a legitimate interlocutor. This would permit the administration to move quickly to what was likely to be the next stage of its policy: the attempt to impose “crushing sanctions,” Secretary of State Clinton’s phrase. The success of this effort always depended upon our capacity to persuade others to support such a regimen. Although that may still be difficult—as it was in the past—the dubious legitimacy of the Iranian government might now make that easier. For it could now be represented as a “rogue regime” from every point of view. And even if it should fail, the United States would have laid the ground for the proposal of other options.

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Josef Joffe :: You’ve heard about the “electronic herd” as moniker for those investors and venture capitalists who buy and sell exactly what the fad du jour demands. But what about a close relative, the “mooing media,” which so often reports what it wants to see?

And so with Iranian election. Behold this immortal headline on the editorial page of the International Herald Tribune: “The Velvet Revolution, ” followed by cheery prediction that “whatever its outcome, this (dramatic) expression of the popular will carries the promise of better times.”

“Hope Breeds Hype” would have been the better headline, followed by the warning to resist the “North Tehran” syndrome. In this fanciest section of the Iranian capital, they speak English, wear Chanel dresses under their chador and believe in the imminent demise of a despised regime. (In Tel Aviv, it is the “Sheinkin Street Syndrome,” where your basic foreign correspondent talks to artists, Meretz activists and assorted lefties before he files his story on “Change, Hope and the Peace Process” or on the evils of the Netanyahu regime.)

If these good folks had dug deeper and wider, if they had gone into the slums or countryside, they would not have confused a few cute girls who show lots of ankle and hair or a university rally with a “velvet revolution.” If they had read their Hanna Arendt, Franz Neumann or Lenin, they would have been still more skeptical about the incipient decrepitude of the Ahmadinejad regime. If they had studied the history of the Iranian revolution, they would not have called Mr. Mousavi a “reformer” instead of a “disgruntled conservative,” ditto Messrs. Karrubi and Rezai. Their battle against the past and future president was a very mild remake of what happens in any revolution: a falling out among chiefs.

The electoral outcome is no “velvet revolution” at all, though—give honor where honor is due—the “Iranian street” was more vocal and courageous than at any time since the crushed student revolt of 1999. But remember the election of 2005, when Ahmadinejad garnered a mere 19.5 percent in the first round, and then beat former president Rafsanjani with almost 62 percent. This time, Ahmadinejad won right away, and by one point more.

Of course, there was systematic (and brazen) fraud. Why else had the election authorities “counted” millions of ballots right after the polls had closed? On the other hand, Iran is not Enver Hoxa’s Albania (where he came in at 97.8 percent each time), and so Ahmadinejad’s massive majority could not have been completely rigged. As went North Tehran, the country did not. But the regime did not want to take any chances, and so added to vox pop without having to falsify it. Think Richard Daley the Elder, not Enver Hoxa.

The more interesting news is the opposition to Ahmadinejad in the “Holy City” of Qom, the spiritual headquarters of the 1979 revolution. The vocal protests of many clerics lead to a fascinating speculation: The old theocratic revolution is dead, power has passed to the—let’s call them—”secularists.” They are still bearded, but they wear suits or the battle dress of the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards. They don’t trade in fatwas, but in economic privileges. Their weapon of choice is not the Quran, but the Kalashnikov, and their badge is the Iranian flag and not the green of the prophet (the battle insignia of Mr. Mousavi).

Let’s carry speculation on step farther. On Monday, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered an investigation into what Mousavi calls outright voting fraud. Whence we might conclude: The old clerical guard has understood the true import of the electoral verdict. It was a putsch at the ballot box, masterfully executed by Ahmadinejad and his henchmen, and it was directed not so much against the students and the wealthy denizens of Niavaran and Shemiran, but against Khamenei and his religious cohorts. It is Robbespierre vs. Danton, who had led the uprising against the King in 1792.

If this assessment is correct, we will see a lot more strife in the days to come. In the end, it might lead to a Persian Napoleon and his military dictatorship. And why not a “little war” to stabilize the new autocracy? These are dark thoughts, and like all historical analogies, they may be wildly off the mark. So over to Barack Obama, who has staked his first months in office on wooing the Islamic world in order to give a boost to moderates and liberals. Round one goes to the reactionaries.

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Mark N. Katz :: The prolonged protests in Tehran against the Iranian regime’s claim that Ahmadinejad was overwhelmingly re-elected president have raised the possibility that Iran might be on the verge of a democratic revolution. The widespread belief that election results were falsified has triggered successful democratic revolutions in several countries, including the Philippines, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Such protests, though, do not always succeed, as has been seen in Burma (Myanmar), Armenia, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere.

I have previously argued at MESH and elsewhere that a rapprochement between the United States and Iran’s authoritarian regime would be in American interests. The democratic transformation of Iran, though, would be far more beneficial for the United States (and, of course, for Iran). A democratic Iran might become an American ally or, if not that, friendlier to the United States than Tehran has been since 1979. A democratic Iran could also be expected to push Hamas and Hezbollah in a democratic direction, or perhaps even sever its ties with them. Further, while a democratic Iran could be expected to continue the atomic energy program that Tehran began under the Shah, it would presumably be more willing to accommodate the concerns of the international community than the Islamic Republic has been.

With all these possibilities at stake, the Obama administration’s restrained, “even-handed” reaction to the disputed Iranian election results may appear quite odd. This cool reaction, though, may be the best way for Washington to help the cause of Mir Hossein Mousavi—the presidential candidate who is charging electoral fraud. Greater public American support for him could be seized upon as an excuse by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to discredit him as an American agent. Expressing support for a transparent process instead of a specific politician may avoid this problem—especially since there may be little that the United States can actually do to help Mousavi right now.

As past occasions have shown, whether or not widespread popular protest against perceived electoral fraud results in democratic revolution or not depends on whether elements of the security services defect from the regime to the democratic opposition. The defection of even a few key personnel can quickly cascade into the defection of much of the security services and the immobilization of the rest. But without these initial key defections, the democratic opposition cannot hope to prevail, and its protests will sooner or later (and more probably sooner) be crushed.

It is virtually impossible, of course, for the United States to engineer the key security service personnel defections away from the regime and to the opposition during the brief window of opportunity that may be available before the democratic opposition is crushed, if security force defections don’t take place. What the United States can do, though, is quietly signal that it is prepared to work with those security service forces that do defect and to not seek their destruction. This is because organizational survival and personal advancement are often just as or even more important motives than the desire for democracy for officers considering defection to the democratic opposition in such situations.

Even if the regime succeeds in crushing the democratic opposition, its self-confidence is likely to decline and its internal divisions to remain and even grow. In similar circumstances elsewhere, some elements inside an authoritarian regime have made common cause with democratic forces outside of it. Helping them do so may be the sort of long term project that the United States could discreetly help with—whether or not Washington goes forward with attempting to achieve détente with the Islamic Republic.

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Martin Kramer :: There are days when I’m supremely grateful that I’m not paid to make policy decisions. Those who must make them on Iran have much more information than I have, but it probably still won’t be enough, so that in the end, analogies will play as large a role as analysis. Already much of the public in the West has embraced the analogy between Iran’s protests and the “color revolutions” of Europe. The potential for error there is great: Iran’s politics are sui generis even in the Middle East. But there’s a bit of room for such an error, because the regime doesn’t have nukes. If it had them, we’d be biting our nails instead of tweeting on Twitter.

Harvard’s Stephen Walt, on his blog, made an assertion that exposes the fundamental weakness of the realist claim that the outcome doesn’t matter, at least to us: “In the end, what really matters is the content of any subsequent U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, not the precise nature of the Iranian regime. If diplomatic engagement led to a good deal, then it wouldn’t matter much who was running Iran.” Walt is right when he goes on to say that Mousavi, specifically, may not be a vast improvement over the Khamenei-A’jad duo. But in keeping up Iran’s end of any “good deal,” does it really not much matter who runs the country? In our own lives, we prefer to do business with reputable dealers, as opposed to known scam artists, thieves, and forgers. The meaning of this past week is that the ruling mob has been exposed, and that alternatives aren’t entirely unimaginable. No one should get their hopes up, but the moment Khamenei, A’jad, and even Mousavi aren’t the entire universe of options, there’s every reason to put engagement on hold.

And since it’s always better to have options, perhaps the United States should act to promote them. “The Americans do not have the experience or the psychological insight to understand Persia.” That was Ann (Nancy) Lambton, the great British Iranologist, back in 1951. (She thought Mossadegh could be readily overthrown; the Americans at first thought otherwise. She was right.) So it’s a long shot. But there may be an opportunity here, and perhaps even awkward Americans—now with an additional sixty years of experience and a president with psychological insight—can find it.

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Walter Laqueur :: Has the legitimacy of the Iranian regime been seriously dented? The regime was no doubt surprised and even shocked by the intensity of feeling against Ahmedinajad by so many in the capital, but there seems to have been much less resistance outside it. The country is split ,but the levers of power (and the weapons) seem to be firmly in the hands of the regime, and this is all that matters at the present time. Mousavi, in any case, is part of the regime, not a true reformer, at best half-hearted; his fervent supporters are bound to be disappointed. A rotten compromise to solve the present crisis seems quite likely. The decomposition and eventual breakdown of the regime are bound to happen but they will take time.

Perhaps there was fraud in Iran, but most outside observers were apparently not aware how easily elections can be won in authoritarian regimes without even using the grosser forms of fraud such as stuffing the ballot boxes. If part of the population is illiterate, a desirable outcome of the elections becomes even easier to achieve. As far as now known, there was no outright forgery on a massive scale in the elections in the fascist and communist regimes in Europe.

The U.S. approach? What approach? I suspect Washington has accepted, knowingly or not, an Iranian regime in possession of nuclear weapons. No substantial help to slow the process can be expected from Europe, Russia and China. Military action will not be used, and its use by Israel will not be accepted.

No thought seems to have been given to what American policy should be once this stage has been reached. Should there be a grand bargain with Iran, accepting some or all of its “legitimate demands,” including its wish to extend its influence throughout the Middle East? Or should America support the anti-Iranian forces? I suspect there will be a little bit of appeasement and a little bit of resistance, some engagement and some disengagement, all the options will be tried in an attempt to muddle through until (or unless) something wholly unforeseen will happen.

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Michael Mandelbaum :: The principal goal of American policy toward Iran is to prevent that country from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Obama administration proposes to accomplish this through direct negotiations with the Iranian regime. Success is unlikely, but it is less unlikely if greater international pressure is brought to bear on that regime. The administration should therefore use the stolen election, and the outrage it should provoke in the democratic West, to try to persuade the Europeans to agree to tougher economic sanctions on Iran.

It would be helpful to have the Russians and the Chinese join in such an effort, but the events surrounding the election are not likely to prompt either to do so. The governments in Moscow and Beijing are no doubt just as appalled as the Europeans at what has happened, but for different reasons: the Russians because of the way the regime in Tehran has botched a rigged election, the Chinese at Tehran’s decision to hold an election at all.

Ultimately, Iran will cease to be a major strategic problem for the United States only if the current regime falls and is replaced by one less resolutely opposed to Western interests and values. Here the events of the last several days count as good news. Dictatorships fall when the governing elite loses the will to rule (as in Eastern Europe in 1989) or when it is sharply divided. The candidate from whom the election appears to have been stolen must represent a segment of the governing structure, otherwise he would not have been permitted to run in the first place. The unfolding conflict in Iran therefore pits not only the society against the rulers but also one part of the ruling clique against another. The United States can probably have little or no influence over internal Iranian politics, but anything American policy can do to widen this second division (the regime itself can be counted to do everything necessary to expand the first one) is worth doing and should be done.

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Philip Carl Salzman :: Watching the Iranian elections is like watching a Model United Nations or a Mock Supreme Court The issues are real and important. The passions are deeply felt. The divisions reflect divisions among the population. But the decisions have no effect whatsoever in the real world.

The elections, to change the metaphor, are like shadow plays or puppet shows: it is the manipulators behind the scenes who make the actors move, or negate the movements of the actors. In Iran, it is the Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the Expediency Council, and increasingly the Revolutionary Guard who call the shots.

We have already seen this play, starring reformist President Khatami. Whatever the president and the reformist Majlis tried to do, the real rulers denied. Elected officials are mainly a façade, giving faux-democratic respectability to the regime. Yes, to an extent, elected officials provide a face to the regime, and do have some influence over internal matters, such as economic measures. But on the greatest matters of substance, they are entirely powerless.

Why should we pin any hopes on the Iranian elections? Does it matter all that much whether the face of the regime is sweet and smiling or angry and frowning? The regime will be the same.

What if, as many suspect, the current election, allegedly won by Ahmadinejad, was itself manipulated? The supporters for other candidates, like participants in a Mock UN, are incensed that, as they believe, the rules were violated and the results unfair. In this case, with electoral cover gone, the regime stands naked, its reality exposed. Naive Iranians will be disappointed and angry.

What about hopeful foreign leaders and diplomats? What has changed for them? Nothing. If they did not know what they were dealing with before, they were not only hopeful, but naive.

What approach to Iran would be most beneficial for the United States? Again, let’s look at past experience: When did Iran last do something agreeable to the United States? Iran stopped their nuclear program when the United States invaded Iraq, fearing that Iran might be next. When the threat appeared to recede, Iran reactivated their nuclear program. It thus seems that Iran responds to a serious threat by pulling in its horns. If the United States wants Iran to stop its nuclear bomb and missile program, reduce its terrorist support throughout the Middle East, and ease the pressure on its neighbors, then Iran must feel that the cost of pursuing its current path would be too high. President Obama must show the stick, and be ready to use it.

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Raymond Tanter :: The unfolding drama on the streets of Tehran raises key issues of whether Iranian instability will threaten survival of the ruling ayatollahs and if it is possible for a diplomatic breakthrough with them on Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons status in light of growing political instability.

Two schools of thought conflict in addressing these two issues.

One approach holds that although election fraud represents something of a setback for Iran’s “illiberal democracy,” efforts at engagement should be continued. Just as such analysts were wrong in presuming the regime would be constrained from cheating to maintain power, they falsely assume that representative institutions legitimize the rule of the ayatollahs in a less-than-liberal democracy.

A second school, of which the Iran Policy Committee is a contributor, finds that Iran does not have even a “limited” or “illiberal” democracy. Rather than deriving legitimacy from the people, the ayatollahs rule by assertion that clerics should rule because they are representatives of God on earth.

Regarding the issue of whether illegitimate elections in Iran are a point of departure for a breakthrough in Western diplomacy, such an assertion overlooks the role revolutionary ideology plays in motivating the Iranian regime to pursue its nuclear weapons program. Whether Iranian elections are legitimate is irrelevant to the regime’s pursuit of the bomb.

To motivate the Iranian regime to bargain in good faith requires leverage. An unused point of leverage against Tehran is for the West to reach out to its main opposition as it reaches out to the regime.

The Iran Policy Committee performed a content analysis of leadership statements regarding all major Iranian opposition groups. The study showed that the Iranian regime pays attention to the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the main Iranian opposition group, 350 percent more than all other opposition groups combined. In view of this surfeit of attention, it is reasonable to infer that Tehran fears the MEK as a threat to the survival of the regime.

Reaching out to the Iranian opposition, which is based in Iraq but has an extensive network in Iran, would be a common point of leverage for Washington and moderate Arab allies of President Obama to counter Iranian regime expansion in the region. Rather than a binary choice of pressure or engagement, an approach that incorporates the Iranian opposition would allow for a coherent policy of coercive diplomacy. Such a policy is likely to be more effective than either pressure or engagement alone.

From Joshua Muravchik

When I would tell people that I was writing a book about Middle Eastern democrats, the reaction was invariably the same: “That will be a short book.” This jibe expressed the common knowledge that the region remains stubbornly autocratic.

The fact that there is precious little democracy in the Middle East does not mean, however, that there are no democrats. Surveys show that the vast majority say they want democracy, although it is uncertain what they mean. Perhaps more important, there are also individuals whose lives revolve around making their countries more free and democratic, and who have proven they understand these ideas well. We know little about them because their work is peaceful and incremental and overshadowed by the shocking deeds and pronouncements of tyrants, terrorists, and religious fanatics.

I have profiled seven of them, six Arabs and an Iranian. In addition to illuminating their goals and activities, I have attempted to sketch a full biography in the hope of understanding how they came to be who they are.

Each of them was raised under an authoritarian regime in a society hidebound in its customs. Each belonged to a religious tradition that prized memorization over debate; each attended schools that stressed obedience and rote recitation. They learned that personal desires may have little effect on one’s choices in life; that family connections may determine how much justice can be expected; that that dissent can consist of as little as a complaint and be punishable by as much as death; and that power is seized or retained through brutality. In such societies, acquiescence is the key to longevity.

How did they free their minds and become different from most around them? For some the answer lay in exposure to the West. For others the personal became political. Both women in the group saw their mother’s life blighted by polygamy. Some experienced religious or class persecution or watched their parents persecuted. Some witnessed raw brutality and were revolted. One might have been content to be a poet if the authorities had tolerated that.

Each of these seven has paid a heavy price. Four have been imprisoned, and four have received death threats. Three have had loved ones menaced or penalized. Two have been forced into exile. One has seen his children murdered. All have sacrificed material well-being. In addition to physical bravery, each has displayed moral courage to march to their own drummer in societies that prize loyalty, not individualism. Their stories are inspiring and absorbing.

These are the seven:

• Wajeha al-Huwaider, briefly a columnist for the leading Saudi newspaper al-Watan, was banned for her searing polemics against male supremacy. She is the leader of the movement for the right of women to drive in Saudi Arabia and a group that puts Saudi women (faces concealed) on YouTube recounting their mistreatment.
• Mithal al-Alusi, once a leader of the youth movement of the Iraqi Baath Party, split with the party over its brutality and lived two decades in exile. In 2004, after returning to liberated Iraq, he became the first prominent Iraqi to visit Israel, provoking several attempts on his life. In one, his two sons perished. In 2008, Alusi’s fourth trip to Israel led to the lifting of his parliamentary immunity and an indictment for a capital crime, but in a landmark ruling the Iraqi court overturned these actions.
• Mohsen Sazegara was a press attaché to Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris and accompanied Khomeini back to Tehran in 1978 for the revolution’s final triumph. While serving in several high positions in the clerical regime, Sazegara grew increasingly disillusioned by it, becoming one of its most effective opponents, enduring four arrests before being forced into exile in 2004.
• Hisham Kassem pushed back the limits of press freedom in Egypt by publishing the Cairo Times, a small but widely-noted English weekly in the 1990s. Then he became the founding publisher of al-Masry al-Youm, the first fully independent Arabic daily in Egypt since Nasser took power, which has transformed the press scene in Egypt. He is also chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.
• Bassem Eid was the principal investigator for B’Tselem, an Israeli organization combating mistreatment of Palestinians. When Yasser Arafat returned to the occupied territories in1994 and established the Palestinian Authority, Eid grew alarmed at mounting abuses of Palestinian citizens by Arafat’s regime, so he left B’Tselem and founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.
• Rola Dashti was the leader of the campaign that in 2005 won women the right of women to vote and hold office in Kuwait. In 2009 she and three other women won election to parliament.
• Ammar Abdulhamid is a human rights activist and blogger who was Syria’s most outspoken dissident until a face-to-face death threat from Bashar Asad’s security chief impelled him to flee the country.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting yesterday with a group of young Egyptian activists at the State Department was a welcome and long-overdue development. These young people somehow managed to elicit the words “democracy” and “human rights” in the same sentence from the Secretary, something that until yesterday she had managed only once before, on Wednesday in a response to a question from reporters when she was meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit.

Of course, in both instances the words were uttered in a rather casual way. She said yesterday, for instance: “Well, we always raise democracy and human rights. It is a core pillar of American foreign policy.” Not exactly a ringing policy defense.

In fact, over the course of the past few months there have been a number of occasions that have caused democracy and human rights activists to wince. First, there was Clinton’s confirmation testimony in which she made clear that U.S. foreign policy under an Obama administration would center on the so-called three “Ds”: diplomacy, development, defense. For many there was a fourth obvious D missing: democracy. Next, there was the conscious downplaying of human rights by the Secretary during her travels to China, Egypt and elsewhere. Then there was the State Department’s decision to move the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor out of the main State Department headquarters after 32 years. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the administration has failed, until now, to find anyone willing to head that bureau.

So, why is this? The first reason is obvious and understandable. The Obama administration wanted to distance itself from the tone and perceived baggage of the Bush administration’s “Freedom Agenda.” The rhetoric did need to be toned down perhaps, but it did not need to be thrown out altogether. A well-placed source at the State Department recently told me that in his bureau, they were no longer to use the words “freedom and democracy” in speeches. “Those are Bush words,” he was told. No. They are not. They are American words as Secretary Clinton herself makes clear.

The second and more important reason seems to be that this administration believes democracy and development are two entirely different things. When asked at her press availability yesterday about the democratic progress Egypt has made, Secretary Clinton avoided the question by talking instead about what the United States was doing and would do with development assistance in Egypt. Specifically she said: “We are very committed to doing what we can to promote economic opportunity inside Egypt. We consider that a key part of our providing assistance to Egypt.” She then added the following breathtaking sentence: “We’ve spent, as you know, many billions of dollars over the last years promoting NGOs, promoting democracy, good governance, rule of law. And I want to stress economic opportunity because out of economic opportunity comes confidence, comes a recognition that people can chart their own future.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, a variation of this line of argument was first advanced in print yesterday by Steven Cook for the June 1 issue of Newsweek. In his article, he argues for eliminating all democracy promotion programs in Egypt (and by extension all authoritarian regimes) and reprogramming them into agriculture, pre- and post-natal health and disease prevention programs. Doing so, he writes, would better win hearts and minds and, more importantly, “reduce tensions between Washington and Cairo.” (And Beijing, Minsk, Rangoon, Harare, etc., I suppose.) This is pretty disappointing stuff from the drafter of the Council of Foreign Relations task force report, “In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How.”

What Secretary Clinton—and Steven—seem to be saying is, “Look, the Bush administration spent a boatload on promoting democracy and look where that got us; let’s spend more on economic development. At least we can make some folks happy.” The trouble with this is that it is both factually incorrect and kowtows to the regime-inspired idea that first you help us develop economically and then, if it suits us, we can think about developing institutions of accountability (aka democratic institutions) later.

The fact is the United States has spent many billions of dollars in Egypt on arms, commodities, and Egypt-defined “development” but not on democracy and NGOs. During my time at the State Department we had to wrestle the Egyptian government (and our own!) to the mat to squeeze out a few million dollars to support international organizations like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House, among others. The direct grants to local non-governmental organizations were even smaller. Most were below $100,000. Although I don’t have the time now to sum up all that was spent by the Bush administration on non-Egyptian-government approved democracy programs in Egypt, I’d make an educated guess that the entire sum wouldn’t amount to more than $100 million over the seven fiscal years from 2002 to 2008. The entire budget for the Middle East Partnership Initiative during those years averaged only $70 million per year—and that was for the entire region from Morocco to Iran.

But the statement is wrong in another way as well. One of the key innovations of the Bush administration—which created a lot of friction, I can assure you—was to stop working with the Egyptian government on their self-described development programs and instead do something that would really impact the economy: the reform of the financial sector. Working with a talented group of new ministers—not a true democrat among them—we found innovative ways of using “development assistance” to incentivize reforms in the financial sector. In a negotiated Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt, the government committed to, among other things, strong and independent central bank management, developing a functioning government securities market, and implementing a comprehensive program to reform the Egyptian banking sector that included privatization. Against benchmarks in the MOU, the Bush administration committed close to $700 million with an additional $2.3 billion in loan guarantees, also tied to performance benchmarks. The results, as the IMF tells us, have been remarkable. Egypt has been growing at an average annual rate of between 5 and 7 percent per year. This is real “development.”

The main point to make here is that actually doing something important required changing the way things were done. The United States had to risk changing the way it spoke about our economic support funds to Egypt. Egypt treated these funds as theirs; they earned them. They made peace with Israel, the argument went, and deserved this annuity in perpetuity for their amazing sacrifice to the United States. The Bush administration looked at what the funds were producing for the Egyptians and for us, and concluded that they needed to be reviewed and reshaped, whatever the original intent of the funding some 30 years ago. Moving economic and political reform together at the same time was crucial in this.

To take a step backwards now is a mistake, but the Obama administration is taking it. Already they have reversed the hard-fought agreement not to allow Egypt to veto democracy programs and have agreed that from now on all programs will be negotiated with the Egyptian government as part of the bilateral agreement. This sends exactly the wrong signal, and soon other governments in the region will be demanding the same sort of agreement. Moreover, the Egypt desk officer at State calmly explains that this administration is only correcting what the Bush administration screwed up. This is Egyptian money, the explanation goes, and we have to eliminate the cause of the friction in the relationship. Some people at USAID tell me that it is all part and parcel of a broader effort to separate democracy assistance more broadly from what USAID does.

Ironically—and sadly—the program that brought in the activists to meet Secretary Clinton yesterday is an early casualty of this leap backwards. Freedom House’s “New Generation” program has seen its project de-funded since the agreement went into force. They had had a three-year agreement with USAID that was terminated only one year into the agreement after the Egyptian government objected to it. It was good the Secretary met with the young people now; she won’t be able to do so next year.

Perhaps we’ll win more hearts and minds with pre- and post-natal care—if anyone knows we’re providing it—but returning to the status quo ante, eliminating core democracy programs, toning down rhetoric to the point that it is seen as a green light to regimes to repress their people, all guarantee we’ll lose some as well. A recent publication by the Project on Middle East Democracy, “Looking Forward: An Integrated Strategy for Supporting Democracy and Human Rights in Egypt,” proposes a much more thoughtful way forward. The Obama administration would be wise to consider many of its sensible recommendations. In the meantime, as these young Egyptian men and women, bloggers, journalists and activists head for home tomorrow, they leave confused about what the United States stands for. This shouldn’t be. Let’s hope that their meeting with Secretary Clinton was for more than just show. Their young lives will depend on it.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

I am one of more than 140 scholars and experts to sign a letter to President Obama, released today (March 10), asking him to take seriously his inaugural statement that leaders who “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” are “on the wrong side of history.” The question is, on which side of history will the Obama administration place itself in its policy toward the Middle East?

Early indications are for a return to traditional diplomacy and jettisoning of any serious efforts to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights. While the signatories of this letter might differ on some issues, we are joined by the belief that this early course by Obama and Secretary of State Clinton needs immediate correction. We understand that promoting Middle East peace enjoys a high priority in this administration, and we believe that it is entirely possible to cooperate with Arab governments in that endeavor while also pursuing improved human, civil, and political rights for Arab citizens. In fact, not to do so would be shortsighted and ultimately counter productive.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

In the week since Israelis went to the polls, the operative word in the media seems to be “inconclusive,” based on the near-tie between the two largest parties and the prospect of bone-wearying bargaining before a government emerges. Both observations are true, but nevertheless the election did register a sharp and significant shift in the Israeli body politic.

Tzipi Livni managed to hold Kadima together and lose only one seat, against expectations, even managing to beat Likud by one seat. For the first time in Israeli political history, a strong centrist party has actually lasted for more than one election; this is a personal achievement of great note and possibly the harbinger of a long-term structural change of major significance. But having said that, the real import of the election was the clear victory of the right.

Only in 2003 have the right and religious parties, as a bloc, achieved such success; in essence, the 2009 election has erased the impact of the 2006 election that followed Ariel Sharon’s defection from Likud and the establishment of Kadima. We are back in 2003, when the second intifada produced the most hawkish Knesset ever. Israel’s turn to the right is a long-term development set in motion by the second intifada, the rise of Hamas as the pivotal Palestinian player, the intrusion of Iran, and what is seen by many Israelis as the failure of unilateral disengagement in Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. In this context, the 2006 election was a transitory fluke.

In 2006, center and left parties won 70 seats, while right and religious parties held the remaining 50. Now the center and left are reduced to 55, including 11 seats held by Arab parties, while right and religious parties hold a combined 65. The Jewish left was devastated, dropping from 24 seats to 16, as many of its voters moved rightward to Kadima, replacing voters who moved rightward from that party back to Likud, their original home. Thus Kadima maintained its strength while Likud more than doubled its numbers.

Religious parties considered separately did not actually gain; ultra-orthodox (haredi) parties lost a couple of seats, while the remnant of the old National Religious Party appeared in a new guise as “The Jewish Home” and emerged with only three seats. For the first time in Israel’s history, the religious camp in the Knesset will be dominated almost entirely by the haredim; the national religious camp, long a fixture of the Israeli scene, has practically disappeared.

The other winner on the right, apart from Likud, is Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which has outgrown its Soviet immigrant base and has managed to attract a growing clientele with its unique mixture of secularism and a new model of hawkishness based more on ethnicity than on territoriality. This is not the old right wing of “Eretz Yisrael Hashlema” (The Entire Land of Israel); Lieberman is ready to reduce the Arab presence in Israel not only by surrendering Arab population centers on the West Bank and Gaza, but even by ceding Arab-inhabited areas of Israel itself.

Israel’s turn to the right does not mean the end of the two-state solution as the dominant model for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apart from Lieberman’s heterodoxy, Likud’s platform neither endorses nor rules out a two-state solution, but simply condemns any further unilateral withdrawals on the model of Lebanon in 2000 or Gaza in 2005. Thus the differences between the parties are less far-reaching than differences that have sometimes existed between parties joined in the same government. Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can therefore pursue his announced goal of a National Unity government, knowing that in any event there will not be serious peace negotiations over basic final status issues so long as there as no unified Palestinian negotiator in control of all Palestinian territories and able to implement a final agreement.

For the same reason, the formation of a government dominated by the right, with or without Kadima as a junior partner, will not stir up any untoward clashes with the new U.S. administration. With no serious peace talks in the offing, efforts will focus on stability and conflict management rather than a final resolution. A hawkish Israeli government can still work on strengthening the viability of the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and otherwise working toward the day when Hamas can no longer cast an effective veto over an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And in any event, all Israeli parties as well as the United States are likely to be more focused in the near future on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Freedom House has just released its Freedom in the World survey for 2009, rating the level of political rights and civil liberties worldwide. Freedom House divides countries into three categories: free, partly free, and not free. In its “Map of Freedom” (download here), free countries are shown in green; partly free in yellow; and not free in blue. Here is the Middle East portion from the 2009 map.

The survey notes:

Since the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region was the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda, the lack of more significant and durable gains for freedom stands as a major disappointment for American policy. During the Bush years, 9 of the region’s 18 countries experienced some improvement on the Freedom in the World scale, including Saudi Arabia and several of the Gulf states. There were, however, no major breakthroughs: in 2008, as in previous years, Israel was the only country in the region to enjoy a status of Free, although as the occupying power in the Palestinian territories, Israel is largely responsible for the Not Free status of the areas under its control.

Iraq’s provincial elections took place yesterday without much fanfare and, thankfully, not much violence either. According to news reports, the complexity of the system, the size of the ballot and voter apathy drove voter turnout down. Still, these historic elections, in which 7.5 million Iraqis participated, will set the tone for Iraq’s democratic development and prepare the way for parliamentary elections later in the year. As news and results trickle out of Iraq ’s Independent High Election Commission (IHEC) over the coming days and weeks ahead, here are ten quick things to watch for:

1. Did Sistani’s injunction that everyone should vote go unheeded? If it is turns out to be true that turnout nationally was only 50 percent then the Ayatollah’s influence over electoral politics may be on the wane.
2. Did the big, established parties benefit at the expense of new lists? High turnout tends to benefit large, well organized political parties. That it seems to have been fairly low should bode well for lists like Prime Minister Maliki’s which was going head to head with al-Hakim’s ISCI.
3. Did religious parties lose out? What about the Sadrists? No party in the elections ran with the slogan “Islam is the Solution” since voters were much more interested in who could actually provide services at the local level. As the Hamas experience indicates, however, election rhetoric and policy actions are different things. The Sadrists ran as independents on two separate lists. Under this electoral system, this should kill them.
4. Will there be outright majorities elected to the provincial councils? The provincial councils vary in size based on population from 25 to 57. The electoral system should not produce many clear winners meaning even after the results are tabulated coalitions at the local level will have to form and will likely take time doing it.
5. What will the elections means to the idea of a new regional government in the south? If Hakim’s ISCI does poorly, its goal of establishing a regional government in the south analogous to the Kurdish Regional Government in the north will be seriously in question.
6. What will the results mean for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)? The results of these elections will give a strong indication of whether the SOFA negotiated with the United States will pass in this summer’s national referendum. If the governmental parties do well, the referendum should be expected to pass easily.
7. What will be the impact of election on the level of violence in Iraq? Elections don’t always contribute to stability. Expect a large number of disputes to be lodged with the IHEC. It is unlikely but not impossible that disputes will descend into violence. Once elected, however, members of the councils will provide targets for would-be insurgents.
8. Will the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) lose out to the Son of Iraq? Turnout in the whole of Iraq is reportedly low but in the Western provinces turnout is reportedly high. Because the Sons of Iraq ran a fragmented campaign and too many candidates, the IIP could end up doing quite well.
9. How strong are governors likely to be? Governors are not elected directly in post-Saddam’s Iraq. The Provincial Council elects him (or her). They need not elect someone from within their number. Who the governor will be will likely be the first decision taken by most councils. This, combined with coalition government, will make for inefficient governance.
10. How will women do in these elections? The low turnout coupled with the complexity of the electoral system will likely mean women will do very poorly.

In a Policy Watch of The Washington Institute that ran today, I reflect on yet another Bush Administration initiative that has been left to crawl forward weakly without sustained U.S. leadership: the G-8’s Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) Initiative. Like a man dying of thirst in a hot desert, it won’t have to crawl much farther.

Back in the distant past—four years ago—the Initiative was something the Administration just had to have: a multi-lateral framework that would work to create and support a common reform agenda for the Broader Middle East. It was novel in many ways, and a re-read of its founding documents makes interesting reading, if you’re into that sort of stuff. Its chief innovation was to involve business and civil society actors in the deliberations with governments and ask them to help inform reform priorities. For some groups, it is their only chance to meet face to face with their governments at any level.

For five years now an ever-expanding network of activists and reformers has been meeting and making recommendations to their governments on a whole slew of topics. Policy recommendations have flooded into capitals on everything from vocational training and media reform to election monitoring and women’s empowerment. Annually the groups come together at something clumsily called the Parallel Forum at the Forum for the Future, to summarize their recent meetings and to finalize a set of recommendations to make to ministers when they meet one or two days later. In 2005 in Rabat there were just five such activists, all of whom were hard-core human rights activists. Today in Dubai, there are hundreds representing hundreds more in all sectors.

Over the course of the past two days I’ve been listening in on their conversations and deliberations as an invited delegate at this year’s gathering, and have a number of quick impressions to share.

First, these folks are seriously interested in partnering with governments to stimulate change. These are not wild-eyed revolutionaries of either the secular or the Islamist sort. They are people who want to see their governments and their societies thrive. Not because the United States or anyone else wants them to but because they believe it profoundly themselves. They recognize the failings of their governments but they also fear militant Islam and believe they can help compete with it, if governments would only let them.

Second, and this should encourage Michelle Dunne, they all still want to have elections. When I walked into a discussion on how to improve election monitoring, I asked with shocked incredulity if they were still hoping for and encouraging elections. They looked at me strangely and said of course. Elections are poorly run in this part of the world but they do take place and they should be freer and fairer they said. I agree with them.

The other big take-away from this meeting is that governments—aside from bits of our own—don’t care about this process. No government officials were allowed by the UAE government to participate in this year’s sessions, a sharp break with past practice that allowed government observers. So there was no one to hear the delegates offer constructive criticisms, truly thoughtful ideas or truly bad ones. Moreover, the Emirati government is thinking of curtailing civil society participation at the ministerial altogether, a huge step backwards if it happens. Typically, elected delegations from the parallel session and various meetings that take place over the course of a year make short presentations at the Forum. Apart from Rabat where the NGOs were inadvertently kicked out of the session by the foreign minister (they were later brought back in after the FM called them on their cell phones to apologize) and in Bahrain, where a member of a local human rights organization was not allowed to participate despite having been selected, an ever-larger group of civil society activists has been allowed in the room for the entire ministerial.

So why the change? In part it has to do with the fact that in the Emirates there is no real civil society and so they are unaccustomed to having to deal with it. But in part it also has to do with Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s last minute announcement that she’s not coming to the Forum. Again. The government is clearly embarrassed that she would cancel, knowing that others will now downgrade their participation. Why should they risk being embarrassed further by activists who just might say or do anything? Or perhaps they are trying to force the activists to protest the event giving them a pre-text to cancel it altogether?Last year after Secretary Rice canceled her trip the Yemeni government canceled the Forum—without a pretext.

What is strangely encouraging about all of this is what I heard most of all from the delegates with whom I spoke. They are frustrated the G-8 is not taking the process seriously enough and upset at their own governments’ blindness to the hand that’s being offered, but they want the process to continue. As one of them put it to me, “It’s arrogant and even outrageous that the G-8 would invent this initiative and then abandon it but I hope we can continue to have this sort of meeting. Even without ministers. What do foreign ministers know about privatization or election law anyway? If we could routinely have senior officials from relevant ministries dialogue with us it would be a huge step forward.”

It’s not a whole lot to ask, frankly. But unless attitudes towards the initiative change within the G-8 and the governments of the region, even that may be a bridge too far. Fairly diversified funding for the initiative has all but dried up and most activities are supported now by the United States. With the next Administration even that slim trickle of support could dry up and then the BMENA Initiative would be yet another quickly forgotten grand scheme.

As I write in my piece today, no one will likely mourn its passing, but it truly was a missed opportunity. It occurred to me after reading Tamara Cofman Wittes’s post that this would be one way of partnering with the countries of the region and representatives of their societies to challenge the revisionists of Iran and their proxies. By seriously addressing reform issues and perhaps adding security to the mix, a broad consensus and partnership could emerge to confront the extremist narrative. But it’s late here in Dubai and I’m jet-lagged out of my mind. Perhaps I’m already dreaming.

There are two opposing coalitions in the Middle East today. On the one hand, there is a revisionist coalition comprised of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah—a coalition dissatisfied with the distribution of power in the region, and dissatisfied with the current agenda-setters and frameworks for state action. These revisionists include states and non-state actors. Like other such coalitions in the region’s past century of history, they are using their ability to play spoiler on regional issues and within the domestic politics of certain Arab states, in order to force status-quo states to give them a greater share of attention and power.

Hezbollah’s dynamic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, and Iran’s populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, envision a region defined by unending “resistance” against Israel, the United States and status-quo Arab governments. Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad argue for the redemptive value of violence and offer the promise of justice and dignity for Arabs humiliated by decades of defeat at the hands of the West and Israel, and decades of humiliation and neglect at the hands of their own governments.

Against this group of revisionist actors is a looser coalition of status-quo actors who are trying to preserve the regional balance of power, including the role played by the United States. It is notable that today’s status-quo coalition, unlike any in the Middle East’s past since 1948, includes all the major Arab states alongside Israel and the United States.

Even on the streets of their own cities, moderate Sunni Arab leaders such as Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (all associates of the United States) are less popular than Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad. The radicals’ message of resistance is always combined with denunciations of Sunni Arab leaders for cowering under an American security umbrella and making humiliating deals with Israel, and for ignoring the plight of their own people. The revisionists’ critiques of Arab governments’ performance both regionally and domestically are echoed and reinforced by the narrative of the domestic Islamist opposition inside Egypt, Jordan, and the other Arab status-quo states.

This balance of forces in the region had its coming-out party in the 2006 Lebanon War, and the diplomacy and developments since that conflict all represent the efforts by regional revisionists to capitalize on the openings that conflict created for them, and by the status-quo states to recover and contain the revisionists’ influence.

Because of this regional face-off, and the imperative of containing this revisionist coalition of actors, America and her major Arab partners need one another more than ever. But Arab states are cooperating with America in the face of unprecedentedly high levels of public anti-American resentment and anger. America and the status-quo Arab states must attempt to cooperate in containing these regional threats at a time when each of them individually, and their partnership itself, are subject to widespread public resentment and opprobrium. And the regional revisionists are proving themselves very effective at wielding this public sentiment against both the Arab regimes and against Washington. That puts them in a real dilemma. Over time, in the absence of some kind of regional progress, this U.S.-Arab strategic cooperation on big regional issues like Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel will only survive if Arab governments are willing to repress that domestic resentment and anti-Americanism.

That is not a stable foundation for long-term relations, and it’s a situation that plays right into the arguments of regional radicals like Hasan Nasrallah as to why these regimes have to be overthrown: they sell out to the Americans, they make humiliating deals with Israel, and they don’t care about the people.

Washington and the Arab capitals are like two donkeys tied together on a cart: neither can stand without the other’s help, and neither can escape unless the other is also freed. The Arab regimes are implicated by our failed foreign policies in the region, and we are implicated by their failed domestic governance. If we don’t help each other, we are both in trouble, and we know it.

Escaping from the bind that the United States and its Arab friends are in in the Middle East today requires several things that seem in short supply in 2008: a commitment to sustaining our investments when many weary Americans would prefer to walk away from the table; new investments in issues like Arab-Israeli diplomacy even though the returns are likely to be meager at best; and a commitment to the long term, despite the urgency many feel for quick results.

Here are my thoughts on what such a policy must comprise:

• A renewed effort at Arab-Israeli peacemaking—not because the situation is ripe for resolution, but because a peace process is part of containing the regional revisionists and especially the efforts of Iran to plant both feet firmly in the heart of the Levant. A peace process will not solve all the problems of the Middle East. But a peace process is important because it creates tensions and disagreements among members of the revisionist coalition, weakening their impact on the region and on our regional allies.
• A continued U.S. commitment to security in the Persian Gulf. Despite Russia and China’s more energetic commercial efforts in the region, neither of these countries is eager to take over this job. The United States must continue to keep the Gulf open for all, and I am fairly confident it can be done peacefully. But it does require concerted multilateral diplomacy to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, to deal with Iraqi stabilization, and to help the GCC states build the capacity and will to play a greater role in Gulf security.
• Initiatives that will present a compelling narrative of progress, peace and prosperity to counter the narrative of rejection and resistance put forward by the revisionists. As I said, that suggests the value of efforts at Arab-Israeli peace, but it also suggests the need to present the vast majority of Arabs who live outside Palestine with the opportunity to shape their own future. This promise can only be fulfilled through far-reaching political, economic and social reforms that create a new relationship between Arab governments and their citizens.

Arab leaders keenly feel the threats from radical Islam within their own societies. They know that Islamists have capitalized on state failures and weaknesses, and that the critique put forward by local Islamists is magnified by the rising popularity of Iran and its allies. In this insecure environment, U.S. efforts to persuade at least some Arab leaders of the need to reform should resonate—if it is part of a broader regional agenda, and if it is accompanied by the right kind of incentives.

For now, most Arab regimes believe that the best way to manage the threat from domestic Islamist opposition is to focus on resolving regional conflicts like Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, relieving them of the burden of addressing domestic grievances. While the United States should work with them to resolve regional conflicts, the next president needs to help them understand that the best insulation against the destabilizing effects of regional revisionists and rising domestic Islamism is to repair the frayed social contract between citizens and the state.

Tamara Cofman Wittes made these remarks at a symposium on “After Bush: America’s Agenda in the Middle East,” convened by MESH at Harvard University on September 23.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Can the United States still promote democracy in the Arab countries?

There are three misguided assumptions and assertions circulating in discussions on this question:

1. The United States has contaminated the idea of democracy in the Middle East and now Arabs do not want democracy because it is connected with U.S. policy.
2. It is not possible for the United States to pursue democracy promotion and work with Arab governments on regional peace and security at the same time; we have to choose between the two.
3. If a new U.S. administration pursues democracy promotion in the Middle East at all, it should focus on developing the institutions of democracy rather than pushing for early elections.

In what ways are these three notions misguided?

• Contamination of democracy. Certainly U.S. actions in the Middle East in recent years have caused a spike in anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East, although even there I would caution that it is by no means a new phenomenon. As a former U.S. diplomat, I remember well being beaten up for alleged U.S. bias during the 1980s and 1990s. But the question is whether U.S. actions—including the invasion of Iraq—have turned Arabs against democracy.

While Arab government officials and pundits often say so, public opinion data say otherwise. Have a look at the analysis of data from the Arab Barometer Project presented in a new article entitled “Has the United States Poisoned Democracy?” by Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler. Correlating polling data on support for democracy—as high in Arab countries as in any other region of the world—with anger at the United States, the authors conclude that “our data do not support the argument that Arab popular support for democracy has been undermined, and the concept itself has been discredited, by the anti-Americanism that results from Arab complaints about U.S. foreign policy.”

Further, those of us who study the region and visit frequently have found a shift in the debate about political systems. Ten or twenty years ago, we indeed heard many debates about whether democracy was compatible with Islam, consonant with Arab culture, or an imposition of Western imperialism. Nowadays such debates are over, and when you still hear such arguments, generally it is from an older person or from someone who is part of or connected to the ruling establishment. Islamists, leftists, and others who once made such arguments have moved beyond them to an acceptance of democracy, though they might have a certain character or spin they would like to put on it. But my point here is that, whatever sins the United States might have committed in the Middle East, turning the Arabs against democracy has not been one of them.

• Pursuing democracy and security interests. Clearly the United States has many items on its agenda with Arab countries, and promoting democracy is only going to be one of them. Can we pursue more than one interest at once? I think the key point here is how far we expect the U.S. government to push democracy promotion. If the United States government were lending its support to dissidents who were an immediate challenge to regime—in other words, if the ruling group believes they are in immediate danger of losing power—then that ruling group most likely would not cooperate with the United States.

But the United States has not adopted a policy of regime change toward most Arab countries; rather it is promoting gradual change along the lines of increased media freedom, civil society freedom, judicial freedom, freer and fairer elections, etc. There are very few countries in which the opposition is even strong enough to attempt to take over—Palestine and Lebanon come to mind, and the United States is not inclined to ally itself with those opposition movements. While the sort of incremental democracy promotion that the United States generally does might annoy Arab governments at times, it will not stop them from cooperating with us on shared interests. Egypt, for example, never ceased cooperation with the United States on military affairs, counter-terrorism, or Arab-Israeli diplomacy during the time (2004-05) in which the US had quite an active democracy promotion program there.

• Institutions rather than elections. Building up the institutions of democratic government and a democratic society is a critical part of any democracy promotion strategy. But I am troubled by the suggestion that the United States should stop promoting free and fair elections, which springs from the traumatic experience of the Hamas victory in Palestine in 2006.

First, a strategy of institutional development without political competition is doomed to failure, because in most cases autocrats do not create institutions that will limit their power unless they are compelled to do so by opposition forces. (For more on this, see the article entitled “How Democracies Emerge: the Sequencing Fallacy,” by my colleague Tom Carothers.) The enlightened dictator who makes a gift of democracy to his country is a rare commodity. Political competition and the development of sound and empowered institutions reinforce each other.

Second, the fact is that nearly all Arab states (except Libya) are holding elections of one kind or another on a regular basis, with no pushing from the United States. So the real dilemma for the next administration will not be whether or not to push Arabs to hold elections, but whether to encourage them to make the elections that they will hold freer and fairer.

Michele Dunne made these remarks at a symposium on “After Bush: America’s Agenda in the Middle East,” convened by MESH at Harvard University on September 23.