July
15, 2002 8:45 a.m. Bush
vs. the Mullahs
Getting
on the side of the Iranian freedom fighters.
ate
Friday afternoon, when all the newsies were headed for the beach and the
bars, President Bush issued a statement on Iran. Unlike the "major
media," which had downplayed the monster demonstrations in Isfahan,
Tabriz, and Tehran (if they reported them at all) on the ninth, the president
not only underlined the historic importance of the Iranian people's ongoing
struggle for freedom, but threw America's full support behind the freedom
fighters. He again denounced the country's "unelected leaders,"
and called upon the regime to abandon their "uncompromising, destructive"
policies. The president went on to spell out the devastating consequences
of the repression: misery for the Iranian people, and a massive exodus
of students and professionals to free countries.
The
president's eloquent call for freedom in Iran went largely unreported
in this country, but provoked the inevitable firestorm in official Tehran,
as Supreme Leader Khamenei fulminated against this "interference
in Iranian affairs," and President Khatami, the phony "reformer"
who is the darling of the State Department's office of appeasement (a.k.a.
policy planning), indulged himself in a tirade against America and lapsed
into the blatant lie that everyone in the Iranian government has been
duly elected. This is Khatami's reply to the 120-plus "reformist"
members of parliament (more than one-third of the total membership) who
called upon him to get some real results in a hurry, or else step down.
Meanwhile, in Isfahan
— -the epicenter of the anti-regime demonstrations (just as it was
the eye of the hurricane that brought down the Shah 23 years ago)-there
have been numerous proclamations and rallies in support of the regime's
most visible critic, the Ayatollah Montazeri. Montazeri, who has been
under house arrest for years, issued a fatwah some weeks ago, denouncing
the practice of suicide bombing as sinful, and was praised last week by
Ayatollah Taheri, who resigned as Imam of Isfahan and issued the most
violent denunciation in the history of the Islamic Republic of the evils
of the regime. The mounting support for this aged cleric is yet another
sign of the disintegration of the extremist religious tyranny that has
wrecked Iran at the same time it has devoted enormous resources to the
support of anti-American terrorism.
Travelers recently
returned from Iran tell me heart-rending stories of both material and
moral disintegration, of young women driven to prostitution because there
are no jobs and there is no future; of young people openly flaunting the
strict moral code against sexuality and alcohol, daring the security forces
to arrest them; of police and security forces protecting demonstrators
against the regime they are paid to protect; of foreigners who do not
even speak Farsi being imported to maintain order. It all reminds me of
the final days of the Soviet Empire, as the people awaited signs that
the Kremlin lacked the will to crack down yet again.
For this is the only
issue now. Tyrannies do not fall simply because they have wrecked the
national economy, impoverished the people, and rendered their lives miserable.
Tyrannies fall when they no longer use all the instruments of terror to
maintain their power, thereby signaling the people that revolt can succeed.
The crucial turning point is always in the minds and hearts of the tyrants
and the tyrannized, and it cannot be measured by social scientists or
intelligence analysts. It can only be smelled by those with noses trained
to sense that the rot has set in, and the whole edifice is hollowed out,
an empty shell of a regime.
This is a moment
when those who claim to support freedom must embrace the legitimate cause
of the Iranian people, the brave Iranians who lit candles to mourn our
dead on the eleventh of September, and who lit fires to celebrate the
fourth of July with us earlier this month. The president has done this
twice, first in his "axis of evil" speech, and now again in
honor of the demonstrators. It is important that his not be a lone voice.
If Secretary Powell understands the moral and geopolitical stakes in Iran,
he must speak out, and he must insist that his friends and admirers in
Europe do the same. Alas, this week the European Union is sending a delegation
to Tehran to discuss lifting sanctions and reopening full trade. It is
a very bad thing to do, and the Iranian people will certainly remember
it when their dictators have been removed.
They will also remember
everything that we can do for them now: support for Farsi-language broadcasting,
much of it based in Los Angeles and a handful of European cities. Support
for some of the representatives of Iranian opposition groups now approaching
Western governments, the most important of which speak for Iranian student
groups. And surely it must be possible to organize some material assistance
to those young Iranians who are being starved and corrupted by this horrid
regime.
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ate
Friday afternoon, when all the newsies were headed for the beach and the
bars, President Bush issued a statement on Iran. Unlike the "major
media," which had downplayed the monster demonstrations in Isfahan,
Tabriz, and Tehran (if they reported them at all) on the ninth, the president
not only underlined the historic importance of the Iranian people's ongoing
struggle for freedom, but threw America's full support behind the freedom
fighters. He again denounced the country's "unelected leaders,"
and called upon the regime to abandon their "uncompromising, destructive"
policies. The president went on to spell out the devastating consequences
of the repression: misery for the Iranian people, and a massive exodus
of students and professionals to free countries. 
