Il est trois heures du matin et vos enfants sont endormis. Mais le téléphone sonne à la Maison-Blanche. Il se passe quelque chose dans le monde. Votre vote décidera de qui répondra à cet appel. Quelqu’un qui connaît déjà les leaders mondiaux, les forces militaires du pays, quelqu’un de rompu, prêt à gouverner dans un monde dangereux. Qui voudriez-vous voir répondre à cet appel? Spot de campagne d’Hillary Clinton (mars 2008)
Plus personne ne peut désormais prétendre que la théocratie et la démocratie sont compatibles. Amir Taheri
La rébellion iranienne, bien qu’il soit trop tôt pour la qualifier de révolution, s’avère être cet appel téléphonique de trois heures du matin pour M. Obama. Alors qu’un président français fait honte à son homologue américain pour sa clarté morale, l’argument d’Hillary Clinton sur son inexpérience et ses instincts dans une crise se révèlent prophétiques. The Wall Street Journal
Après ses zéros pointés en histoire de la Turquie puis en histoire de l’islam …
Un essai de missile nord-coréen promis sur Hawaii pour sa fête nationale et, en pleine crise de succession, un navire transportant des armes prohibées approchant la Birmanie …
Un énième rappel de sa « préoccupation » quand, bousculant tous ses plans , le sang coule depuis plus de dix jours à Téhéran et dans les villes iraniennes …
Remise des pendules à l’heure par le spécialiste du Moyen-Orient libano-américain Fouad Ajami.
Qui rappelle que, contrairement à ce que voudraient nous faire croire tant le Pleurnicheur en chef lui-même que ses thuriféraires médiatiques, la politique de la main tendue a maintes et maintes fois été utilisée avec la « République islamique ».
Et, ainsi que pourraient lui confirmer tant Carter que Bush père ou même Clinton, pour leur plus grand malheur.
Comme, s’il n’y prend garde, peut-être le sien aussi …
Obama’s Persian Tutorial
The president has to choose between the regime and the people in the streets.
Fouad Ajami
The Wall Street Journal
JUNE 23, 2009
President Barack Obama did not « lose » Iran. This is not a Jimmy Carter moment. But the foreign-policy education of America’s 44th president has just begun. Hitherto, he had been cavalier about other lands, he had trusted in his own biography as a bridge to distant peoples, he had believed he could talk rogues and ideologues out of deeply held beliefs. His predecessor had drawn lines in the sand. He would look past them.
Thus a man who had been uneasy with his middle name (Hussein) during the presidential campaign would descend on Ankara and Cairo, inserting himself in a raging civil war over Islam itself. An Iranian theocratic regime had launched a bid for dominion in its region; Mr. Obama offered it an olive branch and waited for it to « unclench » its fist.
It was an odd, deeply conflicted message from Mr. Obama. He was at once a herald of change yet a practitioner of realpolitik. He would entice the crowds, yet assure the autocrats that the « diplomacy of freedom » that unsettled them during the presidency of George W. Bush is dead and buried. Grant the rulers in Tehran and Damascus their due: They were quick to take the measure of the new steward of American power. He had come to « engage » them. Gone was the hope of transforming these regimes or making them pay for their transgressions. The theocracy was said to be waiting on an American opening, and this new president would put an end to three decades of estrangement between the United States and Iran.
But in truth Iran had never wanted an opening to the U.S. For the length of three decades, the custodians of the theocracy have had precisely the level of enmity toward the U.S. they have wanted — just enough to be an ideological glue for the regime but not enough to be a threat to their power. Iran’s rulers have made their way in the world with relative ease. No White Army gathered to restore the dominion of the Pahlavis. The Cold War and oil bailed them out. So did the false hope that the revolution would mellow and make its peace with the world.
Mr. Obama may believe that his offer to Iran is a break with a hard-line American policy. But nothing could be further from the truth. In 1989, in his inaugural, George H.W. Bush extended an offer to Iran: « Good will begets good will, » he said. A decade later, in a typically Clintonian spirit of penance and contrition, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came forth with a full apology for America’s role in the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
Iran’s rulers scoffed. They had inherited a world, and they were in no need of opening it to outsiders. They were able to fly under the radar. Selective, targeted deeds of terror, and oil income, enabled them to hold their regime intact. There is a Persian pride and a Persian solitude, and the impact of three decades of zeal and indoctrination. The drama of Barack Obama’s election was not an affair of Iran. They had an election of their own to stage. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — a son of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary order, a man from the brigades of the regime, austere and indifferent to outsiders, an Iranian Everyman with badly fitting clothes and white socks — was up for re-election.
The upper orders of his country loathed him and bristled under the system of controls that the mullahs and the military and the revolutionary brigades had put in place, but he had the power and the money and the organs of the state arrayed on his side. There was a discernible fault line in Iran. There were Iranians yearning for liberty, but we should not underestimate the power and the determination of those moved by the yearning for piety. Ahmadinejad’s message of populism at home and defiance abroad, his assertion that the country’s nuclear quest is a « closed file, » settled and beyond discussion, have a resonance on Iranian soil. His challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a generation older, could not compete with him on that terrain.
On the ruins of the ancien régime, the Iranian revolutionaries, it has to be conceded, have built a formidable state. The men who emerged out of a cruel and bloody struggle over their country’s identity and spoils are a tenacious, merciless breed. Their capacity for repression is fearsome. We must rein in the modernist conceit that the bloggers, and the force of Twitter and Facebook, could win in the streets against the squads of the regime. That fight would be an Iranian drama, all outsiders mere spectators.
That ambivalence at the heart of the Obama diplomacy about freedom has not served American policy well in this crisis. We had tried to « cheat » — an opening to the regime with an obligatory wink to those who took to the streets appalled by their rulers’ cynicism and utter disregard for their people’s intelligence and common sense — and we were caught at it. Mr. Obama’s statement that « the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as had been advertised » put on cruel display the administration’s incoherence. For once, there was an acknowledgment by this young president of history’s burden: « Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons. » No Wilsonianism on offer here.
Mr. Obama will have to acknowledge the « foreignness » of foreign lands. His breezy self-assurance has been put on notice. The Obama administration believed its own rhetoric that the pro-Western March 14 coalition in Lebanon had ridden Mr. Obama’s coattails to an electoral victory. (It had given every indication that it expected similar vindication in Iran.)
But the claim about Lebanon was hollow and reflected little understanding of the forces at play in Lebanon’s politics. That contest was settled by Lebanese rules, and by the push and pull of Saudi and Syrian and Iranian interests in Lebanon.
Mr. Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo did not reshape the Islamic landscape. I was in Saudi Arabia when Mr. Obama traveled to Riyadh and Cairo. The earth did not move, life went on as usual. There were countless people puzzled by the presumption of the entire exercise, an outsider walking into sacred matters of their faith. In Saudi Arabia, and in the Arabic commentaries of other lands, there was unease that so complicated an ideological and cultural terrain could be approached with such ease and haste.
Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America’s relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution — and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.
Little more than three decades ago, Jimmy Carter, another American president convinced that what had come before him could be annulled and wished away, called on the nation to shed its « inordinate fear of communism, » and to put aside its concern with « traditional issues of war and peace » in favor of « new global issues of justice, equity and human rights. » We had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War, he said, « fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is quenched with water. » The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.
Mr. Carter would try an atonement in the last year of his presidency. He would pose as a born-again hawk. It was too late in the hour for such redemption. It would take another standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, to see that great struggle to victory.
Iran’s ordeal and its ways shattered the Carter presidency. President Obama’s Persian tutorial has just begun.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is the author of « The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (Free Press, 2007).
Voir aussi:
Obama’s Iran Abdication
Democracy interferes with his nuclear diplomacy script.
WSJ
JUNE 18, 2009
The President yesterday denounced the « extent of the fraud » and the « shocking » and « brutal » response of the Iranian regime to public demonstrations in Tehran these past four days.
« These elections are an atrocity, » he said. « If [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad had made such progress since the last elections, if he won two-thirds of the vote, why such violence? » The statement named the regime as the cause of the outrage in Iran and, without meddling or picking favorites, stood up for Iranian democracy.
The President who spoke those words was France’s Nicolas Sarkozy.
The French are hardly known for their idealistic foreign policy and moral fortitude. Then again many global roles are reversing in the era of Obama. The American President didn’t have anything to say the first two days after polls closed in Iran on Friday and an improbable landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad sparked the protests. « I have deep concerns about the election, » he said yesterday at the White House, when he finally did find his voice. « When I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people. »
Spoken like a good lawyer. Mr. Obama didn’t call the vote fraudulent, though he did allow that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei « understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election. » This is a generous interpretation of the Supreme Leader’s effort to defuse public rage by mooting a possible recount of select precincts. « How that plays out, » Mr. Obama said, « is ultimately for the Iranian people to decide. » Sort of like the 2000 Florida recount, no doubt.
From the start of this Iranian election, Administration officials said the U.S. should avoid becoming an issue in the campaign that the regime might exploit. Before votes were cast, this hands-off strategy made sense in that the election didn’t present a real choice for Iranians. Whether President Ahmadinejad or his chief challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, won wouldn’t change the mullahs’ ultimate political control. Mr. Mousavi had been Ayatollah Khomeini’s Prime Minister, hardly the resume of a revolutionary.
But Friday’s vote and aftermath have changed those facts on the ground. Like other authoritarians — Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 or Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 — Tehran misjudged its own people. Having put a democratic veneer around their theocracy, they attempted to steal an election in such a blatant way that it has become a new and profound challenge to their legitimacy. Especially in the cities, Iranians are fed up with the corruption and incompetence rampant in the Islamic Republic. This dissatisfaction was galvanized by the regime’s contempt for their votes and found an accidental leader in Mr. Mousavi. The movement has now taken on a life of its own, with consequences no one can predict.
The Obama Administration came into office with a realpolitik script to goad the mullahs into a « grand bargain » on its nuclear program. But Team Obama isn’t proving to be good at the improv. His foreign policy gurus drew up an agenda defined mainly in opposition to the perceived Bush legacy: The U.S. will sit down with the likes of Iran, North Korea or Russia and hash out deals. In a Journal story on Monday, a senior U.S. official bordered on enthusiastic about confirming an Ahmadinejad victory as soon as possible. « Had there been a transition to a new government, a new president wouldn’t have emerged until August. In some respects, this might allow Iran to engage the international community quicker. » The popular uprising in Iran is so inconvenient to this agenda.
President Obama elaborates on this point with his now-frequent moral equivalance. Yesterday he invoked the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup against Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadeq to explain his reticence. « Now, it’s not productive, given the history of the U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections, » Mr. Obama said.
As far as we can tell, the CIA or other government agencies aren’t directing the protests or bankrolling Mr. Mousavi. Beyond token Congressional support for civil society groups and the brave reporting of the Persian-language and U.S.-funded Radio Farda, America’s role here is limited. Less than a fortnight ago, in Cairo, Mr. Obama touted his commitment to « governments that reflect the will of the people. » Now the President who likes to say that « words matter » refuses to utter a word of support to Iran’s people. By that measure, the U.S. should never have supported Soviet dissidents because it would have interfered with nuclear arms control.
The Iranian rebellion, though too soon to call a revolution, is turning out to be that 3 a.m. phone call for Mr. Obama. As a French President shows up the American on moral clarity, Hillary Clinton’s point about his inexperience and instincts in a crisis is turning out to be prescient.
Voir également:
Obama and the Rogues
North Korea and Iran intrude on his diplomatic hopes.
The WSJ
June 23, 2009
President Obama took office loudly promising to be the anti-George W. Bush of foreign policy, vowing to « extend a hand » to adversaries « willing to unclench » their fists. What he has received instead is an education in the reality of global rogues, and how he responds has become a major test of his Presidency.
The immediate challenges are North Korea and Iran, governments that the American left claimed were « evil » only because Mr. Bush had declared them so. Perhaps Mr. Obama believed this too, though five months later he has learned otherwise. North Korea has rejected his every overture and is now defying the U.N. to press its nuclear and proliferation ambitions. As for Iran, the mullahs are attempting to crush a popular uprising after a stolen election while also showing disdain for Mr. Obama’s diplomatic entreaties.
The question is whether Mr. Obama will now adapt his policies to meet challenges he clearly didn’t expect. Jimmy Carter took office with similar illusions about the Soviet Union, promising to cure our « inordinate fear of Communism. » Our enemies pushed back at what they perceived to be U.S. weakness, and Mr. Carter and his NSC adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski never recovered. We’ll soon learn if Mr. Obama is made of sterner stuff.
On North Korea, for example, the President has vowed that « words matter » and that renegade missile and A-bomb tests must have « consequences. » The U.S. has rallied the U.N. to pass sanctions against Pyongyang, albeit no tougher than those the U.N. issued in 2006. Those sanctions include a Security Council « call » to intercept North Korean attempts to sell or spread weapons and delivery systems of mass destruction. The issue is whether those sanctions will be enforced.
As it happens, a U.S. Navy destroyer is currently tailing a North Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons toward Burma via Singapore. The cargo ship Kang Nam left a North Korea port last Wednesday, and a South Korean intelligence report said it is believed to carry missiles and other parts. This would violate U.N. sanctions, and the U.S. has every legal right to board the ship. Alternatively, the USS John S. McCain (named for the Senator’s father and grandfather) could steer the Kang Nam to Singapore and inspect her there.
Either action carries risks because North Korea has said it will consider such an inspection to be an act of war. No one knows how the North would respond, though its leaders must know that any attack on South Korea would guarantee the end of their rule. It’s also possible the entire North Korean crew could defect if promised asylum.
The risks of doing nothing are even more serious because it would show the North — and the world — that the U.N. sanctions once again mean nothing. The threat of a North Korean attack on the South is small, but the danger of nuclear proliferation to the U.S. and its allies is clear and present. We know Pyongyang has proliferated to Iran and Syria in the recent past. Senator John McCain said yesterday the U.S. should board the Kang Nam, a sign that Mr. Obama could count on domestic political support. Will the President let Kim Jong Il make a mockery of U.N. condemnations?
Regarding Iran, Mr. Obama will also have to rethink his hopes for a grand nuclear bargain with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This diplomatic desire explains the President’s cautious refusal last week to take sides in the post-election standoff — or, as a Washington Post headline put it, quoting Administration sources, « Obama Seeks Way to Acknowledge Protesters Without Alienating Ayatollah. » It’s impossible to imagine the Reagan Administration whispering something similar about Soviet dissidents and the Politburo.
The Supreme Leader gave his reply by endorsing the election results, arresting opponents and unleashing security forces to beat the demonstrators. Like the Shah in 1979, the government is now firing on its own people chanting « death to the dictator. » Even if the mullahs succeed in stopping the immediate unrest, their legitimacy will never be the same. As Iranian journalist and Journal contributor Amir Taheri notes, the « republic » half of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been exposed as a fraud.
Mr. Obama finally stiffened his rhetoric on Saturday, calling « on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights. » This is an improvement, though he said this only after both houses of Congress condemned Iran’s crackdown on Friday.
Going forward, Mr. Obama will have to consider that any negotiations with the current government will lend it legitimacy at the expense of the Iranian people. That would be precisely the kind of « meddling » in Iran’s politics that Mr. Obama says he wants to avoid. Opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi might not take any less a hard line on Iran’s nuclear program than the current government, but he does now represent the aspirations of millions of Iranians. And there is even less chance that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei will bend on nukes now that nationalism and thuggish power are their main claims to legitimacy.
Focused as he is on domestic matters, Mr. Obama no doubt wishes he could return to his campaign illusions about the powers of diplomacy. But the world’s rogues have other priorities, and stopping them will take more than an extended handshake.
Voir enfin:
Iran’s Clarifying Election
No longer can anyone pretend theocracy and democracy are compatible.
Amir Taheri
The Wall Street Journal
June 16, 2009
Having won re-election amid allegations of fraud, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday tried to show that he also controlled the streets where the Khomeinist regime first seized power in the 1979 revolution.
The show was less than impressive. Despite efforts by the Ansar Hezbollah (Militants of the Party of God) and security services to manufacture a large crowd, the massive Maydan Vali-Asr (Hidden Imam Square) was unfilled. The official news agency put the number at « several hundred thousands » while eyewitnesses reported tens of thousands.
Even then, scuffles broke out on the fringes of the crowd as groups of dissidents tried to force their way in with cries of « Marg bar diktator! » (death to the dictator). That slogan may be on its way to replacing the normal greeting of salaam (peace) in parts of urban Iran.
No one knows exactly how much electoral fraud took place. The entire process was tightly controlled by the Ministry of Interior under Sadeq Mahsouli, a general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and a senior aide to Mr. Ahmadinejad. There was no independent election commission, no secret balloting, no observers to supervise the counting of the votes, and no mechanism for verification. It is impossible to know how many people voted and for whom.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was credited with more votes than anyone in Iran’s history. If the results are to be believed, he won in all 30 provinces, and among all social and age categories. His three rivals, all dignitaries of the regime, were humiliated by losing even in their own hometowns. This was an unprecedented result even for the Islamic Republic, where elections have always been carefully scripted charades.
Many in Tehran, including leading clerics, see the exercise as a putsch by the military-security organs that back Mr. Ahmadinejad. Several events make these allegations appear credible. The state-owned Fars News Agency declared Mr. Ahmadinejad to have won with a two-thirds majority even before the first official results had been tabulated by the Interior Ministry. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main rival, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, retaliated by declaring himself the winner. That triggered a number of street demonstrations, followed with statements by prominent political and religious figures endorsing Mr. Mousavi’s claim.
Then something unprecedented happened. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all issues of national life, published a long statement hailing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s « historic victory » as « a great celebration. » This was the first time since 1989, when he became supreme leader, that Mr. Khamenei commented on the results of a presidential election without waiting for the publication of official results. Some analysts in Tehran tell me that the military-security elite, now controlling the machinery of the Iranian state, persuaded Mr. Khamenei to make the unprecedented move.
A detailed study of Mr. Khamenei’s text reveals a number of anomalies. It is longer than his usual statements and full of expressions that he has never used before. The praise he showers on Mr. Ahmadinejad is simply too much. The question arises: Did someone use the supreme leader as a rubber stamp for a text written by Mr. Ahmadinejad himself? With Mr. Khamenei’s intervention, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s three defeated rivals are unlikely to contest the results of the election beyond lodging formal protests to the Council of the Guardians, a 12-mullah body that has the legal duty of endorsing the final results.
Buoyed by his victory, Mr. Ahmadinejad has already served notice that he intends to pursue his radical policies with even greater vigor. At yesterday’s rally, he promised to pass a law enabling him to bring « the godfathers of corruption » to justice. His entourage insists that former Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, and former parliament Speaker Nateq Nouri, all midranking mullahs, may be among the first to fall in a massive purge of the ruling elite.
It is too early to guess whether these dignitaries would march to the metaphorical gallows without a fight. Even if they fight, they are unlikely to win. Nevertheless, Messrs. Rafsanjani, Khatami and other targeted mullahs could influence others who wish to prevent a complete seizure of power by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s military-security clique, which is determined to replace the Shiite clergy as the nation’s ruling elite. Nor is it at all certain that Supreme Leader Khamenei would stand by and watch his power eroded by a rising elite of radicals.
Mr. Ahmadinejad also plans to seize the assets of hundreds of mullahs and their business associates for redistribution among the poor. In his speech at his victory rally yesterday he promised to « dismantle the network of corruption, » and vowed never to negotiate about Iran’s nuclear program with any foreign power: « That file is shut, forever, » he said.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory has several immediate consequences. First, it should kill the illusion that the Khomeinist regime is capable of internal evolution towards moderation. Mr. Ahmadinejad sees Iran as a vehicle for a messianic global revolution.
Second, the election eliminates the elements within the regime — men such as Mr. Mousavi and Mahdi Karrubi (another of the three unsuccessful candidates who ran against Mr. Ahmadinejad) — who have pursued the idea of keeping the theocracy intact while giving it a veneer of democratic practice. According to a statement published yesterday by Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister who was among 132 anti-Ahmadinejad activists arrested over the weekend, the regime’s « loyal opposition » would now have to reconsider its loyalty. With Iranian Gorbachev wannabes like Messrs. Khatami and Mousavi discredited, advocates of regime change such as former Interior Minister Abdullah Nouri and former Tehran University Chancellor Muhammad Sheybani look set to attract a good segment of the opposition within the establishment.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory has the merit of clarifying the situation within the Islamic Republic. The choice is now between a repressive regime based on a bizarre and obscurantist ideology and the prospect of real change and democratization. There is no halfway house.
The same clarity may apply to Tehran’s foreign policy. Believing that he has already defeated the United States, Mr. Ahmadinejad will be in no mood for compromise. Moments after his victory he described the U.S. as a « crippled creature » and invited President Obama to a debate at the United Nations General Assembly, ostensibly to examine « the injustice done by world arrogance to Muslim nations. »
Iran’s neighbors are unlikely to welcome Mr. Ahmadinejad’s re-election. He has reactivated pro-Iranian groups in a number of Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. He is determined to expand Tehran’s influence in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially as the U.S. retreats. He has also made it clear that he intends to help the Lebanese Hezbollah strengthen its position as a state within the state and a vanguard in the struggle against Israel.
Even Latin America is likely to receive Mr. Ahmadinejad’s attention. The first foreign leader to phone to congratulate the re-elected Iranian leader was Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, whose « brotherly message » received headline treatment from the state-controlled media in Tehran. Later this year, Mr. Ahmadinejad plans to attend the summit of the nonaligned movements in Cairo to claim its leadership, according to Iran’s official news agency, with a message of « unity against the American Great Satan » and its allies in the region.
Buoyed by his dubious victory, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears itching for a fight on two fronts. He thinks he can have his way at home and abroad. As usual in history, hubris may turn out to be his undoing.
Mr. Taheri’s new book, « The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution, » is published by Encounter Books.
jcdurbant 