A Rational Path Out of the Iranian Crisis

Le FigaroReza PahlaviWednesday, May 30th, 2007These past four years have witnessed IAEA reports and UN Security Council resolutions, one after another, come and go with little result other than the net worsening of the Iranian nuclear crisis. The only gain from this "dialogue of the deaf" – between two differing operating systems: one democratic, the other theocratic – has in fact been the latter’s progression and intensification of its suspect uranium enrichment activities.Why such overtly defiant position towards the international community? Simply because, so long as the international community follows the wrong road map, the clerical dictatorship of Iran will legitimately find itself protected from the fatal blow: one that would hold it accountable for its neglect and systematic violations of Human Rights, bringing it face to face with its worst enemy, the people of Iran.In a regional context, a growing crisis is threatening to spread its roots: from the Palestinian territories to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan, and throughout Lebanon and Iraq, radical and insurrection flash points multiply; Hezbollah replenishes its ammunition stockpile; sophisticated weaponries continuously flows through Tehran and Damascus; sabre rattling is amplified by the expansion of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf; and all the while jihadist metastases, as if by enchantment, surface one after the other.In this free for all, different players blindly pursue their own narrow interests, often overlooking their ideals and fundamental values: some, the eulogists of the so-called “Oriental complexities,” preach an endless dialogue with the repetitive offenders of Tehran; others seem nervously ready to draw swords! Meanwhile, the clerical regime’s uranium continues to get enriched without producing a single kilowatt of electricity; Iranians get poorer and the region sinks deeper into crisis.Is all lost in such a sterile dichotomy?In this dialectic of wills, beginning as far back as 1979 with the coming to power of political Islam and its Marxist allies, and reiterated since with the 1980 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis, the 1982 creation of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, the 1989 fatwa against British author Salman Rushdi, and the initiation of the nuclear standoff in 2003, should the rational throw the towel in its battle against the irrational? Is hope vain?Certainly not!All this while, there has been an unexplored path. Beyond the very real issues of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, never has the clerical regime of Iran been held accountable, in any real and measurable way, for its systematic violations of human rights!In fact, our very real and present danger is that brought about by Failed States. Fuelled by a pathological propensity of grandeur, as fallacious as it is dangerous, the theocratic regime ruling Iran is the quintessential symbol of Failed States. Those seeking proof only need to have a cursory review of the regime’s calamitous mismanagement of nearly all its affairs, this in spite of more than 700 billion in oil revenues. Nothing, in its entire thirty-year balance sheet suggests it to be a reliable and trustworthy partner. For such a failed State, Man is but a tool, Rights just mere favours, dialogue really a foxhole, and war a providential gift. To counter such a state, the sole effective and legitimate weapon happens to be the will and power of the people.Being a culturally complex society, the Iranian nation’s contemporary memory is rich with historical milestones; beginning with the 1906 Constitutionalist Movement; the Nationalization of Iran’s oil in the early 1950s; the1960s obscurantist insurrection against modernization and reforms; the Marxist-Islamic surge which led to the cataclysmic advent of clerical rule in 1979; and finally the resounding failure of a theocratic reform movement at the turn of our current century. Demographically speaking, however, our nation today has given birth to an entirely new generation that has come to light, emerging as an immunized counter force and an antidote to the ills ravaging our homeland. Not a single day goes by without the vanguard of ethnic, civil and urban movements defiantly expressing their thirst and desires for liberty and a better life. It is to them that the future of Iran belongs. They have continuously reached out to the free world. It is their call that the world must heed. In this dialectic of wills, Europe plays a critical role. From its bosom, France illuminates our world with her longstanding spirit and wisdom. Conscious of this invaluable role in resolving this crisis, the Iranian democratic opposition increasingly places Europe, and France in particular, at the heart the equation. It is from here, which was once headquarters to a certain Khomeini, that we can and must mobilize the energies for the liberation of all political prisoners, journalists and academics held against their will in Iran. From here, we can and must legitimately call for the solidarity of international Labour Unions with Iranian workers. From here, we can sensitize and call upon women of Europe to support their Iranian counterpart in their fight to recover their dignity and natural rights. From here, we must call upon the international judicial establishments to spearhead a shift from immunity to accountability especially over the numerous political murders and assassinations that have bloodied European capitals.As proclaimed by President Sarkozy, upholding Human Rights is «France’s diplomatic priority throughout the world ». History will corroborate this stance, for it has been demonstrated that, from the collapse of apartheid to that of the former communist bloc, no oppressed nation has been able to assert its sovereignty without tacit assistance offered by the international community.Therefore, I call upon France’s political will: for peace, for stability, and in the interest of all, let us engage in this third path, the least costly and the most promising of all options, in order to resolve the Iranian crisis, the keystone of the regional crisis; together let us carry, by keeping them alive, these universal values we so deeply cherish.