Iraq and Afghanistan

In an Op-Ed entitled "The Human Rights Case Against Attacking Iran" Shirin Ebadi and Hadi Ghaemi, two Iranians much concerned with human rights in Iran argue that attacking Iran would be a major setback for human rights in the country because it would make its human rights campaigners appear to be traitors to the general Iranian public. It is easy to understand their case. One does not know, of course, whether they are writing this because they or their coworkers are still in Iran. The reason for the Op-Ed might then be a form of both personal and movement self-defense. Even if true, this does not make their case illegitimate.

They make the point that there is a lot more human rights activity in Iran even now than Americans suspect. In recent months groups called the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, the Association of Journalists for Freedom of Press, and the Students Association for Human Rights campaigned for the release of journalists and were ultimately successful. Many other indicators of relative freedom in Iran suggest that Ms. Rice's characterization of human rights in Iran as "loathsome", as well as the Freedom House rating of Iran as "6, 6, not free" is simply mistaken. (Freedom House ratings since 1989 have unfortunately reflected the interests of the American government as much as the degrees of freedom being reported.) Iran is clearly not less free than Egypt, Azerbaijan or many other states rated more highly. It is surely not to be compared to Congo (Kinshasa).

I believe that the writers' concerns about an American invasion are not justified at present. Yet the talk and bluster that has been addressed to this issue in the United States in the last year may in itself damage the human rights cause in Iran.

This raises the question of just what the United States can effectively do to change human rights behavior in another country. When that country is as powerful and self-assured as China seems to be today, the answer may be "not very much". When a country is relatively weak, the human rights problems sufficiently egregious, and the rest of the world agrees with us, then quite a lot can be accomplished, as in East Timor, the Balkans, or Afghanistan (let us not judge Iraq yet for just a bit). But in these cases military interference or threat was realistic, effective, and relatively cost-free for those concerned. This is obviously not the case for Iran. The case of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite empire brings up another set of issues. This seems to have been an implosion that in my judgment was caused by both economic failure over many years and the rejection of the system by the intellectual classes on which its legitimacy was ultimately based. Outside news sources and contacts played a part, operating on Soviet opinion over a very long period, but evolution within the USSR was probably the most critical factor. It was a cultural shift. It should be noted that in those successor states that were least affected by contact with "the West", such as the Central Asian Republics, human rights is at least as poor today as it was under the Soviets (except perhaps for religious freedom).

The Soviet example is relevant for Iran, but not completely so. Like the western part of the Soviet Empire, the Iranian intelligentsia and the country's middle class are much affected by Western culture. The number of Iranians educated in the West before Khomeini was much higher than that in the old USSR, and to some degree this tradition continues today. However, economically Iran continues to do well because of its oil reserves. It is suffering by comparison perhaps, but not suffering in the same way the Soviet peoples were. Moreover, the support of the present Iranian regime is not based on a secular intelligentsia as in the Soviet world. The basis is rather a religious class able to generate consider grass-roots support among the masses. The young within this religious class are also said to be restless, but to what degree I am not sure. They probably are not the mainstay of the human rights organizations the authors mention.

We need to develop both short and long-term policies for improving human rights in other countries. These need to be tailor made for each situation. They should have both a governmental and a nongovernmental aspect, and by "nongovernmental" I mean a really independent effort such as Amnesty International might be involved in.