Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Iran Crisis: Just Beginning

Some (e.g., Stratfor) are saying that the crisis in Iran is petering out. The protests are dwindling, they say. This is all overblown anyway, because Mousavi is really no fan to the US. He would be almost the same as negotiating with Ahmadinejad, and since he's a "reformer" it might actually be even more difficult.

Is this correct? Not bloody likely. Gary Sick, member of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan (that's 3 US Presidents, and also spans the time when the 1979 Iranian Revolution took place) says that this has just begun.

Now it's tempting to want to root for the protesters, to cheer them on. And therefore it's tempting to wish very hard that the protests have not come to an end. So at first glance, when the protests are smaller on one day than they were before, it looks level headed and wise to admit that our dreams of a free and democratic Iran will never come to fruition. Skepticism is often mistaken for wisdom, because skepticism is often the wise course.

Yet skepticism for skepticism's sake is not wisdom anymore than predictions of revolution in Iran driven by intense desire to see it happen is.

In that vein, just what is the National Security Council? Well, it's a body, appointed directly by the President, that advises him on matters of national security. Simple, right? It's supposed to be somewhat non-political, because appointees don't have to be approved by Congress. The President can appoint whoever he wants, according to his own wisdom, instead of according to who he can get Congress to approve.

So the fact that Gary Sick managed to serve on this President appointed body advising the President under 3 Presidents of differing political parties is...well...impressive to put it mildly. Mr. Sick did not get that position by letting dreams carry him away on a cloud of analytical bliss, prognosticating the future he longed to see. In other words, Gary Sick is not telling us that what we want to happen WILL happen. He's trying to be realistic.

So what does he say will happen? He has no idea. That's how you know you can trust him. He said, "If anyone tells you that they know how this will turn out, treat their words with the same regard you would have for any fortune teller peering into a crystal ball." He has no ulterior motive when he says that.

Now some might have ulterior motives in their predictions. For example, let's say that I really, really want to believe that the government of Iran will collapse. I may read my desire into all the evidence, and this will result in my thinking that all the evidence points to my desired outcome. Conversely, I might become obsessed with the fact that no one in Iran is really pro-West or pro-US, and that might also taint my view of the evidence, and thus I might predict that the protests really don't mean much and in fact are petering out.

Gary Sick, however, says that he has no idea what's going to happen. He has no desired outcome. He doesn't have a horse in this race. He just wants us to understand the situation. And he really only wants us to understand one thing. It ain't over till the fat lady signs, and she's not even warming up yet.

His evidence? History, the best evidence. The fact that Iran just had a revolution relatively recently in 1979 is actually enormously helpful in analyzing the current situation. What happened in 1979? Well, the protests ebbed and flowed. Sometimes things got quiet for a while, but then they'd come back to life. The protests began in Jan 1978, and the Shah was not overthrown until Jan 1979. So if this revolution, if indeed it becomes a revolution, happens just like the revolution of 30 years ago, which is actually a fairly safe assumption, it will take a year. Even if it ultimately isn't a revolution, we can still expect the protests to continue for that long before things come to a head.

Gary says we should be thinking marathon, not sprint. So get comfortable, put your feet up, pop some popcorn, and watch history unfold on TV before your eyes. The clash of the titans in Iran is just beginning.
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