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You may note that up there in the title bar, the last subject I planned on covering with Squaremans was Politics. But the 2008 American Presidential Elections kinda put the kibosh on that because I’m not really interested in domestic policy. I’m not an armchair legislator, I’m an armchair diplomat and that means I prefer to speak ex cathedra on subjects I know too little about that are happening really far away, rather than subjects I know too little about that are happening right here.

If you’ve been following Twitter or read any Aged News you’re aware that something’s going on in Iran. There are massive protests and people have been killed. The media, maybe unintentionally, repeatedly draw dramatic analogy with the Islamic Revolution of 1979. By drawing this analogy I think perhaps they’re encouraging people in the West to come to the wrong conclusions about what’s going on in Iran.

Thanks to the internet and the easy availability of knowledge, I think most people now understand that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a successful attempt by the Iranian people to replace an autocratic, dictatorial monarchy with a representative quasi-democractic theocratic government. In other words, they threw out their non-religious King, and replaced him with a semi-democratic Islamic state. America, famously, supported the Shah of Iran, the unelected monarch, while covertly discouraging any democratic rumblings in the area. Therein lies the seed of hate and mistrust toward America.

I believe the media, fueled perhaps by the wishful thinking of their audience, is setting up the current protests as a kind of counter-revolution. Americans following on Twitter know little except that a lot of pissed off Iranians are complaining about voter fraud and the government is foolishly cracking down on it all. This casts the government in the role of autocratic fascists, and the people as revolutionaries.

Well, the government of Iran may be autocratic, fascist, theocrats…but they’re Iran’s autocratic, fascist, theocrats. By which I mean, this is their government. They may be unhappy with their governors, but they are not protesting to install a new form of government.

We may imagine, from 6,000 miles away, that the Iranian people are finally fed up and want democracy and representation like we have. Nothing could be further from the truth. America and Iran are in many ways very similar cultures. We have a lot in common and it’s tragic that two countries that should otherwise get along cannot. There are, I think, two core issues driving us apart.

First, the Iranian people simply don’t believe in western-style democracy. Because our democratic traditions are both secular and place a large burden on the electorate. The people of Iran are, as a whole, not particularly interested in the messy business of direct election of representatives. They want participation, not full responsibility. It’s worth noting that this is only one step removed from our system. We don’t directly run the country, we pick people to do that for us. They pick the people who pick the people who run the country.

Furthermore, they don’t believe in the separation of church and state. They do not, as a society, think that Government should be secular. They believe a government that is guided primarily by religious principles and institutions is a virtue. I don’t make an emphasis there because of I think that idea is wrong or misguided, only because of how different it is from our point of view.

When the Iranian people’s secular leadership failed them, when they were fed up with their secular monarch, they took charge. They turned to their religion, Islam, and installed an Islamic government. Their highest official of any sort is the Ayatollah. That’s a clerical title. His official government title is literally, Leader. Colloquially known as the Supreme Leader. Even though he’s the Ayatollah, and an Imam, and the Supreme Leader, he’s still elected. Just not by the people.

There’s a second difference driving a wedge between us. The Iranian people enjoy, as a culture, a tradition of demagoguery that mystifies Westerners.

President Ahmadinejad said recently that what we’re seeing is no different that football hooligans rioting in the streets after a game in England. Taken at face value, this is absurd.

What he was saying, because unlike most Western journalists he has a keen grasp of both the Iranian and Western psyches, is that we do not understand. We’re seeing a cultural tradition that does not mean to us (revolution) what it means to them (outrage and enthusiasm). This is not the first time the Iranian people have taken to the streets en masse and marched and shouted and chanted. And it’s not the first time the West has missed the point. When the people of Iran chant “Death to America!” and call us The Great Satan, we freak out. Our elected officials become reactionary. These are the words of an aggressive, warlike people posing a threat to our security. But westerners who live in Iran say “well, it’s not what you think.” That’s the disconnect. We see that hostility and we say “How can it NOT BE what we think!?” Because this is a different society with different traditions.

We overreact when they say Death To America, and we’re overreacting now. Originally I thought President Obama’s statement in reaction to the elections was far too little. Now I think, it was the right thing to do. Reacting by supporting the protesters, pressuring the current government, advocating for reform is what gets us into trouble there every time. It’s the wrong response. They see it as meddling. Saying “we hope this can be resolved peacefully” and then focusing on the Nuclear Issue is the right way to go.

Previous administrations on both sides of the aisle would look at the current situation and say “now is our chance to support the reform-minded moderates!” And it’s true, there are moderates in Iran who find a theocratic government distasteful and want a western-style democracy. But it is, I think, a mistake…a particularly American mistake…to see the current crisis as an opportunity to support those moderates in order to install a new government that’s more Pro-West.

Because the moderates in Iran are a minority. A minority of upper and upper-middle class citizens disenfranchised by the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. The majority of Iranians favor an Islamic government. President Obama has been famously described as Post-racial. Meaning “of a generation that doesn’t define itself primarily by race.” He’s also post-imperial. And here I don’t mean the British-style, colonial imperialism, I mean the American-style economic imperialism that puts governments in place whether the people want them or not, purely to further our economic interests abroad.

President Obama, as he showed in his Cairo speech, is not interested in that strategy. He is the signal that America is now mature enough as a global power to deal with the representative governments of foreign countries, even when we don’t like those governments. When Hamas won election among the Palestinian Authority, it was a crisis for American Imperialism because our foreign policy was not designed to handle a legitimately elected, theocratic government that was openly hostile to America and Israel. But we must deal with such governments because while we may be ideologically in opposition, we fundamentally believe in the right of the people to govern themselves.

I keep saying “as a culture” because I am speaking here sociologically. Not psychologically. I speak of the character of the nation as a whole, not the individual. For decades Western journalists have been stymied by the contradiction inherent in a people who will take to the streets and chant Death To America! And then ‘in private’ discuss their regret that our two nations must be enemies, but it’s not a contradiction. One is a sociological phenomenon, the other is psychological. The mistake is trying to reconcile them, rather than treat them as two different phenomenon.

The Iranian political system is complex. No one in power is unassailable. The President of Iran is not a dictator, neither is the Ayatollah. Both can be removed from power, though not directly by the people. The most these protests can achieve is the removal of Ayatollah Khamenei from power. I’m not sure what will happen, but this seems likely to me now.

The last independent poll everyone trusted showed Ahmadinejad ahead by a large margin before the election. Many observers and experts believe he may have won. But we’ll never know, because the election was obviously rigged. In other words, the Iranian government may be so incompetant and corrupt that it couldn’t rig an election it’d already won.

It’s that corruption the people are protesting against. Many people support opposition leader Mir-Houssain Mousavi, but not because he’s Pro-west or even Pro-democratic. He’s only microscopically to the left of Ahmadinejad. He still favors strict adherence to Muslim law, and the weaponization of uranium. In other words, he’s not pro-civil rights, and he wants the bomb. He appears to be slightly more lax on women’s rights and other social issues, but it’s not yet clear whether this is political opportunism. Ahmadinejad’s power was weakened because of an economic crisis brought on by the plummeting price of oil, not a social revolution.

The Assembly of experts may remove Khamenei and replace him with Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad may have to step down and give up a position he was democratically elected to because the government tried to first rig the election, then failed to respond properly to the people’s reaction to the rigged election. But Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, Khamenie, Rafsanjani, to us in the West they’re just variations on a theme.

So, support the Iranian people, yes. Put up green avatars and let them know we’re watching and we care what happens. But understand that what we’re all supporting when we do that is greater transparency in the Iranian system, less corruption, more accountability. We’re not supporting a revolution. There is no revolution. The revolution happened 30 years ago and the majority of Iranians are happy with the results.

EDIT: Fareed Zakaria, who’s so handsome and nice he must know what’s he’s talking about, says there’s reason to be optimistic that we’re seeing a sea change in Iranian governmental philosophy.

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