Daniel Pipes on the Iranian elections: “I think it about the best result possible.” The emerging meme on the right (when they even deign to discuss this election) is that the Iranian people woke up on Saturday and realized that they had been living in a sham democracy all along. There is some element of the truth to that, although there is no dispute that things have deteriorated. But, I’d ask the Republicans why they didn’t wake up on Saturday and realize that the Iranian people had never accepted dictatorship. Take a look at the pictures from Teheran. Do those young people look much different than young people in this country? With their westernized clothes and cell phones? Are they not all on Facebook and Twitter? Yes, they are Iranian, and yes, they have different sets of beliefs than American youth. But this is not a country of devils. It’s a country led by some bad people who have some very illiberal ideas on pretty much every topic under the sun. This now includes the idea that you can just make up whatever numbers you want in an 80%-turnout election.
Seeing the people that support democracy out in the streets, the American impulse (speaking, at least, for me) is to want to find some way to support them. Unfortunately, sixteen years before I was born Dwight D. Eisenhower took the other side in a battle for democracy in Iran. He thereby destroyed America’s ability to be of assistance now. Even kind and encouraging words would probably be counterproductive. Think about what a shame that is. Imagine if the Poles and Czechs and East Germans and Hungarian democrats had been unwilling to receive even rhetorical support from the United States when the Berlin Wall was coming down?
Iran used to be a great ally to the United States. Unfortunately, we were not a good ally to them. With some luck, we can both do better in the future. Our two countries would have significant differences under any conceivable systems of government, but our two peoples are not so different and can find much common ground. Let us hope the Iranian democrats find a way to prevail without our help, so that we may be of help to each other in the future.