Ever since President George W Bush declared the country to be part of his ‘axis of evil’, the debate about ‘regime change’ in Iran has been top of the international political agenda. With the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ongoing confrontation about the country’s attempts to enrich uranium, many wonder whether a democratic Iran is not only desirable but feasible. Should the West promote democracy in Iran? If so, what kind of democracy should this be, and what are the best ways of doing so?
Civic Mobilisation
Jack DuVall
Democracy in Iran is not authentic, because political dissent is punished by imprisonment and torture, and an unelected religious council can arbitrarily veto parliamentary candidates and laws. Changing these conditions is necessary for real democracy.
More repressive conditions than these have been overcome in more than 30 countries by nonviolent civilian-based resistance. Through movements using strikes, boycotts, mass protests and civil disobedience, the apparatus and control of undemocratic rulers have been disrupted, until they held fair elections or were forced out. In Poland, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, and Serbia, autocrats were evicted with nonviolent strategies.
In Iran, alienated groups include students, women, merchants, technical and industrial workers, and ethnic minorities. Strikes and protests are frequent but uncoordinated. Yet sufficient latent support exists for a unified movement to compel changes. Requests from indigenous groups for international assistance in the form of knowledge and training in civic mobilization should be fulfilled, to enable the Iranian people themselves to establish real democracy.
Jack DuVall is co-author of A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2001), and president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.   A Policy of Engagement
Shireen Hunter
The democracy discourse in Iran is far more advanced than in the Arab world. Even the defective democracy of the last twenty five years, which has been deficient in guaranteeing the basic human rights of its citizens, has instilled certain habits in the Iranians that bode well for prospects for democracy in that country. As of yet, Iran does not have the powerful militaries of the Arab world or Pakistan, which control all political life.
Under these circumstances, the worst thing that could happen to the prospects of democracy in Iran would be a military strike against that country by a Western coalition.
This would lead to the ascendancy of the military, possibly even a military takeover, and the consolidation of the conservatives' power. Moreover, preoccupied with national and territorial survival, the Iranians will relegate struggle for democracy to a secondary objective, because freedom without a country to be free in has no meaning or value.
By contrast, a policy of engagement, however difficult it may appear now, is the best way to advance democracy in Iran.
Shireen Hunter is Director of the Carnegie Project on Reformist Islam at Georgetown University.
