A new poll taken inside Iran reveals the thoughts of Green protesters.
I'm a little late in getting to it, but this piece by Steven Kull from the ever-useful WorldPublicOpinion.org brings some internal Iranian polling to bear on the question:
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of Iranians--conducted by native Farsi speakers calling into Iran, thus bypassing any possible government controls--reveals that large majorities continue to support the Iranian system.Naturally this raises the question of whether people are answering honestly in an autocratic environment where people are being imprisoned for protesting against the government. But we can focus just on those who were brave enough to say that they did vote for the opposition candidate Mousavi. Presumably they are being frank in response to other questions as well....
...More important, they express support for the Iranian system. Fifty-three percent say that a body of religious scholars should have the right to overturn laws they believe are contrary to the Koran. Two thirds say they trust the government in Tehran to do the right thing at least some of the time. Majorities say they have some confidence in the Guardian Council (55%) and the President (62%).
Furthermore, even if these people were to have a powerful influence over Iranian foreign policy it would not signal a transformation of US-Iranian relations. Only 35 percent say they trust Obama, and majorities have pernicious assumptions about US goals such as the belief that the US is hostile to Islam (68%). Like the rest of the sample, less than half say they oppose attacks on US troops in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
Perhaps most significant, only 43 percent say they would be ready to give up enriching uranium in exchange for removing sanctions.
One of the problems I have with Andrew Sullivan's analysis of the Green Movement is that it seems to discount how the U.S. actually engages with the Middle East. A revolution, should it occur, would only occur in Iran, not the United States. We would continue to hold the same set of interests in a post-revolutionary Iran as we have in a pre-revolutionary one. Ambivalence about the prospects of a Green Revolution has nothing to do with frissons but the simple reality that, when it comes to the Middle East, Washington only cares about a country's geopolitical orientation, not the form of its government.
Is that going to change should the Green Wave wash the Supreme Leader & Company out to sea? I'm doubtful.
An Iran run by the prospective leaders of the Green Movement would still have to renounce terrorism against Israel, stop aiding Hezbollah and Hamas, forswear nuclear weapons, end arm shipments to sympathetic Shia groups inside Iraq and generally accommodate itself to American and Israeli primacy in the Persian Gulf in order to meet the standard for good relations set by Washington.
Perhaps Washington would respond to a less authoritarian Iran by moderating (or at least, placing on the back burner) some of its demands, and trying to find a modus-vivendi that does not require Iran to completely reorient its entire foreign policy in one fell swoop. But I don't think it very likely. Instead, as in Russia, the euphoria of a democratic transition will collide with the grim reality of conflicting strategic interests.
Update: Daniel Larison studies the WPO findings as well:
The detail that even a majority of admitted Mousavi supporters does not endorse the key claims of the Green movement is remarkable, and so it will probably be dismissed out of hand by pro-Green enthusiasts. If that figure is correct, however, it makes the breadth and depth of the Green movementâ??s support even more questionable. It would mean that most of the people who are willing to identify themselves as supporters of the leading opposition figure do not accept even the most basic critiques of the election and Ahmadinejad that were at the heart of the movement that claims to represent them.
The bottom line right now is that we're trying to construct a puzzle without all the pieces and without a clear picture of what the end design is supposed to look like. In such an environment, it's hard to fault the administration for not running in guns blazing.
(AP Photos)
