Rethinking America's Iran Strategy

Three decades of assumptions about Iran -- including the premises behind Washington's recent outreach to Tehran -- have been transformed by its stunning uprising. It's time for a policy rethink.

The Obama administration's offer to engage was the right idea. But the theocracy's brutal crackdown on the opposition since the June 12 presidential election, followed by the purge of senior politicians in show trials and an alarming increase in general executions, marks a turning point for Iran's revolution. U.S. policy now needs a broader approach. Recent history offers relevant guidelines.

The three most important revolutions of the 20th century -- for their political innovation and impact -- happened in the Soviet Union, China and Iran. At the peak of revolutionary paranoia, the Soviet Union and China witnessed turmoil similar to what is happening today in Iran. Soon afterward, however, Moscow and Beijing altered course. Both began the move from defiant revolutionary regime to a normal state willing to work within the international order and mended relations with the United States.

The shift in both the Soviet Union and China was partly tied to the maturation of revolutions, as Crane Brinton outlined in "The Anatomy of Revolution," which leads to the final stage of "convalescence" that plays out over years, even decades. The Islamic Republic is on the same trajectory. Its current uprising pits those trying to transform Iran into a normal state against unrelenting revolutionaries. The men and women now on trial have made the transition, in varying degrees, in their political thinking.

In their civil disobedience since June, millions of Iranians also have indicated that they're ready for normalcy. The U.S. should now factor them into policy.

The pattern of revolutions suggests, however, that a catalyst is required to trigger the critical transition. The spark has traditionally been one of three factors: a geo-strategic challenge, economic necessity or political exigency. In other words, a revolution needing to convert an enemy into an ally to survive.

In the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin launched show trials of Communist Party officials from 1936 to 1938, when vast numbers were dispatched to gulags or executed. Yet pressure from the Nazi threat combined with the costs of war spawned a U.S.-Soviet alliance and Stalin's meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Stalin was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who started de-Stalinization. The revolution's later undoing began after Mikhail Gorbachev concluded that the Soviet system of political control was no longer viable in the information-based global economy and that basic changes were essential to survive.