The Right has a narrative on Iran: bombs away. The Left has a critique of that position as enunciated by Unclaimed Territory. What the Left doesn't have is its own narrative on Iran. This is where I can be of help.

Point 1: The Right's information on Iran comes from very dubious sources. One of the foremost Right authorities on Iran is Amir Taheri, who, as a reader informed me, was once referred to as the Emissary of the Apparatus. This post also discuses how Taheri lied about a story about Iranian Jews being forced to wear yellow stars and even though Juan Cole called him on it he refused to recant.

Not only that, but Taheri has a history of misrepresentation. In his article written after Nejad's letter to the White House, Taheri stated that the Iranians leaked their letter after the White House's dismissive attitude, when, in fact, Wiki had a copy of the letter hours after Nejad wrote it. This was the first time I started becoming reticent about Taheri's work.

Point 2: The Right wants to use Iran as a way to change the entire discourse of failure in the Middle East. Powerline's Open Letter to the President states this Orwellian strategy quite clearly:

You are beset right now, Mr. President, by a sea of troubles [ed: no shit]. Any passive policy will fail; only boldness offers hope. The calculus not just in Iraq, but throughout the region, must be fundamentally changed. Many are counting you out, Mr. President, but the fact is that you still hold the highest cards: the American armed forces. It is time to give the Army, the Marines, and, this time, the Air Force, the order: fix bayonets and prepare to charge. 

Point 3:  The Left's coverage of Iran has been immeasurably better and broader. In this post I looked at two case studies of discussions about Iran and found that both times the Right picked up a story about Iranian reformists and then dropped it, neither time questioning its bombs away strategy. Not only that, but it actually picked up the stories from the Left. As such, the Right overlooked the fact that there is a Velvet Revolution afoot in Iran (yes, we have been hearing that since 1996 but ten years is a very short time if you consider how long it took the Central Europeans to get out of Soviet control).

Point 4:  Iran, domestically, and internationally, is rife with activists and dissidents who are well aware of the evils of the Theocrats and doing something about it. My point is showing this group is that people are doing something about Iran's evils without dropping bombs. In this post (scroll down) we heard about Amir Fakhravar who has written an important collection of writings called "The Prison Papers." In this post we saw an Iranian dissident publicizing a letter by a man whose mother was stoned to death. In this post we heard about Rahim Jahanbegloo, the Iranian Gandhi. In this post we saw an Iranian-American anti-stoning activist take the Iranian regime to task.

Point 5: The most important point. Iranian dissidents do not need or want bombs backing their activism. In Der Speigel, Iranian nobel prize winner Shirin Ebadi stated this very clearly:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you seeking help from the international community?

Ebadi: It's the people of Iran that have to gain their own freedom and human rights improvements. Military action or other punishments against Iran will make the situation for political reformists and human rights advocates in Iran a lot more difficult. I don't think that Iranian human rights advocates need help of that sort from the governments of the West. But I expect people in the West to support freedom-seekers in Iran.

Mehrangiz Kar, another Iranian lawyer, said the same thing on her website when she argued that reforms will have to come from the Iranian people who would have to do this by getting the power to vote freely (she makes no mentions of bombs):

Regardless of its specific manifestations, stoning has often been used to undermine the credibility of Iranian governments. Every time someone wants to undermine Iran’s national interests, a documentary or fictional movie about stoning is screened somewhere. And it is not easy for the Iranian people to change these laws. So long as people cannot freely elect their lawmakers, and the Guardian Council continues to screen candidates, it is not easy to repeal the stoning law. Only through free elections would Iran’s laws get in synch with the necessities of the time. But one cannot wait until that happens. Something must be done.

Point 6: The American Media has bought into the "we must demonize Iran at all costs" strategy. Khatami's speech at Harvard got attention from the Right not for how anti-Ahmedinejad it was, but how much CAIR supported it. The Right could have actually focused on Iranian activists who had their own reasons for criticizing Khatami -- namely, he wasn't reformist enough -- but this would have meant actually supporting someone who does proactive work for Iran.

Then when the Holocaust conference went down, the Media once again focused on making Iran look as bad as possible. The fact that Khatami stated that the holocaust was a historical reality was buried away and largely uncovered. Those initiatives made by American Leftists at Emory University which pro-actively tackle the problem of disinformation of the holocaust were never even brought up in the media. Then, the straw that broke the camel's back for me, was the fact that a week prior to the holocaust conference, the Iranian clerics had met with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent to blow holes in Jihadi tactics."

Point 7: The Left has to understand and promote the fact that there are ways for dealing with problems in Iran -- and that the Left does have to do something about these problems because when the Left remains silent the Right starts screaming for bombs. Email and letter writing campaigns like this one -- the kind of stuff that the Left excels in -- help get activists involved at the global level. In fact, when I launched that initiative, close to 90 different left blogs linked to it (and one Right one). It isn't just stoning where such pressure can be exacted. Working with Muslim and Persian ethnicity groups is another way for the Left to seek positive change in Iran. Working with Muslims will not immediately make you any less secular humanist; you can still make plenty of critiques of the perversions of religiosity in Iran. There are many opportunities for pro-active initiatives in Iran. For example, after an important cleric imposed a death fatwa on a journalist, we at Eteraz.org were able to write a pointed letter directed at the cleric. Why wasn't this picked up by the big boys on the Left? My guess is because the Left does not have a narrative on Iran.

But it should.

Part 2 available here.