Regime Change in Iran?

Sunday's New York Times had an article explaining how the United States has now started to increase its funding of Iranian opposition groups abroad and pro-opposition radio broadcasts within Iran. According to the article

the Voice of America increased the time it broadcasts its government-financed satellite programs into Iran, now repeating its one-hour news program four times a day. Voice of America said a recent telephone survey in Iran, where satellite dishes are widespread though banned, showed that 10 percent of respondents said they watched the program.

Broadcasts this month included interviews with a student leader and a well-known poet and political activist who criticized Iranian clerics for barring hundreds of candidates from the presidential election next month.

According to officials in the State Department and administration, they are taking some of their inspiration from the events of the past year in Ukraine where "the United States gave money to opposition and pro-democracy groups, some of which later supported the peaceful overthrow of the governments in power." Even so, officials acknowledge that the conditions and factors in the two cases are very different.

Conventional wisdom states that a majority of the Iranian public (especially the youth) is fed up with their fundamentalist and theocratic government which is perceived as contributing to underdevelopment and a stagnant economy. This attitude is reflected in the election of perceived reformists (and the subsequent disqualification of many of them by the conservative clerics). The important principle for the United States to remember is that regime change is always more powerful and popular when it comes from a grass-roots movement inside the country. As the United States moves to fund dissident groups abroad it should make sure that these groups have a base of support within the country so that they can avoid a repeat of the mistake they made during the Iraq war of trusting Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, a group composed of Iraqi exiles that were not an accurate reflection of Iraq and that had little support within Iraq. Also, The United States should not assume that a reformist government or one supported by the student dissidents will stop the nuclear program. As a second weekend New York Times article points out, even Iranian opponents of the current regime believe that pursuing Nuclear energy (though not necessarily nuclear weapons) is the right of Iran and attempts to stop it are viewed as imperialistic meddling in the affairs of Iran.