When It Comes To Protests Abroad, America Needs The Prime Directive

The year 2017 began on the streets, and on the streets is where it ended. The year’s opening saw tens of thousands of Americans take the streets in protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump, first at the J20 protests on Inauguration Day, and then at the Women’s March the following day. The year ended with many more people marching on streets half a world away, as many people across Iran came out in protest against poor economic conditions in their country. The object of January’s protests was quick to come out against the ones that broke out in December- Donald Trump went on Twitter, and in his usual fashion blustered about how the US was watching Iran for human rights violations, implying that the US was ready to intervene on the side of the protestors if necessary. Many of the liberal-minded people who marched against Trump might actually be inclined to agree with him here- after all, isn’t Iran a dangerous theocracy, a rogue state and enemy of the United States? Of course its people want democracy right? Well, as it usually is in this situation, the truth is something quite different. As with many other protest movements in other countries, the American government and media either misunderstands or intentionally distorts what many of these protests are about, and the best thing Americans can do for the goals of these protestors is to stay the hell out of it.

I realize that it is ironic that, as an American, I am about to try to tell you what it is the Iranian protests are about while writing this article about how the protests are being misunderstood by Americans, but nonetheless, this is what I will do. The first thing that many actually experienced Iran observers and analysts have noticed is the differences between these recent protests and the last major unrest in the country, the 2009 Green Movement that arose in response to perceived electoral fraud in the reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Those protests were mostly centered in Tehran and other urban centers, involving younger, upwardly mobile middle-class Iranians. These protests, by contrast, began in smaller, more rural areas of the country, traditionally poorer and less developed. These areas have provided the political base for conservative Iranian politicians like Ahmadinejad or 2017 presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi, and are economically depressed in the way that Rust Belt states that voted for Donald Trump are. The nature of their grievances is largely economic in nature, they resent the uneven growth of the Iranian economy that they see as benefiting business owners and clerics (many of whom are economically intertwined), as well as the budget cuts and privatization measures carried out by the “reformist” government of President Hassan Rouhani. That said, as the protests have dragged on, chants have been heard directed even against the Supreme Leader of the country, Ali Khamenei, suggesting the protests may yet take on a more dangerous character for the regime.

In the mainstream American media, figures of dubious credibility have taken this opportunity to show their “solidarity” with the “Iranian people.” This has been particularly absurd coming from the likes of neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol, who has been a hardline advocate of sanctions which have contributed to these protesters’ economic woes in the first place, not to mention having supported outright military attack on the country in order to bring about regime change. Liberal figures such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times may not be as overtly hostile or hypocritical in their stance, but he still misunderstands the nature of current Iranian society or what the protests are trying to accomplish. He implies that these protests want to move Iran towards a more secular, liberal society as Americans understand it, comparing them to Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan for Saudi Arabia. Friedman neglects to mention that in many respects even under clerical rule Iran has a thriving secular society in the arts, youth culture, music, and cinema that is recognized the world over. Iran’s cleric-run national education system, while certainly far from ideal, is actually more advanced in its teaching of science and the theory of evolution than many parts of the “secular” United States! The elite consensus in the United States is often that when it comes to pro-democracy movements abroad, the “freedom” they want translates into the Washington economic consensus of budget cuts and privatization, which in the case of Iran is literally the opposite of what the protesters want by all indication.

The television series Star Trek had a concept called the Prime Directive. It meant that when the crew of the Enterprise visited a new planet, they were strictly forbidden from interfering with its development. When it comes to these protests Americans should abide by this principle. The protesters who came out in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi did not want to see their country be essentially divided into three parts and see the return of open-air slave markets in Benghazi. No, they wanted the restoration of social services and infrastructure that Gaddafi’s government had cut in recent years (at the request of western leaders and financial institutions that later cheered his overthrow). People in these countries should not be discouraged from taking to the streets, far from it. But the guiding principle of how Americans react to these protests should be to let the people themselves decide what they want, how they want to change their own societies. Intervention has shown over and over again that it can only make things worse, and if we do not want to burn even more goodwill in the eyes of the world, we should show the world that instead of empty phrases saying we “support the people” of Iran, or Tunisia, or Libya, that we actually prove it by not imposing ourselves on these peoples’ struggle for liberation and a decent life.