Zehra Zaidi was a Conservative candidate for the European Parliament in South West England at last year's elections and has been a development consultant on governance and democratisation for UNICEF and the British Council. She has also acted as an adviser to Andrew Mitchell, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.
As I write this, it is unclear what the future holds for Iran. Internal politics in Iran are on a knife edge and internationally, the regime in Tehran is locked in a game of cat and mouse with the West over the extent of its nuclear enrichment programme. Both issues are interlinked. Western powers have been careful not to be seen as interfering in domestic Iranian politics to avoid jeopardising negotiations over the nuclear programme, as well as the groundswell of support in Iran for the reform movement.
President Ahmadinejad and his allies, however, regard prolonged negotiations as a useful tool to silence critics of the increasingly repressive regime. At the same time, the regime promotes the nuclear programme domestically in the hope that by restoring a sense of national pride and achievement, it will gloss over the increasingly acute economic problems of rising inflation and unemployment.
So far, dialogue between Western allies and Tehran has focused on the nuclear issue but with dialogue not bearing fruit (except for giving the Tehran regime more time potentially to surreptitiously develop its nuclear programme), the time may have come to get tough and impose strong, smart sanctions and to even widen the debate to issues of domestic and regional security. Here I shall explore these issues in turn.
Iran’s descent into civil chaos
The Tehran regime has brutally clamped down on the opposition Green Movement protests which engulfed the entire country after the death of leading reformist cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri on 20th December 2009. His death happened to occur at the start of the religious month of Muharram when Shiite Muslims mourn the death of Hussain, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson at the Battle of Karbala in 680AD and which symbolises the struggle against oppression and tyrannical government. It re-energised the supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi since the summer uprising against the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But now the struggle is no longer simply about votes. People are fighting for human dignity and freedom, justice and respect for the rule of law.
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