Iran, Bolivia and the Fork in the Road

This week when massive public protests broke out in Tehran I found myself not far away, in another Muslim nation but a very different one, Turkey.

While people all over the world this week have watched and debated the unexpected implications of 100,000 people taking to the streets -- in Turkey, a place where women wear headscarves and Mosques blare the call to workshop from tall and ancient minarets, the demand for freedom by a Muslim people echoed all the more powerfully.

And let's be clear, what young people in Iran are facing down gunfire and beatings to demand is Freedom. How then will we as people and our governments as the people's representatives respond?

Obama and the Politics and Tongue Biting

Few governments have a trickier tightrope to walk than the one in Washington.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran thirty years ago was a direct response to Washington. The rule of the ruthless Shah was the direct product of President Eisenhower's CIA. The Iranian coup in 1953 was the U.S.'s first post-war experiment with covert regime change on the cheap and it worked so well the CIA soon repeated the experience in Guatemala.

Given that history it is no surprise that the 1979 revolution targeted the U.S. embassy in Iran and no surprise that the U.S. has been branded there the Great Satan ever since, under successive U.S. Presidents of both parties. President Bush's offerings about the Axis of Evil and hints at more regime change helped strengthen the political hand of hardliners, including President Ahmadinejad.

I have no doubt that President Obama would love nothing more than to make lofty declarations in support of the opposition protests and I am certain as well that he knows that the moment he does so he will be pulling the Persian carpet right out from underneath that opposition, addling unintended legitimacy to charges by the Iranian government that the protests have been fabricated by Washington, as they were in the 1953 coup.

So Mr. Obama, playing mature political chess, opts for wisdom over the easy shot.

Morales and the Politics of Strategic Alliances

Having just spent a week also in a tiny republic (Georgia) where people live in genuine fear of foreign tanks (Russian), I am also reminded of how most diplomacy is not so much about the words people use but the strategic alliances they seek.

And here is where Bolivia enters from stage left to take on its own bit part in the Iranian drama that has captured global attention. Since taking office Bolivian President Evo Morales has made closer and closer relations with the government of Iran, a policy with important implications.

Some may recall that right after Ahmadinejad's infamous September 2007 "we have no homosexuals" speech at Colombia University in New York, his next stop was La Paz for a state visit with Evo.

On the surface, it isn't hard to see what the politics were that brought Iran's leader to the Andes. One obvious motivation, for both leaders, was about the U.S. and the Bush administration in particular. By cozying up to anti-Bush leaders in Latin America, most notably Morales and President Chavez of Venezuela, Iran was widening the playing field for its power moves aimed at challenging U.S. power, in this case in Washington's so-called "political backyard."

Similarly the Iranian move helped Morales underscore his intention to chart a diplomatic course of his own choosing, independent of U.S. desires. Morales and others in the Bolivian government have repeatedly said that they have the right to have relations with whomever they want.

Bolivia, like the U.S., has a right to establish relations that advance its national interest. For Bolivia that interest also included access to Iranian experience in managing an oil industry and also some foreign assistance. Reporter Tyler Bridges reported recently on one of those projects, construction of a milk factory in Achacachi.

To be certain, these Bolivian/Iranian relations have caused consternation in Washington. If you speak to those who travel in serious diplomatic circles there you will hear quickly that, given Iran's positions in the high stakes diplomatic games of nuclear proliferation, proximity to both U.S. Mideast wars, and the politics of oil, Bolivia's relations with Iran mean a whole lot more to the U.S. than the coca leaf.

But how different is it for Bolivia to seek out its self-interest with Iran than it is for the U.S. to have such close economic relations with China -- already a nuclear power and not exactly a human rights haven.

But What About Human Rights?

All this, up to now, is just about the diplomatic game of nations pursuing their perceived self-interest. That is what nation's do, big and small.

But as citizens of nations our concerns must be wider than that. There is also a role, a critical role, of looking as global citizens beyond the game of national self-interest to the moral stakes involved -- human rights, freedom, genuine democracy.

And if Evo and those loyal to him who consider themselves champions of the people cannot see clearly where freedom sides in this battle, they aren't looking.

First, were the Iranian elections last week rigged?

The British daily newspaper, the Guardian, had the best breakdown I have seen. I picked up a copy in the London airport this morning on my snaking way home to Cochabamba. In the province of East Azserbaijan, home of the leading opposition candidate, Hossein Mousavi, Preident Ahmadinejad mysteriously increased his percentage of the vote from 10% for years ago to 57% last week. In another province Ahmadinejad increased his vote percentage from 9% in 2005 to 71% last week. The fraud here isn't even subtle.

Second, which side is the side of freedom?

Evo and those loyal to him should easily recognize the dynamics at play in the streets or Iran this week. The government is shooting people. Opposition leaders are arrested. Protests are repressed rather than permitted. This is Banzer in the Water War and Sanchez de Lozada in October 2003.

And anyone who has been in the streets when a government decides to use violence aganst its people (I have) understands how courageous the Iranian people are who continue to go to those streets to press their demand for a genuine election instead of a sham.

So it comes down to this. Bolivia does not need to pull the plug on a milk factory in the altiplano. It doesn't have to turn away offers of technical assistance (badly needed) on how to run a state-owned energy operation. It can have fine relations with the Iranian people.

But when the leaders of Latin America's leftist wave, Evo included, take stock of what their erstwhile ally, Mr. Ahmadinejad, is up to at home, let us hope that their response is more thoughtful than "anyone critical of the U.S. is a friend to us."

Human beings risking their lives in the defense of democracy and the dream of freedom, deserve something less blind than that, at least if not more.

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