Weakening the mullahs is the best defense against an Iranian bomb.
With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now inaugurated for another four-year term, President Barack Obama is surely tempted to go back to seeking negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. But these negotiations will not yield results and will only strengthen Ahmadinejad’s hold on power. Instead, the United States should try a radically different policy: It should propose a conversation with Iran about human rights.
Since the rigged presidential election, Tehran has continued its ruthless crackdown on political dissent. The regime initiated mass trials against more than 100 people associated with the post-election protests. Convictions would carry a death sentence.
Other members of the opposition have already been imprisoned, tortured and forced to provide false confessions that they were acting as foreign spies. All of this comes on the heels of the violent suppression of the massive protests that left at least 26 people dead.
In this context, negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program would not only be inappropriate, they would also be counterproductive. Events in the last few months have revealed serious fault lines in Iran—both within the regime, as well as between the regime and the opposition. Nuclear talks would allow Ahmadinejad to divert attention away from these fault lines and the grievances that caused them. The Iranian people, proud and patriotic as they are, would in large part rally behind Ahmadinejad as he defends Iran’s right to nuclear power and weapons—a right in which even many Iranian moderates believe.
But a conversation about human rights would do just the opposite. Under such a plan, Mr. Obama would announce that recent developments in Iran have sparked such concern about the basic rights of the Iranian people that he is setting aside talks about the nuclear issue to focus on talks about civil rights. He would propose a framework in which the U.S. would offer incentives—such as the gradual lifting of sanctions—in exchange for concrete steps towards greater protection of Iranian basic rights. The idea is similar in principle to Sen. Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson’s push for introducing human rights as a component of our negotiations with the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
The effect on the political dynamics inside Iran would be profound. Ahmadinejad would face a clear choice: Accept the framework and risk providing Iranians with the very freedoms that could undermine his totalitarian regime; or, more likely, reject the framework and incur the wrath of Iran’s democrats.
A majority of the Iranian people want greater protection for human rights and better relations with the West. Here would be an opportunity for them to have both. Proposing these talks would shine a spotlight on the fundamental thuggishness of the regime, whether Ahmadinejad agrees to them or not.
Ironically, by declining to talk about nuclear weapons, the U.S. actually stands a better chance of resolving that very issue. The regime will never voluntarily give up its nuclear program, no matter how many carrots Mr. Obama offers. A nuclear weapon would go a long way toward inoculating the Iranian regime from outside threats, leaving it better-positioned to bully its neighbors and conduct its domestic affairs as it sees fit.
And if the Iranians have learned anything from North Korea’s experience over the past decade, it is that the international community is too feckless to prevent rogue regimes from going nuclear. In fact, nuclear weapons would only make the world even more inclined to shower the regime with inducements.
So the nuclear issue will go away only when this regime does. Shifting the focus to human rights is helpful in that respect, since it weakens the mullahs and accelerates real democratic change.
Mr. Benard, a New York attorney, has worked at the Department of Defense and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
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