Newsday.com: Rice's Iran plan is heavy-handed

Newsday.com: Rice's Iran plan is heavy-handed

But public diplomacy makes sense

February 22, 2006

International pressure to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons hasn't worked. Neither have economic incentives and threats of sanctions. In that context, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's proposed $75-million initiative - to expand U.S. broadcasts in the Farsi language and fund Iranian dissidents, pro-democracy groups and labor unions opposing the rule of the mullahs - could be seen as an attempt to bring another kind of pressure to bear on Tehran.

As a form of public diplomacy to reach out to the Iranian people, this is a welcome change. Keeping a frozen official distance from Iran was always the wrong policy. But the proposal to fund dissident groups openly is a singularly ham-handed attempt at regime change that could backfire. It's long been known that pro-democracy groups and their supporters in Iran would be discredited if they were publicly linked to the Great Satan. Worse yet, that open linkage would give Iran's secret police agencies an excuse to crack down brutally on them as enemies of the state, charging their leaders with subversion.

In her proposal to spend $75 million to promote democracy in Iran, Rice should focus on improving and expanding the Voice of America's television and radio broadcasts, which have gained a considerable audience there. That's part of the funding she requested, and that's fine. But to tell the world of U.S. plans to undermine the Iranian mullahs' powerful clerocratic rule by funding dissident groups, academics and labor unions is an obtuse policy. During the Cold War, Washington funneled secret funds to anti-Soviet dissident groups like the Polish labor unions. It worked there. But those were covert support operations, never disclosed in public. Get a grip, please.