I want to thank the commission for asking me to testify
about this very important topic. Because of the absence of
diplomatic relations between our two countries since 1980,
only a small number of American journalists and no
American officials have recent on the ground experience in
Iran. I have been fortunate to visit Iran six times since
1996 and have also closely followed U.S. policy toward
Iran during this period.
Let me also add that I approach this subject from the
perspective of having lived in two other countries that
experienced violent revolutions and were, at one time,
bitter adversaries of the United States. I was an exchange
student in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s and worked
as a journalist in China in the early 1980s. In both
cases, a change in U.S. policy toward engagement and
recognition led to an improvement in living standards and
to some extent, personal freedoms in those countries.
Iran's human rights record also improved somewhat during
the late 1990s while a reformist president was in power
and tensions between the United States and Iran eased.
Repression in Iran has intensified, however, as hardline
elements returned to power in Tehran in 2004 and 2005. In
my view, it is not coincidental that this shift followed
President Bush's designation of Iran as a member of an
"axis of evil" in 2002 and his rejection of an Iranian
offer for comprehensive negotiations in 2003. These
actions embarrassed the reformist government of President
Mohammad Khatami, which had cooperated with the United
States in Afghanistan in 2001 in part in hopes that that
would lead to improved relations with Washington. While
Iran's human rights record during the Khatami presidency
was by no means spotless, the record under his successor
has been far worse. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became
president in 2005, and especially in the past year,
executions have increased and so have arrests of students,
women activists and labor organizers. Innocent
Iranian-Americans, including my good friend and mentor,
Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson Center, have been
thrown in prison on bogus charges of promoting a so-called
velvet revolution in Iran.
![USIP Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin testifies before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on human rights and religious freedom in Iran.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20081107235050im_/http://www.usip.org/congress/images/slavin_testifies.jpg)
The U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the
administration's highly ideological democracy promotion
campaign have also contributed to the Iranian crackdown on
dissent. President Bush frequently expresses concern about
ordinary Iranians. But his overtures to "the Iranian
people," when combined with a refusal to acknowledge the
legitimacy of the Iranian government, pre-emptive military
action against Iraq and threats of such action against
Iran, have convinced Tehran that the Bush administration
seeks the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime. Such
comments as Bush's pledge, during his 2005 second
Inaugural address to "stand with" Iranians as they stand
for their own liberty, and his decision to spend several
hundred million dollars on democracy programs have
backfired. They have given the Iranian government pretexts
to clamp down on civil society and made it difficult for
Iranians to accept U.S. government funds. U.S. rhetoric
threatening to attack Iran because of its nuclear program
has also hurt civil society in Iran. In a climate in which
an American president talks of "World War III" if Iran
acquires nuclear weapons knowhow, Iranians who criticize
their leadership are vulnerable to charges of treason.
At this late date in the Bush presidency, it is difficult
to see a way in which this administration might positively
impact the human rights climate in Iran. A new U.S.
administration, however, will have an opportunity for a
more creative approach.
The next U.S. president should certainly continue to
affirm support for democracy and human rights, but express
confidence in the ability of Iranians to reform their
government on their own. The noted Iranian dissident Akbar
Ganji has said repeatedly that the most helpful thing the
U.S. government and U.S. human rights groups can do is to
publicize rights abuses in Iran but stop threatening to
change the regime by force. As a first step, the next
administration could reaffirm the 1981 Algiers accords
which ended the 1979-81 hostage crisis. Under this
agreement, the United States promised not to interfere in
the internal affairs of Iran. Instead of allocating money
explicitly for democracy promotion, the next U.S.
administration could spend more on scholarships for
Iranians to study here and for Americans to study in Iran.
It would also be helpful to lift blanket Treasury
Department restrictions on American nongovernmental
organizations that seek to do humanitarian work in Iran
and which do not espouse an obvious political agenda.
To support increased contacts between the two countries
and give U.S. officials a better understanding of the
impact of their policies, it would be extremely helpful to
have U.S. diplomats in Iran to process visas for Iranians
seeking to travel here. At present, Iranians must travel
twice to Dubai or Turkeyfirst to apply for a visa and
then to obtain onebefore they can come to the United
States. This is expensive and cumbersome and opens
Iranians to additional scrutiny by Iran's security
services. In an interview two years ago, President
Ahmadinejad told me that he would consider allowing U.S.
consular officials in Iran if the United States accepted
direct flights between New York and Tehran. This was
something that Ahmadinejad proposed in early 2006.
However, the Bush administration never replied.
U.S. officials could also acknowledge that American
actions in the prosecution of the war on terror have
undermined the U.S. ability to promote human rights
abroad. When I interviewed former Iranian President Akhbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2005, he said that because of U.S.
human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the
United States had "lost the moral platform" from which to
judge others. In a recent op ed in the British newspaper,
the Guardian, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
made a similar remark. Mottaki also criticized the United
States for rejecting the outcome of democratic elections
in Algeria in the early 1990s and more recently, in
Palestine.
Iran, with all its faults, is more pluralistic and less
oppressive than many U.S. allies in the region, including
Saudi Arabia. Iran is entering an election cycle that may
produce leaders who are more pragmatic and less
repressive. At a minimum, U.S. officials should refrain
from rhetoric and actions that could intensify a climate
of hostility and fear in Iran. Like China and the Soviet
Union, Iran will inevitably change. Its revolutionary
character has already faded considerably over the past
three decades. Its population is overwhelmingly young,
literate and aware of the outside world. Iranians need
encouragement from established democracies, not lectures.
That encouragement will be most effective if it comes from
a country that has shown an ability to recognize its own
mistakes and correct its record on human rights. The
United States has always led best when it has led by
example. Thank you very much.