Sobre Marx e o Irão

Leitura recomendada: Trust in Marx: To Undermine Tehran, Leave It Alone, por Uriah Kriegel, no Tech Central Station.

Karl Marx wasn't right about much. But one thing he did get right is the social dynamic leading to political revolution. Genuine revolutions, Marx noted, do not take place in a friendly environment amenable to gradual and piecemeal reform. They are the result of widespread dissatisfaction so strongly suppressed that it eventually erupts, like an overblown balloon, in acts of revolutionary violence and fervor.

In a wonderful historical twist, this piece of Marxist-Leninist wisdom may be the key to the undoing of the Iranian theocracy. But to make it so, the US must play it clever and ignore the Iranian government's repeated provocations.###

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The formula is simple and well known by now: generate a confrontation with the world's most powerful nation. A decision by the latter to lead an international campaign of sanctions, which would hurt the Iranian populace rather than governance, would be particularly helpful!

Breaking the UN seals on Isfahan nuclear facility and resuming uranium conversion -- effectively Ahmadinejad's first act in office -- is designed to generate just that. The egregious and unapologetic audacity of the act is supposed to be especially provocative, a clever attempt to stir passions. Apparently, the tactic is already working: the Iranian on the street has been riling behind his government, protesting the injustice of the harsher treatment the Iranian nuclear program receives than the Israeli one ever did.

Our best bet is to ignore the Iranian provocations altogether: not even issue a formal condemnation. We should put our faith in the Marxian mechanism of boiling, seething internal unrest and its revolutionary outburst. Once the Iranians are left alone, left to turn inward and focus on the scope and depth of their own illness, nothing good can happen to the ayatollahs.

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In any event, if an Iranian nuclear capability does become a practical and imposing possibility in the future, a targeted air strike (American or Israeli) is always an option. But it being an option need not be a talking point of the Bush diplomatic team. Talk of all options being "on the table" may be counter-productive in the present context. All options are in fact on the table, but this fact need not be part of the diplomatic strategy for handling Tehran. The strategy should rather be consistent and manifest disregard of its provocations.