Don’t forget the Iranians who have gone up against the regime

Do not forget Iran. Remember Neda. If there are green-clad protests in Tehran this weekend — to mark the first anniversary of the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole — they will doubtless again be crushed with casual brutality by the thugs of the Basij militia, the secret police and the Revolutionary Guard.

Faced with violent repression, the green movement is a long way down — but not out. Iran will never again be the country it was before the election of June 12, 2009. In the great demonstration three days later, everything was changed. In the subsequent repression, a terrible beauty was born. The historical process may take years, but one day, as the economy worsens and discontent spreads to more sections of society, the movement will be back in force, though perhaps in a different form. Eventually, there will be statues in Iran of Neda Agha-Soltan — the young woman shot dead in one of the early mass demonstrations — and other memorials to the martyrs of this struggle for freedom.

We should also never forget that this is a self-generated movement from within a Muslim society, dedicated to transforming the contemporary world’s longest-running and still most formidable Islamist regime into something very different.

If you want to get a sense of the agony and ecstasy of Iran over the last year, read “Death to the Dictator!” by Afsaneh Moqadam. It tells the story of the stolen election and attempted green revolution through the experience of one young man, Mohsen, who is caught up in the excitement of the protests but then detained, tortured and repeatedly raped by his jailers. The larger political narrative is vividly and knowledgeably woven around this central biographical thread. One thing that emerges very clearly is the vital role of women, which Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has also written about. Mohsen’s mother herself joined the protests, independently of the men in her family, and we understand that for her this was a double emancipation. “Afsaneh Moqadam” is a pseudonym, and some names and details have been changed to protect those involved, but I have spoken to the author and am left in no doubt that this harrowing account is closely based on a true story.

Then go on YouTube to watch the American film “For Neda.” The film is a bit too schmaltzy for my taste, but well worth seeing, with some brave reporting by Saeed Kamali Deghan, who returned to Iran to film interviews with Neda’s family. Despite the regime’s efforts to block it, many people in Iran have reportedly viewed it online.

Finally, look at Amnesty International’s latest report on Iran, with its sober catalogue of arrests, torture and numerous executions.

Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and other Western powers this weekmanaged to push another round of sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. Despite being watered down at the behest of Russia and China, these do further tighten the screws on the regime, including some of the leaders and enterprises of the Revolutionary Guard. But the sanctions are related only to the nuclear issue, not to human rights.

Two questions arise: What is the best way to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb? And how will possible strategies on the nuclear issue interact with the country’s tortured internal politics? I doubt very much whether any sanctions acceptable to China will be strong enough to stop Iran from getting to the nuclear weapon threshold. They will, however, worsen the country’s economic situation and therefore potentially increase the social discontent that feeds opposition.

Some say the West should have responded more favorably to the recent Turkish-Brazilian proposal to take a chunk of Iran’s low-enriched uranium outside the country. I don’t think that would have stopped Iran moving covertly to the nuclear weapon threshold, and many regime opponents in Iran would not welcome such readiness to shake their oppressors’ bloody hands.

Bombing Iran, as advocated by hotheads in the United States and Israel, almost certainly would produce a wave of patriotic solidarity with the regime. At the other extreme, ever more foreign policy sages in Washington now say privately (and a few argue publicly) that we must learn to live with — and “contain” — a nuclear Iran. But the risk of sparking a Sunni-Shiite nuclear arms race in the Middle East is very grave, while such a “success” would also strengthen the Ahmadinejad regime at home.

With no good alternatives, what remains is the hope of getting a more responsible government in Iran. To be sure, the leaders of the green movement do not differ as much as we might like from the regime’s position on the nuclear issue. But a more popular and legitimate government, reengaging with the world, would create a very different dynamic and set of linkages around the nuclear issue.

How and when that domestic political change comes is both morally and practically a question for the Iranians themselves. The experience of other countries suggests that it will depend on the movement’s ability to formulate clearer, more strategic goals, retain nonviolent discipline and be inventive in finding new tactics of protest; to appeal to other social groups affected by a declining economy (workers, public service employees, bazaar merchants); and to exploit growing divisions within the regime.

Iran will be liberated by the Iranians, not by us. But at the margins, there are a few things we can do from outside. First, do no harm. We must examine every step we take on the nuclear issue to make sure it does not actually damage the internal movement for change. Second, keep open the lines of communication and information, so Iranians inside and outside the country can tell each other what is happening there. Work should be redoubled on Internet firewall circumvention technologies, so all Iranians have online access to films like “For Neda,” as well as their own homemade citizen journalism. Third, our leaders should say much more clearly that our policy is also a response to the brutal repression inside Iran. We care about their rights, not just about our security.

Last but not least, we must always remember what has happened over the last year, and help Iranians to do the same. What all tyrants want is for their own people and the outside world to forget. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once famously observed that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” For man, read also woman. Mohsen, and his mother.

Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professorof European studies at Oxford University.