“I’VE BEEN TO PARIS, PERU, IRAQ, IRAN…I SPEAK VERY, VERY FLUENT SPANISH…”

12/21/09

Judging from the reactions of the oil, gold, and stock markets, I am pretty much alone in my concern, but I am quite worried about Iran at the moment. With the death this weekend of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the seeming confirmation of charges of torture of dissidents at Kahrizak Prison by the returning of indictments against twelve prison officials over the weekend, the earlier shutting down of that prison, and the continuing Muharram Shiite holiday, these are not idle concerns.

Ayatollah Montazeri was one of the architects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, at one time the clear successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. However, about ten years after the revolution, Montazeri began criticizing Khomeini, accusing, with plenty of justification, the man who nosed him out for supreme leadership, Ayatollah Khamenei, of creating a dictatorship in Iran. Montazeri was incessant in his calls for reform of the Islamic Republic. Eventually, even his stature as a religious scholar, which exceeded that of Khamenei, could no longer protect him, and he was placed under house arrest in 1997, which continued until 2003. That punishment did not silence Montazeri, who called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “illegitimate,” apparently again with plenty of justification. For obvious reasons, Ayatollah Montazeri became a rallying point for the opposition movement in Iran, which has come to be known as the “green movement,” separate and distinct from what the rest of the world understands as the green movement.

Montazeri’s death over the weekend, and his funeral, scheduled for today, when combined with the weekend indictments of officials at Kahrizak, will provide yet another focal point for the green movement, especially when the level of fervor is increased by the ten day Muharram holiday. What might happen? Who knows? But an overthrow of the regime, while still a remote possibility, is not out of the question. Certainly, at the very least, Iran is in for a rough couple of days.

As most readers know, given my approach to U.S. foreign policy, my normal reaction would be to say “Well, it looks like the IRANIANS have a problem,” and leave them to work out their own difficulties as opposed to the current Bush/Obama/conservative/liberal approach so popular in this country of assuming that we know the optimal outcome for everybody in every corner of the world and thus offering our “advice,” at the point of a gun if necessary. That is, of course, my reaction in this case; contrary to modern American belief, the Iranians, even though they don’t speak English as a first language and don’t spend their evenings watching David Letterman, Jay Leno, and “Dancing with the Stars,” are adults and can think for themselves. We should let them do so and stay as far away from them as possible. Our attempts at intervention, as enlightened as the politicians in Washington, who, of course, have figured everything out, assume they are, usually result in disaster.

This does not mean, however, that unrest, or worse, in Iran, will not affect us. Remember the last time Iran experienced “regime change” in Iran? The price of oil quadrupled and the price of gold followed. The equity markets, already battered by three years of Jimmy Carter, encountered difficulties as well. Whatever hopes, paltry as they were under Mr. Carter, of recovery were quashed under the weight of, at that time, unheard of $42 oil. Our country went into a funk, economically, diplomatically, and psychologically, from which it took years to recover.

Given that oil has been quiescent of late, gold has taken a swoon from its highs of a few weeks ago, and stocks continue to go nowhere but up, one of three things is going on: Iran, at least relative to all the other bullish signs everyone but I is able to see so clearly, is no longer important, everything will be just fine in Iran, or no one is paying attention. I’m betting on the last of those possibilities. After all, a new season of “American Idol” is about to start.