By Connor Shirley

          Egypt was one of the first countries to follow the example of the Tunisian revolutions. Merely ten days after Ben Ali fled Tunisia, Egypt became embroiled in a wave of self-immolation and mass protest which met violent police crackdowns.  There were many civilian deaths leading up to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, including over 200 just in Cairo itself. However, Mubarak leaving proved to be no panacea to the ails of the Egyptian populace. The Egyptian military, which was very influential in removing Mubarak, refused to surrender power to the people and has attempted to control any new form of government that is proposed.

          Throughout all of Egypt’s revolution, there had been large numbers of people camped out in Tahrir Square, a location that has been known informally as “Liberation Square” since the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Unfortunately, after Mubarak’s resignation, the army invaded the square and destroyed many of the encampments of the people protesting the general’s reluctance to allow change to take place. The surrounding areas, such as Libya and Syria, watched nervously as an apparently successful revolution stalled and appeared to retrogress.

          Fortunately, over the past two days, elections have been held in Egypt. And not only were the elections apparently fraud-free, they were almost entirely peaceful. At the end of the election sessions, there were a group of ‘thugs’ who attacked the protesters still in Tahrir square and injured several people, but compared to the large scale violence and disruption previously seen by Egypt, I believe it is safe to say that the elections are a success. At this point, whatever the outcome of the elections is almost inconsequential to the simple novelty of an election in Egypt. Egypt has never seen anything like this before, and moving forward the populace will be dealing with things never before considered by their public policy makers.

          The only concern I have about the elections is what they have revealed about the mindset of the people. The Salafis, a group many western scholars consider to be a right-wing conservative fundamentalist Islamic group, are going to be a large part of the new government. On top of that concern, the Muslim Brotherhood, who is leading in the current polls, is pushing for a reinstatement of Shariah law, which would return Egypt’s courts to the traditional Islamic law system. I believe that the return to this system of law would be detrimental to the progress the Egyptian people have worked so valiantly for and also that many of the western countries will view this as a ‘failure’ of the revolution. However, if it is what the people want, and if we truly value the ideals of democracy, we must embrace whatever the people of Egypt decide, even if it’s a system of law that has seen only minor changes for the past 600 years.

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AYATOLLA KHAMENEI / CREDIT TO AP

By Connor Shirley

“I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new, one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.” – President Eisenhower to the 470th Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly

News that the International Atomic Energy Agency has found evidence of a certain type of computer modeling used for nuclear warhead projection plans in one of Iran’s nuclear program has led to an international furor for even more pressure and trade sanctions on Iran. The U.S. has frozen Iranian assets abroad consistently since 1969, including freezing bank accounts and aviation and military equipment. If the U.S. attempts to increase these sanctions to an even higher level, the resilient Iranian economy (with an average growth rate of 5.2% from 2000-2007) might be even more crippled than it already is, especially if the U.S. finally decides to push for severe oil sanctions.

Before I analyze what this is going to mean for the relationship between Iran and the rest of the Middle East and the Western powers, I want to talk about the current sanctions and why the neighboring countries are uncomfortable with the possibility of Iran having Nuclear weapons. The first event that is significantly relevant to the current situation was the 1953 C.I.A. backed coup in Iran that replaced a democratically elected Mossadegh with the U.S.A. approved Shah. The Shah ruled for 26 years, funded amply by the United States, until a strong Islamist revolution threw the Shah out and formed the Islamist Republic of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. The secular laws of the Shah were replaced by a theocratic Guardian Council of the Constitution, a twelve member council on which half were experts in Islamic law and the other half experts in other areas of law. This council can overturn basically any decision made by the Majlis (Parliament of Iran) and are very influential in choosing the President of Iran, who is currently Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The events that followed include an Iraq-Iran war that left Iran with an impression that it didn’t need to take out loans to survive a war like Iraq did, continued sanctions from various countries, and little to no support from Iran’s neighbors because of the contentious nature of Iran’s foreign policy. Iran has faced severe problems with everyone from the U.N. to Saudi Arabia, but continues to persevere despite such drastic opposition.

It is through that historical lens that I interpret the recent attempts by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, if the allegations made by the IAEA turn out to be accurate. Iran has consistently struggled to survive, both economically and militaristically. Iran has faced invasion from its neighbors and withstood from the U.S. without flinching. I realize it is somewhat contentious and perhaps contrarian to portray Iran as the valiant underdog; Iran has been no saint in terms of human rights violations and freedom of speech laws.

Many nearby countries have nuclear weapons, such as Pakistan and India, and perhaps most notably Israel. Iran developing the bomb would bring many of the issues currently facing Iran to the forefront of international relations with Iran, especially the Israeli-Palestine conflict. When such a fervently anti-Israel country gets a bomb, many of the surrounding states may start to fall in step with Iran. I believe that the argument that Iran should be prevented from getting the bomb to stop proliferation is an extension of Nuclear apartheid, where only countries with nuclear technology attempt to stop countries from getting that same technology.

This push for nuclear weapons has been a long time coming for Iran. They currently have no leverage in terms of international diplomacy, and are unable to try and separate their economy from the oil trade. I do not doubt that the Ahmadinejad administration views having nuclear weapons as a step closer to becoming a more independent and more of a power player on the regional level. My only hope is that the U.S. (the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons, mind you) does not attempt to strong-arm Iran into destroying their program. 

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