by CKR
Yesterday I pointed out that Iranians who appear to be taking the US line for independence may face trouble. Today's Washington Post says that's happening.
It's hard to say if it's the State Department or the media that are putting this news out there. Condoleezza Rice seems glad to make public that the US is doing all it can to encourage the potential revolutionaries, so reporting on the conference in Dubai makes sense in that context.
In Estonia in the late eighties, the US gave its aid very quietly, and, to the public eye, it was under the control of the Estonians. Further, the US was viewed favorably by the Estonians in the Cold War world that had two poles: the United States and the Soviet Union.
Is the US trying to provide martyrs for the revolution? People who will be imprisoned so that they can be triumphantly released as the revolution proceeds?
Enn Tarto was that kind of hero in Estonia, having resisted the Soviet authorities since he was in middle school and survived regular grisly imprisonments. But he acted on his own, and I doubt that Rice and company have heard of him.
On the other hand, perhaps the public pressure is causing Iran to consider negotiations with the US. But there have been approaches of this sort before, and it's hard to tell if they were merely tactical or if the US successfully rebuffed them.
More on the WaPo article from a different angle by the Armchair Generalist.