Grassroots change

Editorial

As the buildup for a possible U.S.-led invasion of Iraq continues, efforts are underway in Iran, Iraq's neighbor, for a more constructive regime change.

Last month's arrest in Iran of history professor Hashem Aghajari intensified the political conflict between the student-led supporters of President Mohammad Khatami and the mullahs led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Aghajari was quickly tried and convicted on charges of encouraging a freethinking, progressive expression of Islam. He has been sentenced to death.

Students in Tehran have been taking to the streets to protest both Khamenei's punishment and the religious hardliners' stonewalling of Khatami's plans for social and political reform.

According to reports in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the pro-Western, pro-democracy protestors have access to the Internet and satellite television. They are aware of Western social and political freedoms and economic opportunities.

In 1979, Iranian protestors took American citizens hostage and chanted "Death to America." Today's protestors are chanting "Death to dictators." They correctly are placing blame for their lack of social and religious freedoms, and for not having jobs waiting for them at graduation, not on U.S. shoulders but on the shoulders of Iran's religious hard-liners.

The students are not alone. Industrial workers in the Iranian cities of Alborz and Arak have staged their own demonstrations. And incredibly, a government-sponsored poll earlier this month revealed that 70 percent of the people want increased dialogue with the United States.

Meanwhile, Khamenei-empowered police disperse demonstrators and arrest their leaders.

Regime change in Iraq could mean the death to thousands, cost millions - if not billions - of dollars, and place Israel at risk. Because grassroots reform is already occurring in Iran, the price tag for change there could be much lower. That should be incentive enough for the United States to support those moving for change.

The U.S. State Department has reported on what should be an added incentive to get involved: Iran is constructing an underground nuclear fuel production and research laboratory, and has a nuclear reactor in the southern port city of Bushehr ready to go online.

President Bush has declared Iran a member of the Axis of Evil. The United States must do what it can to help Iranians decouple from that malevolent alliance.

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