The West undermines its own credibility by advocating ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ for Iran.

In the wake of a damning report by Human Rights Watch that has detailed the “torture, detention and the crushing of dissent” under the mullahs’ regime, the anguished voices of oppressed Iranians seem to cry out to the watching world. But should the West answer them by taking up the cause of freedom and helping them cast aside the yoke of tyranny?

Because such a cause is so idealistic, its claims so grandiose, and its values so abstract, by championing it we immediately render ourselves highly vulnerable to allegations of hypocrisy and double standards. While an obvious example is provided by the horrors of Abu Ghraib, which cast a very dark shadow over American claims to be ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people, consider too the troubling tension between the two ideals that liberal humanitarians so loudly advocate for others — ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’

There is of course no necessary reason why these should be incompatible: our rulers are clearly much more likely to respect the interests of those to whom they are accountable. But the recent experience of Western countries, where the guardianship of those rights is often entrusted not to democratically elected bodies but to unelected judicial elites, amply demonstrates that an orchestration of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ can easily strike not a natural harmony but a terrible discord.

All the states of Western Europe have, for example, sacrificed some of the powers of their own democratic assemblies to the judges of the European Court of Human Rights, which was established in 1950 “to ensure the collective enforcement of certain rights and freedoms.” This has forced ordinary people to helplessly watch the curtailment of their right to rule themselves by a distant, unelected judiciary that would seem to have nothing to do with their own country.

Britain’s Human Rights Act, which took effect in October 2000, has also given unelected judges new powers to challenge the legislative decrees of its democratically elected parliamentary assembly. If the British courts can’t construe legislation to make its terms fit the demands of the European Convention on Human Rights, then they “may make a declaration of that incompatibility” which prompts the executive power to refer it back to Parliament for revision.

How ironic, then, that Western politicians talk to the Iranians about democracy and human rights with such ease. The diplomats of the European Union have spoken this humanitarian language to the Iranian authorities ever since the beginning of their ‘critical dialogue’ in 1995. And across the Atlantic, President Bush has appealed directly to ordinary Iranians who “in the face of harsh repression…are courageously speaking out for democracy and the rule of law and human rights,” while his deputies, Richard Armitage and Zalmay Khalilzad, also typically speak of their wish to see “a democratic Iran…that respects human rights.”

The natural enemies of liberty are not slow to detect weak points in the arguments pitched by those they confront. The editorials of Iran’s hard-line press, for example, frequently question the right of President Bush to advocate democracy for others when his own democratic mandate in November 2000 was so fragile. And the more we now talk about democracy and human rights for Iran, the more vulnerable we will become to their retorts that our actions are both hypocritical and incoherent: as Britain’s archbishops warned on Wednesday, “the appearance of double standards inevitably diminishes the credibility of western governments” throughout the world.

Of course Western governments are under great pressure from the well-heeled Human Rights Industry to show some concern for the welfare of the oppressed, and any negotiations with Tehran that ignore the plight of ordinary Iranians would for this reason provoke a storm of outrage. How, then, can they meet this pressing need while also keeping their credibility intact?

The solution is, fortunately, very simple. Why not just demand that the mullahs “allow the Iranian people to have the Iran they want to have,” a formula that would also reconcile the West’s need to be seen to care with the right of all Iranians to determine their own future? Let’s hope our politicians can now resist the pressure of the human rights professionals and put forward this new message instead.