LESSONS ON EGYPT FROM CARTER AND THE SHAH

By RONEN BERGMAN

The White House’s reaction to the rioting in Egypt is shortsighted—and typical of what is wrong with the Obama administration’s Middle East policy. Only days ago, President Hosni Mubarak was a longstanding and valued ally of the U.S. His regime was the beneficiary of a $2 billion annual American aid package (the second largest after Israel). And the White House and the State Department tread carefully when broaching the issue of human rights with Mr. Mubarak.

But after not even a week of protests, official U.S. statements regarding Egypt have suddenly made human rights and democracy all the rage. There’s also been talk of terminating U.S. aid.

The U.S. has played this game with dictatorial regimes in the Middle East for decades. The dilemma it faces is difficult, but it certainly isn’t new: Support a distasteful regime because it is a strategic ally, or disavow the dictatorship because it betrays fundamental American values like freedom and democracy.

The first option gives the U.S. immediate practical benefits, not the least of which is increased regional stability. But there is a price for this pact with the devil: The U.S. image is tarnished by association, and the citizens who suffer under the dictator’s yoke are not likely to forget American support for the abuses.

With the second option, U.S. short-term interests will likely suffer as other players rush in to fill the void. Image-wise, the U.S. shines. And the hope is that in the long run, the country—and others—will remember this principled stand and the U.S. will gain some practical benefit from it.

The most difficult maneuver to execute is switching from one option to the other midstream. In fact, the U.S. has never accomplished this maneuver successfully in the Middle East, and all indications are that it is unlikely to succeed now.

The most obvious example of this failure was President Jimmy Carter’s catastrophic mishandling of the events in Iran in 1978-79. The Shah had flouted Iranians’ basic freedoms for decades, yet this hadn’t prevented the U.S. from striking oil and arms deals with him.

On New Year’s Eve 1977, President Carter called the Shah “an island of stability” in the region. Yet as Iranians protested the Shah’s reign beginning in the fall of 1978, Mr. Carter began to insist on democratic reform and human rights—to the exclusion of practically everything else. To the extent that this criticism contributed to the Shah’s downfall, it was spectacularly counterproductive.

It certainly did not satisfy the masses of protestors—a hodgepodge of left-wing and right-wing activists and religious extremists—who continued to fill the streets. As they did, the high command of the military (then 800,000 strong, the sixth-biggest in the world) waited impatiently for a visit from Mr. Carter’s emissary, the deputy commander of American forces in Europe, Gen. Robert E. Huyser, who came on Jan. 8, 1979. They wanted to know one thing: If they took over, would the U.S. prevent a Russian invasion of Iran? That is all. They could have handled everything else by themselves.

But the White House believed that a military intervention would be the worst move possible. Huyser came to Tehran in order to relay the message that President Carter had sent him to ensure a democratic Iran.

When Huyser left Tehran, ties between the generals and Ayatollah Khomeini, who had emerged as the leader of the opposition, had strengthened. The army interpreted Huyser’s message as a form of abandonment. Gen. Abbas Gharabaghi, chief of staff of the army, promised Khomeini, who returned from exile to cheering crowds on Feb. 1, that the army would not leave its bases. (Yesterday, the Egyptian army promised it would not open fire on the protestors.)

On Jan. 16, the Shah, ailing and debilitated, decided that without American backing he had best pack up and leave. He flew to Egypt with his wife and a handful of aides. There he was welcomed as a head of state by his friends, President Anwar Sadat and Vice President Hosni Mubarak.

We are all familiar with what happened next. First, a bloody campaign waged against all dissent against Iran’s new clerical rulers. Then the establishment of an Islamic regime in Tehran that has been no friend to the U.S. For the past 30 years, Iran has attempted to undermine the stability of the Middle East. It has been worse in terms of human rights abuses than the regime it replaced, and it now threatens the entire region with its nuclear program.

Also consider what happened in Gaza. In 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice applied considerable pressure on the Israeli government to permit the participation of Hamas in the elections of the newly independent Gaza. This plan to create instant democracy was based on a heavy dose of wishful thinking, including the unfounded belief that Hamas would win only 30% of the vote and thus not pose a real threat. In the end, Hamas won 70% of the vote and ultimately gained total control of the Strip. Along the way, it killed many of its Fatah opponents, ending any hope of true democracy there for years to come.

Human rights and democracy are not causes that can be turned on and off at will, like a tap of water. To suddenly demand respect for human rights when the survival of the Egyptian regime is in the balance—a scenario that could soon be repeated in Jordan and elsewhere—is cheap, feel-good populism, and evidence of a short-sighted approach that risks creating a long-term human rights disaster zone.

Past experience suggests that if Mr. Mubarak’s regime is toppled, not only will American interests suffer, but the cause of freedom in Egypt could be set back dramatically. And the U.S. will have contributed to a Middle East that is less stable and more dangerous than it is today.

Mr. Bergman is a senior military and intelligence analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. He is currently working on a book about the Mossad and the art of assassination.