By Maziar Bahari
The most important opposition to Iran's nuclear program in 2010 could come from inside the country. Before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection in June, there was widespread consensus among Iranians that Iran had a right to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes--and if you scratched the surface, many also favored a nuclear deterrent. After all, they reasoned, Pakistan and Israel both have nuclear arsenals; why shouldn't Tehran be able to defend itself?
But now many Iranians associate the nuclear program with the group that oversees it, the hated Revolutionary Guards. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, both of whom have supported a peaceful nuclear program in the past, have kept silent on the topic since June. A Mousavi aide, asking not to be named for fear of reprisal, says: "The unreasonable brutality of the security forces has made people rethink everything this government stands for." If the West imposes broad sanctions, including on gasoline imports, Iranians might rally around their government again. But more likely Ahmadinejad, not the West, would get much of the blame for Iran's hard times. And sanctions targeted at the bank accounts, front companies, and travel visas of Revolutionary Guard commanders could encourage this simmering resentment rather than quash it.
