By Nader Mousavizadeh, a special assistant to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan 1997-2003 and a consulting senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (THE TIMES, 22/12/09):

The Islamic republic of Iran’s year of living dangerously is finding an apt end in the extraordinary scenes unfolding after the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. The senior cleric’s funeral has turned into a huge demonstration against the Government, with tens of thousands of protesters descending on the holy city of Qom.

The YouTube clip of the murder of the young protester Neda Agha-Soltan in the summer’s demonstrations against the stolen elections symbolised the Tehran regime’s betrayal of its youth. The death of Montazeri was a reminder of how an older generation has been betrayed. Montazeri, a founding father of the republic and once a chosen successor of Ayatollah Khomeini, came to despise the monster that grew out of the revolution. He recently denounced the regime’s shock troops, the Basij, as having chosen the “path of Satan”.

Diplomatic observers in Tehran have no doubt about the potential of this moment to change the course of history. Ambassadors from Eastern European countries sense a familiar spirit in the air, and regale their colleagues with stories of the final days of Honecker and Ceausescu.

Its legitimacy eviscerated, support crumbling from top to bottom, you would imagine Tehran to be fielding international protests about its repressive handling of the protests. Instead, it has secured almost a free hand at home by distracting the world with its nuclear ambitions.

From the very first days of the post-election violence, Western leaders, with President Obama in the van, chose circumspection over condemnation. Nothing — no protests about human rights abuses — could get in the way of securing a deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Iran’s programme to create a nuclear bomb. What do we have to show for this venal bargain? Very little.

Untenable as this ought to be, strategically as well as morally, a more damning prospect still is emerging. The West may be about to provide a dying regime with a lifeline at the moment of its greatest vulnerability. Even if intensified sanctions forced the regime to comply with Western demands over its nuclear project — an unlikely prospect — an agreement between Tehran and the West would benefit one party above all: President Ahmadinejad and his illegitimate Government.

Deeper sanctions would be welcomed by Mr Ahmadinejad — it would allow him to appeal to nationalist sentiment and tighten his grip on the economy. (Of course, a military attack would be the ultimate gift to the theocracy, something hardline elements of the regime are reportedly seeking actively to provoke.) Worse still, an agreement would enable the leadership to claim victory without actually impeding its repressive rule. Having lost legitimacy in the streets of its own cities, the regime is being offered a chance to regain it, in different form, in the halls of the United Nations. With its very existence in the balance, pressure on the regime to freeze its nuclear programme is not a threat, but an opportunity to regain international credibility.

The fracturing of the Islamic republic’s traditional elite, and the persistence and power of Iran’s democratic awakening six months and countless acts of arrest, torture and repression later, make clear that regime change is under way in Iran.

The protest movement is the most promising development in the Middle East in the past quarter of a century. Rather than being viewed as a sideshow, the uprising should be at the core of every policy decision made by Western statesmen on Iran. Western leaders should ask just one question whenever faced with a new set of measures towards Iran: will they help or hurt the Green Movement?

For all the concern about a fitful and still highly vulnerable nuclear programme, a far greater prize is in sight: the Iranian people and their manifest aspirations for a freer society and an accountable government. The question is whether a Western policy of pressure, threats and further isolation aimed at forcing a nuclear deal with Mr Ahmadinejad will risk promise of real change for the illusion of a security arrangement with a regime built on enmity against the West.

Before being led down a strategically barren path of sanctions and threats focused exclusively on the nuclear programme, Western leaders have a unique opportunity to seize on the promise of a movement far more consequential to the future of Iran and the broader Middle East than any nuclear deal with the existing regime. This is a moment for Europe’s leaders to draw on their countries’ longstanding knowledge of Iran to explore a different path. The US Government, even under Mr Obama, appears constrained by history and an unwillingness to think creatively about Iran. And yet the moment cries out for something other than a predictable set of tortured Security Council negotiations that will achieve little.

The West should redirect its focus to helping the new Iran emerging, however erratically, however slowly, from the fallout of the June elections. This means using every opportunity to highlight support for the Iranian people’s legitimate aspirations in every international forum where Iran is discussed. (The reform movement’s recent chant — “Obama, are you with us or with them” — makes plain the need for the West to do more than merely “bear witness”.) It means making clear to the regime that a nuclear deal should no longer be considered a get-out-of-jail-free card as it continues its despotic behaviour. It means providing Israel with additional security guarantees robust enough to dissuade it from a calamitous strike on Iran. It means developing more ways to disable and delay the nuclear programme through even more creative covert operations.

And it means creating a containment and deterrence regime around Iran strong and patient enough to ensure that whatever outcome the nuclear negotiations have, they will be but a footnote to the story of a regime changed by its own people, on their own terms, for their own sake.