OP-ED: Starving the Mullahs, By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, New York Post, June 25, 2007

The divestiture model won't work with Iran for three key reasons, all of which make the South African experience a poor example:

1) the oil in a tight global market that's only getting tighter

2) the reality that the New Core (esp. Russia, India, and China) has really no economic choice, given their trajectories, which we want to see continued, and

3) unlike South Africa, which was a real democracy, however flawed, Iran is still authoritarian and undemocratic, so the pressures will be misdirected.

Bad example, bad advice.

We need to structure our incentives so that the people must choose between a better life (connectivity) and the mullahs, not a worse life (more disconnectedness) and the mullahs (right now aiming for the same in a harsh crackdown).