Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author. He is the author of the ‘Taliban’ and his most recent book is "Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia."

There is mounting criticism of Western leaders, including President Barack Obama and some European heads of government for their so far mild rebukes to the Iranian regime for the violence it has unleashed on its own public after the controversial elections.
However these critics are underestimating how an alternative, tough, intrusive US and European policy towards supporting the pro-democracy movement in Iran could derail the Middle East and South Asia and put critical parts of the Muslim world on another collision course with the West.

After eight disastrous years of the Bush-Cheney administration’s failed ‘regime change’ policies in the Muslim world, which included CIA funding to undermine Iran’s Ayatollahs, the last thing any Muslim regime or its population wants to see is yet another US sponsored policy for regime change in Iran – although most Muslims like everyone else would like to see democracy flourish in Iran.
So far President Barack Obama and European leaders have got it just right – mild but non-threatening rebukes Iran - even though it is clear that instinctively Western governments, along with the rest of the world are appalled at the unleashed violence and fraudulent cover up that the Iranian regime is following.

However going gently with Iran is critical if other major planks of Obama’s foreign policy in the region are to survive – reaching out to the broader Muslim world, the Israel-Palestinian peace initiative, withdrawing US troops from Iraq and dealing with the Taliban threat to Afghanistan and Pakistan. For European leaders still being able to negotiate with Iran on its quest for nuclear weapons remains paramount.
A threatening response from the US towards Iran would only derail many of these initiatives, make it much more difficult for Muslim regimes to deal with the US and Europe, reinforce anti-Western views held by many Muslims and threaten to make Obama a premature lame duck in the Muslim world, just as he starts out in his presidency.

There are many other factors. Iran is predominantly a Shia country and politically influential Shia minorities live in every Muslim state from Lebanon to India. Volatile countries like Pakistan, which already faces a Sunni extremist insurgency in the shape of the Taliban has a 15-20 percent Shia population.

Many of these Shia minorities would instinctively rally around the present leadership in Iran if it saw a threatening US policy. That could destabilize regimes in the Middle East and South Asia by increasing Sunni-Shia sectarianism. President Ahmadinejjad is still not the Great Satan that the United States is in the minds of many Shias. 

Moreover many of these Shia minorities and their leaders have been funded and mobilized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in recent years, as a counter force to resist former President Bush’s attempts to undermine Iran.

Iran’s plan – which presumably is still operational - was that if the US or Israel was to threaten or attack Iran, these Iran funded groups across the Muslim world would retaliate on behalf of Theran, attacking Americans and Westerners wherever they could. As part of this strategy Iran has also helped arm and fund some Sunni militant groups, such as elements in the Taliban.

The region around Iran is especially volatile and prone to instant destabilization if Washington or Europe make the wrong move.
Two of Iran’s neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan are occupied by US troops. Other neighbors – Pakistan and the Arabian Gulf states provide bases for the Americans in one form or another. Iran has every reason to fear encirclement by the US and the paranoia that has long gripped the Iranian regime has not been helped by the threats of the former Bush administration.

All of Iran’s neighboring regimes are fragile, which is why they have already congratulated President Ahmadinejad on his election victory – no matter what they may feel about the validity of the elections. The reality is that neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan to the east, nor Azerbaijan to the north or Iraq and the Gulf Arabs to the west can afford to see a wounded, humiliated, angry Iran blaming them for pandering to American wishes.

Iran can destabilize all of its neighbors. Teheran still has the capability to undermine the US withdrawal from Iraq by fuelling a renewed spell of violence against US troops. And if the Americans are forced to hunker down in Iraq, Obama and NATO desire to focus on stabilizing Afghanistan will be jeopardized.

Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s Asif Zardari have gone out of their way to court Iran in recent months for a variety of reasons that includes cheap oil and gas deliveries, but mostly because they cannot afford a hostile Iran outside their borders propping up a hostile Shia minority inside their borders.

Whatever the outcome of the present crisis in Iran, the country is going to be deeply polarized and in a profound state of instability for some time to come. Iran’s neighbors – many of them US allies - will be the first to feel the winds of instability blowing from Iran. These neighbors will need a judicious and wise US and European leadership that does not plunge them headlong into confrontation with Iran.
Western leaders across the political spectrum need to understand how complicated and intertwined Iran and the region has become and they need to rally round a policy of moderation and caution when dealing with the crisis in Iran.