After the passing of the end of year deadline for Iran to respond to the offer of the P5+1 nations (Britain, the US, France, Russia, China and Germany) on nuclear reprocessing, we are still without an agreement. It is possible that Iran will give a positive response, but it is now necessary for the world to start thinking about what to do next if no agreement is forthcoming. At the same time the green movement, which is what Iran’s opposition calls itself, has proven itself resilient, and has grown in strength, while the government has emerged weaker. It is beginning to look as if the greens aren’t going to go away, and therefore a decision has to be made by the nations involved as to whether to give support to the opposition or continue to look the other way.

It’s a decision that is becoming unavoidable for a number of reasons. For one thing, the greens need all the help they can get, involved as they are in a desperate struggle for survival, and it looks like they will accept assistance from all quarters. Five exiled members of the opposition have in fact been doing the rounds of think tanks in the US recently, though president Obama has made it clear that he is willing to do business with the present government, and does not wish to frighten them away from the negotiating table by doing anything which remotely resembles regime change. However, the situation today looks a lot different from the beginning of negotiations. Iran seems unwilling to shift on uranium enrichment which means that pressure will be ratcheted up. There has been little in the way of pressure so far so that whatever is done now is going to ruffle the feathers of the ruling conservatives anyway. Sanctions are the next logical step, but in themselves they are no magic bullet.

Iran has managed to survive 25 years of sanctions, and on present form they can probably survive a while longer, especially as China has now weighed in to block them. Military action, or the threat of it, is certainly not going to endear the regime to its foes, so the options available at this point all involve the application of pressure or coercion anyway. It may be that helping the opposition will be more promising than those other options. It has, in any case, become a near inevitability. Sanctions will now probably not be aimed at the ordinary citizen but will be targeted at the revolutionary guard – enemies of the green movement.

No doubt president Obama and others involved in diplomacy are aware that the opposition could form the next government, and that this could be a golden opportunity to shift the nature of Iran’s foreign policy toward greater cooperation. In addition, the green movement is maturing and now has a manifesto in which they have set forth their aims, which include greater democracy and for the clergy, universities and the military to be made independent of politics. The opposition is now beginning to look more like a government in waiting, not just a protest movement. They have evolved in another way: they are a now a liberation movement, and deserve the support of progressives as well as governments. Trade unions and other organisations in the UK and worldwide could also help by getting involved in this struggle.

The west still needs to be cautious about creating a backlash among conservatives by giving too much support to the opposition too soon. However, taking the greens seriously as an alternative to the current regime is beginning to sound like an attractive proposition.