One year ago, a twenty-two-year-old apolitical woman named Mahsa Amini was killed in the custody of Iran’s morality police for not wearing her head covering correctly. The murder was the catalyst for months-long protests across the Iranian spectrum of their citizens, who are fed up with the brutal regime. Hundreds were killed, thousands were injured, and tens of thousands were arrested, with at least seven executed.
“Woman, life, freedom” became the rallying cry, with women taking charge of their lives by removing their regime-mandated headscarves. This should have resonated with an American administration that prides itself on a moral foreign policy. When US President Joe Biden spoke to the State Department after his inauguration, he said that our “diplomacy [is] rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.”
Yet, over the next two and a half years, the administration prioritized a nuclear deal over its self-professed human rights priorities, just as President Obama abandoned the Iranian people in 2009 during the Green Revolution, when millions of Iranians took to the streets, and the administration made a mockery of championing our democratic values. Under multiple administrations, America offered only half-hearted vocal support to the Iranian people against a regime that refers to the United States as the Great Satan and has the blood of countless Americans on its hands.
So why are we afraid to say the obvious, that we want the Iranian people to take control of their future, ending the despicable Iranian regime that terrorizes the Middle East, and whose demise would dramatically advance American national security interests?
Why are we afraid to say we want to end the Iranian regime?
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, “Under Mr. Khamenei’s leadership, anti-Americanism has become central to Iran’s revolutionary identity… On virtually every contemporary American national security concern – including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese threats against Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, and cyberwarfare – Tehran defines its interests in opposition to the United States… Tehran’s worldview will endure even if the nuclear deal is revived.”
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s administration figured that getting the Soviet Union to spend beyond its means to keep up with an American military buildup could collapse the Communist regime, and it worked. In contrast, America’s response to the Iranian threat has been to grant the world’s leading state sponsor of terror the right to enrich uranium, and billions in sanctions relief to sustain their economy, while offering minor rhetorical lip-service to the suffering Iranian people.
The myopic focus on almost any nuclear agreement with Iran, while we ignore the regime’s decades-long human rights abuses, their development of ballistic weapons, continuing terrorism, attacks against international shipping in the Persian Gulf, and kinetic assaults against American troops, undermines not only American security interests but our leadership of the free world. Appeasing Iran is interpreted as weakness.
THIS IS something that would have seemed oblivious to this and previous administrations. America is an exceptional nation when its voice is heard, not when it denies reality, as happened when Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the six billion dollars we released this month for Americans unjustly imprisoned in Iran was not a hostage ransom.
The time is now for America to speak plainly and state clearly that the Iranian people deserve to be the masters of their destiny, and we support their desire to end their enslavement under a heinous regime. What are we afraid of? Can the Supreme Leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bad-mouth us any more than they do already?
According to UNSC resolution 2231, any member of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) can trigger snapback sanctions for Iranian transgressions, even if Iran’s Chinese and Russian allies object. Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association states, “In May 2019, Iran began breaching the JCPOA’s limits… resuming nuclear activities prohibited under the deal.” These included stockpiling enriched uranium and restarting enrichment at Fordo. “The moves called into question Tehran’s commitment to returning to the JCPOA,” she said.
We should fully implement those sanctions accompanied by secondary sanctions against nations that circumvent them. The Obama and Biden administrations have not completely enforced sanctions during their administrations, and we do not know the power of fully enforced sanctions to change Iranian behavior.
Supporting the Iranian people’s desire for regime change does not mean an American military presence. It means increasing the economic pressure on Iran and its supporters who help its resistance economy survive. It will require patience, something Americans do not have, and the Iranians have used that knowledge to their advantage.
Since the Mahsa protests, I have been in touch with Iranian activists in America, and I try to encourage them to remain strong. I educate Americans – when I speak and write – that it is in our best interest not to become fatigued by the duration of this struggle with Iran and not to forget about the Iranian people who have Western inclinations, if ever given a chance to express them.
American policy should be pro-Iranian, meaning supporting the Iranian people, not enabling the regime with sanctions relief for a time-limited nuclear deal that will still guarantee Iran will have a nuclear weapon when they choose to. The Iranian revolutionary theocracy is unreformable, analogous to the North Korean regime. They will do almost anything to survive, and any moderate gestures they make are simply tactical decisions to fool gullible Western negotiators.
Standing with the Iranian people is a moral and strategic decision for American interests. We need patience and a realization that rewarding a regime that yearns for our demise is not diplomacy but suicide.
The writer is the director of MEPIN (Middle East Political Information Network) and Mandel Strategies, a consulting firm for business and government officials in the Middle East. He regularly briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides. He is the senior security editor for The Jerusalem Report and a regular contributor to The Hill.