By Ken Blackwell
Thirty years after
President Reagan seized upon an historic opportunity to bring down the Iron
Curtain, there are growing indications that President Trump can make similarly
historic strides in the conflict between the U.S. and the new Evil of our time:
Islamic extremism.
In its first five months,
President Trump’s presidency has witnessed dramatic shifts from the policies
normalized by the Obama administration. Few are as significant or wide-ranging
as the changes in American dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The new attitude enjoys
rare bipartisan support in Congress, and with good cause. The conciliatory
policy of Trump’s predecessor resulted in an ineffectual nuclear agreement and
tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief for a regime that remains the world’s
leading state sponsor of terrorism.
President Obama had
insisted the Deal would prompt Tehran to moderate its behavior, but since the
nuclear deal, Iran’s regime has only become more belligerent and more prone to
human rights abuses, both within its own territory and across the Middle East.
In his speech at the
Arab-U.S. summit on May 21, Trump emphasized that Tehran is responsible for
much instability in the region. From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, the
Iranian regime funds, arms, and trains terrorists and extremist groups that
spread destruction and chaos. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of
sectarian conflict while openly advocating mass murder, vowing the destruction
of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many nations. Among Iran’s most tragic
and destabilizing interventions is its support for the Syrian dictatorship of
Bashar al-Assad in the midst of its unspeakable crimes.
But the Iranian regime’s
longest-suffering victims are its own people, as President Trump has rightly
pointed out. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have
endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict
and terror.
The U.S. has a strategic
and moral imperative to push back. The new administration has strengthened ties
with adversaries of the Islamic Republic. It has also increased sanctions on
Iran’s dangerous ballistic missile program and taken steps toward isolating theIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The overwhelming majority
of Iranians have become disillusioned with the regime. The world saw this in
massive uprisings in 2009, but by reaching out to the tyrants ruling Iran, the
Obama administration helped doom them to violent suppression. Nevertheless,
there are still constant reports of protests over unpaid wages, minimum social
welfare, rampant corruption at the top of the regime, and so on.
These trends point to the
popular support that exists for regime change. But the question then becomes
whether that popular sentiment has the necessary organization to bring it to
fruition.
Some contend that there
is no such movement and that the opposition is fractured or lacking in support.
In that case, the best strategy would be to merely contain the regime. But
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly stated in recent weeks
that any change in Tehran’s behavior would be tantamount to the regime change.
Faced with this attitude, containment is clearly not a realistic possibility.
A growing number of
observers are making the case that there is a viable alternative. They point
out that unlike many other cases in the Middle East, the Iranian opposition is
organized in the form of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. It has an
identifiable female leader, Maryam Rajavi, who has a progressive, democratic
ten-point plan for the future of Iran.
The support among the
diaspora is evident in its annual major gatherings in Paris (scheduled for July
1st), which draw tens of thousands of Iranian expatriates and their
international supporters. It has solid bipartisan support among U.S.
congressmen and senior national security officials from the past four
administrations.
For years the level of
opposition support inside of Iran was an issue of dispute. It has been true
that the key movement of the coalition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization ofIran (POMI/MEK) has witnessed the brunt of the regime’s suppression and some
100,000 of its activists have been executed over the years.
One noticeable change in
the Iranian political landscape has been a substantial upsurge in domestic
activism of the MEK. Its activists throughout the country have been risking
arrest and torture by hanging banners and posters in major express ways and
walkways urging regime change and support for Maryam Rajavi. The July 1 rally
is expected to be viewed by millions, via a banned Resistance television
network.
The Trump administration
has moved Iran policy in the right direction but has yet to exploit the unique
opportunity to turn the page against the ayatollahs for good, for the betterment
of the Iranian people and the world as a whole.
Comments
Post a Comment