The greatest overseas threat Donald Trump will face during his second term will not come from Russia, China, or even North Korea. It will come from the Islamic regime in Iran.
Russia, China, and even North Korea respect the rules of power politics and will respond to some blend of negotiation, coercion, and enticement to set aside — at least temporarily — their hostile intent toward America. In other words, they are ripe for the “art of the deal.”
Islamic Iran is not.
Any idea that the mullahs in Tehran are ready to make a deal with President-elect Trump is profoundly mistaken. They do not chant “Death to America” at every public meeting just for the cameras. They believe that their regime will utterly destroy the United States, and they are planning each day how they can accomplish that end.
You could call it the death by a thousand cuts. Iranian regime agents murdered 241 U.S. Marines in the October 1983 bombing in Beirut. They covertly assisted the 9/11 hijackers who murdered 2,977 people in 2001. They killed another 600 U.S. soldiers in Iraq using explosively formed penetrators. And they have been accused by the FBI of having plotted to kill Trump himself.
So far, only one U.S. president has held them to account for their actions. When Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was mobilizing Iraqi militias to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Trump took action, ordering a drone strike on Soleimani in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, 2020.
According to Bob Woodward’s account in the book “Rage,” the president based his decision on intelligence intercepts. That may have been the way the intelligence community disguised the information provided to the president, but it came from human sources who had access to the Supreme Leader’s office — a story I reveal in “The Iran House.”
Trump understood at that time that allowing Soleimani to continue his attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad would do grave damage to the United States. And he was right.
Military force does have an effect on the Iranian regime’s behavior, but it is only temporary. They back off for a time, only to regroup and plot how to strike anew.
You cannot negotiate with a regime dedicated to your demise. They may temporarily change their behavior, but never their goals.
Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who boasts of his close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, claims his government is ready to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with the United States and our allies.
But Pezeshkian represents very little of the Iranian regime. As the presidential nominee selected by the Islamic elite, he is little more than a puppet in their hands. The regime is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who rejected the 2015 nuclear deal until the very end to coerce Secretary of State John Kerry into greater concessions.
Neither of those powers wants a deal with the United States. Khamanei ideologically opposes dealing with the “Great Satan,” while Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stands to lose its monopoly on the grey market oil trade with China, now averaging two million barrels of oil per day.
Secretary of State designee Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) got it just right when asked by NBC News whether a deal was possible with the Iranian regime.
“If the Iranian regime tomorrow said, ‘We’re going to stop trying to become the regional power, we’re going to stop our nuclear weapons, we’re going to stop sponsoring terrorism, we’re going to stop trying to kill you — which is what they’re trying to do with Donald Trump — we’re going to stop all of these things — theoretically, yes. Of course, you could work on something like that.”
But Rubio added that making a real deal with the Iranian regime — and not just a make-believe deal like Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement — was “unlikely,” because the policies the United States is asking Iran to abandon are “the very driving mission and purpose of the regime.”
If the next Trump administration really wants to gain leverage over the Islamic regime in Tehran, they should begin by reinstating the “Maximum Pressure” sanctions against Iranian oil exports.
Those U.S. sanctions are already on the books, but Biden stopped enforcing them on day one of his administration, allowing Iranian oil sales to skyrocket form 400,000 barrels per day in January 2021, to more than 2.5 million barrels per day today.
But the U.S. can and must do more. As I argue in a paper for the America First Policy Institute, we should couple Maximum Pressure on the regime with “Maximum Support” for the Iranian people.
It is in America’s national security interest to help the people of Iran to replace the Islamic regime — not through a replay of old neo-con fantasies of imposing regime change from the outside, but by enabling the Iranian people to take those steps themselves.
What concretely can the U.S. do? First, we can delegitimize the Iranian regime and its representatives by banning them from overseas travel, including to the United Nations in New York, expelling them from international organizations, and blocking their ability to cash in on their stolen wealth in Western banks.
Second, we can promote pro-freedom Iranian voices in U.S. government international media, including the Voice of America’s Persian language service. Unfortunately, Voice of America is today considered the “voice of the mullahs” by many inside Iran.
Third, President Trump should appoint a special ambassador to the people of Iran to help the pro-freedom movement in its decades-long effort to coalesce into a force capable of taking on the regime through non-violent struggle. The special ambassador should meet with Iranian opposition leaders in Washington and elsewhere, and promote their efforts on the world stage.
The U.S. can also provide secure chat apps and other technology to allow opposition protesters to communicate securely amongst themselves without fear of government eavesdropping, and with the outside world when the regime shuts down the internet.
In its four decades-long struggle against the U.S., the Islamic regime in Tehran has used all the elements of state power to kill Americans, infiltrate agents of influence into U.S. government agencies, and even attempt to assassinate a former and future president.
It’s time the U.S. fought back — not with boots on the ground or violent subversion — but with the tools that make our republic great: censorship-free communications, and a clear moral stand in support of the freedom of the Iranian people against their Islamic dictators.
The Iranian people have shown time and again through massive protest movements that they want to change the regime. It’s time to give them a little help from their friends.
Source » thehill