Blueprinting the Right Iran Policy

By Heshmat Alavi    avery reluctant US President Donald Trump recently gave the green light for the State Department to recertify Iran as complying with a nuclear agreement signed between international community representatives and Tehran two years ago.

This measure has hurled ongoing debates, launching a faceoff amongst those who consider the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a liability and seek an immediate exit, and those who argue the world simply can’t live without it.

While there are also calls for renegotiating the deal or implementing the JCPOA to its exact meaning, as mentioned recently by senior US officials such as inspecting Iran’s military sites, there is another option before the Trump White House: supporting the Iranian people and calls for regime change.

What needs understanding is that Trump’s agenda of adopting a firm stance on Iran should not be minimized on the JCPOA. This would play into Iran’s hand, while Tehran continues its belligerence elsewhere.

The Trump administration has before it an opportunity to adopt meaningful leverage on Iran.

We must give credit to the Obama administration for establishing an international coalition and initially ramping up sanctions against Iran. This is what brought Tehran to the negotiating table, as economic strains began reaching the point of no return.

Obama’s mistakes afterwards were treacherous, however, succumbing to Iran’s demands. Tehran came to believe Obama sought a foreign policy legacy at all costs, and took full advantage. Whereas if the US led the international community in pressuring the mullahs, Tehran would have given in to all demands.

Never forget how despite all his saber-rattling remarks, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the nuclear agreement approved in the regime’s parliament in 20 minutes.

Yet to those who believe continuing with the JCPOA as it is, a look back at the past two years is necessary. Iran has used the deal’s resulting in reportedly up to a $150 billion windfall, reportedly up to $150 billion, to expand its Middle East hegemony. Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon are under substantial Tehran influence, leaving the region heavily battered more than ever before.

To add insult to injury, the JCPOA’s sunset articles provide Iran the option of patiently awaiting until they can produce all that is necessary for a nuclear weapon.

Iran is already cheating the nuclear deal due to Obama’s desperate positions in his final years. Tehran exceeded its heavy water production cap. Heavy water is the fundamental ingredient in a plutonium bomb. Iran has been testing more advanced centrifuges, again undermining JCPOA limits. According to German intelligence services Iran has been illicitly procuring highly sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile technology in Germany. Tehran has also exceeded its uranium enrichment cap, another major non-compliance factor.

The deal left the Trump administration little to work with, and no serious building block to build pressure on Tehran.

As a result, abandoning the deal allows Iran make a dash for nuclear weapons capability and leaves the US to blame. In such a scenario, it would most likely take more time for Washington to form an international coalition necessary to re-impose necessary measures.

The Obama approach encouraged the Europeans and other parties to rush to the Iranian market. This effectively has been providing further billions to the notorious Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as this entity controls more than 40% of Iran’s economy. Such a disastrous dogma has also left the Trump administration reluctant, or even unable, to fully overhaul Washington’s comprehensive Iran policy and hold Tehran accountable.

In its first six months the Trump administration slapped three different rounds of sanctions, mostly through the Treasury Department, in response to Iran’s ballistic missile test launches, support for terrorism and regional extremism, and egregious human rights violations. While such action is necessary after all the cost-free concessions provided by Team Obama, they fail in forcing Iran to think twice about its measures. However, there is light at the end of this tunnel.

Congress sent a very powerful message to Tehran recently through the House 419-3 and Senate 98-2 votes, slamming an unprecedented level of sanctions and restrictions on Iran. This bill experienced its share of riddles and obstacles, as reservations and alterations have continuously hovered over the Russia and North Korea sections. The Iran chapter, however, continuously enjoyed vast bipartisan support. And Tehran is receiving the message loud clear.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of Keyhan daily in Iran, known to be the Supreme Leader’s mouthpiece, described the new bill as the “mother of all sanctions.”

While long overdue, and despite the fact that the IRGC should officially be designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the State Department, the Guards are now blacklisted amongst the Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).  “The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), not just the IRGC Quds Force, is responsible for implementing Iran’s international program of destabilizing activities, support for acts of international terrorism and ballistic missiles,” the text reads in part.

Drastic measures will be implemented following Trump’s signature: all US-based assets and property associated to any individual or entity linked to the IRGC will be seized and frozen. No US individual or entity is permitted to any affiliation, including financial, business or other services, with any individual associated by any means to the IRGC. With all IRGC-affiliated individuals and entities placed under sanctions, this move will have a paralyzing effect for Iran’s belligerent efforts. The IRGC Khatam al-Anbiya conglomerate, currently involved in cooperation with over 2,500 companies, will be targeted severely. A domino effect will launch as sanctions target all related firms. Secondary banking sanctions against the IRGC will ban any and all financial institutions from delivering direct and/or indirect banking services to any individual or entity linked to the IRGC.

These sanctions should be imposed immediately to act as a launching pad for the Trump White House to take the next necessary steps. Iran’s footprints in Syria and Iraq have resulted in utter death and destruction. Tehran’s lethal influence in the Levant and Mesopotamia must be brought to an end. Moving on, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have both spoken of regime change as a forward-looking approach when it comes to Iran.

Ambassador John Bolton, former US envoy to the United Nations, said it most clearly at a recent Iranian opposition rally in Paris: “The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its 40th birthday,” come February 2019.

YEARS INTO NUCLEAR DEAL, US POLICY ON IRAN NEEDS MAJOR MAKEOVER

YEARS INTO NUCLEAR DEAL, US POLICY ON IRAN NEEDS MAJOR MAKEOVER

byAli safavi __July marks the second anniversary of the nuclear agreement between the Iranian regime and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. Former U.S. President Barack Obama envisioned the agreement — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)— as a potential starting point for a broader rapprochement between the ruling theocracy and the West.

Obama had insisted that with Hassan Rouhani as the regime’s “moderate” president, Tehran would begin to exhibit a more positive behavior. Now, in his second term in office, the promise of moderation under Rouhani’s leadership has proven empty. That is because Rouhani neither wants nor is capable of reform. After all, it is not the president but the supreme leader who defines the contours of the regime’s short-term and long-term strategic direction.

That the possibility of moderation in the Iranian theocracy is a total delusion was reflected in Secretary of Defense James Mattis's recent interview with Washington state’s Mercer Island High School newspaper.

Secretary Mattis dismissed the May 19 Iranian presidential election as “not really an election” and highlighted the stark differences between the ideology of the Iranian regime and the character of the Iranian people.

Still more significant, Mattis endorsed the message that had been presented to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. At a hearing, Tillerson suggested that American foreign policy should be focused first upon confronting the regime over its regional destabilization and then ultimately upon facilitating transition to a democratic system of government, driven by existing voices of opposition. The Defense secretary, too, reiterated that the Iranian regime is the most destabilizing force in the entire region. 

After 38 years of the clerical rule in Iran, the world is beginning to understand that stability in the Middle East requires the removal of the Iranian regime, known for being the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism and the only full-fledged theocracy in the modern world.

While the U.S. administration has imposed new sanctions on individuals and organizations with ties to the Iranian ballistic missile program, it is now mulling the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization.  

By highlighting elections in Iran as a sham and also the fundamental divide between the regime and the Iranian people, Secretary Mattis did undercut much of the previous administration’s rationale for futile rapprochement with the Iranian regime.

Since the regime is both unwilling and incapable of reforming itself, democratic change at the hands of the Iranian people and their organized opposition should be recognized as the only viable option to deal with Tehran’s multi-faceted nefarious conduct. Until this situation changes, nothing else about Iran will change, not even its commitment to developing a nuclear weapon as part of its bid for regional hegemony and global influence.

This is the message that was delivered to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands of Iranians at the “Free Iran” rally in Paris on July 1 by the Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi and by other international supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Rajavi used the opportunity to urge the U.S. and its allies to formally recognize the right of the Iranian people and their organized opposition to oust the dictatorship. A democratic Iran, she added, is an imperative and is within reach. An alternative that can affect change exists.

The Free Iran rally went a long way toward showcasing the depth of Iranian people’s animosity toward the regime. Media outlets reported that the event was attended by some 100,000 people, mostly Iranian expatriates, and it featured messages from domestic dissidents and accounts of the more than 10,000 known acts of protest against the regime over the past year.

It also highlighted a flurry of activities by supporters of the NCRI and its key component, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), inside Iran who are campaigning for democracy.

Two years after the nuclear deal, it is time for a serious and comprehensive Iran policy makeover based on realities on the ground. This means designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity, expelling the Iranian regime and its proxies from the region, taking effective initiatives to permanently block the Iranian regime’s path to a nuclear bomb, and recognizing the Iranian people’s right to topple the regime and establish a democratic and peace-seeking representative government that would be the source of stability and peace in the region. 

originally published in the hill