{"id":18957,"date":"2019-12-06T10:35:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T08:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/?p=18957"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:35:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T08:35:57","slug":"instead-of-suffocating-us-should-help-iran-stable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/?p=18957","title":{"rendered":"Instead of suffocating..US should help Iran stable"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Washington Post – By<\/em>\u00a0Ardeshir Zahedi<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Ali Vaez<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Ardeshir Zahedi is Iran\u2019s former foreign minister (1966-1971) and ambassador to England (1962-1966) and United States (1960-1962 and 1973-1979). Ali Vaez is the International Crisis Group\u2019s Iran project director, based in Washington.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We belong to two very different generations of Iranians. One of us served in senior official positions in the pro-Western monarchy that ruled Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution; the other is a child of that revolution. One presided over the golden age\u00a0<\/b>of Iran-U.S. relations; the other was subject to years of state-sponsored anti-American indoctrination. Yet, despite these differences, we share a sense of belonging to both countries and grave concerns about the collision course they are on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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The Trump administration seems to believe it can achieve what has eluded its predecessors for four decades: fundamental change in Tehran. It has resorted to a time-worn set of tools to attain this objective: strangling the Iranian economy through sanctions, destabilizing Iran by supporting dissidents and secessionists, and launching an information war against the leadership in Tehran. It\u00a0appears convinced<\/a>\u00a0that exercising what it calls \u201cmaximum pressure<\/a>\u201d will cause Iranian capitulation or regime collapse.<\/p>\n

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The Iranian people, meanwhile, strive for democracy as they have for more than a century, amid growing discontent over endemic corruption, repression and environmental degradation. They deserve a government that respects their rights, preserves their dignity, and offers them peace and a chance at prosperity. Washington\u2019s belligerence, however, could once again bring their democratic struggle to grief. This is for several reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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First, the Trump administration has very little credibility as the would-be standard-bearer of positive change. Its rhetoric promising to \u201ccrush<\/a>\u201d Iran or usher in \u201cthe\u00a0official end of Iran<\/a>\u201d through military action belies its professed distinction between the leadership and the Iranian people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The administration\u2019s list of public missteps toward the Iranian people is as long as it is regrettable. It includes\u00a0preventing<\/a>\u00a0almost all Iranians from visiting the United States;\u00a0<\/b>misstating<\/a>\u00a0the historic name of the Persian Gulf;\u00a0failing to express sympathy<\/a>\u00a0with Iranians after terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and separatist groups; and, perhaps most consequentially, withdrawing from the nuclear deal that\u00a0remains popular<\/a>\u00a0in Iran and to which many there had pinned their hopes for a better life.<\/p>\n

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These mistakes have helped transform top-down anti-Americanism in Iran into a bottom-up phenomenon. Nothing spurs a rally-around-the-flag effect among 83 million Iranians more than humiliation and threats of foreign aggression.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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How can Iranians buy into the administration\u2019s professions of positive intent when Washington selectively decries their leaders\u2019 corruption and human rights violations while overlooking the same behavior among U.S. allies? Why didn\u2019t President Trump ask his North Korean or Russian counterparts to fundamentally reorient their policies before he would engage them in fruitless pageantry?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The administration\u2019s Iran policy is not a strategy. It is a pressure tactic wrapped in bellicosity folded inside a chimera. It is bereft of a viable vision and based on the naive assumption that overthrowing the Islamic republic will miraculously lead to a pluralistic and pro-American order. That previous U.S.-sponsored regime change in the region has ushered in failed states or worse autocracies seems to be an afterthought.<\/p>\n

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Even when the administration seems to vie for rapprochement, it is unconvincingly inconsistent.\u00a0<\/b>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says, \u201cWe are prepared to engage in a conversation [with Iran] with no preconditions,\u201d but in the\u00a0same news conference<\/a>\u00a0, he goes on to say that would happen only \u201cwhen the Iranians can prove that they want to behave like a normal nation.\u201d This kind of double-speak and condescension does not instill trust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The suffocating sanctions that the United States is slapping unilaterally on Iran have pushed the country into a deep inflationary recession, impoverishing its middle class and enriching state-affiliated actors, especially men with guns and experience in circumventing restrictions. This could lead to one of two outcomes: a weakened Iranian society, in which making ends meet will overshadow any quest for liberty; or a blind, desperate revolt that ends either in a brutal crackdown or a bloody civil war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Either scenario will leave behind a broken, radicalized and militarized Iran, perhaps entrenching the Islamic republic\u2019s most hard-line elements. How does that temper Iran\u2019s behavior? How is that in the United States\u2019 interest?<\/p>\n

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Bullying and crude threats will achieve little beyond entangling the United States and the region in another senseless war while deepening the two countries\u2019 40-year estrangement. The United States should strive for an Iran that is stable with a strong middle class and highly educated youths connected to the moderating influence of the outside world. The Iranian people want to restore the friendship between Iran and the United States, two countries that enjoyed 123 years of cordial ties before 1979. But the path to their hearts and minds is not through sanctions and military intervention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is not too late for this administration to cease demonizing and threatening Iran, and step aside from its maximalist demands. One of Iran\u2019s most renowned poets, Rumi, offers a better way forward: \u201cOut beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I\u2019ll meet you there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post – By\u00a0Ardeshir Zahedi\u00a0and\u00a0Ali Vaez\u00a0 Ardeshir Zahedi is Iran\u2019s former foreign minister (1966-1971) and ambassador to England (1962-1966) and United States (1960-1962 and 1973-1979). Ali Vaez is the International Crisis Group\u2019s Iran project director, based in Washington. We belong to two very different generations of Iranians. One of us served in senior official …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4220,388],"tags":[2644,7807,758,2709,5629,10057,555],"class_list":["post-18957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-slide","tag-help","tag-instead-of","tag-iran","tag-should","tag-stable","tag-suffocating","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18960,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957\/revisions\/18960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}