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Washington will only neutralize Iran by exploiting the regime’s main vulnerability: its false claim to legitimacy. The ayatollahs’ hold on power is inherently unstable because they have no popular mandate. Since staging a rigged election in 2009 to keep Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they have relied exclusively on repression and brutality to silence opposition by jailing journalists, torturing detainees, and executing critics (both real and imagined). By highlighting these crimes on the world stage and actively supporting Iran’s dissidents, the United States can place a new, more effective kind of pressure on Tehran and support the movement for democratic change from within. Focusing on human rights violations will allow the United States to expose the hypocrisy of the regime and remind Iran of its domestic troubles as it tries to expand its power and influence.
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Some may argue that exposing Iran’s human rights record is a poor means of undermining the its regime. But it is actually sound statecraft. At little cost, the United States can mobilize international condemnation of Iran’s oppression far more effectively than it can unite countries against Iran’s nuclear program, which is a far more contentious issue.
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U.S. policymakers are increasingly catching on. In June, the State Department sanctioned the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its human rights violations against Iranian citizens. Critics, however, insist that the United States will harm the Iranian opposition by assisting it, ruining its credibility. Others believe that a human rights–based initiative will ultimately fail to change Iran’s behavior and thus point to negotiations as the only solution.
Yet the events of the past two years suggest such critiques are outdated. The Green Movement activists who raised banners declaring, “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us!” demonstrated that they want U.S. support. Moreover, the Obama administration abandoned its policy of engagement with the Iranian regime after two years of silence from the ayatollahs.
The United States, then, should adopt new methods of neutralizing Iran. It can begin focusing on human rights by conditioning any future negotiations on Iran’s demonstrated adherence to international human rights standards. It can place travel bans not only on senior Iranian officials but also on their family members (a tactic used against lieutenants of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s). The Obama administration can mention Iranian dissidents by name in speeches and press conferences. Above all, it can place sanctions directly on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
”— Why Obama Should Highlight Iran’s Human Rights Abuses (via mohandasgandhi)
(via mohandasgandhi)
