Trump’s State Department spent over $1m in Iran to exploit unrest for ‘regime change’, documents reveal
At
the end of 2017, a dozen cities across Iran, including the capital
Tehran, were rocked by spontaneous protests which continued into the
New Year. What role did the United States play?
Part
10 - More foreign interference means more brutal repression against
activists
This
approach, however, only aggravates tensions, encouraging Iran to
crackdown brutally on domestic democracy activists and opposition
groups on the pretext that they are funded by the United States. It
also threatens to destabilize an already volatile region, and take us
steps closer to a nuclear confrontation.
The US
government still does not appear to have learned its lesson that
democracy cannot be imposed from outside.
Action:
The US sanctions and their counterproductive impact on Iran’s
economy could be acknowledged and reviewed. This could further
accompany a full House or Senate inquiry into the full dimensions of
the US strategy toward Iran since the 1979 revolution to identify how
the policy has worsened the situation.
In the
absence of a significant US change of course, other countries can –
with a view to safeguard against a rapid deterioration of
international security – move to leverage their relationships with
the US.
Action:
US allies and partners in Europe and beyond could exert diplomatic
and economic pressure on the US to pull back from its efforts to
scupper the Iran nuclear deal, an arrangement which at least
demonstrates the non-emergence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Iran,
equally, has failed to grasp that its increasingly draconian efforts
to crackdown on public opinion and legitimate anti-regime sentiment
at home only fuels this dissent.
Action:
Iran could review and roll back its domestic police state apparatus,
address its appalling human rights record, and begin to restore
accountability in the way it treats its citizens. By pro-actively
attempting to salvage its claim to be a ‘republic’, the
government could open the way for a more active and open engagement
between opposition groups and the political establishment.
On the
other hand, Iran has failed to understand and manage the impact of a
convergence domestic economic, energy and environmental crises.
Action:
The Iranian authorities could commission the UN, or another agency,
to conduct a wide-scale independent review of how ongoing
mismanagement has exacerbated the country’s water crisis, which on
a business-as-usual trajectory, will lead to intensifying national
crisis in coming years. The resulting recommendations could lead to a
comprehensive re-organization of the country’s agricultural and
industrial enterprises to create more sustainable water policies, as
well as more effective climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The
irony of course is that, with the Trump regime pursuing its anti-Iran
agenda in alliance with some of the region’s most undemocratic
human rights abusers, the difference between the Trump and Iran
regimes seem increasingly a matter of mere cosmetics.
***
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