At this point, the evidence is irrefutable: The Obama administration got Iran wrong. So did the international foreign-policy establishment. So did the New York Times and nearly every major center-left media outlet in the United States and Europe. In 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested a rigged election and the regime dispatched its thugs to crush the protest by assaulting, imprisoning, and in many cases murdering the
At this point, the evidence is irrefutable: The Obama administration got Iran wrong. So did the international foreign-policy establishment. So did the New York Times and nearly every major center-left media outlet in the United States and Europe.
In 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested a rigged election and the regime dispatched its thugs to crush the protest by assaulting, imprisoning, and in many cases murdering the protesters. The new president had campaigned on the need to “dialogue” with the regime and wanted to prove his foreign-policy prowess by securing a nuclear deal; so he responded with weak rhetorical criticisms and nothing more. A movement that might have blossomed into a democratic and peaceable Iran was instead crushed for the sake of an agreement—the 2015 nuclear deal—the Iranian government immediately began flouting.
Since then, the regime’s cheerleaders in European foreign offices and mainstream media outlets have ignored Iran’s execrable conduct. Tehran has refused inspectors’ full access to its nuclear facilities, sought banned ballistic hardware from foreign agents, imprisoned Iranian dissidents and at least one innocent American academic, supplied Bashar al-Assad with money and manpower, and funded terrorist organizations around the world.
The Times and others, meanwhile, persist in propagating the fiction that the regime is abiding by the nuclear deal. Not only that. A new populist nationalism was emerging in Iran, we’re told, as a direct result of Donald Trump’s aggressive tone and skepticism of the nuclear deal.
With thousands now protesting the regime, that interpretation begins to look like the superficial hot take it always was. Mainstream media reports over the last two days have strongly implied that the Iranian people are mainly protesting the government’s economic policies. It’s true that many ordinary Iranians are angry about high unemployment; the lifting of sanctions as a result of the nuclear deal hasn’t resulted in the pervasive economic opportunity the deal’s proponents predicted. But these protests are manifestly about more than economics. There are credible reports of crowds chanting “We don’t want an oppressive government!” and “Death to the dictator!” Posters of that dictator, meanwhile—Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran—are being defaced and toppled around the country.
These acts could land protesters in jail or worse. They are angry about far more than the country’s struggling economy.
The realpolitik attitudinizing of U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson aside, the Trump administration does not seem inclined to follow the example of its predecessor by turning its back on the Iranian people. Already the State Department has condemned the arrest of peaceful protesters, and President Trump, rightly eager to remind the world of Tehran’s belligerence and Obama’s naïveté, has registered strong support for the protesters.
For the first time in years, the regime finds itself at a severe diplomatic disadvantage. Since the administration in October refused to recertify the nuclear deal, the U. S. is free to reimpose sanctions and pull out of the deal altogether. A return to pre-deal sanctions would do irreparable harm to the country’s economy and thus the regime’s authority. The administration might threaten to carry out that policy if the regime arrests or assault any more peaceful protesters. That will put Khamenei’s government in an impossible position and may, in time, lead to its long hoped-for dissolution and a true Persian democracy.
