[Eli Lake] Trump must focus on Iranian freedom after nuclear deal

President Donald Trump finally made good on his promise Tuesday to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. As I have written, I would have kept the agreement in limbo and let the regime’s clerics twist in the wind.

But what’s done is done. Much will be written about what the US and its allies should do on the nuclear file. Iran’s leaders have made vague threats, and the West must prepare for the prospect of losing visibility into the country’s declared nuclear infrastructure.

That said, the most urgent task now for Trump is increasing the odds of success for Iran’s democracy movement.

To understand why, consider the argument first put forward in 2005 by former CIA analyst and Iran specialist Kenneth Pollack. In his book, “Persian Puzzle,” Pollack said there were two clocks for Iran: a countdown to nuclear weapons, and a countdown to democracy. He argued that the best guide for US policy was to try to slow down the former to give more time for the latter.

The problem is that the nuclear deal also enriched the regime that Iran’s democrats are hoping to change. As Iran’s diplomats have argued since 2015, the US is required to assure other world powers that large investments in Iran’s economy are permissible. Indeed, until Trump’s inauguration, it was US policy to soothe European concerns about investment in Iran.

Beyond that, President Barack Obama also conferred legitimacy on a largely powerless president, Hassan Rouhani, who campaigned on releasing political prisoners but has presided over increasing repression. In 2015, the year Iran agreed to the JCPOA, the Iranian state executed more than 1,000 prisoners. At a moment when Iran’s people were becoming disillusioned with their unelected leaders, America’s elected leaders conferred undue respect on them.

In an interview last week, Iranian dissident Heshmat Tabarzadi told me he would shed no tears for the nuclear bargain. “Obama and the Europeans sacrificed the human rights of the Iranian people in order to achieve more security for themselves,” he said. “This was a blatant mistake. The point is that the Islamic regime, through its blackmailing via its nuclear programs, managed to buy time, receive dollars, crack down on the Iranian people, meddle in Syria and Yemen, and make the world a less safe place through its development of missiles.”

He told me that now the best thing for the US to do is to support technologies like Telegram that allow Iranians to communicate securely with one another. An Iranian court recently announced a ban on Telegram, which exposed again Rouhani’s powerlessness.

Tabarzadi also said he supported targeted sanctions against the regime’s propaganda organs as well as expanding sanctions against Iranian leaders for human rights violations.

Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi made a similar point to me last month in an interview when she called for sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the entity that runs the regime’s domestic and foreign propaganda efforts.

Tabarzadi said he opposed external investment in Iran at this point. Ebadi said the same.

With that in mind, it’s important to remember a few basic rules for supporting nonviolent resistance movements like the one in Iran.

First: Iranians will be the authors of their liberation. They will not succeed because of a policy decision in a foreign capital. Trump must refrain from choosing leaders, arming factions or invading Iran. The Iranian people must lead; the West must support.

Second: Solidarity with Iran’s democratic resistance requires a credible channel of communication. That means disregarding outside groups that seek to impose their agenda on the movement, like the People’s Mujahadin or US groups that act as a de facto lobby for the regime like the National Iranian American Council. Instead the White House should seek out Iranian expatriates who want to support the movement in Iran but do not believe they can return to Iran as Ayatollah Khomeini did in 1979 to lead the revolution.

Third: Insofar as Trump wants to change the behavior of the Iranian regime, he needs to expand the list of demands beyond nuclear matters. That means tying specific sanctions to the release of political prisoners, such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two presidential candidates whose election was stolen in 2009 and who remain under house arrest to this day.

Another idea would be to tie sanctions to the movement for an UN-monitored referendum to remove the office of the Supreme Leader from Iran’s constitution.

Now that Trump has accelerated Iran’s countdown to nuclear weapons, it’s more urgent than ever for him to speed up the democracy clock. It’s ultimately up to the Iranian people to organize their next revolution, but Trump has a chance to pursue solidarity with their struggle instead of negotiating another deal with their oppressors.


Eli Lake
Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. -- Ed.

(Bloomberg)