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Ordinary Iranians have risked their lives to oppose theocracy and sexual apartheid.
Following the apparent killing of a Kurdish woman by the “orientation patrol” (Iran’s police), weeks of protests ended in “bullets, steel pellets, gruesome beatings, killings, abductions and disappearances. “
Anyone who cares about fundamental human rights sympathizes with the brave women and men who oppose Iran’s regime. But expressions of sympathy may ring hollow. Sympathy does not buy groceries for Iranians who lost their jobs for protesting against the regime and, in fact, does not prevent bullets or remove political prisoners from their cells.
Iranians are (again) the vanguards of a revolution
So, do “we” (i. e. , the U. S. government) do anything?
The question inevitably arises when a crisis erupts involving human rights violations in a remote component of the global, or at least if it happens in a country we are used to seeing as an enemy. And in mainstream political discourse, “doing something” almost means “bombing someone,” “punishing someone,” or “sending troops. “
These are the blunt tools of our imperial foreign policy, and as citizens of a country that maintains plenty of military bases around the world, it can be hard to stop thinking.
But in this case, there is one simple and apparent thing that the U. S. is not able to do so. The U. S. can do to get the Iranians to fight their despicable regime, and it’s the exact opposite of “doing something” in the same old sense.
We deserve to lift sanctions against the Iranian government that keep Iranians on the brink of misery, restrict their access to the world, and make it difficult for them to take risks to oppose the regime.
Helping Iranians bet on the “world police”
I understand, the suggestion would possibly seem ridiculous.
If you see the United States as the world’s policeman and the less tough nations as the criminals we control patrolling the streets, recommending that we leave Iran alone while it brazenly commits serious crimes is quite the opposite. If you think that way, we deserve to find new tactics to punish this nation as a whole. But we want to prevent people from thinking that way.
It’s a mindset that has led Americans into catastrophic wars in recent decades. When then-President George W. Bush sent troops to invade Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, we were told that those troops would be welcomed as liberators. They were greeted for many años. de insurrection, chaos and resentment as more working-class Americans returned home in flag-draped caskets wrapped in flag-draped caskets.
In another of Iran’s neighbors, Afghanistan, the U. S. The U. S. overthrew a theocratic regime even more repugnant than Tehran’s, and failed spectacularly to build a new state with enough popular aid for U. S. troops to arrive at the airport 20 years later.
Does anyone say that if Joe Biden sent the 82nd Airborne Division to bring democracy to Iran, the effects would be better?
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had anything like Iran’s military capability. The Islamic Republic has enough weapons of war for Vladimir Putin to kill Ukrainians with Iranian drones, a horror that, incidentally, could be stopped if the United States were willing to lift sanctions against Iran. Iran and normalize relations. In such a scenario, Iran would have something to lose by offering this aid, but as things stand, this is not the case.
The fleeing Russians are war criminals, they are refugees.
A war with Iran would make Iraq and Afghanistan look like minor skirmishes.
This is why so few people can decide to seriously protect such a thing.
So what’s left if you think “doing something” means taking competitive action?Should we launch some cruise missiles? Iran’s reaction to then-President Donald Trump’s order to assassinate one of its most sensible military commanders, Qasem Soleimani, leaves little doubt that the Islamic Republic would: it would retaliate and likely lead to a broader war that would be disastrous for the United States and, of course, be a boon to the regime’s domestic popularity.
Impose sweeping sanctions? We have already done that too. That’s the problem.
How sanctions are helping Iran’s elite and hurting Iranians
Iran won sanctions relief in 2015 from the nuclear deal negotiated through then-President Barack Obama. But when Trump followed the neocons’ recommendation and withdrew from that deal, that relief disappeared.
And, of course, Iran did not continue to fulfill its share of the market. Why would they? If you think the world is a safer position without Iran’s nuclear arsenal, that’s why the U. S. is proposing to lift sanctions.
These sanctions restrict many Iranians’ access not only to the global economy, but also to the internet. They make it incredibly difficult for anyone outside the regime-linked elite to accumulate wealth.
When I asked Kurdish educator and podcaster Djene Bajalan about this, he pointed out that smuggling and non-compliance with sanctions were rampant, but that senior officials, his friends, other people who manage “religious funds” connected to the regime, etc. Obviously the bestpositioned to get away with this activity and benefit from it. And those other people are not forced to send their children to the schools where they live because of the concern of the guidance patrol. The Iranian elegance of aghazadeh (elite youth, or literally “young men”) is sent to school in countries like Canada.
What the Cuban Missile Crisis Can Teach the U. S. U. S. on How to Deal with Russia and Ukraine
Meanwhile, Iranians who fill the streets chanting “Women, life, freedom” will have to worry about how they will feed their families. The UN special rapporteur on the effects of sanctions spoke of their “devastating humanitarian impact. “
Anyone who has ever tried to organize a union in their office, for example, a mass uprising in a country, knows that other people who must care about the fundamental desires of their loved ones will naturally be reluctant to take private risks for reasons they might sympathize with in the abstract. If Iran’s despicable regime survives what is happening right now, one of the main reasons will be economic desperation that will force other people back to life as usual.
If you need the emotional satisfaction of punishing someone and fulfilling the fantasy of the world’s policeman, you should look elsewhere for solutions. But if you really need to help the women and men who are risking their lives on the streets of Iran right now, lift the sanctions.
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