A deal with Tehran only strengthens the Islamic republic
by Armita Hooman · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Six months ago, millions of Iranians poured into the streets in open defiance of the Islamic republic.
Their chants struck at the ideological foundations of the regime itself. Across the diaspora — including the United States, Canada and Germany — more than 1 million Iranians echoed the message of those inside Iran.
They called for an end to the Islamic republic and for a future rooted in secular democracy and national sovereignty.
Yet now, as Washington pursues a deal with Tehran, the Iranian people are nowhere at the table. The very people who have suffered the most at the hands of this regime, including the loss of at least 40,000 lives in January, are being treated as spectators to negotiations over their own future.
Worse, the deal being discussed would not weaken the Islamic republic. It would rescue it.
In early January, just days into Iran’s national uprising, President Trump warned Iran against killing peaceful protesters. As the crackdown continued, he told Iranians that “help is on the way.” Washington seemed to frame its escalation as an intervention on behalf of the Iranian people, urging them to take control of their institutions and targeting parts of the political leadership.
Yet after many deaths, extensive military damage and a heavy economic burden, the United States now appears prepared to shake hands with the very government it once told Iranians to rise against.
This deal would hand a regime on the brink of failure the time, legitimacy and money it needs to survive. This deal teaches Tehran — and all our other adversaries watching — that killing its own citizens, threatening global energy markets and escalating nuclear blackmail can force the world into capitulation.
Advertisement Advertisement
For the regime, the deal is a victory. For the Iranian people, it is a betrayal. The new avenues of destabilizing leverage a deal would encourage are already visible.
A deal validates the regime’s playbook for the Strait of Hormuz. The mullahs now know that a relatively short-lived economic disruption can serve as a strong shield for survival. They have learned that oil price blackmail works.
If the government can drive energy prices high enough, disrupt global markets and make confrontation appear too costly, the international community will eventually search for a way out — even if that means negotiating with the very regime that manufactured the crisis. Tehran will read this as proof that escalation creates leverage.
Also, any money flowing from a deal — whether through sanctions relief, access to frozen assets or renewed commercial openings — will merely fuel the country’s illicit activities.
Even then, Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged after President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that some sanctions relief money would likely “end up in the hands of the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.”
Advertisement Advertisement
In the hands of the Islamic republic, money becomes ammunition. It strengthens the IRGC, bankrolls regional proxies, fuels repression at home and sustains the nuclear program that brought the region to this point in the first place.
Emboldening Iran betrays the Iranian people and weakens American strategy at the same time. A regime that survives through hostage-taking, nuclear escalation, proxy warfare and threats to global energy markets will not become moderate because it is rewarded. It will tell its commanders that the West can be pressured, frightened and bought off.
It will tell the Iranian people that, no matter how bravely they stand against the regime or how many of them are shot in the streets, the world will ultimately choose the regime over them.
A deal with Tehran would not end the crisis. It would delay it, strengthen its source and make the next confrontation more expensive, more violent and more dangerous.
Advertisement Advertisement
That is why Washington must stop treating the Islamic republic as Iran’s sole political reality. The regime does not represent the Iranian nation; it is the force holding Iran hostage.
A serious Iran policy must recognize that distinction and deny the regime the legitimacy, cash and diplomatic lifeline it seeks while making clear that the future of Iran belongs to the Iranian people, not to the clerics, commanders and proxy networks that have ruled through fear for more than four decades.
The choice before Washington is not between war and diplomacy; it is whether America will stand with a dying authoritarian regime or a nation fighting to be free. As long as the Iranian people are kept outside the room, any deal with Tehran is destined to fail.
• Armita Hooman is a research analyst at the National Union for Democracy in Iran.
Advertisement Advertisement