Iran International
The Biden Administration is under increasing pressure to reconcile its policy of nuclear talks with Iran and taking a clear position in support of ongoing protests.
While the administration has taken some steps to show its support for Iranians protesting for freedom, it still remains committed to reviving the 2015 nuclear accord (JCPOA), which would give the Iranian regime billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
Critics say that in the current situation when the Iranian government is killing protesters, lifting sanctions would simply provide a huge financial windfall to the regime to suppress the people, and to carry on with its malign regional policies.
In fact, those who were opposed to the revival of the JCPOA now have further reason to question the administration’s policy of nuclear talks with Tehran.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Monday tried hard to respond to this quandary during his daily briefing.
“Both are a national interest of ours. These are core to our interests and to our values. So of course, we are committed, President Biden is committed, to seeing to it that Iran is never in possession of a nuclear weapon,” he said, referring to President Joe Biden’s stated policy of not allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and supporting the demands of protesting Iranians.
But under tough questioning by reporters, it became apparent that the spokesperson faced a difficult challenge, amid increasing calls for a tougher policy toward Iran.
The administration insists that reviving the JCPOA is part of not allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. But the deal’s sunset clauses will run out in less than a decade and Iran would be free to expand its nuclear program, while earning money free of sanctions.
The second argument the administration presents is that the nuclear challenge Iran poses is the most dangerous and the revival of the JCPOA will address that. However, it agrees that Iran also poses other dangerous challenges to the United States and its allies, such as its support for militant proxies around the region that are already dominating Iraq and Lebanon and building a military infrastructure in Syria.
While reviving the JCPOA would temporarily stop Iran’s progression toward a nuclear bomb, the sanctions relief will allow it to amplify other dangers it poses to the region and US national interests.
A relevant historical example would be US arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union, by which successive administrations tried to harness the arms race while calling for freedom and democracy in the Communist empire. But those talks were not contingent on providing tens of billions of dollars to Moscow in sanctions relief.
Ned Price also highlighted that the administration eased sanctions on sending software and hardware to Iran to provide Iranians free access to the internet after the government severely restricted connectivity. In that context, however, he was careful to distinguish the Biden Administration form its predecessor by saying, “We are helping people around the world, including in Iran, access personal telecommunications technology. This, of course, is not a regime change policy.”
Iranian officials, including foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian have accused the US and the West of fomenting or supporting the protests, trying to argue that the popular demonstrations are not genuine and engineered from abroad. In an interview with Al Monitor the foreign minister went as far as calling hundreds of videos showing violence against protesters “fake”.
Fazeli who was fired from the Tehran University earlier this year for expressing his views, said in an interview with reformist website Etemad Online that "The protests are led by a mechanism that has originated in Iran."
He pointed out that the Iranian people no longer live like the older generations thanks to the Internet. He added that the Iranian society has experienced a growth during the past 43 years and can no longer accept the values and standards introduced many years ago.
Trying to make sense of the protests that followed the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman, Iranian scholars and academics have been discussing the underlying reasons of the protests. Many of them say that the protests are not simply the outcome of recent events, but they are the product of more than 40 years of bad governance in Iran.
Fazeli said that there are many unresolved problems that have been accumulating during the past four decades, without any attempt by the government to address them. He said, "When President Raisi says he will probe into Mahsa Amini’s death, the people cannot trust him because similar cases in the past remained unresolved.”
Meanwhile, the absence of a prospect for the future after several decades of high inflation, near-zero economic growth, the decline of the administrative system and many other factors have left no hope in the future for the new generation. This has led to the emigration of educated individuals and flight of capital,” Fazeli added.
Worsening unemployment in the country has added another dimension to this national despair. Iranian youth cannot help but compare their situation to their counterparts in the UAE, Turkey, China and other countries, Fazeli explained. He further said that forcing the lifestyle of 43 years ago on the new generation is like forcing them to put on the outfit they used to wear when they were one year old.
The Mahsa Amini episode, said Fazeli, was simply a trigger that started the inevitable protests.
Meanwhile, in an article in Etemad newspaper, Abbas Abdi, a reformist commentator, asked whether the government's official policies can be effective in tackling the protests. Why protests take place one after another and nobody thinks of an effective solution. He opined that politics is about resolving or at least controlling conflicts in a non-violent way. Using force will lead to short-lived solutions but will not resolve the crisis.
Abdi criticized the Islamic Republic for failing to bring about any change to resolve crises that have emerged particularly during the past two decades. Meanwhile, he added that following wrong cultural, social and economic policies as well as unresolved foreign policy problems have created the current crisis.
The government's introduction of the morality police has been humiliating for young Iranians, particularly young women, Abdi argued, adding that professionals such as doctors, engineers, artists, writers and so on experienced this humiliation in other ways that constantly enraged them.
Meanwhile, in a commentary in Arman Melli newspaper, reformist academic Sadeq Zibakalam wrote that both supporters and critics of the Iranian government are currently worried about the country's situation. The Iranian government has not changed its approach toward protests, and it has not sought the insight of moderate politicians. It refuses to accept that part of the society does not agree with the lifestyle hardliners want to impose. Zibakalam maintained: "Ignoring this dissatisfaction in the Iranian society will not solve the government's problems."