Dealing With Iran

The tragedy of Iran is twofold.  First, there is the fact that its people are quite open-minded and moderate compared to the rest of the Middle East, and even took to democracy without America having to impose it on them - it is only its revolutionary Islamist regime that makes the country an enemy of freedom.  Second is the fact that Iran would still be a parliamentary system if the United States hadn't once again decided that as part of its global struggle to protect democracy from communism it should set up an authoritarian puppet regime, whose collapse set the stage for the aforementioned revolutionary Islamist regime to take over.

But there's no use bemoaning America's past mistakes (save for hoping that we'll learn from them at some point), so we have to look at the situation we have now, and figure out where to go from here.

Iran is not a friendly country.  Its leadership hates us for backing the Shah decades ago, hates us for backing its rivals in the Middle East now, and hates us for being a country where women can wear a bikini and men can skip church to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  Iran supports Bashar al-Assad, the tyrant who led Syria into civil war, and terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.  Its regime rejects notions of human rights in favor of religious fundamentalism, and when Iranians attempt to protest election results they’re suppressed by security forces and Islamic militias.  And its nuclear program has had ambitions to build a weapon in the past, and a history of ignoring international treaties and hiding things from nuclear inspectors

Almost as worringly, Iran is also a schizophrenic country.  It has an elected national government that at every level is checked by a fanatical religious regime, so even while Iran's negotiators try to work out a deal with us, the Ayatollah is posting taunts and threats on social media while his priests lead the "Death to America" refrain they've been singing for nearly forty years now.  It has a conventional military, as well as an Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and its auxiliary Basij militias, which act on their own initiative when it comes to brutalizing or imprisoning citizens who dare to speak out against the religious regime.  This is not the sort of system that you'd want to have access to nuclear power, in other words.  Even if Iran doesn't build a conventional bomb with it, there's all sorts of mischief its glassy-eyed fanatics could get up to with a radioactive sample.

America's response to all this has been to try to isolate Iran diplomatically and, along with other countries, impose economic sanctions in an effort to punish and limit its misbehavior.  They haven't worked.  Even after the UN Security Council sanctioned the country for continuing its nuclear program, Iran was able to build a functioning reactor, step up production, even start a second underground facility.  As we've also seen in places like Iraq and Cuba, if a regime is willing to brutalize its own people to stay in power, imposing additional hardships on that population probably isn't going to get it to do what we want.

So the status quo isn't working, and the Obama Administration has done something pragmatic.  Rather than sticking to our current strategy and watching as Iran develops its nuclear program despite the sanctions, the president has attempted to give us some control over what the country does next, lifting some ineffective economic disincentives if Iran behaves itself and follows some instructions.

Naturally, the Republicans are outraged.  Iran will surely use the money it makes from lifted sanctions to back terrorist groups.  Israel, our 51st state, will be placed in mortal peril.  All our valuable allies in the region (whoever they are) will lose faith in America's resolve to stand with them, assuming they had any left after we watched our dictator in Egypt be replaced by another dictator, or ISIS run all over Iraq.  Even the American public doesn't have a whole lot of support for this triumph of years of patient diplomacy - it simply feels wrong to lift sanctions on a hostile, undemocratic regime that hasn't changed its tune.

But we don't have many alternatives.  If we stick to our principles, fold our arms, and refuse to deal with Iran, we miss out on Iran's agreement to let nuclear inspectors in, reduce its low-yield uranium stockpile by 98%, cut down on centrifuge production, and so forth.  It's an unhappy compromise, and dropping some of the sanctions against Iran means that a troublesome regime will have more money to spend on other projects we don't like, but at least it will have some restrictions on a program that has us very worried.  How else are we going to control Iran's nuclear aspirations?  Is anyone seriously proposing yet another American military operation in the Middle East, at a time that we're already reluctantly working with Iran against ISIS?

Optimistically, this deal could lead to further negotiations on those other things about Iran we find so objectionable.  And if nothing else, lifting some sanctions could help bolster Iran's middle class, that important ingredient for democracy.  So not only would we be helping out some people that already have enough problems just living under the Iranian government, we might be causing problems for that Iranian government when those people question why they're required to chant "death to America" every day.

This is not a deal that America would normally be proud of, but right now it might be the best option we have.