Advancing the debate about how best to help Iranian protesters , the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has released a 10-point plan . Its proposals are big on targeted sanctions that are important to encourage protesters and signal to the regime leadership that the international community will hold them accountable.
While it is necessary to take Amnesty International figures with a grain of salt given its politicization and record of sloppiness on Iran, the group is probably correct when it counts Iran as the world’s top executor, at least after China . By calling out the regime leadership’s human rights abuses, the world can signal that the Islamic Republic’s senior officials could find themselves on the other end of the noose if they continue their record of rape and murder.
IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARIES NEED US
However, not everything should be about sanctions. Certainly, the United States and the Western world can go further. The fall of the shah culminated in a multiyear process. What finally tipped the situation in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s favor was the spread of strikes throughout Iran and especially in the oil industry. It is ironic that not only Democrats but also European progressives and Australia’s ruling labor government support organized labor the world over, except in Iran. It is time to end that oversight and provide striking Iranians with funds so they can feed their families while marching against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other agents of regime repression. This is well within the realm of the possible, both given the development of mobile money since the 1979 revolution and the fact that Iran cannot afford to cut itself off from its trade in Dubai.
Perhaps the biggest reason why muddle-through reform in Iran could never work is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exists to prevent it. While the Revolutionary Guards are not monolithic, the diplomatic and intelligence communities still have little insight into its factional divisions. Many within the Revolutionary Guards' orbit are not happy. When I lived in the Islamic Republic, it became apparent that many veterans resented the regime for failing to provide them with adequate care, especially given lingering injuries from the Iran-Iraq War. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin might dispatch an American hospital ship to Dubai and offer Revolutionary Guard veterans free medical care. Should they accept it, it would be an intelligence and propaganda coup for Washington. Should the regime prevent them from taking up the offer, it will put into overdrive their antagonism to their own government. Nor should those veterans be the only ones to qualify. Providing injured Iranian protesters medical care should they get to Dubai would mean much more than vacuous State Department statements.
Voice of America and Radio Farda should dispense with world news and other programs to focus 24/7 on fact-based reporting on the protests from every corner of Iran. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration smartly declassified key intelligence to blunt the Kremlin narrative and delegitimize its efforts at false-flag provocations. Certainly, the time is now to allow America’s Persian-language broadcasters to reveal everything the U.S. knows about regime officials’ embezzlement and corruption.
FDD’s proposals are smart, but the U.S. can do much more without overstepping its role and delegitimizing what truly is an indigenous, authentic movement. It is time to move beyond sanctions.
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Michael Rubin ( @mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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