According to the State Department’s annual human rights report on Iran: “Iran’s restrictions on human rights worsened in a number of areas during the year….[For instance], transnational repression against individuals, femicide, forced sterilization, early and forced marriage, trafficking in persons, recruitment of child soldiers, worst forms of child labor, violence targeting ethnic minorities [e.g., Shiite Arabs, Sunni and Shiite Kurds and Sunni Balochis], severe restrictions on freedom of expression and religion [e.g., Sunnis, Baha’is, Jews], criminalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons, enforced disappearance, torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government….”
The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights adds: ”Human rights violations by Iran… amounting to crimes against humanity…. Women and girls subjected to rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape, rape with an object, electrocution of genitalia, forced nudity and groping…. State authorities at the highest levels encouraged, sanctioned and endorsed human rights violations through statements justifying the acts and conduct of the security forces….”
*Since its February 1979 violent rise to power, the Ayatollahs’ regime has been intensely committed to its 1,400-year-old fanatical vision, as documented by its Constitution, school curriculum, mosque sermons and the daily enforcement of its Islamic Revolution, domestically and globally. The Ayatollahs’ vision – which transcends financial and diplomatic considerations – has transformed Iran from “The American Policeman of the Gulf” to the leading global epicenter of anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced military systems.
*Notwithstanding Western appeasement, generous financial and diplomatic gestures and occasional crippling economic sanctions, the Ayatollahs have adhered to their ideology, rejecting the Western notion of “Money Talks.” The Ayatollahs have systematically defied peaceful coexistence, good-faith negotiation and tolerance, which contradict the core of their own Islamic Revolution. They have evolved into a role model of ruthless despotism and imperialism, driven by an ideology, which mandates subjugation and degradation of internal and external opponents, such as domestic dissidents, ethnic and religious minorities, women, “apostate” Sunni regimes, the “infidel” West (religiously, culturally and strategically), “The Great American Satan” and “the illegitimate Zionist entity, the vanguard of the US in the Middle East.”
*The Ayatollahs have been totally committed to intolerant violence at home and abroad. Their rogue domestic conduct has reflected and bolstered their rogue external conduct.
*Contrary to US policy makers, who consider negotiation as a means to advance their goal of reconciliation, the Ayatollahs have always viewed negotiation as a means to advance theirgoal of subjugation, leveraging the US diplomatic option to bolster their anti-US capabilities, surging from a secondary/tertiary power in 1979 to global prominence in 2024.
*President Trump’s first term featured “maximum pressure” economic sanctions, crippling the Ayatollahs’ economy, and constraining their capability to bolster terrorism and wars. However, as demonstrated by the 2021 suspension and softening of the sanctions, economic sanctions are reversible by a succeeding President. They temporarily reduce/delay the wrath of war and terrorism, but do not induce the Ayatollahs to abandon their ideology, and reform their conduct, domestically and globally. Moreover, the Ayatollahs have perfected their sanctions-evasion techniques…
*On the other hand, regime-change is irreversible, eliminates the threat, and cannot be restored by a succeeding President. Moreover, it would bolster the US’ strategic stature (including in Latin America, the US’ soft underbelly), by removing the Ayatollahs’ machete from the throats of all pro-US Arab regimes, eliminate the chief global destabilizer and supporter of Islamic terrorism, and induce Saudi Arabia and Oman (and possibly Kuwait, Indonesia and additional Moslem countries) to join the Abraham Accords.
*Therefore, the Ayatollahs’ 45-year-old track record attests that they should not be partners to negotiation, nor a target for maximum pressure economic sanctions, but a target for regime-change. The potential cost of regime-change would be dwarfed by the cost of an Ayatollahs’ success to topple the regimes of Jordan (transforming Jordan into a volcanic arena of Islamic terrorism) and the highly-vulnerable Arab oil-producing countries (gaining control of 48% of global oil reserves), as well as the horrific cost of facing a nuclear Iran.
This column was published at The Ettinger Report.
The views expressed in guest columns are not necessarily the views or positions of the CCNS or its members.
