The New US Iran Strategy; For or Against Our Against?

Donald Trump speaks at White House on New US Iran Strategy.

 Last Friday, President Trump announced the new US strategy towards Iran. Reaction to this strategy was diverse. Advocates of the appeasement policy condemned it, claiming it is in contrast with US interests. Some claimed with this strategy, people of Iran and the region will lose their trust in America. On the other hand, others believe the new strategy will mutually serve the interests of the US and Iranian people.

Being the main victims of the West’s appeasement policy, the Iranian people had in fact been waiting for such a strategy for decades.

Iran’s Malign Activities

In his speech, Trump cited some of Iran’s malign activities during the past 38 years:

“Beginning in 1979, agents of the Iranian regime illegally seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held more than 60 Americans hostage during the 444 days of the crisis. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah twice bombed our embassy in Lebanon – once in 1983 and again in 1984. Another Iranian-supported bombing killed 241 Americans – service members they were, in their barracks in Beirut in 1983. In 1996, the regime directed another bombing of American military housing in Saudi Arabia, murdering 19 Americans in cold blood. Iranian proxies provided training to operatives who were later involved in al Qaeda’s bombing of the American embassies in Kenya, Tanzania, and two years later, killing 224 people, and wounding more than 4,000 others.”

He did not discuss the details of those suppressive measures, but for so long such measures have been overlooked by the West:

Execution of over 120,000 dissidents since 1981, and more specifically the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in summer of 1988. Those killed were mostly members and supporters of the main opposition, the People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MeK).
Imprisonment, torture, and execution of hundreds of thousands of Iranian people, including execution of pregnant women, execution of girls and boys under the age of 18, raping women before execution, …
Implementing anti human, and anti-Islamic rules under the guise of Islamic sharia, such as amputation of arms and legs, gouging eyes, stoning to death and torturing people in public by flogging.
In short, for the past 38 years the mullahs’ regime has been at war with the nations of Iran and the Middle East. The supreme leaders’ special army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been the main force behind this inhumane war. In the meantime, the West, through its appeasement policy, was siding with the regime in this war.

Obama and Appeasers Supported Mullahs

In 2009, while people across Iran were in the streets calling for change and the regime was on the verge of collapse, Obama was busy writing letters of friendship to Khamenei, the regimes’ supreme leader. In the streets and in demonstrations, people were chanting “Obama, are you with us or with them” and Obama’s response was clear. Obama and the advocates of appeasement policy turned a blind eye to the regime’s atrocities.

The West was hoping to contain Iran through engagement, but the facts of the past four decades prove that rapprochement has only emboldened this regime, and today the whole region is is chaos and engulfed in war, all caused by Iran.

The facts indicate that the consequences of the failed policy of the past 38 years is an unstable Middle East with a terrorist regime in Iran, fueling sectarian war, death and destruction in the region, and the spread of terrorism across the globe.

In response to Trump’s new strategy and designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced they are all IRGC. This admission clearly indicates that the illusion of moderation inside the regime was a tale by appeasement policy advocates aimed at legitimizing their association with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

Peaceful Iranians Welcome New US Iran Strategy

Contrary to the mullahs and its officials, the Iranian people and their true representatives welcomed the new US strategy. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi , President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ), said Washington should “condemn the IRGC’s gross violations of human rights” in Iran and “deny the Iranian regime and especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) funding for its malign activities, and oppose IRGC activities that extort the wealth of the Iranian people.”

The NCRI President elect added A firm US policy vis-à-vis Iran is long overdue, Rajavi said. The ultimate solution, however, is the overthrow of the regime and establishment of freedom and democracy in Iran by the Iranian people and Resistance. For years, a policy of appeasement has acted as the main impediment to change in Iran.

It is time that the international community recognizes the aspirations of the Iranian people and stands with the people of Iran and their legitimate right for regime change.

Keyvan Salami
Keyvan Salami is an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights. Keyvan graduated from the University of New York, and his focus is Iran and the Middle East. He has contributed writing to many sites. His work covers a wide variety of issues concerning Iran’s state sponsorship of global terrorism, ballistic missile, and violation of human rights.