Will There Be a New Iran?

The time has come to give long overdue attention to the situation in Iran.

Since late last year, there have been systemic protests against the Iranian regime with the regime responding by killing between 7,000 and 30,000 civilians.

Mass protests are hardly new in Iran. Indeed, they have occurred regularly since the ill-fated Green Movement of 2009 following the "election" of then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Of course, then President Obama refused to back the Green Movement because he wanted to achieve a nuclear deal with Iran. For Obama, it was more important to preserve a repressive regime in the name of justifying his Nobel Peace Prize than it was to stand with people fighting for their freedom. 

Yes, it is true that in 2022 Obama admitted that he erred in not backing the Green Movement. Better late than never perhaps. But Obama knew what his choices were and chose his own ego over the greater good. If Obama were ever to be sent back to the White House, I do not have confidence that he would be any wiser. 

Yet Obama's failure to back the Green Movement has not stopped Iranians for standing up for themselves. There were protests influenced by the Arab Spring in 2011, the Dey Protests of 2017-2018, Bloody November in 2019 as well as the 2022 women led protest sparked by the murder of Mahsa Amini by Iran's morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

What is different about this set of protests is how Iran's regime appears to be crumbling. Iran's Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Khamenei turns 87 in April, and the country has been plagued by water, food and fuel shortages. The Iranian regime is only capable of responding with violence against their own people.

Then there is the threat of military action by President Trump. Yet those threats are accompanied by diplomatic talks over its nuclear program. Should diplomacy succeed then the Trump Administration will have given the Iranian regime a lifeline and a guarantee of more water, food and fuel shortages with a large dose of political repression. 

Yet let us suppose there is military action in Iran. Who can say it would be any different than what occurred in Venezuela earlier this year where they extracted Nicolas Maduro only to install his vice-president as his replacement? Meet the new Ayatollah. Same as the old Ayatollah. 

From where I sit nearly 6,000 miles away from Tehran, I believe the best possible outcome would be if the regime were to collapse by the sheer force of popular revolt from within and for Iranians to determine their own destiny. I write this knowing full well such a thing is unlikely to happen without the aid of external actors. While it is true that Iranians have long been the most pro-American nation in the Middle East outside of Israel, leave it to Trump to squander that good will.

During his SOTU address earlier this week, Trump stated:

And just over the last couple of months with the protests, they’ve killed at least, it looks like, 32,000 protesters — 32,000 protesters in their own country. They shot them and hung them. We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.

I'm not sure how much Trump has deterred the Iranian regime from killing their own people. Of course, Trump is right to decry these killings. Yet his credibility on the subject is severely undermined by the enthusiasm with which he and his administration defended the executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month. It is hard to take Trump seriously concerning his defense of political protest in Iran when he does not support political protest on American soil unless it is a crowd trying to overturn an election on his behalf. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to Iran, Democrats are little better. Democrats are falling all over themselves to accuse Israel of genocide while looking upon Iran with complete indifference except to oppose military intervention either by Trump or by Israel. Well, why would those who accuse Israel of genocide condemn Iran when Iran has long been a significant benefactor for Hamas? Why would pro-Hamas apologists bite the hand which helps feed Hamas?

Iran's Islamic regime has made the lives of Iranians miserable on all counts. Nothing good comes from their remaining in power. Yet they cannot be replaced by an entity which will either maintain the status quo or make things worse. But what Iran lacks in water, food, fuel and basic freedoms is made up by a thriving civil society which, in the face of death, has the capability of being the foundation of a new Iran which could contribute positively to the Middle East and the world. 

The question which remains is whether a new Iran will have a chance to emerge or if the Trump Administration gives it yet another lifeline.