On Iran

When the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was agreed in 2015, I was originally quite supportive. I naively believed two things:

1. Iran would use the released funds for the good of their own people.
2. Iran would see the value of inclusion in the world community of nations and forswear its nuclear ambitions, notwithstanding the sunset provision in the agreement.

Obviously wrong on both counts.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has used the bulk of those released funds in a bloody campaign to extend its influence throughout the Middle East. It has armed and financed its proxies in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and in Gaza, supported Middle East tyrants and cut a swath of Iranian control from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.

To Iran, the U.S. has been, is now and will always be the Great Satan. 

While I am a staunch supporter of diplomacy, it has become clear that the rigid Islamic regime in Iran which has suppressed its own people for 42 years has no intention of honoring any agreement that precludes it from acquiring nuclear weapon capability. They need only to look to Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who dismantled his nuclear program in 2003 and met his end in 2011, with U.S. backing. As a nuclear power it will add to its arsenal a formidable defensive and offensive dimension, it can more effectively project fear and uncertainly and therefore will command broad international deference, however reluctant that deference may be. No pact or agreement will deter their goal.

There is an old saying that ”the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And so it is that countries like Russia and China provide arms and sustenance to Iran with the primary purpose of offsetting our sanctions and complicating our foreign policy objectives.  Our leverage over Iran is weakened and we are left with few viable options to deter their nuclear ambitions

I have been to Iran and have known and worked with many fine Iranians. They are victims held hostage by an oppressive regime but have no power over their own lives nor over the direction of their own country – – – and they seem to have no prospect of altering their dismal plight.

There are only three ways that the direction of a country can be altered; by the direct actions of the rulers, by the determined will of the people, or by irresistible external pressure. With respect to Iran, the first two seem unlikely. 

Regretfully, the Islamic regime in Iran lives by, and only understands, brute force. Where will that force for change come from?

• – –  Just the view of a common man