Right Move for Biden Is To Send Envoys To Meet Representatives of Iran Uprising

The representative to the United States of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, Salah Bayaziddi, told me on Monday that he thought the U.S. government and its allies were still waiting and watching to gauge the seriousness of the unrest in Iran. “I think everything has been changed since 10 days ago,” he said.Let us heed his words. It might be too early to say whether the mass civil disobedience in Iran is the prelude to the much deserved toppling of the Ayatollahs. It’s not too early, though, to acknowledge that the protests are about ending, not reforming, the Islamic Republic.The videos beaming out of Iran now show protesters attacking police cars, defacing posters of the supreme leader, burning Hijabs, and seizing government buildings. This has been ongoing for 10 days, despite violent crackdowns and an effort to slow down and block access to the internet.Unlike the tumult in 2009, following the regime’s theft of the presidential election that year, the uprising in Iran today is not limited to the major cities or led primarily by the professional class. While this round of unrest was sparked by the killing of a Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police, all segments and ethnicities in Iran are participating in the uprising.This presents the free world, and particularly America, with a golden opportunity to center its policy around its real allies — Iranians demanding to take their country back. So far, President Biden and his administration have responded to this opportunity with merely half-measures.Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is a classic case. On the Sunday news shows, he touted the administration’s decision to grant a license for Starlink to provide satellite-based internet to Iran and the Treasury Department’s new sanctions against the morality police.In his speech at the UN General Assembly last week, Mr. Biden called out the regime’s repression against protests.Those are all positive steps. Mr. Sullivan, though, also made clear that America would continue to seek a nuclear agreement with the regime that the Iranian people are seeking to displace.Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. Sullivan invoked President Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union as a parallel to Mr. Biden’s approach to Iran.“At the very moment Ronald Reagan was calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, he was also engaged in arms control talks because he knew that on the one hand we had to push back vigorously against the repression and violations of human rights of the Soviet Union, and at the same time we had to protect and defend the security of ourselves, our allies, and our partners,” Mr. Sullivan said. Mr. Sullivan’s claim is a vain boast. To start, the Soviets already were fielding nuclear weapons by the time Reagan took office. Iran is not yet a nuclear power. By the time Reagan was president, the Soviets wanted to negotiate an arms control agreement with America.As I wrote last week, the Iranian regime has consistently made impossible demands of Mr. Biden’s administration, ones that he lacks the authority to deliver. Even if Iran were to agree to a nuclear deal despite all signals that it will not, America would be flooding that regime with revenue it would then use to kill, imprison, and exile other Iranians leading the current resistance. The incentive for a nuclear deal is the very regime security that comes with such an agreement. In this respect, even if American diplomacy were to succeed, American interests would not be advanced.No need to take my word for it. Listen to Masih Alinejad, who is one of the leaders of Iran’s anti-Hijab protest movement in recent years and who now lives in America. On Sunday, she said the thought of negotiating with Iran’s leaders while offering “thoughts and prayers” to its people is “shameful.” “Don’t save the dictators by signing a nuclear deal,” she added.At this moment, Iranian opposition figures are watching what America does, not just what Mr. Biden and his advisers say. A policy that still seeks an accommodation with a regime that is teetering undermines the message of solidarity from the U.S. government.“In the last 10 days we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of Iranians take to the street,” Salah Bayaziddi told me. The wise move now for Mr. Biden is to state publicly that America is in solidarity with the revolution taking place in Iran and send his diplomats to meet with representatives of the current resistance to seek an equitable nuclear deal once the Islamic Republic falls.

Right Move for Biden Is To Send Envoys To Meet Representatives of Iran Uprising

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