Anne Applebaum on the lack of a U.S. strategy for Iran.
For decades, American presidents from both parties have oscillated between coercion and engagement with Iran, sometimes offering diplomacy, sometimes sanctions. Doves and hawks both sought to manage the tactics of the Islamic Republic – its nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missiles, its network of proxy militias throughout the Middle East – without ever coming up with a meaningful strategy to combat the root problem: the ideology of the regime itself.
The Islamic Republic is a theocracy founded explicitly to oppose the deepest principles of liberal democracy and the rule of law. During its 47-year reign, this theocratic state underwent no meaningful political reform, made no improvement to its human-rights record, and never stopped trying to export its radicalism abroad. To maintain control, the regime has used mass violence, intimidation, and surveillance. In recent years, the regime has also sought, successfully, to use online smear campaigns to divide and denigrate the Iranian opposition. Nevertheless, as the scholar and activist Ladan Boroumand has written, Western liberal democracies have long preferred to engage the Islamic Republic “almost solely through the paradigm of Realpolitik,” to engage in negotiations that never seemed to work.