By Reza Shafiee
Every three months, there's a deadline for a U.S.
“recertification” of the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA). As that deadline approaches, discussions in the Beltway
heat up as to what is the right approach toward a government which complies
with the letter of the deal but not the “sprit," despite signing off on
the contract with six world powers in 2015, which limits its bomb-making
capabilities for at least 10 years.
If nothing has been learned from the behavior of mullahs
in Tehran over the past 40 years, one thing is obvious; they succumb only when
their back is against the wall. Case in point is the eight-year-old Iran-Iraq
war, which left hundreds of thousands dead, and billions of dollars in losses
just on Iran’s side. It ended when Supreme Leader Khomeini was convinced that
the regime was only steps away from a crashing defeat and subsequent collapse.
Many Iran watchers in the West regrettably fail to notice
the nature and structure of mullahs’ hierarchy, which is built on the
foundation of Velayat-e faghih (Guardianship of Jurisprudence), and the
absolute rule of the Supreme Leader - Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1970s and 1980s,
and now Ali Khamenei. These two pillars of power simply mean ruling with an
absolute iron fist at home and exporting its brand of Islamic ideology
(terrorism and fundamentalism) abroad. There are no “moderates” or “hardliners”
in Iran.
There are talks in the media even among the staunch supporters
of the Obama administration on one hand and the White House’s inner circles on
the other as how to continue putting a tight leash on Iran beyond 2026 or 2031
when the JCPOA expires.
Politico reported on Sept. 15:
“One-time aides to Barack Obama are holding meetings,
contacting lawmakers and working the media in an urgent bid to prevent the
dismantling of one of the former president’s signature foreign policy
achievements.”
The Iranian regime’s unprecedented rage toward U.S. has
not gone unnoticed. President Donald Trump reciprocated Khamenei's tough takes
on Iran which has tested a new bomb calleding “Father of all Bombs”
–copycatting the U.S.’s Mother of all Bombs, which was tested last spring in
Afghanistan - by calling for rigorous
inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
He said: “Washington will walk away from a nuclear deal it agreed to with Iran
and five other nations if it deems that the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) is not tough enough in monitoring it.”
The U.S. president made it crystal clear in his speech
before the current session of UN General Assembly that he distinguishes between
Iranian people and their desire for a peaceful free Iran, and ruling mullahs in
Tehran who are busy making intermediate- and long-range ballistic missiles.
He called Iranian regime a "murderous regime,"
which "masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a
democracy." He called the Iran nuclear deal made by the Obama
administration, "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the
United States has ever entered into" and while not vowing to immediately
cancel it, he added, "don't think you've heard the last of it."
A chief concern for the U.S. administration, despite
Iran’s signing off on the nuclear deal is that it has a destabilizing role in
the region. Obama was wishfully hoping that the mullahs would behave after the
deal was struck, but it was just an illusion since he failed to realize that
there is no good mullah in Tehran.
Iran undermines the U.S.’s goal of kicking ISIS out of
the Middle East and at the same time reassuring its jittery allies in the Arab
world that they will not be harassed by their unpredictable neighbor Iran.
The top American admiral in the Middle East,Vice Adm.
Kevin M. Donegan, said that in Yemen, Iran is sustaining the Houthi rebels with
an increasingly potent arsenal of anti-ship and ballistic missiles, deadly sea
mines and even explosive boats that have attacked allied ships in the Red Sea
or Saudi territory across Yemen’s northern border. The United States, the
Yemeni government, and their allies in the region have retaliated with strikes
of their own and recaptured some Houthi-held coastal areas to help blunt
threats to international shipping, but the peril persists.
Stakes are as high as they can ever be in the Middle East
and a minor miscalculation by big players such as the U.S. can leave
devastating effects. We are at crossroads once again in a region that is
strategic in many respects. With the departure of ISIS (when it finally
happens) there should not be a big vacuum left behind for the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to fill in Syria and a repeat of what
happened when the U.S. forces packed up and left Iraq in 2010. According to the
Syrian opposition, by the end of 2016, IRGC and its Quds Force had over 90,000
trained militias fighting in the country, not taking into account tens of
thousands of Hezbollah fighters already established in Syria with an expanded
operation from Lebanese border all the way to Damascus. It has significantly
grown in numbers over the past few years in Syria and no one doubts that they
are there to serve the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Khamenei, while no opportunity
is missed by Hassan Nasrollah, the groups’ leader, to renew his allegiance to
Tehran. He said last year: “We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget,
its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and
rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” According to sources, Iran
has quadrupled Hezbollah’s annual allowance for 2017.
IRGC spares no one from the tooth-and-nail fight in
Syria. “Thousands of Shiite Muslims from Afghanistan and Pakistan are being
recruited by Iran to fight with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria,
lured by promises of housing, a monthly salary of up to $600 and the
possibility of employment in Iran when they return, say counterterrorism
officials and analysts,” according to a Washington Post report on Sept. 16.
The U.S. and the West in general should learn from their
flaws when it comes to dealing with the Iranian regime. Since the early days of
the 1979 revolution, Tehran’s rulers are dreaming for a Khilafat or Shiite
Crescent, which expands from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea via Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon. The bloody eight-year war with Iraq, according to Khomeini’s failed
doctrine, was the first step in realizing his dream of an Islamic State,
Shiite-style. Khomeini used to say that Iran would conquer the Shiite holy
shrine of Imam Hossein (the third Imam of Shia Islam) in Karbala and then would
march to Quds (Jerusalem). Despite Khomeini’s failure to deliver, his heirs
never gave up the idea and with the emergence of ISIS and a strong foothold in
Iraq, courtesy of Obama administration with its hasty exit from Iraq which left
the vacuum for Iran to fill, now IRGC is establishing itself in Syria.
Once again, as in 2010 and Iraq, the window is closing in
Syria, and soon, if the U.S. and its allies do not act swiftly in stopping and
expelling the IRGC and its proxies from expanding in the lands ISIS is leaving
behind, the Iraq scenario might repeat itself. The difference this time
however, is that it would have a far greater impact on the geopolitics of the
region.
Reza Shafiee (@shafiee_shafiee) is a member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
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