@Sitnam and I got sidetracked into an interesting discussion re: “What should be the best international response to a regime like Iran’s”.
I would like to continue the discussion here.
His last post before the mods rightly stomped in our hijack was:
My answer:
How so?
Sanctions have impoverished the average Iranian without making much of a dent on the regime, in fact regime change revolutions are rarely the work of impoverished masses.
If you check the fall of totalitarian/evil regimes in history to internal causes (IE: not crushed by outside intervention) they mostly happened to regimes that were not being sanctioned, or at least not in the way Iran has been.
For example: South American dictatorships all fell without any sanctions, South Africa’s apartheid was mostly unsanctioned (and IMHO sport and cultural boycotts were far more effective than economic sanctions), the USSR was not being sanctioned, Franco’s Spain the same.
Economic sanctions hurt the people less responsible for the bad state of affairs and provide the leadership with an excuse for anything that goes badly “Yeah the economy sucks but that’s because of the sanctions”, “Yeah we are curtailing civil liberties but we don’t have a choice, our country is under economic attack”.
I asked you for solutions to the Iranian government killing it’s own people and destabilizing the region enough to stop Hormuz traffic. I am not interested in what doesn’t work.
What are your concrete solutions for the international community to that question?
I think find ways to engage diplomatically and economically. Especially in ways that makes it impossible to keep outside communications via the internet out of the hands of the people. Educated and informed people will eventually force change, whether by forceful rebellion or, more likely, slow chipping away and gradual opening up.
You said “ignoring it makes it worse”
And I reply that it doesn’t.
Sanctions and bombing make it worse, doing nothing it’s better than worsening the situation.
But ok, my suggestions for an intractable problem like that would be:
Do not make it worse, it’s an intractable problem but it will not go away faster if you impoverish the country’s population or bomb them, in fact those things are counterproductive and will result in the regime lasting longer.
Coordinate condemnation for the regime human rights violations with as broad a coalition of other countries as possible.
Boycott the country’s national sport teams and locally based cultural events.
If necessary sanction the country’s access to military technology.
Apply these measures without playing favorites so if a country liked by the west violates human rights it receives the same response as a country hated by the west.
Will it fix the situation as fast as it could be hoped ? not a chance, but neither would the “sanction and (eventually) bomb” alternative and it will probably be faster, and with less innocent casualties.
And start small. Iran and the US/Western countries have been at odds for over 40 years now. You don’t fix that overnight, and insisting on trying will lead to failure.
Obama had it right in the Iran Nuclear Deal. Negotiate with the more reasonable Iranians about one clear issue. Make an agreement, and show the rest of Iran that talking works, that it’s possible to back away from the “Great Satan” “Crazy Mullahs” rhetoric, and make some progress. Let that work for a few years, let each side see the improvements, and the value in talking. Then gradually build on that.
Will it be hard? Yes. Will there be setbacks? Almost certainly. Will it require us to give Iran some of what it wants? Of course. Will it take decades? For sure. But we don’t fix this overnight.
That only works if you have a single “Tyrant”, in the case of Iran where there’s a whole political movement (one with a political history of martyrdom to both!) it would only result in the regime lashing out (as we’ve seen).
Forget that it doesn’t change regimes, what concerns us now is that there is the real possibility of alternate power brokers in Iran near a delicate strait. There is a strait next door in tough shape right now because of exactly this issue. The Iranian government is repsonsible for both.
I argue waiting is the worst option. Right now good people are dying in Iran because they want freedom and financial opportunities. Their government is waging economic warfare as well as the bullet kind on their own people. Waiting helps the government kill enough to stop the protests and consolidate.
But sanctions do not mitigate that, heck Cuba has been under sanctions for longer than I’ve been alive, no “alternate power brokers” have taken the chance to change the regime.
Sanctions do not work, and provide an excuse for the government killing and/or economic mismanagement.
They belong to the broad category of actions described in the old fallacy:
“Something must be done about this situation, X is something”.
Counterproductive actions are “something” but do not help.
International trade concerns the world. If those on the couch don’t think it necessary to help desperate people near an important trade route, those people will make you care one way or another. And later there will be less we can do about it.
Comparing this with tin pot dictators in South America is laughable.
And in what way are those desperate people helped by sanctions?
“Hey my country is a dictatorship but in the good news department I’m also unable to buy food because foreigners don’t like it”.
Can you name any dictatorial regime that was brought down by sanctions? anywhere in the world?
Let me grant the OP their position vis-a-vis a random dictator, what do youall think of sanctions against Russia whose purpose is not to change the government but to deprive the Russian government of the money it needs to pursue its war? The situation seems sufficiently different to at least allow a different answer, although it doesn’t seem to have had much effect so far.
I would agree that it is a different situation, Russia is actively waging open war, sanctions against it are not an attempt to weaken the regime vis-a-vis internal opposition but to limit their war capabilities.
We seem to be talking past each other. I do not believe sanctions are working in Iran. Doing nothing, which is what we were doing, isn’t enough in this instance because our world depends on safe passage through that strait. I do not believe Trump’s moves so far are great, but I do not have any alternatives. That is what I asked you to provide and why I had believed you started this thread.
If that wasn’t your intention I’ll go somewhere else.
And we should note, it’s not the “desperate people” in Iran who are shutting down the strait, it’s the government we’re hoping to reform, for the benefit of those desperate people.
I think you underestimate the damage the US has already done to the structured military Iran was using to kill unarmed protestors. These are weapons they won’t get back. A couple of Shahed drones won’t change that.
So Iran closed the strait because that was all they could do, enraging their sanction skirting customers in the process. Good. Trump’s aggression gave the regime some legitimacy and a few new cards to play, but they all suck.
I think you overestimate the structure a military needs to kill unarmed protesters, any barely functioning military is capable of that.
I guess we’ll see the validity of your theory in the coming months, if there’s another wave of protests in Iran it may be because the protestors sense that the capability to repress the protest is gone, and if those protest go unrepressed then your theory would be validated.
I think that
There will not be any protests because , as you said, the regime’s legitimacy has been reinforced and also because people who have just been bombed are not prone to dangerous protests.
IF there is a protest it will be repressed with even more ferocity by the regime without any need for “structure”.
So, if sanctions don’t work, and bombing doesn’t work, and we don’t want to talk to the “Bad Guys”, then all we really have left is the good old CIA-backed coup.
Lucky for us, those always go well, and never result in any unintended consequences!