News over the last two weeks has been dominated by discussion of racism, intolerance, and inclusion in the United States. There was the Charleston shooting, a horrendous example of premeditated murder motivated by racism. There can be absolutely no mitigating factor. South Carolina has the death penalty and I, for one, hope it is used in this case when the suspect, who reportedly has confessed to the crimes, is convicted. Much has been written here at COMMENTARY and elsewhere about the subsequent campaign to tear down and banish the confederate flag that has become a symbol of that racism.
Then, there was the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage. Gays celebrated, as did many heterosexuals, although there were instances of intolerance on both sides of the issue: opponents of gay marriage upset at both a narrow loss and federal encroachment on what they see as states’ rights and gay activists who spit on priests and sought to punish political opponents who might simply have been defending their own religious perspectives.
Here’s the question: If President Barack Obama and his followers want truly to overcome the legacy of hate and intolerance, should he seek to ban the confederate flag and use law enforcement to hound violent groups antagonistic to gay rights into the shadows, or should he instead fund the Ku Klux Klan (to pick an extreme example) beyond its wildest dreams? Would a ‘Grand Wizard’ of the KKK come in from the cold if the FBI chose to wire him a few million dollars into his personal bank account? Or would those who believe gays deserve nothing but scorn benefit from money beyond their wildest dreams? I ask that with tongue-in-cheek, of course, but to illustrate a serious point: It is the logic that surrounds the Obama administration’s efforts to moderate Iran.
If and when a deal is signed, the Obama administration plans to reward Iran with around $100 billion in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, on top of which there will be billions in new investment. To put that figure in perspective, it’s about 20 times the annual official budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Obama administration officials have argued that Iran will invest its financial windfall to better its economy and help its long-suffering people. Colin Kahl, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, told Bloomberg, for example, “It is our assessment … that they are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter,” although he did concede that the IRGC would also benefit. Simply put, Kahl’s assessment is both wishful thinking and it depicts profound ignorance of Iran and Iranian history. Between 2000 and 2005, the European Union chose to shower Iran with trade under the theory that greater ties to the world community and a chance at enrichment could moderate Iran. At the same time, the price of oil increased, providing Iran with a hard currency windfall. The result? A huge investment in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Council on Foreign Relations scholar Ray Takeyh who knows Iran far better than Kahl also suggests that some of the windfall Obama allows Iran will benefit ordinary Iranians. Writing in the Washington Post, he argues:
Two years into Rouhani’s tenure, his government stands as one of the most repressive in the post-revolutionary period. Many civil society activists languish in prison, media censorship has continued unabated and the intelligence services remain abusive and unaccountable. The state cannot sustain such an oppressive order without ameliorating some of its constituents’ misfortunes.
While he is right about Rouhani’s repression, he is wrong and lacks any evidence whatsoever to support the idea that the state cannot sustain an oppressive order. For one, he ignores demography. The birth rate in Iran is half of what it was in the mid-1980s. The aging population means a relative decrease in the number of young Iranians translating into a greater efficiency in repression. Regardless, it was Rouhani who was Supreme National Security Council chairman from 1988-2005, during which point he helped supervise the evisceration of the reform movement. Regardless, Iran is no democracy; sovereignty comes from God through the supreme leader, who serves as the deputy of the messiah on Earth. If popular will mattered, the Islamic Revolution would have ended within a year of its start when the reality that Ayatollah Khomeini lied about an Islamic democracy and a benevolent order would have become undeniable.
The Islamic Republic does not reflect the reality of the Iranian people. In any dictatorship, it’s the guys with the guns that control things and repress liberty and freedom. The ideology the regime upholds is as racist and noxious as the Ku Klux Klan. There really is no dismissing regular calls to genocide on the part of the Iranian regime and proxies like Hezbollah that it supports. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and, yes, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s bigotry toward Baha’is, Jews, Christians, and Sunni Muslims is real, and it is palpable. The solution to the integration of that hatred into policy is no more to deliver tens of billions of dollars to it than is the solution to racism funding the racists. The counter-intuitive is not always sophisticated, as so many in the White House and State Department would like to believe; often, it is just stupid. The simple fact is this: incentivizing hatred with money breeds more hatred. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry may want a legacy. Unfortunately, it will more likely be measured in the blood of Iran’s future victims than in any recognition of their own imagined diplomatic prowess.
