Road-map to Free Iran

Iranians hold key to America's long-term strategic interests

Balatarin
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Road-map to Free Iran
by Fariborz Ghadar & Rob Sobhani
12-Feb-2011
 

As the Islamic regime of Iran celebrates its 32nd anniversary, the people of Iran face monumental economic challenges similar to those faced by other countries in the region like Tunisia and Egypt. The economy is feeling the sting of sanctions with shortages, unemployment, layoffs and inflation fears creating a widening gap between the regime and the people. Indeed, the regime is facing its toughest challenge – its 32-year monopoly may be about to be busted wide open.

Theoretically, Iran should be ranked among the world’s top five economies (assuming an average annual 10 percent growth rate since 1978). Unfortunately, the reality is that over 30 percent of its citizens struggle to survive and live below the poverty line.  

The lifting of subsidies by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has been welcomed by the IMF as a necessary step towards exorcizing Iranians from cheap gasoline and other consumer goods.  However, the regime’s underlying economic problems remain unresolved.

The challenges facing Iran’s economy remain the same as three decades ago: corruption, mismanagement of Iran’s natural resources, lack of foreign investment, unemployment, brain drain, squeezing out the private sector and last but not least, putting ideology before national economic interests.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini’s claim that “economics is for donkeys” has been the fundamental challenge facing Iranians since the establishment of an Islamic Republic thirty years ago. By all economic measures the people of Iran have fallen behind their neighbors and the world. Iran’s oil-rich neighbor Saudi Arabia has used the past three decades to cement itself as the world’s most important exporter of crude oil. Despite having the world’s second highest reserves of natural gas, Iran has fallen behind its small but agile neighbor Qatar in the quest to supply clean burning natural gas to regional, Asian and European markets. Non-oil exports have also suffered since Khomeini’s declaration.

While rent-a-crowds encouraged by the regime have chanted “Death to America,” Turkey has taken in millions of tourists and last year generated over $20 billion in revenues, a figure exceeding all of Iran’s non-oil exports. Most tragic is Iran’s brain drain which according to the International Monetary Fund is ranked No. 1 in the world.

As thousands of Chinese, Israeli, Indian and Arab students take the knowledge they have gained in the US to their home countries and contribute to economic growth, Iranian students have been forced to flee their country into permanent exile. Even newly independent countries neighboring Iran, like Azerbaijan, have done better. Since its independence in 1992, Azerbaijan has attracted over $60 billion in foreign investments.

The sum total of these opportunity costs has created a crisis amidst Iran’s plentiful resources. The historic parallels with the former Soviet Union are telling. The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred not because of but despite plentiful resources. Indeed, in spite of taking over the U.S. the system devised by Moscow imploded and collapsed within a short few months.

How to deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is a perplexing foreign policy challenge as the Iranian economy implodes. What Washington needs is a road-map to a post-Islamic Republic Iran.

U.S. policy towards Iran should consist of five simultaneous pillars.  First, President Obama should appoint an Iran Czar to coordinate the overall goals of his approach to Iran. Second, should the regime in Tehran wish to talk with the U.S., diplomacy should always be on the table as an option. Third, impose targeted economic sanctions such as freezing the enormous assets of the regime’s leaders.

Fourth, while Washington should keep a close eye on the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, our public diplomacy should refocus on, the mismanagement of the economy, unemployment, inflation, corruption, lack of meritocracy, the eroding standard of living and of course  the violation of human rights in Iran. The venue for this public diplomacy should be more robust programming from the VOA Persian Language Service. Respected members of the opposition (both inside and outside the country) should be featured on a more regular basis and factual documentation of the regime’s illegal and corrupt activities during the past two decades should be presented.

Finally, serious consideration should also be given to the wishes of the Iranian people. The people of Iran hold the key to America's long-term strategic interests in the Middle East. Poll after poll has highlighted the desire of the Iranian people to engage with Americans and the positive attitude of Iranians towards the American people. As the gulf between the Iranian people and their regime widens, Washington should focus its efforts on making this divide permanent. Indeed, the national security interests of the United States coincide with the wishes of the Iranian people.

The day President Obama was elected the 44th U.S. President was also the 29th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran by radical students driven by hatred for America. Since that hostile action 32 years ago and over six different administrations the official U.S. political and diplomatic response to Iran has vacillated between engagement, appeasement and containment while the potential threat from Iran to the U.S. not only remains unchecked but has increased exponentially.

President Obama now has an opportunity to reverse thirty-two years of failure to devise an effective and proactive policy of dealing with Iran.

First published in www.thehill.com.

AUTHORS
Fariborz Ghadar is a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and founding director of the Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State University.  Rob Sobhani, Ph.D. is President of Caspian Energy Consulting and author of two books on the Middle East.

Balatarin
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cvaughan59

Guilt and an apology

by cvaughan59 on Fri Nov 18, 2011 10:58 AM PST

J. C. Vaughan

I am so ashamed of the part Britain/America played in these horrible troubles of Iran, since political interference of 1953, that I sometimes want to pour out my own blood in penance. I do not think Britain/America can do much to help, unless they just support Iranian people as much as they can. Otherwise, they will make troubles worse, just like in Iraq. If only the Shah had dedicated himself to the Iranian people, instead of listening to the British/Americans, then Iran would be so much better off today. And please, do not blame Islam for the troubles. Islam is not guilty for all of the bad things that are done in its name, by those who act as if they do not even truly believe in Islam (no mercy, no compassion).

 


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Siavash300

Let's be united to save IRAN from these monsters

by Siavash300 on Sun Feb 13, 2011 08:34 PM PST

Please let's not to raise cane at each other. Let's be united and  send these Islamic bastards who are in power in IRAN to hell. Khomainie in hell is waiting for them.


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SOS-FREE-IRAN

End your blasphemy you constitutionalist

by SOS-FREE-IRAN on Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:41 AM PST

Hold your defamatory blasphemous vile tongue. Your blood libel and rudeness toward our King and Queen is reprehensible.  You don't know the truth, you are a liar and keep spinning Sir Ayatollah Khomeini's lies over and over and over again. This Islamic revolution was unnecessary.

Reagan didn't sell us to Carter. Carter and British started to work on overthrowing our Monarchy as early as 1975.Good old Jimmy Carter, a southern racist democrat who is still loyal to England - sold us to the Brits -afterall they are cousins, are they not? Mr. Jimmy Carter has been silent all these years while Iranians are bottle raped, murdered, forced into sex slavery, pacified with opium/drugs, murdered in their homes, isolated, barred from the free world -- all so that the oil money can fund his cousins in England -- their lavish lifestyle, their billionaire palaces, their royal weddings, royal anniversaries, their luxurious universities, their technology, their dreams. 

Our Kind and Benevolent Democratic Monarchy was hijacked by ignorant radical terrorists like you. Stop your wayward ways and join the true light of our Shahbanoo Farah Pahlavi and Reza Pahlavi. 

 


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theconstitutionalist

a little out of touch

by theconstitutionalist on Sun Feb 13, 2011 10:40 AM PST

 

Some of the article seems to make sense, but over all its way off reality.

US companies hold almost $50 billion in lucrative contracts with the Mullahs.  With Dick cheney's old company Halliburton leading the way in natural gas development contracts.   I would suggest to the author research the national archives for information about the events of Iranian politics during the last two years of the Shah's bloody reign.  He seems to have little specific knowledge of what actually happened.  

Regan sold us to the Mullahs so he can destroy Carter, who happened to be one of the most popular US presidents ever.  We know Khomeini tried to return the hostages on several occasions, but were denied by Regan's folks at the see eye aye.  They were released the day after Regan's inauguration. 

The Mullahs are simply finishing off what the Phalavis started.  Destroy democracy in Iran by suppressing socialists, unions, intellectuals, artists, nationalists, minorities, women, opposition from both secular and religious sects.  

Pahlavi ran like a scared little bitch thinking the see eye aye is going to put him back in power once things settled.  Not realizing they had already made a deal with Khomeini.  What an idiot.  Pahalvis will never be able to return to Iran, because they would be stripped of their wealth and hung.  Instead of staying in Iran and facing their opposition they simply took their ill-gotten gains and left. 

I would be suicidal and depressed too if I were a Pahlavi.  They will always pay for the sins of their father and grandfather who destroyed democratic movements on at least two occasions and allowed the killing of thousands of their fellow countrymen.  1 during the constitutional revolution when the Pahlavis took foothold in Tehran with the help of the British.  they dissolved Iran's majilis arrested and murdered the members and instituted martial law.  2 during the 1953 coupe of Mossadegh, which brought Pahlavi back from the dead.  same thing.  

Inside Iran the youth call them "billionaire mullahs" and look at their lavish lifestyles with the same contempt as the Pahlavi mafia during the 1970's.

We don't want foreign tyrants.  No matter what they wear.  

Sorry I'm so rough on the Pahlavis, but the truth is hard to avoid.  Especially since there's plenty of evidence of their murder and torture in my own family.  I have to say, the Mullahs are much better at the torture, murder thing.  

SAVAK = SAVAMA  


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SOS-FREE-IRAN

America has a moral imperative to overthrow Islamic Regime

by SOS-FREE-IRAN on Sat Feb 12, 2011 11:50 PM PST

Whether it is in the interest of the British-Americans or not, these two countries have a moral obligation to overthrow this murderous, thieving, pedophillic regime established by their own agent, Mr. Khomeini, who is half british-half Indian whose mission was to destroy Iran and redirct the oil money into Britain.  Iranians have been persecuted, murdered, bottle raped, denied access to education, music, technology, freedom, dignity for 32 years - the country has been impoverished, polluted, and embarrassed and humiliated with pedophillic genocidal leaders that undermine everything Iranian.

For 32 years, the British have filled their coffers with Irans oil. Trillions and Trillions of petrodollars have funded the British welfare system, the British free education, technology, palaces, standard of living, their pension funds, their $40,000 per capita, allowing the Brits to live in luxury in England. Isn't it enough? how long can they look at themselves in the mirror knowing that each time they put a strawberry in their mouth, an iranian is being bottle raped? or an Iranian is starving to death? or dying of malnutrition? Doesn't this turn their stomach? or America's stomach? 

It is moral imperative of America to help overthrow the Isalmic Regime. To assassinate these murderous thugs such as Mousavi, Khameni, et al.... or overthrow the British Monarchy for its blood-drenched genocidal track record in the past 100 years. 

It is moral imperative of America to restore our Queen as rightful ruler of Iran. It is the moral imperative of America to give back Iran to Iranians. To pull Iran out of British-Islamic Regime's throat - stomach - holghoom Britannia.

Shame on America - the Carter Administration for stabbing the King of Iran in the back and for America's support of Mr. Khomeini, a murderous, pedophillic, radical terrorist... Shame on you Mr. Carter for spinning blood libel about our King and Queen. 

It is now the moral imperative of America to restore our benevolent Monarchy in Iran - to Repatriate our Queen with her Country - as Queen of Iran. She is the rightful Ruler. She can then pass the crown to the Crown Prince.

Long Live Shahbanoo Farah Pahlavi. 

Long Live Pahlavi. Long Live Iran.

 

 


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AlexInFlorida

What nonsense. Are you not Ashamed? Embarrassed?

by AlexInFlorida on Sat Feb 12, 2011 04:27 PM PST

How to deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is a perplexing foreign
policy challenge as the Iranian economy implodes. What Washington needs
is a road-map to a post-Islamic Republic Iran.

Iran is no foreign policy challenge to the USA and Europe.  How ignorant could you guys be.  Islam in government is exactly what the west wants, they don't want the regime to disappear, just to be more democratic while still keeping religion in control of government.

ThE USA, France, UK, Germany all Agreed on creating and supporting an islamic republic on the island of guadelope, before khomeini came to power.  Now they are thinking of how to keep it in power with a green movement wing of islam.  This is changing leaders not a regime.  It is hand picking the leaders you want to do as you tell them... this is about getting leaders/the ones that USA can control.

USA does not want secular governments like old iranian monarchy in power in Iran.  It wants old barbaric islam to keep its people backward, weak and controllable.

Roadmap to a Free Iran is not the US natioal interest.  Are you totally ignorant to the last 32 years?


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