"THE CRETINS KEEP CHOOSING FAITH":

Both sides misread Washington's intentions towards Iran. Although US pressure has deeply impacted Iranian politics, it is not leading to "regime change." Instead, US policy is structured to inflame Iran's social contradictions. And that policy has borne fruit, trapping Iran in a cycle of polarisation.

US pressure is designed to exacerbate the tensions between the aspirations of Iran's educated middle class and the values of the Islamic Republic. It achieves this by shrinking the economic pie for everyone, primarily through sanctions. By targeting certain imports over others -- forcing a tradeoff between bare necessities and luxuries -- the sanctions have led to "intensified income inequality and inflation," former sanctions architect Richard Nephew claimed.

At the same time, US power has targeted elite Iranian factions who could drive change. Many Iranians had pinned their hopes on the Reformists, a loyal opposition movement that united old guard revolutionaries with young liberals. But the most intense US pressure on Iran took place after the Reformists took power. President Donald Trump reversed US diplomatic outreach to Iran, and placed the country under severe economic sanctions and military threats. Violent unrest broke out across the country in November 2019, ensuring that the legacy of Reformism was not only humiliation abroad, but also blood-soaked repression at home.

With a military coup d'etat unlikely, the United States offered alternatives that seemed almost designed to fail. The Obama administration helped reconstitute the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Islamic socialist faction that was purged from the Iranian revolution and later earned a reputation as Saddam Hussein's muscle squad. Under the Trump administration, US government funding and private donations flowed into an Iranian-American activist scene plagued by petty toxic politics.

Tweet   @brothersjudd