Since late 2017, Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the clerical regime’s domestic repression, foreign adventurism, corruption, and economic mismanagement. With chants of “Death to Rouhani” and “Death to Khamenei,” the demonstrators have contested not merely the Islamic Republic’s policies but also its very legitimacy. These developments offer the Trump administration an opportunity to advance U.S. interests by supporting the demonstrators against the regime while also promoting U.S. values by focusing the world’s attention on the regime’s rampant human rights abuses. This report documents the human rights violations committed by 12 senior officials in the Islamic Republic. By adding these individuals to U.S. sanctions lists within the context of a broader economic pressure campaign, Washington can boost the morale of protesters, challenge the regime’s radical Islamist ideology, and make Tehran pay for its behavior. At the same time, America can send a message to its allies that the Iranian people deserve their robust and concerted support. Iran is sensitive to international criticism of its human rights record. In Tehran’s view, the West seeks not only to defeat the Islamic Republic military but also to infiltrate the country with foreign values that subvert the culture and faith of the Islamic Revolution. In this sense, the mullahs regard their conflict with the West as a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. By documenting the violence and repression that Tehran inflicts to quash dissent, the United States can undermine regime propaganda that portrays the country as a healthy society proud of its militant Shiite creed. At the same time, the designation of Tehran’s offenders would signal to the Iranian people that America shares their goals and concerns. Foreign support may play an important role in raising the morale of protesters. In 2009, Washington’s tepid response to the regime’s brutal suppression of protests prompted many demonstrators to criticize President Barack Obama on Iran’s streets. Common slogans included, “Obama, Obama – either with us, or with them!”33 American inaction may have persuaded many Iranians that the uprising was unlikely to succeed. New human rights sanctions can also prompt U.S. allies to follow suit. While committed in principle to the cause of human rights in Iran, European governments have largely retreated into passivity. Between 2011 and 2013, the European Union sanctioned 83 Iranian actors for committing human rights abuses, including three profiled in this report – and none thereafter. Although the EU has continued to renew these sanctions annually, most recently in April 2018, its failure to impose new designations stems in part from its misperception that President Hassan Rouhani, a self-described moderate, has been working to resolve the problem since his 2013 election. Yet the opposite is true. This report shows that the leading perpetrators of abuse in Iran serve in Rouhani’s cabinet or otherwise maintain close ties to him.

Western support for Iran’s nuclear programme gave way to opposition when it was realised that alongside non-military use, the Islamic Republic was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. Driven by Tehran’s policy of aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere, Western states under US coordination intensified the pressure on Iran to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons programme. Rather than halting uranium enrichment in Iran, however, years of stifling economic, scientific and military sanctions have only caused the country to take a more clandestine approach. Though US-led restrictions have slowed down the pace of Iranian nuclear development, they have been unable to make Tehran come clean about its plans. While maintaining the correctness of the US position on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this work argues that the policy of restrictions must be reshaped in order to limit its effect on ordinary Iranians. These citizens are identified as potential drivers of change. Seeking their support is crucial for the success of global efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—hence, the need to restructure restrictions.

The combination of harsh US criticism of Iran and profession of a policy of democracy promotion has given rise to intense expectation that the Islamic Republic might well be the next Muslim state to be subjected to US military attack, an attack that would undoubtedly be justified partly on grounds of Iran’s alleged democratic failings, and that might be presented as an attempt to promote democratic regime change in Iran. But, as I seek to show in this essay, the chief US charges against Iran lack substance, and constitute no basis for military action against the Islamic Republic.

J. Lindsay and R. Takeyh reveal Iran as a peculiarity of the international political atmosphere such that it represents a modern theocratic government with the underpinnings of a revolutionary regime. The decisions, policies, and actions of the Iranian government prove difficult to associate with concepts of human security as national security as a result of religious precedent and fear of regime change from external forces. Iranian foreign policy, in the scope of nuclear non-proliferation, fails to demonstrate or hint at a paradigm consistent with applying human security as national security that it ought to employ in order to protect against a multitude of threats. Iranian policy-maker’s failure to align its national security interests as human security interests is evidenced by continued acceptance of harmful sanctions imposed by the United States and other international institutions, diversionary tactics which mask domestic issues plaguing its society, and potentially acting as the catalyst of increased instability within the Middle East region in the interest of attaining nuclear weapons as a one-size-fit all solution.

A short article review based on the video documentary "Iran and the West", for an individual assignment for the course SSA 3014: Introduction to International Law. DISCLAIMER: All documents may freely be used as reference materials for personal use, but not as a part of any form of published academic reference made available to the public sphere. All works cited within the documents are the sole property of its original author(s). Author's note: A pretty well written piece, if I may say so. But I'll leave you to judge its quality.

A review-essay in the Fall 2016 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Using Laura Secor's book Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran as a point of departure, I examine Iran's role in the shifting political landscape of the Middle East since the 2011 Arab uprisings, particularly the Syrian conflict, and conclude with some speculations on Iran's political future. A web version with hyperlinks to key sources is available at: http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/42/theaters-of-coercion/

From the Summer 2013 issue of The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/CairoReview/Pages/intheJournal.aspx?issid=11), my critical review of the controversial book Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran, by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett