2 years into nuclear deal, US policy on Iran needs major makeover

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international-affairs/342377-2-years-into-nuclear-deal-us-iran-policy-needs-major

July marks the second anniversary of the nuclear agreement between the Iranian regime and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. Former U.S. President Barack Obama envisioned the agreement — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — as a potential starting point for a broader rapprochement between the ruling theocracy and the West.

Obama had insisted that with Hassan Rouhani as the regime’s “moderate” president, Tehran would begin to exhibit a more positive behavior. Now, in his second term in office, the promise of moderation under Rouhani’s leadership has proven empty. That is because Rouhani neither wants nor is capable of reform. After all, it is not the president but the supreme leader who defines the contours of the regime’s short-term and long-term strategic direction.

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That the possibility of moderation in the Iranian theocracy is a total delusion was reflected in Secretary of Defense James Mattis's recent interview with Washington state’s Mercer Island High School newspaper.

Secretary Mattis dismissed the May 19 Iranian presidential election as “not really an election” and highlighted the stark differences between the ideology of the Iranian regime and the character of the Iranian people.

Still more significant, Mattis endorsed the message that had been presented to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. At a hearing, Tillerson suggested that American foreign policy should be focused first upon confronting the regime over its regional destabilization and then ultimately upon facilitating transition to a democratic system of government, driven by existing voices of opposition. The Defense secretary, too, reiterated that the Iranian regime is the most destabilizing force in the entire region. 

After 38 years of the clerical rule in Iran, the world is beginning to understand that stability in the Middle East requires the removal of the Iranian regime, known for being the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism and the only full-fledged theocracy in the modern world.

While the U.S. administration has imposed new sanctions on individuals and organizations with ties to the Iranian ballistic missile program, it is now mulling the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization.