Biden and the Masochistic Nail

[Valin]

Gatestone Institute

Amir Taheri
July 31, 2022

• There is no way that you or anyone else could help the Iranian people return to normalcy as long as the present regime is in place in Tehran. A people that finds itself in the hands of a brutal authoritarian regime that claims a divine mandate and is ready to do whatever it takes to remain in power, no holds barred, is beyond help by any outsider with the best of intentions.

• If you help the Islamic Republic improve its economy, the bulk of the proceeds will go to strengthening the apparatus of repression, with the people receiving mere crumbs to keep their mouths shut.

• If you make a deal with the supposedly "reasonable" faction within the regime, its rivals will do whatever they can to sabotage the deal. Haven't you noticed that each time that the faction you consider as reasonable comes close to normalization, other factions start seizing hostages, putting bombs in your cities, or raiding your embassies to derail the process?

• President Barack Obama even smuggled $1.7 billion in cash to "help the Iranian people" but the money went to the regime's repressive machine. Each time, however, that cursed "goodwill" led to the seizing of new hostages and a more virulent campaign of vilification against "the evil foreign powers."

• Whatever helps this foreign power, with the best intentions one could offer, will go to the regime, not to the Iranian people.

• Remember how Prince Charles of Great Britain, Queen Rania of Jordan and US President George W Bush helped collect vast sums to help the earthquake-stricken people of Bam in southeast Iran? Well, not a single farthing reached those people while Khomeinist propaganda claimed that "the evil foreigner" was using humanitarian aid as a cover for espionage and the conversion of Iranians to "canceled (manuskh) religions such as Christianity.

• [T]he late Shinzo Abe went to Tehran to play peacemaker, he was insulted and told to return home empty-handed. It is interesting that President Joe Biden or whoever is his ventriloquist still thinks they can normalize the quintessentially abnormal.

(Snip)

So, if the carrots are eaten only to sharpen the teeth and the sticks are diverted to beat the ordinary folk and not regime "deciders", what is to be done? One answer is to let them stew in their juices until they rot in their contradictions. This is what happened to the Soviet Union, which was fed endless juicy carrots and hit by many prickly sticks but could not alter course until it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.

(Snip)