Eli Lake: Trump should use leverage to help Iranians' Freedom

Eli Lake in The Free Press today:

The Free Press website

quote]This goal is understandable. There is still around 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium trapped beneath the rubble of what used to be Iranian nuclear facilities. And even though the war has set Iran’s regime back several years from acquiring an apocalyptic arsenal, the stakes are as high as they get. If Iran gains nuclear weapons, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism will have acquired a nuclear umbrella to protect its armies and many proxies from retaliation.

All that said, President Donald Trump should aim higher than just another nuclear deal that eventually expires. Trump should also demand that Iran’s regime respect the lives and security of its own citizens.

Iran’s nuclear program (with the exception of an unfinished facility known as Pickaxe Mountain) is almost entirely demolished. It’s possible the regime may seek to rebuild, but that will be an expensive and arduous task for a mafia state that is on its back. In other words, there is time to neutralize, either diplomatically or militarily, the Iranian nuclear threat down the road. A more pressing concern is the regime’s survival and whether it will stay in power through another massacre when and if Iranians take to the streets again, as they did three months ago.

This line of concern may sound like a throwback to George W. Bush, who in his second inaugural address proclaimed the ultimate goal of U.S. foreign policy was “ending tyranny in our world.” But it’s really a return to Trump’s promise a few months ago, when he pledged America would come to the rescue of Iran’s protesters. It’s a recognition that the real strategic victory in this war only comes when Iranians take to the streets and topple the holy men and terrorists who stole the 1979 revolution.

Now Trump has an opportunity to use America’s extraordinary diplomatic leverage to wrangle concessions from Iran’s regime that benefit the same people Trump promised to liberate. And make no mistake, Trump has the leverage.

A week ago, time was on Iran’s side, because it had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to ships flying the flags of America and its allies. The longer the strait was closed, the more likely the global price of oil would skyrocket. Now, that dynamic is reversed. Every day and every week the U.S. Navy cuts off the Strait of Hormuz for Iranian ships, the cash reserves of the regime are further depleted. Iran’s central bank has already warned that it may take a dozen years for the regime to rebuild its wrecked economy.

So now is the time to think big. This would entail making three basic demands of Iran’s regime: release political prisoners, end the execution of protesters, and turn the internet back on. In exchange, the U.S. can offer to lift sanctions and unfreeze assets the regime needs just to pay the salaries of government employees.

“The president has real leverage to call not for just a halt in executions, but to seek the termination of the death penalty for certain ‘offenses’ in Iran,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He added that a precondition for the next round of talks should be to restore internet access for Iranians, which has been cut off now for nearly two months. In addition, Ben Taleblu said, Trump should demand the release of political prisoners arrested after the June 2025 war and more recently after the national uprisings and state-led massacres in January. He estimates 21,000 Iranians were arrested in June, and that more than 50,000 have been arrested since January.

“Though the kaleidoscope of Iranian domestic and diaspora opinion points to people wanting the Islamic Republic gone, especially after the unprecedented and brutal crackdown in January, the president still appears keen on a deal with Tehran,” Taleblu said. “If that remains the case, it would be strategically sound and morally prudent for him to make sure the Iranian people whom he so strongly vouched for in January get something out of a deal.”

Kian Tajbakhsh, a former Iranian political prisoner and now a visiting professor at New York University, said that most Iranians want to end the Islamic Republic, but the regime has amassed so much power in recent years that regime change will require assistance from the outside. “The balance of force between regime and society is so skewed toward the regime, and the society is so weak, my view is that we need an outside power to weaken the regime and strengthen the society,” he said in an interview.....

Trump has an opportunity to make good on his initial pledge. It will almost certainly not happen right away. Tajbakhsh said that most Iranians are still in shock, and in fear of their oppressors. “It will take six months to a year before you see more people power,” he said. “The regime is highly mobilized against any opposition right now. It will take that time for the economic strain that has been caused by the war to pressure various groups of people who will become increasingly unhappy about their lack of basic services and salaries. But it will slowly accumulate over time.”

So Trump has a choice. He can seek promises from a near-bankrupt regime not to rebuild a nuclear program demolished in two wars. Or he can pressure the mullahs to restore the internet, end the executions, and release Iranians from their dungeons. The latter choice is the one that ends the threat from Iran for good.[/quote]