Giving Carrots to Iran Will Not Alter Its Brutal, Expansionist Plan
by Majid Rafizadeh • April 30, 2022 at 5:00 am
"The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ... will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God's way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God's law throughout the world." – Constitution, Islamic Republic of Iran
"We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle." -- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, 1981
"We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." --Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, The Economist, November 20, 2007
Does anyone seriously think that having a bomb and billions of dollars will make the mullahs less aggressive?
It is time for the Biden administration and the European Union to see that, as with Putin's Russia, no amount of appeasement or concessions is going to pressure the Iranian regime – called by the US State Department itself "The world's worst state sponsor of terrorism -- to change its ruthless, expansionist program for the better.
The Biden administration and the European Union continue to appease the ruling mullahs of Iran while ignoring the regime's threats to annihilate Israel. Do they really believe that appeasing the Islamic Republic will lead to a positive change within the regime? Or do they secretly hope that Iran will do them a favor and finally, to paraphrase King Henry II, rid them of this troublesome country?
The Biden administration and the European Union might do well to understand that revolutionary and authoritarian regimes such as the Islamic Republic -- as we are seeing now with Vladimir Putin's Russian invasion if Ukraine -- do not alter their malign policies through appeasement and concessions. If anything --as there are no negative consequences for unneighborly behavior, and sometimes there are even rewards -- they regard appeasement and concessions as green lights and double down, go twice as bad.
