Opinion | Commentary by Ray Takeyh: The US Can Support the Aspiration for Freedom in Iran
Ray Takeyh, a senior researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to follow the pattern of the “Helsinki Accords” in 1975 that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Members of both parties in the United States believe that any future agreement with Tehran should include ballistic missiles and the Islamic Republic’s regional activities. What is often missing from this discussion is serious attention to Iran’s human rights record. The main victim of Iran’s religious regime is its own citizens.
Human rights have played an important role in U.S. diplomacy. During the Cold War, American officials regularly raised the Soviet Union’s repressive policies in meetings with their Russian counterparts. The Soviet Union accepted in 1975, as part of the Helsinki Accords, to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief.”
Soon, groups called the “Helsinki” groups, as civil society actors in the Soviet bloc, turned the Kremlin’s commitment against itself. More than arms control and weapons deployment, it was the Helsinki Accords that sparked changes and weakened Moscow’s hegemonic ambitions. The accords empowered dissidents and highlighted Soviet domestic abuses.
In 2018, more than a hundred political and civil activists inside and outside Iran, in protest of Khamenei’s control over Iran’s foreign policy, said in an open letter: “We, the signatories of this statement, support direct, official, and transparent dialogue between Iran and America, and we believe it is in the interest of establishing peace and security in the world and the region and improving the welfare, freedom, and dignity of Iran and Iranians.”
Mostafa Tajzadeh, former deputy interior minister and reformist activist, wrote in a tweet in May 2020: “Building and launching satellites and long-range missiles is honorable, but if not accompanied by gaining public trust and economic improvement, at best we become the Soviet Union, which conquered space and split the atom, but collapsed, and at worst North Korea, which has missiles but no bread.”
These issues are evident in the protest movements of recent years.
The Islamic Republic is in a deadlock. It has no desire to reform, but without doing so it cannot meet the demands of the people. Abbas Abdi, a journalist, has compared the Islamic Republic to the Shah’s government, which was overthrown in 1979.
Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, one of the fathers of the revolution, criticizing the leader of the Islamic Republic, has said that this situation is not sustainable.
In recent years, all elements of Iranian society, including working classes, have expressed their discontent through protests. Political repression, mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, economic recession, and widespread corruption have made a large portion of Iran’s population dissatisfied. What is less visible are civil society activists who lay the intellectual foundation for protest movements. The United States can protect and amplify these voices for change.
In Helsinki, the Soviet Union was obligated to commit itself to changing its domestic behaviors. Any potential dialogue between Iran and the United States should include human rights. The Islamic Republic’s access to the international market should be contingent on improving its treatment of its citizens. The Soviet Union was not exempt from this. The clerics in Iran should not be either.
Source: Voice of America
