Perhaps it is time that they consider why it is that the Iranian government now works so hard to prevent its own citizenry from traveling beyond Iran’s borders, writes Mrubin1971.
Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, continues his effort to win a new nuclear accord. Already, the White House and State Department have agreed to lift billions of dollars in sanctions. Other sanctions, they simply do not enforce, netting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps billions of dollars in profit.
Those around Sullivan say he truly believed that by engaging so-called reformists, he could privilege them in their own struggle against more hard-line factions and open the door to reconciliation. This was naive for two reasons. First, elected positions in Iran do not set national security policy. That is the purview of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Second, the difference between reformers and hardliners is one of style over substance.
There are two possible reasons for this. First, the regime believes that its former officials are no longer willing to uphold the fiction of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary precepts and they fear that, once outside Iran’s borders, they will acknowledge that the ayatollah wears no clothes. There is also a more mundane explanation: Intelligence officers appear to pay special attention to those Iranians with potential inside knowledge about the processes through which Tehran evades sanctions.
Regimes that have legitimacy need not imprison their own citizenry. Nor do countries that intend to abide by the letter and spirit of diplomatic agreements fear what former officials might say.