Hossein Askari

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration now can boast that it has delivered on another one of its campaign promises—engaging Iran. After meetings in Geneva and in Vienna, the administration seems to be well on its way to tying the knot with yet another authoritarian state.

Although there is history impeding better relations, the new administration in Washington was presented with a unique opportunity to chart a new course with Tehran—an opportunity that is about to be wasted in the name of a campaign promise and the empty quest to halt the regime’s nuclear enrichment project.

The recent Iranian election on June 12 exposed the soft underbelly of the state in Tehran as never before—its illegitimacy, its unpopularity, its brutality, and, indeed, its vulnerability, even among regime loyalists. As I wrote elsewhere three days after the election, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) assumed most levers of power, essentially emerging as a military dictatorship.

Seeing an opportunity for change, Iranians are risking their lives as never before to confront the system peacefully. They want to choose their leaders with fair and transparent elections. They want their freedom. They want respect for their human rights. They want a better future for themselves and for their children. In other words, they want a true republic with transparent institutions—what they thought they had fought for in 1979 as they overthrew the Shah.

So now that there is a real chance for a more democratic regime in Tehran, what does Washington do? It appears that, yet again, the United States has chosen a dictatorial regime over the Iranian people.

Candidate Obama promised to engage Iran, but circumstances and conditions have changed. Washington’s timing for engaging Iran could not be worse. The United States has not had a dialogue with Iran for nearly three decades, but is courting Tehran feverishly under these circumstances. Consider the signals this sends to Iranians and to the wider Muslim world. After Iranians have been robbed of a fair election, after peaceful demonstrators have been treated with unprecedented brutality, and after a large number of citizens have been imprisoned under inhumane conditions, many tortured, raped, or killed, after the emergence of a military dictatorship, now the United States chooses to engage Iran. What exactly does this tell oppressed people around the world? Is this how we plan to begin rapprochement with the Muslim world? Is this to be the legacy of President Obama’s Cairo speech?

Realists would dismiss what I have said as the words of an idealist. They would argue that this is the best opportunity to seal the best deal we can to halt Iran’s quest for nuclear weaponry. While I may be an idealist, they are without a doubt wishful thinkers in believing that they can stop Iran’s quest for mastering the nuclear fuel cycle through an agreement on a piece of paper.

No matter what, Iran’s leaders will not believe that the U.S. government is not secretly working to overthrow them. Iran’s leaders believe that the best deterrent to their removal from power by external forces is mastering the nuclear fuel cycle and supporting powerful surrogates, such as the government in Baghdad, Hezbollah, and Hamas. While Iran’s leaders might fool Washington into believing that they are now compromising and giving up this leverage, they will never do so.

In their quest to master the nuclear cycle, Iran’s leaders have without a doubt taken all the precautions that any prudent regime would take. If they agree to give up 2,500 lbs. of low-enriched nuclear fuel, you can be sure that they have an undeclared stockpile in addition to their remaining declared stockpile, or have the ability to replace the shipped fuel with newly enriched fuel at the same rate.

You would think that the Obama administration must have a special channel to Tehran to have such confidence in the viability of agreements signed with the Iran, but this seems pretty unlikely. The administration has advisers who have little intimacy with the people who determine policy in Tehran. While some advisers may have visited Iran once or twice since the revolution, or others that have Iranian heritage, this hardly addresses the difficulties of the negotiations, which require familiarity with the other side, a familiarity that cannot be acquired in libraries.

The Obama administration should change its direction before it is too late. If the United States throws a lifeline to the Iranian state, solidifying its control of power, generations of Iranians will remember America’s betrayal.

Instead, the Obama administration should support the Iranian people’s quest for fair elections and for human rights. If Iran is isolated through financial sanctions and U.S. laws are enforced to cause a collapse of the Iranian currency, Iranians may realize their dreams of a democratic state, if not of a true Republic of Iran, and the United States may in turn gain a true friend and partner in the region.

Hossein Askari is the Iran Professor of International Business and International Affairs at the George Washington University.