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TOP STORIES
State media aired pro-government demonstrations in
cities across Iran Wednesday after a week of protests and unrest over
the nation's economy - a move apparently aimed at calming nerves amid
clashes that have killed 21 people.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called
Tuesday for the U.N. to act and for world leaders to express
solidarity with Iranians, as antigovernment demonstrations raged in
Iran for the sixth day. The U.S. has called for emergency meetings at
the Security Council and the U.N.'s Human Rights Council in Geneva,
said Ms. Haley.
President Donald Trump has not yet made a decision on
whether to sign an Iran sanctions waiver later this month, White
House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. But Sanders said
the administration is keeping "our options open" as far as
sanctions against Iran are concerned, particularly as popular
protests continue to grip Iran.
UANI IN THE NEWS
But [UANI Chairman and] former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a
staunch Iran critic, said it's a given Tehran will portray dissent as
externally provoked. "That's a very weak excuse for American
inaction and inconsistency with our own interests and values. I'm
glad President Trump is not following that advice," Lieberman
said in an interview.
"I would not walk away" from the nuclear deal,
said [UANI Senior Adviser] Dennis Ross, a Middle East adviser to
three presidents of both parties. "It basically diverts
attention back onto us. We have an interest in keeping the spotlight
on what the Iranians are doing, not shifting it to a step that we
took."
It's clear that these demonstrations are broad-based.
They're rural and urban areas. They're talking about corruption, the
economy. They're talking about the Islamic Republic, against the
involvement in Syria. This is a broad- based democratic movement.
I joined UANI and Vets against the Deal to try and stop
them from getting a nuclear bomb a long time ago. We are still on
that mission today. When they got the blood of 500 Americans just in
the last few years on their hands. They've been killing Americans
since the 1970s and we just really haven't done a whole lot about it.
I think expressions of support for the Iranian people
are helpful. And it shouldn't just be coming from President Trump, it
should be coming from the world. There has been talk of a joint
communique that the United States is working on issuing with nations in
Europe to support the people of Iran. It really has to be a
multilateral approach.
IRAN PROTESTS
Iran's costly efforts to project power beyond its
borders in the wider Middle East are exacting a political price at
home, with arrests and deaths multiplying as antigovernment
demonstrations persisted into a sixth day Tuesday.
The Basij militiaman, a paramilitary storm trooper of
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, was reportedly swinging an electric shock
baton when the crowd of angry protesters closed in around him.
"They got a Basij, hold him!" one man shouted as the
demonstrators pulled away the militiaman's baton and knocked him to
the ground in the largely Kurdish city of Kermanshah.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani may have to step back
from some of his core economic policies in the face of nationwide
protests by tens of thousands of people frustrated by high
unemployment and stagnant living standards. The protests, during
which at least 10 people have been killed, are fueled by
disappointment that the lifting of sanctions on Iran in January 2016
has failed to deliver an economic boom. Instead, the non-oil part of
the economy has continued to struggle, with unemployment officially
put at around 12.5 percent - in reality, much higher for Iran's
millions of young people - and inflation running at nearly 10
percent.
The New York Times says the recent deadly protests that
exploded in Iran have not led the company to cancel any of its $8,000
tours of the terror-sponsoring rogue nation being offered this year,
conferring the prestige of the paper on wealthy customers - as the
paper seeks to find new sources of revenue.
Think of the Iranian uprising as a bottom-up revolt by
people who feel they've been ignored by a corrupt elite. The issues
and the faces in the street are very different from those of the
populist movements that swept the United States and Europe in 2016,
but you sense a resonance: "Make Iran Great Again" and
"Iran First."
On Dec. 28, protests broke out in the northern city of
Mashhad, spurred at first by concern over the country's stunted
economy and the high prices of basic goods like eggs, which saw a 40
percent jump in price. Over the next six days, the protests in more
than two dozen towns would turn into an open rebellion against Iran's
Islamic leadership itself.
In a country as repressive as Iran, it's difficult to
gauge where the current countrywide protests are leading. But a bold
theory that predicted the recent transition to democracy in Tunisia
may offer some clues.
We are now six days into the Iran protests, and the
questions that seized Washington during the 2009 pro-democracy
movement have now once again come to the fore. Should the United
States try to help Iran's protesters? Can we help them? Barack Obama's
answers to those questions were clear: No, not really. His position,
the one now echoed by many Western liberals, is based on a deeply
misguided premise that the current regime can be reformed or
moderated. It can't - and that premise should be abandoned if we want
to do right by Iran.
For the first time in years, the regime finds itself at
a severe diplomatic disadvantage. Since the administration in October
refused to recertify the nuclear deal, the U.S. is free to reimpose
sanctions and pull out of the deal altogether. A return to pre-deal
sanctions would do irreparable harm to the country's economy and thus
the regime's authority. The administration might threaten to carry
out that policy if the regime arrests or assault any more peaceful
protesters. That will put Khamenei's government in an impossible
position and may, in time, lead to its long hoped-for dissolution and
a true Persian democracy.
I have a New Year's confession: I retweeted President
Trump with approval, not something I had expected to do, especially
on the subject of Iran. But Trump has been right to get behind the
brave Iranian protesters calling for political and economic change.
Oil settled close to a 30-month high after days of civil
unrest in Iran failed to interrupt supplies from OPEC's third-biggest
crude producer.
Iran deadly protests could drive prices back towards
$100-mark and even higher. It happened back in 1979, and it could
happen again this time around. There are several reasons for that.
One of them is that protests place Iran's regime between a rock and a
hard place. Letting protests go on and risking chaos or cranking down
on protesters and risking another round of sanctions, this time
around for humanitarian reasons. Either scenario is bullish for oil,
as it could limit the flow of oil coming out from Iran.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
French President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday expressed his
concern over unrest in Iran during a telephone conversation with
counterpart Hassan Rouhani and called for "restraint and
appeasement," his office said.
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