How America should deal with Iran’s new president

By adapting the Obama-era policy of “strategic silence” in the wake of the selection of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s enforcer Ebrahim Raisi as president of Iran, the Biden administration is tacitly endorsing his appointment, presumably in hopes of persuading him to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or nuclear deal, after his inauguration in August. The ballooning social protests across Iran, however, suggest that a return to “strategic silence” at this critical juncture could be as great a missed opportunity this summer as it was twelve years ago when the then Obama administration studiedly ignored the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. A more productive policy might be to revisit the successful Cold War precedent, summed up in the word “solidarity,” for forward-leaning engagement with the Iranian people.

In June 2009, as tens of thousands of brave Iranians took to the streets to protest the fraudulent reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in the New York Times to caution “neoconservatives” to “think before you speak” about developments in Iran. Kerry cautioned that, while he was “inspired” by the protesters and “sympathized” with their aspirations, strongly supporting them would only empower the hardliners. President Obama, on the other hand, by keeping quiet and “offering negotiation and conciliation to Tehran,” had “put the extremists on the defensive.” The result of this remarkable discretion was the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal.

Following the corrupt and undemocratic selection of Raisi as president, the Biden administration has reprised the silent treatment, declining even to put out an anodyne statement on this theater-of-the-absurd form of democracy from the State Department let alone anything from President Biden himself. This glaring omission began to get so much attention that the State Department spokesman felt compelled to respond that comments in his daily briefing were the statement, a claim that is laughable given State’s routine practice of putting out statements on elections, great and small, around the world. The decision not to condemn the elections is so obviously the price for the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna that it hardly requires articulation.

But for two reasons the Biden administration might want to reconsider its decision to not condemn the Iranian “elections.” First, Raisi is a particularly dangerous combination of thug and cleric. Second, the Iranian people may be waiting for just the sort of robust encouragement the Obama administration withheld in 2009.

One thing the election made clear is that the Supreme Leader no longer sees a benefit to paying lip service to useful-stooge “reformists” in the regime, such as outgoing president Hasan Rouhani and foreign minister Javed Zarif. Raisi’s background suggests that he has a very important — and potentially personal — role in maintaining the Khamenei family’s control of Iran.

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Victoria Coates

Victoria Coates works on regional issues such as energy policy, countering predatory Chinese activity, expanding the historic Abraham Accords between Israel and Muslim-majority nations, and establishing a U.S.-led Middle East strategic alliance. Coates routinely appears on TV and radio outlets such as Fox News, CNN, OANN, Newsmax, The Hugh Hewitt Show, The Erick Erickson Show, The John Batchelor show, and CSP’s own Secure Freedom Radio. Her writing has appeared in Bloomberg, FoxNews.com, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Post, Newsweek, The National Interest, National Review, The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Times.

Coates previously served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council staff and the Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy in the Donald J. Trump administration. She also served as the National Security Advisor in the office of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and as Director of Research for (former) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s 2011 memoir, Known and Unknown.

Coates holds a B.A. from Trinity College, a M.A. from Williams College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, all in art history. Coates is the author and presenter of dozens of publications and conference papers worldwide on the intersections of art and history, including David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art (Encounter Books, 2016) and the forthcoming Seeing the Light: A History of Christianity in Twelve Works of Art (under contract with Encounter Books), which are part of a projected trilogy on the key tenets of Western Civilization: democracy, the Judeo-Christian moral code, and the primacy of the individual.

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How America should deal with Iran’s new president

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