Pleas of a Predator: Will the U.S. Ever Stop Pushing for Still More Sanctions on Iran?

To put further sanctions on Iran today would be like pushing someone into a lake and then pouring a glass of water on his head. As an Iranian-American who was born the year of Iran’s Islamic revolution and who has never in my lifetime witnessed an Iran that was not a so-called Islamic Republic, I can tell you that Iranians have been living under unilateral American sanctions for nearly thirty years. This is nothing new to them--I’ve seen the effects of these sanctions with my own eyes, and they have been pretty consistent over the years. I can also tell you that Russia and China aren’t interested in slapping any more UN sanctions on Iran, as they are hefty consumers of Iranian oil. What exactly does the United States hope to achieve through even more economic sanctions? Obviously, the sanctions have not been influential in ceasing Iran’s alleged nuclear program. So, what is the solution?

For starters, it would do the American government some good to realize that by threatening war against Iran, it is only making more Iranians rally around the country’s right to nuclear power—not because the Iranian people genuinely care about anything nuclear but because nobody likes to be told what to do. The American government’s selective amnesia and ignorance isn’t helping matters much either. Iranians have not forgotten that the US backed Iraq in the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq war—it’s hard to forget something like that when you lose upwards of half-a-million sons, brothers, nephews, uncles and fathers. Nor have Iranians forgotten about the CIA-sponsored 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s very popular democratically elected prime-minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, simply because he had the nerve to try to nationalize Iran’s oil so that Iranians could benefit from their own natural resources. So, when the US starts barking orders at Iran to do anything at all, Iranians the world over, including myself, can’t help but roll their eyes, not only because of this history, but also because of the unabashed hypocrisy of the American government’s foreign policies. For the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb in battle to ask others to stop nuclear efforts is akin to a lion asking a mouse to stop squeaking so loudly.

Recently, I spoke at a high school in Ohio, and one of the students asked me, “What can Iran do to improve its relationship with the US?” It’s a question that I don’t blame him for asking—it’s all over the news, but the answer is simple—not a damn thing. Until the US begins to realize that a whole hell of a lot of the mess that has been created in the Middle East is thanks to America’s own myopic meddling, there is nothing else that Iran can do. Iranians are a smart and sensitive lot. We aren’t about to roll around in catnip and then approach the lion that is the American empire, begging to make friends with our greatest predator. The lion has to make the first move here--and if that first move comes in the way of bombs and missiles, chances are that Iran won’t happily curl up on a plate to face its death. And who could blame her?