The National Interest:
Gawdat Bahgat is a professor of national security at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
There is no doubt that the “maximum pressure” strategy is making life harder for the government of Tehran and the majority of Iranian people. Still, it is unlikely that the pressure will lead to a major policy shift. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was largely driven by hostility toward American penetration of Iranian government and society. For generations, Iranians have perceived their country to be a victim of interference by global powers including Russia, Britain, and now the United States. They believe these global powers have denied Iran the regional prominence it deserves. Economic sanctions are reinforcing this sense of victimization and are not likely to lead to a key policy shift.
A revised deal with Iran that entails compromises by all parties should not come at the expense of other regional powers, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In recent weeks Tehran has proposed signing a non-aggression pact with its Arab neighbors, but Riyadh and Abu Dhabi rejected this overture. That said, tensions among Middle East countries could be reduced if Iran had better relationships with its neighbors. Arab countries do not need to see Iran as a common enemy in order to work together. Instead, major Middle East countries merely need to agree on an inclusive regional security architecture. This would be a win-win proposition and would pave a path towards global peace.
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Keep dreaming Sar Dabir jan!!!
Who else has not said what the good professor has said in his article?
Has copying and pasting of ideas become a norm?
Thanks to the policies of the regime in Tehran, Iran has been devastated, but the Gawdat Bahgats of this world keep seeing Iran as a “regional power.” What exactly does “regional power” mean to the likes of Gawdat Bahgat? The US are not in that region to win wars. For decades now, US’s main strategy has been to keep the region underdeveloped and destabilized. And the strategy has worked.
Hey AR,
The heinous Flynt Leverett and his bitch are two of the main culprits. The rest you know. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Leverett was heavily criticized for his articles during the 2009 Iranian Green Movementprotests. After the government announced official election results, millions of Iranians took on the streets in a peaceful protest against the rigged presidential election. The demonstrations were brutally crushed by the Iranian regime's security forces that left hundreds dead, and thousands of dissidents were injured, arrested and tortured. In a New York Times op-ed co-authored with his wife Hillary Mann Leverett, Flynt described the Iranian opposition movement as weak and not representing "anything close to a majority." The piece then went on to criticize President Obama's Iran policy as "half-hearted efforts."[2] The Leveretts' op-ed was harshly criticized by Abbas Milani. Calling the Leveretts' op-ed "the most infuriating op-ed of the new year," Milani pointed out how Obama's extensive efforts to reach out to the Ayatollah had been rejected and ridiculed by the regime.[3] In a 2010 article in the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg described the Leveretts as "cynical foreign policy realists," and criticized their reasons for a policy of conciliation between the US and a "regime that rapes and murders its own citizens" as "semi-inexplicable."[4]