Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, gives his official seal of approval to newly elected President Ebrahim Raisi in an endorsement ceremony in Tehran, Iran, August 3, 2021.
The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy is on the horizon, and we are faced with images of the Taliban’s swift takeover in Afghanistan after 20 years of the U.S. at war. A generation of Americans whose political views were shaped by these events have come full circle.
For many Americans, the failure of the United States to defeat the Taliban or bring lasting peace and democracy to Afghanistan—despite trillions of dollars spent and thousands of civilian casualties—is a bitter vindication of their objections to war. But for the nation as a whole, this is a moment of reckoning. Not only must we reflect on our mistakes in Afghanistan and the role of the U.S. in Afghanistan’s internal affairs that dates back decades before September 11, 2001, but we must also re-examine the enterprise of endless wars and the tendency of the U.S. government to favor military solutions.
While we cannot turn back time, we can and must shift strategies moving forward. Yet, even as we are reeling from the disaster in Afghanistan, there are U.S. hawks calling for a longer or indefinite U.S. military presence in the country. To make matters worse, rather than learning from our missteps, proponents of U.S. belligerence are still pushing for the Biden administration to abandon its diplomatic efforts with Iran in favor of a more aggressive approach that could risk a hostile confrontation or another costly war.
Using the all-too-familiar rhetoric of human rights and democracy, with no sense of irony, opponents of diplomacy with Iran have pushed for brutal sanctions on the country that human rights groups and experts have called into question on the basis of violating Iranian human rights. The efficacy and inhumanity of U.S. sanctions have become all the more pressing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, human rights experts and international bodies called for an easing of U.S. sanctions in an effort to support the global efforts to combat the deadly pandemic. However, under both Trump and now the Biden administration, those calls were disregarded.
Although sanctions are often regarded as a benign policy that avoids war, the devastation unleashed by blanket sanctions is often akin to war.
Now, as Iran is suffering through its fifth and worst wave to date of the pandemic—the result of a gross mishandling of the pandemic by Iranian officials—U.S. sanctions remain in place and continue to prevent the flow of essential goods to Iran in spite of humanitarian exemptions. Although sanctions are often regarded as a benign policy that avoids war, the devastation unleashed by blanket sanctions that target the entire financial sector of a country is often akin to war. In the case of Iran, with millions forced into poverty by U.S. sanctions, combined with the pandemic and shortages, some Iranians compare their current situation to that of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988).
Though President Biden suggested as a candidate that his administration would right the wrongs of his predecessor and restore the historic Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration foolishly abandoned, his administration was slow to address a return to the agreement. Losing precious time to political posturing and an unreasonable early view that Iran would have to make the first move to return to compliance—when it was the U.S. that abrogated the deal—the Biden administration finally began indirect talks with Iran in April. With an Iranian presidential election in June and the transition to a new administration in Tehran in early August, the talks have reached an impasse and are currently on hold.
But while the Biden administration maintains the idea that the “ball is in Iran’s court,” there are steps that the U.S. can certainly take if we are intent on resolving the issue of Iran’s civilian nuclear program with diplomacy. Given the state of the pandemic, the most appropriate move as a show of humanity and to demonstrate the U.S. is serious about diplomacy would be to immediately address sanctions impeding the import of essential goods and medicines to Iran. To this end, the Biden administration could free frozen assets for vaccine purchases, work with the global vaccine alliance COVAX to ensure the delivery of mRNA vaccines to Iran, approve Iran’s loan request from the International Monetary Fund, and ease duplicative Trump-era sanctions as a show of good faith.
Now more than ever, the Biden administration must make international cooperation the centerpiece to its foreign-policy outlook and make diplomatic talks with Iran a key priority. There is a glimmer of hope—ever so slight—in the Biden administration’s openness to diplomacy with Iran. Nonetheless, that openness must be met with tangible steps if there is to be any hope for a successful restoration of the deal. If the events of recent decades and the failure in Afghanistan have taught us anything, it is that we must do everything in our power to prevent the plague of war and embrace diplomatic solutions that engender the cooperation of states.
President Biden’s opponents are already trying to pin the blame for the debacle in Afghanistan squarely on Biden himself, conveniently overlooking that it was President Bush who began the war, and two presidents thereafter who continued and escalated the war in Afghanistan. However, 20 years of war is not the failure of any one individual or administration; it is an institutional failure. As such, it requires a deeper examination and fundamental change.
