American academic Wang Xiyue may be softly spoken, but his message about the growing dangers of the Iranian regime – and the seemingly misguided attempts to placate it – is a powerful one.
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In an exclusive interview with i24NEWS, Wang was withering in his condemnation of US President Joe Biden's approach toward Iran, terming it, "self-righteous, cynical, myopic, lacking in cohesion and immoral."
He questioned the Biden administration's current stance, which seems broadly indistinguishable from former President Obama's - particularly as many of the same personalities straddle both - and appears to be predicated on appeasing the Islamic republic whatever the cost.
An aspect of US-Iranian relations that perplexed him was why such a brutal Islamist regime - seemed to have more sympathizers in America than Iran. "For the most part, Iranians love America," he explained. "Many Iranians were willing to endure sanctions because it was a way to resist the regime. However, many Iranians would argue that the benefit of sanctions being lifted can hardly trickle down to ordinary people"
The general Iranian populace is similarly mystified as to why the Biden administration seems so determined to misunderstand the lessons from Obama. During his successful presidential campaign, Biden made it clear that the JCPOA should be restored, while ordinary Iranians urged him and other members of the international community to put pressure on Tehran over human rights. However, they have been met with stony silence.
Wang was highly critical of the tactic of attempting to appease the mullahs, noting that the years following the signing of the JCPOA saw an emboldened Iran intensify support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and a significant number of other Shi'ite proxies in Iraq and Syria.
He was similarly dismissive of much of the commentariat too, whom he described as "Leftist media, very safe and secure in their US apartments; who fail to understand or really care about the situation on the ground."
The academic also highlighted the potential folly in the push to undo, or the attempt to do so, of Trump's policies, purely on the basis of who implemented them, as highly politicized. He cautioned that the lack of perspective had the potential to be massively damaging for American national security, as well as for the Iranian people.
And his perspective is a unique one.
Imprisoned in Iran from 2016-2019, although the Revolutionary Court originally handed him down a 10-year sentence, Wang was an unwitting part of the diplomatic wrangling that surrounded the painful birth of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
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A near three-and-a-half-year hell in Evin prison, Iran's notorious incarceration site for political prisoners followed. It was an unusual training ground for Wang. Imprisoned with former Iranian diplomats, officials and many ordinary Iranians, he was offered a view of the Islamic theocracy from an entirely different perspective.
What he found both during his travails in prison and in his previous time of freedom within Iran was an "overwhelming dissatisfaction against the regime."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
