The Most Important Security Threat to the Country: The Islamic Republic and Its Continuation

Since the beginning of the new wave of opposition and protests against the Islamic Republic, the regime's propaganda apparatus has aimed to scare people with the prospect of the country's disintegration and civil war. The Islamic Republic's media frightens people about becoming like Syria and foreign interventions, presenting the protests as orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. However, all evidence indicates that the greatest security threat to the country is the continuation of the corrupt, inhumane, fraudulent, totalitarian, and authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic. What turns Iran into Syria or Somalia is not the protests of Iranian youth in Qahedarijan, Toyserkan, Izeh, and Dorud, but the continuation of the Islamic Republic. Both Sunni and Shia Islamism, with the dream of establishing a totalitarian religious government nationally and then a global Islamic government or caliphate, pose the greatest security threat of the 21st century, just like fascism and communism did in the 20th century. The track record of movements and governments that have operated on this basis is just like that of fascist and communist governments and movements. One cannot ignore this danger from both Shia and Sunni perspectives. Supporters of the Islamic Republic downplay the threat of the Islamic Republic by emphasizing the danger of ISIS. It is astonishing and interesting that supporters of the Islamic Republic have abandoned slogans of freedom, justice, spirituality, and helping the people, and only boast about the cemetery-like security in Iran. Why is it a security threat? The Islamic Republic is a serious security threat from five aspects: 1. The Islamic Republic is an Islamist, authoritarian, and totalitarian regime; it despises the West and its freedoms; it is a police state that rules through intimidation via acid attacks, burning bookstores and cinemas, throwing people off bridges, bombing press offices, suffocating in vans, and butchering with knives. These actions have caused anger and dissatisfaction among Iranian youth, which can be clearly seen in the protests of December 2017. The Islamic Republic is not only a security threat to its neighbors and the international community but is the most significant security threat to Iranian citizens. Supporters of the Islamic Republic boast about Iran's security in the Middle East because their only security and military strategy is based on security, while security is not limited to the silence of people in a neighborhood against the rampage of thugs and club-wielders. 2. Islamism is expansionist, whether Sunni or Shia. Both seek dominance over the Middle East; the result of this expansionism is the impoverishment of the people and the formation of social volcanoes. 3. The Islamic Republic seeks to eliminate religious minorities such as Jews, Bahá'ís, and dervishes in Iran; look at the calamities that befall these groups daily and the flood of their emigration; the clerical government is a sectarian regime that, in critical conditions, uses thugs to send protesters home. 4. The Islamic Republic has supported terrorism worldwide, from Lebanon (Hezbollah) to Afghanistan (harboring the Taliban leader and al-Qaeda members who fled from Afghanistan to Iran) and Bahrain (the Islamic Republic directly defends Bahraini terrorists), from Argentina (AMIA) to the UAE (Abbas Yazdanpanah Yazdi) and France (Bakhtiar), Germany (Mikounos assassinations), and from Britain (offering a bounty for the assassination of Salman Rushdie) to the United States (Ali Akbar Tabatabai); some want to forget the history of these assassinations. ISIS has followed in the footsteps of the Islamic Republic over the past five years but was not lucky enough to hide its crimes in the pre-information age and has even been pleased to showcase them. 5. The Islamic Republic has pursued all programs for the production of weapons of mass destruction, from nuclear weapons (a program that cannot yet be assured to be halted) to biological weapons (the Royan Institute is pursuing this project). The agency only oversees the declared facilities. The Obama administration entrusted inspections of military facilities (like Parchin) to the Islamic Republic itself. The purchase and production of weapons of mass destruction have been at the top of the Islamic Republic's agenda. This behavior can also be observed in ISIS. Its missile and nuclear programs (the former continues vigorously and the latter is subject to a weak and time-limited agreement) along with threats to annihilate Israel are a threat to Europe and the United States. Which country has security brought by military powers? When we put these five policies together, it is a recipe for creating tensions and inviting threats to others and making the security situation fragile, rather than alleviating security threats. Is setting a trash can on fire to counter tear gas a security threat or giving missiles to Hezbollah or the Houthis? The fragile, cemetery-like, and police state security of the Islamic Republic is not only a security threat to its neighbors and the international community but is the most significant security threat to Iranian citizens. Supporters of the Islamic Republic boast about Iran's security in the Middle East because their only security and military strategy is based on security, while security is not limited to the silence of people in a neighborhood against the rampage of thugs and club-wielders. 1. What is observed today in Iran is not reliable and sustainable security; rather, it is walking on a tightrope over a mass of fire. A small mistake by the conservatives in allowing anti-Rouhani protests (to pay back bank deposits) toppled this paper house and set it on fire. Before 2011, the Syrian propaganda apparatus also boasted of the security that the Assads had brought to Syria. The claimed security in Iran is fragile, cemetery-like, police-based, and relies on widespread repression inside and continuous presence in crisis areas from Bosnia in the 90s to Iraq in the 2000s to Syria in the second decade of the present century. Security, like development, must be sustainable and long-term, universal, and dynamic. Sustainable, universal, and dynamic security is based on the welfare and participation of the people, the power of civil institutions, security cooperation with neighbors (the Islamic Republic does not even have a close friend among its neighbors), and adopting strategies to resolve conflicts. Security has no necessary relationship with despotism, totalitarianism, a closed society, mass killings, human rights violations, waste and corruption, and participation in the massacre of 400,000 people in Syria. The expansion of influence and destabilization of regional governments have worried both Israel and Arab countries in the region to the extent that they cooperate to counter the Islamic Republic. These work against Iran's long-term security. 2. The current security situation should not be merely compared to failed and shattered states (Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen), meaning the worst-case scenario. The current situation can be compared to conditions where Iran has a democratic and tolerant government and an open society. With a democratic and open government, security coefficients in the country would certainly increase, and the people's power to confront risks would grow. We are not facing just one option. 3. Iran's potential allies in the region are not Syria and Iraq but Israel and Turkey. By joining NATO, Iran would enjoy more sustainable security than by antagonizing the United States and Israel. If the Islamic Republic is realistic in its security claims, it should approach Israel and the United States rather than wanting to erase one from the map and push the other out of international waters (the Persian Gulf). What is observed today in Iran is not reliable and sustainable security; rather, it is walking on a tightrope over a mass of fire. A small mistake by the conservatives in allowing anti-Rouhani protests toppled this paper house and set it on fire. Before 2011, the Syrian propaganda apparatus also boasted of the security that the Assads had brought to Syria. 4. Without intervention in Syria and by maintaining neutrality and avoiding sectarian wars, ISIS would have had nothing to do with Iran. Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram, etc., also had nothing to do with Iran. The Taliban acted against Iranian diplomats in Herat due to Iran's cooperation with Masoud's forces. Even with existing interventions, ISIS has avoided direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Unlike al-Qaeda, ISIS has sought to gain territory in Iraq and Sham from the beginning and consolidate its power in these areas. The Islamic Republic's intervention has drawn ISIS into enmity with Iran, not the other way around. It was the Islamic Republic that brought the war to ISIS's trenches, not ISIS to Iran's borders. The story of the defenders of the shrine is a comical and ridiculous tale. Who should be credited for the unstable security in Iran? The credit for fragile security in Iran should go 1. to the opposition, most of whom oppose violence and have shown patience against the government of thugs and hooligans (the commanders of the IRGC and security forces) or the 'fire at will' people; 2. to European governments and Democrats in the U.S. who have shown patience and tolerance towards the regime's actions and have somewhat naively pinned their hopes on the faction they consider moderate; 3. to the Bush administration, which removed two serious regional enemies of the Islamic Republic, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam's government in Iraq, and the cost of this was borne by Americans with thousands of billions of dollars and thousands of deaths. Khamenei has no strategic security thinking. Supporters of Khamenei are pouring oil and dedicating it to the Imamzadeh. Khamenei has played no role in the key decisions of the Islamic Republic that have led to the regime's survival: 1. He was not the architect of accepting Resolution 598; that was Rafsanjani. Khamenei made no effort to end the war; 2. Some officials of the Islamic Republic sought to enter the war in support of Iraq after Iraq's attack on Kuwait, and the Rafsanjani/Rouhani team prevented this. Khamenei, after the National Security Council's declaration of neutrality led by Rafsanjani, condemned the U.S. and its allies' attack on Iraq instead of emphasizing neutrality. He later defended neutrality to present a coordinated policy of the regime. Khamenei is filled with hatred towards America, and one cannot have strategic thinking with hatred. 3. In the JCPOA negotiations, Khamenei played a passive role, not an active one. He was forced to accept negotiations under the title of 'heroic flexibility' to sustain oil revenues. The incompetent leader. If the Assembly of Experts acted within its designated responsibilities, it should have voted for Khamenei's incompetence by now due to: 1) fruitless and costly enmity with the United States and Israel, 2) a nuclear program with over $100 billion in wasted income and tens of billions in costs, 3) structural and institutional corruption, 4) unprecedented waste of resources in Iran, 5) government and state inefficiency, 6) lack of transparency in the institutions under his supervision, 7) lack of accountability, and 8) illegal actions such as direct interference in the work of the parliament and executive bodies. Dealing with the IRGC. Opposition to weakening and dissolving the IRGC is like opposing the arrest of El Chapo due to increased violence and deaths among drug groups and gangs in his absence. The IRGC does not even have the capacity to protect the parliament (the escape of IRGC personnel from the scene after the attack and the IRGC's assault on both hostages and hostage-takers), but it boasts to American forces in the Persian Gulf. These boastings are currently the greatest threat to the country's national security. One cannot expect security for the country from a mafia. The IRGC is the guardian of the power of Shia clerics and the rule of the jurist.