Since last June, the country’s anti-U.S. resolve has gone into overdrive, starting with the shooting down of an American military drone over the Persian Gulf and culminating a few months later in a masterful sneak attack on two of the oil world’s most valuable facilities in Saudi Arabia (Abqaiq and Khurais). The Trump administration raised the ante in January by killing Iran’s most revered soldier, former IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Yet Iran’s hardliners stuck to their guns by carrying out a series of brazen attacks against U.S. military forces in Iraq.
Tehran is biding its time, for now, praying for a Biden win in November that would usher the U.S. back into the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal, end sanctions and begin a new experiment with what two prominent Biden advisers recently dubbed “aggressive diplomacy.” The dreadful alternative is another four years of Donald Trump, summed up recently in an ultimatum delivered by the U.S. envoy for Iran: “Negotiate or manage economic collapse.”
Unfortunately, neither Trump’s maximum pressure policy alone nor a flip to Biden will compel the Islamic Republic to accommodate the United States. This raises the question: Why not skip right past another generation of Iranian dissimulation and disingenuous deal-making and go straight to regime change? A full-scale war with Iran is hardly warranted, but covert action could be exactly what the U.S. needs to support a democratic transition.
But first, we need to detox. “Regime change” still evokes images of CIA abuses, orchestrated military coups and the type of reckless U.S. interventionism that President Trump himself regularly riffs on. A 21st-century version should be non-lethal and strive to remove as much of the secrecy as possible. Accordingly, it will stand a much better chance of getting buy-in from Congress and the American public.
In a more politically palatable form, it would be easier to provide non-lethal U.S. support to freedom-seeking Iranians. There are several things Washington can do to elevate pressure from max to supermax.
Unify Iran’s disparate protest movements. Regime change will benefit from U.S.-backed programs that fund, train and operationalize Iran’s most important but disparate protest groups such as women, students, teachers, truck drivers and ethnic minorities. Boycotts, strikes and civil disobedience that occur under a single banner of uncompromising opposition will lead to defections from security services and political elites—one of the most important determinants of success for any mass movement. By opening up covert action to experts in economic reconstruction, organized labor and civil society, Washington will have a deeper impact and provide a future national resistance movement with structure, funding and vision—precisely what was missing in the popular but rudderless Green Movement a decade ago.
Active, not passive media. U.S.-sponsored Persian media programs that cost tens of millions of dollars every year, such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, offer high-quality news broadcasts. Some estimate that they reach as many as 50 million regular viewers of satellite TV, 44 million internet users and 25 million users of social networks and messaging apps. That sounds like a substitute for unbearable, pro-regime propaganda at home, not an action-oriented tool of U.S. policy. The days of “passive media” should make way for creative initiatives that rouse an army of disaffected Iranians sidelined by fear. This is exactly what Ayatollah Khomeini did when he weaponized a sprawling network of nearly 10,000 mosques across Iran to clandestinely disseminate tape-recorded messages to inspire millions of Iranians to take up the cause of civil resistance.
Connect with regime insiders. For any non-violent mass movement to succeed, it will need assistance from men and women in the government they seek to overthrow. Sympathetic elites can start by smuggling out damning information about the regime that riles up Iranians the most—corruption, incompetence and violent repression. Insiders include not only military officers and government officials, but also the insidious facilitators that quietly run the day-to-day affairs of a vast commercial apparatus. Their support will be especially critical during the later phases of a transition, when the regime’s survival will hinge on whether the security services remain loyal or not. The U.S. can help stand up and fortify the scaffolding of insider support, but it will take time, money and planning to thwart Iran’s vast and increasingly paranoid counterintelligence apparatus.
Burrow into Energy and Transportation. General strikes, boycotts and general disobedience were largely responsible for paralyzing the Iranian economy in the two years leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In November 1978, 37,000 oil workers went on strike, causing Iran’s oil production to fall by nearly 80 percent in less than two weeks. A similar strike today would be even more devastating, potentially causing fuel disruptions at home at a time when sanctions have already cut off 80 to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. While oil workers have avoided protests in recent years, truck drivers have started them. More than 200,000 truck drivers went on strike across 250 cities for most of the second half of 2018, leading to shortages of gasoline and other basic goods across the country. Iran’s judiciary pumped out hundreds of arrest orders, and the prosecutor general went even further by threatening severe punishments, including the death penalty. Washington should voice public support for truck drivers and help strengthen the 10 informal (i.e., illegal) trade associations that truck drivers have set up across the country.
A second Trump administration should part with the fiction that U.S. leaders have coddled uncomfortably for far too long: Iran will eventually change its ways. Maximum pressure has failed to achieve it, paving the way for a new approach nestled between Biden’s promise of “aggressive diplomacy” and the unthinkable notion of all-out war. Broader U.S. government participation in a reformed version of covert action could be an open, cost-effective and humane way of helping Iranians usher out the ruling theocracy in favor of democracy. The alternatives—waiting for Iran to capitulate and commit to real change or spontaneous combustion in the form of a Persian Spring—are just wishful thinking.
Scott Modell is the managing director of the Rapidan Energy Group, a Washington, D.C.-based energy consulting firm focused on oil markets, policy and geopolitics. Scott is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and served for 13 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
